The Daily Bible Challenge

  Good Monday morning, I hope your weekend and Sabbath were memorable and fun! We had a great weekend here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood! Today I have a job in town and will be heading out soon to pick up supplies and get this project finished by the deadline of Wednesday afternoon. I am so thankful for the blessing of this work and prayerfully, my old bones will allow me to hit the deadline without too many hiccups along the way!   Our Daily Bible Challenge for today is Leviticus 14 and is one more of those that are where this blog gets its name! Yes, it is more about leprosy and cleansing. It is written for the future, as these people are still in the desert wilderness living in tents, but the previous chapters go over the textiles of the tents and how to handle them. There is hope for healing in these words, and since we have spent more than thirty minutes over the last few days on just this topic, it must have been a big fear for the people. They didn’t know at that time...

   There isn’t a lot to write about in Today’s Daily Bible Challenge; it is dry material and a lot of it! It is just under ten minutes describing what the people needed to do about leprosy. What you can observe from this text is that they had little or no medical knowledge, but God provided some good rules of thumb to protect the people.    There was a term used several times in the second part of this chapter, which was “whether in the warp or in the woof.” Mentioned many times, but as I didn’t know what it meant, I looked it up. It is a weaver’s term, identifying the vertical or horizontal parts of the woven fabric. Such detail might of been because woven fabric was a very valuable possession and they may have tried to hang on to it even though it was contaminated. (Well, it is only contaminated in the woof part of the fabric…do I still have to burn it?) We seem to always be looking for loopholes in God’s words for us. It seems to be a timeless fault of mankind! Cl...

   Good Saturday morning to you and yours, I hope this letter finds you well! I am up early and writing this before I head out to work the monthly food distribution at a friend’s church. This is a ministry I truly love, just south of Glen Rose, Texas. It is about a thirty-minute drive, and then mostly the same group of people meet early, pray, and then start sorting food as soon as the Tarrant Area Foodbank truck arrives. Then, about an hour later, there is a long line of cars waiting to drive up and get supplemental food supplies for themselves and or their neighbors. I like the idea of giving food away to people in need, but I also love the pastor of this little country church! I receive a real sense of community from this monthly event! We do lots of ministry in our own church, too, but I am kind of an adopted member of this church, too! There are people of all ages among the workers and the recipients, too. Hardship comes at any age in your life, and having a church car...

  Good Friday morning to all of you! We stayed up too late last night, and I am writing as fast as I can to get this posted in time. Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is Leviticus 11 (remember that we read chapters 9 and 10 yesterday). This is all about what you are going to have for lunch when you go out with your work buddies today to celebrate TGIF! So there are a few things that you probably won’t find on the menu at the BBQ joint! But there are a few things that you might be surprised by, too! I forgot Rabbits were unclean! Oh, that bacon we all love so much is also on the unclean list! But how about this, you can eat those grasshoppers and crickets, and don’t forget those locusts for dessert! Click the link below to listen to chapter 11 for yourself. See, even if you were sure you were perfect and didn’t need a savior, you do! All of us have fallen short of the perfect example Jesus set for us! We do not live lives that are fully pleasing to God; we need Him to make us cle...

   Good morning, I will keep my ramblings very short this morning because we are doing two chapters for Todfay's Daily Bible Challenge. We are listening to chapters 9 and 10 of Leviticus. Chapter ten has something new for you to help break the difficult monotony of Leviticus! When the audiobook finishes chapter nine, just wait three seconds, and chapter ten will start on its own.    God was very clear in His instructions, and Moses and Aaron presented the details very clearly. God’s wrath was stirred when things were not followed correctly! Two sons of Aaron were made examples of by God to establish just how serious He was about how to run the tabernacle and the rituals of sacrifice. Priests and assistant priests were held to a very high standard, as they should still be today! Click the link below to listen for yourself! Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=3&c=9

   Good morning, what a fine Wednesday this is shaping up to be. The sunrise is amazing, and it seems as if each one brings new hope! It is far easier to avoid pity parties with God at the helm of our lives (at least for me). I still acknowledge when things take a bad turn, but rarely do I wallow in self-pity anymore!    I am sure glad my ordination as a deacon years ago in H-town didn’t look anything like the ordination of Aaron and his sons in chapter 8 of Leviticus! What a completely unusual life these men/priests must have had after this day. None of this kind of thing was part of the pastoral care classes I took in Seminary! The only thing taught about this was in Old Testament class, except for the mention in New Testament class of how all this stopped after Jesus became the sacrificial lamb. So Moses consecrated them, and then after seven days, they took over all the responsibilities of the Tabernacle.    Click the link below to listen to the Bible ...

              This is one of those parts of the Bible that gives this blog its name: The Daily Bible Challenge . It is not easy to read the whole Bible; thus, the challenge! But I can promise you it is well worth the effort! If, like me, you are having trouble with motivation in such chapters, maybe you can try looking up unknown words like Votive in verse 16 on sites like https://www.gotquestions.org/votive-offering.html . It helps me keep motivated in the harder stuff of the Bible.     One more fun fact, even AI has a very hard time creating images of these chapters, so we are not alone in confusion about some of these more difficult areas of the Bible! There is so much to learn about this culture and about our God, but much of it is beyond human comprehension, and AI, too, apparently! I have an ongoing argument with Grok about today’s image; it is not very accurate, and it gave me a two-page written explanation of...

    Good Monday morning, as I watch the sun lighting up the thin clouds to the east, I feel sorry for those who don’t believe. Why, you ask? Because knowing the maker of all these things of beauty seems to bring even more appreciation for the created things and for the Creator! Mondays are the best, as I eagerly await what this week will bring. Yes, last week was not one of my best, but I have such hope for what this week will bring! Last week ended poorly as I had a dozen laying hens on Monday, and by Sunday, foxes had us down to three! They can jump so high that the electric net fence is useless! These are an important part of our retirement food supply, but I don’t want them to live their lives trapped in a tiny cage! However, I also have no plans to feed the local wildlife with our poultry! So I will begin the process of developing protection from foxes! Today we are in Leviticus 6, and the perpetrator of havoc is not a fox, but sin in the people Moses is leadin...

     Good morning from the little corner office looking out over The Little Hundred Acre Wood. There is a beautiful sunrise this morning here, and I get the privilege of watching it as my office faces east. I didn’t do much yesterday as I am still dealing with the lack of energy from Hashimoto’s. Hopefully, I will notice some change soon from this new dosage of meds! I anticipated the news we heard last night about the war and was not surprised in the least. This post is so late due to my taking 25 minutes to read my direct news reports out of Israel and others (I don’t pay much attention to lamestream media news). The senseless loss of life is tragic, but man is a fallen creature and will always end up in war, until Christ returns anyway; we have thousands of years of history to prove war is inevitable! Enough of that! We are here for The Daily Bible Challenge, so let’s get to it! Click the link below to listen to chapter 5 of Leviticus. If you are new to the Bibl...

      Good morning, wherever this day finds you! It is Saturday when I am writing this to you, so for some it is their Sabbath, for others it is tomorrow, as it is for me. I will keep this shorter than normal as we have two chapters, Leviticus 3 & 4, the second is a bit long! Just think of how many animals had to be sacrificed, with an estimated over 3 million people. That is why I titled yesterday’s Daily Bible Challenge as a Bloody Mess! Today’s descriptions are worse! Remember, these sacrifices stopped some 70 years after Jesus’ death as the ultimate sacrifice! I know for some this is hard to stomach, so I am grouping two chapters together so we can get through it faster. We welcome your questions and comments via Direct Messaging. Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=3&c=3

For you who live for such news, it’s Friday! Yesterday we went to Weatherford, TX, and the doctor adjusted my medication, so maybe my energy levels will return soon. I am tired of being tired! God has a plan even in all this, so I await His plan to be revealed with an excited heart! Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is two shorter chapters, as we begin Leviticus (1&2). It is right at the 5 minutes, we try to keep our reading to 5 minutes or less when possible. The plan here is some prayer time and reading each day, not to exceed 15 minutes for those in the busy lifestyle of this time we live in. If your schedule allows for more time, please do so! More prayer is always a good idea! Chapter one teaches us what a bloody mess the tent of meeting must have become! It brings to mind so many questions for me: Did they clean all this up after each sacrifice? Did they allow the blood of a bull to mix with other animal sacrifices? Were the flies so thick all the time? I could go on...

        Good Thursday morning to all of you. Wherever you are, I bid you a great day in the Lord! We are finally at the conclusion of Exodus (Chapter 40) for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge! We get to see what all this looks like as they finally assemble this tabernacle they have been making for what must have been months and months of labor to make every part without any power tools of any kind! If you are new to the Bible, please understand that things repeated were the cultural way to emphasize something in Hebrew; you couldn’t use BOLD print, or all caps, or even an exclamation mark, because it didn’t exist in their language. But the other chapters described how it was made; this one puts it all together for the first time! Have you ever tried to erect a tent after dark, after arriving late at the campsite after a long day’s drive? Well, this tent is more complicated than anything like that, not tens of pieces but hundreds! I will be reusing an image of the...

     Good morning to each of you near and far, this ministry of sending the Bible around the world from my little office could not have happened just 20 years ago! I feel so blessed to get to serve God and all of you each day in this way! The messages I get from the other side of the globe bring me great joy! Some are begging for money, and as much as my heart wants to give, that is something I cannot help with, as we are only blessed with enough to pay the bills and keep this ministry going. Yes, I know some of those messages are con artists, but many are not. But they are a part of my prayers either way. Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is the second-to-last chapter of Exodus, chapter 39. It is a detailed review of all that has been done for the Tent of Meeting and the priest’s worship garments. It is a detailed description, but an easy read. I know some of these detailed descriptions can be hard. Especially with the repetition of the information for the old Hebrew wa...

  Good Tuesday morning, Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is the reading/listening to chapter 38 of Exodus. Now, as this is more details of the construction of the Tabernacle, I am afraid some of you may be getting a little bored with these details. So, as a side note, let’s dig into some of the terms of measurement mentioned here. We will hear the words, talents, and shekels here quite a few times. Those are units of measure of weight. A Talent is 3000 shekels, and is equal to about 100 pounds! This will bring new insights to you as you read or listen to the descriptions of how much metal (Gold and bronze) was used in each joint of this wooden frame that supported all the tapestry of the Tent of the Tabernacle. Now, this tent material is not a thin tent like today’s tents; some of these curtains are 4” thick! Remember, this is a portable structure that is disassembled and carried to the next destination as this huge tribe (counting just the men, a total of 603,550 people) moves aro...

     Good Monday morning. I'm happy to have my black coffee this morning, as I'm fasting for bloodwork at 7:30 in a town about an hour's drive away. I got up at 3:30 so I can write today’s post before leaving, otherwise it would be quite late to be a part of your morning quiet time! Until God tells me otherwise, this is my calling, and it brings me great joy to serve God and you this way! God leads me, and I write to you as He reveals a daily message. Sometimes I don’t like the message, but it is not mine to change! Other days, I seem to be closed off to His leading, and it seems as if it is just my words, rambling on about The Little Hundred Acre Wood and such, or an old truck named Eeyore. But even on those days, He seems to lead it back around to the chapter of the day! Today in Exodus 37, we hear of the actual building of all the items for the inside of the Tabernacle. The altar, the ark of the covenant, the table for incense, and the table for the showbread. The ...

     Good morning and Happy Father’s Day and Happy Sabbath! Today, we are in Exodus 36, and the actual Tabernacle is being built. Every detail is as described before, as God instructed them in the last few chapters. These are God’s people, and He has made an oath with them. I can't help but reflect on that oath as I read so many headlines about the war against these very same people that is happening as I write this letter to you! It is so important to keep all this in perspective, Biblically, as we live through these next few weeks. Many will tell you this marks the beginning of the end times. But I will tell you, God told us “No man will know”! But an educated person should be aware that this is easily understood as a possible sign of that outcome! With that, I challenge you to hold your family as tightly as you can today and enjoy your Father’s Day, but also make sure you have done all you can to teach your family how they need Jesus as their Lord and Savior and how t...

    Good Saturday morning to each of you from the little corner office overlooking The Little Hundred Acre Wood and the far reaches of Lake Granbury. We are so blessed to live here after so many years feeling trapped in the “Big City”, where we could rarely see the horizon for all the buildings and houses. Those walls of the big city seemed to always be closing in on me, not so much for my bride. There is just something in my DNA that drove me out of there! I loved and still love so many people there, but our hearts are now here in a more rural part of Texas! God granted us this, or maybe He was the one who made me yearn for this lifestyle in the first place! We have met so many people who have moved to this area, saying they had no idea why, but God brought them here for something! Maybe God did all this so I could be writing this letter to you this morning. Sharing with you how God moved in our lives and brought us here for healing first, and then a true, intimate relat...

    Good Friday morning to all of you! My day kind of went into the crapper yesterday, no, literally! I don’t remember anything in Seminary classes that prepared me for my ministry yesterday LOL! As I lay in the mud, flushing out a black tank on an RV that had been clogged up. The church uses this RV to shelter single moms or expectant moms in crisis. This ministry falls under my role, and part of that is to keep this all in working order and coordinate volunteers and service providers to help serve the moms. But actually doing this work is not what I had planned! I am authorised to hire all this out, but we needed things “cleared up” by nightfall when the mom returned from work, and I could not locate anyone who would pump the tank and clear the blockage! So, because I knew how to fix this, I said this little prayer, “ God, please tell me when I get to the fun part of ministry today, as I don’t want to miss it”! With about five hours before giving a public testimony from ...

      Good morning, it is another very wet, rainy morning here on the Little Hundred Acre Wood. North Central Texas always needs rain, but this is getting a little old LOL! I will spend my time today cleaning up the shop/garage after all the mechanical work on the truck over the last few weeks. It's time to transform the shop into a metal fabrication shop for a few days. Then it will become an upholstery shop for a while. I have to clean up my mess between each kind of work just to make room to move! I tend to be very tired after a day's work and have never been good at cleaning up each day! So today’s rain will give me the excuse to stay inside and clean and organize, if for nothing else than my own sanity! I wonder if God feels that way about the messes we make in our lives? We teach in our Re/Generation program at StoneWater Church to clean up our messes with God and others each day as they happen. If you sin against God or someone else, go admit your error and m...

      Good Wednesday morning! As I prayed and listened to chapter 32 of Exodus for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, I await the next round of thunderstorms forecast to arrive any minute now. We are way ahead of our yearly rainfall totals, and I know there are many thankful ranchers and farmers in Texas this year! It is also good for The Little Hundred Acre Wood, but much more will soon cause delays in my shifting back to the house remodeling work. Eeyore, my antique truck is now truly safe to drive (even fun!), so I can shift that truck work to a lower priority, doing one or two minor projects a week, and shift my focus on our home again for my darling bride! She has been so patient with these delays. Lately, I have been forced into pondering some deep areas of concern in my relationship with God. Most of this was prompted by reflections on my past brought about by reviewing my work in the Re/Generation program at StoneWater Church. I am co-leading a group and going...

      Good Tuesday morning, I hope this letter finds you well! I finished most of the work on my little truck yesterday, well, as far as rebuilding the front end suspension and steering, there are still many projects for Eeyore in the future. I love working on old things and making them like new or even better than new! Whether it is woodworking, sheetrock and trim, or metal, or auto interiors, I just love to create! I think it was something God put in some of us for His glory! Others have different talents for His glory, and all are very important in the fabric God is weaving in each of our lives. That creativity is what Exodus 31 is all about, well, that and keeping the Sabbath Holy! Dig into this chapter by clicking the link below to start listening about all the craftsmen God anointed to make the tools for worship, but also, I am sure they made everyone's clothes and furniture, and whatever was needed or wanted. I like to imagine what it must have been like to...

     Good Monday morning, what a night of storms we had here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood! This may be the most evenly spread out rain of any year we have had here since we moved here almost eight years ago now! Our table grape vines are going to yield very well this year. If it dries up enough today, I plan on resuming the work on my antique truck. With all I learned last week (basically doing the same job three times to get it right), it should go much faster today. It turns out it was all about the details, and I had them in the wrong order! It was a shame I didn’t have better videos or instructions on this job! That is much like the instructions in Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in Exodus 30, as we read/listen to how important the details of incense are to God! I have never been much for incense as such things mess with my allergies, but from a distance, some things are very pleasant to the senses. God reveals so much about Himself in the Bible, which is why...

     Good morning from the little corner office overlooking the Little Hundred Acre Wood. Well, I said I would rest, and I did yesterday. Our only excursions were to HEB to pick up meds and stop in to switch out the rental truck for an SUV. Madeline could not get into the tall truck with her towering stature of barely five feet LOL! She now has a mid-sized SUV and can be completely independent and mobile again, while her smaller truck is having the bodywork completed. Oh, we also went out to a late lunch at the Loco Cyote west of Glen Rose. But the rest of the day, I was either asleep or watching YouTube videos. I may be sorry I rested, though, as stormy weather may delay my finishing the repairs on the antique truck Monday. Today is our Sabbath, so more rest is planned after church this morning. God created the Sabbath for man to rest, and He set the example for us in Genesis. As we heard in the last few chapters, details are very important to God. Today, we get to h...

     Good Saturday morning to each of you, and if this is your Sabbath, Happy Sabbath, and I hope you rest and have great worship today! Speaking of rest, I have overdone it in the heat for two days now and will rest up today and continue with the work on my truck on Monday. There were no how-to videos for replacing the lower ball joints and the CV axles on this old 4x4 truck, so I had to redo some things along the way. The Factory service manual was not very helpful on this one either! But at least on Monday, I will know what I have to do to finish the driver’s side of this repair in one try. It was also a bear to replace the strut rod bushings, and those will really help as the originals were totally shot! When I finished this work, I think Madeline wanted to burn my clothing instead of washing it! I was a total mess from head to toe! I am careful in such times to wear the worst of the worst-worn-out clothing just in case she decides to throw it away to protect her ...

    Good Friday morning to each of you near and far! It's like Houston out there this morning at 78 degrees and 87% humidity before sunup! The temperatures are a normal level for June, but that humidity is way too high for our territory! Not such a good day for me to be outside working on Eeyore II, my antique truck, but I started a rebuild of the front end yesterday and need to finish it before Sunday. I sure will be glad to get these CV Axles, ball joints, bushings, and tie rod ends all replaced. It will ride like a new truck after this. Our roads are quite rural, so this is very important to protect the truck and keep my old bones from rattling, LOL! Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is Exodus 27 and is full of more details of the construction of the Tabernacle. It would seem that the details of this are very important to God. I wonder if all the details of our lives are this important to Him? After all, we are His creation! It is written that He even knows the numbe...

      For Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in chapter 26 of Exodus, we hear/read of a complete description of the tabernacle/dwelling place (elaborate tent) for God’s commandments, and even God Himself. Not that He needs such a physical dwelling, as He is omnipresent, but He chose to dwell with His people this way for a time. I tried to use AI to come up with an image for this tent, but it failed with many attempts, so I went off on a tangent looking for a better one and found this one for all of you. No, it is not pretty or flashy, but it is more accurate than most. Reading the article about this tent image from a home church in Australia is why this post is so late! Here is the article link: https://biblestudentsdaily.com/2017/01/02/study-8-the-tabernacle-coverings/ I am fascinated by such instructions from God on how to build this elaborate, yet portable, tent of meeting. Remember, these people are traveling, so this large tent has to be taken down and moved...

       We bid you a fine and good day! These are not just words but a heartfelt desire for you to be enriched by this Wednesday ahead! In Today’s Daily Bible Challenge (Chapter 25 of Exodus), we begin the preparations for some of my favorite descriptions of building projects in the whole Bible! In days to come, there will be a curtain described, and it and its details will become very important in many months from now when you read of Jesus’ death on the cross. But I am getting way ahead of myself here. Today, we will read about the construction of the Ark of the Covenant. The stone tablets have not been created yet, but as God seems to always do, He has a plan for that future date. If He plans for something like a place to carry those stone tablets, how much more do you think He has a plan for His creation “YOU”! He didn’t love those stone tablets, but He loves us enough to die for us, and He did! This is what the Daily Bible Challenge is all about: we read/li...

      Good morning, my bride is home safe and sound, and there is peace in The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Do you bring that kind of peace to your spouce? I work hard to become a better man so I can learn how to bring that kind of peace to Madeline. Yesterday, I spent some time working on the Old Jeep Eeyore to get her ready for market. I will be spending a bit more time on her this morning before moving my efforts to the new Eeyore (AKA my antique truck). I enjoy working on cars, but not when there is pressure to get everything repaired fast due to it being a daily driver. Having Madeline and her truck home takes that pressure off me and makes it fun again. Eighty-five percent of Eeyore 2’s front-end parts have arrived, with the remaining all due before Saturday. So by next week, she may actually be fun to drive; she is kind of a beast with heavily worn and loose steering and worn bushings throughout right now. Next, she will go to the experts and get a full alignm...