With the New Year the Bible reading starts all over again. Last year I read it from cover to cover and since the New Year I haven’t missed a beat. Some things are a little different this year, I’m reading the Old Testament in the New Living Bible and the New Testament in the King James. Last year I had me a time in some of the Old Testament books using the King James, and when a New Living Bible showed up in this house from the second hand store I in late fall I switched over to it and it all came in loud and clear. Plus a fella learned something about those folks that I couldn’t ever with the King James version. I’m using the same daily schedule as I did last year, some Old Testament and New every day. In many instances it follows in order but not always. The Gospels are spread out so a person has a taste of them four different times of the year.
And besides all of that I always manage to read in my faith library, which has really grown huge! The past few days I’ve delved into the Works of John Wesley again, after laying off of that for a few months. And with over eight thousand pages to read I won’t be getting through it anytime soon. I had been reading his journal and it was incredible what that man went through spreading the Gospel. But now I’m starting to read some of his sermons and they hit me like a ton of bricks! One of them was about the Judgment, and let me tell you, it ain’t watered down! I’ve read it twice and will reread it again as time permits till it gets into the very marrow of my bones. He has sermons on just about anything of importance and they are so straight forward and scripturally correct that I often wonder how some folks can think we really have arrived in this day and age. Looks to me like some arrived a couple of centuries ago!
Another batch of sermons are his sermons on the Sermon From the Mount. He takes that sermon apart bit by bit and explains it like I’ve never heard it explained before, and again, the scriptural correctness amazes me! And when they are scripturally correct, that means they are timeless and never lose their usefulness. When I ordered that large set of books last summer I ordered it from the Pastoral resource section of Christian Book Distributors. And I can see why they are considered that. Two hundred years ago it was not much different, the circuit riders used these sermons to base their own on. Every important subject is covered and covered well. And I personally can’t see why that can’t happen again, and I suppose that’s why they are in the pastoral resources department.
When reading these sermons it makes a person want to go to the Bible and study what he was talking about. And with the continual reading of the Word of God it seems like it just comes alive! I remember a few years ago, I thought I’d never, ever get the Bible figured out, it was such a strange thing to me, and last year I thought I’d never get through the whole thing, that I’d just get to busy and quit. But alas, the more I read, the more hungry for the Word I get! And the more the Word gets in a person, the more it wants to come out!
Oh Lord, what a journey this is! I remember one time I heard a sermon, and the preacher was saying we shouldn’t read the Bible religiously, in other words to make us look good. Well, I figure there ain’t nothing in this earth that could make me look good anyhow so I’d read it no matter how I felt, and to be honest there were times when I sure could have used the excuse that I wasn’t getting a thing out of it. But a pigheaded old farmer sometimes don’t give up, no matter how it felt, or how it’d look. But I came to the realization that in today’s church, folks try to use the religious excuse, that we shouldn’t act so religious, as just an excuse for their own flesh’s laziness. The flesh don’t want us to be reading the Word of God and will come up with every excuse on earth for us not to. But I say, that’s when a person gotta just force him or herself to read it no matter what. Some good old fashioned discipline is what’s needed. And even though the modern church talks against discipline, I won’t. In fact I say its one of the most important things a person can do in their life is to discipline themselves, to put the flesh under and do what we should be doing.
This life is like a vapor, so very, very short and to put God first in everything we do is the most important thing in any believers life. If church folks tell you that your getting religious, well, let em think what ever they want to think. Do what’s right in the eyes of God and never try and please man first because no matter what they ain’t gonna get pleased. One warning, when a person disciplines themselves and starts to read the Word, to read sermons that meant something, not some of the mush today, it will fill you till it must flow out of you! And flow it will. Sometimes folks ask me how they can tell what their calling is. Well, read the Word, and keep reading every single day no matter what and I can promise that you’ll know! The Bible, besides being the great book that it is, is also the story of every believer’s life! Read it, read it even when it hurts, never give up! If for some reason there were some days that you didn’t read it, just get back into it, don’t look back! It will open up the real world to everyone that digs into it!
