Sixty Days: Day Sixty...ish

Today's Reading:

• Esther 6-10 (the last of the OT historical books)
• Song of Solomon 5-8 (the last of the wisdom books)
• Malachi 1-4 (the last of the prophets)
• Acts 27-28 (the last chapters of NT history)
• Revelation 18-22 (the last chapters of the Bible)

Reading Time:  An hour, more or less

Well, it's done.

Sixty-five days after I started in Genesis Chapter One, I have closed the Book with Revelation Chapter Twenty-Two.  Everything from Table of Contents to Maps.  Every day a sampling of chapters from every division of the Bible.  Something I haven't done since March 2012.  I have read my Bible completely through in a planned, systematic, 60-day kind of way.

What does it mean?

I remember how I was feeling two months ago.  Down.  Empty.  Forlorn.  Alone.  Like I would never have another breath of fresh air, like I would never see the sunshine again, like I would never be back on the mountaintop, like I would never have another ounce of strength.  None of those things were true, but they were what I was feeling. 

Yes, I read the Bible regularly.  Yes, I prayed.  And all the while pastoring a church 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, praying, praising, preaching, ministering, fellowshipping, sharing Jesus...which is second only to my other 24-hour a day, 7-day a week job of being a husband and a father.  Neither role provides much room for escape, not even much of a fifteen minute break.  I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.

I remember what I was praying for two months ago.  I needed help.  I needed relief.  I needed rest.  I needed strength. I was begging God for it.  And God answered me.  He said, "You're starving.  You're malnourished.  You're unfit.  And it's all starting to show."  It was time to get back into the Word in a real and overwhelming way.  It was time to be a Spiritual glutton, to feast, to binge on the Bible.  Like a man invited to an always open, all you can eat, absolutely free buffet, who hadn't had a decent meal in a very long time, I bellied up to the bar and loaded my plate down every day with huge helpings of fried chicken, mashed taters and gravy, green beans, corn on the cob, brussel sprouts, hot buttered biscuits, salad loaded down with every kind of extra known to man, sweet ice tea to drink, and more than one slice of homemade something-meringue pie.

Over the last two months, I studied the long, cyclical 4000-year history of Israel every day.  I savored divine wisdom and poetry from 3000 years ago every day.  I listened to God's prophets, hell-fire and brimstone preachers from an age long past, and I listened every day.  I walked the shores of Galilee and the Jordan Valley and the streets of Jerusalem with Jesus and the twelve disciples, then traveled the world with Peter, Phillip & Paul.  I read the letters penned by men who really had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  And I let my Technicolor imagination run wild with the motion picture of the Revelation.

As a result, I am full today.  I am encouraged today.  I have already experienced the presence of God today through His Word.  I know I feel better today than when I started this journey through the Word in August.  It helped me.  It doctored my wounded spirit.  It ministered to my deepest needs.  It spoke to me daily words I needed to hear.  It rescued me from the prison and chains of an enemy that has no hold on me.  It saved me, again.  Not in the sense of my soul needing to be saved.  But it saved my life.  It restored faith, hope, love, joy, peace and goodness to me.  It reminded me of God's righteousness and God's faithfulness.  It showed me that God is still (and always will be) there.

Let me tell you, I've read the Bible constantly and repeatedly for 35 years (yes, since I was old enough to read) in several different versions and formats.  I have it on CD (the dramatized versions are my favorite), and I've listened to it hours upon end..  I've heard it preached and taught and expounded an discussed thousands upon thousands of times.  I am familiar with it, some parts more than others.  But in spite of that familiarity and comfort, or perhaps because of it, every day it gives me a thrill from the core of my being to the pores of my skin to open the pages of this timeless, matchless, ageless Book and find God there in its words.

So having finished the Bible today, I can hardly wait for tomorrow when I crack it open again and begin anew.

Sixty Days: Day Fifty-One

Today's Reading:

• 2 Chronicles 8-14
• Job 12-20
• Micah 6-7
• Nahum 1-3
• Habakkuk 1-3
• Acts 5-7
• 2 Peter 3

Reading Time:  More than 1 hour, less than 2 hours...

I've doubled up on a lot of reading days, attempting to catch up from the time I lost on vacation.  I started this reading plan on August 28; October 28 is next Tuesday.  I am currently on target to finish October 31, which was my goal to begin with...I gave myself 64 days to do a 60 day Bible reading plan.  Regardless of when I finish (and it will be next week sometime), I am happy to say I will have read my Bible through, Table of Contents to Maps, in 2014.

Today it seemed like a consistent message was being preached at me from the Scriptures, no matter where I was.  History, Wisdom, Prophecy, Epistle.  They were all saying the same thing.  The guilty will not go unpunished.  They may be getting away with sin for a season, but seasons change.  What goes around comes around.  You reap what you sow.  Your actions produce results...or consequences.  So be warned.  Whatever you're doing is seen by God, and if God doesn't like it, He won't let you get away with it for very long.

People have dropped dead under the weight of God's wrath.  Whole cities and civilizations have been annihilated by the anger of God.  The ruins of Ninevah (the subject of Nahum's prophecy) were under sand for 2600 years after they refused to heed the voice of this second prophet sent to them.

This is not the kind of God people want to hear about in the here and now.  Church people, even preachers, are uncomfortable with a God who kills people for lying about their tithes and offerings.  We like the warm and fuzzy God, the one full of grace and mercy and compassion and love, who accepts everybody just like they are.  We like Him so much, we have forgotten that He is also a God of law and order and justice.  He is the rewarder of those who seek Him, but He is also the great judge over all the earth, who keeps track of every tear we shed, every word we say, and every deed we do.  We are more comfortable with knowing that heaven is for real, but we are not always at ease with the thought that hell is for real too.

But because I believe what the Bible says, I believe there is a hell.  I believe there is eternal punishment in darkness and everlasting fire for those who don't believe in God and in Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son and our ever-living Savior.  I believe there are levels of suffering in hell, visited upon the damned in accordance with their deeds.  But I also believe that no one HAS to go there.  Everyone has been given a choice.  Unbelief is the dead end, no outlet option.  Belief in God and in Jesus Christ is a free, one-way ticket to Heaven, and that's the choice I have made.

And I'm extremely thankful today that because of God's love and mercy and grace and compassion, He saved me in spite of myself and my sins.  He is a forgiver of those who confess.  He is the accepter of those who come to Him.  He is the Savior of sinners who call on the Name of the Lord.  In judgment, He still remembers mercy!

Thank you Jesus for that!  I couldn't make it without You.
 

Sixty Days: Day Forty-Five

Today's Reading:

• 2 Kings 17-25
• Proverbs 21-24
• Hosea 6-10
• John 17
• James 1

Reading Time:  2 hours

I was thinking today about the power of influence a patriarch can have on future generations of his family.  Proverbs talks about disciplining your children often and early.  Hosea shows the love of God to children who are not actually his.  Jesus prays for those God has given Him, and for all those whom God will give Him.  But the most profound example I found was in the closing chapters of 2 Kings, chapters that record the final years and the fall of the Kingdom of Judah.

King Manasseh reigned the longest of any kings of Israel or Judah--55 years.  The son of the righteous King Hezekiah and raised in a Spiritual climate heavily influenced by the prophet Isaiah, Manasseh turned out to be the most wicked king Judah ever had.  He built temples to worship every kind of foreign god.  He sacrificed his own children in the fires of Molech and Chemosh.  He did evil in the sight of the Lord like no one had ever done before.  He killed so many innocent people the streets of Jerusalem ran red with their blood, including that of the prophet Isaiah, who was sawn in half on Manasseh's orders.

If you will allow me to skip to the part of the story I know but haven't yet read in 2 Chronicles, Manasseh was taken captive by a foreign king, and while in prison, in his old age, he repented of the sinful deeds he had committed and was restored to his kingdom.  So we can assume his end was better than a misspent life of idolatry, immorality, and evil.

But for the next 100 years, the record of each king, good and bad, is accentuated by one caveat:  Manasseh's sins were still the source of God's wrath and the reason for His judgment on the Kingdom of Judah.  No revival, no restoration of the temple, no national call for righteousness could reverse the effects of Manasseh's godlessness on five generations of his descendants, and the entirety of his people.  His great-grandson saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, the execution of his sons and civic leaders, and a remnant of Jews being marched into exile in Babylon...just before they gouged his eyes out and led him away in chains.  This was the third and final wave of captivity for the Jews, which would culminate 50 years after this point with King Cyrus of Persia granting the Israelites permission to return and rebuild the temple of God.

Then there is an obscure government official, a court secretary named Shaphan, whose children and grandchildren keep showing up in the closing chapters of 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Jeremiah.  They were righteous men, godly men, men committed to the survival of God's Chosen People.  They rescued the prophet from an unjust imprisonment, they pleaded with kings to heed the word of the Lord, they tried to shepherd Israel through the dark days following the destruction of Jerusalem.  Even though we don't know anything about Shaphan, surely we can surmise from the actions of his offspring what kind of man he was?  Surely we can understand the kind of influence it took to produce multiple generations of people who continued to serve the Lord while the world around them beat a speedy trail to destruction.

My wife has left for a two-day retreat with other church women, leaving two small sons in my care.  Last night at Bible Study, one of the ladies asked me, "Is April taking the baby with her?"  When my reply was no, she looked at me in horror and said, "Who's going to take care of the baby?!?"  I raised my hand and said in all sarcastic seriousness, "I AM a capable father.  And April has left me with plenty of frozen milk."  But there is such spiritual significance to that as I write today.  My heart truly is filled with the desire to be a father as capable and influential as Shaphan.

Sixty Days: Day ???

Perhaps someone somewhere is wondering, "Is Casey still reading?  Is he on schedule?  Is he going to finish his 60 day reading plan on time?  Where has he been and why isn't he blogging about it?"  Okay, so in reality, maybe nobody anywhere is asking those questions, but I ask myself that almost everyday.  But just in case you were wondering...

 

Yes, I'm still reading.

 

No, I'm not on schedule.  That vacation wreaked havoc on my reading schedule.  Nevertheless, having finished my schedule for today, I am 3 days behind where I want to be, with 24 days of reading ahead of me.  That said, I have read 3/5 of the Bible in the last forty-two days.

 

Yes, I'm going to finish my 60 day reading plan on time...since I allotted myself 63 days to do it, I will finish my final day of reading on October 31.  If not before. 

 

And my, what an exciting journey this has been!  I'm beginning to feel full of the word again.  I feel my own faith being built as I read.  I find my own desire for more of the word insatiable.  I feel the double-edge sword of the word doing its work in my soul and spirit.  It illuminates my walk.  It enlightens my ponderings and considerations.  It has come alive again to live richly in me.  This is as it should be.

 

Nevertheless, the more living and power the word becomes to me, the more aware I become of the need for proclaiming truth in a world--and a church--that has turned a deaf ear and a cold heart away from the authoritative word of God.  The more aware I am of just how many believers so-called have abandoned their faith in the inerrancy and infallibility of the word of God, trading the truth in for fables and the vain imaginings of misled gurus and megastars.  The more aware I am of those close to me who are so in need of a Biblical worldview grounded in the word rather than their own imaginations and machinations.

 

Christians, we need to rely on the word of God now more than ever.  The grass withers, the flower fades, the leaves fall and decay as autumn comes on.  But the word of God remains the same forever.  It does not change.  It is faithful and true.  It is a sure foundation.  It is not a private interpretation, but rather the speech of God proclaimed as the Holy Spirit moved on holy men of old.  It is enlivened with the very breath of God, completely inspired, absolutely reliable, and useful in every conceivable way.

 

This word is what we need.  And 22 days from now, when I have read the final chapters of my 60 day plan, you know what I'm going to do?  I'm going to open my Bible on November the 1st and start reading it again.