I appreciate JoAnna Hoyt highlighting a point I’ve been making for years: academic and devotional reading should overlap.
This is just one of 9 suggestions Hoyt has for those involved as students or professors at Christian universities or seminaries. But it’s an important point for anyone who seeks both inputs and outputs from Scripture. In other words, this idea is not just for students reading the Bible to write a paper on it, but also for small group leaders reading the Bible in preparation to lead a discussion.
Even if you are reading for outputs (such as writing a paper or leading a small group), your reading should impact yourself first. If it doesn’t, you are not qualified to teach it. How hypocritical is it to ask someone else to apply a text to their life that you have refused to apply to your own life?
For this reason, you don’t need to have separate “devotional time” and “prep time” in the Bible. Your Bible learning should inform your Bible teaching. Walk with Christ, and then call others after you to do the same. Please don’t separate or reverse that order.
