The Daily Bible Challenge

     Good Monday morning, I am ready for this week and hope you are too! There is excitement in the air here at The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Madeline has work today at our local Artisan Bakery, simply named Baked, and my eldest son James will soon also, with several promising interviews scheduled this week. I have scheduled to install the carburetor I rebuilt last week for early this morning to allow time for any adjustments and testing. We think the Old Eeyore (1992 Jeep Cherokee) is finally repaired now, as we installed the new gas tank Saturday morning before James left for San Antonio. James will be testing it today, as we hope the stalling will be gone now that there is a new fuel pump in a new clean gas tank. In a few weeks, we will need to repair the AC on this one as it seems to have a clogged expansion valve and/or accumulator drier or a failed compressor. All cheap parts to buy but harder to install. There is hope in the air here this morning, and we will ...

     Waiting on God or anyone else, for that matter,  is not one of my strong points, how about you? In today’s Daily Bible Challenge (Genesis 12), we read more of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah (here they are still called Abram and Sarai). So if they are to be a great nation, then they will have to have offspring to do so. Now remember, Sarai was described earlier as barren, so this will be a miracle of God’s doing. They had to wait 75 years for this child to be born to start their new lineage that God promised! I struggle with this guy Abram quite a bit, but who am I to question God’s authority and choices of who He favors! I have struggled for a long time with Abram as I wrestle with his choices later in this chapter and later in Genesis also. I tend to struggle with people who cower in fear for their own lives, but my lack of fear is probably just because I know where I will be going when I die (so, maybe it is not any kind of bravery)!   ...

    Good morning, another Saturday for all of us to enjoy! I finished rebuilding that carburetor on my old truck yesterday and will install it today and try to work out the kinks with all the adjustments. It was a big mess with at least a hundred parts to clean (in some cases, soda blast). If that wasn’t bad enough, the rebuild kit was for several models, so there were far more new parts and gaskets than were being used on this model. (Oh, and why include the parts for all the vacuum controls, those diaphragms will be fine after forty years LOL). The other part was that the instructions were unclear; it was more of an exploded view and not much else. The pictures I took as I disassembled it were more helpful than anything else! I even had a YouTube video for some of it, but it was just from someone struggling and confused as I was! Many people end up buying a new Chinese carburetor with mixed results on quality. But there is one quality version too from Webber (the racing...

     Good morning to all in whatever corners of the world this letter might reach! What an amazing time we live in. I can click these keys on this keyboard and write to someone ten thousand miles away, and they read it in mere moments after it is posted. Some of us saw many of today’s technologies born, and some were born without knowing what it was like to live without them!     This reminds me of my late brother-in-law, he was an interesting sort, he had little use for tech, and his life was much like Nimrod (Noah’s great-grandson) he was described here as “the great hunter before the Lord’ in chapter 10 of Genesis for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge.     You see, my brother-in-law was an accomplished hunter also, and grew bored with the ease with which he could hunt with a rifle. You see, he was in special forces in Vietnam, and the use of a rifle was second nature to him. Now, because of the kind of larger-than-life character...

     Good Thursday morning to each of you. I am excited as I await this morning’s sunrise, as we are forecast to have rain today at The Little Hundred Acre Wood on the hilltop overlooking Lake Granbury. With the clouds and sunlight, there is so much for God to use to show off His artwork in the sky. His paintings, appearing for only seconds at a time, light up the sky, and true artists aspire to copy His works on their own canvases! But if it is a grey overcast sunrise, I can rejoice in the impending rain as the whole property needs the spring rains to start, as we are in a semidrought condition. Our poor asparagus patch is not producing very well due to the lack of rain. I harvested a few stalks last night, but there was so little I just ate it while walking back up the hill.     Yesterday I worked far less as I needed to give the old bones in my hands a rest. The new Eeyore truck is really making some progress this week, although cosmetically, s...

     Good Wednesday morning to each of you. For today's Daily Bible Challenge, we are in chapter 8 of Genesis. I hope your morning is going well and you have great plans for this day, after some prayer time and some Bible time, of course! Today, we listen to how the flood waters receded in Noah’s day. It reminds me of a strange time in our lives, some eight years ago now. Our flood was Hurricane Harvey, and we were stuck there waiting for the water to recede as we were tending to some dear friend’s house while they were on mission in China at the orphanage that Beth & Steven Curtis Chapman facilitated in China. It was so sad to see this home flooded, and we had quite a bit of loss ourselves as we had moved in and had all our belongings there. We were blessed that it was a two-story house, so we could move the small stuff upstairs. But many family heirlooms were lost by us and our friends. There was great fear as you didn’t know if the flood waters would keep risi...

     What an amazing red sunrise we have this morning, I sometimes feel guilty for getting to see God’s creation so easily every morning now that we live here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood! Today’s sunrise kind of marks a new chapter in our lives, you see, last night was a special night for us as a couple, Madeline had her commencement ceremony for Re/Generation, and gave her testimony with her classmates. This program is something God uses to free people from the bondage and baggage in their lives. This baggage sometimes holds people back from a more full and intimate relationship with God and others. Hurts against us or hurts we have done to others sometimes cause great emotional scarring, and this eleven-month course helps people gain the tools needed to rise up and overcome those struggles of the past. This program was originally created at WaterMark Church (here is a link: https://www.regenerationrecovery.org/about ), but has now spread to churches around the ...

     Oh, bother, what to do with these strange accounts in the Bible? Our modern-day schools have taught us so much differently than what the Bible tells us. What if Genesis 6 (the building of the Ark) is true and the science of evolution and creation has a great bias in its accounts? What if we do find the remains of an ark on Mount Ararat? What if the great canyons of this earth were really formed by a rapid draining of floodwaters? We were taught theories as facts in school, so why not listen to this historical account and ponder its possibilities as being fact, or are you too biased for that?    Do you believe in magic? Well to most who witness God’s miracles, would consider them at least otherworldly or magic! Now I am not defining miracles as black magic I am using the word “magic” as just an event that is unexplainable to our current scientific understanding of what is possible. Words are very important here because I don’t want to come across a...

     Good morning and Happy Sabbath to the Churches that celebrate on Sunday, to the others I hope your Sabbath was full of rest worship, and fellowship as God designed it to be! We have had a very full weekend so far and hope for a more restful Sabbath today. Yesterday, we had a son move in for ninety days of restoration, a car repair, a reorganization of the kitchen & pantry (allowing for our son’s supplies), and a birthday party for a friend at a tiny saloon built in 1897, that friend just turned 70, I would guess him to be in his fifties as full of life as he is! He has a lifelong passion/affinity for Hawaiian shirts and asked the partygoers to wear one if they had one. I pulled out my antique made-in-Hawaii shirt from my late Uncle John and wore it proudly. It only comes out of storage for special occasions! Now to not paint this scene incorrectly, this was a mixed crowd celebrating, people ranging from their teens and early twenties all the way into their l...

     It is so easy for me to get confused by chapter four of Genesis, Oh did I say that out loud…LOL! Yes men and women of God that spend their whole lives studying and worshipping still get confused by a book conceived and inspired by the creator of the universe! If someone tells you they know and understand everything about God that is their ego talking and they should probably be ignored! I often get confused when I study the reaction and interaction of man, less so when studying God! God’s nature is pure, man’s is muddy and selfish so knowing this, why do I get confused? If we understand that God was willing to die (and did) for man to be saved we can understand His Holiness ( as well as a mortal can) and that He is not like us in so many ways (yes even though we were made in His image).     So, just how does one decide out of jealousy to kill his own brother and then lie about it to the all-knowing and all-seeing God? This is the part where I...

     Good Friday morning to all of you! Easter is around the corner now and marks spring for us here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood, our grass is growing tall enough to mow soon and we have even seen a few wildflowers and surprise lilies pop up. We have had our first asparagus harvest too! We love fresh asparagus! It has been quite warm but I have had to use my days on getting Eeyore II ready for prime time instead of remodeling our home. I had a semi-successful run into Weatherford in her yesterday. With only two minor issues to work out along the way, I will count that as a win! But with a 42-year-old truck that has not been on the road in a while, these things are to be expected for a while.     If you are asking what would make a man drive around in such an old truck it is just this simple! I am tired of fighting all the faulty electronics in modern cars, they last about eight to ten years then you are fighting cheap components that shut down...

     Good morning, I hope this letter finds you and yours well! I am up extra early this morning, maybe it is because of the changes coming in our household, maybe it is because God wanted me in prayer longer this morning, or maybe it is just bad luck, (but I highly doubt that last maybe). The change is Madeline starts a new job today, she is overjoyed to start in a real commercial kitchen this morning, she loves cooking and serving others, so I am really excited for her! There is another change coming as our eldest son moves in with us this Friday for up to 90 days as we help him get his feet back under him from a series of very hard knocks in his life! He will be living in the dungeon of this old house of ours. It gives him more privacy and independence which a man needs in such times. He will be earning his keep by helping me with the exterior remodeling so that the siding and paintwork can be completed before the end of spring. That is when he isn’t at his job sa...

     Good morning as we start a new adventure in The Old Testament, for The Daily Bible Challenge! Where we stop listening to gossip about God and start listening to God about God! If you are new here maybe it would be best if you first went to blueletterbible.org and read at the very least John 1 (Not 1st John 1). Use the quick nav button to find this, and please choose the NASB version to keep things clear. This will give you some background needed to begin understanding things like verse 26 in Genesis 1.     It is only natural for me to discuss creation as more believable than chance, so bear with me if you are a skeptic. There are over a million parts to the human eye, without it we would have surely perished in less than a generation, so this, for me, discounts any belief in evolution. I have a hundred or more such explanations of creation, just contact me through PM/DM and I will be happy to discuss them with you!     So ...

     Good morning all, for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge we are in the last chapter of the Holy Bible this morning Revelation 22. For some of you, this is just the beginning but for others it is the end of a very long journey reading/listening to the Bible cover to cover, taking in every last word and making it a part of your life! Tomorrow we will start the Old Testament again, I have been praying asking if God wanted this ministry to continue and He answered my prayers. The answer was clear to me when I found out about a dear friend and missionary who has been following along almost daily with us in The Daily Bible Challenge. I have always told myself, that if even just one person reads the whole Bible because of this ministry it was all worth it and now I know! I don’t need any riches or fame from this, but I do need the occasional affirmation from God that I am on the path He has planned for me! Mostly I need that out of fear I will screw something up LOL! So in ...

Good morning to all of you around the world and around the corner, it is with mixed emotions as we are about to finish Revelation. It is a fascinating chapter, with such imagery that it is hard to see all the wonder! I can’t even imagine a world without night and without the sea but that is what is described here! A world without a sun because God’s light shines everywhere! Please join us by clicking the link below and listen for yourself! This can be a pretty intense mental journey, I am not sure I like the sound of all of this, but in those times we must trust in God that it will be all He says it will be!    We are about to finish the New Testament together, wow what an adventure this has been! We only have today's and tomorrow’s chapters, if you have been with us for the whole Bible congratulations! You have become one of the statistical few that have actually read the whole Bible cover to cover! If that is you, here is your new challenge; What are you going to d...

   Good morning and a fine Sunday to each of you! This morning I challenge you to try to hear the truth in the Word instead of what you want to hear or what you have been taught in the past! Just think of the meaning here and keep it simple if you can. In this, you will have revelations that maybe you have never begun to understand or have been misled in the past! Where am I going with that? Well, a hint for you is God is not bound by our sense of time, He is able to see the beginning of time at the same time as the present, and the future! So in my opinion, if we are at rest for a thousand years, we will not perceive that as a time passing!     There is something else we should not pass over lightly here, what is this “book of life” and what about the deeds mentioned? If you have been with us long here at The Daily Bible Challenge, you know that our deeds are only important if we have not confessed our sinful ways and asked Jesus to cleanse us from th...

      Good Saturday morning to all of you, yes, if you are new here we do this seven days a week, and 365 days a year. This little ministry called The Daily Bible Challenge’s sole purpose is to inspire you of the importance of reading/listening to God’s word through the Bible He left us! We like to say stop listening to gossip about God and start listening to God about God! I wake up early and spend my time in prayer and the word, in my little corner office looking out over The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Then ask the Holy Spirit to give me a little something to talk with y'all about and I write it down and edit it a few times and then publish it with links on many social media platforms with hopes that some of this seed will fall on fertile soils and take root in your hearts!     We are in chapter 19 of the book of Revelation this morning. It is not an easy section, but it is better than some of the others in this book. There is great hope in ...

      Happy Friday to all of you, we were out late (for us) last night for Re/Gen in Tolar. It was a great night and then we watched a movie at home. It is unusual for us to stay up together that late. Madeline is the night owl, and I usually turn in early because of the early hour I write to all of you. The movie was entertaining but not worth the grogginess I feel this morning! We have extremely high winds forecast today, so I will be heading out to the garage to work on Eeyore II, yesterday was a good day of diagnosis and one repair, today is installing all new fan belts to revive the old girl's air conditioning. All that is left is this and the turn signals and she is ready for prime time. There are several other projects needed for comforts and her poor esthetics, but those are far less pressing at the moment.     It is that time of year when we start to harvest our asparagus bed every few days. That is about the only food crop we will h...

     Good Thursday morning folks, I hope your week has been productive. In some ways mine has, but in others not so much. Such is this life I guess, it is a balancing act to live in this world, but not live as if I am of this world. If you are new to all this; no, I am not from another planet, but God tells us in His word that our home is heaven, not this world. So sometimes life throws us some tough pitches, and other times it is like freewheeling down a gentle hill on a bicycle. Breeze in our hair and joy in our hearts, treasure those moments when you find yourself in them!     Off and on, I have been working on an old truck, getting it mechanically sound, the last two weeks. Yesterday was new spark plugs, distributor cap and rotor and wires. This went well and delivered considerable horsepower for my efforts. Today I will be diagnosing the no turn signals and maybe even start the air conditioning diagnosis. This is North Central Texas with temp...

     Good Wednesday morning to all of you, I hope you had a good night’s rest and are ready to take on this great day. We come here each and every morning to join together and read/listen to the whole Bible one or two chapters at a time. It is no small task, so this is called The Daily Bible Challenge, are you up to the challenge? If you are not a believer in God, that is ok, we still want you to join us and see what all the hype is about from this historical book from thousands of years ago. It is an ancient account of events that are being confirmed all the time through archaeology. If you are agnostic or even atheist, why are you scared to read it and stop listening to gossip about it, and actually study if it is true for yourself!      If you are a Christian but have never read God’s word but only listen to two or three verses in a sermon once a week, you are basically listening to gossip about God too! Let’s go get it directly from God’s...

     My job here at The Daily Bible Challenge is to inspire you to read/listen to the Bible because statistically, so very few have read the whole Bible and even fewer try to live out what it says! We read one and sometimes two chapters a day, trying to keep the read times to five minutes or less because I know everyone is so busy trying to get ready for work and school or whatever it is you do! But in chapter fourteen of Revelation it is hard to be that uplifting old guy writing to you from the little office looking over The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Chapters like these make it difficult to do my Job, but are why this is a “Challenge” and will not always be fun, like that early workout some of you are preparing for before heading to the office! When it is done, there is a reward, but before and during it's not so much fun!    We hear of the 144,000 again in this chapter and they are mentioned as the “first fruits” as they are here before the angels wi...

     Well, the closest thing to dragons here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood is the occasional lizard of one form or another. But those have a hard time here with all the Roadrunners, we have! We have a nesting pair of Roadrunners here in one of our cedars almost every year now. Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is one of those chapters that I would rather talk about The Little Hundred Acre Wood than to discuss the terrifying details of this chapter! Today is a day of car repairs and maintenance around the homestead. I look forward to completing some of these projects on the new to me Eeyore #2 truck. But other projects are still waiting on parts to arrive. Well, I better get back on the task at hand, the book of Revelation 13…     We are in the thick of it now in Revelation 13. If you are a mid/post-trib guy like me, these details are tough because we need to be prepared to live through them as bondservants of Christ! If I have this right, the dragon...