Writing your way through the Bible is the final step for better Bible reading. This step is all about learning to read with a pen in your hand! I recognize that this step is perhaps confusing at first glance, because what we're talking about is conversing with the Bible. In my opinion, this is where it all comes together. Everything that we've been talking about so far comes together at this point, simply put conversing with our Bible, means reading with a pin or a pencil in hand. Some like to call this active reading. And I'm not the one who invented that idea, but we are going to approach it in a little bit of a different way than traditional active reading, because normally this step is responsive. It's something you do after you read. However, I find it most helpful to write while reading. And I want to encourage you to do this with a pen and not a keyboard, not because I'm against typing, but because the way you're going to converse will be best done with a pin in hand with a physical copy of God's word in hand, in order to do this, I want to recommend to you that you get a wide margin Bible. Here's why have you ever come across a verse that you highlighted years ago in your study Bible or your regular Bible, and wonder why you highlighted it. Maybe you thought about trying to write something off in the side margin at the time, but there wasn't any room and your study Bible was already full of notes all over the place. So you just decided to highlight it and leave it alone. Well, having a wide margin Bible can help you with this because they are unique ways for us to track our reading progress. In our knowledge of the Bible. In essence, what a wide margin Bible is, is our own personal study Bible with a blank slate, waiting for us to write notes and arrows and highlights and whatever else it is that you want to do to converse with the text. As you read it, it also turns out that this is a great way to map your progress through certain books of the Bible. For example, I purchased my first wide margin Bible several years back, and I used it as my Bible for slow and steady reading over time. Several books of the Bible have notes and highlights on every page. While on the flip side, I also have several books that are left blank. What this does. It actually allows me to see my progress in real time. If I come up a book that has a bunch of notes and highlights, I know that I've spent time in that book. Whereas if I find a book that has nothing written there, that tells me what book I have left to deal with, at least at first glance. And this is an excellent way to trace my reading progress. Let's say that a verse in Romans comes to mind. I decide that I want to study it at this point. I could grab my study Bible and look at the notes from other people, but I could also pick up my own wide margin Bible and see my previous interaction with that verse. We wouldn't run into the issue. Like I mentioned earlier of coming across a highlighted passage that you had from several years ago and trying to figure out why you highlighted it because in a wide margin Bible, you would have made use of that wide margin to write down notes, to associate an idea with your highlight. You might actually find that what you wrote months or years ago can help you today, which is very fascinating. There's so much more that could be said about the idea of conversing with the Bible. But I find that it is one of the most neglected aspects of reading because not many people have that wide margin Bible, but because they're so accessible, everyone should have one because one of the greatest ways that you can put steps, one through five into practice is by this final step of conversing with the Bible and tying it all together with a pin in hand.Support the show