Since the Bible is the word of God, its nature is divine and spiritual. We must read it with every part of our being.
1) “Then He opened their mind [to which understanding belongs] to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).
In reading the Bible, we must first use the understanding of our mind to comprehend its text, which was written in human language, and to know its meaning.
1) “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom...” (Col. 3:16).
2) “God...the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him” (Eph. 1:17).
These two verses mean that we need to understand with wisdom the word regarding the divine things revealed by God in the Bible. Ephesians 1:17 also shows us that wisdom is joined to our spirit. This wisdom is not what we have naturally but what we obtain through prayer. Such wisdom in our spirit is deeper and higher than the understanding in our mind. We understand the letter of the Bible with the understanding in our mind, and we apprehend the truth in the Bible by the wisdom in our spirit.
1) “And receive...the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit” (Eph. 6:17-18).
Here we are told to receive the word of God by praying in the spirit. This reveals to us that we also need to exercise our spirit when we read and receive the word of God. This is done, undoubtedly, through prayer. Therefore, in reading the Bible, after we have understood the meaning of the text by our understanding and have apprehended the truth of the text with our wisdom, we should use our spirit by prayer to receive the truths in the Scripture into the deepest part of our being, that is, our spirit. In other words, after we understand the text and receive the truth therein, we still must exercise our spirit to turn what we have understood and realized into prayer that it may be assimilated in our spirit, becoming our life supply and the basis of our spiritual experience.
Another simple, spiritual, and most beneficial way to read the Bible is pray-reading. We take the Bible text as prayer and pray-read with it. Not only do we read and pray simultaneously, or pray and read, read and pray; but also we directly turn the text we are reading into the very words of prayer to pray with. At times we may apply the text to ourselves through prayer. The more we repeat this kind of pray-reading, the more uplifted and released our spirit becomes and the greater, deeper, and richer the benefit is which we receive.
We may read the Bible at any time and should do it whenever necessary. However, generally speaking, it is best to read in the morning before we contact any persons or things, and it is especially good to match reading with prayer. Such times should not be too long. The most suitable way is to pray for ten minutes and read for ten minutes. Sometimes reading and prayer can be mingled together.