Learning To Love And Understand God’s WordSample

  Have you ever vowed to read the Bible all the way through? Like anyone would, you probably opened to the beginning and started reading in Genesis. If you got through the first chapter without wondering how all the days add up, you likely would have stumbled when you got to chapter 3, thinking:

Wait a second! I thought God was a loving God! Why is he cursing Adam? Did the snake actually talk out loud? If the Garden is perfect, how’d the serpent get in there? What is this, Jurassic Park?

When this is our experience with Bible study, it’s no wonder we freak out and give up, or return to the comfort of devotionals and sermon podcasts that interpret the Bible for us! If we’ve stopped and started a few times like this, we begin to believe that the Bible will always be confusing and contradictory. We distance ourselves from the practice of reading God’s Word because the confusion brings doubt and maybe even suspicion.

Let’s turn a new page and choose a different starting line for our Bible study. Let’s start over and ask a basic question: Given that the Bible can be confusing and there are so many resources out there, why should I work to understand it myself? 

To find the answer, we turn to 2 Timothy 3:16-17. We read “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

First, let’s find the promise in that little sentence. It starts after “so.” Servant of God! That’s you! The Bible is talking about you! If you are using this reading plan, seeking the things of God, you are serving him. You could just insert your name in there. Now read it again.

Now that hits a little closer to home, I bet. So, what is the promise? The promise is that you, yes you, will be “thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Thoroughly. Equipped.

How is that going to happen? Let’s go back to that verse. See that list at the beginning of the verse—the Bible is useful for what? The promise from 2 Timothy is that we can be totally, completely, thoroughly equipped for this life. And the way God uses scripture is this: teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training. That sounds to me like the job of a coach. God explains here that his Word is our coach, that through the Holy Spirit, the Word watches our lives closely and provides vision, direction, and correction.

What you’ve just done in these few minutes is look closely at one passage and really allow it to sink in. The Bible is filled with promises like this. They are bold promises about the power and position the Bible can hold in your life. Will it be confusing at first? You bet. Will it be worth it? Absolutely. The question for you is, are you ready to receive it?