So a couple of years ago I had a conversation with someone going from no faith of any kind to Jesus. And as I typically do, one of my first recommendations for anyone who wants to start following Jesus is to learn more about him by reading the Bible. The thing I have taken for granted for a long time is how intimidating the Bible is to people who are coming to Jesus from zero Christian experience. So I got to sit with him and walk him through the basic structure of the Bible, how to interact with it, and how to get started reading.

And a quick scroll on social media will tell you he’s not the only one. So let’s take a beginner’s walk through the Bible.

It’s the inspired word of God and living and breathing.

We say it’s the inspired word of God because we believe that God gave humans the words to write. So inspired means God had a part in each book of the Bible to make them all a seamless story.

We say that it’s living and breathing because no matter how many times you read it, there is something new you can understand about the Bible and what it teaches us about our relationship with God. A scripture you read one day may mean nothing to you, and the next day might bring you to your knees. In addition to the impact one single scripture might have on you day to day, the Bible is like an onion. Meaning there are layers and layers of understanding and impact the Bible has for us, but it takes us spending time getting to know it to get to some of the deeper understandings.

The Bible is an anthology

Yes, we view it as one book, but really it’s 66 books written over time by different authors to give us the big story of God’s salvation and of our humanity. This is one of the things that makes the Bible even more impressive because these authors didn’t talk to each other. Becasue of the time between books, they couldn’t have talked about what each of them was going to write and if it would connect to what the others were going to write, especially to the level of connection that the Bible has.

It’s split between the Old Testament and New Testament

The Old Testament is all the books written before Jesus’ birth.

The New Teastament is all the books written after Jesus’ birth.

There are 56 books in the Old Testament

The Old Testament is based around God’s promise to bring a savior to fix the problem of sin and how God chose a group of people that the savior would come from and continued to work in and through people in order to bring Jesus at the right time.

There are 27 books in the New Testament,

The New Testament is how Jesus fulfilled the Law and made a way for us, and what it looks like to live a life that believes and follows Jesus.

There are chapters and verses to help with location, not storytelling

I still don’t get the reasoning for the way the Bible was split into chapters and verses. And when we’re trying to read the Bible just to learn to love reading the Bible, the chapters and verses can really get in the way of understanding what’s happening. It happens often enough that a chapter cuts off the end of a thought and disjoints the thought process, but we’re committed to this setup now so it’s more of an understanding you need to keep with you.

Chapters and verses are just addresses so you can find the place everyone is talking about easier. That’s it. When you have a reference it will look like this

(book of the Bible) (chapter#):(verse#)

Meaning, when you’re looking, you look for the book, then the chapter then the number.

If you want to get familiar with the order of the books, using your Bible regularly is step one, but I’m also a fan of music for learning, so check out some of these songs to help you learn the books of the Bible. They will also help you with some of the pronunciations of the books. And yes, you’ll see my children’s minister showing with these songs, but goofy helps us learn too.

This is probably my favorite because it goes through the books and adds a little of what the books are about, so you get the rundown of everything.

These are songs that I can handle listening to with my kids. And even though I was a children’s minister, I can’t stand recorded kids singing. Listening to kids sing their hearts out live, love it. Listening to kids professionally recorded with a classical soprano, nails on a chalkboard.

If you read it in anything other than Greek and Hebrew, it’s a translation

The original text of the Bible was written in Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament). So no matter what translation you read, it’s still a translation. I’ve already written a post about translations here that you can read if you want. But if you just want to know which to start with, I say whichever version your church uses. If you haven’t settled into a church family yet, NLT and NIV is the most common everyday readers, unless you’re Baptist and then it’s ESV.

But I would say start with the translation you’re going to interact with the most with your church family and once you get used to using the Bible, you can work towards studying and trying out new translations.

If you’re still not sure, download the Youversion Bible app*(it’s free) and read the same scripture in different translations till you find one that you generally like. Every translation has it’s pros and cons, but find one that feels comfortable reading so the translation won’t be a barrier to you digging into your Bible.

Where to start reading

Where to start is determined by where you’re starting. If you’re super new and never cracked the Bible before, I honestly would recommend you start with two storybook Bibles. Growing up I read my comic book Bible as much if not more than the chapter verse Bible and I think that’s a part of what makes it easier for me to follow the story of the Bible.

So the first Storybook I recommend is the Jesus Storybook Bible is going to walk you through the main stories of the Bible in a way that explains how everything points to Jesus. It helps a beginner understand how some of the hard stories and stories that don’t make sense are often telling that Jesus is coming.

The other is the Action Bible: This is just a comic book of all the stories of the Bible. It doesn’t avoid hard stories either. But this will give you an understanding of what the small and big stories of the Bible are

If you want to start reading a Chapter verse Bible, I would say start with Psalms and Proverbs. You don’t have to understand a story to understand the emotion behind someone following and going to God in the highs and lows. Psalms will help you understand how to worship in all moments of life. Proverbs is about the best ways to live life and relationships and seek God’s wisdom.

Once you get down a general idea of the stories, it makes it easier to read the stories from a chapter verse Bible, because you won’t get as easily confused by what’s happening and can pay attention to what the story means.

A lot of people say to start with John because it’s the shortest, but he can get metaphorical at times. So I like having people start with Luke the best because it’s a lot of the parables Jesus told, which means he taught people using stories and makes it easier to follow.

My third choice for books of the Bible to start with is James. It’s short and a very practical application of faith in life. It’s kind of like the cliff notes of Romans.

Ruth is good for a short story. Genesis can be long and complicated, so if you don’t love reading, I wouldn’t start with the whole book of Genesis. Maybe just read the first 3 chapters to get creation and the start of Sin.

But really a great way to start reading the chapter-verse Bibles is by reading through the stories. It took many years of reading the Bible for me to find Leviticus interesting, so don’t feel bad if you skip that a couple of times before trying, and then trying again.

It’s about quality, not quantity

If you’re like me you’re an all-or-nothing person. If I can’t do it all or perfect there’s no point in moving forward. But when you’re starting out, it’s about doing it, not doing it perfectly or whatever you’re thought of as perfect is.

Consistency is the most important thing when building a relationship. It’s not about doing the same thing every day or communicating the same way for the exact same amount of time. The important part is that you are consistently communicating. So as you start reading the Bible and making God the most important relationship in your life, maybe one day you read a verse, and the next day it’s a chapter, and then maybe you miss three days. The important thing is that you come back after the three days and keep going.

If you need a reminder, again, the You Version Bible app is great because it can remind you and has some reminder and reward systems in place to help you make reading your Bible a habit, and really making it a habit to spend time with God each day is all that matters.

Stay Weird,