HOW DO WE READ THE BIBLE?

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16)

How do we read the Scriptures? That may seem like a strange question but I assure you it is a vital one. For many, we read our bibles often beginning with a wrong approach. We tend to read it with primarily ourselves in mind. We tend to try and make sense of this inspired, infallible text by using an approach of, “how does it affect, challenge, rebuke and teach me?” Now don’t get me wrong, these properties of reading Scripture are good and needed but they should not be the primary emphasis of our approach to reading and understanding Scripture. We can easily miss the weight of truth, that Scripture is God breathed. The reason we tend to do this is because we fail to get past ourselves. This will result in a failure to focus on the Author of Scripture and His primary intent. We all get caught in the‘me first’ syndrome and for reading scripture, that approach can easily give us a wrong understanding of the text. 

The question we should have indelibly printed on our minds for a right approach to reading Scripture is first; “what is God saying and doing?” This is vital for a more accurate understanding of the text prior to any personal application.
Tom Wells in his book, ‘Christian - Take Heart’ says the Bible’s “emphasis is on God, and what God is doing. It is not first of all on man and what he ought to do. A false emphasis perverts the truth. In theory we may believe that the Bible is about God while, because of our emphasis, we deny it in practice.”