Neither life nor busyness nor a “massive music festival” shall cause me to miss the best meal of everyday: The Word of God!
Your words came and I ate them.
Summer Bible Reading PLAN: read through the New Testament and the Psalms over the 14 weeks of summer. Ideally, about 4 chapters or 20 unhurried minutes a day. Meditate on them, internalize them, live them and be renewed and restored by them.
Ahem….right.
Reality and true confessions: I have “skipped” a few days and then can’t catch up on my-self-imposed “catch-up days,” AND I have zoomed through chapters, realizing later, I have no idea what they even said. So then, how could I possibly meditate on them??? Couldn’t. So, I must re-read…Am I supposed to confess this publicly? Well, I did.
Pray for me, friends and fellow-sojourners. And catch me when I slack.
I wish to be diamond-dripping RICH with the indwelling word by summer’s end. You, too, I hope!
As Kent Henry sings (and we sing along!)
Lord, I live by Your Word
Lord, I live by every word from Your mouth
And I’m like a tree by a stream
I’m bearing fruit, my leaf is green
All that I do is prospering
O, Lord, I live by Your Word.
2 Timothy 3.16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
For fun and for LIFE, here is where I will be this summer. Want to join me?
Reading the New Testament and Psalms through this summer.
This is reading 410 chapters of Bible over the course of June, July, August and wrapping up the week of Labor Day. It averages to slightly more than 4 chapters a day, or more specifically, 2-3 chapters of NT daily, plus almost 2 of the Psalms each day of the week. That is just averaging.
I know summer seems a weird time to pick up a “plan,”to start somthing that you are committing to when we usually see this time as our “lazy days,” (although who has time to be lazy ever these tdays??). But don’t you also hate getting to the end of a “season” and find that it was wasted, that you didn’t get everything from it you could have?
The busier I am, the more I need the life-giving Word of the Living God to be in me, to actually live in me…
Colossians 3.16 Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.
Russian sage.
Ideas on fitting it in
Get up an hour earlier. This is my plan. The cool of the morning is a lovely time for the Word.
Skip the summer reruns on TV and take that last hour before sunset to sit outside and read and refresh.
Raed the NT through the week and drink up the Psalms on the weekends.
Read aloud. You are supposed to read to your kids anyway. How about reading the scriptures aloud to them? Faith come by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, don’t be surprised when you actually start to be increased in faith by your own reading. Preach it!
Listen to the audio Bible on the way to work, or during a walk. www.biblegateway.com has it for free. www.youversion.com, too. The Bible is readily available free of charge!
Schedule it in like everything else we do for the summer: play dates, ball games, vacation days, picnics, small group.
Then?
Meditate on it throughout the day. At the end of each week (or on Sunday), write yourself a few quick notes of what God’s Word did in your heart the past week.
Jeremiah 15.16 When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, LORD God Almighty.
The plan.
WEEK OF
June 5 Matthew 1-14; Psalms 1 – 11
June 12 Matthew 15 – 28; Psalms 11 – 22
June 19 Romans; Psalms 23 – 34
June 26 1 & 2 Corinthians; Psalms 35 – 46
July 3 Mark; Psalms 47 – 58
July 10 Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians; Psalms 59 – 70
July 17 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon; Psalms 71 – 82
Hebrews 4.12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
It is about 20 minutes a day, I’d say, reading at a leisurely pace (I just meandered through Matthew 1-5 and Psalm 1-5 in about 30 minutes). Just think what a great meal we’ll have enjoyed in the next 90 days!
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Want to join me? Want to? Come on. You know you do!
Go to www.soaking.net and click on the (instrumental) music-only pop-up player. Cut the volume back by about half.
Open a new tab in www.biblegateway.com, scrolling down to “Listen to the Bible.” Click on that and then select Psalm 119 using the drop-down boxes.
You’ll hear Max McClean’s gentle and generally un-annoying voice reading the Word about the Word (the laws, the statutes and decrees, the commands and precepts, His Word, His way) to an amazingly beautiful soundtrack of worship. The music goes on and on. I re-play Max reading Psalm 119 three times. That equals about an hour of the water of the Word washing over you like a fresh brook flowing.
The first time, I listened and just let the Word do some mending, re-adjusting and healing. The second time, I prayed it to the Lord for all I was worth, just repeating in my own words what the narrator was saying as he read. The third time through, I grabbed pen and paper and wrote the words and phrases that stuck out to me, were illuminated, things like: You are good and what You do is good…Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I may lodge… and …Your promise preserves my life…
This was how I spent my “Tent time” this morning (www.thetentdenver.com), joining other worshipers aound the metro-area in “creating a canopy of continuous praise.”
FromKnocking at God’s Door – A Little Book of Prayers by Oswald Chambers, the January 13 prayer is:
O Lord, how excellent it is to commune with Thee in the early morning hours. Enable me by patience to reproduce these exalted moments of calm into the activities of the day.
That Oswald could pray. I say AMEN to that!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I was made to worship Him. I was born for this – lingering, praising, bringing Him honor. Seven times a day….
I am called in Christ (Romans 1.6).
I was redeemed in Christ (Romans 3.24).
I reign in life by Christ (Romans 5.17).
I have eternal life through Christ (Romans 6.23).
I am a joint heir with Christ (Romans 8.17).
I have victory through Christ (1 Corinthians 15.57).
I am a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5.17).
I have liberty in Christ (Galatians 2.4).
I am crucified with Christ ( Galatians 2.20).
I have put on Christ (Galatians 3.27).
I have been blessed with spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1.3).
I have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that I should be holy and without blame before Him (Ephesians 1.4).
I have been created in Christ for good works (Ephesians 2.6).
I rejoice in Christ (Philippians 3.3).
I press toward the mark of the high calling of God on my life in Christ (Philippians3.14).
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength (Philippians 4.13).
God supplies all my needs through Christ (Philippians 4.19).
I am complete in Christ (Colossians 2.10).
I am dead with Christ (Colossians 2.20).
I am risen with Christ (Colossians 3.1).
My life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3.3).
Christ is my life (Colossians 3.4).
I have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2.16).
I have the attitude of Christ, choosing humility (Philippians 2.5-7).
I am preserved in Christ (Jude 1.1).*
Jesus: Who do you say that I am?
Peter: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God…
Jesus: Who do YOU say that I am?
In Christ Alone…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: That I may know Him…Know Him, press in to knowing Him…song: “becoming like Him in His death, so that in me there’s resurrection life…”
*adapted from the book by John Eckhardt, Prayers that Rout Demons
Just got back from 3 days in the mountains (beautiful!!!) where we kicked off Leaving a Legacy (an arm of Get the Word Out! Intensives).
The teaching team was Mary Jean Powers (my co-mother-in-law-co-Nonnas-we-share-Hunter), Joy McGinnis of Seattle, our daughter Tredessa, Dave & Tara, our daughter and son-in-law and Dave and I.
It was wonderful and difficult. I exposed myself and got honest. Dave and I both told on ourselves, about the places we have failed in raising children who have come to know and seek after God for themselves.
I told them that:
It is never too late to become the family you might have been. Don’t give up. Get the Word into your home and family and serve God fearfully with all your might.
I am still learning to parent in this new season. I still have to apologize for things as the Holy Spirit reminds me – from both years ago and a few days ago.
Raising kids who’ll love the Lord? It’s gonna take at least Forty-Thousand Days of Purpose! Sorry, Rick Warren.
And-we have all have dirt under our fingernails. We’re sowing something into our children’s lives. We may as well be sowing the incorruptible seed of the Word of God to get the spiritual harvest that God’s Word promises in Gal. 6. Is your family at a crossroads or troubling time? Stand on the promises: read ’em, speak ’em, believe ’em, bury them deep in the soil of your heart in faith. Then? Eat the fruit! The harvest WILL come!
Dave taught on journaling as a way to leave your written legacy and not only taught about the blessing (learning to verbally speak blessing over your children), but prayed a bessing over the fathers and fatherless young men who were there.
I wondered aloud, at one point, if there was anyone who could possibly have messed up parenting more than I had.? Even though Mary Jean and Joy claimed they could have (and maybe we all had that potential), I am so grateful to be living to see the faithful hand of God in our lives, as a family. We’re still living it and tripping along the way sometimes, but I am so glad for the opportunity to encourage other families that God is faithful. He promises – and He will keep those promises! I was honored to get to pass that message along!
Blessed to be a blessing…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Keep living the legacy. You have to live it before you can give it away.
pictured: the view just outside our cabin door – if you look very closely, you can see some snow on the rocks from a few days before…we had 70+degrees; my husband praying for our son-in-law Dave just before he (s-i-l) reciprocated.
Ahem….right.
