Lesson 1 | Read Well
Take It, Read It
Tolle Lege, Tolle Lege
“Take it, read it.”
As Augustine prayed under a tree in his garden, he heard these words repeated again and again by a child on the other side of a garden wall. Although his mother had taught him the Bible from childhood, he had spent his teen and young adult years living a life of wanton pleasure and the pursuit of status. But the Spirit of God began drawing Augustine to Christ. Augustine knew that God was calling him, but he did not want to forsake his worldly pleasures. Now at a crisis point, he was in deep inner turmoil, weeping and praying in his garden. When he heard those words from a child’s voice, “Take it, read it,” he ran back to where his friend, Alypius, was sitting. He picked up his Bible and read the first thing his eyes landed upon,
That was the end of all Augustine’s resistance. He writes,
I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.
—Saint Augustine Confessions, VIII.xii.29
It is so often the case that what we need most is to simply take up our Bibles and read with a heart tuned to hear and receive the truth God has for us. This lesson focuses on the value of taking time to read Scripture—and to read it well. The word of God is the sword of the Spirit (Heb 4:12–13). He wields it as a weapon to kill sin and as a skillful surgeon to cut away tumors for the sake of health and healing. Let us submit our hearts to his work by taking up and reading his word.
Lesson Objectives
- To own the value of taking time to read and meditate on whole book and whole chapters of Scripture
- To build a practice of applying multiple reading strategies
- To become familiar with the Markup module in order to use it effectively in subsequent lessons