Hello Friends,

In case you wonder, yes I did read in Proverbs 16 today but I'm going to write about something different. I figure in the months to come, I'm bound to write about some of the lessons from Proverbs 16. Today though, let's look to the second chapter of II Timothy.

II Timothy 2:15
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman what needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

We are at the beginning of the year and I would encourage you to make a resolution, if you have not already done so, to read the through the Bible in the next year. Yes, I do mean every word, cover to cover. It's really not that hard. It requires that you read three chapters a day, and four chapters one day out of the week. In this article I'll tell you why I feel this is so important.

In this passage we see that it tells us to "study to shew thyself approved unto God" and it tells us that it is important to rightly divide the word of truth. The bible tells us in II Peter 1:20 "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." So what does this mean?

Have you ever talked with someone or maybe listened to two people discuss the same passage or even maybe a doctrine of the Bible and the two of them come away with two different beliefs about what the bible is talking about? Well what this verse is saying is that the Bible is not of any "private interpretation" in other words the bible means a certain thing and where yes it is "quick" (alive) and you can read it at different times, and God shows you new applications for the passages you read, but the meaning of the passage does not change. When you have two people who get two different meanings from a passage, one or both of them are wrong.

To make sure that you are "rightly dividing the word of truth" you need to always make sure that you read the bible in context. One good way to do this is to go back a chapter or two and read the chapters before and after it. The ultimate way to make sure you are reading it all in context is to read the Bible in it's entirety. I try to do this each year. I am currently working on reading it through for the 14th time. It is amazing how many things you notice each time that you never learned before. And by doing so you also see the verses that tie everything together.

I know that I have met good people who do study their bible that believe one thing while another group who also study believe another. Both can give you passages to back up what they believe. Now we know that the Bible does not contradict itself. Well when you read it all you see how the verses that might seem to be contradict each other, actually tie in together.

Another good thing about this is that when you meet scoffers, who say things like "I don't believe the bible. It contradicts itself" or "it has mistakes" I have found that it is nice to be able to ask them "where?" It's funny because where they are very quick to tell you about all these mistakes they can't name a single one. Then I just ask them, "have you ever read it all?" NO. "I have, several times, cover to cover, and I've never found a single mistake." You would be surprised how many arguements that stops cold.

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