As another Sunday has come and gone, the Pastor at my church has issued another challenge. Previous challenges have included listening to Christian music and reading one Psalm a day and two Psalms on Sundays. I have been doing ok in these challenges. The only time I usually listen to music is on Sundays in church. Reading one Psalm a day (and two on Sundays) is forcing me to get back to reading the Psalms daily. (I used to read five Psalms a day. That way, I would cycle through all the Psalms every 30 days. I stopped this a while ago because I found I was just mindlessly reciting the words--their meaning was lost in a mindless void.) But now, only reading one Psalm a day, I have been reading them slowly and often in various translations.
This week's challenge has been making me crazy! Read the whole Bible in a year! Ahhh!!! This message has been haunting me for several months..but I keep ignoring it. I have read through the entire Bible and did so using an amazing verse by verse commentary by J. Vernon McGee called Through the Bible. It is intended to take five years to go through the Bible. Since the whole series is available for free online at ttb.org, I listened/studied the entire Bible in 15 months. Since then, I have hop-scotched through the Bible. My younger years of my life, I spent attending a church which focused almost 100% of the sermons from the New Testament. Henceforth, I have a very good knowledge of the New Testament. I have tried to focus my energy on things I am unfamiliar with such as the Old Testament history, kings and prophets--Haggai, Ezekiel, Obadiah, Nahum, etc.
Unfortunately, when I try to read through a book in the Bible, I get hung up on details. For example, today I was studying Zechariah chapter 8. There were four fast days mentioned in the Scripture, but no explanation was given. I then researched what these fast days where, when they started to observe them, why they observe them, what traditions are associated with them, etc. Needless to say, I am easily diverted from my main reading into all different parts of the Bible. It takes me a very long time to get through one chapter of the Bible. But I feel like learn lots and lots!
For example, I spent a large amount of time in Jeremiah chapters 40-41reading about Gedaliah and his amazing leadership of the remnant which remained in Judah (586 B.C.) after King Nebuchadnezzar took captive and hauled away (or killed) almost all the Jews to Babylon. Of course, jealousy arose because Nebuchadnezzar did not appoint a guy who was a royal descendent, a plot to kill Gedaliah was hatched and ultimately Gedaliah and a bunch of Jews were killed by their own countrymen. After this, the tiny Jewish remnant ignored God's advice delivered by the prospect Jeremiah. God promised if the Jews remained in the land, He would protect them. If they fled to Egypt, they would suffer famine and die when Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt. The Jews decided to flee their homeland (Israel) and escaped to Egypt. A few years later, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt, and the Jewish remnant was killed in the subsequent war (another prophecy fulfilled). The Jews observe a fast day in their seventh month (Tishri) in which they observe the death of Gedaliah. I find this all terribly interesting, but I only got through about 10 verses of Scripture.
I decided I was going to ignore the Pastor's challenge, but as I was eating lunch and listening to a Bible commentator, he emphasized the need for Christians to read the Bible through every year. Noooo!!! Why does this message keep haunting me!? So, I have resolved myself to attempt to "just read" through the Bible (i.e., do not research all the details and numerous questions which pop up in my head when reading through Scripture). I will try hard, but I am so easily distracted with questions--what does this person's name mean, who was his ancestors/descendants, where is this city located,
how far is it between these two places, what other important events happens at this locations, etc., etc. This must be an important challenge for me since God keeps sending the same message over and over again. I get so mad at the Jews when they ignore God's words. Perhaps God is just as annoyed with me for ignoring His message.
"Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make known my words to you." (Proverbs 1:23)
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