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You took the advice and opened Luke at chapter one. By verse five there is a priest called Zacharias, something named the course of Abia, and a wife descended from Aaron. By verse nine somebody has cast a lot about burning incense. Nine verses in, on a Tuesday morning, you could not say out loud what you just read.
The real question underneath that is not what does this mean. It is is it supposed to be this hard, or am I just not smart enough for this? That has an answer, and it is not a pep talk. The Bible says something about its own difficulty, in writing, in a place almost nobody shows a beginner.
The Bible Says, in Writing, That Parts of It Are Hard
Near the end of his second letter, Peter mentions Paul’s letters – one of the few places one New Testament writer assesses another’s work. The verdict is not poster material:
“As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16)
Some things hard to be understood. That is the text’s own description of itself, from someone who had known Paul personally.
Which gives you permission – finding a page hard is not evidence you are unqualified to read it – and then a map, because Peter does not say the whole thing is hard. He locates the difficulty in the letters. So if you landed in Romans or Hebrews because someone said it mattered, and bounced off, you hit the one section the New Testament itself flags.
And notice what that warning is about. Not failing to understand, but people who wrest it – twist it into a shape they wanted. Twisting is active. Sitting there confused is not.
The Twelve Did Not Understand Either
Six chapters from the end of Luke, Jesus takes the twelve aside and tells them plainly what is coming: Jerusalem, the mocking, the death, the third day. Then Luke adds this:
“And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.” (Luke 18:34)
Luke states the same fact three ways in one sentence, because he is not softening it – and these were people with the author of the story standing in the room, free to ask follow-up questions out loud.
Then in the final chapter, after the resurrection, one short line about that same group: “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45). Understanding turns up in chapter twenty-four, not chapter one – arriving partway through, as something given. Not understanding is the documented starting condition of the people closest to Jesus, not a disqualification from reading.
Read the Paragraph, Not the Verse
Now the fix, which is a layout problem more than a comprehension one. The numbers in your Bible were not written by the people who wrote the Bible. Chapter divisions are generally credited to Stephen Langton, around eight hundred years ago. The verse numbers in the New Testament come from a printer – Robert Estienne, in a Greek edition published in 1551, roughly fifteen centuries later. They exist so a line can be found and cited.
But that is not how you are using them. A number at the start of every sentence reads like a full stop, so you halt every twenty words to check whether you understood. Nobody understands a story twenty words at a time. If a friend told you about her week in numbered fragments you would lose her by the third.
So change the unit: read to the end of the scene, then look up.
In Luke 1 the first scene is not verse 5 – it runs to about verse 25. An old priest, married a long time, no children, doing a job he has done for decades. An angel turns up at work and tells him he will be a father. He says he does not believe it, because they are both too old. He loses his voice until the baby is born.
That you can follow completely. And the course of Abia and the lot and the incense, which stopped you at verse nine, turn out to be the camera telling you where you are standing: a real man, with a real job, on an ordinary day at work.
Two rules keep it repeatable. On a first pass, a name you do not recognise is scenery – keep walking unless the sentence’s meaning depends on it. Then at the end of each scene ask: who wanted what, and what did they do about it? Answer that and you understood the scene. If not, reread the scene – not the chapter.
And wanting someone to walk you through it is the oldest pattern there is. Asked whether he understood what he was reading, a man in a chariot told Philip, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” Philip climbed up and sat beside him (Acts 8:30-31). Nobody called that a failure.
What a Month of This Looks Like
Give it thirty mornings of ten minutes and the change is specific. You stop flinching at unfamiliar names. You read in scenes instead of lines – roughly the difference between watching a film and watching a slideshow of one. And when something is genuinely hard you can tell this passage is difficult apart from I am bad at this.
For the case on where to begin, see how to start reading the Bible and where to start in the Bible for beginners; how to read the Bible explains why its parts ask to be read differently.
What stops people is rarely the hard verse. It is deciding every single morning what to read, how much, and whether yesterday counted.
30 Days Walking with Jesus was built for that gap. It walks through the life of Jesus one day at a time, so the only decision left is whether to press play. Each day has a short devotional video, under a minute. There are full-chapter audio readings for the mornings when being read to is all you have in you. A PDF study guide with journal prompts gives those scene-by-scene questions somewhere to live, and five quick-reference scripture guides help you find a passage again.
It takes under ten minutes a day, access is instant on any device, and it is yours to keep. And it is free – no payment, no card, no upsell at the end. The words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall.
Open Luke tomorrow either way, and read to the end of the scene before deciding you did not understand it. If you would rather not make that call alone each morning, start Day 1.
Questions People Are Asking
Q: How do I start reading the Bible when I do not understand it?
A: Change the unit you read in. Read to the end of a whole scene rather than stopping at each numbered verse, then ask one question: who wanted what, and what did they do about it? The verse numbers were not written by the Bible’s authors – the New Testament’s were added by a printer, Robert Estienne, in 1551, so lines could be cited – and reading in those fragments makes a narrative harder to follow than it is. Treat an unfamiliar name as scenery and keep going.
Q: Is the Bible supposed to be hard to understand?
A: Parts of it, and the New Testament says so about itself. Writing about Paul’s letters, Peter says there are “some things hard to be understood” (2 Peter 3:16). That helps twice: finding a passage difficult is not evidence you are unqualified to read it, and the difficulty is not spread evenly. Peter locates it in the letters, not the Gospels – a good reason for a beginner to start with the story of Jesus rather than Romans or Hebrews.
Q: Why do I feel lost even after reading a whole chapter?
A: Usually because the chapter held several separate scenes and you read it as one block. Reread a single scene, only that scene, then say what happened in one sentence of your own words. It also helps to know this is not unique to you: when Jesus told the twelve plainly what was going to happen to him, Luke records that “they understood none of these things” (Luke 18:34).
Q: Is it okay to need someone to explain the Bible to me?
A: Yes, and scripture treats it as normal rather than a shortfall. When Philip asked a man reading in a chariot whether he understood it, the answer was “How can I, except some man should guide me?” and Philip climbed up and sat with him (Acts 8:30-31). Further back, the oldest public Bible reading on record describes the readers giving “the sense” so that people understood what was read (Nehemiah 8:8).
