The One Year Bible - Day 216

Poor Josiah. After a life of genuine dedication to God, he lost the ability to discern God's voice from king Neco of Egypt. This mistake cost him his life. It is so easy to come awry after a period of 'success' (if we can call it that) once we start shifting from God-focussed to me-focussed. We can't say it too many times people - check yourself before you wreck yourself!

The One Year Bible - Day 215

Josiah pursued God at the age of 16! He had been made king at the age of 8 and although he had help from Hilkiah, it was clear that this boy had a heart after God. Where are we releasing our young people to pursue God? Not in that patronising way where they are only allowed to do young people's work or special youth services but full-on church involvement?

The One Year Bible - Day 214

I love it! Imagine, you are besieged by a massive army from a country who has been undefeated against every other nation. You are cornered in your city with limited supplies and you get threatened. What do you do? Well Hezekiah cried out to the Lord in prayer and "and the Lord sent an angel who destroyed the Assyrian army with all its commanders and officers". Haha, take that Sennacherib!
We need to keep on realizing how much resource we have in Christ and start living on that truth. Forget fear, let's live in victory!

The One Year Bible - Day 213

Do you ever have arguments at work about following processes? There tend to be people who follow them to the letter and others who take them "more as a guide"! Well Hezekiah ends up celebrating the passover at the wrong time because the preparations started late and the priests weren't ready. You could imagine God not liking this because it wasn't "to process" but actually Hezekiah understood that the act of the Passover was more important than when it took place, certainly in this one-off situation. In the church, we also have processes, either formal or informal and sometimes as leaders, we have to make a decision uni-laterally which is not necessarily malicious but simply to ensure the Spirit wins over the procedures!

The One Year Bible - Day 212

It seems it is not enough for someone's successor to be more Godly than the person they take over from but they need to take positive action to restore what has been lost. In the OT it was mostly destroying pagan shrines and asherah poles but nowadays, there are similar idols in the church that need not to be simply ignored or even denounced but to be destroyed. Sadly the Christian life has to be cycles of blessing and then tidying up as we notice the rubbish start to collect in our lives.

The One Year Bible - Day 211

Uzziah did what was pleasing to the Lord. It seems clear that if we maintain a position where we are doing what pleases the Lord, then many things prosper under our leadership. Here we read of fertile valleys, a strong army and success over neighbouring nations, not because of talent or strength but as a result of favour.
I guess we easily fall into the trap of "doing" to earn some sort of brownie points instead of simply "being" before God. Our time spent "being", which is prayer, Bible and meditation should always balance or perhaps be much greater than our time spent doing!

The One Year Bible - Day 210

We read again today in Chronicles about how much God actually does despite what we do. If it were up to us, we would take a large army to fight someone. However the Arameans won the war with a small army because God allowed them to win over a Godless nation. I fear what our nation is becoming as we feel we are advancing in our own eyes but all that will happen is God will allow a catastrophe to occur to remind us that we need to be dependent on Him. I also think we easily dismiss what God chooses to do in place of the free will that we think we have in all matters.

The One Year Bible - Day 209

"Jehoram was 32 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem 8 years. No one was sorry when he died".
For some of us chasing a dream, to reach that dream feels like a major success. We might want to be a sportsman, a president or a pop-star but the reading today displays that these things count for nothing in eternity.
Jehoram became king and this would have been an amazing experience so why was his first act to kill his brothers? He should have simply done what God required of him as king and died another hero but we read that he was so hated, there was no celebration when he died and he was not buried in the royal cemetery. He could have done something great with a legacy in eternity but rather he squandered his chances and ended up as a swear word.
We could be in the same situation. We could be the leader of a church and perhaps even popular at one point but if we seek our own ends and not Gods, we will be remembered with little interest or excitement. Let us be like King David and not like Jehoram!

The One Year Bible - Day 208

"Always think carefully before pronouncing judgement. Remember that you do not judge to please people but to please the Lord"
We can read this and think, "yeah, I agree" but do you ever wonder to what extent we might need to take it? I was interested to read about Glenn Beck, the US commentator who has gone to Israel and told them to trust in God and not be swayed by world opinion and I realised how much guts it takes to go that far.
How many of us when we look at Israel, simply see a normal situation of conflict where the best way would be to please as many people as possible and find some sort of compromise and how many of us rely on what the Bible promises concerning Israel despite many well-know and respected people on the world stage (including Christians) who would denounce this view.
Our judgements are our responsibility and should be based on our own revelation and conscience, not on someone else who has better credentials or more experience. That is the reality of basing our views on what God wants and not on what people want. Not an easy game.

The One Year Bible - Day 207

"Then the fear of the Lord fell over all the surrounding kingdoms so that none of them wanted to declare war on Jehoshaphat"
Do you ever wonder about situations like the Iraq war or the government stance on terrorism or society? Do you ever say that there is no real answer to these problems and the government simply has to decide what they think best and accept the consequences?
Something we are reminded of today is that devoting yourselves to God as a community is enough to remove some of these problems. Not just because you might get Godly wisdom to deal with things but because God acts on your behalf in the spiritual world and does things to protect you!
I always wonder how much the MPs and politicians really pray about their decisions?!

The One Year Bible - Day 206

There is a continuous theme in the OT Kings that involves good kings smashing Ashera poles, shrines and foreign temples and the bad Kings building them up. We can look at these and think it strange that something so obvious happened in direct opposition to God's command but actually, we all do exactly the same things.
In our lives, we build up foreign Gods, either in general or specifically in the church. We venerate people sometimes above God, we talk about ministries as if the success is due to people, we talk about certain churches like they are special despite God rather than because of.
If we are taking over a ministry, does our Spirit tell us to smash these Gods and work to remove things that distract us from God? Do we specifically avoid praising men rather than God? And more importantly, do we actively rebuke people or situations that say things related to idolatry?
I expect mostly not!

The One Year Bible - Day 205

We read today about something that is subtle but actually does occur in our lives. We have someone who was doing something evil that was obviously born of the flesh but which actually got stopped because God told him to stop. I think it demonstrates that our lives are not ones of black and white but all of us have a balance between our Godly minded-ness and our human minded-ness. We should strive to be more God-minded so we can avoid incidents and mistakes in our own lives where this happens.

The One Year Bible - Day 204

Solomon made a big gesture today. He moved his foreign wife from Jerusalem to another palace because he realised that she should not be 'on holy ground'. The law dictated that the Israelites should not marry foreign women since they would be led astray yet Solomon, who we know had a fondness for the ladies, had done exactly that. He had at least done something about this and made sure he separated his 'unholy' wife from the area of the Temple. I somehow feel this was half-hearted though and it would be like saying I will leave my alcoholism at home and not bring it into the church. What Solomon should have done, as the returning Exiles did in Ezra, was to divorce their wives and send them back to their own lands. To completely deal with the compromise and not try and ignore it. What do we bring to church or perhaps 'leave at home' which we should actually get shot of? Something obvious like addiction?, an un-Godly relationship? Perhaps something more subtle like fear, bitterness or pain? God has the power to deal with these things, why on earth do we allow them to continue?

The One Year Bible - Day 203

Solomon dedicates the Temple with a very sincere prayer. He asks that God will always dwell there. Many church congregations treat their buildings like the Temple even though we are told that we are His temple but yet we don't treat it fully like a Temple. Personally, I don't see the building as the temple but I go to an Anglican church and that is certainly how it is perceived in many people's eyes. We use phrases totally freely like, "Are you going to church", "I didn't see you at church", "He is over in the church", despite many people openly acknowledging that the building is not the church/Temple. What is half-hearted though is that although we sort of treat the building like the Temple, we do not fully consecrate it. We do not metaphorically wash before going in, we do not restrict the activity in the building to what is suitable for a Temple (at least not in our church). In some ways, I have a respect for the high churches who do go the full 9 yards and treat their buildings with reverence. It might be Old Testament but it is consistent. I feel that a lot of newer churches are inconsistent and are pehaps guilty of discarding some religious concepts but holding on to others.

The One Year Bible - Day 202

We read today about some of the items made for the temple by Solomon and the one I was struck by was called "the sea" and was a massive bronze bowl which could hold 16,500 gallons of water! The priests used this as their means of ritual washing before they offered service in the Temple. It would be easy to use parallels in the spiritual world for what 'washing' means to the Christian but I have been challenged recently to ask what this meant physically. My opinion is that God is not a God of formality and religious liturgy rather than a practically minded and spiritual God. If we ask therefore what it meant to be clean before God to the priests, we can ask what dirt is or perhaps what it might be. Is it possible that if the priests hadn't washed and took a significant amount of bacteria or viruses into the Temple, that the reaction that would occur in the presence of a Holy Almighty God might well cause these priests' death? We can easily read that God requires us to do certain things otherwise in some way He will 'punish' us but this does not match up too well with a loving God who is aware of our weaknesses, so we need to ask therefore what God is asking of us and it must relate to His ultimate will which is that we come back into a relationship with Him and must throw away everything that hinders. The question is, what about this uncleanliness hinders?

The One Year Bible - Day 201

What would you ask for if God told you he'd give you anything? I think most of us, would automatically think of something material like money, a house or perhaps that 'dream' job. Solomon asks for wisdom however. On your top 10 list of things to ask for, would this honestly be one? For many of us, sadly, I think we are still very much earthly minded and not heavenly minded much at all. This might not be as blatant as full-on materialism, although that might lurk underneath, but it might well be in the way that we carry out our Christian ministry. By definition, we need to ask God for direction in all things spiritual but honestly, how much time do we spend praying. If we spend more time doing than praying, we are probably still too earthly minded.

The One Year Bible - Day 200

1 Chronicles 29 and a great passage about people giving freely to God's work. What is important here is that there is communication first, David no doubt explains and imparts his vision for the temple which is then caught by the others and which enables them to be willing to give generously to the work. We must be careful to spend appropriately on God's work (i.e. generously) but only off the back of a well communicated vision. If people are not catching the vision then it needs to be back to the prayer table!

The One Year Bible - Day 199

Organisation. It is a hard thing to balance in a church setting. We end up in a number of scenarios. We might decide that organisation is basically un-Godly, since we must trust Him for everything and probably our church is quite sloppily run as a result. We might decide that organisation is very important and might end up therefore restricting what God can do because it doesn't fit into the organisational plan. Otherwise we might end up with some sort of balance.
In Israel, we see David being very keen on organisation and we can learn a few things about what works and what doesn't. The key things here are gifting and trust. We cannot imagine David picking a weakling to run the army or an idiot to run the storehouses. He was apparently gifted himself in spotting talent and using it - something important to do in churches. The other thing was then trusting these people (with some accountability of course) to do what they were good at and were entrusted to do. There can be interference from people above us if there is a lack of trust or some lack-lustre performances from people in positions they are not gifted in.

The One Year Bible - Day 198

1 Chronicles 25 is one of the few passages about music in the Bible. It is interesting that we place a massive emphasis on it in today's churches whereas the Bible places much more emphasis on the Kingdom, integrity, love and power. Anyway, the one thing that struck me was how seriously they took their music. There were people appointed who were directed by musical directors. We can easily shy away from such things in the church because we are afraid of excluding people who might not be very good. Of course you can arrange music with people are aren't that good, you just have to limit what they do to what they are able to do. If we were playing for the Queen, we would prepare and practise loads. For some reason we don't feel the same burden to do so for the King of Kings even though He is infinitely greater.

The One Year Bible - Day 197

We read in 1 Chronicles 22 a great passage about what it means to leave a legacy. We mostly want to get the glory, as A W Tozer said, "We say that God gets all the glory but we enjoy the fringe benefits". So the idea that we might only be preparing ground for someone else is not good for our egos. We want to reap what we sow, or perhaps even more. David realises that he will not build the temple but rather than simply leaving it to Solomon to do his own work, David draws up plans and prepares building materials in advance to aid Solomon and in doing so leaves a legacy. Of course, this could be seen as David trying to get some of the credit but we read that David is concerned that Solomon might not have the confidence since he is young and wants to reduce the burden of the job.

The One Year Bible - Day 196

I was wondering today about the way in which foolishness incurs a debt that is not always easily repaid. Look at Hanun the new king of the Ammonites and the way he foolishly not only mistrusted the gesture from king David but also then humiliated the messengers instead of perhaps sending a message back. He then mustered a war machine and allies in preparation to fight and then lost hopelessly twice. It is hard to imagine what it must be like to have 40000 soldiers killed in a battle but this was a result of foolishness, there is always less debt when we acknowledge mistakes as soon as possible and deal with them. Trying to hide behind pride just leads us to a fall.

The One Year Bible - Day 195

We see today the correct format for serving in church. The leadership arrange for the practical people to carry out their operations. This is important because lots of churches seem to have a continual tension between leaders who decide things by themselves without regard to the operations and practical people who feel they are not free to do things properly or who are not allowed to make decisions such as where to spend money. It is important that the practical people are empowered to run things practically as the Apostles dictated to the Deacons in Acts and it is also important that the Leadership are happy that the practical arrangements being made for the running of churches are appropriate to the vision of the church. As with many things in life, a balance is required between hands on and hands off. I remember a church leadership discussing for 2 hours whether to buy a mobile phone for emergency church use (there was no land line) even though it would only cost £30 or something!