Good Saturday morning to you near and far! We are back to very cold temps this morning, but at least the snow and ice are gone! I guess today will be a good day to catch up on some reading I need to do! I hope it is fairer weather where you are!   Today’s post is titled 2nd Kings 11: An Evil Grandma! I cannot even imagine a grandma putting all her grandchildren to death so she could become queen, but that is just what happened in Today’s Daily Bible Challenge! But her plans were foiled in time by some heroes who hid a proper heir to the throne. Find out more by clicking the link below and listening for yourself! It is less than four minutes read/listen, surely you have that much time for God Himself!   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=12&c=11

 Good Friday morning, I hope this letter finds you well! We are doing fine, although this sinus infection has not cleared up much yet; today is only the second day of medicine, so I need to be patient. Yesterday got fairly warm here, and I tackled a couple of small projects. The first was getting the heat to work on my 43-year-old truck. The second was some cleanup from the construction we have had going on here, off and on, for the last three years. There is still a lot to do on that project, but getting a start in the winter was great. Today it is swinging back to cooler temps, starting out at 32 degrees. I am so glad all the roads melted before this hit! Well, I started rambling again, didn’t I? Let’s get to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in 2nd Kings 10.  King Jahu utterly destroyed his predecessors but still had some errors along the way, yet God showed him grace, maybe because his heart was in the right place, yet with so much blood on his hands. It makes me ponder about ...

    Good Thursday morning, I am running quite late after my new medicine kept me up late last night. But we have a very eventful chapter for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. We are reading/listening to chapter nine of 2nd Kings. There is a new king for Israel, and Jezebel finally meets her just due! I know I say it a lot these days, but sure, the Bible is just a boring old book…NOT! We have a war between North and South Israel (Israel and Judah). We have a queen’s body being eaten by dogs. We have battle scenes with arrows piercing the armor of a king. And that’s just one chapter!   Click the link below and listen for yourself! Here’s a question for you: Why did Elisha send someone else to anoint the new king? Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=12&c=9

  Good Wednesday morning! I hope things are warm and safe for all of you, too! It looks like we will be able to leave the Little Hundred Acre Wood for the first time in many days, as our iced-over road seems to have melted enough to escape and get me to a doctor. I have had a strange sinus infection for a few days now, and it is getting worse. I am also sick of TV, but I couldn't focus enough to read with the left side of my face swollen and hurting nonstop. My darling bride is as stir-crazy as I am at this point! But enough small talk, let’s get to the reason we are here!   We are in 2nd Kings 8 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. It is full of famine, prophecy, ambition, murder, and even maybe the first recorded waterboarding, but for murder, not interrogation. If you are a regular here, you know what’s coming next…Yeah, the Bible is just a boring old book…NOT! But there is also some hope at the beginning, as Elisha saves the woman and her son again, from yet another famine. ...

    Good morning, we are in 2nd Kings chapter 7 today, picking up where we left off from yesterday’s cliffhanger. God provides a miraculous end to the famine in the land, while scattering the army that surrounded his people! We also hear how doubting Elisha is not a wise path! Click the link below, and an audiobook of the Bible will pop up and read it to you word for word! How easy is that? This audiobook is a free service of Blue Letter Bible, but they do accept donations to help with the expense of running this worldwide ministry. My darling bride and I have supported them for years, and we hope you will consider doing the same!     The Daily Bible Challenge is not connected with BLB.ORG in any way other than supporting them monthly! We are also not part of gotquestion.org , but hope you will support them also! While we are talking about money, The Daily Bible Challenge is a free ministry, but we hope to one day find supporters who will help us with some of t...

  Good Monday morning, we are still iced in here at The Little Hundred Acre Wood. With at least a half-inch of ice on the road leading down from our hilltop home, it would be foolish to try to leave. At the base of the hill, there is a hard right turn. If you miss that turn and slide off there, you roll down a cliff into the lake!   We can leave out the back gate of our property, but you have to go up a very steep hill almost immediately. We liked that about this property because these tall hills protect us from flooding. We escaped Houston many years ago after Hurricane Harvey flooded where we lived! This is our third time to be iced in in eight years, a minor inconvenience to live on this little slice of heaven! We have been watching a kajillian cardinals come to our feeder yesterday, but we are already getting cabin-fever!   Well, considering I had little to say when I rolled out of bed, that was a little long-winded! Let’s get to The Daily Bible Challenge as we read a...

    Good morning to each of you, it is 12 degrees here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood in NC, Texas. My darling bride and I are not fans of this kind of weather; we have a half inch of ice covered by snow and sleet on our road. Our heat is doing a great job of keeping us warm, but we are stuck at home. You see, we live on a steep hill with a large, deep lake at the bottom of the hill. If you can't make the hard right at the bottom of the hill due to sliding on ice, you slide off a cliff into the lake…Yeah, I think we will just stay put!   Well, let’s get to the reason we are here, The Daily Bible Challenge, in 2nd Kings 5.   Why do people have hearts of such greed? Hey, I used to be the same way many years ago, so I am not judging you if that is who you still are! There is ultimately a price paid for such greed; either Jesus will pay that price for you, and you will repent and turn away from your old self, or that price will be on your own head for eternity.   T...

  It is 31 degrees and snowing, with some sleet at 4:16 when I am writing this... Someone tell the Northerners to come get their weather and take it back home...   Well, buckle-up buttercup! We are in for a wild ride for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in 2nd Kings 4. Well, I guess we are also in for a wild ride with this weather…BTW, you can have this under 32 degrees stuff! We have 31 degrees now and a light snow after freezing rain most of the night. Our stairs are almost impassable at this point. The dogs made it out to the wood but I kept them from running down the stairs as they normally do (no way to get to the vet in this)! They were more than happy to get back into the house fast! Our two inside cats woke me early this morning. I think the sleet we had pounding on the windows at 3:00 in the morning got them ready to play! Well, we'd better get to the Challenge!   Elisha (through God) brought great reward to the widow of a prophet who had feared the Lord. He also h...

  Good Friday morning, I hope you and yours are prepared for this winter storm. We have one last simple errand to run this morning, and then we can hunker down for the weekend. Today, we are in chapter 3 of 2nd Kings for The Daily Bible Challenge. It is another war, but this time against the Mohabites and some Israelite allies join forces to fight them, but there is a very strange ending!   But I would rather talk about a new life in Christ, found in the New Testament, but foretold many times in the Old Testament. We live this new life in Christ and wanted it for you too! If you are curious or already truly seeking this, please know our inbox is always open to you!   The Daily Bible Challenge is an important part of our mission here at The Little Hundred Acre Wood, but only after you have met Christ and invited Him into your heart as your Lord and Savior. The Bible (especially the Old Testament) is a way to deepen your relationship with Him. But, if the relationship is no...

      Please forgive my tardiness this morning, but I was very ill in the night! But with that, I have something different for you today! First, a riddle or a puzzling question anyway; How many times in the Bible did God part the waters through a prophet? Make sure you dig a little first, or you will surely answer wrong! The second is how many men or women went to heaven without dying? That we will find in 2nd Kings 2 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge!   I am so glad you are all here to spend time with God in His word today. If you invest time in His word, it will yield a return for His Glory, and in doing so, you will look back and see how you were blessed along the way!   Hey, send me your answer to the riddle via PM so others can still look for the answer! Click the link below to listen to today’s chapter; it is very interesting indeed!   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=12&c=2

  Good morning from The Little Hundred Acre Wood, where I rise early each and every morning to write to you, imploring you to read your Bible to learn more about God. Why, you ask? Because I truly believe we are living in the end times, in other words your time to delay might be up soon! But it is even more than just that, I want you to have a new life in Christ, living in the Joy and Freedom God has waiting for you. A life full of purpose and meaning that this earthly life only teases you about. All the while leaving you hungry for something unattainable. Well this new life in Christ can start today and is very attainable! But first let's get to Today’s Dilly Bible Challenge in 2nd Kings 1.   If only we had prophets of God today that would be willing to speak what they were told and believe it would happen just as God said! We will see such a man in today’s chapter, it is Elijah and he was a brave man of great faith! Just click the link below and listen to it for yourself. Th...

  Good Tuesday morning,   This is The Daily Bible Challenge, a blog that challenges you to read the whole Bible cover to cover in context. We do this by reading/listening to one and sometimes two chapters at a time 365 days a year. No, we will not finish the whole Bible in one year. This is a larger commitment than that, we want to allow time for prayer and discernment as we dig into each chapter a little deeper. I do not do much of the digging for you. But will often leave links to dig into the puzzling aspects along the way. Many times from gotquestions.org and the tools section of BLB.ORG .   So you might be asking who am I to try to lead you in this challenge? Well I am just some guy that used to be a drunk with all kinds of addictions in my past. I was a real sleaze-bag, running from God as fast as I could. Until God revealed Himself to me in a powerful way and redeemed me from my sins against Him and others. Now I am a Pastor in the background at a mid sized satell...

    Good Monday morning, all. I trust your weekend was restful and fulfilling! Ours has been such a blessing hosting this young family and their young girls in our home! My darling bride is in her happy place, getting to cook for many more than just us! God has given me a heart that loves kids and recognizes what a blessing they are as His creation! It must be kind of like how God sees us!   Well, I could write all day about watching these kids play and interact with the animals here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood, and Madeline having a young woman to sit and talk away the hours with! But we are here for The Daily Bible Challenge, and we'd better get to it!   We are in chapter 21 of 1st Kings this morning, where we will hear of a powerful king with a murderous wife who will stop at nothing to give possessions to her husband, the king. But through her gifts, there is murder of innocence and stealing of land and curses on King Ahab. But then there is some mercy shown ...

  Why can’t these kings just do exactly as God commands them to do? It is not like us, where God has been silent for a while. These Kings heard directly from God through His prophets. They had many signs to make it clear to them that God was real, and yet they still fought against what God told them to do! Just as we still do today, you see, God left us His word for us in the Bible, and year by year we are uncovering more and more proof the Bible is more about history than just some writings made up (like fairytails). Yes, there are parables that may not have actually happened, but were created to teach a lesson. But much of what we read (like today’s chapter) is a real account of what actually happened. Yet even with great evidence, we fail to believe! Like these kings, I think much of this is due to our pride clouding our vision.   Click the link below and join us here for The Daily Bible Challenge. We are in 1st Kings 20, and there is much prideful posturing from one king ...

  Good Saturday morning, near and far! What a day we have planned! We had other plans for our anniversary tonight, but God had a new plan of service for us instead! We will be hosting a family tonight due to the extreme cold that is coming our way. They are living in an RV that is older, and the propane system is leaking and needs repairs next week. That is making the heat unreliable! So, for this extreme cold, they will live with us in the guest bedroom. Madeline is so excited to bake bread with the mom and daughters! Madeline and I are not big fans of old man winter, so we will move our dinner plans to a late lunchtime to miss the cold. We have narrowed our plans to 4 restaurants, and it's ladies' choice of course!   Well, I can see that I am about to start rambling, so let’s cut that short and get to The Daily Bible Challenge in 1st Kings 19. We will hear about Elijah running in fear from Jezebel and going all the way to Mount Sinai, a very long journey! There God spoke to ...

  Good Friday morning, what an exciting time we live in! Every day is filled with news stories more surprising than the last! For some, it breeds fear deep in their hearts, but for us as Christians, we should see it as a sign of the times and not be fearful but rejoice that the Lord Jesus is returning soon! Do I know the exact time? No, of course not, as the scriptures say, no man will know! Do I have fear, only that I might get fooled or fail my mission in some way? But I trust in the Lord to set me on the right path at that time!   Do you have confidence in the Lord? Have you asked Him to save you, yet have not yet invited Him to be your Lord? Well, if that is you, it is a simple request with the hardest path you will have ever taken! Yes, His yoke is light, but your heart is heavy with selfish ambition, preventing this new life.   So here is the key: it is relinquishing control of every area of your life, and submitting to Him as Lord. I believe this is the very reason...

  Good morning, we have a great miracle in today’s chapter. I can hardly wait for you to hear it with me! This is one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible as God proves again that He is the keeper of life and death in chapter 17 of 1st Kings! I can’t even imagine how the widow felt in this account as her son died while she was in service to a man of God, a prophet of the Most High! Then the joy she felt after he was raised from the dead! Did she feel shame for doubting the Lord and the prophet Elijah?   Well, sorry for no spoiler alert, but like I said, this is about as good as it gets for me! But at least I didn’t spoil the first miracle in this chapter! You will need to click the link and listen for yourself to get that unique miracle of culinary provision! Your comments and questions are always welcome via PM/DM on any platform you find this blog!   Talk with you soon!    https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=11...

  Good morning, it is a rare day for me, I slept past 4 am! I woke so late that I must apologize for the tardiness of this post! Please accept my apology, especially if you use this as your daily devotional time with God! This will be very brief, as I don’t want it to be delayed even further by my rambling!   We are in 1st Kings 16 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, and all this turmoil and intrigue was really caused by Israel wanting a king instead of their true King, God! We must cover some four kings in this one chapter this morning. I lost count in my hurry to get this posted!   So please pour yourself a big mug of coffee and sit down with the Lord for the reading/listening to 1st Kings chapter 16!   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=11&c=16

  Good Tuesday morning to each of you. I hope this letter finds you and yours well! The last wall got painted at the house on The Little Hundred Acre Wood yesterday. Today, there will be trim paint, detail, and cut-in work. At last, we are in the home stretch! Well, let’s get to The Daily Bible Challenge while the coffee is still hot!   We are in 1st Kings 15 today, and we will hear how there were many kings in rapid succession between the north and south, Israel to the north and Judah to the South. We finally get a good king in here as ASA did well in the sight of the Lord! But there was a whole string of bad ones along the way! Remember to keep this in context. We need to ask who wrote it, who was the audience it was written to, and when it was written. I won’t always give you the answers because I want you to dig in a little for yourself. I don’t want you to just start listening to just anyone on the internet, test what you hear against the Bible itself, and then dig in wit...

    Good Monday morning! We had a great Vision Night at our StoneWater campus last night! We revisited some of the accomplishments of last year and then made straight the path God has us on for the next twelve months! It is going to be an exciting year indeed!   The painting on our casa is supposed to restart today, but it is a bit cold for it until about ten this morning. We are so excited to have this phase complete and move on to the final touches, like our downstairs entryway. I am building some huge, thick doors to give the place a clear entryway. That is a project for cold days of winter, if we ever get them this year. So far, almost every cold morning has ended up with a warm afternoon! Well, I am rambling again, maybe, out of fear of speaking on the horrible fate of Jeroboam’s family in Today’s Daily Bible Challenge.   As we read/listen to 1st Kings 14, we hear of a mother going to find out the fate of her sick child from a prophet, and it is not good news! B...

  Good morning, I hope you will be up and preparing for God’s day soon and will be headed to worship and fellowship with your church family. My darling bride and I were able to see the hands and feet of God at work within our church body yesterday, and it stirred feelings of joy and even pride in us about our church body. An all-volunteer group of mostly men was rebuilding the foundation of a church member’s home. It was a very old house, and this was no small task. But 15 to 20 men were all over and under this old partially pear and beam home that had signs of depression era construction techniques that had to be corrected for modern living requirements. Some ladies in the church brought food and drinks, and there was also a construction professional to lead the huge project. What a joy to see God’s people serving out of love for one another!   Well, Today’s Daily Bible Challenge is not an easy uplifting read; there is so much detail here in 1st Kings 13 that it is hard to k...

  Good Saturday Morning to all of you near and far! We had a busy day yesterday with many errands and some Greek food for lunch! Later this morning, I have a breakfast with some men, then a friend is kind of having an old-fashioned barn raising, but really we are just leveling his pier and beam house. But many men from our church are showing up to help as a community. I can’t participate much with this hernia, so I am just loaning him some huge house jacks and a coil nailer for his siding work for the following week. I am so excited for this young man who is experiencing a new life in Christ after incarceration a few years back. What a great God story this man has!   In Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, we listen to how Israel gets divided against itself, and a North and South begin to form a divided country after Solomon’s death. Solomon’s son Rehoboam was a foolish king over the South of Israel (Judah), while Jeroboam was over the North. Some of these events were foretold by G...

 Good morning, it’s Friday in case you have lost your way this week! We had some good news at my doctor's appointment yesterday, and hope for better results soon with another adjustment of my meds. The Casa paint project had to pause yesterday due to high winds all day. We hope our friend/contractor can pick back up on this project on Monday.  Speaking of losing your way, even with all the wisdom in the world, Solomon still fell due to the root of most falls, his own pride! We read again of his polygamy here, how else could you explain such things as 700 wives and 300 concubines other than a huge ego/pride problem! If you find yourself wanting to possess everything you think is pretty, sexy, sparkly, maybe it's time to face the situation that you have a pride problem! That would have eventually been my downfall, too, but God set me straight to see my huge pride problem, but not before some stumbling along the way!  Remember way back in the beginning of the Bible when Go...

  We are so very blessed by this weather, as we have been painting our casa in January! Normally, paint would have to wait until at least March, but with these unusually warm days and even last night’s low of 67 degrees, the paint has had ample time to adhere and dry fully. With some rain forecasted to start at any minute now, the timing has truly been a blessing! I sincerely mean this when I say thank you, God, for this wonderful situation, whether miraculous intervention or mere coincidence, we are blessed regardless! Today we head to Weatherford to see the specialist about my Hashimoto's disease. We look forward to having some answers soon after some more tests and biopsies! We covet your prayers in this situation!   Well, let’s get to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge in 1st Kings 10! As I wrote of our blessing above, I now ponder just how much more Solomon was blessed beyond measure. It would seem good that I am not blessed in the way Solomon was, because I am sure I would no...

  So you have read me write about the Bible being a boring old book "NOT" a few times in the past. But that is usually about drama, intrigue, passion, sex, adultery, war, crime, and betrayal. However, today my claim is for the businesspeople in the crowd. There are huge business deals concluding in today’s chapter, and as is the norm in business, one party is happy, and one is feeling jipped! Click the link below to listen to this transaction between two kings.   It would seem that giving a king 20 cities would be a very extravagant gift or payment for the cedar, cypress, and gold used to build the Temple and Solomon’s palace. But the King of Tyre (Hiram) was not pleased with the gift/payment. In fact, he named them Cabul (meaning worthless). But then Hiram sent Solomon 120 talents of Gold. I cannot figure out this transaction for the life of me. Why send so much gold if you didn’t like the payment of the cities? So I am going to research it for a few minutes and get back to ...

    Good Tuesday morning! Paint prep was going all day yesterday at The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Today, the first paint will start! My darling bride and I are so excited that we can hardly wait to see the new look and have all that new siding protected, if we ever get a real winter this year! What a blessing this weather has been for this project! I had a great lunch meeting with a friend yesterday, of course, at Grumps, in Glen Rose! Well, I am rambling again, let’s get to today’s chapter!   Wow, what a chapter this is! In chapter 8 of 1st Kings, we hear/read about King Solomon giving a big prayer to dedicate the 1st Temple. If only the leaders of today had such dedication as we will hear in this prayer! Well, as this is a long chapter ~10 minutes, I will end this right here to value your busy schedule. Click the link below to listen for yourself to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge!    Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video...

  As I listen to an old tune from CSN, I find myself pondering the impending sunrise and how God makes it different every day! I am sure some days one area has a better sunrise than another. It would seem we focus on Him creating this one as a special event, but maybe we should be more focused on that He created everything that makes this happen, not just that one sun rise you see. Expanding how we see God to maybe get just a glimpse of what He sees, from His perspective, will help us keep our own ego in check! And somehow see ourselves as just how small and insignificant we are as a single human! Yet to Him we are so important as a son or daughter that He died for us on the cross for each one of us as an individual!   So sometimes I have been guilty of watching a sunrise and feeling like He created it special just for me that morning. After all, He does know how much I love to watch a sunrise, and He is my Father/Daddy and Savior! But in the overall scheme of this world, that...

  We hope you have a fantastic Monday! Ours is quite full with the house painting starting today and a lunch meeting, and several other todos along the way. I hope my energy holds up for all this! What kind of plans do you have for this day? Well, I hope those plans include starting in God’s word for The Daily Bible Challenge, in 1st Kings 7! Click the link below to join us on this great adventure as King Solomon builds his own house while finishing up the details of God’s house! This makes me think of an old song! https://open.spotify.com/track/2hitsKa8SthKhRJBXUHbIv? si=ef9e8fea0a974bf9   If it were me, I would be careful not to build my own house as big or bigger than God’s house, nor more opulent! Maybe that itself would be a good spot to use Got Questions and Grok or other AI to find out just what this ”house” looked like? Sometimes I think Solomon didn't listen to the Wisdom God gave him! So he was kind of like all of us on this earth, a flawed, fallen man.   Talk t...

    I hope you are pondering a place of worship this morning, unless, of course, you already have a church home! It is the first Sunday for worship in the new year for us. Our church closes this one Sunday after Christmas for the whole staff to spend the time with their families. I know I just can’t wait to see everyone and spend some time in worship and fellowship with our church family. So if you are new to all this, it may seem weird that I look forward to church, but it is a place where we feel like we belong to something. No, it is not an exclusive club, shunning anyone new. In fact, our larger focus is on new guests, making sure we remove that awkwardness as quickly as possible! Just about everyone gets that feeling when trying something new!   Our goal is that you experience God’s love on your first and every visit to any of our campuses! Why you ask: Because we want you to feel like family and come back every week, because belonging to a family symbolizes what we...

  Good Saturday morning, it is exciting to see the number of daily readers grow. May all the glory go to God Himself! It is interesting to me that as my darling bride and I ponder what our finished house will look like when the exterior is finished next week, we are reading about a house being built for God and the Ark in 1st Kings chapter 5. I am sure Solomon knew what God’s house would look like, as someone surely had it all drawn on some kind of paper. Our pondering is, will the remodel and paint make it really feel like a modern farmhouse as we envisioned years ago? Well, before I start rambling on and on about this, let’s get to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge!   David was not allowed to build the Temple, but Solomon, with little blood on his hands, was commissioned by God to do so. With one hundred and fifty thousand forced laborers, this should get knocked out much faster than our little farmhouse was done! Click the link below to read/listen for yourself!   Talk wit...

    Good morning, I hope this letter finds you and yours well. We are doing well here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood. With two hounds at my feet and a tiny cat in my lap, I write to all of you with great joy in my heart! It has been such a blessing to see this blog grow so much this past year, not for my gain but for God’s glory. Please humor me as I catch up on some details for long-time readers on our project list here on the homestead.   The pressure washing will start here on the house today, and the paint should start Monday if the weather holds up for us. Some of the siding got dirty as this project started over two years ago. (even under a real tarp, dirt crept in). A brother from church has asked to do the work, and he is very experienced with painting with the high-pressure spray type rig I am providing. I have to get another five-gallon pail of paint, a case of caulk, and the trim paint this weekend, and lots of protective covering material for the deck and sto...

       Happy New Year, one and all! Madeline and I watched a movie last night, although some parts were cruel/sad, the end was pretty good! I, of course, didn’t stay up for the new year; this early post would be so very difficult if I had. We have rarely stayed up for the ball drop together; my darling bride is a night owl and has seen many without me. But back in the day, we did go out and have a great celebration more often. I barely remember last night’s fireworks waking me.  In the past, we would have to sedate our poor old Ruby (chocolate lab) because she was a traumatized hunting dog that spooked from the gunshots and never recovered. I remember being thankful the first year after her death because she didn’t have to live through New Year, and the Fourth fireworks anymore. She was one of the best dogs of my lifetime, and I miss her regularly, still to this day. Her resting place is a rock-bordered garden here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood.  Wel...