As human beings, we can withstand great physical and circumstantial difficulties, but when we lose hope even small problems can seem insurmountable. How do we find hope and learn to trust God when we have lost hope and the pressure seems too much to bear?
Also, how should we respond when someone speaks to us in unbiblical ways or threatens us foolishly? What can we learn from Jesus’ responses to Pilate?
And from our Old Testament reading:
Even though God is love, He is also the righteous Judge of the universe. In His mercy, He gives people many opportunities to repent and change, but He does eventually judge evil. Such was the case with Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab died in battle but his wicked wife Jezebel’s death was especially gruesome.
God’s Word has much to say about pride, humility, and wise living. When we heed its counsel, it can help us avoid many of the pitfalls that lead to embarrassment, humiliation, and disaster. But when we don’t, and we become prideful, we often think we can handle things, especially temptation, and don’t need God’s help.
Even within Jesus’ inner circle, prideful, self-confident Peter had told Jesus he would never deny Him. Yet, three denials later, as he heard that rooster crow, he must have experienced the worst grief and humiliation of his life!
In what way might you be thinking or saying, “I would never ________” … you fill in the blank?
In 2 Kings 5, we will read about a little servant girl who had been ripped away from her family and life as she knew it, and forced to work as a slave. But her heart attitude was one of loyalty and concern for the people under whose authority God had placed her. I wonder how you and I would respond to a similar situation. The truth is, most of us have difficult things going on in our lives. How are you responding to your challenges? Are you living based on the hope that is in you or something else? Why is doing so the way to true blessings?
We live in a world where the Bible and religious liberty are under siege. Many people point to the Old Testament, in particular, and say it’s outdated and irrelevant. Others want to discredit the Bible all together as something devised by men. They call those of us who hold to it everything from ignorant to mean-spirited.
Is the Bible and the Old Testament, in particular, still relevant? Does it have something to say to New Testament believers? If so, why are some Old Testament laws still valid and others are not?
Have you wanted to read through the Bible but the idea seems too overwhelming? Do you wish you had someone to help you understand the more difficult sections and someone to cheer you on when you get behind or bogged down? Kind of a bible for dummies plan?
Most of us are familiar with the proverb: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” But we all know kids who were raised in church and, yet, have walked away from God. What went wrong? Did their parents miss something? Did God fail to keep His Word? Do we have a parental guarantee that our children will always walk with God?
Also in today’s post:
As we start the book of Esther, we’ll look at what God was up to, and the un-fairy-tale-like ending for the other young virgins taken as “potential queen for a night.”
And from Romans, we’ll read about God’s warning to us concerning the danger of self-righteously judging others. So, as you can see there’s a lot to talk about in these passages.
Watch and listen to the Bible in a Year on YouTube! Get your FREE downloadable and printable Bible study through the book of Mark when you subscribe to my channel. Let me know here (so I can send the link)....
I will still be here in the coming year blogging through the Bible in a Year. But beginning this January, I’ll also be posting Bible in a Year videos on YouTube. You can view several of them right now including...
Why a fresh start through the Bible? Why “through” the Bible? Why not just read here and there, perhaps finding a subject that interests you? Or how about a short devotional? As long as you read something every day, isn’t that good enough? Today’s reading from the book of Psalms gives us a very good illustration of why it’s so important to read God’s Word in context.
The psalmist in Psalm 1 talks about a man who is like a tree planted on a riverbank where it gets plenty of water and is always fruitful. The psalmist goes on to say that God prospers whatever this man does.
I don’t know about you, but I want my life to be like that. But despite some who teach that God wants to make every believer prosperous, there are requirements for this prosperity. There are things we must do and other things we are to avoid. We also need to understand what the psalmist meant when he wrote about prosperity. If we don’t, we may find ourselves disillusioned, even angry, with God.
But this is just one example of the importance of understanding God’s Word in context, in its entirety. One of the biggest problems I find among believers is a failure to know God, to know His character, to know how He works through our tests and trials. As a result, far too many lead faithless, defeated lives.
But when we read through all of Scripture, we begin to see the big picture. As we go through the book of Genesis, we’ll look at the creation account and what it tells us about our incredible God. It will launch us on a journey through the history of God’s people and some of the most fascinating stories even recorded. As we go through the Prophets, we’ll see the many examples where their prophecies have already come to pass and our faith will grow. We will, also, come to better understand what was really happening in the book of Job, how much the psalmists were like us, and see the wisdom we can gain from Proverbs. In the New Testament, we’ll walk with Jesus and the Apostles, read Paul’s letters with fresh understanding, and marvel at the glories of eternity future.
So, why read “through” the Bible and not just here and there? So we understand the whole counsel of God and so we know the God of the Bible and not God as we think He should be.
Perhaps the question should be, “Why not read through the Bible in 2022?”
2022. A new year stands before us. 2021 and 2020 before that have been challenging to put it mildly.
Viruses. Bombings. Senseless murders. Shut-downs. Financial hardships. Crime. Dirty, partisan politics. Suicide. Sexual immorality. Anger. Road rage. Persecution. The loss of religious freedoms.
The world around us has been and continues to be in upheaval. Everything is changing right before our eyes.
Even within the church world, there are many false gospels.
So, how will we know truth from lies? How can we stand strong in a changing world, when life gets hard, or stays hard?
