It's unfortunate that George Mueller is not a household name, considering all the good he did for thousands of parentless children on the streets of London in the middle of the 19th century.   

The orphanages that God raised up through Mueller's faith were started with only two shillings (50 cents) but as he prayed - believe it or not without making his needs known - slowly but surely the buildings were built to feed and house orphans for sixty years.

How did this happen, you ask? Curiously, Mueller credits his habit of scripture reading.

I believe that the one chief reason that I have been kept in happy useful service is that I have been a lover of Holy Scripture.

It has been my habit to read the Bible through four times a year; in a prayerful spirit, to apply it to my heart, and practice what I find there. I have been for sixty-nine years a happy man; happy, happy, happy." 

Forget four times. Try once in 2012. Baby steps. Here are some questions to keep you focused and to increase your understanding of what you are reading.

1. What do these words actually mean?

2. What light do other scriptures through on this text? Where and how does it fit in the total biblical revelation?

3. What truths does it teach about God, and about man in relation to God?

4. How are these truths related to the saving work of Christ, and what light does the gospel of Christ throw on them?

5. What experiences do these truths delineate, or explain, or seek to create or cure? For what practical purpose do they stand in Scripture?

6. How do they apply to myself and others in our own actual situation? To what present human condition do they speak, and what are they telling us to believe and do?

From A QUEST FOR GODLINESS by J. I. Packer, page 105

Wilbur Smith, the remarkable Bible teacher and professor from the middle part of the last century, had a hand in the founding of Fuller Seminary, and for a time his entire collection of books blessed the students who studied there.

In writing a preface to a collection of sermons by the English preacher G. Campbell Morgan, Smith remarks that for a period of forty years, beginning in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Morgan was "the greatest Biblical expositor known in the pulpits of both England and America." (THE WESTMINSTER PULPIT, vol 1, page 7)

In a sermon from that same volume titled THE BURNING OF THE HEART, Morgan warns of a deadening process that can take place in our study of the scriptures....

The study of the Bible will curse us in the next ten years if we are not careful. Men will tabulate and analyze, and think they know everything.

Man, listen, for, unless as a result of your study of the Bible you hear the imperial tone, the voice of the living Christ talking in your inmost soul, your Bible knowledge is a mere technique that will burn you and ruin you within the next ten years.

Listen, listen for His voice. Cease petition sometimes, cease praise sometimes, cease your questioning every now and then, and listen. No man or woman, young man or young woman, youth or maiden, will cultivate the habit of waiting to listen for the direct message of the Christ and be disappointed. Then your Bible will be a new book. Then your organization will throb with the propulsion of a new power. Then the missionary fire will blaze and drive you out upon the path of service.