Why read the Bible more?
Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament, tells us that the Bible is useful.
2 Tim 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Reading the Bible has a purpose. It teaches us what is right and corrects what we’ve got wrong. It trains our behavior and our character so that we can be the people God intends us to be.
The Bible tells us the truth about God, the truth about man, the truth about the world around us and the world to come. No other reading material on the planet can have as much accuracy and usefulness as the word of God.
Sometimes we shy away from reading the Bible more because we don’t think we can understand it. Or maybe it feels difficult or hard to plow through at times. There are some passages in scripture like the genealogies or the laws in Leviticus that might make the average reader question – how is this useful?
That verse in 2nd Timothy says the word of God makes us equipped or another translation reads the word of God makes us “complete for every good work.”
As you read the word of God it seeps into your thinking, it transforms how you feel, how you look at the world, and it renews your mind. We start thinking like God thinks.
There is a spiritual work and blessing that happens when we read the Bible and we let God speak to us through it. This work goes beyond our intellectual understanding. Beyond our physical understanding.
Because of this spiritual level on which the Word of God operates, we don’t have to understand it all for it to effectively be working in our lives. Many people get discouraged because they feel they don’t get much when they read the Bible on their own and so they give up.
Hear me say this – we must work to understand the Bible the best we can, and read it thoughtfully and carefully. There are many tools and resources out there for us to use. The truth is reading the Bible benefits us spiritually even when we don’t understand it all intellectually.
A critic once wrote a letter to a magazine saying, “Over the years, I suppose I’ve gone to church more than 1,000 times, and I can’t remember the specific content of even one sermon over those many years. What good was it to go to church 1,000 times?”
Someone wrote back: “Over the past many years, I have eaten more than 1,000 meals prepared by my wife. I cannot remember the specific menu of many of those meals. But they nourished me along the way, and without them, I would not be alive today!”
The Bible will do its spiritual work in us, if we will let it. The Bible is useful.
