From the Pastor’s Desk
Update:
As I am writing this I am in Colorado, working on packing, moving, and getting the building ready for closing. This Wednesday night I will not be in Abilene but, Jeremy will be handling the service there. If you cannot make it to service Wednesday night we will be viewing a video on “The House of God” to kickoff our newest Bible study series called “The Church, Pillar and Ground of the Truth.” Here is a link to this video by David Cloud: https://www.wayoflife.org/s3/building_new_testament_church.php
Some special prayer requests: Please pray for Alice this week, she has surgery on Thursday for her knee. Pray that the surgery will go well and she will have a speedy recovery. Keep praying for Skylar and that the insurance company will pay for her treatments. Keep praying for church growth and for souls to be saved here in Abilene!
From the Bible
This last Wednesday night I took Bible questions, which we do from time to time. It’s amazing the questions our young people come up with, especially those that are in the Christian School. This last week many of their questions were challenging to answer and rather deep, lol. Here is a question one of our young men asked me a few months ago that I wrote down, that is not really deep but, very practical. The question was “Pastor where should I start reading my Bible?” This is a really good question that a lot of Christians, and especially young Christians deal with. I am very pleased that they were not asking “Should” I read my Bible but, where can I get started?
First I would say read your Bible and enjoy it. In order to do that, there are places in the Bible that I would not recommend you start. This is the problem with these “Read Through Your Bible in a Year” programs. With most of them you lose interest real quick. Those Old Testament books can be a little boring at first, and hard to wade through. I would suggest that you start in three places. The Gospel of John, GEPC, and Proverbs. This approach will allow you to see what kind of Bible study is most enjoyable to you. So let’s break this down. The Gospel of John is familiar to many, with great stories of Jesus’ earthly ministry. It starts with “In the beginning was the Word,” and moves on the Christ’s earthly ministry including John 3:16. The Gospel of John flows well and is a good read that will encourage many young Christians in their new found faith in Christ. GEPC (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Collisions) are those four small books in about the center of the New Testament. If you want a small book that you could read all the way through in one sitting, a small book that you could wrap your mind around its entirety, then these are good for that. These four books can be more challenging than the Gospel of John. They are little more in depth, more theological. You can read just a few verse in these books and meditate, or read an entire chapter, and go back the next day start over. It takes a while to fully digest the content of these four books. They are good to begin exercising those new Spiritual discernment muscles. The book of Proverbs is fun to read, because it is easy to take the short wise sayings and quickly apply them to your everyday life. Proverbs has no great deep overarching theme except to understand and get wisdom. You may need to get a dictionary (or google it) to understand some of the sayings, but many are readily understood with no further study. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs and many Christians make it a lifetime, daily habit, to read one chapter each day for the day of the month (ie Chapter one on the 1st, and chapter two on the 2nd etc).
These three places which I recommend you start all three at once, will begin to show how and where you most enjoy reading and studying your Bible. You may be the type who likes to dig in a little deeper in the GEPC, or just enjoy the Gospel story of the Gospels, or a daily dose of wisdom from Proverbs. In time you may find yourself taking this three prong approach to your reading and study everyday. In time, as your Spiritual muscles grow, you will forge on to other great, and more challenging, adventures in your Bible. One day your will even appreciate Leviticus, and see the mind of God and the principle of the Gospel in the law. You will learn to enjoy the beauty of Hebrew poetry or the challenges of understanding Revelation. I hope this encourages and challenges yo to get into your Bibles! And when you have questions, come to church and ask them. By they way, the fact that our young people ask “where to read” tells me why they have the most questions to ask on question night. God bless you all!
Pastor Wilkinson
