A Bible Reading Challenge - Completed

Last night, I completed my reading of the entire Bible. What an experience it has been! I look forward to blogging a little more now since I will have a little more time to do so. I will elaborate on this more later, but I wanted to share that it is done - and that it was INCREDIBLE!

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me and prayed for me during this journey. Thanks to God for His faithfulness at all times and for revealing Himself in His Word.

A Prayer Request

Please be in prayer for Pat and Kim Weindrop. They are members of our church. After services last Sunday, they found their son, Christopher Michael Weindrop, dead at home. He was a victim of a heart attack. He was only 23 years old.

He will be missed by all. The funeral services will be held tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for your prayers during this time of grief.

A Bible Reading Challenge - update

Thanks again to all who have stopped by and read my entries here at Wellsprings. I appreciate your encouragement.

I am still on track to finish reading the entire Bible by January 31, 2008. I have finished the New Testament and the Law, History and Wisdom sections of the Old Testament. I still marvel at how themes for prayer and study jump out at me as I read in large sections. This experience has been a blessing so far.

Pray that I will continue to study prayerfully and not simply read to get things read.

Some thoughts for the New Year

I heard a sermon on the radio yesterday from "Leading the Way". I thought the text a great one for us at the beginning of 2008.

"Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Phi 3:13-14 NASB)

Many of us will walk through the new year with our past clinging to us - whether painful or victorious. We need to forget what lies behind. We must set those things aside (because they take our focus off of Jesus and place it on ourselves) and press on toward the prize. We must keep our eyes on Jesus Christ because the prize is found in Him alone!

Thoughts from Charles Spurgeon

"I suppose you are all aware that among the old systems of astronomy was one which placed the earth in the centre, and made the sun, and the moon, and the stars revolve around it.

"Now, in a similar fashion, there is a way of making a system of theology of which man is the centre, by which it is implied that Christ and His atoning sacrifice are only made for man's sake, and that the Holy Spirit is merely a great Worker on man's behalf, and that even the great and glorious Father is to be viewed as simply existing for the sake of making man happy. Well, that may be the system of theology adopted by some; but, brethren, we must not fall into that error, for, just as the earth is not the centre of the universe, so man is not the grandest of all beings.

"The salvation of man must surely be first of all for the glory of God; and you have discovered the right form of Christian doctrine when you have found the system that has God in the centre, ruling and controlling according to the good pleasure of His will. Do not dwarf man so as to make it appear God has no care for him; for if you do that, you slander God. Give to man the position that God has assigned to him; by doing so, you will have a system of theology in which the truths of revelation and experience will move in glorious order and harmony around the great central orb, the Divine Sovereign Ruler of the universe, God over all, blessed for ever." - Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to my Students

In light of the huge amount of man centered preaching and teaching going on in the church today, I thought this message from Spurgeon particularly appropriate. May all God's people declare God's word for God's glory alone.