After we have faith, is there any point reading the Bible?

If the Bible is sufficient to generate faith, then after we have faith, is there any point reading the Bible? Yes there is: a really crucial reason for reading the Bible (besides it being the Word of God and crucial for that reason alone) is that we actually get to know God better. We can see more and more consistencies in His attitudes toward things.

After my experiment of reading through the Bible with no pre-conceived notions, I used to think that the main thing about the Bible was that it was sufficient to generate faith. This is of course the important thing, but as I read it over more times, I realized I was also getting to know God more and more. In my first reading, I would sometimes be puzzled as to why God acted a certain way to certain happenings. In the second reading, many of those started to make sense. This was because I was getting to know God more.

If I had not been reading the Bible, chunks of it might seem incomprehensible or confusing. There will always be parts that seem harder than other parts. But I find that the more I read the Bible, the less confusing it is. It becomes a lot clearer. A lot of that is due not to intellectual growth per se, or from becoming more knowledgeable about the events that happened in the Bible. It's due to knowing God more and more.  It became easier to get a feel for the things He liked and didn't like through the Bible.

If I hadn't read and re-read the Bible, I would probably guess quite wrongly about what He did and didn't like. I still don't know Him all that well, but I do know Him better than I did the first time I read the Bible. And I'm hoping by the time I finish the current round of Bible reading that I'll know Him better than I do now.

Besides helping me grow spiritually, it helps me in everyday life when I know Him more and more. This is because I'm able to make better decisions. By knowing Him better, I feel like I now have a better feel for what decision I should make, if I'm faced with a decision. I don't mean just things like sticking to the ten commandments, or things where I already "know" what I'm supposed to do. I'm talking about difficult dilemmas and situations that don't have an immediately obvious answer. In those situations, I find that I have better discernment about what to do through knowing God better. It's easier to come to a good decision without mental anguish. My decisions are not perfect and I still struggle at times. But I can see looking back that I'm better equipped now at handling difficult decisions (than I was before) because of knowing Him better than before, and predicting better what He would want me to do in any particular situation. I don't have anywhere near as much stress about decisions and agonizing over things as I used to do before I read the Bible regularly.

So yes, after we have faith, it's still crucial to read the Bible. This is because in doing so, we get to know God better. In turn, we grow spiritually and are better able to make good decisions in life.

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