A Love Ballad for a Lima Bean

The Bible has a lot to say about the value of, well, the Bible. 

In Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, literally every verse highlights the value of God’s words. According to Psalm 119, the Bible is reliable, helpful, certain, trustworthy, and true. According to Psalm 119, the Bible provides direction, purity, wealth, joy, clarity, confidence, life, and salvation. Psalm 119 patently gushes about how great the Bible is. If Psalm 119 were a song, it would be a love ballad—one of those epic, 11-minute versions (that always has the best parts trimmed out for the radio edit - ugh!) 

Even if you agree that the Bible is trustworthy and true, chances are you don’t always feel that into it. Ant, it’s okay for us to be honest about our feelings toward the Bible.

We sometimes think of the Bible as a vegetable. It’s good for us, sure. We know we need more of it in our diet. But we don’t really get excited about it. Who has ever written a love ballad for a lima bean? 

We’re missing something about the Bible and how we feel about it.

For instance, here’s an excerpt from Psalm 19, like a Cliff’s Notes version of Psalm 119 (not just in number). Reflecting on the words of God, the psalmist writes,

“More to be desired are they than gold,

    even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey

    and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned;

    in keeping them, there is great reward.”

Psalm 19:10–11 ESV

I love those images! The Bible isn’t depicted here as useful, practical, or good for you (though it is all of those things). Instead, it’s rich and sweet, like honey and gold. 

In other words, the Bible isn’t a lima bean. The Bible is baklava.

 

In Search of Reward

So what prevents us from feeling that way—that the Bible is rich and sweet and not like a chore or something good for us that doesn't excite us?

Many of us conclude that we’re dealing with a heart issue. If we really loved the Bible, we’d make time for it. So the answer, we guess, is to drum up more motivation for Bible reading. 

That’s not entirely wrong-headed. After all, the heart certainly plays a huge role here. We all sense that our love for the Bible should be greater than it is, don’t we? Whether our Bible reading is flourishing or floundering, we know we should want the Bible more. 

But this isn’t just a heart issue. Many of our struggles are much more mundane.

When it comes time to actually read the Bible, we can’t find it (I mean, literally, you misplaced it). Or we don’t know where to start. Or how long to read. Or what in the world that verse means. And then our circumstances conspire against us: It’s easier not to read the bible, sleep in, check Instagram, work a little longer, whatever the excuse may be.

It’s not necessarily that we believe the Bible is dispensable or cheap—we’d never say that—but our practices might. In other words, not reading the Bible isn't just about the heart. It's also about our hands. Not reading the Bible is about our habits.

But that’s good news—because habits are in these days. Current habit literature reminds us that we are formed just as much by what we do as by what we think or feel (if not more so). A collection of good habits creates a good character. A good character leaves a good legacy. 

Read enough of these habit books, and one piece emerges consistently—reward. 

People develop habits because a certain action produces a certain short-term reward. Put a Fitbit on your arm, and you might be motivated to walk further than usual. Why?

You want the reward of defeating your cousin Phil. And when you do, it clicks. You feel a sense of accomplishment. It’s rewarding for something to “click.”

Many short-term rewards drive us in the wrong direction: 

• Cookie tastes good: Click
• Laying on the couch for three hours: Click
• Scrolling TikTok: Click click click 

The trick is to manufacture (healthy habit) clicks that drive us in the right direction: 

• Shoes by the door (a cue to hit the gym): Click
• A piano in the center of the home (instead of a TV): Click
• Doing a crossword puzzle—you know, to keep the brain sharp: It’s fun, so … Click

In the long run, these short-term clicks eventually give way to long-term rewards: You no longer just want to defeat Phil; you like how your body feels when you hit 10,000 steps. But it takes a while to get there. A lot of short-term clicks have to happen first to find long-lasting rewards.

I would contend that people who love the Bible—baklava love (rich and sweet), not lima bean love (good for you, but doesn't excite)—began with some kind of click. 

How to Read the Bible—Find Habit Clicks

This theory on habit clicks leading to long-lasting and healthy rewards… Is any of this in the Bible? I would say yes!

Consider this anchor passage from the Old Testament. Again, this is a reflection on God’s words, coming from Moses this time: 

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. 

–Deuteronomy 6:6–9 ESV

You may not read that as a clinic in habit formation. But it is.

God Wants Us to Be Habit Forming

The Word of God wasn’t primarily a proposition they were supposed to understand but a habit they were supposed to undertake.

Look how physical the commands are: Put this stuff on your doors, your foreheads (or just your wrists, I guess). Physical objects are often habit-forming cues. Like a banner above the locker room door that says “Believe”—on the way out to the field, everyone slaps the banner. Click.

Yes, the word matters. But the habit attached to the word? That’s what makes it stick because it’s rewarding.

The timing here matters, too. Moses pointed out transition times: when you sit, when you lie down, and when you rise. What you do during transition (especially mundane transitions) quickly becomes ritual. 

For instance, every night, before bed, I sing three songs to my four-year-old son. Two of those songs were intentional—(1) Jesus Loves Me and (2) You Are My Sunshine. The third was an accident. It’s a made-up song about an airplane that doesn’t make any sense. Why do I sing it every night? Because months and months ago, I sang it one night at bedtime. And it became part of the ritual. 

Transition Times are Habit-forming Times

What you do when you leave the house, lay down to sleep, sit down to eat … that little ritual matters. Whether you know it or not, that ritual becomes a habit, and something within you instinctively wants to seek the click in that moment. You want that little reward. 

The point here was never the doorposts, never the hands. The point was always the heart: “These words shall be on your heart.”

But God knew that the way to drive the word into our hearts was to bind it to our hands, in other words, by making it click. 

It’s no accident that Moses told God’s people to remember God’s word with clicks. God knew more about habit formation than we do now, so he gave us a starter kit on habit-forming rituals. He knew we wouldn’t find our way to baklava without a little nudge.

 

Beyond the Click: Rewards for the Long Haul

If you read the Bible consistently, you’ll be reaping all kinds of beautiful fruit decades from now. But you and I don’t live decades from now. You and I live today. And today, you and I need a click. 

What might that click be for you? Here are a few ideas:

• Leave a stack of Bible memory verses in a high-traffic area, like your front door or in your car. Check out GoodKind Sticky Prayers, which are removable so that you can take prayers with you wherever you go, prompting you to engage with God and return to the Bible.
• Stash your phone under your Bible, so you have to physically pick up your Bible first—even if only to move it out of the way. 
• Game-ify your Bible reading. The Bible App has a “streak” feature, so use it to see if you can defeat your cousin Phil. Click.
• Buddy up—then commit to texting your friend (at the same time every day) one insight from the day’s reading. Click, click, click, click. 

 

Get creative. Try some things, see if they work, and then try some other things. See what clicks.

The Bottom Line on Reading the Bible and Finding Enjoyment 

You may never write a love ballad for the Bible. But with enough clicks, you’ll begin to see why someone did. And over time, I believe you’ll start to experience the Bible as both baklava and lima bean—enjoyable and fruitful, rewarding in the short term and satisfying in the long term.