"God answers my prayers everywhere except on the golf-course."
Why read the Bible?
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17These verses give us two answers to the question in the title. The Bible is “God-breathed”. When we understand the origin of the Scriptures, that gives us a first reason for reading it. Of course the Bible was written by human authors and we need to recognize the differences between the letters of Paul, the gospels, the historical books and the poetry of the Old Testament but it is all the God-breathed Word of God.
The passage says that the Bible will help us in 4 ways
Teaching – it is from the Bible that we learn who God is and also who we are. We learn of God’s strategy in history and how we can obtain salvation from our sins through the death of Jesus.
Rebuking and correcting – at times as we read the Bible it will challenge us, rebuke us and point out our errors. As the Bible reveals God in his perfection and holiness, we become more aware of sins and our need both of forgiveness and to change our attitude and behaviour
Training in righteousness – “training” may seem an odd word but it is a word most of us are familiar with. We are saved by grace but need to spend a lifetime becoming more like Jesus. I once heard Jonathan Edwards say that he first triple jumped in junior school and 16 years later he was Olympic champion. There was a lot of training between the first jump and the Olympic final.
It is the same in the Christian life “training in righteousness” and becoming more like Jesus takes time.