That was sure a long day yesterday. I slept late this morning after wrestling with sleep for a couple of hours, while I finally wound down. I am a morning person, so work days that last well into the evening can really mess with my rhythm. Which is probably why I had to reread this chapter several times, even though it is only a two-minute read. I finally asked Grok to summarize it, and that allowed me to wrap my sleepy head around what was going on. I look forward to tomorrow's chapter to hear what happens to Athaliah.   Did you know there was once a queen ruling over Jerusalem? She was an evil, wicked queen named Athaliah, and she put many of the possible heirs from King David’s lineage to death so she could seize power! She reigned for six years while the last possible heir (Joash) was hidden from her. Click the link below and read/listen to more!   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=14&c=22

  Good Monday to you, I hope your day goes well. Let’s get to this while the coffee is hot. We can give it a good start with The Daily Bible Challenge in 2nd Chronicles 21. We will read/listen to what happens when a son is given leadership just because he is the firstborn, not because of character or merit, again, without seeking God’s will first!   It amazes me how some of these kings just murdered their own family and still remained king after such crimes! Well, God had special plans for Jehoram with all his evil. Well, I will put it this way: it is just too gruesome to talk about these details before coffee and breakfast! In fact, I can’t recall a more gruesome end to anyone smote by God in the whole Bible! Click the link below to read/listen to it yourself.   As always, many thanks to BLB.ORG for providing this audiobook for all of us! Please consider supporting them financially, as we do! This is a free ministry to all users of their platform, purely to spread the g...

  It is the Lord’s day. What are you going to do with it? We will go to gather with our church family, and there will be much praise and worship, and of course, much fellowship! This is Palm Sunday, with Easter next weekend, we are overjoyed to celebrate Jesus' first choosing to die to pay for our sins, and then rising from the dead so we can too! There is life after death, but there is also a great life here as servants of Christ. Sharing this new life in Christ with others is what I live for; it is my calling to share this with you and to share The Daily Bible Challenge with you so that you can learn more about God and grow in a Saving Relationship with God!   My little cat does not seem to want me to share this with you this morning, she is in my lap under my keyboard, reaching up and licking and gently biting my fingers as I type…LOL! She is full-grown and only about six pounds and thinks my lap is her bed. Well, she has managed to distract me enough to get a mention here,...

        Good Saturday morning, I am writing early to all of you after a rough day yesterday. This morning is the monthly food distribution I work for in Glen Rose, Texas. I love serving in this ministry at Cornerstone Fellowship.  There was some good in yesterday; we got a new fridge for downstairs. We have always had two fridges until about 3 years ago, when we gave one to someone to get started in a home. It turns out to be almost exactly what we gave away. It will hold a full-size party tray, and that was the most important feature we wanted. I see some gatherings/parties in our future! But on the way to pick up the fridge, I had a wreck in my bride’s truck while pulling a trailer…ARGH! Everyone was ok except for Bella, that’s what my darling bride named her truck. She is still drivable after I removed the driver’s side fender so we could open the door. I feel awful for causing this accident and worse for messing up my bride’s truck! The adjuste...

  We made it to Friday! I hope your week has been productive! We have gotten a lot done here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood. Today, I am working on the wiring on my antique truck before the transmission returns from being rebuilt by an acclaimed rebuilder in Las Vegas. With a new fuse block, I should be ready for this summer heat, running the AC full blast! Well, I am rambling, it is easy for me to do when talking about my old truck! It is also easy for me to do when sharing with people about my Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!   We are in 2nd Chronicles 16-17 this morning, under a five-minute read/listen. It struck me this morning just how many leaders started off strong and became vain in their later years and stopped listening for God’s dierection! You have probably seen this before, but absolute power corrupts absolutely! It is the tale of humankind that we are all born with sin and fall when not running toward Jesus! We are instructed in scripture (with good cause) to ...

  Good day to each of you, far and wide! Today’s daily Bible Challenge Blog is not for everyone. If you are content in God and in a full saving relationship, this might not appeal to you. But for those who are still feeling empty, who go to some big church each week, but still haven’t found the Lord and still have that empty feeling in their hearts, this one is for all of you! It is also for a seeker who has not found God or a church they are seeking. We are in 2nd Chronicles 15, and a prophet of the Lord has been sent to call out to the king and the people.   Are you waiting on a prophet to tell you what is missing? Maybe you have been attending church at a large, organized worldwide religion for ten, twenty, or even fifty years, yet still feel empty! Knowing something is missing, but not knowing what to do about it! Well, all of you who fit into these descriptions, this day’s Bible Challenge is for you! Maybe what's wrong isn’t your church; maybe it’s you! Have you become a ...

  I hope your week is going well. Ours, here at The Little Hundred Acre Wood, is going quite well! Madeline has a paper due this week for her current class. I get the privilege of reviewing/editing it for her after I finish writing to you this morning. Yes, it is a privilege; this is a very personal journey she is on right now! We were out late (for us anyway) last night, and I am a bit sluggish this morning. I just spent thirty minutes researching the territories mentioned in our chapter for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. Gerar is only mentioned twice in the whole Bible, so I wanted a clear mental image of where this battle was and where the men from Judah plundered the cities of the invaders. They actually chased them all the way to their home and plundered it, not at all what the rival invaders planned for their incursion into Judah! So click the link below and listen to more about the good king Asa, son of Abijah, as he defends the homeland against invaders, and all with God’s...

     Good day to you on this fine Tuesday! We are in 2nd Chronicles 13, and a lot is going on in the divided Israel. There was a southern territory (Judah) that remained mostly faithful to God; it included Jerusalem near the northern border. The territory to the north was called Israel, which we call the whole country today. What strikes me in this section of history is just how short a reign some of these kings had! Three years for Abijah, yet he did so much good in that short time. But we will read tomorrow about how his son did even more when he took over for his father. Oh sure, the Bible is just some boring old book… valiant wars, kings with fourteen wives with 48 kids. I can’t even imagine two wives; that seems like a recipe for disaster…LOL! Please click the link below and listen for yourselves! Then join us here again tomorrow for The Daily Bible Challenge! Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=14&c=13

  Well, sometimes I make a mistake in my posts; yesterday I did just that, and I am very grateful for those who pointed it out to me! No, really, no sarcasm here, I am very grateful! I would never want to lead people away from the real facts of God’s word. You see, it was Rehoboam that had the zipper problem, not Jereboam! (Jereboam had the goat demon problems!) I also mentioned how Rehaboam went in the right direction, and at that point, he did! But in today’s scripture (2nd Chronicles 12), we find that like many men, he did the right thing at the beginning, but only five years in, we find that he has dropped all that and been influenced (maybe by all those non-Hebrew wives..?) He allowed high places to be set up for worshipping asherah poles (other false gods). So much so that God sent His wrath upon them! Rehaboam humbled himself before the Lord, as I hope I have done this morning.   So in closing, you might have heard me say in the past: Click the link below and read it fo...

      Good Sunday morning! We had a great Saturday here, but man, did it get hot for March! 95 degrees Ferenhight is too hot for April…let alone March! We had some Help Ministry work yesterday and then went for a drive in the hills west of us, before returning home for a nap. Saturday naps are the best! I am about to head out to my monthly breakfast with some brothers in Christ, but first, let’s get to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. We are in 2nd Chronicles 11.    As Rehoboam does well and follows God and the scriptures, Jeroboam heads the other direction with his half of the land. Rehoboam had many wives and concubines, no, seriously, he had a lot! He ended up with 28 sons and 60 daughters! This is a fault I like to call a zipper control problem in modern day, but these men didn’t wear pants, maybe that would have helped, LOL!    It is easy to skim over verse 15, but it needs further digging! We have the golden calves rear their ugly he...

      Good Saturday morning, it is still early as I write this letter to all of you. I love early mornings awaiting the sunrise here in my little corner office overlooking The Little Hundred Acre Wood! Moving here, now over 8 years ago, was the best decision we ever made! Our home is almost complete on the exterior; there are still some plans for the interior, but those will be waiting a while now as we enter this year of healing. My darling bride is going through a course called Healing Hearts Ministry, and God is using that to take her to a new place of harmony with her past wounds. I am so proud of her in this journey of hard work and turning to God for answers. Moving here and finding a church home and a rural lifestyle has allowed us to heal ourselves and our marriage and grow closer than we have ever been as we seek God’s plans for our lives! But soon I will start a bunch of doctor’s appointments to get to the bottom of some health issues. I have no fear because God...

      Good Friday to all of you! I am running late again, as we had some adventures last night with a baby squirrel and a mammal rescue in Cleburne, Texas. My darling bride found the poor little guy with cats surrounding it, so we kept it warm and got it to a licensed rehabber. Then a late dinner at Grumps in Glen Rose. I didn’t even wake until five-thirty… Very late indeed! My bride says we have a big X on our home that all the needy animals see and run to us, LOL! She may just be right about that!    Well, we are here for The Daily Bible Challenge, not Animal Rescue 911! Let’s get to 2nd Chronicles 9 and the Queen of Sheba. It is an interesting account of their meeting, in which she quizzes Solomon about many things and tests his Wisdom. From the sound of things, it would seem he passed her test.     Scholars still argue whether she was from Saba (pronounced Sheba) in Yemen or from Arabia. That debate will continue until Archaeolo...

  Good Thursday to each of you, far and wide, although not as far and wide today as Tuesday, before I was deplatformed from X on Wednesday. This brought me great sorrow, and with deeper research, I determined that the automated system that found me guilty was correct. I had broken a rule, but the rule's language was very ambiguous, especially since the platform provides the tool I used to accidentally break the rule…LOL!! I will appeal a second time in a few days, and maybe a human will review the appeal. If this is what a fully AI world will be like, things will be rather strict and heartless! Hey, a thought, if any of you are on X, copy and paste this on X and include @elonmusk, and maybe he will send it for review… But I am rambling again, let’s get to The Daily Bible Challenge.   We are in chapter 8 of 2nd Chronicles, and it is full of interesting tidbits to dig into. Such as the reason for the new house for the queen, because she is spiritually unclean, being an Egyptian,...

  We have made it to Wednesday, wow, this week is going fast! My morning has been long already as I deal with some of the behind-the-scenes issues a ministry like this can face. Appealing a platform suspension, for using a tool they provided me to use…LOL! I am in my third hour, and it is seven, and just writing to you, very late indeed!   Today, we are in chapter 7 of second Chronicles, there are some interesting things to hear as you listen to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. Such as this party, feast, celebration of the grand opening of the Temple lasting 22 days! Now that is a celebration! I can’t imagine anything lasting this long in today's generations! But we also see a miracle in the text as God consumes all the offerings with fire coming down from heaven and then fills the temple with His Glory. It is an easy, fast read/listen, so click the link below and hear it for yourself!   Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb...

  Good Tuesday to you all, wherever this letter finds you! I look forward to Tuesdays, my darling bride has women’s Bible study in the morning, then that evening we have our family group. It is nice to have a place where you belong!   I hope we have built a place where you feel like you belong here at The Daily Bible Challenge each day. We also hope this is a place for new believers and seekers, as well as those who have called themselves Christians for many decades. This morning, we have something for all of those people in chapter 6 of 2nd Chronicles, so let’s get to it!   It seemed strange to me that Solomon would stand on something made of bronze in the temple, but then I noticed that it was a platform he had made, maybe for this very purpose. Not some other bronze appointment that had been made from God’s design for the tabernacle. To stand on any of those items would have probably been worthy of death! But Solomon had wisdom granted by God and, at this point, was st...

    Good Monday morning to each of you. I hope this letter finds you and yours well! All is good here on The Little Hundred Acre Wood, spring has sprung, and I already had to do the first mowing, which usually isn’t until some time in April or even May! Well, the coffee is hot, and the hounds are at my feet, so that must mean it’s time for The Daily Bible Challenge!   We are in 2nd Chronicles 5 this morning. It is a very short read, but the next chapter is longer, so we will just listen to 5. Solomon brings in all the items his father, David, had prepared for the Temple. Then Solomon sent for the Ark, which had been waiting in the tent/Tabernacle for a few years while construction of the Temple was underway. This would mean that some Priests were living and tending to the Tabernacle and the Ark the whole time it was waiting for the Temple to be finished. This time, there is no record of anyone touching the Ark and dying immediately, like in the other moves! Maybe that sto...

  Happy Sunday, I hope you are planning to head to your home church this morning, or search for one to call home! My darling bride and I consider StoneWater church our home and family! If you are in North Central Texas, give us a visit! We have an amazingly detailed pair of chapters for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge (2nd Chronicles 3 & 4). Please click the link below to join us in the challenge!   So, if you are wondering how this guy can get so excited about the Bible? Today it is easy, but I will admit some of 1st Chronicles was not so easy LOL! Today, we are getting one of the most detailed descriptions anywhere in the Bible of Solomon’s temple. I am pretty sure none of us have ever seen such an elaborate and beautiful temple/church anywhere in the world. I asked Grock AI to recreate it, and it failed miserably today. After many tries, it just couldn’t do it justice, but it did find a great copyrighted illustration, so here is a link to that; it is midway down the linke...

  Good day to all of you on this fine Saturday! I managed to send off my antique truck’s transmission to an expert in this era and brand. He is in Las Vegas, so there is at least a week's delay round-trip, plus his repair time. But it will be well worth it to have it like brand new! I will use this time to finish the other repairs/restoration of the truck’s electrical system and air conditioning. Well, I am rambling again, let’s get to why we are here, The Daily Bible Challenge!   We are in 2nd Chronicles 2, and it is an easy read/listen. There are no long lists of names, just action! Solomon is negotiating deals with neighboring areas to get craftsmen. It is kind of an H-1B visa program like we have today. But there are also many plain laborers mentioned, much like some of the immigrants we have today. 150 thousand workers who were foreigners in the land. Plus 3600 supervisors. This kind of talk gets the Project Manager in me all fired up! Eighty thousand of those men will qu...

  Good day, it is Friday, and we have a lot to cover, so let’s get to it for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. Coming to you from the little corner office overlooking The Little Hundred Wood. The Wood is bursting out in many shades of green, and many blooms have started to form now that we have had two spring rains! My little truck, Eeyore, will be waiting on a new transmission for a while, so I will be knocking out some other interior restoration in the dash area over the next couple of weeks.   Well, I am very late posting this, so let’s stop the small talk and get to 2nd Chronicles 1! We will be hearing of how God blessed Solomon with the requested wisdom to lead his people. God was so impressed with young Solomon’s request that He also granted him great wealth and honor! Solomon, as a young man, started out doing everything right as King. He went up to where the Ark was waiting and sacrificed many things to God. But we will read soon of how he collected wives like some kids c...

  Good day to you on this fine Thursday. I ask for prayers for all those ravaged by the tornadoes/storms on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. The property damages were severe, but at this time, only two deaths occurred due to the far better warnings and reporting available today. What a devastating time this must be for all those families! It is in such stark contrast to what we are reading/listening to in Today’s Daily Bible Challenge!   In chapter 29 of 1st Chronicles, we are listening to great wealth and riches being donated to build the first temple (AKA Solomon’s Temple). But clearly that is a misnomer as it is God’s Temple! God provided such great wealth for His people that their contributions for the temple are almost unbelievable in pure volume of giving! In my opinion, there has never been such a building campaign since this one! The gold and silver alone would be billions of dollars in today’s value.   But alas, we also hear of King David’s passing, with such ...

  Good morning, I am finally up early again. I guess the time change threw me for a loop the last few days. We had quite a storm blow through the Little Hundred Acre Wood last night, but not nearly the destruction of many towns up north. I got a lot done on the truck yesterday before the rains set in, but I hope to get back to it today. If it is not raining all day, I hope to pull the transmission and begin the repairs there, as the engine checked out completely. Well, we are here for The Daily Bible Challenge, not Austin’s garage and weather talk, let’s get to it!   We are in 1st Chronicles 28, and King David gives quite a speech in his old age. First, he gathered all the leaders and then told them how God gave him the total plans for the temple, but withheld the privilege of building it from him, but gave it to his son Solomon! David admitted God denied him this privilege because he had shed much blood in war. Not that that wasn’tr what David was commanded to do, but that do...

  Good morning and welcome to The Daily Bible Challenge. We are in chapter 27 of 1st Chronicles this morning. The project manager in me could not help but see today’s chapter as a good outline for how to organize a society! We had guards stationed in the thousands to protect the city, and many leaders overseeing the food on the hoof for the rest of society. Also, others were overseeing the food still on the vine/branch, and yet others were protecting the food in storehouses. All these positions were held in high esteem, as every item was important to survival. Yesterday, we read of the protection of the temple itself, as that was very important to the spiritual health of the society. That is the area where our guard is down in modern-day societies.   It would seem we do not value our spiritual health as a society any longer. Thus, the reason for The Daily Bible Challenge! Through digging into the scripture, we can find meaning and purpose, and outlines on how to treat each ot...

    I really can’t blame my tardiness this morning on the time change; this time change is my favorite, and I love the longer daylight hours! Sleep always comes so easily to me that my darling bride is often jealous! But last night was not the case, I just tossed and turned and finally went to the couch as to stop disturbing my bride! So when I finally slept, I slept until 7:15, an embarrassingly late time for a guy who is usually up by 4 in the morning! So my sincere apologies if I have thrown anyone off on this fine Monday morning!   We are in 1st Chronicles 26 for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. We will read what at first glance is a kind of boring text about the lineage of the gatekeepers. Well, there are a few things in here that deserve looking deeper into to keep it interesting. For one, how does one lose his birthright as Hilkiah did, mentioned for all of prosperity as he was first born, but his dad made his brother Shimri 1st! That must have left an emotional scar...

 Good Sunday to you, I hope this time change doesn’t throw you off today! I set most of the clocks last night before bed, but I have one analog clock left to set. Welcome to the Daily Bible Challenge. We are in 1st Chronicles 25 today. Please join us on this journey!   It is easy to get mixed up in the Bible, not because of poor skills in interpreting from one language to another, but often because of the limitations of the English language, for one! So many languages around the world have many words for slightly different versions of the same thing; the German language is famous for this and is often the brunt of jokes about a sentence being five words in English and fifteen in German! Sometimes Hebrew can be similar to this, maybe not all the words in the same sentence, just many words that have close to the same meaning. Today, we have the word “prophecy” in relation to worship music. It does not mean future-telling in this context, but it does mean musicians engaging in di...

  Good Saturday morning! Well, after a tough week here on the Little Hundred Acre Wood, my darling bride and I went to a coffee shop a couple of towns away and enjoyed a day off! The coffee and pastries were exceptional, and the mother-daughter team that owned the coffee shop were delightful! We didn’t know it was the beginning of the rattlesnake roundup for the area. This is a once-a-year festival where they actually go rattlesnake hunting and capture them live. We walked around a bit and saw many booths with stuffed rattlesnakes, hatbands, and other such art. There were carnival rides and the like lining the small town streets. It was a fun distraction from all the problems of the last week! I don’t mind snakes of all kinds, well, except for copperheads, they are very aggressive! Rattlesnakes warn you and just want to be left alone! There is so much superstition about snakes that it is hard to know fact from fiction, such as the false rhymes that so many trust to save them from ...

  Last night I got to share my God story with a new group of Re/Generation sojourners. This testimony of how God transformed me from a self-centered conn man with multiple addictions into a Pastor serving Him in all ways in a new life in Christ. A man who had secrets everywhere but now lives a transparent life, hoping to share Christ's truth with all I meet. A man who lived only for his own pleasure is now living to bring hope and love to all who will listen! You see, this complete transformation makes God very real to me; there is no doubt He did a miracle in my life, as most who know me now would never believe I was the man I used to be!   My mission here at The Daily Bible Challenge is to try to talk you into reading the whole Bible cover to cover in context, so you can get to know your creator, too! Not to show off my Biblical knowledge because I am a student too, I am always learning more about God through life and the instruction book He left all of us! But sometimes I g...

 What a great chapter we have for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge! In chapter 22 of 1st Chronicles, we read of David being told by God that he could not build a house for the Lord! The why that God was willing to tell King David must have been difficult for David to hear! But there was no way David could argue the point on this! God doesn't always tell us the why when we receive a NO answer! David had a very special relationship with God when he showed so much faith from such an early age, and it almost never faded in his long lifetime. I pray you find such a faith in your life also! It’s the kind of faith that allows you to still have Joy regardless of the circumstances around you, a calm in the storm, so to speak.  But David was given some very good news, and that is that his son Solomon would be allowed to build the house of the Lord! So, as any pushy dad would do, he began to gather all the materials for the project before his own death. I could see a son rebelling again...

  Good Wednesday morning, wherever this letter finds you! We have a confusing or at least puzzling chapter for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge. In chapter 21 of 1st Chronicles, King David takes a census of all the people of Israel and Judah. And this stirs God’s anger against him. But why would counting the people make God so mad? Click the link below to listen for yourself, but at least in David’s sinful mess, he chose to ask God to punish himself instead of all the sheep (people). At the beginning, there was no choice given that didn’t also punish the people, and David grieved over how his actions would hurt the people.   So why did this make God so mad? Well, it is a cultural difference that we do not understand from our perspective. You see, back then in Israel, only someone who owned something could count it, so by David counting the people, he was saying he owned them and that Israel was his, not God’s. That is why Joab understood this was a sin, and we were still lost on ...

    Good Tuesday morning! What a wild ride we had yesterday with things we count on and don’t even think about failing and causing turmoil in our lives! Truck problems, sewer problems, and a few other things along the way. We are promised difficulties when we follow Christ, and spiritual warfare was at an all-time high for us yesterday here at The Little Hundred Acre Wood! But we just rolled with the punches and set up a plan to resolve each problem over the next week or so. We will still go do all our normal church family stuff, if even just to spite satan LOL! No one was bleeding or getting a death prognosis, so none of these obstacles will stop us, maybe slow us down a bit, but not stop our Joy!   Our chapter is short this morning, but it is full of truly gruesome details of a war and the destruction of a people group. Namely, the last few giants, Goliath’s descendants. But there is a lot of meat on the bone in this area to research. Although it reads that they used th...

  Good morning! I hope you have a big day ahead that you are looking forward to! I know I am, but that is a decision I made, yes, I chose to look forward to boring a 6” coring hole in a parking lot! We needed a guest parking spot marked at the church, and this is the only way to secure the pole it will be mounted to. All other attempts to mount signs on asphalt have failed. If all I get done is the hole, that will be enough for today, but I hope to get the pole installed too! There is always something going on at a lively church like ours! I also have a small second job for a friend later in the week, and several jobs on my antique truck, Eeyore. So a busy week ahead, but not nearly as busy as what King David had in these two chapters for Today’s Daily Bible Challenge, please join us!   What a fitting couple of chapters for the times we are in today! King David strengthened his kingdom with each conflict and skirmish. God had His hand of protection on David and His people! The...

     Good Sunday morning, we are in 1st Chronicles 17, and for some, this subject is a tough one. It is especially tough for those who are living a blessed life of abundance and have for most of their lives, like just about everyone who lives in the USA. So I ask you this question before you start reading/listening to Today’s Daily Bible Challenge: Has God ever told you NO? If He has, how did you handle it? Did you pout, did you rebel and do it anyway? Or maybe like King David, you treated God with respect and honor and accepted His no with dignity. God has a way of humbling us, and many years ago, He humbled me, and I am so thankful He did! Click the link below to listen for yourself, then I hope you will go and gather in worship somewhere that focuses on what God says to us in the Bible, and not just the parts we like! Talk with you soon! https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=13&c=17