THE ONE YEAR BIBLE CLUB

   If you don't understand "Providence" then you have to read today's reading. Paul is pretty much a dead man. 40 men have made a vow not to eat or drink until they have killed Paul. However, as it would "happen" to be, Paul's sister's son (Paul's nephew) happens to overhear the conversation of these men conspiring to kill him. He reports this to Paul and then Paul has his nephew go tell the one in charge of Paul's security/safety and the plan is thwarted. As we get ready to tackle on the 2nd half of the year, God's Providence is definitely something we want to contend for. He really is the God that goes before his people and prepares the way. He can circumvent events on our behalf, even in to our favor. He can cause the schemes of the enemy to be thwarted. From the time we wake in the morning until the time we lay our head down on the pillow that night, there are so many unknown factors. The idea is not to go through the day looking over...

   It's ironic (or maybe not) that on the 4th of July, "Independence Day" that we read in Psalm about people wanting to be free, about people breaking off the chains and being free, ironically they are wanting to break off the chains from God, "l et us break off our chains and free us from the slavery of God ". Could anything be more ironic than that? Than wanting to break free from God to be free, but yet only God can bring true freedom. We can say, today in the 21st Century that humanity has followed through in this quest to free themselves from the chains and slavery to God. Today, America is more of a secular Nation than a Christian one and the question, then to ask is ...."are we more free than we were before?" The answer is definitively "NO". We freed ourselves from the slavery of God only to become enslaved by everything else.      Today, many will celebrate their Freedom, all the while using the things that enslave them, to celebrate ...

         The bad guy isn't always the bad guy, sometimes he's the good guy.  It's easy to read this story today and read it dismissing David as the calloused killer, insensitive to the lives that he is affecting by having these innocent people murdered. These parents and citizens must be filled with hatred and animosity towards David. I seriously doubt that this is easy for David to do and the text does make mention to his sparing Mephibosheth from the slaughter. David is simply trying to help Israel, Saul is the culprit and the reason behind why David must do, what to many is, a senseless slaughter of innocent lives. David inquiries to God why the famine (which is also leading to the death of innocent lives) and God's response to David is, “ It is on account of Saul  and his blood-stained house; it is because he put the Gibeonites to death.” Saul is long gone now and David is left with the mess left behind by the previous King. A true leader is one th...

       The reality of Ministry is…the very people you are in ministry to reach and help are the very people that will want to make you quit the ministry, if you let them. We always have to remember that we are not in “the ministry” to help the people (that’s a by-product) we are in the ministry to serve God. If we are in the ministry out of some noble quest to “serve the people”, once the people start stepping all over you and spreading rumors about you, you will say, “well, if that’s how they are going to treat me, if they don’t appreciate what I’m doing for them; then forget this, I quit!” However if we are in the ministry to serve Christ, who is always grateful and appreciative of our efforts and service, then we will not quit even when the people we are trying to feed, bite us! As the saying goes, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”, well people don’t seem to abide by that a whole lot, in the Church. The Elders in  Jerusalem  explain to Paul that the J...

   I'm not one to rip apart my clothes in despair, but I have been there, it's a bad place to be. The King of Assyria is definitely personifying the voice of Satan in our story.  "Don't let King Hezekiah deceive you into thinking your God will deliver you from us, look what we have done to other nations".  You have to remember this whole scene started with Hezekiah trying to bribe the King of Assyria into not marching out against them. Not exactly a sign of strength. Perhaps it was Joash who started this pathetic display of unbelief by trying to bribe his way out of battle. Israel has fallen and sunk quite low from her former stature of Faith, Power and Dominion. Now she is weak, cowardly and begging the enemy not to hurt her. The thought of fighting and winning is a bygone era. Now she will compromise, bribe; anything because she knows even herself how pathetic she has become. Does this remind you of some Christians you once knew? How the mighty have fallen! Unfo...

        I'm so confused..are you?  They worshiped the Lord (well that's good) BUT, they also served their own gods...."      At least there's a "but" in between, but that's a big  butt..... I mean, which is it, did they serve God or not? I'm confused.  Confusion, that's what we get when we try to serve God along with our own gods along the way.  Confusion, is what you get when you try to serve God along with your own religion.  The world looks on and they are confused. The world ought to be able to look at an individual and either see a sinner or a saint, Christian or Heathen, which one is it? Choose, make a decision and then let it be clear what you are. I am confused by this.....they worshiped the Lord...BUT they also served their own gods. This confuses me just as much as our duplicate lives confuses the world that looks on at us in the church. And to add to the confusion  Verse 34  says,  "They neit...

  Always be very Leary about an individual who stresses to you that their Christian life is private, it is between them and God. Every Christian must possess both a private and a public life with Jesus Christ. Jesus woke up early in the morning, privately, to pray with the Father. The rest of his day was very public. Even his sufferings were not in private. And of course his death and crucifixion was very public. Jesus could have been slain in private and He would have still died for our sins, The Father could have orchestrated his death a private death, but God orchestrated Jesus' death to be public. We want our Christianity to be private and we want it not to have to "cost us" anything. Our text from the book of Acts today gives us a lesson in making our Christian life and profession...PUBLIC. The word "publicly" is specifically used in verse 19. "A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them  publicly ." Now let...

    I'm sure any title with "racism" in it is not going to surprise anyone, but what is surprising is the racism I am writing about is between Jews.  Jews fighting Jews.  How it must have broken God's heart to see this war between Judah & Israel. A civil war between God's people. Racism, it's a hot topic today's media onslaught. America had it's own civil war, Ireland has had it's own sort of civil war, the Protestants killing the Catholics and vice-versa. What we can learn about racism is it goes deeper than skin color. Today's headlines focus' on skin color, it's the blacks against the whites, but these are naive people. What they don't realize is racism goes deeper than skin color. Racism is basically about anyone who is "not us", "not in our group". As I mentioned, Ireland for years had whites killing whites, same skin color, but yet still racism. I grew up in Montreal and we had racism. It was blacks tha...

        You can find some comfort today, in reading about God's inspired description of Joash. We read at the beginning of Joash,  2  Joash did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him. " 2  Joash did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him ." However, as we go on to read about Joash we find out that his life was not so stellar after all. Immediately after that verse we read..." 3  The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there."   And it doesn't stop there, further on we read...  " 17  About this time Hazael king of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem.  18  But Joash king of Judah took all the sacred objects dedicated by his predecessors—Jehoshaphat, Jehoram and Ahaziah, the kings of Judah—and the gifts he himself had...

       Although, we didn't read about  David today, perse, we did read his Psalm, Psalm 144.  We get a glimpse of where some of his gratitude comes from in the Psalm, “Praise the Lord, who is my rock, He trains my hands for war and gives my fingers skill for battle.”  How many times did David go into battle for  Israel , risking his life but yet God supernaturally enabled him. A life of leisure, a life where we just live in our “comfort zone” may be a little better for our blood pressure, but it is not something that is going to cause exuberant Praise to come out of your mouth on Sunday mornings. As a matter of a fact, you may be one of the individuals that yawns during Praise & Worship on Sunday mornings. You may say, “I’m into the Word, just give me the Word, we can skip all that Praise non-sense and just get to the good stuff”. David would have disagreed with you; and David was a man’s man, but yet David had exuberant Praise in him, that ju...

  I think we all know this Shunammite woman. She exists in every church. She is that woman of extraordinary faith in God to move on her behalf; and you know what, He does! The Shunammite woman believes God has given her the son she has and when he is taken away, she goes back to God, or at least her source to God and demands him back and Elisha raises her son from the dead. I believe her reasoning here, in our text is the same. She believes God is the source of all she has and she is right; therefore the land she had, that she has lost, was from God and she is believing God to give her that land back just like He gave her back her son. The only problem is, with her son, she had Elisha to go to, in this case who does she have? This is a woman who acts in faith, not logic. Logic would say, “she doesn't have a snow ball’s chance in Hell” of getting that land back, but with God all things are possible to them that believe. Her job as a believer is to motion forward and allow God t...

 I remember many years ago Pastoring in a Church where there was some minor issues, that were quickly escalating to major issues. My options were to ignore it or confront it. I looked at the parties involved and what I saw was a group of men that were strongly opinionated, but also mature and strong in their faith. So based on that, I chose the option of confronting, head on. We all met at every Christian’s church outside of church, ie; Starbucks and just brought out all the gossip and rumblings. The situation was fragile and could have easily escalated out of my control, but it didn't! I believe that when you are dealing with two or more mature Christians, solid in their faith, you should be able to bring up any issue, discuss any matter and still be able to have a civil conversation or even a civil argument; and not all leave hating each other and wanting to leave the church and/or ministry. If ever you have one of these meetings and things do not go well, it is because you were ...

 The Word of God declares, “two are better than one”. There are many reasons why two are better than one and here in our story, we have a perfect illustration of how that works. What happens is this woman’s son from Shunem dies. We are not sure what happened, let’s say it’s a tumor or brain aneurysm, he screams out, "my head is hurting" next thing you know the child is dead. We have a wife and husband in this story. The husband accepts, perhaps, to simply “accept the loss”, as I’m sure this hurt. The wife resolves something completely different. While the husband accepts the death, the wife will not. She has resolved to contend for this miracle (the boy) that God gave her. When she is saddling up to head out, the husband thinks she is going to see the man of God for some religious ceremony. Little does she know she is going to fight for the life of her son. This is why two are better than one in a home, in raising children and even when there are no children. It brings a grea...

 I can't tell you how many times this principle has been applied in my life & circumstances. The good that I did for others, as God moved upon my heart, has ALWAYS come back to do me better good than I did in helping others. All this woman has done is use the wealth God has given her to build a room for Elisha to stay in and has taken the time to feed him when passing through town. And we do give credit where credit is do, she could have easily made excuses for not doing so, but she didn't. However, look what she gets in return! Never in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine, that by simply doing good to this obvious servant and man of God, that she would reap a son in return. And not only does she reap a son, but when her son dies years later, that same man, Elisha, restores her son to life. That same man, Elisha, years later, is the cause of this woman having her property restored to her. The dividends, the retribution that is recompensed this woman far exceeds what she...

 You probably would never quote a New Testament Christian saying, "I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies." and then shortly thereafter also asking God to.... “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me..," This is almost comical to a new testament Christian, that someone would come out and speak about his hatred for another and then in the following sentence ask God, "to search him to see if there is any offensive way in him....HELLO! We would say..."are you stupid?" Hatred....this is what we try to conceal from God, is our hatred for others. Why would we openly admit it to God and then ask God to search us, as if we were as pure as the driven snow. Are Christians today confused about who they are and what they should feel? Are we trying "to be Christian" or is it more that we "simply are"....Christian. David never tried to be Godly. David never ...

I think we can safely say, there is a theme running, in today’s reading. Whether you are in the old or New Testament.  In the Old Testament we see Ahab, who purposely surrounds himself by advisors, prophets, who only tell him what he wants to hear. Then we have “the lying spirit that comes to entice him to go into war which will lead to his eventual death.  A good quote I read on that lying spirit, “God did not deceive a truth seeking King. God gave a “truth rejecting” King, over to the deception he preferred.”        Then in the New Testament, Paul is explaining to these people, that they did (crucified Jesus) exactly what the scriptures (that they read every week and some every day) foretold they would do.  How can we read The Word of God everyday and yet do the very things it warns we are capable of doing; if we don’t guard our hearts?  And the answer is simple…deception!      God will give us over not to what we piously espouse,...

   "And Barnabas and Saul returned from  Jerusalem , when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark." We talk and write a lot about the genuine vs. the disingenuous Christian, but where our metal is really tested is in "Ministry". So many Christians avoid ministry and I have heard every excuse there is, as to why "I'm not going to get involved in ministry". And there's always a grain of truth in some of the reasons I hear, but at the heart of it, is a reluctance to be put through the refiners fire. Nothing refines a Christian like ministry. You want to see what a man or woman of God is really made up of, put them in ministry  with other people . That will test any man, any woman's worth. How do we know Barnabas and Saul (Paul) are spiritual? Ans:  They fulfilled their ministry !!! Not enough can be said for that. It was hard, it was more work than they thought, it was full of people problems, demonically...

        Elijah finally lets it slip that he is human after all. He has been on quite an impressive run of Faith. He closes the heavens from rain for 3 years, he is fed by the ravens, then goes to Zarephath and challenges the widow to feed him with her last morsel of food and proclaims to her that she will not run out; then he, by himself, stands on Mt. Carmel and boldly challenges the prophets of Baal to a dual, soaks the altar with water and believes God to consume it with Fire and consume his sacrifice, which God does. My faith probably would have failed when I arrived in Zarephath, only to find that the person God told me would provide for me is worse off than I. However, Elijah is not me.  Elijah is a serious man of faith, seems almost super human, but finally we see that his spiritual armor, like yours and mine, is penetrable after all.  When Elijah hears that Jezebel has put a hit on his life, this sends him into a downward spiritu...

        I have been in this situation more than once! I have learned over the years be careful about coming all humble to your leader, asking him/her what you should do and then walk away and don't listen because you think the advice they gave you is crazy.  You walk away wondering, "why did I even ask, that's the last time....he's crazy if he thinks I'm going to do that". Obadiah runs into someone he really admires, Elijah! However, once his excitement wears off, Obadiah is wishing he had not run into Elijah! “What can I do for you, anything my leader” Elijah asks him to go get Ahab and tell Ahab he wants to meet with him.  Obadiah is outraged at the position Elijah is putting him in. "Why are you asking me to do this, you want me killed?".  And of course we know that Elijah wants Obadiah killed, right?  Well obviously "no", Obadiah is a good man and Elijah knows that, but sometimes it does seem like our leaders don't care about us, th...

     There's a number of interesting thoughts on this passage.  # 1, Elijah is suffering at his own hand, what I mean by that, is he is the one that pronounced there would be no rain, this has caused a drought, which has caused a famine which has not only left the people without food or drink, but ALSO HIM.  However, we see that God is supernaturally providing for him. God tells Elijah to go to Zarephath and there I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.  But if God has directed her then why does she seem somewhat unwilling? If God had told us this, we would have asked and then when we had received the response that Elijah received, [  12  “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”  ] This is not the response we are expecti...

   Sometimes the people that have been giving the most, been given the most gracious opportunity, fail the worse. Handing over to someone something they have not worked or fought for is normally a recipe for failure. This is the problem with "well to do, good deed programs" that build houses for the poor any hand the houses over to these people for free, no investment, no sacrifice, no cost to them and most will run those houses into the ground, just like Jeroboam runs his Kingdom into the ground. Jeroboam receives one of the sternest rebukes that any King ever receives from God. Jeroboam was given one of the greatest opportunities of any man in the Bible. He is in no way in the lineage of David's family, but yet God, for some reason, when He decides to rip the Kingdom away from the House of David, chooses this man to hand it over to him. You would think that Jeroboam would have taken this opportunity and turned it into a long lasting Dynasty for his family, but he does t...

   "If only God did more", we may not speak those words, but we do think them. Well, we can't accuse God of not doing enough in this story.  First He sends a prophet, a man of God, to speak. Result? His words are rejected. (Words aren't enough, how about a miracle, some demonstration of God's power, that's what people need to see).  Okay, so next we get our demonstration of God's power.  Jeroboam stretches his hand out to the guards to have the man of God seized and his hand shrivels up! (People need to see that God is merciful, that's what people need, people see God as mean). Okay, well next we have Jeroboam crying out to God, to the man of God, please have mercy, please heal me.  So, the man of God prays to God and God immediately heals Jeroboam's hand. God has done everything in this situation that we would desire Him to do. He gives a powerful word, 3 great miracles, the altar is split (wow!), hand shrivels up, then God's merciful, He heal...

  I believe Tom Cruise, the actor, on his 3rd marriage [at the time] (and many women in-between) has uttered those words on Oprah. Celebrity status, wealth & good looks are a recipe for disaster. One survey & research suggested that most men "don't cheat" simply because they don't have the opportunity. They don't have striking good looks, don't have money & power, don't have much that is going to have women drawn to them, soliciting them or making sexual advances. So these men don't cheat, at least not physically, but they probably still often cheat, in their minds. Find me a man with good looks, power and wealth and I'll find you a man with some infidelity in his background. "Solomon loved many foreign women", are text tells us. I'm sure he did. Solomon had a Harem full of super models, it was unrestrained lust and sexual indulgence. He was a man who had no governor on his heart. He was able to get the most beautiful wome...