Every year about three thousand people attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail in its entirety, trudging their way through the mountains and valleys of the Eastern US. The complete trail stretches over two thousand miles of varied terrain, from Georgia to Maine. The total journey takes an average person about six months to complete. But barriers—like unpredictable weather, exhaustion, or improper training—keep most hikers from reaching their destination.
Those who do reach the finish line are commonly referred to as “thru-hikers.” Millions of others, “section-hikers,” prefer to approach various smaller pieces of the trail over shorter periods of time.
When it comes to reading Scripture, Christians are called to be thru-hikers. We are called to engage the whole scope of God’s Word carefully and to walk in whole-hearted obedience to its entire message.
But the path isn’t easy. The complete Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, spans thousands of years and has at least forty different authors. The Bible has its own barriers too—unexpected detours and difficult terrain—and no one starts out with the proper training. The journey is daunting!
Take for instance one popular Bible app: Over three million people signed up to read the entire Bible in 2025 (which is worth celebrating!).1 Yet it’s unclear how many of those users completed their goal.
So how might we devote ourselves to adequate preparation? How might we identify the habits that will put us in a position of success? And how can we resist the temptation to become section-hikers, sticking to only those parts of Scripture that are easiest or most comforting?
Listen and Respond
If we look to Scripture itself, specifically Deuteronomy 6:4–9, God gives a clear and repeated invitation to his newly-chosen people:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
The first word in this text is to hear or listen. Or if you prefer, in Hebrew the word is shema. We will not be equipped for the rest if we do not first listen to the whole of God’s story. Part of our training is to develop disciplined study habits.
More than Intuitive Reading
The message of God’s work can be communicated at all levels, but intuitive reading strategies are not enough. Those called to be students and teachers—whom God holds to the highest standards—need something more (see James 3:1).
Faithful listening to Scripture requires attention to original languages, historical and literary contexts, patterns of biblical theology, and honest reflection on personal assumptions and biases. Neglecting any of these could lead to error or harmful misapplication.
Not only do students and teachers need tools and resources to correctly handle the word of truth (see 2 Timothy 2:15), but their hearts must be properly oriented to the study of Scripture. To listen well is an act of love toward God and neighbor.
The word shema doesn’t stop with mere listening. It requires a response. In a Hebrew context, if you do not respond to—or obey—what you’ve heard, you haven’t done all the work.
We can study Scripture thoroughly, dive into cultural context, and unpack every sentence. But if we never do what it says, it’s like analyzing a map of the Appalachian Trail without ever lacing up our boots or setting out on the hike.
The word shema doesn’t stop with mere listening. It requires a response. In a Hebrew context, if you do not respond to—or obey—what you’ve heard, you haven’t done all the work of listening.
Heart and Soul
After calling his people to shema (to hear), God commands them to love God and neighbor with all their hearts, souls, and strength. The call is to wholeness—responding to God’s Word with the entirety of our being.
In the original Hebrew, the word for soul is nephesh. Contrary to modern understandings of the word “soul,” the ancient writers of Scripture understood this to include more than just the spiritual parts of us. It includes everything that makes us alive—our whole bodies.
The invitation is to love with everything we’ve got: our minds, emotions, wills, and actions.
Intellect and Emotions
There are broad implications for this invitation when studying Scripture. We must bring our whole selves into our practice.
If you lean toward the intellectual side, then you might need to engage Scripture in a more contemplative manner. You might ponder its words in a way that stirs your emotions and imagination.
But if you are more comfortable with devotional-style reading, you might need to sharpen your study habits. Dig into a practice that will cultivate your curiosity and probe deeper into what you thought you knew.
In Matthew 22:37, Jesus repeats the prayer from Deuteronomy, the prayer of shema. He instructs listeners to love God with all their hearts, souls, and minds. The addition of the word mind emphasizes the original point. To attend to God’s Word in obedience, we must engage every single part of ourselves—inside and out.
Private and Public Reading
The prayer of shema reminds us that loving God and reading his Word is a deeply relational activity. Notice that in Deuteronomy, God first says that his commands “are to be” on their hearts (6:6). It doesn’t say exactly how the commands will get there. But the idea gets picked up and expanded in other verses of Scripture. God ultimately promises to be the one to put them there (compare Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10).
God’s commands will not only live on tablets of stone—or in our case, in the pages of the Bible—but will be etched into the deepest recesses of our being.
We can read Scripture with confidence that the Holy Spirit will meet us when we bring our full selves into his presence. Scripture is working on us, being written upon us from the inside as we read. The Word of God resonates and reverberates with his indwelling Spirit. In this way, the practice of reading Scripture is deeply devotional, relational, and personal.
Public Reading of Scripture
We shouldn’t forget that reading Scripture is also a public affair!
God’s people were to take the commands they received and communicate them to their children. They were to talk about them when sitting, walking, lying down, and rising. (I’m pretty sure that covers all possible human postures!)
These words first invite God’s people into the practice of meditation, chewing on and turning over the words of Scripture multiple times a day. But they also invite public sharing. Paul echoes this idea when he instructs followers of Christ to devote themselves to the public reading of Scripture, exhortation, and teaching (1 Timothy 4:13).
Talking about, sharing, and displaying God’s Word were all common practices for the ancient people of God. We are called to do the same. Not only is this deeply formative, but it can be corrective to realize that our study is not just about us and our personal enrichment.
In The Liturgy of Politics, Kaitlyn Schiess wisely reminds us that “an emphasis on communal readings of Scripture in its various ways also shapes our responsibility to those outside of us—we are not ours alone; we belong to a community that is necessary for our moral formation.”2
Whole-Hearted Devotion
Reading Scripture requires dedication to proper training, ongoing commitment, and a full-body engagement of all that we are. And, it is worth our efforts. God’s Word spreads out before us in new and expansive ways as we participate in the fullness of the narrative.
Even more, the story works on us as we enter it, forming us and shaping us to become more like Jesus. In John 5:39, Jesus says that as we search the Scriptures, we must never forget that what we are really looking for—what Scripture testifies to—is him.
Jesus is our destination. And the views are spectacular.
Article by Nicole Howe.
- J. L. Gerhardt, “Plan This Year’s Bible Reading for Endurance, not Speed,” Christianity Today, December 31, 2025, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/12/bible-in-a-year-slow-reading, accessed Jan. 20, 2025. ↩︎
- Kaitlyn Schiess, The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2020), 79. ↩︎
