Customized Bible Reading Plans for 2008
I operate on a September-August Bible reading schedule. After writing this post in September, a number of you joined me in my September to August Bible reading schedule, adopting one of the five reading plans listed in that same post. Best I can tell, four months in, most of you are still on board with the plan–still reading and enjoying your Bible along with me.
Many of you function better on a January-December Bible reading schedule. To help you in setting up a workable joy-fueling, God-glorifying, sin-killing, others-loving, prayer-producing, gospel-remembering Bible reading plan for 2008, I’d encourage you to adopt a customized Bible reading plan that excites you and fits you. To get you started, here’s six different Bible reading plans to choose from and to, if necessary, customize to better suit you:
Download bible_reading_calendar.pdf
Download bible_reading_chart.DOC
Download Biblereadingrecord.doc
Download DailyBibleReading.pdf
Download GNT_reading_program.pdf
Download year_classic_single_letter.pdf
You might also want to read how I’ve customized my Bible reading schedule/how I go about soaking in the Bible on a daily basis and download the corresponding reading plan that my friend Steve created:
Christmas 2007 & My Son’s Health Report
Yesterday afternoon my family and I returned from a refreshing Christmas vacation in Bodega Bay
with my parents, brother, and sister in-law. We had a rich time together: conversing, laughing, walking on the beach, reading, eating, riding motorcycles, playing, praying, sleeping in, giving/receiving gifts, and celebrating Jesus’ birth. We also enjoyed a late night viewing of Hitchcock’s classic, The Birds, which was filmed in Bodega Bay.
On the way up to Bodega Bay my wife and I took our son Cru to a hospital in San Francisco that specializes in pediatric radiology where Cru could receive a CT scan. For a little while now there’s been some mild concern over a small bump on my son’s face. The purpose of this CT scan was to find out the identity of this bump (is it comprised of bone?, tissue?, fluid?, etc.).
While waiting a long 2 hours for the CT scan, Cru and I discovered that hospital floors provide an ideal, slick surface for cardboard box racing:
After many box races, it came time for Cru’s CT scan. The little guy proved tough as I held him and he received anesthetic through a gas mask. After falling asleep, I laid Cru down and he received his CT scan:
A few minutes later, Cru was back in our arms. He didn’t have very much fun coming out of the anesthesia, but within 20 minutes he calmed down and began eating Cheerios:
A few days later, while in Bodega Bay, we received the results from the CT scan. The news was good. What Cru has is called a dermoid, a small mass of tissue that didn’t properly grow together while Cru was in the womb. If this dermoid were ever to rupture it could cause some problems for Cru, so we will probably have it surgically removed in the coming months.
Taylor and I aren’t too concerned about all this. We recognize that our son’s medical issues are extremely minor compared to that of many other children. And, while in Bodega Bay, we observed that Cru is in no pain at all–nothing’s slowing down his active personality or his sand-eating habits:
However, I would appreciate it if you thought to pray for Cru and for our family as we consider how to move forward in handling this minor medical matter. I debated about whether or not to share any of this here on the blog, but I figured it would be best to do so because it would trigger more prayer for my son. Thanks for praying.
I hope you all enjoyed a merry Christmas, as my family did. Blogging should be light the rest of this week. Next week I plan to return to a normal blogging schedule. Finally, while I was away on vacation Tim Keller commented here on my blog. I thought that was neat.
Preaching & Prayer
"Basically I am convinced that men who do not make praying their first priority in life and ministry should not preach or pastor. As preachers they will be confusing models of a Christian man, and as shepherds they will not show willingness to die for the sheep…As we seek faith and pray together, the power will be in the preaching, and other matters such as style will begin to take their own course."
-Jack Miller
William Bridge, Trace All Your Sins to the “Head” Sin
The more you are humbled by God’s free love and grace, the more you will be humbled and the less discouraged…If you will be truly humbled and not be discouraged [depressed]…then trace all your sins to your unbelief and lay the stress and weight of all your sorrow upon that sin.
…if a man can trace every sin to the fountain, the head sin, he will be most humbled. Now what is the great sin, the fountain of sin, the head of all your sins, but unbelief…if you can present God to your soul under the notion of his general goodness, as good in himself, you will never be discouraged, but truly humbled.
-William Bridge
Tim Keller, Puritan Resources for Biblical Counseling
In the most recent issue of The Journal of Biblical Counseling I spied a footnote that referenced a 1988 article by Tim Keller, Puritan Resources for Biblical Counseling. I was able to track down this original article and I found it immensely helpful. Here are Keller’s six headings for why the works of the Puritans are a rich resource for biblical counselors:
1. The Puritans were committed to the functional authority of the Scripture. For them it was the comprehensive manual for dealing with all problems of the heart.
2. The Puritans developed a sophisticated and sensitive system of diagnosis for personal problems, distinguishing a variety of physical, spiritual, tempermental, and demonic causes.
3. The Puritans developed a remarkable balance in their treatment because they were not invested in any one "personality theory" other than biblical teaching about the heart.
4. The Puritans were realistic about difficulties of the Christian life, especially conflicts with remaining, indwelling sin.
5. The Puritans looked not just at behavior but at underlying root motives and desires. Man is a worshiper; all problems grow out of "sinful imagination" or idol manufacturing.
6. The Puritans considered the essential spiritual remedy to be belief in the gospel, used in both repentance and the development of proper self-understanding.
Tuesday List: Top Ten Books from 2007
For this week’s Tuesday List, here’s my 2007 Top Ten Book List. This isn’t a list of books published in 2007 (though three of these books were published in 2007). This is a list of books I’ve read in 2007 that have given me the most profit and/or pleasure:
1. Jack Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader
2. Iain H. Murray, Martyn Lloyd Jones (Volumes I & II–in order to make this a top ten list and not a “top eleven” list, I’m counting these two volumes as a single volume)
3. Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics
4. Fergus Fleming, Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Adventure
5. Courtney Anderson, To The Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson
6. Sally Llyod Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible
7. Jefferey, Ovey, & Sach, Pierced For Our Transgressions
8. Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
9. Tim Woodruff, A Distant Presence: The Story Behind Paul’s Letter to the Philippians
10. Ray Bakke, A Theology As Big As The City
As He Turned His Face Away From His Son, He Turned Toward Us
An important quote from my favorite chapter, The Pastoral Importance of Penal Substitution, in Pierced For Our Transgressions:
The Lord Jesus Christ did not come into the world to meet with his friends. He came to die for his enemies. He came to a people who had rejected his law and killed his prophets, who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, trampling his courts in the hypocrisy of their self-righteous religious observances. He came to nations that had exchanged the truth of the living God for a lie, the glory of the immortal God for man-made images, and the fountain of living water for cracked and broken cisterns. he came to a world stained with violence, to a people whose hands were full of blood and whose righteous deeds were like filthy rags, to a complacent humanity who proclaimed ‘Peace! Peace!’ while they waged war with God.
This is the biblical portrait of the people for whom Christ died. We were objects of wrath, rightly facing the unmitigated, everlasting fury of an incensed God, but now in Christ we have found mercy. We have been brought from death to life, from corruption to glory. We were slaves to sin, the world and the devil, but are now adopted children of our heavenly Father…
What love it is, that this holy God should give his Son–his only Son, his beloved–to suffer and die in the place of rebels. He gave him, not hoping he might be spared, but knowing that he would be despised, rejected and killed. As he turned his face away from his Son in the blackness of Golgotha, he turned toward us–a people loaded with guilt, children given to corruption–and fulfilled those precious words ‘God so loved the world that he have his only Son.’
A penal substitutionary understanding of the cross helps us to understand God’s love, and to appreciate its intensity and beauty. Scripture magnifies God’s love by its refusal to diminish our plight as sinners deserving of God’s wrath, and by its uncompromising portrayal of the cross as the place where Christ bore that punishment in the place of his people. If we blunt the sharp edges of the cross, we dull the glittering diamond of God’s love.
Next-Wave Ezine
The post I wrote a few weeks back on Rob Bell’s the gods aren’t angry tour has been published in the December edition of Next-Wave Ezine. It appears in the Theology section. I’m glad that the editor (Bob Hyatt) of Next-Wave got in touch with me and wanted to include my perspective in Next-Wave.
