How to Personalize Your Bible

by David Gibson

Perhaps you own a Bible with your name engraved in gold on the cover. Or maybe you received your Bible from a relative or friend who wrote a meaningful inscription to you on the flyleaf. Certainly, this makes your Bible more personal than those of the same edition in boxes on the bookshelf at the store.

But there are even better ways to personalize your Bible.

We can mark it up.

Some people think they should never write in their Bibles. But isn’t writing notes in a Bible for study purposes actually a sign of great respect? It shows we care about discovering its treasures. It shows that we are taking the Bible seriously and genuinely want to learn more. A Bible with a worn cover, loose pages, its words circled and underlined or highlighted, and its margins filled with notations from years of study—now that's a personalized Bible!

How many Bibles should a Christian wear out in a lifetime?

We can live it out.

“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves . . . . one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22, 25 NASB).

Having a Bible is good—if we study it. Studying the Bible is good—if we obey it. Could there be a better way to personalize our Bible than by shaping our lives each day according to its teachings?