“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion” – Proverbs 11:22
You put a ring an a pig’s honker to keep him from rooting up the ground. Any old metal ring will do and that’s why there’s no point in spending $500 when you could spend $1. The wise godly sage is not saying that nose rings in hogs are bad and he’s not saying that it is bad for a woman to be beautiful. He’s saying that it’s a shame to see beauty wasted on a foolish woman like gold is wasted on a hog’s ring.
The beauty industry exalts the outward appearance while mostly ignoring the inner character. This is unfortunate because it communicates the wrong thing: that the true value of a woman is in her outward beauty. But the answer is not to be as homely and disheveled as you can, rather, a woman is to concern herself first with the cosmetic of her character.
The power and influence of a beautiful woman can get a job, get someone fired, get a loan, get a man, get a discount, get out of a speeding ticket, get put to the front of the line, get a promotion, get a larger dip of ice-cream, get a parking spot, get a better grade – basically, get just about anything she wants if she’s beautiful enough. It’s just the way things work. “Lyin’ Eyes” was a song written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey of the Eagles and recorded in 1975. One of the lines goes, “City girls just seem to find out early. How to open doors with just a smile.” So true. But let’s not come down too hard on beauty and its power – this is not inherently evil. By its very nature, Beauty is supposed to affect and attract and bring a smile.
Have you ever been to Chicago on a summer day and hear some great outdoor, live, impromptu saxophone coming from somewhere? You follow the sound – you want to get closer, you want to hear better and see the action. Or smell some awesome BBQ? You follow your nose. You want to see and taste. Or your favorite artist – you buy the ticket to the show and you want to afford a seat as close as possible. We were made to seek after and enjoy Beauty. God made Beauty. He made women beautiful. Some, he made drop-dead gorgeous. Like Esther.
In the bible, Queen Esther “had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at” (Esther 2:7), which is why the King selected her. But Esther also had discretion. She did not allow her beauty to misguide her judgment of men, money, prestige, and power. Her beauty was not a waste because her discretion of life was guided by her love for the Lord, to the degree that she did not value her own life over courageous truth-telling and godly living. She approached the King uninvited to inform him of treachery in the kingdom (you could lose your life to approach uninvited). Her own family pleaded with her to not intrude and impose upon the King, but she said, “if I perish, I perish” (4:16). She did not perish. The King listened and admired her beautiful character. She saved her family and the Jewish people.
Here is godly wisdom. If you are a beautiful young girl/woman, do not waste your beauty by being foolish with your beauty. Just because you can open many doors with just a smile doesn’t mean you should. Not every door is for your good and not everyone who opens the door for you has your best interest in mind. Your beauty is a gift by God, to be used to show off a beautiful God. But you can’t do that if you’re acting like a fool in life. No one will see the one who made you. Your “in-discretionary” lifestyle is a distraction not only from the one who made you, but you too. Wisdom says, “Be Beautiful and Wise,” then your beauty will not be a shameful waste.
So how’s those New Year Resolutions coming along?
Me? I plead with Paul:
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want (like start exercising), but I do the very thing I hate (eat more donuts) . . . For I do not do the good I want (like pray more), but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing (like watching too much tv) . . . wrecthed man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (that is prone to such weakness)? Romans 7:15b-19
Therefore, I take great comfort in what Tullian Tchividjian posted regarding an illustration of what it means to never stop trying to do better. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) journals his fight against sloth and to get up early in the morning to pray:
1738: He wrote, “Oh Lord, enable me to redeem the time which I have spent in sloth.”
1757: (19 years later) “Oh mighty God, enable me to shake off sloth and redeem the time misspent in idleness and sin by diligent application of the days yet remaining.”
1759: (2 years later) “Enable me to shake off idleness and sloth.”
1761: “I have resolved until I have resolved that I am afraid to resolve again.”
1764: “My indolence since my last reception of the sacrament has sunk into grossest sluggishness. My purpose is from this time to avoid idleness and to rise early.”
1764: (5 months later) He resolves to rise early, “not later than 6 if I can.”
1765: “I purpose to rise at 8 because, though, I shall not rise early it will be much earlier than I now rise for I often lie until 2.”
1769: “I am not yet in a state to form any resolutions. I purpose and hope to rise early in the morning, by 8, and by degrees, at 6.”
1775: “When I look back upon resolution of improvement and amendments which have, year after year, been made and broken, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.” He resolves again to rise at 8.
1781: (3 years before his death) “I will not despair, help me, help me, oh my God.” He resolves to rise at 8 or sooner to avoid idleness.
So Don’t give up. Tomorrow is January 9!
Kevin DeYoung is a pastor and author of whom I appreciate on various levels. Here is one of his most recent posts to his own church family. I too plead the same sentiment. He calls it, “The Scandal of the Semi-Churched.” After I read this it seemed as if I could hear our Shepherd say, “Dear Church, Meet with me.”
“This is one of those posts I’ve wanted to write for awhile, but I wasn’t sure how to say what I think needs to be said. The danger of legalism and false guilt is very real. But so is the danger of disobedience and self-deception.
I want to talk about church members who attend their home church with great irregularity. These aren’t unchurched folks, or de-churched, or under-churched. They are semi-churched. They show up some of the time, but not every week. They are on again/off again, in and out, here on Sunday and gone for two. That’s the scandal of the semi-churched. In fact, Thom Rainer argues that the number one reason for the decline in church attendance is that church members don’t go to church as often as they used to.
We’ve had Christmas and Easter Christians for probably as long as we’ve had Christmas and Easter. Some people will always be intermittent with their church attendance. I’m not talking about nominal Christians who wander into church once or twice a year. I’m talking about people who went through the trouble of joining a church, like their church, have no particular beef with the church, and still only darken its doors once or twice a month. If there are churches with membership rolls much larger than their average Sunday attendance, they have either under-shepherds derelict in their duties, members faithless in theirs, or both.
I know we are the church and don’t go to church (blah, blah, blah), but being persnickety about our language doesn’t change the exhortation of Hebrews 10:25. We should not neglect to meet together, as some are in the habit of doing. Gathering every Lord’s Day with our church family is one of the pillars of mature Christianity.
So ask yourself a few questions.
1. Have you established church going as an inviolable habit in your family?You know how you wake up in the morning and think “maybe I’ll go on a run today” or “maybe I’ll make french toast this morning”? That’s not what church attendance should be like. It shouldn’t be an “if the mood feels right” proposition. I will always be thankful that my parents treated church attendance (morning and evening) as an immovable pattern. It wasn’t up for discussion. It wasn’t based on extenuating circumstances. It was never a maybe. We went to church. That’s what we did. That made the decision every Sunday a simple one, because their was no real decision. Except for desperate illness, we were going to show up. Giving your family the same kind of habit is a gift they won’t appreciate now, but will usually thank you for later.
2. Do you plan ahead on Saturday so you can make church a priority on Sunday? We are all busy people, so it can be hard to get to church, especially with a house full of kids. We will never make the most of our Sundays unless we prepare for them on Saturday. That likely means finishing homework, getting to bed on time, and foregoing some football. If church is an afterthought, you won’t think of it until after it’s too late.
3. Do you order your travel plans so as to minimize being gone from your church on Sunday? I don’t want to be legalistic with this question. I’ve traveled on Sunday before (though I try to avoid it). I take vacation and study leave and miss 8 or 9 Sundays at URC per year. I understand we live in a mobile culture. I understand people want to visit their kids and grandkids on the weekend (and boy am I thankful when ours come and visit). Gone are the days when people would be in town 50-52 weeks a year. Travel is too easy. Our families are too dispersed. But listen, this doesn’t mean we can’t make a real effort to be around on Sunday. You might want to take Friday off to go visit the kids so you can be back on Saturday night. You might want to think twice about investing in a second home that will draw you away from your church a dozen weekends every year. You might want to re-evaluate your assumption that Friday evening through Sunday evening are yours to do whatever you want wherever you want. It’s almost impossible to grow in love for your church and minister effectively in your church if you are regularly not there.
4. Are you willing to make sacrifices to gather with God’s people for worship every Sunday? “But you don’t expect me to cancel my plans for Saturday night, do you? I can’t possibly rearrange my work schedule. This job requires me to work every Sunday–I’d have to get a new job if I wanted to be regular at church. Sundays are my day to rewind. I won’t get all the yard work done if I go to church every week. My kids won’t be able to play soccer if we don’t go to Sunday games. If my homework is going to be done by Sunday, I won’t be able to chill out Friday night and all day Saturday. Surely God wouldn’t want me to sacrifice too much just so I can show up at church!” Not exactly the way of the cross, is it?
5. Have you considered that you may not be a Christian? Who knows how many people God saves “as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). Does going to church every week make you a Christian? Absolutely not. Does missing church 35 Sundays a year make you a non-Christian? It does beg the question. God’s people love to be with God’s people. They love to sing praises. They love to feast at the Table. They love to be fed from the Scriptures. Infrequent church attendance–I mean not going anywhere at all–is a sign of immaturity at best and unbelief at worst. For whenever God calls people out of darkness he calls them into the church. If the Sunday worship service is the community of the redeemed, what does your weekly pattern suggest to God about where you truly belong?
This is one of the questions that is posed by God to Job (38:22-23). Like the other questions, it is not given to send us to the lab and discover scientific data about snow. It is given to build trust in our hearts for God. Job did not understand the ways of God and thought that God was mishandling his life. When you suffer, you question – it’s natural to wonder what God is up to when you are hurting. You want to trust but it’s difficult when pain and loneliness is all you know.
Here is the full question:
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow . . . which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war?”
God asks, “Job, are you capable of discerning all the ways that snow makes life hard . . . all the ways that snow has a threat upon the life of a man? Can you tell me how deep snow gets at the poles of the earth? Can you tell me how snow can break down a forest? Can you describe the solitude and suspension that snow can force upon an army, a city? How much snow can you gather up in your hand to cause an avalanche? Are you able to do as you please in a snowstorm? Do you not feel vulnerable and humbled by such majesty?”
God continues his strange comfort to suffering Job and to you (40:2ff),
“Dear Job, if you cannot fathom the mystery of snow then how can you possibly sit in judgment against me – The SnowMaker? I am just and good in all my ways. You are not suffering for no reason. You are not suffering because of your sin. You are not suffering because I am bored, or angry, or capricious. You are suffering because I am preparing something that only stress and hardship can produce – and you will see that it will be worth it. I have your future joy in mind as I am sending my very one and only to suffer in your place, so that your peace is forever secured. Job, trust me. Believe that the purpose of your suffering is complex, too wonderful for you (42:3), yet, strangely revealing my love for you. Believe that if I can send an avalanche of suffering upon my innocent Son to raise up unspeakable joy, then I know what I am doing with your life. Consider the snow . . . and trust me to use suffering in your life to produce eternal, astonishing fascination in your heart for my Son.”
Let’s Pray:
Heavenly Father, give peace and comfort to our hearts as we look to Jesus Christ who suffered on Calvary’s hill, who bled and died and was raised that we may come to know the God whose power and beauty is seen in snow. Instill a deep sense of awe and wonder as we quietly, silently, sit and wait for our final release from sin and death. As gently as you cover the earth with snow, spread your arms today over the hurting and the lonely, and make known the riches of Christ in many hearts. O gracious Father, make hearts as white as snow as you bestow the gift of repentance – cleansing them from sins. And keep us in perfect rest as we receive our daily supply of grace and mercies from your righteous and steady hand.
In Jesus’ name we gratefully pray, Amen.
Unlike the cartoon, Jesus never needs to change. But like the cartoon, too often that is me. But to say that Jesus never changes can be both comforting and disconcerting. Comforting because you need Jesus to remain faithful to his promises; disconcerting because you feel that he let you down and you want him to step it up and do a little better this year. However you feel about Jesus’s character, scripture teaches that he is trustworthy, and that he does not improve as time goes by. Notice the context of that famous verse:
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them” (Hebrews 13:7-9).
What surrounds the affirmation of Jesus’s consistency is faithful teaching of God’s Word by pastors who shepherd the flock with a faith that is worth imitating, and the heart’s wayward leaning into various teachings, appetites of the flesh, that draw you away from Christ. Jesus cannot be re-packaged into a new mold to accommodate your new desires. If you are resolved this year to become a wealthier person, and you think that Jesus died to make you wealthier just because a Sunday morning preacher on TV said so, think again. The book of Hebrews shows Christians getting poorer and poorer by the minute for following Christ and they are commended for their faith and encouraged to keep it up because it’s going to get worse, not better (10:32-39, chapter 11, and 13:3).
But if you are resolved this year to trust Christ even more than you did last year, because you found him faithful and true to his promises to never leave you nor forsake you (13:5-6), then you will not be wasting your time and effort. Go for it! – “It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace . . . and not by _____________.”
Three Things:
1. What would you put on that empty line that too often was your source of strength last year? Foods. Sports. More Money. Revenge/Justice. A Healthy Body. Marriage. Pregnancy. What was it that was more of a refuge for your heart than Jesus? For some of the Hebrews, they were mixing Jesus into their dietary rules and rituals to feel good about their walk with the Lord and their lives, abstaining from one kind of food and indulging in another. But “comfort food” does not comfort/benefit the heart. It only makes you gain more weight and then leaves you feeling guilty for indulging, or prideful for abstaining. This year, press forward to make Jesus more and more your place of strength and not food.
2. Surround yourself with a pastor(s), and other believers, whose lives have a consistency in God’s Word. Watch them, listen to them . . . then imitate their walk of faith as much as it applies to your life. And keep in mind, someone is watching you too.
3. Jesus promises that if you take comfort in the fact that he will be the same for you this coming year, you will not be disappointed. The sermon to the Hebrews is about a pilgrimage to “the city whose builder and maker is God.” It is about a life of faith that perseveres to the end, strengthened in the heart by a High Priest, Jesus, that will preserve the heart’s loyalty to Christ until the day comes that you are “made perfect” in the presence of Christ (11:40). Jesus is as reliable as the day is long. And some days in 2014 are going to be very long. Jesus will stay with you at your side every second of the way. Don’t quit. Look to Jesus – the founder and perfecter of your faith. You’re almost there. You’re almost home. Compared to eternity, this whole year is just a few more strides around the bend and you’ll cross the finish line, having given your all. By grace, you can do this!
What a crazy and frustrating transition it has been to leave our health insurance providers against our will and to assimilate ourselves into Obamacare. But health insurance is not our god: God is our God, and Jesus Christ is still our Lord. But I do want to share with you what we learned along the way and encourage your heart and mind for next year on a few subjects with the next several posts, beginning with one of the most concerned issues in our country at this time: health insurance.
First, our experience.
Cheryl and I have had separate polices. Being self-employed as a pastor means I shop for a policy on my own with no benefit of a group policy. Cheryl has been on Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (ICHIP) with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois because she is uninsurable due to multiple pre-existing conditions that will never go away. ICHIP has served us well. I have been with several providers over the years as my Insurance Broker shifts me around every-so-often to get a better rate. But, with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, ICHIP’s premium’s are being doubled and then scheduled to terminate in 2014. And because I have no group policy from which to share the load, my premiums are going to double as well, to pay for things that I don’t need, things that are morally objectionable, and to help pay for others to have insurance that are not on my policy. So we have no better option than to make the move.
What we learned:
1. You need to get a Licensed Health Insurance Broker in your state. Their knowledge is very critical to a successful transition. I’m thankful that I have had an exceptional broker for many years now.
2. Your Insurance Broker has a National Producer Number (NPN), a number by which the “MarketPlace” will respond to much quicker than if you simply walk up to the MarketPlace door, and knock on it on your own.
3. Do not use the website. It’s junk. You must get a pillow, a pot of coffee, a good book, and sit on the phone with a rep from the MarketPlace. Be prepared for multiple, “I’m sorry . . . my computer just crashed. It will take about 10 minutes or so to reboot and then we can resume your application . . . again, we’re sorry for the delay.” This can take up to 3 hours, depending on what time of the day you call. For me, their computer crashed 6 times in just over two hours. This is why their website is a nightmare; not even their own reps can avoid the freeze-ups.
4. Do not hang up and come back later to finish. If you do, they will most likely lose your application even if they give you an ID#. Persevere until you have a finished application and they have registered it with your Insurance Broker’s NPN. I sat on the phone for over two hours and was almost finished but needed to leave and come back. My Insurance Broker told me to get ready to hear, “We’re sorry Mr. Truman, but there is no application in our system. We’re sorry, but we will have to start from the beginning.” He was right. They lost my two and half-hour application. In the state of Illinois, according to my insurance broker, the MarketPlace, so far, has lost over 11,000 applications that were actually completed.
5. You will be eligible for a discount if your annual taxable income is below $62,400, and pro-rated for more discount the less income level you go.
6. Obamacare is NOT an Insurance Company/Provider. The government does not have an insurance policy! Think of it this way: Obamacare sticks it’s hand up the back of every Insurance Provider and make them provide to whomever, for whatever, at wherever facility, at whatever rates – deductibles – annual out-of-pocket limits, ect., or else be fined. If you like your present Insurance Provider or doctor, you may not be able to keep it, him or her. That’s the truth and it always was the truth.
7. Get LifeLock Identity Theft Protection. My insurance broker told me that the MarketPlace is a hacker’s paradise because it has almost no security fire-walls built into the system. Your SS# and auto-debit routing and account numbers to pay your premiums are exposed. It is a must that you get the minimum LifeLock protection. If you pay an annual premium at once, you can get it for $99, or even less with New Year’s offer promo code.
8. We successfully made the transition to Blue Cross Blue Shield/Obamacare. For us, the premium is lower than our previously combined premiums, but our annual out-of-pocket will be more. This is because Obamacare now sets the standard on what these Private Insurance Companies can charge and what they can’t. In all seriousness, no Private Insurance Company would take Cheryl on for such a low premium – she’s serious high risk. Here’s the point: no company can survive by taking on too many high-risk, high liability clients without raising the premium, or by not paying the doctor or hospital, or by discontinuing certain expensive procedures. So we’ll see what happens as next year rolls on. For now, it seems that Cheryl can continue to see her specialists at Loyola Research Hospital in Chicago for her kidney disease and autoimmune disorder. We thank the Lord for this.
That’s some of our experience. But thankfully, it is not our foundation for hope. Christ alone will continue to be our refuge.
All of this made me think of Ecclesiastes again, the portion of God’s Word that forces me to look above the sun and put my hope in the one who reigns over all the mess. There is a built-in meaningless and vanity to life because of our sin, which drives us to seek the only true meaning in God. I dare not stake my joy and security in any Health Insurance provider, because,
“What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? . . . In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (Ecc. 2:22, 7:14).
In other words, work hard, be wise, but do not deceive yourself into believing that if you do all the right things, and if you can get everyone around you to do all the right things, that you can keep hard times away from your doorstep. It’s foolish to think that you can out-manage people and problems. Your only hope is in Him who sent his Son Jesus, to do what no Health Insurance Provider can do: conquer death.
Ray Ortlund, Jr. reminds me this morning of a great hero of the faith, Charles Spurgeon:
“‘Immanuel, God with us.’ It is hell’s terror. Satan trembles at the sound of it. . . . Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word, ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused. . . . ‘God with us’ is the laborer’s strength. How could he preach the gospel, how could he bend his knees in prayer, how could the missionary go into foreign lands, how could the martyr stand at the stake, how could the confessor own his Master, how could men labor if that one word were taken away? . . . ‘God with us’ is eternity’s sonnet, heaven’s hallelujah, the shout of the glorified, the song of the redeemed, the chorus of the angels, the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky. . . .
Feast, Christians, feast; you have a right to feast. . . . But in your feasting, think of the Man in Bethlehem. Let him have a place in your hearts, give him the glory, think of the virgin who conceived him, but think most of all of the Man born, the Child given.
I finish by again saying, A happy Christmas to you all!”
C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:430.
Do you want to read the whole Bible?
The average person reads 200 to 250 words per minute; there are about 775,000 words in the Bible; therefore it takes less than 10 minutes a day to read the whole Bible in a year.
(For those who like details, there’s a webpage devoted to how long it takes to read each book of the Bible. And if you want a simple handout that has every Bible book with a place to put a check next to every chapter, gohere.)
Audio Bibles are usually about 75 hours long, so you can listen to it in just over 12 minutes a day.
But the point is not merely to read the whole thing to say you’ve done it or to check it off a list. The Bible itself never commands that we read the Bible through in a year. What is commends is knowing the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) and meditating or storing or ruminating upon God’s self-disclosure to us in written form (Deut. 6:7; 32:46; Ps. 119:11, 15, 23, 93, 99; 143:5).
As Joel Beeke writes:
As oil lubricates an engine, so meditation facilitates the diligent use of means of grace (reading of Scripture, hearing sermons, prayer, and all other ordinances of Christ), deepens the marks of grace (repentance, faith, humility), and strengthens one’s relationships to others (love to God, to fellow Christians, to one’s neighbors at large).
Thomas Watson put it like this: “A Christian without meditation is like a solider without arms, or a workman without tools. Without meditation the truths of God will not stay with us; the heart is hard, and the memory is slippery, and without meditation all is lost.”
So reading the Bible cover to cover is a great way to facilitate meditation upon the whole counsel of God.
But a simple resolution to do this is often an insufficient. Most of us need a more proactive plan.
One option is to get a Bible that has a plan as part of its design. For example, Crossway offers the ESV Daily Reading Bible (based on the popular M’Cheyne reading plan—read through the OT once and the NT and Psalms twice) or the One-Year Bible in the ESV (whole Bible once in 364 readings). [For multiple bindings of the ESV Daily Reading Bible, go here.]
Stephen Witmer explains the weaknesses of typical plans and offers some advice on reading the Bible together with others—as well as offering his own new two-year plan. (“In my opinion, it is better to read the whole Bible through carefully one time in two years than hastily in one year.”) His plan has you read through one book of the Bible at a time (along with a daily reading from the Psalms or Proverbs). At the end of two years you will have read through the Psalms and Proverbs four times and the rest of the Bible once.
The Gospel Coalition’s For the Love of God Blog (which you can subscribe to via email, but is now also available as a free app) takes you through the M’Cheyne reading plan, with a meditation each day by D. A. Carson related to one of the readings. M’Cheyne’s plan has you read shorter selections from four different places in the Bible each day.
Jason DeRouchie, the editor of the new and highly recommended What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About: A Survey of Jesus’ Bible, offers his KINGDOM Bible Reading Plan, which has the following distinctives:
Trent Hunter’s “The Bible-Eater Plan” is an innovative new approach that has you reading whole chapters, along with quarterly attention to specific books. The plan especially highlights OT chapters that are crucial to the storyline of Scripture and redemptive fulfillment in Christ.
For those who would benefit from a realistic “discipline + grace” approach, consider “The Bible Reading Plan for Shirkers and Slackers.” It takes away the pressure (and guilt) of “keeping up” with the entire Bible in one year. You get variety within the week by alternating genres by day, but also continuity by sticking with one genre each day. Here’s the basic idea:
Sundays: Poetry
Mondays: Penteteuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy)
Tuesdays: Old Testament history
Wednesdays: Old Testament history
Thursdays: Old Testament prophets
Fridays: New Testament history
Saturdays: New Testament epistles (letters)
There are a number of Reading Plans for ESV Editions. Crossway has made them accessible in multiple formats:
| Reading Plan | Format | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chronological Through the Bible chronologically (from Back to the Bible) |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Daily Light on the Daily Path Daily Light on the Daily Path – the ESV version of Samuel Bagster’s classic |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Daily Office Lectionary Daily Psalms, Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospels |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Daily Reading Bible Daily Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| ESV Study Bible Daily Psalms or Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch or the History of Israel; Chronicles or Prophets; and Gospels or Epistles |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Every Day in the Word Daily Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Literary Study Bible Daily Psalms or Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch or the History of Israel; Chronicles or Prophets; and Gospels or Epistles |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| M’Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan Daily Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms or Gospels |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Outreach Daily Old Testament, Psalms, and New Testament |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Outreach New Testament Daily New Testament. Read through the New Testament in 6 months |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
| Through the Bible in a Year Daily Old Testament and New Testament |
RSS | iCal | Mobile | |||
You can also access each of these Reading Plans as podcasts:
We’re very thankful for our Lord who came to rescue us from what we broke: a relationship with the one who made us for our enjoyment of him and his own glory. To be restored to a right relationship with God the Father through the reconciliation of his Son (Romans 5:9ff) is the gift of God. Our hope and prayer and resolve is to stay married to one another until we die. We made that vow to one another over 29 years ago. By God’s grace, “Lord give us many more Christmases together – magnifying what Christ did for his bride, his church, for us.”
God bless you with his tender mercies!
Ivan and Cheryl
the sound board 