Tag Archives: Personal Growth

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2016 Bible Reading Plans

Spending time in God’s Word is one of the most important aspects of daily spiritual growth. Allowing God’s Word to impact your life will not happen unless you are exposing yourself to it consistently. Bible reading is perhaps the most critical of the spiritual disciplines.

Bible Reading Plans

I’ve written several times in the past about this discipline:

I firmly believe that this is a critical element of our spiritual lives. And it seems to be lacking in a lot of people’s lives. I think, when you experience the many benefits of consistent, daily time spent in God’s Word, you’ll develop a craving for more.

God’s Word truly does change us.

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Reading The Bible Daily

One Of The Foundational Keys To Discipleship

As a minister, one of the questions I hear most frequently concerns spending time in God’s Word. How often should I read? How much? Questions like these surround developing the discipline of Bible reading.

Bible

Simply put, a disciple is one who follows someone. In more exact terms, a disciple is one who desires to become as much like Jesus Christ as possible.

The best way to do this is by spending time with him. But how do you spend time with someone who walked the earth physically a couple of millennia ago? He isn’t here physically to have a conversation with, so what do you do?

The next best way is to spend time with those who knew him best, or in his own thoughts and writings. This is the primary reason we have God’s Word in our lives. He isn’t physically here to speak to us face to face, but he did leave a very detailed set of books that describe his nature and character to us so that we can be as much like him as possible.

Reading the Bible daily is one of the most important aspects of being a disciple. In fact, it is not a stretch to state that unless you are not spending time in God’s Word on a daily basis, or at the very least, a consistently frequent basis, you cannot be growing spiritually. It’s as simple as that.

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Reading God’s Word

Developing A Love For The Bible

I have recently been convicted concerning the idea of developing passion in my life as a believer. Such a passion has to be rooted in God’s Word.

God's Word and Coffee

Hebrews 4:12 gives us an incredible insight into the Word of God, and God’s own view of it:

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Did you notice the very beginning of that verse? God’s Word is living. If the Bible was a dead book, I would be able to read it once, and would never need to read it again. But it is a living Word. And every time I read it, I experience new and different things in it. As I read in it now, I am in a different place in my spiritual walk than I was the last time I might have read any given passage.

And since it is living, it has the power to work within my life and change me. God, through his Holy Spirit, will nudge me to change the things that he points out to me from reading his Word.

Each time I read this book, I find something new to me that I may never have noticed before. And I may not have ever noticed it before because I was not spiritually ready for that particular piece of Truth. And there are things that I am not ready for even yet. But I may be tomorrow, or next week, or next year, as I continue to grow.

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The Difference Between Evangelism And Discipleship

Have you ever experienced an epiphany? One of those moments where something becomes crystal clear to you like it never has been before? I experienced one of those the other day.

Evangelism Vs. Discipleship

At our staff meeting this week at my church, we had a brief discussion about the differences between discipleship and outreach/evangelism. It was a good conversation, and it sparked some thinking in my mind for the next few days.

The following morning, I posed a question based off of my thoughts on this to a group of men that I meet with weekly. I wanted to gather some additional viewpoints and perspectives. Some of their comments added to my thoughts as well.

I have always differentiated between these two concepts. In my mind, they were two very distinct and different things. Outreach and evangelism is what we do to reach the lost and bring them to Christ. Discipleship, on the other hand, is the process that takes place after one becomes a believer, and conforms us to the image of Christ.

Or at least that is what I have always thought about these two ideas.

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Deepening Our Roots

Developing Passion In Our Spiritual Life

The more I read the New Testament, the more I find that passion is an essential element of discipleship. Without passion, our faith could be seriously questioned.

Pine Tree

Psalm 1 gives us an excellent image of what it means to be deeply rooted, to be spiritually passionate. In verse 3, the psalmist says:

He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.

This image of a tree is a perfect illustration of what it means to develop passion in our lives. The roots have to go deep, or there can be no production of fruit. In this psalm, the tree is planted strategically next to a stream of water, and it is rooted deeply enough to receive the nourishment it needs, and to prevent it from being easily uprooted.

This is exactly what we need to do in our lives. Passion and discipleship require us to be both strategic and solid in where we plant ourselves.

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Book Review – Supernatural by Michael S. Heiser

SupernaturalFor the past few months, I have been hearing a lot of hype about a couple of new books by Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm and Supernatural. Both of these books are an examination of the unseen realty of the spiritual realm that we cannot see, but which is very real. The Unseen Realm is the more scholarly of the two works, and my review of that volume will be forthcoming.

Supernatural is a secondary effort, taking the information presented in The Unseen Realm and making it much more readable and easier to understand for the common reader. This review, while it may touch on the material presented in both books, is primarily concerned with Supernatural.

I have been hearing a lot about these books for a while now, and part of me wanted to read them, while another part of me was afraid to. While I know the reality of spiritual warfare and the realm of the unseen, it has always been an uncomfortable topic amongst the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. It’s too… pentecostal (?) for most of our churches.

And yet this is a very real topic presented in Scripture and there is much to be learned from the pages of the Bible about the forces of good and evil that surround us, which we cannot see. And so, I went into this book with a bit of fascination, and a bit of skepticism for what I might find.

And rightly so. I was faced with thoughts and ideas that I’ve never been faced with before. And, in reading this book, I was forced to examine some of these ideas and see what I believe about them.

Supernatural gave me some insights and ideas that I have been wrestling with since I read the book, and I’m not certain about the conclusions I may reach. This book has really caused me to think, more so than anything I have read in a long while.

First, I want to address the things I found that I didn’t agree with, and then I will share the other side. And finally, I will wrap this review up with something new I am facing and dealing with.

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Book Review – The Entitlement Cure by Dr. John Townsend

The Entitlement Cure“Today we live in a culture that says, ‘Life should be easy and work well.’ This attitude, called entitlement, influences our most important institutions: family, business, church, and government. It’s devastating effects contribute to relational problems, work ethic issues, and emotional struggles. It comes down to this: People are not getting to where they want to go, because they don’t know how to do life the hard way. Entitlement keeps them from tackling challenges and finding success. There is a better way.” – Dr. John Townsend, The Entitlement Cure

One of the greatest plagues on our society in modern times is the attitude of entitlement. My wife and I have long recognized this, and are striving to eliminate this attitude from our own lives, as well as the lives of our children. But it is difficult!

The attitude of entitlement believes that I deserve certain things in my life. I deserve to be treated a certain way. I deserve to have the best.

But that is simply not true. Not at all.

Dr. John Townsend has written a new book that examines this attitude, and seeks to find a way to cure it from our lives. The Entitlement Cure examines this dangerous attitude, and suggests that when we do hard things the right way, we find out that our lives have so much more meaning.