Suggested Bible Reading For 2013

If you truely want to read the Bible more this year, you have to make it happen. Plan a time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know Him better. He will show you His will for your life and give you power to perform it.

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to The Lord.

So, where do you begin? Here are some suggestions.

• Read five of the Psalms daily (praising God) and one chapter of Proverbs (spiritual wisdom).
• If you want to read through the Bible in a year, read three chapters a day, alternating between the Old and New Testaments.
• Read the New Testament repeatedly.
• If you like excitement, see how God intervenes with the Children of Israel from the Books of Joshua, 1st and 2nd Samuel, and 1st and 2nd Kings.
• Don't allow books about the Bible to replace scripture reading.
• God can minister to you anywhere in His Word. My two favorite books are John and Romans.
• Find what works for you. Read what you can, and you will be blessed.

Jesus Owns it All

Communism says the state owns everything. Capitalism says the individual owns everything. Christianity says God owns everything.

Our possessions really belong to God and we are merely managing them for Him. If we don't manage what God has entrusted to us, they will manage us.

Matthew 6:1 Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

• What I have, God owns
• What I need, God supplies
• What I give, God multiplies
• What I invest, God blesses

Malachi 3:10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now herewith, saith The Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

It Shall Not Come Nigh Thee

Psalm 91: 7  A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Reading this scripture, I thought about Corrie Ten Boom, the bold Dutch Christian who helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during WW II.

After her arrest, while standing in a search line at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, she prayed that the officials wouldn't find the small Bible hidden under her clothes. Oh, how she needed God's Word.

As the guards worked their way down the line, she kept praying. When they came to her, an incident distracted them. Resuming their search, they accidentally skipped her. 

I remember the goose bumps rippling from my neck to my shoulders as I read about this in her book. During her incarceration, Corrie ministered to many prisoners and wrote books with her sister. Later, by a clerical error, God got her out of that stinkin' place.

We have the same God. Whatever peril crosses our path, He will be with us and protect us so we fully understand His love, His power, and His care for us?

I'm thankful. God is good.