Questions from a new Christian, Part I - Reading your Bible

Over the next few weeks I’ll be going through some questions I’ve been asked by some people I know who are just starting to find Jesus. Hopefully these questions will be questions a lot of new Christians are asking, and that God will help me give useful answers that they find helpful.

Question 1: “I’m very busy, and I often don’t find time to read my Bible, or any Christians books. Does that make me a bad person?”
This is a question that I got asked just today and I felt it was a good one, so I thought it worth giving a public airing.
Is it good to read the Bible, and to read good Christian literature (by which I don’t mean The Shack etc.)? Totally.
Is it a necessity that predicates how much God loves/will love you? No.
Is it beneficial to try to find time, no matter how busy you are, to read your Bible? Absolutely.
Here’s what I feel is the big underlying point in this question – “will God love me less if I don’t read his Word?”
The short answer is “no”. The long answer is still “no”, with a side of “but he would encourage you to read his Word whenever possible.”
I don’t mean to push it, but God is a loving Father (so perfect that, when saying God as Father, he gets a big ‘f’, not a little one). He loves you. He loves you so much that he sent Jesus, his son, on a rescue mission into history to die for you and bring you back to Dad.

John 3:16 –
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Isn’t that amazing?
Now imagine this loving father with a clipboard, and on this clipboard is a list of things to do, and a list of things not to do. Imagine the father then follows you around all day, marking you on what you do. He then talks to you at the end of the day and says “you ticked nearly every box on the ‘do’ list, and you nearly left every single ‘don’t do’ box unmarked, but because you didn’t I’m going to love you a little bit less for your disobedience.”
Does that sound loving to you? It shouldn’t. That sounds abusive to me, so to attribute this behaviour to God (imaging him loving you less for not reading your Bible, for instance) is crazy. He’s the perfect Father, so this is obviously antithetical to his nature as such to act in an abusive manner.

Going back to his probable encouragement of reading his Word, I would say this – God wrote the Bible by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Human authors, to bring us his Word and let us see Him for who He is. He did this through the person and works of Jesus, and I thank God whenever I read my Bible for his grace and love evident in the works of Christ.
God wants you to be the best you can be, and I don’t mean in the ‘catchy’ Army adverts slogan kind of way. To this end he gives us instruction in the Bible, and I can tell you that it’s all good. In fact, here’s something from the Bible to tell you for itself!

2 Timothy 3:16 –
“All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable”

To quickly translate – “God-breathed” means it’s from God, which is why was call it “the Word of God” sometimes, and it being “profitable” means it is infinitely useful to us as an instruction manual for a life with Jesus.
To this end I think God would encourage you to pick up your Bible and read it.
I also encourage you to pick your Bible up and read it, though obviously I’m far less impressive than “The Big Man Upstairs”.
In my experience reading my Bible directly collates to how happy I am generally, how well I feel I am walking with God, how well I’m developing my relationship with Jesus, and how much difficulty I have facing day-to-day challenges.

Happiness

Reading my Bible gives me joy. It just does. I love to read the Old Testament for the awesome stories like Sodom and Gomorrah getting smashed up[1], people turning to pillars of salt[2], Adam singing a Hebrew love song to Eve[3], and God appearing as a burning bush.[4] I love the New Testament for ‘Diesel Jesus’[5], all of Paul’s letters (particularly the great practical teaching in Corinthians and Romans), Jesus saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me”,[6] and obviously Jesus dying for our sins.[7]
Everybody can find something they love in the Bible, and there is always a way for God to teach you through what you read in his Word, so go there. Just try and read something each day, and see what God teaches you. Through reading his Word, God can impart some of his joy to you.

Nehemiah 8:10 –
“Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!”


Walk with God

Your walk with God refers to how well in your daily life you are walking on the path God has set out for you. This can mean doing the things he has placed for you to do (all of which will be beneficial to you because our God is a good God), meeting with the people he has placed in your life (be it for you to help and encourage them or learn from them, or vice versa), and how much time you spend simply talking with God and learning about him (from books like your Bible or time with Jesus).
I find that the more I read my Bible the more I keep my walk with God on the right track. I attribute this purely to an increase in faithfulness on my part, as I am doing what God asks me to do by reading my Bible, which then encourages me to do what God asks me to do in other areas of my life, and gives me good ways in which to do so.
As a little tip – Proverbs is full of practical ways to step it up in your walk with God, I could not recommend a reading of that book more.

Ephesians 2:10 –
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

2 Corinthians 5:7 –
“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”


Relationship with Jesus

Jesus wants you to know him.
I think the book of John explains Jesus’ pursuit of us very well when it says – “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”.[8]
We are in a privileged position; we don’t have a God who is detached from us and who doesn’t know our hurts, pains, troubles, worries, fears, anxieties, temptations and losses. We have a God who has lived as we do, experienced what we do, and can empathise with us on all things we bring to him. Jesus knows how you feel when your friends betray you, when you’re tempted by something, when you’re tired and run down from working all day, and when you’re just terrified of something you have to do. He came to us to live as we do, so that we can know we can come to him with these problems and he will be able to comfort us, because he’s been there.

Philippians 2:5-11 –
“You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honour and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”


Daily difficulties

This is a big one for me. I am constantly and consistently surrounded by people (as are we all in our current culture) who love to get hammered (drunk, if you’re not familiar with this colloquialism), love to have sex (regardless of whether they know the person or not), love to chat about obscene things, and just generally have an un-regenerated heart. Now, I love them all, they’re friends and I appreciate each and every one of them, but sometimes they’re just hard work. I turn to Proverbs with alarming regularity to keep good teaching in my head, so I don’t fall into the habits of engaging the guys in the kind of conversation I shouldn’t, and the kind of behaviour that will damage my witness and walk with Jesus. Here are some of my favourite verses –

Guard your heart, for that is where all actions and words spring from:
Proverbs 4:23-24 –
“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Avoid all perverse talk; stay away from corrupt speech.”

Keep yourself from the things that the Lord hates:
Proverbs 6:16-19 –
“There are six things the Lord hates— no, seven things he detests: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill the innocent, a heart that plots evil, feet that race to do wrong, a false witness who pours out lies, a person who sows discord in a family.”

Keep away from immoral women:
Proverbs 6:25-29 –
“Don’t lust for [her] beauty. Don’t let [her] coy glances seduce you. For a prostitute will bring you to poverty, but sleeping with another man’s wife will cost you your life. Can a man scoop a flame into his lap and not have his clothes catch on fire? Can he walk on hot coals and not blister his feet? So it is with the man who sleeps with another man’s wife. He who embraces her will not go unpunished.”

Be wise with your speech:

Proverbs 10:19-21 – 
“Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut. The words of the godly are like sterling silver; the heart of a fool is worthless. The words of the godly encourage many, but fools are destroyed by their lack of common sense.”

For my last point (I know you’re all excited to be nearing the end) Ephesians 6:17 says that one of the pieces of God’s armour for us is “the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” and that we should be proficient in the use of this weapon against the enemy.[9] To this end, I feel it is vitally important to read your Bible in order to better understand how to not let your life become open to attack from Satan, his minions, their works and effects. 

I pray that this has helped you in at least a small way, and that you now understand how beneficial the Bible can be in your life, how integral it really needs to be. I ask that God helps you find some time to come to him in prayer and faithfulness, and to read his Word with diligence and patience.
I’ll pray for every single new Christian out there, that they reach out and get to know Jesus, because he sure wants to get to know you better.

If you have any questions for me to answer feel free to comment them in the box below and I will endeavour to answer them when I can.


[1] Genesis 19
[2] See above.
[3] Genesis 2:23 – ““At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man.’”
[4] Exodus 3
[5] Revelation 19:11-16
[6] John 14:6-11
[7] Matthew 27:45-55, Mark 15:33-39, Luke 23:39-49, John 19:28-30
[8] John 1:14
[9] I touched upon this with a little more detail in my Fighters for Christ post - http://heartofcorinth.blogspot.com/2011/02/fighters-for-christ.html