For some, reading is a blast. Reading serious books feels like eating steak, entertaining ones like dessert. For others, though, reading is like eating vegetables. You know it’s important, but it’s not all that fun. So you find other things to do instead.

“Many struggle to find a good route into being a good reader,” Kathleen Nielson observes in a new roundtable video with Rosaria Butterfield and Gloria Furman. How then can one who isn’t “a reader” grow in her desire and ability?

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“You’ve got to have a plan,” Butterfield insists. Regarding Scripture, there’s simply no way you can last as a “verse-a-day believer.” A Christian is one who “shoulders an awesome responsibility: stewarding the world’s ideas in a biblical way.”

But how do we rightly read the Bible? Among other things, we must carefully account for genre. “You don’t scan a text message the same way you do a sonnet,” Butterfield says. “If you did, you’d completely misunderstand the text.” In other words, we must engage Scripture in accordance with what it is. “Presuming the Bible should open itself up to you on your terms is dangerous arrogance.”

Furman is laboring to cultivate in her children a love for God’s Word. “I remind my daughter she isn’t looking at a textbook. She isn’t just reading about God. These are God’s words, and should be treated like food.” And like the best foods, Nielson adds, “The more you eat, the more you want.”

Watch the full 13-minute video or listen to these three women discuss busy life stages, Psalm singing, kids with disabilities, and more.

Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.

We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.

Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.

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Rosaria Butterfield is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University and author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant, 2012) and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Crown & Covenant, 2015). Her new book is The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Crossway, 2018).

Kathleen Nielson is an author and speaker who loves working with women in studying the Scriptures. She has taught literature (PhD, Vanderbilt University), directed women’s Bible studies in local churches, and served as director of The Gospel Coalition’s women’s initiatives from 2010 to 2017. She and her husband, Niel, make their home partly in Wheaton, Illinois, and partly in Jakarta, Indonesia, where Niel helps lead a network of Christian schools and universities. They have three sons, three daughters-in-law, and nine grandchildren.

Gloria Furman (MACE, Dallas Theological Seminary) is a wife, mother of four, cross-cultural worker, and writer. She lives in the Middle East where her husband, Dave, serves as the pastor of Redeemer Church of Dubai. She is the author of Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home (Crossway, 2013) and Missional Motherhood: The Everday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God (Crossway, 2016). You can read her blog at GloriaFurman.com.