Let’s talk about why you should study the Bible (and how it’s different from reading the Bible).

All too often I hear people say they are a Christian, yet they don’t go to church or open up their Bibles. They say they believe in God and they are good people, so that’s enough to get into Heaven.

Not too long ago, I thought the same thing. I believed in God. I knew he had to exist based on my own personal experiences, but it wasn’t until I cracked open the Word and truly digested it that I began to understand just how wrong I was.

Photo by Rachel Coyne on Unsplash — Photo by Rachel Coyne on Unsplash

Know Who You Believe

How can you claim to believe in a God you do not know? What the world shows us isn’t enough to know who God really is. That’s why we need the Bible.

The Bible is God's written Word. It is how we learn who God is, what He believes, and what He commands of us. Although we can also see God through His creation aka the world around us, that knowledge is limited. And if we rely solely on what we see in the world, then we are in for a world of confusion and lies.

If we tried to know God solely based off of His creation around us, we wouldn’t know anything about His grace and mercy. We wouldn’t truly understand the depths of Jesus dying on the cross and how we are saved by faith alone (not by being good people).

We wouldn’t understand the freedom we have in Christ, nor would we be able to decipher between the truth and/or misinterpretations of scripture.

Build A Strong Foundation

When you don’t read the Bible for yourself, you rely on the interpretation and honesty of others. But the problem with this habit is that you are trusting others at their word rather than developing your own knowledge base and relationship with God.

I had faith in a God I created in my mind, not in the God of the Bible. When you believe in a God you do not know, you use worldly wisdom to determine truth. When something questions that faith, you have no foundation to hold on to. This is why it is essential to build a strong foundation in the Bible.

Before I had my daughter, I was pregnant once before. We were excited and planning for the future when one evening I woke up to debilitating pain in my side. I could barely walk to the bathroom. I laid in the bed and cried and prayed for God to keep my baby safe.

A few days later I started to bleed and it all made sense... that baby was no more. Despite the grief I felt, my faith provided the only hope I had. I knew that God’s will was and is always greater. And although He doesn't wish or cause evil, I knew he would care for that child and give me the strength to continue.

If my faith in God relied solely on how I saw his goodness, then my faith would have been destroyed when we miscarried. Instead, the foundation of my faith was in the Bible, not in my circumstances. I knew that God was a good and caring and loving God. I knew that because our world had fallen, our bodies would fail us, cancers would destroy us, and evil would abound until Jesus’ return.

Know Why You Believe

If you talk to any agnostic or atheist person, they will easily bring up all the evil that is mentioned in the Bible. They will mention polygamy, rape, genocides, and murders, they will tell you about slavery, and anything else they’ve come across that most Christians would cringe at.

In college, I had a friend who was openly agnostic, but still respectful of people’s beliefs. We would often have conversations, and it was through her that I learned about all the bad things I mentioned above. I had no idea the Bible actually included stories or rape and murder, etc…

Every time we spoke, the only thing I had to stand on was my own experiences. I would often respond by sharing a testimony I had of how He had answered one of my prayers. That wasn’t enough for this friend.

What I would later realize was that this friend was taking these stories out of context. She didn’t understand that just because it was mentioned in the Bible didn’t mean God condoned the action. But because I didn’t read my bible, I had no way of explaining that to her.

Refusing to read and study your Bible is how people use scripture to believe and justify things like modern slavery.

It wasn’t until I opened my Bible and started reading it that I started to understand WHY I believed in God and what it meant to be a follower of Christ.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash — Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Taking Reading to The Next Level

But reading will only get you so far. Reading is 100% the first step, but don’t let fear stop you from trying to dig deeper. You can read the Bible and start comprehending some of the stories, but you will miss so much more information that isn’t revealed at surface-level reading. Imagine for a second being in a relationship with someone, but only reading their Facebook, Twitter, and IG. Do you think you’ll really know who they are, what they believe, or what they meant by their posts? Probably not.

God, the ultimate creator, created the Bible to tell stories within stories, and in between the lines of who He is. There's the big picture (also known as meta-narrative) that teaches you about creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration, then there are stories within each book of the Bible, and each chapter, and verse.

To complicate things a little bit more, culture, language, author, and genre style, etc… play a significant factor in the interpretation of what scripture is revealing..

Are you overwhelmed yet? Confused maybe?

I was right there with you, and still am for many things. My main point is, there are so many intricacies to the Bible, that you need to break it down, digest it, and let it settle to hopefully understand what is being said.

You could read the Bible in its entirety every year for the next 20+ years and still learn something new. How cool is that?

This is where studying comes into play. Are you ready? I know it’s intimidating, so stick around as we cover how to start studying the Bible.