Week 1 (14.09.08)

This week we did "wise and foolish builders" and talked about why it is so important to live our lives according to what the Bible says.

The passage (Matthew 7:24-27) tells us that if you read the Word and do what it says, making God the foundation of your life, then when things go wrong you won't fall apart or lose your faith. However, if you read the Word but don't let it have an effect on your life, then you won't be able to hold everything together when bad things come your way. Therefore, when we read the Bible, we should always ask God to teach us from his Word and help us to be impacted by it.

Then we spoke about how we can go about reading the Bible in the first place: it's a big book and sometimes we just don't know where to start!

So... If you're interested in getting your teeth into the Bible (not literally) and really starting to get to know God a bit better, but you're just not sure how, here's a few tips:

1) Don't just open the Bible randomly and read any passage out of context (it just won't make sense!)

2) We would recommend that you made your way slowly and steadily, rather than trying to tackle huge chunks.

3) Read a book at a time, start at the beginning of your chosen book and try to read a bit every day (whether that's two verses or a chapter at a time: whatever suits you best)

4) Start with a gospel (that's any of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John) and continue with books from the New Testament. (We're not saying the Old Testament is bad, we love it! It's just easier to start with the New)

5) Don't get put off by lists of names (we can't pronounce them either!) - just skim through or leave them out and go to the next bit....

6) Finally and most importantly, we think we should always pray before we start to read. The Bible was written by God and therefore we're never going to understand it all straight away and we need his help, so by praying before we begin, we're asking him to make the words on the page come alive to us as we read.

Reading the Bible is a great way just to hang out with God, it's great to get to spend time with him in this way and we would really recommend it.

If ever you come across something that really doesn't make sense, or if you find something really interesting, we'd love to hear about it and have a chat with you about your thoughts, so let us know!

Lois and Eleanor