Hi, my name is Angie. I am a wife and a mother of four here in Dallas, Texas.

You are listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast with John Piper. Angie is a precious ministry partner of ours and I want you to meet her in a moment.

But first, as we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, we're talking about Bible reading.

And the question is from an anonymous listener, a man, and a new believer,

which is wonderful. We love getting messages from new believers.

Here's his email, Pastor John, thank you for this podcast.

I'm simply overwhelmed at how much I don't know about the Bible as a young Christian.

I want to be knowledgeable about scripture so that it can guide me

and so that I can use it to guide others in the future. But there's so much. I don't know where

to begin. If I were studying for an exam in class, I would start with a list of

essential topics to be tested on, but with the Bible I feel like the test is life and I don't know what I need to know to be prepared if that makes sense.

In other words, where do I start? What is the first and most essential thing I need to know to follow Christ by reading his word.

Well, my answer is probably going to be a little bit frustrating. Because he's asking for a particular truth in the Bible and I'm

going to say Bible Bible Bible I have never met a mature, fruitful, strong, spiritually discerning Christian who is not full of scripture and devoted to regular meditation on scripture and given to

storing it in the heart through Bible memorization and that's not a coincidence. So what I want to do is

persuade our new believing friend that it is absolutely essential after coming to faith in Christ to be radically,

deeply, experientially, devoted, unshakably, unwaveringly persuaded that reading and meditating on and understanding and memorizing

and enjoying scriptures is absolutely essential for the Christian life,

which would include being in the word capital W every day with the aim that we will meet God there and little by little

the glory of his truth will fill and transform our lives.

And that may seem obvious to them or to others, but it isn't obvious because I know fairly well-along Christians who don't do this.

They don't do this and they've been Christians for years and they're lackadaisical.

...