It’s the First Tuesday again when we bring on a special guest to discuss reading the Bible!
What if you could unlock a deeper understanding of the Bible and its teachings? With the help of our special guest, Sister Allison Johnson, a servant leader with a love for the Word, that's exactly what we're tackling. Sister Allison brings her insights on how to start a personal Bible reading habit and make sense of its profound teachings, especially the finished work of Christ. She reminds us that our journey in faith is one of constantly growing and learning.
Ever thought of reading the Bible with a friend or setting yourself to read the Bible in one year or even 90 days? We have that covered too, as Sister Allison expands on the benefits of shared reading experiences and time-bound goals. Brace yourself for a conversation that will challenge you to deepen your relationship with God through His word.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
The One Year Bible NLT: The Entire Bible in 365 Readings in the New Living Translation
It’s the First Tuesday again when we bring on a special guest to discuss reading the Bible!
What if you could unlock a deeper understanding of the Bible and its teachings? With the help of our special guest, Sister Allison Johnson, a servant leader with a love for the Word, that's exactly what we're tackling. Sister Allison brings her insights on how to start a personal Bible reading habit and make sense of its profound teachings, especially the finished work of Christ. She reminds us that our journey in faith is one of constantly growing and learning.
Ever thought of reading the Bible with a friend or setting yourself to read the Bible in one year or even 90 days? We have that covered too, as Sister Allison expands on the benefits of shared reading experiences and time-bound goals. Brace yourself for a conversation that will challenge you to deepen your relationship with God through His word.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
The One Year Bible NLT: The Entire Bible in 365 Readings in the New Living Translation
Note: All scripture references are from the NIV translation unless otherwise indicated.
Jacqui:
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another special First Tuesday's episode of the Bible Basics podcast. The First Tuesday's episode is when we hear from special guests with their insights on reading God's Word. So stay tuned for a word from our special guest, Mrs Allison Johnson. Well, welcome everyone.
Jacqui:
I'm your host, Jacqui Adewole, and this is the Bible Basics podcast, where weekly, we break down the Bible into understandable, bite-sized chunks. Listeners, I am very pleased to introduce you to a woman of God who has poured into me, and I'm honored to have the opportunity for her to pour into you. She's an active servant leader who is passionate about engaging the saved to dig deeper into God's Word and make it their aim to finish well, to the glory of God. She's married to the Reverend Terence L Johnson and has co-labored with him in ministry for the past 40 years. Additionally, she sows into others as a Christian coach and she holds a Master's of Arts and Religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Dearborn, Illinois. This week is my privilege to welcome Sister Allison Johnson. Sister Allison, welcome to the Bible Basics podcast. I am thrilled to have you.
Allison:
Thank you, Jacqui. I'm glad to be here. I'm just grateful for you inviting me.
Jacqui:
Oh, it's my pleasure Listeners. Sister Allison is just an extraordinary Bible teacher. She is a woman entrenched—is that the right word—entrenched deep in God's Word, and I thought she would be the perfect person to bring on to the podcast to talk to us about getting started reading the Bible and or maintaining a consistent Bible reading habit. Sister Allison, tell us a little bit about how you first began connecting or engaging with God's Word on such a deep level.
Allison:
Hmm, I would say that it's never deep enough. Augustine said the Bible is so—it can be so shallow that a baby can wade in it and it could be so deep that an elephant will drown in it. So when we think about that and I probably—those are my summation of what I remember the quote so, with that said, that's sort of—we don't ever have to be concerned about where we start. You know, if we're babes, we're going to be waiting, and, as I think of those people who are deep theologians and people that I—that have helped me study through the years, I'm a babe, you know. So it doesn't seem like it's deep, but I started as a Christian and I just had this love for the Word and God—I would say that's God-given and that it was very important for me to know his Word and to be able to teach it, because my calling is actually teaching. So, yeah, I don't know if I answered it, but—.
Jacqui:
That's a great answer. I know from experience being a student in your classes that you don't let your students get away with surface readings of the Bible or making up our own interpretations. Probably others who may be listening who also have been in your class, but join me in saying one of the most common things we might hear from you during one of your classes is where is that in the Bible, or is that what it really says? So why is it important for us to read it for ourselves?
Allison:
Yeah, so that we know what's there.
Jacqui:
That's what that is.
Allison:
Right. So we know what's there, so we understand. You know, have God said. And so when we think about the first sin, it was a manipulation on what God had told Adam. And so when we hear others, we have to be able to sift for ourselves, we have to be able to come, and we are living in a time when there are so many translations and ways in which we can get scripture that we are without excuse, and so it's not like our Bibles are chained to the pulpit and the common person can't read it.
Allison:
You, know, and we're living in an age where we are most educated, and why would we dumb ourselves down in the Word of God and think that only I can only take kindergarten stuff or, as we, as I always say, gospel town stuff like this, most elementary, and not grow in the Word? Because the more I grow in the Word, the more I fall in love with my Savior and the God of this Bible.
Jacqui:
So what do you say to somebody who says, okay, I want that, I want to do that, but the Bible doesn't make any sense. I don't understand it.
Allison:
Yeah, yeah, I want to. First of all, I want to check their salvation. I want to see if they you know. I want to question and ask them how do you know Jesus? If you were to die tonight and you went to heaven and you were asked why should I let you in? Okay, Jesus is standing at the gate, and why should I let you in? And you said because my mother was a deaconess and my father was in a pastor and I've been in church all my life and I go to this particular church.
Allison:
And those are all the wrong answers. We have to know that it's because of the finished work of Christ, the blood of Jesus, that saves us from our sins. When we understand that that is the cost of who we are in Christ, then we are along the lines of a true conversion. And the question becomes do you hunger and thirst at the God's word? And if you're not hungering and thirsting, and it's just another book, like somebody said well, you know, I have this thing right, you should have more Bibles than you have shoes Just saying okay, and that's, you know, like who's, like what do you mean? Because the word of God is your textbook and we live in a time when we have so much access to different types of Bibles, like I just lent out a Bible this afternoon. It's an archeological Bible and the person is interested in archeology and culture and so I said, well, take a look at it and, just you know, scan it and see it.
Allison:
So we're living in this age when we have so much access, and how dare us, if we say that we are in Jesus and we love him, that we will not avail ourselves to the Word? And we just come once a week for an hour to two hours and expect for the minister to make us happy, glad, entertain us, and we now know the Word. We don't go to, you know, do we go to Sunday school? Do we avail ourselves to Bible studies and things of that nature? We really grow. So my point is we want, we have that, just if I'm saved, the Holy Spirit has put in me that I want to know him, I want to know him, and thus he left us a textbook, he left us his Word, and so I need to pick up that word and begin to know this God that went to the cross and died for me and was risen so that I might have eternal life.
Jacqui:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Sister Allison's home and I can attest to the fact that I'm sure she has more Bibles than I have shoes for sure, but I don't know about me, so I'll have to take a look at that. But I love that. But I've heard that it's the Bible really relevant. Is it really all that relevant for us today?
Allison:
Are you saved? And if you are, you're not even arguing relevancy, that's not an issue for you. You come with childlike faith. Okay, it's just, you know, I can wade in the Bible and it's always going to speak to me. It's always going to speak to me and it's going to direct me and it's going to help me understand this God who I have pledged my allegiance to and, make no mistake, I pledged my allegiance to him. I have because of what he's done. I reciprocate because of his grace. I then come to him and I want to experience him through his word, not through me getting a thrill and kind of jerking a little bit in church. Oh, I felt something. No, after you get finished feeling something, I'm gonna need you to know something. Right, Because the scripture says that we love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, our soul and our mind. We do pretty good with saying, oh yeah, I love the Lord and, yes, I feel him on Sundays. What about our mind? And somehow we have thrown into our intellect out and all we want to do is have experiences. Warning that will lead you in the wrong direction. We need to know what has God said from Genesis to Revelation. How has he said it? What does he expect of us? How can we then plant and sow in other people's lives?
Allison:
We have people trying to do evangelism and they don't know what's in the Word and, honestly, it was years before I read through the scriptures from cover to cover, and it wasn't until I went to a Women of Faith conference and Becky Terrobasi challenged us to read the Bible in a year, and so what you do, and me and my friend, we were together, and so we said, okay, we're gonna do it, and she was like 15, 20 minutes a day and we started. She had the New Living Translation. I always recommend that as a good reading Bible, because you're not going to see, oh, that was seven cubits by 40 cubits. You're going to see, oh, that was seven feet by 20 feet. Okay, seven feet. I'm thinking about football and how far you know and I can make sense of that. You know, I see courts and I see cups versus other types of measurements that are strange to me, and so it reads really well and it helps me understand and every person who I've ever started when they get the idea that I can read through the Bible from cover to cover in 365 days, just like Becky did with myself and my friend.
Allison:
We both were like, wow, we really read the Bible and found out some stuff in there. We had no idea what was in here. Get to the Song of Songs, you know, get into some of the things that Paul writes about, and it's just amazing. So it's a book that just feeds our soul. Now I know some of you listeners. They are not going to miss a meal. How do we, as Christians, miss a meal in the Word of God? Yeah, how do we do that?
Jacqui:
So how does the person get started? Is that what they do? You just pick up the Bible and start reading it for a year. How do you, how would you recommend someone start this process?
Allison:
Yeah, using a one year Bible. The one year Bibles normally hit the market October, november timeframe, the last quarter of the year. You probably can start finding them in September. Do not wait until January to try to get one, because then you know you might have to wait a couple of days and that's really not a problem because there are all sorts of reading plans.
Allison:
But I like paper and it's good to have a piece of paper where you, where you have a book in your hand, not on your phone, okay, okay, you need to, because, why? Because you want to mark it up, and I know people say, well, I can highlight let's get real, okay and the reason you want to, you want to be able to, you want to be able to highlight it, you want to be able to make a note of how it spoke to you, if it did, or something that connected for you, so you can write in the margins of it, because this is a textbook for us and it's not this. You know people say the Holy Bible and so therefore they want it in a box and they want to bring it to church.
Jacqui:
Never write in it.
Allison:
Yeah, never write in it. I don't know how you do that, because you got to write in it, because you know why you can't remember everything, but you remember it was on the right hand side and you see that yellow marking and I'll tell you when I, if I am on my last few days of my life and I did this with my best friend of 34 years I was able to take her Bible and her markings and read them to her as she was transitioning, and so there's a sacredness there of the notes that you leave and you can plant into your children's life and nieces and nephews, whatever your situation is. So, one year Bible, get a one year Bible, cause it's gonna give you the New Testament, it's gonna give you the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalm and a Proverb, and it'll take you through in 365 days, the Bible. I always recommend you get a partner. You know that good girlfriend that y'all both been saying, hey, we should read it, but y'all do everything else together, so you might as well do the Bible together, and so just read that day, just read that day, and then you can either send each other texts a couple of times during the week or however your close your relationship is. I remember my friend. We were like did you see that I had no idea when we started reading the Bible and we read it from cover to cover that first year and I was actually teaching the Bible and it had been 10 years and I would always study the lesson and everything, but I had never really read it from cover to cover.
Allison:
And I'm such a proponent of you, you wanna read it cover to cover. And sometimes, Jacqui, I'll have people that'll say, okay, I did that and I'm like your point is read it again, read, you know, read it again. I remember when I was in seminary I had one of my professors say that his professor read the Bible three times in a year. Plus, he read it in the original languages, in the Hebrew and then in the Greek. Can you imagine?
Allison:
I'm like, yeah, so one year is elementary and you get you the New Living translation. Okay, that's what you wanna do. And take a friend with you. Right now I have five ladies and we're reading through the one year Bible and we're reading a different version this year and I say version, we are reading the New American Standard Bible because I have never read that one from cover to cover, and so after you've read it a few times in the NLT, then you can sort of vary how you wanna read and like keeping it fresh for you, although it never goes old and never gets old. But I like to just do different things, yeah.
Jacqui:
I love that. I particularly like that idea of doing it with someone. I recall when you challenged myself and a number of other people to read the Bible in 90 days. That seems insurmountable.
Allison:
That's the Bible on
Jacqui:
But we did it with a group. So during the week we're interacting online, maybe making a phone call to friends, but then on Saturday mornings we all got together and we talked about what we had read, we looked at some other resources. I recall we had a video that we looked at to just kind of go over, because 90 days is fast. Yes, so it helps to reinforce some of the things you learned. But that companionship, that partnership, I believe made all the difference in the world.
Allison:
Yeah, and people say why in the world would you wanna read the Bible in 90 days? Because everything is so zoomed in for you. You are in Exodus in four days, yes, and so now, when you're interacting with Exodus, wow, Genesis is so fresh for you. That is just a whole different experience in reading the Bible in 90 days. And but that's a whole different process. And for those of you who've never read it once, just go daily Night days. You have to.
Allison:
You see, the whole thing is you don't fit it in, you take something off of your schedule period. You can't fit it in, you have to take something off of your schedule. So for me it was an hour and a half, 90 minutes of what I would normally watch at night. I normally take that. Whatever that news show is or program I watch, I take that off and that's, and I'm concentrated, which is like when do you read? Morning, afternoon, evening? It's what works for you and make sure that you are awake when you're doing it. You know, you know, haha, yes, so 90 days is a little bit more advanced, I would say. But, like you said, that was the first time you had went through the entire Bible.
Jacqui:
Yes, it was. That was the very first time.
Allison:
Yeah, yeah.
Jacqui:
Since then, I've done the one-year Bible. Right now I'm reading the New Testament in 90 days and I have to tell you it is an amazing experience. I was just telling someone about this. I feel as if I was walking along with Jesus standing right there, hearing every word. Now I'm listening to Paul. I'm experiencing Paul having his discussions, his confinements in jail, his experiences trying to explain about God's grace and about the law. And I'm right there, because it's a slower process. So that one-year idea of reading the Bible in one year and for me now focusing on the whole New Testament in 90 days, that being able to go at a slower pace and really take it in and put yourself in a place and understand the context makes all the difference in the world. Now I wanted to talk about that. I wanted you to talk about that.
Jacqui:
The idea of context when people quote scriptures Jeremiah 29 and 11, I know the plans I have for you says to the Lord plans to give you hope in the future, plans to prosper you and not harm you. And so life's going to be great. I know I'm going to win, I know I'm going to succeed, I know I'm going to get the job because God has plans for me Without any idea about. Well, why was Jeremiah saying that? Who was he even speaking to? What plans was he talking about? Can you say a few words about that, about what reading the Bible gives you in terms of context?
Allison:
Yeah, when you ask that question, what I don't want your audience to hear is study versus reading. Bible reading is reading. Bible studying is studying. Now, when you're reading, you do get the context, because you are reading through the entire chapter and not just picking a verse out. So that's happening, right. And then you know that you're in the book, okay, and what's happening, and you're following along with the book and what is happening in that particular book. So the key to Bible reading is do not study. Most people fall off the rails because they try to study. Oh, that looks really good. I want to find out more.
Jacqui:
Yes.
Allison:
That's not Bible reading. That's why we can't get through in one year. We can't get through the entire Bible, because we then get off track and we study and then we never pick it back up and by the time you get to Leviticus and all of those you know you've got all of that and the slaughtering of the lambs and the goats, and you're like your head is swimming and you're like, oh, my goodness, what in the world you know, just read.
Allison:
What you are capturing the first time you read all the way through, is what you should capture. You know, don't beat yourself up. I don't understand that. Just keep going. If you are one of those people that are saying, but I can't, okay, then get you a journal and put it next to you and put a note. I want to go back to this and keep reading. You know, don't stop. So studying is different from reading and I think I would caution, don't get it mixed up. Don't get it mixed up. Read and then study, and I'm a real good advocate for just reading through. And once you've read it through and you keep reading it through, it becomes so familiar to you and then you have to slow yourself down because it becomes too familiar to you. Yes, and you start reading over things, right, yeah, but I think that there's different ways of studying, but reading is just reading.
Jacqui:
It's a great distinction. I've definitely been caught up in that, coming across a verse or a word or a person that I have to know more about right now, and that certainly does take you off track.
Allison:
Yes, yes, yes, and then you fall. And when you fall behind then you start giving up. I always tell people, if you get your strategy, like if you do every day, you're going to be fine. But sometimes Saturdays and Sundays are different sort of days and routine just changes what you want to do. If you get behind more than two days, skip those two days and keep reading, because what happens is when you start trying to catch up, you get defeated and at the end, if you follow that process, you will probably have read 80 to 90% of your Bible and you are better off with 90% or 80% than you are with 10% because you gave up, because you got too hard and you couldn't keep up. Life happens, life happens, you know. And so just pick up on that next day that you're on and keep going.
Jacqui:
Wow, that's great advice.
Allison:
You get to do it again next year.
Jacqui:
And that is the thing about it whatever you miss this time, you'll pick it up next time, because we keep this needs to be something we continue to do.
Allison:
And the question becomes why? Again, because this is our textbook for life. It's the word of God, it is totally relevant to the believer. The non-believer questions it, but the believer knows that this is. It is life, it is truthful and I can, I know that what I'm reading is has a faithful accuracy of what God has said. Wow.
Jacqui:
Listeners. I told you. I told you that this was gonna be amazing, that we were gonna get exactly what we needed. Not only is Sister Allison a teacher, she is an encourager. I feel motivated. I feel more motivated now and I'm in the midst of my reading, but I'm ready to start again. So I can't wait, and I've never read the New Living Translation, so I'm looking forward to my next reading. Taking that approach, we're gonna try to put some links to where we can get that 365 day New Living Translation in our show notes so everyone can get that. So I wanna thank you again for coming on to the show, for sharing with us, and let you know that you have an open invitation to come back anytime on this topic or any other.
Allison:
Thank you, thank you.
Jacqui:
Thank you for tuning in. If this has been beneficial to you, please share it with others. Subscribe or follow, and all of you Apple Podcast listeners drop us a review.