Use Scripture

Use Scripture, slowly.

Writing

Articles & Devotionals

Short essays on reading Scripture slowly, honest questions about the Christian life, and devotional reflections. Newest first.

  1. 4 min read

    Reading James slowly

    James gets a reputation as the book that argues with Paul about faith and works. Read slowly, it is not a rival gospel but the same gospel walking around in working clothes.

  2. 4 min read

    Communion, plainly

    Bread and a cup, passed around a room. It can look like the smallest of rituals. The New Testament treats it as one of the most loaded acts a Christian ever performs — a meal that remembers, proclaims, and looks ahead.

  3. 4 min read

    Reading Ecclesiastes slowly

    Ecclesiastes seems to say everything is pointless and then sits in your Bible like a problem. Read slowly, it is the most honest book you will ever pick up — and its restlessness has an answer.

  4. 5 min read

    What 'salvation' actually means

    Salvation is far bigger than going to heaven when you die. The Bible's word means rescue, healing, and new creation — a work with a past, a present, and a future, given by grace and aimed at Christ himself.

  5. 4 min read

    Reading Psalm 23 slowly

    Psalm 23 is so familiar we stop hearing it. Read slowly, it is not a greeting-card poem but a steady walk with a shepherd who finally has a face.

  6. 5 min read

    Generosity as worship

    Giving is often felt as a transaction or a tax — money out, obligation met. Scripture frames it as worship: a glad response to grace already received, patterned on the self-giving of God himself.

  7. 5 min read

    Reading the Bible in a year

    A year-long Bible plan can become a box-ticking grind or a genuine encounter with the whole story of Scripture. The difference is not willpower but what you are reading for.

  8. 4 min read

    Baptism, plainly

    Baptism gets argued about more than it gets understood. Beneath the disagreements about who and how lies a single picture the New Testament keeps returning to: union with Christ in his death and resurrection.

  9. 4 min read

    Reading Isaiah slowly

    Isaiah is long and strange and easy to abandon. Read slowly, it moves from holiness to comfort to a suffering servant — and Jesus said it was about him.

  10. 5 min read

    The nearness of God in suffering

    When suffering comes, the urgent question is rarely 'why' in the abstract. It is whether anyone is near. Scripture's answer is not a tidy explanation but a person — a God who draws close to the brokenhearted and who knows sorrow from the inside.