The Daily Bible Challenge

  Good morning, as I write this, I am in the fog of fasting for a blood draw later this morning. I had to dig a little deeper into chapter 18 of Numbers to find out what I was to write about for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. Some days I wake up with the Holy Spirit telling me what to write, and some days I have to dig and pray some more before it is revealed. Today is the latter. One way I search is to read anything that pops up on Got Questions’ Christian search engine gotquestions.org . I just type in the Book and chapter and see what others have asked about it!   Two things stood out to me: one was the salt covenant, the other was just how these Levites knew what their life would be all laid out before them, with no real choices to do something else. But in exchange for this lack of freedom, they were well provided for for their whole life! Yes, some became jealous, and there was strife as we read about a few mornings ago. But for their lifetime of service to God, they we...

 Good Wednesday morning near and far, I hope this letter finds you and yours well! As you read/listen to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in Numbers 17 this morning, please be thinking of all the jealousy you have seen in your lifetime. God has a remarkable way to set things straight and puts His plan of action into place in this chapter. Respect is earned, but God’s authority is granted to whom He chooses!   He makes it clear in a miraculous way who He has chosen to be the Priesthood and that only they are to run the day-to-day operations of the Tabernacle. The other families were told point-blank they were not to try to run the Tabernacle but leave that all to the family of Levi (Aaron). Aaron was the head, and his family members were to help him with all the duties required in the Tabernacle. The other 11 families/tribes were to stay in their lane and leave this to Aaron. Even when God tells them this directly, they struggle with pride, wanting to “help” (read as) control what...

  I must admit I stopped, got down on my knees, and prayed a second time this morning after reading/listening to today’s chapter. I ask daily that God fills me with the Holy Spirit and gives me something to write to honor and glorify Him. Today it was a bit more difficult! Here is what He gave me. I guess every family has the rebellious ones, as we read about in Numbers 16 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. I ponder my own adult sons and daughter and the rebellion they have expressed in their lives. I also ponder the rebellion my bride and I have expressed. Rebellion against your earthly father is one thing, but against God is another thing entirely, as we will hear in the reading. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram all learned this lesson the hard way and were joined by over fourteen thousand others!   You would think, with all the signs and wonders God revealed through Moses and Aaron, that there would be no doubt they were God’s anointed leaders for this journey. But that old fami...

  Good Monday morning out there in social media land! Sometimes I struggle to make God and the Bible a part of every moment of every day. Slipping into a sin as it is talked about in chapter 15 of Numbers for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. There are two classes of sin: one is unintentional, literally not knowing or by complete accident, and the other is out of premeditated defiance. Because we live after Christ’s birth and death on the cross, both may be forgiven, because Jesus paid the price for our forgiveness. But these two sins are seen differently by God. Before Christ, the defiance sin was punishable by death. But now we can seek Christ’s forgiveness and repent of either (repent means to agree with God and turn away from sin) and be forgiven completely. But be careful, God will not be mocked, don’t say: Well, I can do this and then just ask for forgiveness afterward, that is mocking Him!   Don’t get me wrong, sin is sin, by class of sin I am not saying there is a class o...

     Good morning, it is Sunday, as the American church calls it, The Lord’s Day. We will be heading out to worship and fellowship at our church a bit later. I look forward to Sundays, when I can be in the company of friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, all worshipping God. No church is perfect, it can’t be, as it is made up of fallen people! But our church does a pretty good job of keeping to the main purpose we were given by Christ. We are a family of disciple makers and focus on loving others well so they understand there is something different, in the hope that they will want that life change for themselves. We have a motto at our church it is “No perfect People Allowed”. Kind of rude, isn’t it, but what we are really saying is please don’t pretend everything is perfect in your life, we want to live a transparent life with you and with Christ! Broken, fallen people seeking healing and growth in Christ together as a family!   Speaking of fallen and imperfec...

    This is my favorite Saturday of the month. I am getting ready to head out to a friend's church (Pastor James @ Cornerstone) for a food drive just south of Glen Rose, Texas. It is a rural area, and a few dozen people show up to volunteer. We have a semi-truck of food arrive from the Tarrant Area Food Bank, and we sort and package it all for about an hour before the cars start to pull up for their portion of food. Some people are in desperate need, and some are just having a rough month making ends meet. Some are picking up food for elderly neighbors who can no longer get out, which is what we get the privilege of doing each month! The camaraderie and the sense of community drives me to go every month, and we have done this off and on for more than three years now!   Well, I am rambling again, let’s get to why we are here every morning, The Daily Bible Challenge! We are in chapter 13 of Numbers today. It is the beginning of a very important lesson on heroes for God’s p...

  Wow, chapter 12 of Numbers is such a surprise! There is so much in so few words. Today is the perfect day to join the Daily Bible Challenge! Less than three minutes to listen to this one will fill you with questions about so many things! I am giddy to tell you enough to tempt you to read/listen to it!   First of all, this is a family squabble between two brothers and their older sister! Mariam was the older sister who tended to Moses in the woven basket hidden in the Nile from way back in Exodus 1:22. Also, remember that Aaron is Moses’s older brother. Now, without giving too much away, Aaron and Mariam seemed to be becoming jealous of Moses’s role and relationship with God. To be clear, Moses had a very special relationship with God, and proof of that is about to be made very clear in this chapter. Click the link below and listen for yourself, don’t just take my word for it…After all, I am just some stranger on the internet! We welcome your comments and questions via DM. Bu...

     Good morning, if you are still with us on this sometimes dry and difficult journey, congratulations! If you are new, we read/listen to the whole Bible cover to cover, this is called The Daily Bible Challenge. The next two days are far more interesting reads, but there will be other dry spells to come. So, if you are like me, I sometimes get frustrated with the slow and tedious chapters. To help us all keep motivated, here is what came to me in prayers this morning. Jesus was a Jew; therefore, anything we can learn about Him, and His upbringing, and His culture will help us understand Him more! He died by choice to save us, and therefore deserves the respect from us to stay engaged in the readings of His word. Our worldview from all the secular culture around us makes us misunderstand much of the cultural references in the Bible. So when you don’t understand something, ask questions and search out the answers, even if it seems trivial, dig in and learn more about our ...

        Good morning, I hope tis letter finds you and yours well. We are in chapter 10 in the book of Numbers for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. It is more interesting than a lot of the rather dry chapters we have been reading. There is much meat here for us to learn how to live as a community, but also some strategic basic warfare lessons with a twist. The twist is these people are being taught to rely on God for His protection over them. Basic security teaches to hold on to the element of surprise, lie low, and be quiet. Yet they were told by God to blow trumpets at many different times, attracting attention. But with strong faith in God, they were promised protection from God for these travels.   We will read of the first breaking of camp with the miraculous cloud lifting and leading them to the next location to camp. Remember, this is a group of approximately four million people. They had to move for the good of the land, but also for resources. Click t...

  Good Tuesday morning. Today I will rest after a good amount of work yesterday. My back went out on me again, so I'm resting for now! I am not good at resting, but God has a way of teaching stubborn old men like me!   This morning, we see God allow some grace in a few areas for these now nomadic people. I love how the Jewish people celebrate holidays/feasts to remember certain things God did for them in the past. That is what the Passover is all about, but there are several more feasts! We are in chapter 9 of Numbers for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. If you are new to this whole Bible thing, welcome, and you may want to read a bit of Exodus 13:21 to understand this miraculous cloud mentioned in the later part of today’s chapter. Wouldn’t you like to have a constant miracle from God reminding you of His presence in your life? For me, that is creation itself! There are too many variables for it to exist and to all be by chance. Mathematically, the odds against chance for al...

  It’s another fine Monday morning. I hope you have great plans for this day God has given you! This morning, I get to do some work for a dear friend/customer, and my eldest son is my helper, as the work is awkward but not particularly heavy. We will be working from two ladders, replacing some siding. My son wanted to just help, but I insisted on paying him for his much-needed help. I am hoping we are also making some great memories for the rest of our lives. The rest of this job is much easier, and I can complete it over the next few mornings without a helper, but today’s work I couldn’t do without him! We are about to hit our yearly triple-digit weather that will last until sometime in September or later, so I am only working mornings and late evenings.   Please forgive my occasional ramblings about work and projects around the Little Hundred Acre Wood. We are here for The Daily Bible Challenge, in chapter 8 of Numbers. Today’s chapter is a description of the life of a Levi...

  Good morning! For most of us reading this, it is our day of worship, although I hope you are beginning to worship all week long. If you stick with The Daily Bible Challenge, it has a way of changing us and making us want to spend more time with God. But there will also be long, maybe even boring chapters like today’s. But the challenge is to read the whole Bible cover to cover, so we will begin to understand more of the context of the Bible!   There is so much repeated detail in today’s chapter, but if it is this detailed, it must be very important to God, even if from our perspective it seems mundane. We are so busy that we want meat as fast as we can daily. But I think God wants us to slow down and see the bigger picture. So here is one little tidbit: why were there twelve days of consecration offerings? I would suggest it was one offering from each of the tribes of Israel. Now click the link below and listen for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in Numbers 7.   Talk with...

  Good Saturday morning, I am humbled this morning as I read chapter 6 of Numbers. Now, please understand this is Old Testament law and, as a rule, is intended for the Jewish people. Not to say we can’t take a Nazirite vow, but it would be never-ending because we do not have a priest or a tabernacle to have the closing sacrifice made for us. So please be careful how you approach this chapter; this is a very specific vow and tradition that should not be taken lightly. In fact, it is so important that I have included another link to an article and video that cover this very well from Pastor Nelson of Bible Munch. https://www.gotquestions.org/Nazirite-vow.html   Now, on a lighter note, we have a section here that is common to many of us; it is often repeated in churches by the whole congregation. It is referred to here as Aaron’s Benediction, also known as the Aaronic Blessing, and is often the closing of church services. It is really meant for Aaron’s family, but through Jesus...

  Good Friday morning to all of you near and far. As much as I would like to skip today’s chapter (Chapter 5 of Numbers), we read/listen to every verse of every chapter here in The Daily Bible Challenge. However, the good news here is that we are under the New Covenant if we are saved by the Blood of Jesus. But if you are Jewish, you are under both the new and the old by your bloodline. I can guarantee you that if you join this daily challenge, there will be times when the content will make you angry at me,  God, or at least at His Bible. I can tell you, He can handle your anger, He is not weak like we are.   So, without cultural biases, I would say this process should also be for wives to take their husbands to the Priest in the reverse of this situation! But if I were to say that I would be adding to God’s law, and I have no authority to add or take away one word of God’s Bible! If I were to start rewriting God’s law, I am sure from my mere mortal perspective I would ge...

    Good morning, it's Thursday, and it's a busy day for us here at The Little Hundred Acre Wood. I hope your day is full of something that inspires you! As I read Numbers 4 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, I found myself pondering how good it must have been to have such clear instructions from God on what your responsibilities were as Levites. If you were of this family, you did this, and if of that family, you did such and such. To have such a clear understanding of your purpose must be freeing. But with human nature, many would feel trapped by such a life. I, for one, would love such clear direction.   I also ponder just how difficult some of this would have been. You would need to be able-bodied to perform most of the tasks outlined in Numbers 3 & 4. You see, those curtains you have been put in charge of weigh more than even Goliath could have lifted. Some of these curtains were hundreds of feet long and tens of feet tall. The curtain to shield the entrance to ...

     Good Wednesday morning, we are halfway through this week, surely we can make it to Friday! We have gray skies this morning here on the Little Hundred Acre Wood, but they will be giving way to intense sun by about 1pm. My coffee is still hot, and I have been researching Numbers 3 after reading it a little while ago.          Maybe I am just a simple man, but it is confusing to me. The whole part of paying the Levites a ransom for the number of their firstborn was not the same number as the firstborn of the rest of the people of Israel. But the rest of the concept is pretty clear, all firstborn are dedicated by those families as dedicated to God. Jesus was also referred to as Mary’s firstborn! The firstborn male has a very important role in families as a leader when the father passes away or just goes AWOL, as it is in today's culture. For this additional responsibility, they are also given a double portion of the inheritance!   How ...

  Good morning, I hope your week is off to a good start. My workweek is stalled due to the weather and the exterior painting involved in this repair. So, I used my time yesterday to find the missing link on my antique truck suspension/steering; it was literally called the center-link or, more commonly, the drag-link. Someone listed a NOS, OEM part, and these are very rare to find, so I jumped on the deal ASAP! This, with the Idlerarm, means I will have 100% all-new parts in the front end! I also ordered the weatherstripping for the doors to quiet things down, as I am about to finish the new floorboards, too. I have all these parts laid out in my shop in the order of when they will go in. This kind of order is important for such a big project.   Well, God has an order to things too, and that is just what we will be reading/listening to this morning in the second chapter of the book of Numbers. He has a plan for society and how we are to live together. He even has it planned for...

  Good Monday morning, near and far, I am up very early this morning, not for any particular reason, it just happens. Sometimes God wakens me for prayer, but I was not so led this morning, just awake and ready to start this day and write to you about our Lord and Savior and the amazing books He left us. If you are new to this whole Bible thing, it is a compilation of sixty-six books from over 40 authors written over a span of 1500 years. Yet it all ties together with remarkable accuracy! This fact is also why it can be used as its own cross-reference. Many will say you can't use it to prove itself, but because it is a compilation, that is a false argument!    You are reading from a daily Blog that is called The Daily Bible Challenge. Our mission is to get people around the world to read the whole Bible cover to cover. The percentage of even self-proclaimed Christians who have read it cover to cover is alarmingly small. So I am calling on that obstinate part of you that lo...

      Good morning and Happy Sabbath! I must admit, I’m doing a little happy dance to be finishing Leviticus 27 this morning. It may be the toughest part of The Daily Bible Challenge, but we have made it! I will also admit that I spent way too long digging into little rabbit trails as I read this morning. Here is a list of things I ran off into to discern what I was to write about today:  (1) I guess I am only worth fifteen shekels… (2) Can you buy back a promise to God? Just what does this look like? (3) Just what is the vow they are talking about? (1), So, why am I worth fifteen shekels? It’s in the text! I am over 60 and therefore worth fifteen shekels, technically 16 because of the shekel of the tabernacle. Or is it 15 plus 20% plus the one, equals 19? I think I was missing the point of the whole chapter here.. (2), Really, buy back an oath/vow/promise to God? This whole concept just doesn’t make any sense to me at all. On...

  Good Saturday morning to all of you! I am selling some more parts off my parts truck this morning, hopefully its days are numbered here, and I can haul off what is left soon! Most everything I wanted off of it has already been harvested, and the last few items will be removed soon. I want this gone, but mostly I want it gone to make my wife happier; she has been so patient on this one! Someday, I will have a full-size shop to keep such things out of sight! I sure hope this guy buying the wheels is not delayed by the rains to the east of us right now. Dallas had some flood warnings last night.   I have two jobs for the next two weeks, what a blessing that is, thank you, God, for these blessings! One is construction repairs, and the other is RV repairs. I love the variety this lifestyle brings!   I think I am rambling here due to my not particularly liking chapter 26 of Leviticus. Yep, I am a pastor and I don’t like parts of the Bible! It makes me uncomfortable to read th...

        Good morning, near and far! Yes, I know if you are truly far, it is not morning, but regardless, I bid you a good day in the Lord! I will be a bit short in this post due to a longer eight-minute read. Chapter 25 of Leviticus is long but fun if you study it from the perspective of a study of the culture of the Jewish people. There are some words here that give merit to some stereotypes of the Jewish people culturally. One such passage is 25:14. Ask yourself why this applies in just that special year of Jubilee? I do not say this out of any bias, just a curious observation. Questions and comments are always welcome via PM/DM.   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=3&c=25

    Good morning, God put something on my heart as I read Leviticus 24 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. First, it was, why do you think they all had to put their hands on the head of the man they were about to stone to death in 24:14? Then He said, think of how you would be personally convicted of all the things you have done if you had to touch the man’s head you were about to pass judgment on! For most, the only difference between this man and ourselves is that he got caught!   The law’s purpose we are reading about was to show us how we all fall short of God’s strandards, but through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we all may be saved from the punishment required for our sins! Click the link below to listen for yourself! We welcome any and all comments about this subject via DM/PM! Any porn junk will be deleted and blocked!   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=3&c=24

    Good morning, no disasters struck as I entered the kitchen to make my coffee this morning, and I am very thankful for that! There is a great sunrise starting outside my little office windows, and there appear to be far fewer clouds, just the right amount for God’s canvas for another sunrise of Hope painting across the sky! In a way, I am so grateful that God humbled me before all my meetings yesterday. I saw such hope in each meeting from my newly humbled vantage point.   Our local territory representative from FCA was at the latter meeting, and her youthful excitement for this coming year’s activities was contagious! I am not even much of a sports guy, but I was ready to head to Friday Night Lights in support of FCA’s goals! Did you know you can go to their website and support them financially? In doing so, you will be supporting future Christian leaders to take part in returning our communities to God’s will.   Well, before I start rambling on endlessly, let’s ...

  Good Tuesday morning. I was distracted as I started writing this. I am not easy to anger, but it does happen, and this morning is one of those times. I was given a special gift, it is a custom knife made by a regionally famous, successful custom knife maker, Blue Conoe Forge. It was never to go through the dishwasher, handwash only! Everyone in the house knew this but yet it still happened, and now it has a swollen handle, no longer matching up in size to the tang. It made me angry and thus distracted as I went before God for my quiet time with Him earlier this morning.   I love my wife and will let this go because that knife was my responsibility, and just a thing, not a religious relic or something precious to God. I trust that she did this by mistake while tired or in a hurry, and I was probably the cause of either of those factors. I find that I am embarrassed about my outburst of anger when I found it in the dishwasher this morning. I burst out with harsh words, “SOB” i...

       Good Monday morning, wherever this blog post finds you! There is the beginning of a beautiful sunrise beginning to break through the thick overcast sky. After this weekend's events, I needed this glimmer of hope. Did you know your pastors get down over such events, too? But we are to be strong for our flocks and help them find hope and meaning in all circumstances, but you may want to reach out to them with words of encouragement in such times as these. Pastors are generally expected to be perfect in the eyes of thier congregations and that is a terrible burden to lay on their shoulders. Sometimes they will need grace as they are mere humans who have been given a calling that few would volunteer for!   Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is all about the higher standards God put on the Priests. Leviticus 21 is a somewhat less controversial read than the previous few chapters. Yet there are still a few things that today's cultural differences will make seem alar...

  I want to share an uplifting message along with today’s chapter (Leviticus 20) for The Daily Bible Challenge, but this is not a particularly suitable chapter to provide what is needed for times like these. But there is some hope in this message. God did provide a way to be saved from the depravity of mankind. In the days of Leviticus, it was a set of rules to follow to avoid disrespecting God and bringing on His wrath. It was also animal sacrifice to cleanse the people who sinned. There are a lot of answers in this chapter to the ills of mankind in today’s world; many of these infractions had the death penalty as punishment, but some only had banishment. In my sinful nature, I assign a false hierarchy from this discrepancy of the penalties. It is important not to allow yourself to justify wrongs in such a way as my thinking above. Sin is sin, and all will be judged with a penalty of eternal punishment in Hell, but here is the good news: God allowed a pathway of forgiveness when H...

   Good morning, please forgive my tardiness in this post this morning. The fireworks were crazy intense last night, well into the wee hours of the morning. I did not sleep well or deeply and didn’t open my eyes until six-thirty, very late indeed! With that in mind, I will post this with little commentary. My one point for today is that if we all lived by the simple instructions in chapter 19 of Leviticus, there would be little conflict in this world; in fact, lawyers would probably go out of business! As always, we welcome comments via direct/private messaging. Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=3&c=19

  Good morning and Happy Fourth to all my readers in the USA. We are a rugged country of individualists and were founded in the treasonous acts of a few and dependence on God Himself! Yes, the men and women who founded the USA were committing treason against the UK, yet they are heroes in our eyes. Just read the Federalist Papers if you doubt God was a part of this process. Now that is as close to a political note as you will ever hear from The Daily Bible Challenge!   Today’s challenge is Leviticus 18, and so many of society’s woes would be resolved if we just followed God’s plan for us revealed in this chapter; just about every known perversion of man is covered in these few words. We have about nine more days of Levitical law to cover, and then we will be past one of the very hardest parts of the Daily Bible Challenge. I love the Bible, but even I cringe at entering into the book of Leviticus each year. Maybe some of you love this book, and if that is so, please share your ...

        Good Thursday morning, I finished my little contract job yesterday afternoon, and the small amount of add-ons requested. I will be invoicing this a little later this morning. My old bones had trouble with this job; I’m sore all over this morning as if I ran a marathon yesterday. It is probably just a side effect of Hashimoto's disease. It is tough to hear, but God seems to be telling me to slow down. I am not good at that, so maybe He is teaching me something about it! It is important to be listening to God for such lessons and not assume everything in life is a coincidence.   I had a friend send me a comment about all the detailed instructions in Leviticus and how there must be a hidden meaning in all of it. Well, in a way, he is right! Just not about it being hidden; it is right here in plain sight if you have read the New Testament, too! The “law” was to show us how much we needed God and a Savior. No one has ever fulfilled every single law in Le...

  Good morning, we are in Leviticus 16 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. Please join us as each of us becomes one of the statistical few who have actually read the whole Bible cover to cover! Just how many Bibles do you have around your house, and then ask yourself, have you read any of them? Yes, I am sure many of you have, but many who proclaim to be Christians have only heard what a preacher says, one verse here and another there. Or worse, they have only listened to complete strangers in person, or on the internet like me! I don’t want you to trust me, I want you to trust God, and what better way to learn to trust God than to actually start listening to Him fully, in context! About once a month, you will hear me saying we are here to stop listening to gossip about God and start listening to God about God!   I hope this journey through the Bible will be full of prayers asking God to reveal Himself to you through His words in the Bible. Here at the Daily Bible Challenge, w...

     Good Tuesday morning to all of you, I hope this letter finds you and yours well! I will be headed out soon to try to finish the contracting job I started yesterday, but I imagine it will stretch into tomorrow morning, too. I am just thankful to have the work after a long dry spell in the business! Most people in our area are cutting back these days, and projects have been on hold for a while now. You know that guy or girl who talks about uncomfortable topics at a party? Well, that is what Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is like! The Bible covers just about every topic under the sun, and if you are squeamish, maybe you should skim read this and move on. But The Daily Bible Challenge is a cover-to-cover challenge, and that in itself can be part of the challenge. Thus, the funny picture is just clickbait and is totally unrelated to today’s chapter! Well, unless you rely on the old saying, "The devil is in the details". I looked this chapter up on the Got Questions ...