The Bible is a big book, in fact it is a library of 66 books in all.
Where should you start to read the Bible?
You can do what I did when I first started to read the Bible. I started at the beginning with the first book Genesis and the first chapter. It was great to start off with, so many wonderful and amazing stories, but after struggling through the next book Exodus I came to Leviticus and I gave up. A better way to read the Bible is to start near the end at the New testament with one of the Gospels such as Mark, it is the shortest, but any of the Gospels is a good start.
I want to give some advice about reading the Bible, because it is God’s Word, and it can seem complicated and difficult, but it really isn’t; as long as we do one of 2 things.
1] Ask God in prayer to help you read it. After all it is God’s Word and He wrote it down for us so that we can understand what He wants us to know.
2] Read it simply. What I mean by this is we must not over complicate what the Bible says. Rather whatever it says take at face value and believe it.
For example: in the very first verse of the Bible [Genesis 1 verse 1] it says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So, what do those words tell us?
God created everything; heavens and the earth and He created us. It tells us that we have a Creator and because of that, we belong to God. We didn’t just happen by a series of happy coincidences starting from some organic chemical pool, billions of years ago. We were simply born into existence by God. If we try and over complicate things by asking “How did God create us?” then we move away from what God wants us to know. From the Bible and its simple statement of fact we can say we are created by God.
Believing that gives us a foundation of a ‘Biblical’ worldview which is very different to the views of many in the world. But seeing this statement from the Bible as truth it then enables us to believe all of scripture as being true, which it is!
Because all scripture is true and Jesus said that it is. [John 17:17; “Your Word is Truth.”] Then we know that all the promises of God are true. Such as John chapter 3 verse 16 [ God so loved the world that He gave His only Son [Jesus] that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life]. That verse is totally true.
It is important to us that the Bible is true, our whole eternity with God depends on it. Therefore, because the Bible is God’s Word to us, we must not ignore it, disbelieve it or accept only parts of it, rather we must read it, study it, know it, and meditate upon it.
As a pastor I like to see worn out Bibles.
So, keep on reading and believing.