{"id":81,"date":"2025-08-09T23:34:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T23:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/?p=81"},"modified":"2025-11-07T23:34:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T23:34:53","slug":"five-reasons-you-should-listen-to-an-audio-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":"Five Reasons You Should Listen to an Audio Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Audio books and podcasts are all the rage today. Because many of my friends listen to a lot of material every week, I decided to issue a challenge to fold in an audio Bible to their daily consumption. But first, here are five reasons everyone should be listening to an audio Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#1 \u2013 Hear It Read Correctly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I was at summer camp as a teenager, I went to a Bible study with Eric, another teen who had never had any exposure to church or the Bible. The leader asked Eric to start reading Psalm 25. Eric held up my old King James Bible and read, \u201cUnto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee.\u201d Now when he said, \u201cO my God,\u201d he emphasized the words as if he were expressing disbelief, like he did in conversation with friends. He was confused because he always thought using the Lord\u2019s name in vain was frowned upon by Christians, but here it was in their own Bible!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an extreme example, but it\u2019s useful to illustrate the fact that many people don\u2019t know how some verses or sentences in the Bible should be read: where should the emphasis go? How is this supposed to be pronounced? Is this supposed to be funny or serious?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding an audio Bible that is well-read will help establish in our minds the way the Scriptures are intended to be said. My favorite audio Bible is narrated by Alexander Scourby<\/a>, whose deep and powerful voice is full of inflection and pace to properly reflect the intent of chapter and verse. He reads the King James Version, which some may be skeptical of, but let me assure you that hearing someone else read KJV is a lot different than trying to read it myself. And all those old-fashioned words and phrases really keep things interesting!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#2 \u2013 Faster Than Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The second reason you should listen to an audio Bible is that it is much faster than reading it. I can listen to five chapters of the Old Testament in the time it would take me to read through one. Part of the reason reading is slower is related to #1 above \u2013 I sometimes don\u2019t understand how a verse is supposed to be read or which words I should emphasize, which makes me slow down and try a few times. But with a well-narrated audio Bible, all of that is taken care of, allowing me to hear the message behind the words better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#3 \u2013 Allows Multi-Tasking<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now you may think this third reason isn\u2019t good, but let me explain. When I get up in the morning, I have certain chores I need to do in the kitchen. They are mindless and habitual, so I don\u2019t really need to think about what I\u2019m doing. One morning, I was running late and didn\u2019t have time to do my devotional reading in the morning \u2013 I only had time to get my kitchen chores done. So I put my earbuds in and listen to my audio Bible instead, and it changed my whole routine! Now I\u2019m able to get my work done and<\/em> listen to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

           Once that routine began, I started seeing all the other places in my day where I could do the mindless things I needed to do and also play my audio Bible, things like cleaning the house, folding laundry, or even driving to the store. After a couple of weeks, I realized I was hearing a lot more of the Bible than I would have ever been able to read in that timeframe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#4 \u2013 Daily Focus on God<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I had established a new routine of listening to my audio Bible during mindless tasks throughout the day. Pretty soon I found myself thinking more about the things I\u2019d heard. I would be in the shower and I\u2019d be thinking about something that happened to the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings \u2013 something I hadn\u2019t ever remembered from reading through those passages many years ago. Or I\u2019d be laying in bed trying to go to sleep and my mind would bring up something else from the Bible that I might be puzzling over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

           In short, I was focusing more on God each day, without even trying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

           That\u2019s the fourth big benefit of listening to an audio Bible. Like a cow chews the cud, our minds naturally chew on the food we\u2019ve given it. We don\u2019t usually pay much attention to what our minds are eating, other than trying to avoid certain things that we know are not Godly or good for us. But we usually have to make a deliberate and concerted effort to try to think about the things of God. Listening daily to an audio Bible takes the effort out of the process and lets our mind do what comes naturally: think about what it has heard that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#5 \u2013 Write God\u2019s Word on Your Heart<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

           The fifth benefit of listening to an audio Bible flows naturally from benefit #4. When we listen to God\u2019s word, our minds naturally revert to thinking about God\u2019s word, which quite naturally results in us writing God\u2019s word on our hearts. There are many verses in the Bible commanding us to do this, but my favorite is Proverbs 3:3-4, which says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we pair those verses with what Jesus said in his prayer in John 17:17, \u201cThy word is truth,\u201d we can see that writing God\u2019s truth upon the table of our heart is the way to find blessing and wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Challenge<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

           Now that we\u2019ve unearthed several benefits (and surely there are many more) of listening to an audio Bible, I\u2019ve come back around to the challenge I gave my friends about folding in an audio Bible to their normal listening time each day or week. And I hereby issue a challenge to YOU, dear reader, as well: Obtain an audio Bible (download, stream, or purchase), start with the first verse of the first book (Genesis 1:1) and listen to the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long will it take you? While the answer depends somewhat on the speed of the recording you find, I can say that my audio Bible narration by Alexander Scourby has an average run time of about three to five minutes per chapter. For smaller books, like those in the New Testament epistles (letters), that means you can complete a book in about 20-25 minutes of listening. In total, the Alexander Scourby version runs 70 hours. That means if you listen an hour a day, while doing chores or driving, you\u2019ll hear the whole Bible in about 2.5 months. Challenge issued. Will you accept? If so, when will you start? Let me know in the comments, and be blessed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Audio books and podcasts are all the rage today. Because many of my friends listen to a lot of material every week, I decided to issue a challenge to fold in an audio Bible to their daily consumption. But first, here are five reasons everyone should be listening to an audio Bible. #1 \u2013 Hear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[13,15,14],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","tag-audio-bible","tag-gods-word","tag-reading-the-bible"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennimckinney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}