Don’t Let Your Bible Reading Turn Into Visual Muzak

“But his delight is in the law of the LORD and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psa 1:2).

Do you know what “muzak” is? It is the music that you hear and becomes so familiar to you that you don’t pay attention to it, it is just background music. The best example of muzak is elevator music. It is playing while you ride the elevator but you don’t even hear it. We can let our Bible reading turn into visual muzak.

We start to read a passage that we are very familiar with and because we know what is coming we start to think of other things. Our minds drift and before we know it the words of Scripture are just background noise in our minds. In our fast paced “hurry-up and get to the next thing” world falling into this trap is easy. How do we avoid this trap?

We have to be intentional to keep from letting our Bible reading becoming muzak. First, we take a moment, as we open our Bibles, to set our mind on hearing God speak. The Bible is God speaking to us. Mentally we should set our attention on hearing Him as if we were reading a letter from a friend.

Second, when we get to passage we are familiar with, one were we are tempted to start drifting mentally, we should read it differently. We could read it out loud. The act of speaking a passage out loud focuses our attention on the words differently than when we read silently. If we are physically in a situation where reading the passage out loud is not feasible, then read it silently focusing on the punctuation. Physically pause at commas, take longer pauses at semicolons and colon, and come to a complete rest at periods. If the sentence has an exclamation mark reread it with the emphasis of an exclamation mark.

Thirdly we can pray through the passage. This is more difficult with narrative Scripture like OT history or the gospels, but even with these we can form a prayer from the main point of the narrative. For example in Mark 5:1-20 we have the account of Jesus and the demon possessed man. From just a quick reading of this passage we see that Jesus has authority over demons and evil spirits. We can pray thanking God that he gave Jesus authority over devils and evil spirits. A more purposeful reading of the passage would uncover other truths from this event in Jesus’ life, like we are supposed to go and tell others what Christ has done for us, 5:19-20. If you would like another example of praying through Scripture go to the blog immediately after this one on Personalizing Isaiah 53.

Our strength and closeness to Christ in our daily walk is directly tied to the intake of Scripture. Don’t let Satan and his minions use the fast paced life you live as a tool for separating you from your Lord by letting Scripture reading become muzak. Bring your Bible reading to the forefront of your attention.