Daily Bible Reading?
No, it is not a legally binding duty; daily Bible reading is rather to be seen as a personal daily delight. “When your words came,” said Jeremiah, “I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight.” (Jeremiah 15:16) We fall in love with Christ – and we find ourselves wanting to read the Scriptures, because they lead us to him. (John 5:39).
David the Psalmist said: “I rise before dawn,” he exclaimed, “and cry for help. I have put my hope in your word.” (Psalm 119:147). This sounds like a habit!
Isaiah knew it, too. “The sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.” (Isaiah 50:4). That sounds like every day!
The apostle Peter exhorted his readers to receive God’s ‘pure spiritual milk’ so that by it they might ‘grow up’ in their salvation. He then goes on to say, “As you come to him, the living Stone…” and the Greek of the text indicates that they were to continue coming, in this way. (1 Peter 2:2-4).
Let daily Bible reading and prayer be like the meeting of lovers for an agreed appointment. As Soren Kierkegaard of Denmark once observed, “A believer is surely a lover; yes, of all lovers the most in love!”
From ‘The Top 100 Questions – biblical answers to popular questions’
by Richard Bewes
The Perfect Church?
If you should find the perfect church
Without one fault or smear,
For goodness sake don’t join that church
You’d spoil the atmosphere.
If you should find the perfect church
Where all anxieties cease,
Then pass it by, lest joining it
You spoil the masterpiece.
If you should find the perfect church
Then don’t you ever dare
To tread upon such holy ground
You’d be a misfit there.
But since no perfect church exists,
Made of perfect kin,
Then let’s cease looking for that church,
And love the church we’re in.
Of course it’s not the perfect church,
That’s simple to discern,
But you and I and all of us
Could cause the tide to turn.
What fools we are to flee our post
In that unfruitful search
To find, as last, where problems loom
God proudly builds His church.
Anonymous
