2024 GOAL – Reading Through The Bible Chronologically

Jan1

Day 1.  Won’t you read the Bible with me this year?  I use the ESV (English Standard Version), but you read in the one you love. You can also listen to an audio recording.

Begin with Genesis 1-3.
This tells the story of our magnificent, all-powerful, all knowing, forever existing, triune God creating everything – including all the building blocks that even impact our society today in a matter of six days.  And He did it with just His words. (Jesus is THE Word, He was part of creation. Also see in the beginning verses that the Holy Spirit had a part.)
God created mankind too with his hands and breathed into him the breath of life. Then he took a part of Adam and made a woman. (Adam was very wowed when he first saw her!!)  God placed this pair in the Garden of Delight (what Eden means), to easily take care of it and to eat all the fruit, veggies, and grains that they wanted – just by picking it.
Two special trees were in the garden. The tree of life – which the design of the menorah in later history pictured – and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (NOT evil itself).  And you know “the rest of the story.” Before they hardly got started living there…. before they had any children…. they disobeyed, and now we all bear the imprint of their sin.
I saw a curious fact in their temptation. Compare 1:26-27 with 3:5. How did the serpent twist what Adam and Eve already were?
Oh, LORD, keep me from sinning with my heart, my eyes, and my words today.  You have given me all I need for life and godliness.
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Patronesses Phoebe and Susanna: Two named women in the Bible

May23

I love this post on the Patronesses in the Bible. Who knew this was an actual job, and one that I can be doing today.

elizabethprata's avatar

By Elizabeth Prata

Susanna and Phoebe are both mentioned as women who believed in Jesus and supported his ministry. In Romans 16:2 Phoebe is named as a benefactor, and Susanna was giving out of her means. (Luke 8:2).

A woman is depicted at prayer in an early Christian mosaic seen in the Vatican’s Pio Cristiano Museum. (Wikimedia Commons/Miguel Hermoso Cuesta)

Now I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea;that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you; for she herself has also been a benefactor of many, and of myself as well. (Romans 16:1-2).

And it happened that soon afterward He was going around from one city and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good…

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Let These Go, says Jesus

Mar29

Morning and Evening by Spurgeon

John 18:8  Jesus said unto them, If ye seek me, let these go their way.

Mark, my soul, the care which Jesus manifested even in his hour of trial, towards the sheep of his hand! The ruling passion is strong in death. He resigns himself to the enemy, but he interposes a word of power to set his disciples free. 

As to himself, like a sheep before her shearers he is dumb and opened not his mouth, but for his disciples’ sake he speaks with almighty energy. Herein is love, constant, self-forgetting, faithful love.

 But is there not far more here than is to be found upon the surface? Have we not the very soul and spirit of the atonement in these words? The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and pleads that they must therefore go free. The Surety is bound, and justice demands that those for whom he stands a substitute should go their way. 

In the midst of Egypt’s bondage, that voice rings as a word of power, “Let these go their way.” Out of slavery of sin and Satan the redeemed must come.

 In every cell of the dungeons of Despair, the sound is echoed, “Let these go their way,” and forth come Despondency and Much-afraid. 

Satan hears the well-known voice, and lifts his foot from the neck of the fallen; and Death hears it, and the grave opens her gates to let the dead arise. 

Their way is one of progress, holiness, triumph, glory, and none shall dare to stay them in it. No lion shall be on their way, neither shall any ravenous beast go up thereon.

 “The hind of the morning” has drawn the cruel hunters upon himself, and now the most timid roes and hinds of the field may graze at perfect peace among the lilies of his loves. 

The thunder-cloud has burst over the Cross of Calvary, and the pilgrims of Zion shall never be smitten by the bolts of vengeance. 

Come, my heart, rejoice in the immunity which thy Redeemer has secured thee, and bless his name all the day, and every day.