Bible and Breakfast

Feeding your body and your soul? Does that sound good? You'll hear more today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.

So it doesn't matter what time of day, really. Like we already said, there's no magic formula for meeting with God in Scripture. And yet, one tiny step at a time, we can become more consistent in reading God's Word and feeding our souls. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" .

Today author, Asherita Chuchu, is back with a challenge and some hope if you want to deepen your understanding of God through the Bible. Our featured resource today is a visual feast. And if you make any of these recipes, call us. Andrea, Gary and I will be over. We promise we'll be quiet.

Sit in the corner. Her new book, titled Bible and Breakfast, 31 Mornings with Jesus, feeding our bodies and souls together. And Gary, what we're going to talk about today is partly the concept of the quiet time. I remember hearing that term when I was younger, late teens, early twenties, and thinking, what in the world are you talking about? Do you remember the first time you encountered someone encouraging you to have a daily time alone with God? I do, Chris. I was a freshman at Moody Bible Institute.

And in the church I grew up, they always said, read your Bible and pray, but nobody ever shared the concept of sitting down to have a conversation with God and reading the Bible in the sense of listening to what God wants to say to me today and then talking to God about what I read. But it was an older student who shared the idea with me. And I loved it. And I got started. And it's my life, you know.

I mean, it's just a part of who I am and has been for many, many years. So I'm really excited about this topic. And I think those who have never discovered the joy of what we typically call a quiet time with God, I think this program is going to really help.

And those who are, I think are going to enjoy this program as well. Let me reintroduce our guest. She grew up as a missionary kid in Romania. She's now married.

They have children. She's a writer, a speaker. And mixed in with all of that is the topic of food. We've talked before about her struggle with food. She wrote, Full Food Jesus and the Battle for Satisfaction. Her name is Asherita Chuchu, one of my favorite names ever, spelled C-I-U-C-I-U. You can find out more about her and the new book at FiveLoveLanguages.com. That title is Bible and Breakfast, 31 Mornings with Jesus, Feeding Our Bodies and Souls Together.

Just go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Asherita, welcome back to Building Relationships. Thank you so much for having me back.

It's my joy to be here. I agree with Chris that this book is a visual feast. The recipes, the photos all go together with this topic of Bible and Breakfast. So, congratulations on the book. I'm sure there's a story behind the book and the idea. So, share with us what led you to write the book.

Yeah. I mean, I grew up in a Christian family and I've loved Jesus ever since I can remember. I was probably five or six when I gave my life to him. And I grew up with the concept of daily devotions or quiet time. And as a teenager, I read about this Chinese pastor who said, No Bible, no breakfast. He had chosen to prioritize his time with God before anything else, even before feeding him his body.

And I just thought that was, what devotion? And so, I endeavored to do something like that every day to set aside time to feed my soul before I fed my body. But then I grew up, I went to school, I got married, I had kids, I got a job. And before I knew it, life got so hectic and busy that if I were to wait to eat until I had had my time in the Bible, it would probably be five o'clock before I eat anything.

It's just hard with so many commitments to get in that solid hour that I really wanted. And so, a few years ago, I remember thinking, what if instead of no Bible, no breakfast, I did Bible and breakfast? As I've shared on this program before, I'm a bit of a foodie.

I really enjoy food. It's rare that I would skip breakfast. And so, that habit is already well established in my life.

And behavior science shows that you're more likely to be consistent with a new habit if you link it to something that is already consistent in your life. So, I encouraged my blog readers in 2016 to join me for a 31-day challenge to read the Bible while we eat breakfast. Over a thousand women signed up to just raise their hand and say, I need this.

I want this. And it was incredible. Women around the world joining in every day reading the Bible while we eat breakfast.

It was just such a blast. Well, obviously, that was a great response, a thousand ladies. What did that tell you about the need for this sort of thing? For one thing, it really validated that I'm not the only one who struggles with this. I think it's easy to feel isolated and to think, oh, if only people knew I'm such a bad Christian, why can't I get my act together? And yet, to hear so many women say, no, this is me too.

I want this, but I struggle with this. That was something that helped me realize Christian women really do want to read the Bible more. They do want to spend more time in Jesus' presence.

Maybe they don't know how, or maybe they just feel like they don't have time. So that really lit in my heart this desire to help women find joy in Jesus through creative, but also consistent, time in His Word. What are the common struggles that women experience with having a daily quiet time? I think one of the first things is that we have this all-or-nothing mindset. If we've grown up in the church, a lot of us do have this mentality that an hour is the perfect or the right amount of time to spend reading our Bible and praying, and anything less than that falls short. So even if we get 20 minutes, it feels like, that wasn't enough.

I'm a failure. And what that happens is it builds patterns of guilt and shame into our souls, where we start putting off our time in God's Word. If I don't have time for a full hour, then I'll just wait until I do, and that time never comes.

Or if it does come, it's more likely to be filled with social media, or our favorite TV show, or maybe there are chores around the house that feel more urgent. So this all-or-nothing mentality just pairs with guilt and shame, and it can really keep us from making progress and establishing this habit of being in God's Word every day. So your challenge to women who are listening today is to take 31 days with Bible and breakfast and see what happens. And I'm sure you're hoping that they'll establish this pattern and carry it forward, right? Yeah, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more. Bible and breakfast is really one of many little tiny habits that we can establish in our lives, so that we have multiple touch points with God's Word and bringing our hearts before Him throughout our day. So it's not just 31 days, but that does help establish the habit, and then once that's part of our daily routine, then we can look at other creative ways to bring ourselves into an awareness of God's presence in our lives.

And there are lots of creative and fun ideas that I can share maybe later in the program. Asherita studied English and women's ministry at Cedarville University in Ohio and ministers to women in her local church and online through her blog at onethingalone.com. She's married to Flavia Yu, her high school sweetheart, and together they raised their three children in northeast Ohio. A featured resource at fivelovelanguages.com is her book Bible and Breakfast.

You can find out more right there, fivelovelanguages.com. Asherita, I saw this on your website, and I want to hear what you have to say about it. You say, growing up in church, I thought spending time with Jesus meant an hour alone each day. You talked about that in the last segment, but that it was kind of this formulaic approach that got harder and harder to maintain the fuller my life became. But I've learned that Jesus welcomes us to come to him messy, bun, sticky hands, crummy floors and all, and my greatest mission is to help busy women like you and me find joy in Jesus right where we are. My question is, is that true that God can take us right where we are in the middle of the chaos of our lives? I think that's what we see when we look at Scripture. I mean, time and time again, God meets people right where they are.

We see this with Jesus in the Gospels, whether it's the woman at the well, or Mary and Martha, or the woman who was walking with her son's funeral procession. It's in the messiness, in the brokenness, in the hard places of life, and Jesus longs to meet us there. He's not waiting for us to get our act together. He's not waiting for us to measure up to this perfect image of what it means to be a Christian woman or a Christian man. He longs for us to come to him humbly, just as we are, and say, I need you, and you are enough for me.

You know, I think of the Pharisee and the tax collector who came into the temple, and it was the tax collector who said, Lord, you know me well as me, and yet I come to you. It's not bringing all of our accomplishments. It's not having the perfect quiet time, or the perfect family, or perfectly volunteering in church, or perfectly doing anything.

It is our awareness of our need for Jesus to sacrifice, and that is where joy comes in as we enter his presence. Well, I think all of us are aware that the time pressures upon men and women in today's world are very, very strong, and we can get so involved in just the flow of life that we can wake up and realize, oh, I haven't really thought about God much in the last three days. And I think what you're trying to do is to help us, men and women, establish this as a part of our life.

How do you challenge women and motivate women to make this a priority? If we're being honest with ourselves, the issue isn't really time. The real issue is our heart desire, and this was just a place of humbling myself a few years ago and being honest every day, saying, God, I don't really desire you as much as I think I do. It's easier for me after a rough day to turn to the chocolate chip cookie dough, or to turn to my phone, or maybe for other people it's shopping, or a glass of rosé, or pornography, or a relationship. It's so easy to go to all the other things to fill those broken places in our lives. But when we realize that none of those things satisfy, that truly it is Christ alone who offers us healing and wholeness and joy and peace, that's when our priorities come into line, not out of a place of guilt or duty, but out of a place of delight.

When we know, Peter says, to whom shall we go? Lord, you have the words of life. When our hearts resonate with the truth of that, then the prioritization becomes so much easier because it becomes the air we breathe. It becomes our daily bread.

Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. You alluded to this earlier, but in the book and in your interaction with ladies through the years, you've talked about some quiet time stereotypes that sometimes can be more harmful than helpful. So let's touch on that before we dig into the real power of this time with God.

Talk about some of those stereotypes. Yeah, well, we already talked about one of them, that there's a certain time element to it, right? That it has to be an hour each day, or at least that's what the righteous person does. And when we look at scripture, there truly is so little in terms of formulas. There's no one-size-fits-all formula for meeting with God in scripture because God created each of us one of a kind. And He invites us to approach His throne boldly through Jesus Christ.

He is the one way. But in Jesus, there are so many creative ways. So that one hour, we can set that as, okay, maybe in some seasons of life, that might be something to strive for. But in this season of life, maybe we can break it down and we'll talk a little bit about tiny habits. Maybe we start with a two-minute or a five-minute habit, and then we build from there. Another stereotype is that it has to be first thing in the morning, right? No Bible, no breakfast. It has to be before anything else, before the rest of the house wakes up.

And I had a reader email me, actually, and say that this was something that was upheld in her church as the right way to meet with God. That it has to be first thing in the morning before anyone else wakes up in the house. And so she started doing this, waking up before the rest of her family.

But before long, her husband got in on it. And he said to her, I want you to sleep in so that I can wake up first thing in the morning and be the first one to have my time with God. And that just shows sometimes the extremes we can go to to fit formulas where God gives us freedom. Again, looking at Scripture, morning devotions are not better than evening devotions or even sit-in-the-carpool-line devotions. God invites us into His presence any time of day.

And so we have freedom in Jesus to approach Him in His Word, to study His Word, to meditate on His Word whenever that fits into our life, whenever we can create those habits. So if morning time works, that's great. If it doesn't, though, let's not let that be an excuse to say, I don't have time. Let's think creatively about what that looks like. And then the third stereotype that I think is harmful is this idea that quiet time has to be quiet. I remember when my children were, my first two daughters were young, a toddler and an infant. It's like my kids have the sixth sense. The moment I wake up, it doesn't even matter if I haven't yet left my bedroom, one of my children would wake up. And sometimes I might have already pulled out my Bible and journal. One specific day I can remember, I was literally writing out a prayer saying, Lord, it is so good to be in this place of quiet after so many days of just noise. It's so refreshing for my soul to just be able to be in Your presence quietly.

That's something my soul longs for. And I'm in the middle of writing the sentence as I hear my third born son wake up wailing. And there's this frustration that built up.

Why can this mama not just have a few quiet moments by myself? And it's easy to allow that frustration to turn toward our children. And what I sensed the Lord just prompt my heart that day is to let go of my expectations or maybe cultural formulas of what it looks like. And to invite my children into this time, to lead them into God's presence, to model for them what it looks like to feast on the bread of life. You know, there's a recent survey that looked at children who grew up in Christian homes and then followed them into adulthood. Because so many young adults end up turning their backs on not just the church, but their faith when they leave the home. So this survey looked at what are some of the common characteristics of those who stayed in the church.

And the number one factor by far was whether these children read the Bible while they were still at home. And as I read that statistic, I thought, Lord, how ironic that I would be one to champion time in God's word for women around the world. And yet my children rarely see me do it because I want my quiet time. I want my alone time by myself. And so instead of that stereotype saying, let's invite our kids into it.

Let's allow them to be part of this. Yeah, it might be noisy. It might be chaotic. But we can trust God to multiply those moments, to feed our souls just like he multiplied the bread to feed the masses.

Yeah. I like that picture that you're bringing to my mind. The mom sitting there and the three-year-old is sitting there and they're eating breakfast. And the mom is reading the Bible to the three-year-old in the midst of all the activities that the three-year-old may be doing. Yeah, I like that. And of course as they get older, it becomes much more meaningful to the child. But at least we're establishing a pattern for them.

I really hope so. Because right now it's like repeating the same verse six times in a row because I'm interrupted. Truly my hope is that we are establishing a pattern and that my children will grow up with this as their norm. This is what we do.

We gather around the table. As we eat breakfast, we read the Bible. And as they get older, I truly want that to be something that they carry into their families so that my grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, continue this for generations.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you're bringing back a memory when our kids were little. My wife made the commitment when they were little that she was going to get up every morning, every school morning when they started school and fix breakfast, a hot breakfast for the family. Which was a Mother Teresa act for her, okay, because she's not a morning person. And so she would fix the hot breakfast and then around the table, you know, I would read the scripture verse and talk to the kids and we'd pray. And of course she was there with us. But when the last child went off to college, she stopped that hot breakfast stuff, you know. And then I had my quiet time with God, alone with God.

Dropped it like a cold pancake, right? Yeah, right. I like your emphasis that one size does not fit all and there are different ways to spend time with God.

And also, I like the emphasis you make that it's a relationship, it's not a duty. Speak to that just a moment. I mean, we all know that reading the Bible is important, but sometimes it can feel burdensome.

If I'm being honest, I've gone through seasons when it even felt boring. I mean, I don't know if that's okay to admit on the air, but as a pastor's kid, a missionary kid, I'm so familiar with some of these stories and they can start to just become words on a page. And so it's tempting for quiet time or reading the Bible to feel like box checking. Like this is what I do to be right with God.

And when I miss it, then that guilt, that shame can be overwhelming. What I found instead is that when I pause in my Bible reading to look for God in that passage. To pause to say, what is one thing this text teaches me about Jesus? Then suddenly it reminds me that this is about a relationship. This isn't just words on a page, it's not just something I'm doing to fulfill an obligation or a duty. It reminds me that there is delight as I start to know Jesus more.

And then my heart begins to love him more. And this is something that I've been teaching my children as well. They're six, three, and one, and the one-year-old doesn't say very much.

But my six-year-old and my three-year-old will start to respond. And so, before we begin reading a passage, we'll pray and I'll ask them, you know, let them know that this is God's word and we read this because we want to know him more and love him more. And then we'll read the passage.

I might, you know, act it out with different voices or maybe we'll pull out the salt shaker if we're talking about being the salt of the earth. Different ways to engage scripture. But always when we end, that very last question is, what does this teach us about God?

And even my children, as young as they are, can respond with one thing. And then my next question is, what is one thing that you want to say to God in response? How do we react, whether that be worship or confession? And then the last question is, what is one thing that God is calling us to do in response? How do we love him practically? And then how do we turn and love each other?

You know, it might be sharing with your sister or it might be having the courage to say something to your next door neighbor. But just simple and reminding ourselves that this is about a relationship. This is about the God who loved us so much that he didn't strand us as orphans, but he placed his own spirit within us as a seal until the day he returns.

And so now we are preparing ourselves, we're getting to know him, until that sweet precious day that we get to see him face to face. Yeah, I think in the midst of doing this with children, sometimes we can feel like, well, I'm kind of pushing all of this, you know, and it's just going to be a habit for the kids. But we are creatures of habit. It's just a matter of, are we going to have good habits or bad habits, right?

And so what is the value of having a disciplined time like this regularly, where the kids know this is a part of life, this is a part of our day? I think sometimes we think that in order for something to be sincere, it has to be spontaneous. And yet there is beauty in disciplined devotion. It feels that way with my husband. You know, I love his spontaneous text messages or when he spontaneously picks up a bouquet of flowers. And yet it is no less loving when he routinely shows me love in so many different ways, around the house or going on a date or serving me in practical ways.

So there's both of that. And we are creatures of habit. And in fact, that's the way that God wired our brains. Our brains, when we look at habit formation science, are constantly looking for ways to simplify routines and to put things on autopilot, so to speak, so that we don't have to use up as much energy to make all these different decisions. Our willpower diminishes as the day goes on. And so for us to determine ahead of time, what are the habits that I want to establish, and then maybe look at brain science for some ways in which we can rein in how God wired our brains to help us do the things we want to do, to help us read the Bible more, it has been just such a fun adventure for me to do those things, to get a little geeky with the brain science and to say, okay, how can this help us establish habits of reading God's Word? And we all recognize the value of habits in other areas, you know, so we don't think about how we're going to brush our teeth this morning.

I mean, who is this wired? We can do it without even waking up. But it's an important part of life. So applying those concepts to our spiritual development. You know, I think years ago, we used to hear more about, you know, the disciplines of the Christian life. And sometimes today, as you said, we just want everything to be spontaneous. And spontaneity is often controlled by our circumstances, but habits or choices that we choose to build into our lives, extremely important. Sharita, in the book, you talk about two different daily devotional options, snack on the go or feast at the table.

What's the difference between those two? Explain it for us. Yeah, so I'm so glad you brought that up because this is honestly for my personal experience, but also from those thousands of women that I've been working with for the past few years. It's this concept of tiny habits that if we start small, we can build from there. And again, we have this mindset that we want to spend a lot of time reading the Bible.

So a lot of us maybe we start out in the New Year saying, this is the year I'm going to read the Bible cover to cover, or this is the year I'm going to do inductive Bible study. And we start out with these great intentions, but then a few days go by, things come up, it's more difficult than we expect, and we drop the habit altogether. And so instead of doing that, I was thinking, what if we form a tiny habit? So just like maybe on certain mornings, I don't have time to sit down at the table for a breakfast feast, I can still grab a granola bar or a smoothie on my way out the door. And that snack is enough to sustain me throughout the morning. In the same way, I think we can grab a snack from scripture when we only have a few minutes. And as we meditate on that scripture, it sustains our souls throughout the day. So it doesn't have to be feast or famine.

It can be snacks when we only have a few minutes. And then when we do have more time to sit down and savor scripture, we can feast at the table with God's word. And feast is actually an acronym that I've developed for my own personal study. It walks through the inductive Bible study method. And so if readers feast at the table, if they use that inductive study, by the end of the 31 days, they'll have learned how to study the Bible for themselves. But then any morning that you don't have time for that feast, you can just grab the snack on the go.

It's the same passage, but it's distilled into one concept, one verse that you can meditate on throughout the day. And I truly believe in my own life I've seen it, in other women's lives I've seen it, that Jesus can take even a snack and multiply that as we meditate on his word. As a matter of fact, there's a way that listeners right now can get something free, a couple of recipes and things that you're talking about, right?

Yes. So I wanted to make this available to listeners. So as my gift to them, two of the recipes, like you mentioned, but also the snack on the go, the feast at the table, two of these devotionals as well. All you have to do is text the word BREAKFAST to 33777. And I will send those to you in your inbox, just a way to get started. If this is something that is resonating with you and you're thinking, yes, I do want to spend more time in God's word, I do want to make this a habit, then this two-day sampler will get you started on that today. Great. So text the word BREAKFAST to 33777.

Again, the word BREAKFAST, 33777. Earlier we talked about including the children in the daily Bible reading and prayer. What happens to children who see their parents studying the Bible and that it's a part of their life?

What does that do for the child? Well, what the studies have shown is that the children themselves are more likely to make this a habit for themselves. I mean, we've seen this in parenting, right? It's easy to tell my kid to do something, but they're more likely to pick up the habits that they see me doing.

So when we model for our children what it looks like to open God's word, to read it every day, whether it's just a few minutes and a snack or whether it's a whole hour if you want to feast, when we invite our children into that habit, we teach them how to study God's word for themselves. Then when they leave our homes, they are more likely to continue that habit for themselves, to make their relationship with Jesus their own. And that's part of the growing up process for every child, right? I mean, mine are still young.

I know yours are older, so you can attest to this. But even myself, as a teenager, I went through this process. I mean, I saw my parents reading God's word and modeling for me what that looked like. And that's one of the things that I carried as my own habit when I left my parents' home. We saw that in our children, and now I'm seeing it in our grandchildren because their parents are doing what we did.

And they're now going up, my grandchildren are going off to college, but they've built this into their life. What about the listener who's out there saying, okay, okay, but I'm not a breakfast person, and so how does this relate to me? I'm so glad you brought that up because at the beginning of the program, I mentioned that truly I'm looking for lots of creative ways to be in God's word.

And if you're not a breakfast person, that's totally fine. Maybe it's sitting down at lunch and opening God's word for a few minutes while you're eating your lunch. Maybe you're working night shift and your days and your nights are reversed. So maybe you're listening to the audio Bible in your car on your commute, or you're listening as you're walking the dog. Maybe it's writing out scripture on a card and popping that up as you nurse your child during the night so that you have one verse that you're memorizing and meditating on. Maybe it's listening to scripture set to music.

And so I grew up listening to these CDs. And to this day, I'll be reading the Psalms, and I'm reading a verse, and the soundtrack starts in my brain without even thinking about it because those verses were set to music. There's so many creative ways that we can be consistent in feeding our souls, whether that's while we're feeding our bodies or we're doing something else. You know, I mentioned brain science earlier, and one of the things that science has shown us is that we are more likely to stick with a new habit if we link it up to something we're already doing. So before doing that, I encourage listeners to think of whatever that habit is, whether it's reading the Bible or praying or memorizing scripture. As you look at the new year or you're looking at a refresh halfway through the year, look at what you want that habit to be, and then break it down into its smallest increment. Make it a tiny habit, so small that there's no resistance, that there's no reason to make an excuse not to do it. Maybe it's memorizing one verse for a whole month. You can do that, right? Or maybe it's reading just one verse while you eat breakfast or while you brush your teeth.

Keep it tiny, and then link it to something you're already doing. You know, we talked about so many things that are already habits in our lives. And then celebrate your wins. You know, God wired our brains to release dopamine as the reward center so that when we experience something pleasurable, our brains reinforce those neural pathways, and we're more likely to repeat that behavior. I mean, that is why eating a brownie is so, so addicting, because you get that first bite and your brain says, oh, this is good, and that reward center goes off, and it's saying, let's keep doing that. And so pretty soon, you'll find yourself wanting to finish off the row. That's where discipline comes in. But if we can take that concept and bring it into our spiritual formation discipline process, if we can say, all right, what is a discipline that I want to develop in my life? How can I make it tiny to start with so that I'm consistent in that tiny habit?

You can grow it over time once it's consistent. How can you link it to something you're already doing? And then how can you celebrate so that your brain releases that dopamine, that reward center, so that you are more likely to follow through day after day, so that your desire for God increases? You know, one practical way to do this is to bring it back to relationship and to say, Jesus, I'm getting to know you more. Another way is to list out gratitude, things that you're thankful for, or to worship ways that you're getting to know Him more.

So, it doesn't matter what time of day, really. Like we already said, there's no magic formula for meeting with God in Scripture. And yet, one tiny step at a time, we can become more consistent in reading God's Word and feeding our souls.

Actually, let me get personal with you. In your earlier book entitled, Full, you talked about gaining freedom from food addiction. Does this devotional, this new book we're talking about, show maybe how far you've come in your own journey?

I think in some ways it has. Not because I directly address food fixation in this book, but because this is a celebration of the good gift of food. That's something that we talked about in our previous program, that it's so easy to think when we struggle, whether it's our weight or a food addiction or a pattern of eating that we just can't seem to break. It's easy to think that food is the enemy. And yet, when we look at Scripture, what we see time and time again is that food is a good gift given to us from a good Father, meant to turn our hearts to Him in worship. And so it was so much fun with this devotional, Bible and Breakfast, just taking the concept of reading the Bible while we eat breakfast and to say, let's celebrate the good gift of food. And I got to share 31 of my favorite breakfast recipes with readers.

So they're beautifully photographed. Honestly, each one is delicious. And yet also there were some principles that I wanted to make sure to include in the book. So each recipe is rich in protein. It majors on whole foods that will keep you fueled all day long. They're all free of refined sugars to kind of kick that sugar addiction because that had been a struggle for me. I love the recipes I have in here.

They're all foods that my husband and my children will eat. But at the end of the day, as you leaf through the book, you'll see it is a celebration of the good gift of food from God. Actually, Rita, we haven't talked about the role of the church or the Christian community in developing spiritual habits.

Would you address that issue for us? Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, Gary, because in our culture, there's such an emphasis on doing this walk with God alone and individually. And even with daily devotions or quiet time, whatever you want to call this habit, so much of the emphasis is placed on your time alone with God. And while there may be some value to that, I've experienced that in my own life.

As much as I love my kids and having Bible and breakfast with them, my heart still yearns for time alone with God. But I think we get off track when the emphasis is on the aloneness and we forget the value of community. Even reading the Bible, when you look at historical biblical times, the letters in Scripture were meant to be read in community.

That's something I think we forget. And yet there is value in sitting down with our children, our spouses, our neighbors, our Bible study groups, sitting down and listening to God's Word. I mean, imagine what it would look like if you got together with your small group or whoever it is and instead of saying, well, let's talk about what we learned from this or what stands out to you from this passage. What if we just sat down and read Scripture and just allowed the words of God to plant their seeds in our hearts? It would be transformative, I think, if we took time as a community to listen to long sections of the text read out loud rather than spending time talking about how I feel about it.

That's not to say that there isn't, again, value in studies. I'm a big proponent of inductive Bible study and discussing as a community what this looks like to live it out. But I think we've lost an element of listening to Scripture together.

And that's something that can start in our homes as well. And then as you look at the New Testament letters as well, and then as you look at the New Testament writings as well, there's this emphasis on doing life together as a community. And James says, be not just hearers of the Word, but doers also.

As we're listening to Scripture together, we can also talk about what does it look like as a body of Christ together to live out the love of God in our communities? As I think about the letters that Paul wrote, what we have in the New Testament, I wonder how they read those letters. They just had the manuscript that was brought to them. I wonder if they read the whole thing at one time, or I don't know if it was in chapters. I don't think it was in chapters and verses. I'm guessing that many times the whole group just listened as it was read to them. Have you ever thought about that?

Yeah, yeah. In fact, there's this chart, you can look it up online, about how long it takes to read certain letters of the Bible out loud. And most of the epistles, you can read them in under 15 minutes.

You just read it start to finish. And I think sometimes we lose the big picture context when we just focus on one verse or two at a time. So, that is a beautiful thing to do. I think also extending hospitality to our church communities, I think that's something that we might have lost. Again, because of the busy pace of life, it's easier to just walk into a service and sit down and listen and then walk back out. But when you look at the one anothers of Scripture, love one another, encourage one another, bear one another's burdens, submit to one another, all of this is in the context of community. And so, even the practice of Bible and breakfast can become one of these one anothers, where maybe you invite two or three friends from church or from your neighborhood and you say, let's do Bible and breakfast together.

Truly, so much can happen from just such a simple practice of reading Scripture in community. You know, this reminds me of an article I read just recently about Harvard University and it was written by a student. And the whole theme was loneliness and how lonely freshmen are at Harvard University. You know, they come from all over the country. They arrive as freshmen. They don't know anyone.

They're highly driven, so they're into their studies. And yet, in two or three weeks, they're lonely because there's no community built into that. The church, on the other hand, certainly has the potential of being community.

Sometimes we're not, as you just said. Sometimes we just walk in, we sit, we listen, and we sing the songs and we go walk out. But most churches provide smaller groups where there can be community and there can be sharing. So, reading the Scriptures and sharing with each other and praying with each other, I think, is a huge part of the Christian walk. It's the ultimate answer to loneliness because we're members of the family. The church should be a sense of, this is our family. So, I really like the emphasis you're making along those lines. I appreciate that, Gary. And I think, truly, that is the answer to loneliness.

It's found in the body of Christ. And we're not to conform to the pattern of this world. I think technology is great. I praise God for the platforms that we have through the internet to reach people around the world. And yet, we ought not to conform to the patterns of isolation that can happen behind a screen. And so, as a body of Christ, we are the ones to step out from behind the screen, from behind the phone, and to reach out in person-on-person life, face-to-face time. And there's so many beautiful ways that that can happen. But I think the answer to loneliness is found in the body of Christ functioning as a family, just like you mentioned, even around something as simple as reading the Bible while you eat breakfast. Yeah. Well, I really believe that this book is going to be a help to a lot of people in developing spiritual habit in their lives. It has tremendous impact on the rest of life. What kind of other resources do you have for our listeners who want to learn more?

And where do they turn to find you and the resources you might have? Thank you so much for offering that. The website is Bibleandbreakfast.com. I try to make it easy. And like I mentioned, there's that two-day sampler where you can get started right away, right now. There's also a worship playlist I put together with some of my favorite songs that lead me in a spirit of worship. Maybe when I don't have time to sit down with the Bible, I can still focus my heart on the Lord.

There's a 31-day reading plan. There are lock screens for your phone because so many times I think I don't have time for reading the Bible, but truly I just pick up my phone and that sucks up all of my time. So, putting this lock screen on my phone reminds me, the one right now, I'm holding it in my hand. It says, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.

So, this distraction with that custom lock screen on it helps me redirect my attention to Jesus. So, those are available on the website as well. And then, like I said, text the word BREAKFAST to 33777.

And I'm happy to deliver those to your phone right now. Well, that's exciting. You know, when you talked earlier about reading the whole Bible through in a year, my mother was in her 90s and the pastor challenged me to read the whole Bible through in a year. She finished by April the 15th. And I said, Mom, you must have read fast. She said, well, I wanted to get through before it came time to plant my garden.

That's hilarious. So, I'm not that fast of a reader myself. Okay, so I just want to share this because when Carissa, my firstborn, was a brand new baby, a friend of mine online challenged us to do a four-month Bible read-through. And I thought, there's no way I can do this with a newborn. And then the thought occurred to me, why not listen to the Bible instead?

And do you have any ideas how many hours I was up during the night nursing my baby and rocking her and walking? I mean, I flew through Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Kings, like no one's business. And it wasn't four months.

It was, I think, five and a half months. But I did. I listened to the entire Bible with a newborn. And it was my first time listening instead of reading. And it helped me understand Scripture in a whole new way. So, yeah, there's so many creative, fun ways to do that for sure.

You're right. The Scriptures, of course, are our lifeline. Well, thanks for being with us today. And thanks for providing these resources for our listeners. And may God remind all of us that the heart of life is our relationship with God.

Everything else flows out of that. So thanks for being with us today. God bless you.

Thank you so much for having me. And any time you guys are in Ohio, come on over. We'll do Bible and breakfast together.

All right. We're going to do it. With these pictures and this book, all delicious recipes. And again, text the word BREAKFAST to 33777. And if you go to FiveLoveLanguages.com, you'll see the featured resource, Bible and Breakfast, 31 Mornings with Jesus, Feeding Our Bodies and Souls Together, written by Asherita Choo Choo.

Again, go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. And next week, sexual intimacy in marriage. What can we learn from the Song of Solomon about God's design for sex? Don't miss that important discussion in one week. Our thanks to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd, as well as Doug Hayner at Moody Radio Cleveland. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio, in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.