Reading the Bible Properly

 I really should be ashamed to admit this but I will because I truly think it will help someone else. So, I have a confession to make:

After growing up in church and becoming a Christian several years ago and having read the Bible all the way through more than once, I only just now learned how to read my Bible.

There. It feels good to just get that out. Now, here is the rest of the story:

I have been using my KJV Study Bible for the last, oh... four years? I started because the pastor of the church I attended back in Anchorage suggested that it was the best Bible for devotional reading. Up until then, I had been mostly using the Amplified, NKJV, or NASB version at home and using whatever KJV Bible was in the back of the pew at church. I had (and still do) several phone apps with all kinds of versions of the Bible. The point is, I didn't really mind whatever Bible I used because I was only reading the words from book to book and by chapter and verse. I rarely, if ever, paid any attention to the extras.

As you can see, those "helps" are useful if you are really trying to study. And this is just in a regular "reference" type of Bible. My mother used this kind of Bible so there was always one around the house.

Like a lot of people, I usually opted for a Bible version without the thees and thous. Funny enough, now that I am really immersing myself in Bible study and reading, that doesn't trip me up. 

My KJV Study Bible is much like this one - except mine is a soft-cover version. And the How-To-Use section is almost identical to the one in my Bible.

See what I mean? Helpful. And  I had barely paid attention to it until I started doing a lot of Bible studies and began a chronological read-through. 

Yes, I am embarrassed. But I am so happy that I finally took the time to learn how to properly read and study my Bible. 

The chronological reading plan is one with which you are reading the Bible in the order things happened. Since I obviously wasn't paying much attention all the other times I read through the Bible, I am enjoying this plan. It takes longer because I am stopping to read all the explanatory notes, check some of the cross-references, and reflect on various things. I try to take notes also. 

Let me tell you what an amazing difference it is to use all of the aids and actually ponder things as you read. And I am doing something that Chuck Missler suggested: reading aloud. Because I have such struggles with concentration and memory, hearing myself read the words is more useful than I would have thought.

Right now, my best friend is going through some things and this lockdown doesn't help her mood. What I have been doing is something that helps us both. Whenever we talk (almost daily), I will share what I learned from my reading or study. She feels better after our sharing conversations and I have added another reinforcement for my own memory. (Did that make sense???)

So, basically, I just writing this post to encourage others to use all the resources that come with their Bible. Right now, a lot of us are not attending church on a regular basis. We might as well use the lockdown time to just soak ourselves in God's Word.

The links I added in the post will go over the different types of reading plans. Also, there are a lot of apps and free web resources for tips on studying or reading your Bible. Here are the few that I picked up and am implementing:

• Try doing your reading/study at the same time every day or session. (I like doing mine just before bed or first thing in the morning.)
• Read out loud. You don't have to read loud but it helps to vocalize the words. This helps me remember what I have read.)
• Get a notebook or staple some paper together to make a little notes journal. There are some nice journals out there but they get spendy. (I have some newsprint paper that I fold and staple into little booklets. The paper is super-affordable and easy to write on. Newsprint is also really thin and I like using it to slip notes between Bible pages.

Letter-sized newprint

By the way - sorry for the awful photo alignment. Blogger decided to make changes & almost all of them made things worse...

• If you can, try sharing what you read with someone. Sharing and discussing what you read/studied is uplifting and helps to reinforce the lessons.
• If you struggle with procrastinating, remind yourself that you would make time to play a game on your phone, watch a TV show or YouTube video, etc. 
• Be thankful that we still live in a place where we are allowed to read our Bibles without worrying about being jailed or killed. I will remind myself to be thankful that I still have eyesight and that my brain works enough for me to read God's Word. 

I hope that this encourages and uplifts you. 

Peace

--Free

What Is It About God?

 The new season of the Netflix series "Lucifer" has aired. In one of the episodes, Sharon Osbourne plays herself and passes along her husband's gratitude to Lucifer for all of his help over the years.

Now I am already just kind of bemused that there is such a show and that it romanticizes Lucifer. The whole point of the show seems to be to portray the fallen angel as any other sexy and appealing bad boy. What really gets me is how many people like this show and don't seem to be bothered that it is about Lucifer. Here are some of the highlights:

• Just like the "hero" of any trendy plot, he has attracted a seemingly accomplished and smart woman who is in love with him to the point that she would cheerfully follow him into Hell.
• Some of the "good" angels (although only Michael and Gabriel are the only holy angels mentioned by name in the Holy Bible) are featured. One of them, 'Amenadiel' plays a major role. He's good but he's not; he's possibly fallen; he has a child with a human; he helps run a bar in Lucifer's absence. At one point, he babysits Hell for Lucifer.  His character is a muddling of truth and clear lines about anything.
• We are prodded into sympathy (not just for the Devil as Mick sings) for a demon named Maze as she deals with her very human-like issues of abandonment and a need for love.
• There is a trained psychologist who is the mother of Amenadiel's child, by the way. So, again, they are portraying smart, educated and, I guess, emotionally stable people as being fine with this whole Lucifer-is-a-good-guy scenario. 
• The psychologist has a conversation with the female demon and reassures her that they will be together eternally in Hell someday. The demon was fretting about losing people in her life.
• The idea of Lucifer being the Devil is often discussed in public - including the police station - with no one being surprised, upset, or even slightly curious about it

It goes on and on. And, of course, God is blasphemed with a giddy kind of confidence. I am not surprised by the people who are involved with the writing and production of the show. I shouldn't wonder about the actors but I can't help myself. I wonder if they are thinking that they are just earning a harmless paycheck or getting some television facetime. I wonder how much a career means to some people - like just how far will they go?

There is no reverence. This show doesn't even pretend not to be openly blasphemous and dismissive of God. I was so surprised when I heard a while back that there was even a "Save Lucifer" (get it?) campaign among fans to keep the show in production.

I was most surprised by some of the actors working on this series. I am guilty of sometimes assuming things about people I don't know. People in the public eye usually have the job of portraying themselves in a certain way and I will often buy into that facade. The first role I ever saw the actor D.B. Woodhouse in was as Melvin Franklin in that miniseries, The Temptations. As Franklin, Woodhouse was a gentle giant with a kind heart; someone you would think of as a church-raised mama's boy. 

What I did not know about this show before deciding to write this post is that it is based on a D.C. Comic character. 

So I come back around to this: What is it about God? Here are some things to think about as we live in a world that claims to be so "evolved" and among people who believe in their own immense intelligence and high morals.

• What is it about God that so many people claim not to believe in Him but constantly attack and blaspheme Him?
• Why is God under so much attack and ridicule but not Buddha or Allah or... name your other gods?
• If man doesn't believe in God, where do they think they get the idea of right and wrong? Was that something that 'evolved' with the ability to walk upright and think logically?
• If there is no God, as so many people believe, why not at least cut Christianity the same slack that is given to Scientology, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.? 

The one thing that always hangs me up with understanding vehement atheists, agnostics, or former Christians is this: why is it so hard to believe in a God who created the universe while it's so easy to believe in ghosts, demons, and other supernatural phenomena?

I once worked with a woman who laughed when I talked about there being a literal unseen spirit world all around us. The same woman loved ghost stories and always dreamed of going on a ghost-hunting trek. She believed in the Ouija board and she talked often about her kitten who was very "sensitive" to things happening in her apartment. 

Did you understand what I just wrote? The woman who laughed at me for my beliefs in a spirit world was literally fascinated with the spirit world.

Can we just stop and consider for a moment how stubbornly illogical people can be? I am now convinced that disbelief in God is not really a matter of logic with most people. Some people would just rather not believe. 

One Bible teacher made the remark that, if you don't believe in the danger, you don't believe in the need for salvation. I wonder if some people aren't just afraid. Afraid that, if they dare believe, they will have to change on their own power; afraid that believing in God means obeying lots of complicated rules and rituals; afraid that they don't have what it takes to be a Christian.

All "it takes" to be a Christian is to admit that you are a sinner in need of salvation. That is it. You don't need your own strength or ability. If you come before Him and ask for salvation, God will take care of the rest.

I think that some people think that they will have time to come to salvation "later" - when they are old or sick or at their rock bottom. The problem is, we don't know if we will live to take our next breath. We don't have to watch for signs of "The End" or for some kind of doomsday signal; Our own personal "end" is coming at some point.

Please pray for those who are still not come under the blood of Jesus. Pray that they won't die in an accident or some fast illness before they have heard you tell them about the Lord.

Peace

--Free

A Must Read: The Entire Works of Flavius Josephus

 Well, I have been reading the most interesting stuff every evening before bed this week. I have heard about this for years but never thought to check it out until recently:

That is Flavius Josephus. Thank you, Wikipedia. I am only just now getting into the first book I found on my library's app. It's a work that is split into several sections. 

That, my friends, is just the contents for one book of twenty. If you are interested in reading it and don't have a library app for your phone, here is a link to the entire set courtesy of Project Gutenberg, bless them. What's nice is that the contents are composed of links so you can jump through the work easier.

Because I only had the barest awareness of Flavius Josephus and his writings, I went over to Got Questions to get a quick rundown before I started reading. Got Questions is fairly reliable for highlighting any warnings about books and other sources of information. I highly recommend using that site or discussing with a trusted fellow Christian before venturing into unknown territory (churches, study sources, etc) of learning. Be discerning, always.

Of course, I am only on the first book (BOOK I. Containing The Interval Of Three Thousand Eight Hundred And Thirty-Three Years. — From The Creation To The Death Of Isaac) and when I started reading, I immediately recognized that he is re-telling the books of the Torah. He starts with "in the beginning" and gives Moses credit for authorship of the original telling. And let me identify Flavius correctly with this from an Amazon book search I did:

Titus Flavius Josephus (37 – c. 100), born Joseph ben Matityahu, was a first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer.

And, yeah, I did have to go look up the definition of "hagiographer" (a writer of the lives of the saints). Learn a little something every day...

Now, what is so beautiful about this is that so many people try to downplay the historical reality of most people mentioned in the Bible - like Moses, or Noah, etc - but Flavius is a verified person and he is recounting his Jewish history. This is the way most cultures pass along their history, like griots, sharing stories of their "roots" and genealogy.  

I wish that this is a work that had been included in my high school education. There is so much history given in such detail and it's a much more interesting read than the textbooks my schools used. At the very least, these works should be used by parents in teaching their children. This is, after all, our history - Judeo-Christian history and I was never even aware of its existence until I was in my late 20s.

There is too much content for me to even start discussing this huge work but I did want to share the links. Amazon has copies in all kinds of formats - electronic, audio, paper, etc - and I plan to get at least a paperback copy so that I can make notes in the margins. 

Now I have to get back to reading. Between this and the Bible, I am "booked up" for years.

Peace

--Free