One of the best things that you can do for your faith in 2026 is to make reading your Bible a regular habit.

Join 10-minute Bible Talks, study of the Gospels by downloading the 2026 Bible reading plan

and reading a Bible passage that goes with each day's podcast episode.

You can find the link to get your Bible reading

plan in today's show notes. Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to

your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. One of the challenges we all

face reading the Bible is to remember that it wasn't written to individuals. Rather, the Bible was

crafted to speak to small groups in some cases. You know, you could think about Paul's letters

to the early churches. But in other instances, it's larger groups.

For example, the Gospels were written to many churches.

And sometimes, the Bible is directed toward an entire people group, toward a nation.

And that's what much of the Old Testament is.

Now, why is this important to remember?

Well, I think that as modern Christians, we have a really

good desire to read the Bible and apply it to our individual lives. And I believe that God smiles

on this. It's a good thing. His word is designed to speak to you and me. And yet, this good desire

to apply the Bible to your specific life sometimes leads us to

read the Bible as though it's addressing individual problems. It leads us to read a passage as

though it's written about my individual spiritual life, when it may very well be speaking about the

spiritual life of an entire social order.

Isaiah 51 versus 17 to 23 is one such passage.

Now, it's not long, so we'll read most of it here.

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