Have you ever done “Bible Surfing” during your quiet times?
You know, where you pray for the Spirit to lead you in the right direction and then you close your eyes, flip the Bible open, point to a verse, and then read whatever it is your finger fell on.
My first exposure to Bible surfing was in my homeschool spelling curriculum. Random, I know. 😂 I used some sort of faith-based spelling curriculum in 3rd and 5th grade. At the beginning of the week, there was a story about some kids that somehow related to Christianity as well as my spelling list for that week.
I don’t remember the name of the curriculum which is sad because I honestly really liked it (which is saying something because spelling was always my least favorite subject).
Anywho, in one week’s story these girls were trying to decide if God wanted them to do something. One of the girls grabbed her Bible, flipped it open to a random page, pointed at a verse, and read it. It was the story of Gideon putting the fleece out to see if it really was God’s will for him to lead the Israelites into battle (see Judges 6).
I remember thinking that it was soooo cool that the girls were able to randomly find something in the Bible that perfectly related to their circumstances!
I started trying this out on my own to see if it would “work” for me.
Remember, I was in 5th grade at the time. The line between truth and fiction was blurred for me.
But even as I grew older, I would occasionally turn to Bible surfing if I didn’t know what to read that day. I would aim to open the Bible in the Psalms or in the New Testament… but beyond that I didn’t have a plan.
Today I wanted to share with you why I believe Bible surfing is a bad practice and what we can do instead.
Bible surfing treats the Bible like a magic 8 ball
In that story I shared above, the girls were kinda treating the Bible as if it was a magic 8 ball. If they opened it to just the right spot, they’d be able to know the answer to their problem.
I’m sure the people who wrote the curriculum wanted to ultimately teach the story of Gideon and the fleece but didn’t know how else to weave it into the fictional story.
But regardless of the intent, how often do you and I do something so similar to these girls?
The truth is, the Bible is NOT a magic 8 ball. And while it does contain the answers to many of life’s questions, the point of the Bible isn’t to magically tell us what to do in a particular situation.
The Bible is a way we can learn about God.
So often we come to our quiet times expecting to learn about ourselves- regardless of if we are Bible surfing or not.
But the Bible wasn’t written to be a book about life in the 2020s or a life about people. The Bible exists to teach us about God, His character, and His plan for redemption.
The grand story of redemption is weaved throughout the whole Bible- from Genesis to Revelation. Man is sinful and broke their relationship with God. Jesus came to mend that relationship. Now we live in a covenant relationship with Him and someday we’ll be physically reunited.
A danger of Bible surfing is that it can take verses out of context.
As I’m typing this post, I decided to try this out for fun. An experiment, of sorts.
I grabbed my Bible, opened it up randomly, and pointed to a verse.
This is what I read: “the carpenters, the builders, and the masons. Also have them purchase timber and dressed stone to restore the temple.” (2 Kings 22:6 NIV).
By itself, that verse makes no sense.
But if I were to read the whole chapter, I’d have a better understanding of what is going on. Better yet, I’d read through 2 Kings slowly, maybe a chapter a day, in order to know the context more fully.
In our culture, it is so common to randomly see verses slapped on coffee mugs and t-shirts. But so often those isolated Bible verses can be taken out of context!
The two biggest examples I see of this are Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 46:5.
Jeremiah 29:11 states, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future’.”
I love this verse. It’s one of my favorites, actually. But, this verse is not talking about Kara and her life in May 2020.
This verse is God speaking to the Israelites in exile! Telling them that He has a plan for them!
Let’s look at the context before and after this verse:
10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
I remember the first time I read this passage. It was many years after I had memorized Jeremiah 29:11. I immediately went to work memorizing verses 12-14 too.
Can Jeremiah 29:11 be applied to our lives?
Sure. God is omnipotent and has a plan for each of our lives. We see this elsewhere in Scripture, such as Psalm 139:16.
But Jeremiah 29:11 wasn’t specifically written for us. It was promised first to the Israelites. And by studying this verse in its context, we are able to learn more about God.
And Psalm 46:5? That’s the “God is within her, she will not fall” verse. I’m sorry to break it to you, but the sons of Korah who wrote this psalm weren’t even talking about a woman. It was talking about the City of God (probably Jerusalem).
You can read more about this verse and the problem of taking verses out of context in this blog post from Breaking Captives Free.
Instead of Bible surfing, come to your Bible reading time with a plan.
This plan can look different for different people.
Currently I’m using a “read your Bible in a year” plan that I’m purposefully extending to be a two-year plan. I really like this particular plan because it has me reading in two different parts of the Bible each day. (The one year plan has you reading in 4 different places each day.)
So this year I will read through Genesis-2 Chronicles as well as the New Testament and the Psalms. Next year I’ll read the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament again.
My best friend is Catholic and she likes to read the daily readings that the Catholic church puts together.
My boyfriend likes to do topical reading plans through the YouVersion Bible app.
I wrote a post earlier this year titled 7 Different Ways You Can Have a Quiet Time. If you need more ideas I encourage you to check out that post. 😊
Regardless of how you choose to format your quiet time, come to it with a plan.
Spirit-led reading? Is that a thing?
Yes.
I remember shortly after my cousin died I went on a retreat with my Christian high school. At one point I felt overwhelmed by grief so I slipped away and went into the closet of my room to curl up with my Bible and a pillow.
I cried for a bit and then started praying that God would comfort me. I asked the Holy Spirit to direct me to a passage that would help me.
A few minutes later, I felt compelled to turn to the Psalms. Snuggling down further into the closet, I began to read psalm after psalm. Eventually, I came across a psalm that seemed to be speaking directly to me. I read it over and over and started thinking about each line of the psalm.
There have been other times in my life where I seek to find wisdom or comfort in the pages of the Bible. I pray for a while before opening my Bible about whatever the situation is. Then, the Holy Spirit brings to mind a passage of scripture and I turn there to read it.
Or, sometimes the words to a passage prick the back of my mind and I have to search a few different books to find exactly what I’m thinking of.
This is different than Bible surfing.
It’s one thing to just randomly open the Bible and read with no context, no direction, and no plan. It’s another to pray and have the Holy Spirit lead you to a specific passage.
However, I believe that He is able to bring passages to mind because either
A. I’ve memorized that passage at some point in my life, or
B. I’ve read that passage multiple times before and am familiar with it.
This is why reading our Bible consistently and memorizing verses is so important. The Holy Spirit is then able to bring passages to our minds.
My high school Spanish teacher once encouraged us to focus more on the references of a Bible verse more than the actual words.
Of course, it’s best to memorize both the verse and the reference, but her logic was that if you know the verse but don’t know the reference, you can say “Oh this verse is in the Bible,” but you can’t prove it because you don’t know where. Whereas, if you know the reference and a summary of the verse, you can easily look it up to know exactly what the verse says.
Randomly flipping to a random verse isn’t ideal, but it is better than nothing.
Tuesday nights are my boyfriend and my date nights. Sometimes we have a plan and know what exactly we’re going to do. Typically though, he shows up at my apartment and we leave to go out to eat… and decide where we’re going on the drive.
I enjoy these planned-on-the-go dates with him as much as the planned-in-advanced dates because we’re still spending time together and learning more about each other.
Personally though, I prefer the dates that are planned out way in advance. I like knowing what to expect and I enjoy having something to look forward too.
Tying this back to our relationships with God, I think God ultimately just wants us to spend time with Him. And if sometimes that looks like you spontaneously flipping open the Bible and reading where it lands, I think that’s okay. It’s definitely better than nothing!
However, I think you’ll get more out of your Bible reading time and learn more about God if you go into it with a plan. You’ll be less likely to take verses out of context too.
Again, more ideas of how you can spend your quiet time in this post.
What are your thoughts about Bible surfing?
Let me know in a comment!
Also, let’s be friends on Instagram!
Regina Maiden
Excellent points! Thank you