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

it to yourself to read it. Reading an unfamiliar version jars your attention so that you see the Bible with a new set of eyes.
    The point is, do whatever it takes to approach the Word with a fresh perspective. One of the great killers in Bible study is the statement, “I already know that.”
    T EST Y OUR R EADING S KILLS
     
    H ow sharp are your reading skills? Here’s an exercise to test them. In ninety seconds or less, read the following material and circle T or F for each statement (without looking back at the article). Set a timer or have someone call time in exactly ninety seconds. Stop when time is over, finished or not.
     
    DRY ICE
    Can you imagine ice that does not melt and is not wet? Then you can imagine dry ice. Dry ice is made by freezing a gas called carbon dioxide. Dry ice is quite different from ordinary ice, which is simply frozen water.
    Dry ice was first manufactured in 1925. It has since fulfilled the fondest hopes of its inventor. It can be used for making artificial fog in movies (when steam is passed over dry ice, a very dense vapor rises), and for destroying insects in grain supplies. It is more practical than ordinary ice because it takes up less space and is 142 degrees colder. Since it evaporates instead of melting, it is cleaner to use. For these reasons it is extremely popular, and many people prefer it to ordinary ice.
    Dry ice is so cold that, if you touch it with your bare fingers, it will burn you!
     
    Respond
1.  
Dry ice is made from water, but because it is specially treated it does not melt.    
     
T   
F
2.
The first dry ice was manufactured in the 1950s.
     
T
F
3.
Dry ice has more uses than ordinary ice.
     
T
F
4.
Dry ice is not as cold as ordinary ice.
     
T
F
5.
Artificial fog can be made by passing steam over dry ice.
     
T
F
     
    Did you make it in ninety seconds? Feel no anxiety if you did not—you are at the start of your practice in reading quickly and responding accurately. Your aim is to improve gradually and surely, not to become an expert at once.
    [Correct answers to the five questions can be found on page 73 .]
     
    From Norman Lewis,
How to Read Better and Faster
, 4th ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 14-15.

     
     
R EAD THE B IBLE A S A L OVE L ETTER
    Have you ever fallen in love? I hope so. I fell in love with the woman who became my wife, Jeanne, through a correspondence courtship. Five years I chased that woman until she finally caught me.
    So guess what I did when one of her letters would arrive? Did I mumble, “Oh, no, another letter from Jeanne (sigh). I guess I better read it”? Did I sit down, read the first paragraph, and then say, “Well, that’s enough for today. I can check that item off my list”?
    No way! I used to read every single letter four or five times. I’d stand in line, waiting to get into the dining room at college, reading her letters there. At night I’d read them before I went to bed. I’d tuck them under the pillow so that if I woke up in the middle of the night, I could pull them out and read them all over again. Why? Because I was in love with the person who wrote them.
    That’s the way to come to the Word of God. Read it as though it were His love letter to you.
    When Mortimer Adler’s book first came out, it was advertised in
The New York Times
under the slogan, “How to Read a Love Letter.” A picture showed a puzzled adolescent perusing a letter, with the following copy underneath:
    This young man has just received his first love letter. He may have read it three or four times, but he is just beginning. To read it as accurately as he would like, would require several dictionaries and a good deal of close work with a few experts of etymology and philology.
            However, he will do all right without them.
     
    He will ponder over the exact shade of meaning of every word, every comma. She has headed the letter, “Dear John.” What, he asks himself, is the exact significance of those words?