"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Acts 17:11
I guess everyone looks for a starting point in just about everthing they do - so it doesn't surprise me that I get asked all the time by people who are new to faith what they should do first. I guess there could be a plethora of answers (and probably there are a plethora of answers given to someone new to faith in Jesus), but I think what I suggest almost always is that someone starts by getting to know God in the Bible.
Why this and not something else? Why not start praying first? Why not start worshipping first? Well, I guess those could be options too, but the reason I tell people to get to know God in the Bible is because it helps to know who you are praying to and worshipping. What is God's character like? How does God respond to stuff? What does God say about the world? About me? The Bible speaks to all of these things. So of course, you can read the Bible, pray, and worship to start out, but it is the Bible that informs and clarifies the worship and praying, not the other way around (keep in mind this is not the establishment of priorities, i.e.- that the Bible is more important than worship or prayer. That is not what I am saying at all - I am simply noting that without our understanding of God as revealed in the Bible He gave us, we don't really know the manner and heart in which we are to pray and worship).
Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, the Bible is to be a tool to get to know God - it is God's revelation of Himself to us in words and stories. And it is, outside of Jesus who was/is God in a body, the most specific revelation we have about God and what He is like. That is why I think it is the starting point - it is He that we long to know, love and worship, so we need to understand as much as we can about Who He is.
I'll tell you what else it does too. It keeps us from falling headlong into errors and deceptions. When we are new to faith in Christ, we can easily succumb to anything that has some "God" label on it. Be assured, not everything that has a "God" label is really from God anymore than those "Rolex" watches you can pick up from a dude on Times Square are really Rolex watches. Of course, we can't get to know the contents of the Bible in a short reading. Even in a short year. Shoot, it seems that in our short lifetime we will never fully grasp the depth and breadth of the revelation of God in the Bible. That's ok. God did it that way and He knows why. Besides, you don't really get to know someone after just the briefest of introductions do you? It takes time.........lots of it - so, too, with our time getting to know God through the vehicle of the Bible.
I hope you spend time with God in His Word. It is His Word to you, yes, but it is, maybe more importantly, His Word to us. We need to be getting to know God together so that we know, together, how to show God to the world we live in. I've been at this a little while, and I am still making discoveries of God on a routine basis as I get to know Him. And I am not worried about ever running out of material on God. I've got a whole Bible full of stories, poems, songs, and letters to discover and rediscover as they teach me, as they teach us, about the One we love and worship.
