Since this is the first newsletter of 2010, I do hope it will be both encouraging and challenging to you. New Year’s resolutions usually don’t work, but commitments and covenants usually do. My challenge to you this year is for you to read your Bible front to back—all the way from Genesis to Revelation. if you read three and a half chapters a day, you will be able to accomplish that task this year. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day is all that is required.
Proverbs 30:5
Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Keep the pure Word of God flowing into your life:
Mark 7:13
Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
If you don’t know the Word of God, that is how the traditions of men will creep into your life:
Luke 4:4
And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
How can someone live by every word of God, if they don’t know His words?
Acts 4:31
And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
We need more and more people, who are led by the Holy Ghost, to proclaim the word of God with boldness!
2 Timothy 2:15
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Study means to exert yourself. Spending time studying God’s Word should be a joy and something you look forward to every day. It is not drudgery or something you have to do. You get to understand more of God’s ways every day by studying His Book!
Acts 17:11
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
The Christian life is a daily life. If the Bereans can read and study God’s Word daily, so can you and I!
One good thing to do in your life, as I have stated in other newsletters, is to have some older, white-haired men (or women) of God in your life. It is a blessing to learn the wisdom of these folks who have stood the test of time. If they have been serving the Lord for many years, they probably won’t be turning back now. Two of my Christian friends that I turn to for advice are in their seventies. They have stood the test of time.
But what if we could go back even farther than seventy or eighty years and find out what people said about the Bible? These quotes come from Wallbuilder’s Ministry:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1941:
I suggest a nationwide reading of the Holy Scriptures during the period from Thanksgiving Day to Christmas…[G]o to…the Scriptures for a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure of true greatness as this nation has achieved.
President Zachary Taylor said:
The Bible is the best of books, and I wish it were in the hands of everyone. It is indispensable to the safety and permanence of our institutions…Especially should the Bible be placed in the hands of the young. It is the best school book in the world…I would that all of our people were brought up under the influence of that Holy Book.
The first Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay, said:
The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.
Elias Boudinot, a U.S. Congressman from New Jersey stated:
For nearly half a century, I have anxiously and critically studied the Bible and I still scarcely ever take it up that I do not find something new. Were you to ask me to recommend the most valuable book in the world, I should fix on the Bible as the most instructive both to the wise and the ignorant. Were you to ask me for one book affording the most rational and pleasing entertainment to the enquiring mind, I would still say the Bible. And should you ask again about the best philosophy, or the most interesting history, I would still urge you to look into your Bible. I would make it, in short, the alpha and omega of knowledge.
I really love that quote by Elias Boudinot, and I will leave you with that. So, go ahead and take the challenge of reading your Bible front to back this year. You will not regret it. Soak your mind with the Word of God, obey what it says, and proclaim it from the rooftops everywhere you go!
Until the nets are full,
