Free Living by the Book/Living by the Book Workbook Set by Howard G. Hendricks, William D. Hendricks Page A

investments I ever made. He ended up reading better and faster than I can, which is very fast and reasonably well. That’s why I believe that one of the most important things you can do for people is help them in the process of reading.
    Suppose you want to study the book of Ephesians. You happen to be a slow reader, so it takes you one-half hour to read the entire six chapters. But suppose you learned to read it in fifteen minutes and also to double your comprehension. Then for the same amount of time—one-half hour—you would increase your effectiveness fourfold. That’s worth the investment.
    I’d like to recommend a book that will help you get started in this process. It’s a book that changed my education for the better, the classic by Mortimer J. Adler called
How to Read a Book.
Widely available in paperback, it’s a tool you can’t afford to be without. It will revolutionize your life.
    You see, I graduated from high school with honors. I even received the English award. Then I went to college. Unfortunately, I’d never studied in high school. I’d never even taken home a book. So after arriving on campus, I took an aptitude test, and they put me in the lowest English section in the school. This, despite my English award. Pretty humiliating. (It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, because they gave us remedial students the best professor in the place.)
    All I did for the first six weeks was study. No dates. No athletics. Yet I still managed to flunk three courses. That has a way of getting your attention. I thought to myself,
Man, I’m never going to make it.
    So I went to see my professor. He was very straightforward with me: “Howie, your problem is you don’t know how to read.” And he introduced me to Mortimer Adler’s book. I read it, and it transformed my study skills. In fact, it changed the course of my life. And that’s what it can do for you in terms of Bible study.
    Adler covers practical skills such as how to classify books, how to discover an author’s intentions, how to outline a book, and how to find the key terms. He tells what the four questions are that every reader should ask, what the difference is between sentences and propositions, and what good books can do for you. He tells you how to read practical books, imaginative books, historical books, and more. He even includes a recommended reading list of the great books that are worth your while to read. In short, even though
How to Read a Book
is about books in general, it’s an outstanding resource for Bible study because it teaches you how to read.
    Another good tool to have is Norman Lewis’
How to Read Better and Faster.
It’s really a workbook that promises to help you read 50 to 60 percent faster than you do now, and with better comprehension. Lewis has material on how to read for main ideas, how to think along with the author, and how to read with a questioning mind. He’s included forty-two work sessions with dozens of exercises to get you involved in the process. I highly recommend his book.
L EARN TO R EAD A S FOR THE F IRST T IME
    It is often said that familiarity breeds contempt. Well, when it comes to Bible study, something else familiarity breeds is ignorance. The moment you come to a passage of Scripture and say, “Oh, I know this one already,” you’re in deep trouble. Instead, you need to come to every text as if you’d never seen it before in your life. That’s quite a discipline. It involves cultivating a mind-set, an attitude toward the Word.
    One thing that helps is to read the Bible in different versions. If you’ve been reading the same translation for years, try something fresh and contemporary for a change, such as J. B. Phillips’
New Testament in Modern English
orEugene Peterson’s
The Message.
If you really want to stretch yourself, check out the
Cotton Patch Version
of the gospels. On the other hand, if you are unfamiliar with the classic King James Version, you really owe