Our starting point has to be a position of faith. We have to believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that God continues to speak through the Bible. I could back those statements up with verses (such as 2 Timothy 3:16 and Hebrews 4:12) but of course if you don't believe the Bible you're not going to be convinced by those kind of arguments.
We also read believing that the authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit and the same Holy Spirit will help us to understand and apply what we're reading - so we read prayerfully, asking God to help us.
If you wanted to you could sign up for courses, degree courses, you could write a PhD all on the subject of understanding and applying the Bible - so a few lines here isn't going to do more than just brush the surface. So just a few pointers.
Parts of the New Testament were written about 2000 years ago, and the Old Testament is much older than that. And it is not until relatively recently that we have moved from reading the Bible in community, to reading it as individuals. Obviously this was because people simply did not have a copy of the Bible, or they could not read. But as we struggle to understand and apply the Bible we need to remember that we are not doing this on our own, but we are part of a wider Christian community - maybe a local church, a house group, an on line forum etc. And so we are always able to share with others what we think God may be saying - and those who are further along this road than us will be able to affirm, question or challenge our interpretation and application.
We'll look at how to read in a couple of days time, but if you are looking for a couple of really good books on this subject you could do a lot worse than How to read the Bible for all its worth by Fee and Stuart. They also have another very good book called How to read the Bible book by book.
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