Jacqui: 0:00

Greetings listeners. Before we begin today's episode, I'd like to take a moment to honor my dear friend, reverend Allison Johnson. She recently went home to be with the Lord. She's been a part of this podcast from the very beginning she's one of those who encouraged me to start it and from episode one all the way through the episode on the book of Haggai, which means 114 episodes. For each one of those, her wisdom, her encouragement and sometimes her red pen feedback shaped what you hear. She was a seminary graduate, an ordained reverend, and full of creativity. She was always suggesting ways to make the episodes more engaging. She led me through my first time reading the entire Bible, and we did it in just 90 days. And we did it in just 90 days. She also modeled what it means to be a godly wife, a faithful friend and a servant of Christ. Today we are replaying an interview we recorded together some time ago. I can't think of a better way to remember her than to share her voice and her heart with you. Once again, reverend Allison, this one's for you. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.

Jacqui: 1:46

Welcome to another special First Tuesdays episode of the Bible Basics Podcast. The First Tuesdays episode is when we hear from special guests with their insights on reading God's Word. So stay tuned for a word from our special guest, mrs Allison Johnson. Well, welcome everyone. I'm your host, jackie Adewale, and this is the Bible Basics Podcast, where, weekly, we break down the Bible into understandable, bite-sized chunks.

Jacqui: 2:30

Listeners, I am very pleased to introduce you to a woman of God who has poured into me, and I'm honored to have the opportunity for her to pour into you. She's an active servant leader who is passionate about engaging the saved to dig deeper into God's Word and make it their aim to finish well, to the glory of God. She's married to the Reverend Terrence L Johnson and has co-labored with him in ministry for the past 40 years. For the past 40 years. Additionally, she sows into others as a Christian coach and she holds a Master's of Arts in Religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Dearborn, illinois. This week, it's my privilege to welcome Sister Allison Johnson. Sister Allison, welcome to the Bible Basics podcast. I'm thrilled to have you.

Rev Allison: 3:32

Thank you, Jacqui. I'm glad to be here. I'm just grateful for you inviting me.

Jacqui: 3:39

Oh, it's my pleasure Listeners. Sister Allison is just an extraordinary Bible teacher. She is a woman entrenched is that the right word entrenched deep in God's Word, and I thought she would be the perfect person to bring on to the podcast to talk to us about getting started reading the Bible and or maintaining a consistent Bible reading habit. Sister Allison, tell us a little bit about how you first began connecting or engaging with God's word on such a deep level.

Rev Allison: 4:28

I would say that it's never deep enough. Augustine said the Bible is so. It can be so shallow that a baby can wait in it and it could be so deep that an elephant will drown in it. And it could be so deep that an elephant will drown in it. So when we think about that and I probably those are my summation of what I remember the quote, so, with that said, that's sort of we don't ever have to be concerned about where we start. You know, if we're babes, we're going to be waiting, and, as I think of those people who are deep theologians and people that have helped me study through the years, I'm a babe, so it doesn't seem like it's deep, but I started as a Christian and I just had this love for the word and God. I would say that's God given and that it was very important for me to know his word and to be able to teach it, because my calling is actually teaching. So, yeah, I don't know if I answered it, but that's a great answer.

Jacqui: 5:56

I know from experience being a student in your classes that you don't let your students get away with surface readings of the Bible or making up our own interpretations. Probably others who may be listening, who also have been in your class, would join me in saying one of the most common thing we might hear from you during one of your classes is where is that in the Bible, or is that what it really says? Where is that in the Bible, or is that what it really says.

Rev Allison: 6:31

So why is it important?

Jacqui: 6:32

for us to read it for ourselves.

Rev Allison: 6:33

Yeah, so that we know what's there, right. So we know what's there, so we understand, you know, have God said. And so when we think about the first sin, God said, and so when we think about the first sin, it was a manipulation on what God had told Adam. And so when we hear others we have can get scripture that we are without excuse. And so it's not like our Bibles are chained to the pulpit and the common person can't read it, you know, and we're living in an age where we are most educated, and why would we dumb ourselves down in the word of God and think that I can only take kindergarten stuff or, as I always say, gospel town stuff, like that's most elementary and not grow in the word? Because the more I grow in the word, the more I fall in love with my Savior and the God of this Bible.

Jacqui: 7:54

So what do you say to somebody who says, okay, I want that, I want to do that, but the Bible doesn't make any sense. I don't understand it.

Rev Allison: 8:02

Yeah, yeah, first of all, I I don't understand it. Yeah, yeah, I want to. First of all, I want to check their salvation. Okay, I want to see if they, you know. I want to question and ask them how do you know Jesus? If you were to die tonight and you went to heaven and you were asked why should I let you in? Okay, jesus is standing at the gate, and why should I let you in? And you said because my mother was a deaconess and my father was a pastor and I've been in church all my life and I go to this particular church.

Rev Allison: 8:48

And those are all the wrong answers. We have to know that it's because of the finished work of Christ, the blood of Jesus, that saves us from our sins. When we understand that that is the cost of who we are in Christ, then we are along the lines of a true conversion. And the question becomes do you hunger and thirst after God's word? And if you're not hungering and thirsting and it's just another book, first thing, and it's just another book, like somebody said well, you know, I have this thing right. You should have more Bibles than you have shoes. I'm just saying, okay, okay, and that's. You know. Like, who's, like, what do you mean? Because the word of God is your textbook and we live in a time when we have so much access to different types of Bibles. Like, I just lent out a Bible this afternoon. It's an archaeological Bible and the person is interested in archaeology and culture and so I said, well, take a look at it and, just, you know, scan it and see.

Rev Allison: 10:08

So we're living in this age when we have so much access, and how dare us, if we say that we are in Jesus and we love him, that we will not avail ourselves to the word and we just come once a week for an hour to two hours and expect for the minister to make us happy, glad and entertain us. And we now know the word glad and entertain us. And we now know the word we don't go to, you know, do we go to Sunday school? Do we do a? Do we avail ourselves to Bible studies and things of that nature, where we really grow? So my point is we want we have that, just if I'm saved, the Holy Spirit has put in me that I want to know him, I want to know him, and thus he left us a textbook, he left us his word, and so I need to pick up that word and begin to know this God that went to the cross and died for me and was risen so that I might have eternal life and was risen so that I might have eternal life.

Jacqui: 11:32

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Sister Allison's home and I can attest to the fact that I'm sure she has more Bibles than I have. Shoes for sure, but I don't know about me, so I'll have to take a look at that. But I love that. But I've heard that. Is the Bible really relevant? Is it really all that relevant for us today?

Rev Allison: 11:57

Are you saved? And if you are, you're not even arguing relevancy, that's not an issue for you. You come with childlike faith. Okay, it's just, you know, I can wade in the Bible and it's always going to speak to me. It's always going to speak to me and it's going to direct me and it's going to help me understand this God who I have pledged my allegiance to and, make no mistake, I pledged my allegiance to him. I have because of what he's done. I reciprocate because of his grace. I then come to him and I want to experience him through his word, not through me getting a thrill and kind of jerking a little bit in church. Oh, I felt something. No, after you get finished feeling something, I'm going to need you to know something. Right, because the scripture says that we love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, our soul and our mind. We do pretty good with saying, oh yeah, I love the Lord and, yes, I feel him on Sundays. What about our mind? And somehow we have thrown our intellect out and all we want to do is have experiences. Warning that will lead you in the wrong direction. We need to know what has God said from Genesis to Revelation. How has he said it? What does he expect of us? How can we then plant and sow in other people's lives?

Rev Allison: 13:51

We have people trying to do evangelism and they don't know what's in the Word and, honestly, it was years before I read through the scriptures from cover to cover, and it wasn't until I went to a Women of Faith conference and Becky Terabasi challenged us to read the Bible in a year and so what you do? And me and my friend, we were together, and so we said, okay, we're going to do it. And she was like it was 15, 20 minutes a day and we started. She had the New Living Translation. I always recommend that as a good reading Bible, because you're not going to see, oh, that was seven cubits by 40 cubits. You're going to see, oh, that was seven feet by 20 feet. Okay, seven feet. I'm thinking about football and how far thinking about football and how far. You know, and I can make sense of that. You know, I see courts and I see cups versus other types of measurements that are strange to me, and so it reads really well and it helps me understand and every person who I've ever started, when they get the idea that I can read through the Bible from cover to cover in 365 days, just like Becky did with myself and my friend.

Rev Allison: 15:22

We both were like wow, we really read the Bible and found out some stuff in there. We had no idea what was in here. Get to the Song of Songs, you know, get into some of the things that Paul writes about, and it's just amazing. So it's a book that just feeds our soul. Now I know some of your listeners. They are not going to miss a meal. How do we, as Christians, miss a meal in the Word of God? Yeah, how do we do that?

Jacqui: 16:03

So how does the person get started? Is that what they do? You just pick up the Bible and start reading it for a year. How would you recommend someone start this process?

Rev Allison: 16:15

Yeah, using a one-year Bible. The one-year Bibles normally hit the market October, november timeframe the last quarter of the year. You probably can start finding them in September. Do not wait until January to try to get one, because then you know, you might have to wait a couple of days and that's really not a problem because there are all sorts of reading plans.

Rev Allison: 16:40

But I like paper and it's good to have a piece of paper where you have a book in your hand, not on your phone, okay, okay, why? Because you want to mark it up and I know people say, well, I can highlight let's get real Okay, and the reason you want to, you want to be able to, you want to be able to highlight it, you want to be able to make a note of how it spoke to you, if it did, or something that connected for you, so you can write in the margins of it. Because this is a textbook for us and it's not this. You know people say the Holy Bible and so therefore they want it in a box and they want to bring it to church.

Jacqui: 17:30

Never write in it.

Rev Allison: 17:32

Yeah, never write in it. I don't know how you do that, because you got to write in it, because you know why. You can't remember everything, but you'll remember. It was on the right-hand side, I'm halfway down and you see that yellow marking and I'll tell you if I am. On my last few days of my life and I did this with my best friend of 34 years I was able to take her Bible and her markings and read them to her as she was transitioning, and so there's a sacredness there of the notes that you leave and you can plant into your children's life and nieces and nephews, whatever your situation is. So one year Bible, get a one year Bible because it's going to give you the New Testament, it's going to give you the Old Testament, new Testament Psalm and a proverb, new Testament Psalm and a Proverb, and it'll take you through in 365 days.

Rev Allison: 18:41

The Bible I always recommend you get a partner. You know that good girlfriend that y'all both been saying, hey, we should read it, but y'all do everything else together, so you might as well do the Bible together, and so just read that day. Just read that day, and then you can either send each other texts a couple of times during the week or however close your relationship is. I remember, my friend, we were like did you see that I had no idea when we started reading the Bible and we read it from cover to cover that first year and I was actually teaching the Bible and it had been 10 years and I would always study the lesson and everything, but I had never really read it from cover to cover. And I'm such a proponent of you, you want to read it cover to cover. And sometimes, Jacqui, I'll have people that'll say, okay, I did that and I'm like your point is read it again, read it again.

Rev Allison: 19:45

I remember when I was in seminary I had one of my professors say that his professor read the Bible three times in a year. Plus he read it in the original languages, in the Hebrew and then in the Greek. Can you imagine? I'm like, yeah, so one year is elementary and you get you the New Living Translation. Ok, that's what you want to do. And take a friend with you. Right now I have five, five ladies and we're reading through the one year Bible and we're reading a different version this year, and when I say version, we are reading the New American Standard Bible, because I have never read that one from cover to cover, and so after you've read it a few times in the NLT, then you can sort of vary how you want to read and keeping it fresh for you. Although it never goes old, it never gets old, but I like to just do different things, yeah.

Jacqui: 20:58

I love that. I particularly like the idea of doing it with someone. I recall when you challenged myself and a number of other people to read the Bible in 90 days. That seems insurmountable.

Rev Allison: 21:15

That's the.

Jacqui: 21:15

Bible, on steroids, y'all, but we did it with a group. So during the week we're interacting online, maybe making a phone call to friends, but then on Saturday mornings we all got together and we talked about what we had read. We looked at some other resources. I recall we had a video that we looked at to just kind of go over, because 90 days is fast. Yes, so it helps to reinforce some of the things you learn. But that companionship, that partnership, I believe made all the difference in the world.

Rev Allison: 21:48

Yeah, and people say why in the world would you want to read the Bible in 90 days? Because everything is so zoomed in for you. You are in Exodus in four days and so now, when you're interacting with Exodus, wow, genesis is so fresh for you. That is. It's just a whole different experience than reading the Bible in 90 days and and but that's a whole different process. And for those of you who've never read it once, just go daily 90 days. You have to. You see, the whole thing is you don't fit it in, you take something off of your schedule period. You can't fit it in, you have to take something off of your schedule.

Rev Allison: 22:43

So for me it was an hour and a half, 90 minutes of what I would normally watch at night. I would normally watch at night, I normally take that. Whatever that news show is or program I watch, I take that off and that's and I'm concentrated, which is like when do you read? Morning, afternoon, evening. It's what works for you and make sure that you are awake when you're doing it. Yeah, yeah, so 90 days is a little bit more advanced, I would say. But, like you said, that was the first time you had went through the entire Bible.

Jacqui: 23:26

Yes, it was. That was the very first time.

Rev Allison: 23:29

Yeah, yeah.

Jacqui: 23:30

Since then, I've done the one-year Bible. Right now, I'm reading the New Testament in 90 days. Okay, and I have to tell you it is an amazing experience. I was just telling someone about this. I feel as if I was walking along with Jesus standing right there, hearing every word. Now I'm listening to Paul. I'm experiencing Paul having his discussions, his confinements in jail, his experiences trying to explain about God's grace and about the law, and it just and I'm right there because it's a slower process. So that one year idea of reading the Bible in one year and for me now focusing on the whole New Testament in 90 days, that being able to go at a slower pace and really take it in and put yourself in a place and understand the context makes all the difference in the world. Now I wanted to talk about that. I wanted you to talk about that, the idea of context.

Jacqui: 24:35

Often people quote scriptures Jeremiah 29, 11. I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to give you hope in the future, plans to prosper you and not harm you, and so life's going to be great. I know I'm going to win, I know I'm going to succeed. I know I'm going to get the job because God has plans for me Without any idea about. Well, why was Jeremiah saying that? Who was he even speaking to? What plans was he talking about? Can you say a few words about that, about what reading the Bible gives you in terms of context?

Rev Allison: 25:12

Yeah, when you ask that question, what I don't want your audience to hear is study versus reading. Bible reading is reading.

Jacqui: 25:27

Okay.

Rev Allison: 25:28

Bible studying is studying.

Jacqui: 25:30

Okay.

Rev Allison: 25:31

Now, when you're reading, you do get the context, because you are reading through the entire chapter and not just picking a verse out. So that's happening, right. And then you know that you're in the book, okay, and what's happening, you're following along with the book and what is happening in that particular book. So the key to Bible reading is do not study. Most people fall off the rails because they try to study. Oh, that looks really good, I want to find out more. That's not Bible reading. That's why we can't get through. In one year we can't get through the entire Bible, because we then get off track and we study and then we never pick it back up. And by the time you get to Leviticus and all of those, you know you've got the peace and the air and, and, and and all of that, and the slaughtering of the lambs and the goats, and, and you're like your head is swimming and you're like, oh, my goodness, what in the world? You know, just read.

Rev Allison: 26:38

What you are capturing the first time you read all the way through, is what you should capture. You know, don't beat yourself up. I don't understand that. Just keep going. If you are one of those people that are saying, but I can't, okay, then get you a journal and put it next to you and put a note. I want to go back to this and keep reading. You know, don't stop. So studying is different from reading and I think I would caution, don't get it mixed up. Don't get it mixed up. Read and then study, and I'm a real good advocate for just reading through. And once you've read it through and you keep reading it through, it becomes so familiar to you and then you have to slow yourself down because it becomes too familiar to you and you start reading over things. Right, yeah, but I think that there's different ways of studying, but reading is just reading.

Jacqui: 27:42

That's a great distinction. I've definitely been caught up in that, coming across a verse or a word or a person that I have to know more about right now, and that certainly does take you off track.

Rev Allison: 27:57

Yes, yes, yes. And when you fall behind, then you start giving up. I always tell people, if you get your strategy like if you do every day, you're going to be fine get behind more than two days, skip those two days and keep reading. Because what happens is when you start trying to catch up, you get defeated and at the end, if you follow that process, you will probably have read 80 to 90 percent of your Bible and you are better off with 90 percent or 80 percent than you are with 10 percent. Because you gave up, because you got too hard and you couldn't keep up. Life happens, Life happens, you know. And so just pick up on that next day that you're on and keep going.

Jacqui: 29:05

Wow, that's great advice.

Rev Allison: 29:07

You get to do it again next year.

Jacqui: 29:08

And that is the thing about it Whatever you miss this time, you'll pick it up next time, because this needs to be something we continue to do.

Rev Allison: 29:18

And the question becomes why? Again, because this is our textbook for life. It's the word of God. It is totally relevant to the believer. The non-believer questions it, but the believer knows that this is life. It is truthful and I know that what I'm reading has a faithful accuracy of what God has said.

Jacqui: 29:52

Wow, listeners, I told you. I told you that this was going to be amazing, that we were going to get exactly what we needed. Not only is Sister Allison a teacher, she is an encourager. I feel motivated. I feel more motivated now and I'm in the midst of my reading, but I'm ready to start again. So I can't wait, and I've never read the New Living Translation, so I'm looking forward to my next reading. Taking that approach, we're going to try to put some links to where we let you know that you have an open invitation to come back anytime on this topic or any other.

Rev Allison: 30:50

Thank you.

Jacqui: 30:53

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