The Daily Bible Challenge

         Good Saturday morning, we are in chapter 21 of Exodus for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. It is a unique chapter mostly of governess or laws for the people. There are some things here that are particularly hard for us to read, as they are certainly not culturally acceptable in today’s times. But please understand, some of these standards were put in place by Moses and not part of the Ten Commandments from God. Much like what Jesus said about Moses allowing divorce, in Matthew 19:8. I find it best to listen to sections like this and use them to further my understanding of the culture in Biblical times. Please remember that there are some 2250 years covered in the Bible and several different territories, so there is a lot of culture to learn about to gain a better understanding of the Bible and help keep things in context. I believe keeping things in context is one of the American Church’s biggest struggles. Click the link below to listen for y...

     Good Friday morning to each and every one of you. It has been a long week for me, and a busy day ahead also! I am quite late in posting this due to my computer having issues this morning, but after multiple reboots and unplugging and replugging the keyboard dongle, she is up and running again! Now, if all that would work for my brain and body this morning, do humans have dongles and master resets? My new tires are due to arrive sometime today, but I am pretty sure it will be too late in the day to get them mounted. After that massive blowout on the highway on Wednesday, I am driving around like an old guy (way under the speed limit) until those new tires are mounted. The trials of a modern man are minuscule in comparison to where we find the sojourners of Exodus this morning. Let’s get to chapter twenty of Exodus for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge! Moses is on the mountain and is given the Ten Commandments verbally. The people are hearing God and seeing Him as fir...

      Good Thursday morning to each of you. I hope your short week is going well. Mine, not-so-much, but it all turned out well as God put His hand of protection on me yesterday. Not only did “I” (LOL) keep control of my antique truck with a violent tire blowout on a curve at sixty-five miles an hour, but a DPS Trooper came along and lent me a jack so I could change to the spare and keep on my path for the day. My dear brother in Christ, Rick, was already on the way with a jack, so I called him to cancel before he got too far. What a blessing, and the Trooper turned out to be a member of our church family; he goes to a different campus, so we had not met. Such blessings are a constant in the life of a follower of Christ, but sometimes it is not so obvious. I guess I'd better order a replacement jack as the original was missing. There was a time when I would have been very angry that this tire blew out and made me late! I would have seen only the negative instead of a...

  Good Morning, it is a fine rainy morning here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood. There was a fiery red sunrise just under the storm clouds when I started this letter at six this morning. Yes, I am running a bit late this morning as I tend not to sleep well the first night Madeline is out of town; it has been that way for many years now. I installed the new and freshly painted fender on my antique truck yesterday, and it went very well. I was surprised by how much other stuff had to be removed to get this complete, so it took a few hours. Soon, the new floorboards will go in, and then the whole new interior! This will need to wait for better weather, as there is so much metal cutting and welding to do for those floorboards. It is good for me to remain busy when Madeline is away! With that in mind, today I have some maintenance on our water filtration system. Installing a bypass for the UV light filter and new filter elements. It is all in the dungeon, so it is a perfect proje...

Are Foes Inevitable? Good Morning, friends and foes. No, I don’t consider anyone a foe to me, but many hate God and consider me a foe. Learning how to love them, too, has required the Seminary and the wisdom of age. My darling bride is leaving for Houston today due to a death in our extended family. She will be grand-dog sitting, so all the travel for the services can be done by my son and daughter-in-love. It is such a blessing that we can do this for them, and of course, Madeline will get lots of snuggle time with the Golden-doodle Maxie. This dog gets so excited for visitors that she will get the zoomies for the first ten minutes of your arrival! She is still in puppyhood, and things can get a little crazy in that first ten minutes! We see some talk of foes in chapter 17 of Exodus for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. I hope you will join us by clicking the link below and listening to the Bible a chapter or two a day! It is a great, although slower way to get in touch with Go...

 God's Provision, Manna Good morning from the little corner office overlooking the rainy and thoroughly soaked, Little Hundred Acre Wood. There are still flashes of extreme lightning in the distance. I have always loved this artwork, but it seems to have passed by and is on its way east. This provision of rain will be nourishing our grape orchard, and it’s just in time to save the young grapes, our largest crop ever after planting five years ago now. These are all table grapes, and our weather is not ideal for growing these. Maybe this year will be our first real abundance of grapes! We are quite entrenched in The Little Hundred Acre Wood now, this will be the longest we have lived in one house, seven years has always marked big changes in our lives. Who knows what God will bring this time, or if He has plans for us to stay planted here for the rest of our days. God sure had plans for His people in Exodus 16, and for forty years, they will be moving from place to place as the...

      Good Sunday morning, and if this is your Sabbath, Happy Sabbath to you! If it was yesterday, I hope it was filled with worship and fellowship! I am up way too early, but sometimes this happens, and I find it best to write to you and then try to go back to bed, or at least a long nap on the couch, so as to not wake my darling bride of 38 years! Well, before I start rambling on and on about the weather or something, let’s get to The Daily Bible Challenge! We are in Exodus 15 today, where we can find one of the secrets of the happiness of the Jewish people. We can learn so much from them as a race! Think of the last time you felt delivered from a complete mess, that would have meant at least turmoil if not death. What was your first reaction when you realised it was over and you had survived? Well, in chapter fifteen, we learn that maybe that is time for singing and dancing! Take time to celebrate your deliverance and in doing so, you honor God and you show gra...

      Would you believe in God if you saw or experienced a miracle? Would you believe for the rest of your life and teach your children and grandchildren to believe? That is what we read about in chapter 14 of Exodus this morning. It is such a powerful account of a historical event that it is taught to this very day, thousands of years later! But that was a special miracle for God’s chosen people, “Israel”. But there are still miracles today, I know there are because I have had at least three in my lifetime. One saved me from certain death in a nighttime scuba accident about thirty-five years ago. I understand now that it was not necessarily for my favor but to keep me alive for a future change of heart to become His servant and eventually write The Daily Bible Challenge. Who knows, maybe all that was so I could react out of love yesterday when I was in a rear-end collision while stopped at a light in Granbury, Texas! I doubt that was the only reason because I am sti...

      Good Friday morning to all of you! We have a busy day today with behind-the-scenes work for God and His people. This is the kind of thing most people don’t even think of, yet it is part of making all the pieces fit together in a church. There are so many people reaching out in need every week around the world, but behind the scenes, someone is vetting the recipients, and then after that, others are serving them with hearts full of hope and love! You may be asking, “What is this vetting”? Well, to be good stewards of God’s resources, someone needs to make sure these are not con artists going from church to church and other organizations every month, taking advantage and living high off the generosity of others and stealing those resources from the truly needy. But after the vetting, there is only love, support, and opportunities to grow and find a pathway to break the chains of poverty. For some, it is a temporary situation, a crisis pregnancy, or a sudden m...

      Good morning, we have a longer read today, but it is just one chapter, and that is Exodus 12, where we will hear of the first Passover and the Passover Lamb. Many people, as do I, see this as one of the most important foretellings of Jesus the Christ. If you read/listen to this chapter with that in mind, it will all make so much more sense! Jesus was the Lamb of God, and His blood is what saves us from hell. Just as the blood of these lambs saved the families from the final plague that God, Moses, and Aaron delivered to Egypt. If you have questions or comments, please send them through direct messaging, and we will reply individually to all! Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=2&c=12

     Good Wednesday morning to all of you! It is a strange morning for mid-May here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood. It is 57 degrees, and for us, that is a cold morning in May; our mornings are typically 76 degrees or more by this date. I will take full advantage of the cool weather for a project on my antique truck! Soon enough, we will have triple-digit weather for at least 3 months, so we will take advantage of any breaks like today! Later, I have a lunch with my son and my bride of 38 years in a small town a bit south of us. I love these little excursions just for fun or even for work, travel is something that is set in my bones for life! Soon we will be able to take some of these trips in my little antique truck, and that will make it even more of an adventure! But none of my adventures can hold a candle to Moses and Aaron as they battled with a king, the pharaoh of Egypt. For Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, we are in Exodus 10 and 11 this morning, just let the a...

     Good morning, I hope this letter finds you and yours well! Me, not so much after many sneezing fits in the night, that’s not a fun way to wake up for sure! But it could be so very much worse! The night before last, this world lost a great man at 100 years and seven months. His demeanor was so friendly and jovial, and he had been through some very tough times in World War two, but you would never guess it! We will miss that smiling face and great spirit of the man we knew as Big Al, our sister in law’s dad. I don’t believe that man had a prideful bone in his body! Unlike one of the main characters in Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in chapter 8 of Exodus. Pharaoh was the epitome of foolish pride, as it must have been obvious to everyone that he was up against something so much more powerful than himself! Yet he remained stubborn as an ox with his heels dug in against great loss for his people! Not until the loss hit home in a later chapter was he finally humbled! I re...

      Good Monday morning to each of you around Texas and around the world! It is good to have a plan for each day, but especially Mondays! A good plan for Monday morning can set the tone for your whole week, and I have such a plan! But first, it’s time for The Daily Bible Challenge in Exodus 8, where God, through Moses and his brother Aaron, will send a new plague onto the land of Egypt to try and convince the Pharoah to let God’s people out of the bonage of slavery to go to their new homeland that God will provide. These slaves are the descendants of Jacob and Joseph and his brothers, now numbering in the low millions. These historical accounts of the miracles from God are, at the very least, fascinating to try to imagine being there and seeing all these things before we all became so desensitized by today’s CGI! This would be like an alien spacecraft landing in your front yard and asking you to come aboard for a day trip around the galaxy! Boring old book, RIGHT! ...

    Good morning, and Happy Sabbath to each of you! I struggle with each of these Exodus chapters because I want to read every word and let the audiobook keep going into multiple chapters. But my commitment to you is to keep The Daily Bible Challenge as close to five minutes as possible so you can do this with your busy schedules! This world is a busy place, and it is hard for people to carve out even five minutes for God! I don’t like it, but it is true! Satan is winning on this front by keeping us so busy and distracted that we will not slow down and spend time with God! I assure you time invested in God reaps great rewards if you let your heart be in that time! If you open up to God, He will open up to you. Based on your motives, you can expect an ROI, and I tend to think that the ROI will kind of match your motives. But that is more of a warning than a promise of some kind of prosperity gospel! So, as you read/listen about Moses and Aaron as they deal with Pharaoh...

       Good Saturday morning, all! Madeline and I went dancing last night to some great country love songs! That darling bride of mine has been putting up with my two left feet for over 42 years now (38 of those married)! She is and has been such a blessing to me! If you are new here, Madeline and I live on a little plot of land we named The Little Hundred Acre Wood after A.A. Milne's whole Christopher Robin crew from the original book of Winnie the Pooh. When Animals earn a name here, they are usually named after one of those characters. Our little plot of land is a hill overlooking a long panoramic view over Lake Granbury in Texas (BTW, it is well under 100 acres, it's just a name). The house was kind of a dump when we fell in love with the view and bought the place close to eight years ago now. We have been slowly remodeling it ever since. It is scheduled to be complete this year, but life has thrown us a few curveballs along the way, and it may take into next yea...

      Good Friday morning to each of you, another week has flown by! I hope you have met your goals for the week. I met a few of my own, but fell short on a few also. I do tend to overschedule, but this time it was the extreme heat that suddenly fell on our region for two days that set me back. Some great ministry goals were reached. I look forward to seeing what God does with those beginning relationships. We are in chapter 5 of Exodus for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, where we find Moses and Aaron working through the struggles that follow as they present God’s words to the prideful Pharaoh. It is Interesting how these men expected everything to just fall into place as soon as they did what God told them, as if there would not be any struggles to overcome. Sometimes the process is a very important part of the journey with God, and we need to stick with His plans for us even through the tough times! Maybe especially through the tough times! This endurance will yi...

     Good Thursday morning to each of you! We are in Exodus 4 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, and it has a few perplexing verses, unless you dig a little deeper. Most of the issues of confusion revolve around verse 24, as it would seem God was about to put Moses to death! But Moses had relented and accepted his fate to go to Egypt, so why was God ready to kill him? The next verses explain it, but not fully. His wife circumcised their son and touched his feet with the foreskin…WHAT? First of all, why wasn’t Moses doing this important ritual himself? Then why would she touch his feet with it? Here is a great video/article to dig deeper if you would like! https://www.gotquestions.org/kill-Moses.html Click the link below to listen to Exodus 4 for yourself, and then maybe click the link above and dig deeper into why God wanted to kill Moses at that point! God is not so simple that we can read a few verses and understand all of His actions, thoughts, and words. Sometimes we...

       Good Morning, it is a fine Wednesday here in Texas, it will be almost hot enough to ignite the burning bush we will read about in Exodus 3 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge! This heat normally sets in in late June or July, but we will hit at least 101 today! I prefer that over thirty degrees, but I hope this is not an early dog days of summer settling in! We are mostly ready for summer here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood, but I am just not far enough along on projects for the real heat to move in and stay! Well, I am rambling, let’s get to Exodus three as we hear Moses being contacted directly by The Great “I AM” in Hebrew, that is the word “to be” or “to exist” as in always been there. This is a concept that trips up scientists because it is otherworldly in origin and explains some of the unexplainable! He, God, has just always been there, the Alpha and the Omega all at once, not bound by the human concept of time or place! Click the link below and listen to...

Good morning, sometimes we think we have it rough, and then we read of the hard times that befell the people of the Bible. Imagine having all the male children born to be ordered killed by the king just for population control of your race! We have it pretty good here in the USA, and sometimes we need to remember that and count it as the huge blessing it is! I can’t even imagine how the world would have changed if that mom had not made that little boat for her baby to hide in the reeds of the Nile. God had great plans for this baby that would become a murderer named Moses! What God uses imperfect people to do good? I live with that reality daily as God uses me, and man, was I a mess before He got hold of me! Click the link below to join us for The Daily Bible Challenge, where we listen/read the whole Bible cover to cover, one chapter at a time. Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=2&c=2

       Good Monday morning to each of you, this will be a great day if you don’t let your attitude get in the way! Truly, it is the only thing we totally own, and we do not have to let anyone steal it from us. Whether good or bad, it is your choice; if your circumstances are bad, you can choose to change everything. Life is a series of choices, and as adults, we do not have to let others choose for us. I chose to start serving God as my lifestyle because the life of chasing wealth, fame, and power left me feeling empty and even dirty at times. We were called (all of us) to a higher purpose. The God of the entire universe created us for good, but we chose evil! But we can decide to choose good and walk away from our old self and let that old person die, and start a new life in Christ. That is why The Daily Bible Challenge exists! We want to walk you through the steps to a new life in Christ! Will you take the challenge and read the whole Bible with us, cover to cover?...

        Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day! My eldest son and I took Madeline out to an early lunch yesterday to avoid the long waits and crowds today. We will be grilling some steaks after church. It is so nice to have one of our sons here for Mother’s Day this year. The other kids have very busy work schedules right now. Our passage for today is not a great one for Mother’s Day, but it is where we landed. It is the story of Jacob’s burial in his homeland. But it is also the possible answer to a question I posed in a post a while back: Did Joseph or his brothers tell their father of the great sin they had done against Joseph? It would seem as if they did, but were they just lying now about the charge from Jacob before his death? Nonetheless, Joseph uses this time to bring us a very important, often quoted verse in Gen 50:20. Don’t be lazy, look it up! Click the link below to listen to the whole chapter. I can’t help but ponder how I would have reacted to all ...

    Good Saturday to you! I got a lot done yesterday, but I still have much more to do. All this busyness in this life is a curse and a blessing. It makes me reflect on how short a time I have left on this earth and what my legacy will be. Sadly, some will remember me for my labors outside the church, but what I desire is that my work for the Kingdom of God will be remembered, and whether or not my name is remembered is of little importance! What is really important is you remember this guy Jesus the Christ and that someone was so passionate about you learning about Christ and getting a chance at salvation that he got up very early 365 days a year and wrote to you trying to convince your stubborn heart to click a link and listen to the Bible one chapter at a time! We are in chapter 49 of Genesis today, and Jacob/Israel will breathe his last breath in today’s chapter. I love how he knew it was his time and blessed all his adult children in his last moments on earth. Well, som...

      Good Friday morning to each of you, I hope this letter finds you and yours well! Other than a few tweaked backs, all is good here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Working on the old Jeep yesterday, I was replacing the notoriously defective CPS, and although it could have been very easy to access, the engineers designed it to be installed at about one o’clock on the bell housing, on the transmission just behind the valve cover, out of reach and mostly out of sight. They lasted ten years or more when from the factory but are no langer available as OEM parts. The replacement parts are out of China, and maybe one out of ten will last more than a few months! Well, all this to say, somewhere in all that blind reaching and murmuring harsh things against China and engineers, I felt a crick start in my neck, and it spread through the day to my whole back! So on the same day, I had a new door installation for a customer and friend, only to return home with Madeline, who ...

                                              Good Thursday morning to all of you! Our Thursdays are big around The Little Hundred Acre Wood. If you are new here, that is the name of our humble little homestead in North Central Texas. My bride works at the local Artisan Bakery, and I have contractor work today and ministry tonight. I started my day at three this morning with prayers for others (mostly marriages in crisis, but some individuals also). Next, is feeding the inside animals, and making my, and Madeline's coffee (yes, two different pots) and cereal for breakfast. Normally, I have eggs, but I wanted a change this morning! Then I move into my little corner office overlooking the lake far below and the impending sunrise. I start reading the chapter for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, and then sometimes some commentaries and other research also. Then I write somet...

     We are in Genesis 46 today, although I must admit I had to read 47 too, I can’t stand stopping in the middle of a story! But these chapters are about four minutes each, and I try to always keep it as close to five minutes as possible for The Daily Bible Challenge because I know most of you are preparing for your workday! Can you even begin to imagine loading up your whole family and moving 389 miles by camel, oxen, and wagon when you are 135 years old? This was in the middle of a famine when everyone you met along the way was desperate. Jacob, now renamed Israel, had a huge number of changes and hardships, and also great blessings in his long life! I hope by now you would at least murmur under your breath, scoffing at anyone who told you the Bible was a boring old book! I have a specific prayer request this morning: our nephew, BJN, had his house burn down a few nights ago (total loss), and he is not a man of faith, so all this is pretty tough on him, without G...

      Hello, is your family or other relationships broken due to harsh behaviors in the past? Many families are, in fact, this has gone on for thousands of years. If this has you in sorrow or depression, please read/listen to chapter 45 of Genesis, where we see how God solves this family's issues. Jesus tells us we are to forgive seventy times seven. Can you do that? I am in no way suggesting that you allow an abuser of any kind to continue to harm you. But forgiveness is more for the forgiver than for those who have harmed you. In our studies in a program called Re/Generation, Madeline and I learned that forgiveness is turning the debt owed to you over to God and accepting His justice for those who have harmed you. It is a tough thing to learn how to do, but it brings a freedom that will break the chains holding you in the past! Joseph learns about this and then expresses it to his brothers in our chapter for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. I sure would like to kn...

    Good Monday morning, what a great Sabbath yesterday was for us! My darling bride is headed off to her job at the local artisan bakery, and I am watching this amazing sunrise lighting up all the clouds from the northeast, stretching all the way to the south. We are so very blessed to have this view! We never knew what we were missing in the big city until we moved to a more rural setting and started to feel the rhythm of God’s creation! I sure don’t miss the big-city trickery either. Joseph seems to have fallen into such a way of life as he plays with his brother's emotions while acting out some of this spiteful trickery in Genesis 44 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. After all, they did plot to kill him and then sold him into slavery! The most my big brothers ever did to me was beat me up a little. Joseph had a pretty big axe to grind until God changed his heart, but that's in tomorrow's chapter! Click the link below to listen to this cliffhanger for yourself! Plea...

      Good Sunday and Happy Sabbath if this is your day for worship, fellowship, and rest! I am about to head out to breakfast with my accountability group of men. We meet about every two weeks as travel and work schedules allow. Today is a special day in my life as I have been allowed to graduate and be licensed as a Pastor. It has been a long road, but God has finally gotten me where He wants me, the call is finally answered, and I look forward to seeing what nd where He plans to use me, as I am staying out of His way and listening well. But at this point, the biggest plan is to continue The Daily Bible Challenge, but to improve and expand it for His Glory! Maybe this was His plan all along, back when I first felt His calling when I was eighteen and ran far from Him as fast and rebelliously as I could.     Well enough about me, let’s get to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in chapter forty-three of Genesis. Where we will find the brothers returning...

          Happy Sabbath to those of you who worship and rest today, to the rest, Happy Saturday! There are unusual noises (he says it is music) coming from the bathroom as my eldest son is in the shower. Some of you might think it is modern music that an old man can’t appreciate because of his biases. But in reality, it is some kind of Gregorian chant, so I am a few centuries too young to enjoy it LOL! You see, he has a degree in Biblical Studies and went on for his Master of Divinity, so he found a love for this music while studying in college.     After a time of our relationship becoming distant with our eldest son, he now lives with us while getting his feet back under him after some tough circumstances befell him in life. This is a hand up, not a hand out, as we feel it emasculates a man to be coddled. We could never have imagined our relationship could be brought back, yet God made it all happen so quickly, and we are thankful...

         Good morning, what a chapter we have today, as I have been saying lately, the Bible is not a boring old book! Yes, it is old, but it is really sixty-six books written over about fifteen hundred years by forty authors, yet they all intertwine and match almost perfectly after many translations. There is something divine about that, as time moves on, so many things change, but God’s word left for us is unchanging!     We are in chapter 41 of Genesis this morning, and God reveals the meaning of Pharaoh's dreams to Joseph. Now remember this is the same Pharaoh who hanged the Baker earlier! This man thought he was a god, or at least his people did! He must have had some humility and understanding because he recognized that Joseph’s God was more powerful than himself!     But I want to focus on something deeper here, I want you to think about how much trust Joseph had in God at this point! Trust is hard for Ame...