Learning your words gives wisdom.
—Psalm 119:130
Someone defined great literature this way: “When you are done reading, you’re a different person.”
J.I. Packer’s Knowing God and A.B. Bruce’s The Training of the Twelve rank high on books that have had that effect on me. I came away from their pages a different person.
But there’s nothing that comes close to the Bible in terms of making you a different person. Its depths can’t be plumbed in a lifetime. Bible students repeatedly sit in stunned silence when pondering a passage they’ve read a hundred times, and are suddenly struck with a fresh insight they’ve never seen before.
The writer of Psalm 119 found God’s Word to be great literature because he came away from it a different person: “Your instructions give me pleasure; they are my advisers” (v. 24).
Time spent in God’s Word is life-changing.