Why Read The Bible? Sample

The Bible Is Your Instruction Manual

If you’re going to build a house, you don’t start the process without a blueprint -- the plan a builder must have in order to build. It gives the builder a vision for what the house is supposed to look like. 

Without a blueprint, the construction crew wouldn’t know what to do. Walls might not meet. Plumbing and wiring might be placed wrong. A hundred things could go wrong with the framing, and the entire house could eventually collapse because it would be structurally unsound.

Like a blueprint for a house, God’s Word shows you and me how to walk through this life of a Christian, and it also shows us how to walk out God’s specific plan for our life. Without it, we also could eventually collapse. 

I once talked with a young man who was severely tramatized. Several years earlier, his best friend had died in a tragic accident. This young man simply couldn’t get past the pain and loss. By the time he came to see me he was not sleeping, almost flunking out of school, and dabbling in drugs and alcohol. 

This young man was a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian. In fact, his parents were ministers and he’d been involved in church activities all of his life. But when he came to see me, he was struggling to make sense of a senseless accident.

After listening to him talk for quite a while, I asked, “How’s your devotional life? Are you reading your Bible every day?” He was taken aback, and then answered sheepishly, “I haven’t been reading it at all. I just stopped a while ago when I couldn’t make sense of all this.”

It was no wonder that the young man had gotten off track. He had stopped reading the instruction manual, the very source of help. There was nothing to shine a light into his darkness. He had lost the vision for his life just when he needed it most.

I challenged this young man to go back to reading the Word daily and see if it made a difference. I am happy to report that he did as I suggested, and it did make a difference. God’s Word never fails. It is our blueprint for life.

You can learn more about today's content in my book Why God Why.