The Bible: God’s Powerful Word

Read and copy 2 Timothy 3:15–17 📖 . What do these ­verses tell you about the Bible and what it can do?

We must be careful not to use the Bible to prove our ideas. Our ideas are not always the same as God’s ideas. God is not a puppet that we control. We must not expect Him to do whatever we want. God’s ways and thoughts are holy and beyond our understanding ( Isaiah 55:9 📖 ). So, we should not try to control God’s words to us. We also must not pick and choose to study the parts of the Bible that we like the best or already know. So, don’t just read the verses that are easy to understand and pay no attention to the more difficult verses. If we want God to talk with us in the Bible, we must study the whole Bible carefully. We must trust that God will show us what we need when we need it most.

Also, Jesus Himself says, “ ‘You should love the Lord your God completely: Love him with all your mind. Love him with all that you are. Love him in all that you think’ ” ( Matthew 22:37 📖 , EASY). God wants us to educate our minds with Bible truth. We can read many Bible stories about God’s conversations with people. We can read what God said to Enoch, Abraham, and Job. We can read what Jesus said to people, too. These conversations show that God pays attention to our questions. He cares about what we think. He invites us to compare every idea and teaching with Bible truth to understand how He plans to save us.

Our ideas and thoughts are not perfect. We can make mistakes. We can try to work things out on our own without God. When we do that, we are in danger. We are making self and our own thinking more important than God. People also must be careful to study the Bible with the right spirit. We must be careful not to think we know everything or that we have nothing new to learn. When we feel important and that we don’t need any help, we depend on our own lim­ited knowledge. We forget about our relationship with God. Then we trust in our own thinking.