Part 2 – Why Read the Bible?

            Reading the Bible can be enjoyable as well as a challenge.  There are difficult parts, as well as passages that don’t seem to have much relevance to us in our modern world, .e.g., the lists of families and tribes. However, God has given us a message in the Bible, and we should at least make the effort to read it. 

            A number of us have begun to read through the Bible in a year.  However, you may not have the time, or be free at this time to join us, but you can still read through the whole Bible by yourself.  You don’t need a plan or a schedule; just work at it at your own pace.  If you read three chapters every day and five on Sunday, you should be able to complete the whole Bible in a year.  You can begin with the New Testament first if that is more convenient.

            There are blessings too from reading the Bible.  Two stand out from my experience of reading.  The first time I read through the Bible as part of my preparations for missions work, I managed to read it in a little over three months. A month or so after finishing, a person in my church said to me that she thought I had changed!  I can’t remember the details now, but I was reminded of Ephesians 5:26: “cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”  The word of God has a cleansing effect if we read it and allow it to influence us. 

Another experience was when I was doing a locum physiotherapy job at a rehab centre in Cardiff prior to going out to Japan.  I was having another Bible read through as part of my preparation for going out for our missions work.  I was reading the Bible in the morning, and again in my lunch break in the staff room, and again at night.  A few years later we received a letter from the superintendent physiotherapist to say that she had become a Christian, and one of the key influences had been seeing me read my Bible in the lunch break.  We never know what God may use in a person’s life to bless them. 

            But why else should we read the Bible?  First and foremost, because God has given it to us, and it is one key way that God communicates with us. God is relational and He wants to enjoy our companionship.  For that friendship to continue and grow there needs to be conversation.  God communicates with us through His word, and we communicate with Him in prayer.  However, it can be quite one sided at times.  Think about a good friend of yours.  When you meet you talk and share together.  Analyse it for a moment – how much of that time are you speaking, and how much of the time are you listening?   A good relationship will probably be 50/50.  But in our relationship with God, how much of the time are we doing the talking?  How much of it are we listening? 

            God uses His word to speak to us as the Holy Spirit takes what we read and applies it to our hearts.  Perhaps you are wondering how that works.  An example might help.  My wife and I were prompted to pray about our future in Japan and whether the time had come for us to return to the UK or not.  We had prayed quite a bit about it, seeking God’s leading in the matter.  Then one Sunday morning, when our Japanese brother was speaking from Mark 5, God used a verse in that chapter to touch our hearts.  After the service and when we were together later, I mentioned that Mark 5:19 seemed rather significant in regard to our thoughts about returning to the UK.  Esther then shared that she had felt the same thing from the same verse.  The verse says, ‘Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.’  “Go home to your family” seemed to hit both of us very forcefully.  This was confirmed in other ways as time moved on, but we believe that God had spoken to us through that verse, giving us a greater sense of direction in our thinking about our future. 

There have been many other times when God has used His word to speak into our situations.  And when we have had a word from the Lord this has enabled us to persevere in spite of difficulties, because we have the assurance and confidence that we are where God wants us to be, and we are doing what we believe God wants us to do.  Often God speaks to us by prompting a thought in our minds about something, but more often than not, we will receive confirmation from God’s word that the prompting was from Him. 

If we are not reading the Bible, God cannot use this means to speak to us.  It’s like any relationship, if it is one sided we do not benefit from the relationship as much as if it were two way.  Let’s open our hearts to God’s word and let Him speak to us through it.