Via Michael Heiser

You should read your Bible.

That’s axiomatic for Christians, and I’d dispense that piece of advice to anyone.

But reading the Bible is not where our engagement with the Bible ends. It’s where it begins.

You need to go beyond reading the Bible to a serious study of the Bible.

The first step is to realize there’s a significant difference between reading and studying.

Reading is casual, something done for pleasure. The motivation is personal gratification or enrichment, not mastery of the content. Bible reading has as its aim private delight or personal application for our lives and relationship with God. Bible reading is inherently devotional and low maintenance.

Bible study, on the other hand, involves concentration and exertion. We have an intuitive sense that the study requires some sort of method or technique and probably certain types of tools or aids.