John MacArthur expounds on how important doctrine is — a personal conviction of mine — and shows how, while we look for practical applications of the Word of God, it follows after getting a right understanding of doctrine in God’s Word, not the other way around.
If I may connect this view to a real-life scenario, it would be akin to learning how to write computer programs — you first have to understand what each function and call in that language does before you can even apply those to actually writing computer programs that work.
What Does It Mean “To Me”?
by John MacArthur.
First published at Pulpit Magazine.
That’s a fashionable concern, judging from the trends in devotional booklets, home Bible study discussions, Sunday-school literature, and most popular preaching.
The question of what Scripture means has taken a back seat to the issue of what it means “to me.”
The difference may seem insignificant at first. Nevertheless, our obsession with the Scripture’s applicability reflects a fundamental weakness. We have adopted practicality as the ultimate judge of the worth of God’s Word. We bury ourselves in passages that overtly relate to daily living, and ignore those that don’t.
My thanks go out to 
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