Dusting Off Your Bible

I am currently going through Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald Whitney with a group of upperclassmen at Drexel. His first chapter focuses on the importance of Bible intake.

Of course we must take in the Word of God! Isn't that obvious? Yet while many Christians, he says, agree that getting fed with Scripture is important, they still know "...little more about the Bible than Third-World Christians who possess not even a shred of Scripture." (pg. 28)

No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God's Word. Nothing can substitute for it. There simply is no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture. The reasons for this are obvious. In the Bible God tells us about Himself, and especially about Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God. The Bible unfolds the Law of God to us and shows us how we've all broken it. There we learn how Christ died as a sinless, willing Substitute for breakers of God's Law and how we must repent and believe in Him to be right with God. In the Bible we learn the ways and will of the Lord. We find in Scripture how to live in a way that is pleasing to God as well as best and most fulfilling for ourselves. Non of this eternally essential information can be found anywhere else except the Bible. Therefore if we would know God and be Godly, we must know the Word of God--intimately. (pg. 28)

More importantly, as my friend leading the study mentioned, the Bible explains why it needs to be read. Paul says in 2 Timothy, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work" (3:16-17)

In Him,
Jason