Well, what's the difference between just reading the Bible, like any other book, and having a

profound heart-stirring encounter with the living God through its pages?

Today, a very rare look into Pastor John's personal devotions, where he welcomes us into one of the

practices you uses before reading the Bible in the morning to prepare his heart to encounter God.

But before we get there, like all the resources from desiring God, this episode comes to you

at no cost. It's made possible by listeners who have been helped in the past and who choose

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Your steady support ensures that next month and the month after someone else can find this

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That's give.desiring godorg. Thank you very much for considering it and for partnering

with us. And thank you if you already do. So as we wrap up our annual read through the Bible this week, what exactly are we looking for in that practice?

Well, we want to encounter the living God himself.

Our aspirations are that high for the discipline, but what exactly does that feel like?

That's the bold question from a listener named Josephine.

Hello, Pastor John, I love to read my Bible every day and to get to know God better.

I have heard you talk about the importance of not just reading the Bible, but reading in such a way to see the peculiar glory of Christ shining from the pages into our eyes to stir our hearts. It's a unique type of reading

requiring genuine faith, regeneration, and the power of the spirit. But I don't really know if or how

or when this happens in my own life. Sometimes I make discoveries in the text that really stir my heart. Sometimes I don't. Can you

bring us into your own Bible reading and articulate for me the difference between simply reading the

Bible and those precious rare times, not every time, in which you are met with the glory of Christ

...