Tag Archives: Reading

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Developing Consistency In Your Bible Reading

One of the toughest areas of my spiritual life has traditionally been consistency in my Bible reading. It seems like it’s easy to slip away from this habit over all the other spiritual disciplines. And we can’t let that happen.

Developing Consistence In Your Bible Reading

Finding consistency is our spiritual habits is critical. But it’s not something we think about too often, if at all. We just kind of take it for granted, unless it’s missing, and then we notice, and we wish we could do better. But we don’t know how.

The Importance Of Consistency

The Bible is our primary source for knowing God and his will for our lives. He has written his love letter to us, in the form of the sixty-six books of the Bible. And, if we want to get to know who he is, and what he desires for our lives, that is where we will find it.

You learn a lot about God from spending time with him. And you get to know him better personally as well. He has opened himself to us through his word, and we can see his heart, his character, his love and much more.

And, the better you know the message of God, the better you understand his mission: to seek and save humanity. And you can see your role in that.

Unless we are reading the Word of God on a consistent basis, we won’t have a handle on these things. Reading daily will help you and I understand God better, know his Son more fully, and see his will more clearly.

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Book Review – Black Earth by Timothy Snyder

Black EarthI greatly enjoy reading about history, especially certain eras of history. One of those eras is the time period surrounding World War II. I find this period of time fascinating. In light of that interest, I decided to pick up and read Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning, by Timothy Snyder. I thought it would be an interesting examination of one of the darkest periods of the twentieth century. It was not.

I found it very hard to read Black Earth. Snyder’s writing style was dry and cumbersome, and lacked any kind of excitement. His research was quite extensive, and it shows. He looked in great detail at the mind and politics of Hitler and German before and during the war. But his presentation was very dull, and lacked luster. I did find the history and the look into Hitler’s thought processes interesting, as much as I was able to stay engaged.

It is quite obvious that Snyder comes at this topic from a liberal perspective. And while I am not against reading books that I may not agree with, his approach belittles any other viewpoint, especially more conservative ones, if he acknowledges them at all.

And he makes some connections that make no sense whatsoever. The “lessons” he wants us to learn from the Holocaust, he applies to climate change and global warning, warning this generation to not make similar mistakes as those who lived in the 1930s and 40s. How he managed to make such a comparison, I have no idea. And beyond that, he ridicules those who reject the notion and political stance of climate change, implying that those who take an opposing view have their heads stuck in the sand.

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Book Review – The Newsmakers by Lis Wiehl

The Newsmakers by Lis WiehlI have been a fan of Lis Wiehl for a while, and have enjoyed many of her books over the past few years. So when I saw her new book, The Newsmakers, I was excited to pick up a copy and read it.

Overall, The Newsmakers was a pretty good story. But it was not up to the same level as other novels by Wiehl. This was not her best book, by far. That said, it is still a great story, and was an enjoyable book to read.

By way of a brief synopsis, and without giving anything away, the book is about Erica Sparks, a new character for Wiehl. Sparks is a TV reporter who has just been hired by an up-and-coming global news network. But when a series of events begin to unfold, she begins to suspect that her career, and her life, may be in jeopardy.

Sparks is a very real character. She is a recovering alcoholic, fresh from a nasty divorce, and Wiehl has done a superb job of making Erica Sparks a character the reader can understand, and even identify with. Along with many other characters in the book, Sparks is one the reader soon comes to love. Other characters, however, feel under-developed, and forced, and could have used some polishing.

Wiehl has chosen to write The Newsmakers in the present tense. For example, instead of writing “she said,” or “she walked,” Wiehl wrote “she says,” and “she walks.” While this is a small thing, it frequently makes the flow of the story seem stilted, and becomes distracting. At one point, I was almost frustrated enough to put the book down because of this. While some books can be written this way, The Newsmakers should not have been.

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Book Review – Last Act by Craig Shirley

Last ActI have mentioned before that I love to read biographical material, and I especially love it when those biographies are about great leaders. When I received Last Act: The Final Years And Emerging Legacy Of Ronald Reagan, I was pretty excited to dig into it.b

Craig Shirley has written extensively about Ronald Reagan before, and his books have been bestsellers. But this book was not all that impressive. I was somewhat disappointed in Last Act.

I knew going in that this book would be different than other biographies that I have read about Reagan. This book is solely focused upon the final years, the death and funeral, and the legacy of one of the greatest Presidents of the twentieth century. Very little of this book is about the years as an actor, or even the years in the Oval Office, except in passing.

The complete focus of Shirley’s work here is primarily on the death and funeral of Ronald Reagan, and the legacy that he left behind. The media hated, and still hates, Reagan. But the American people loved him greatly, and still do. And with that premise, Last Act had the potential to be a great examination of Reagan’s impact.

Sadly, that was not the case. I have not read any of Craig Shirley’s other works to compare, but his writing in this work was scattered and disjointed. He would break into his own thoughts with seemingly random paragraphs, often about American society in general, and give no explanation for why this was included right at that point. It was distracting and made for very difficult reading.

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Book Review – Dinosaurs: Marvels Of God’s Design by Dr. Tim Clarey

Dinosaurs: Marvels Of God's DesignI love dinosaurs. And I have since I was a kid. One of the hardest things for a lot of people to reconcile with the Bible is just how these creatures fit into a biblical perspective of history. I know this was a major question for me for a long time.

Fortunately, there are several great resources out there now that explain how dinosaurs fit, and one of the best is a new book by Dr. Tim Clarey, called Dinosaurs: Marvels Of God’s Design, published by Master Books.

Clarey’s book is very comprehensive is scope and contains a ton of information about these animals, both from a biblical perspective as well as a geological and archaeological point of view. In this book, he covers numerous topics, including an overview of the beginning of creation and Noah’s Flood, and how this impacted the dinosaurs. He discusses the age of dinosaurs, and examines the evidence in the rock record and fossils. He looks at the extinction of dinosaurs and their end.

But what may be the most impressive part of this book is the detailed look at several varieties of dinosaurs, including the variations of theropods, sauropods, ornithopods, and more. The level of details he gives is extraordinary, and he does it in a way that almost anyone can comprehend. My eleven year old son absolutely loves this book!

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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.