How to read the Bible

At the book The Mentored Life, I’ve got another interesting text from Soren Kierkegaard explaining how to read the Word of God. He told us that the loyal reader is those who search a basic faith in God to delight himself in the Word of God night and day. To get it, Soren Kierkegaard makes some recommendations:

at first, you need to be alone with the Word of God, which is not to allow that other ideas intervene in text read

second, create a silent environment for the Word of God. If we fail to do it, we can forget that we are dealing with the Word of God or we will fail to listen to it due the “noises” of our cultural inclinations

third, see the Bible as a mirror through we see ourselves and answer to what we see in us as sinners.

Fouth, this reading must take us to a deep feeling of conviction, personal repentance and to a behavior of repentance and humility by reading the message of God to us, this should allow His internalization in ourselves

Fifith, make a responsive reading to obey it and practice the truth

Sixth, Recognize that the biblical communication is done by indirect ways: Jesus himself told us stories.

Finally, read the Biblie with hope, believing that everything is possible to God, in order to make us open to the newness of God.

I take all those recommendations as a great challenge. As long as I try to read my Bible everyday, it is very easy to start reading it as a challenge to comply my goal of reading the Bible as many times as I can. However, no goal would help me to listen what God is telling in each text. An interesting thing of the recommendations above is the effort that the Word of God read (as once Brian McLaren told in one of his books) and teach us.
In Spiritual Mentoring, I found the word “bibliolatry”, which is when people goes to Bible with all their pre-conceived ideas to base their own theology. Indeed, we will only make it if we read the Bible with a teachable spirit, which requires humility, sincerity to recognize what is not in agreement with the Word of God and disposal to change whatever is needed in our lives.