A headline turned up in my reading this week: John and Lisa Bevere naming the one Bible habit they believe every Christian needs. I clicked, half expecting something elaborate. It wasn't. The habit was this — read it yourself. Daily. Whole books, not just the verses somebody hands you on a graphic.
That is not a new idea. It is roughly two thousand years old, and it belongs to a little town in northern Greece that almost nobody would remember otherwise.
The Town That Fact-Checked an Apostle
Paul had just been run out of Thessalonica. He arrived in Berea, walked into the synagogue, and started preaching Jesus. Here is what Luke wrote about the people who heard him:
"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed" (Acts 17:11-12).
Sit with that a moment. This is Paul. Apostle. Author of half the New Testament. And the Bereans went home, opened the scrolls, and checked whether what he said held up. Scripture does not scold them for it. Scripture calls them noble.
I find that enormously freeing. It means God is not nervous about being examined. It means a faith that can only survive if nobody looks closely was never much of a faith. And it means the person in the pew is not meant to be a passive receiver of whatever comes off the platform — mine included.
Two Halves of One Habit
Notice, though, that Luke gives us two halves and they only work joined together. The Bereans received the word with all readiness of mind, and they searched the scriptures daily. Open heart, open Bible.
Take away the first half and you get suspicion — arms folded, listening for the mistake, ready to argue. That is not Berea. That is Thessalonica, and it did not end well. Take away the second half and you get whatever the loudest confident voice tells you this week. Neither one grows anything.
The Bereans came eager and they came with the text open. That is still the shape of a steady believer. Lean in. Then look it up.
There is a practical urgency to this now. Another item in the same news feed reported that most pastors are worried about artificial intelligence misinterpreting Scripture. I understand the concern. Anyone can generate a paragraph that sounds biblical, cites a reference, and carries a warm devotional tone — and is simply wrong. But the answer is not fear, and it is not a bigger fence. The answer is what it has always been. People who know the real thing recognize the counterfeit without needing a lecture about counterfeits.
You Don't Need a Degree for This
Let me take the pressure off. Searching the Scriptures daily does not mean seminary. It means a chapter, most days, in a Bible you can actually understand, read slowly enough to ask a question or two. It is more like eating than like studying for an exam. Nobody remembers what they had for dinner three Tuesdays ago, but it built something.
And you are not doing it alone. Jesus promised, "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). That is present tense in this church. I watch it happen — someone reads a passage they have read a dozen times and this time it opens up, lands on the exact situation they were losing sleep over, and they come find me on a Sunday morning to tell me about it. That is not coincidence. That is the Helper doing what Jesus said He would do. The Spirit does not replace the reading. He shows up in it.
If you want a place to practice that with others, our Tuesday prayer gathering at 11am is one of the quieter, better things we do — an open Bible, and people praying it back to God. You do not need to know how. Nobody is graded.
Where It Leads
Luke finishes the Berea story simply: "Therefore many of them believed." The searching did not dead-end in information. It led to a Person.
That is the whole point. We do not read to win arguments or to be the one at the table who knows the most. We read because the living Christ meets us there — the same One who walked the Emmaus road opening the Scriptures until their hearts burned within them.
Some mornings the page will feel flat. Read it anyway. He has a long history of showing up in ordinary rooms, to ordinary people, with an open book on the table.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.