One of the best summations of both the reason to read and how to apply the Bible is found in Tom Wright’s Simply Christian:

“. . . what Christians believe about Jesus generates a narrative within which one is called to live; that living within that story generates a call to a particular vocation within the world; and the Bible is the book through which God sustains and directs those who seek to obey that vocation as intelligent, thinking, image-bearing human beings. The Bible constantly challenges its readers not to rest content. Giving the church such a gift (the Bible) was a way of pointing out to each generation that we need to grow up, to become more fully human, in our thinking. That is done not least through God’s addressing us in words – words which force us either to retreat into shallow, shoulder-shrugging denial or to think more deeply, to work out what he is up to and what he wants of us. More particularly what he wants to do through us. Scripture is there to enable us to glimpse the task before us and to become the sort of people through whom that task can be attempted and accomplished.”