LORD, you are the light of my life. You have saved me – so I am not afraid.
You protect me from danger. There is no reason for me to tremble. When the Evil One and his team attack me, trying to tempt me and distract me, they will not win. Your mighty army of angels surround me – I have nothing to fear. Even when my path gets tough, my faith in you remains solid.
The one thing I desire most of all, LORD, is to spend my life with you, enjoying my time with you and listening to your voice.
You hold me close when trouble comes. I can hold my head high even when trials come my way.
I praise you, LORD, with songs and shouts of joy!
I know you hear me, LORD. You answer me, showing great mercy. You say, “Come and talk with me”, and my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.”
I know that you never turn your back on me in anger – you are always ready to help me. You never leave me or abandon me, O God of my Salvation! When everyone else leaves me behind you are here, holding me close.
Teach me the right way to live my life, LORD. Lead me down the path you have prepared for me and do not let me wander. Help me avoid the pain and consequences of rebellion. Do not let me give into the temptation to act as the evil ones act.
I live with the confidence that each day you are walking beside me – loving and guiding me.
Everything in me praises you, LORD! I will praise you as long as I am alive. I will be singing your praises, Father, when I breathe my last breath.
I don’t put my trust in people who have money – they will not help me when I really need it. When they return to the earth as dust, all of their plans will die with them.
Those of us who trust in you to help us, God, find hope and joy. You are the Master Creator of heaven and earth and everything in them.
You always keep your promises. You give food to the hungry and justice to the oppressed.
You have freed me from the guilt of my sins and you are opening my eyes to your truth. You, oh God, lift me up when the cares of this world weigh me down. You are a Good Father to all of us who love you. You protect the strangers among us and care for orphans and widows.
You mess up the plans of unbelievers.
You, my King, will reign forever, throughout all generations.
I know the joy of not following the advice of unbelievers,
refusing to spend a lot of time with those who do not honor God,
and avoiding groups of people who have no respect for God.
I delight in God’s Word. When I am focused on my relationship with God, I am like a tree planted along the riverbank, fed each day, all day by the Living Water. Jesus grows fruit in my life as he gives me love and wisdom and strength.
This is not true of those who rebel against God. Their lives are scattered by the wind – they will be judged and condemned by God. Unfortunately, when nonbelievers leave this earth they will be forever separated from the One they refuse to believe in.
Each day, God watches over all of his children with love and grace, but the path of those who don’t have faith in Jesus leads to destruction.
Hear me, LORD, and answer me, I need you. I am a faithful servant who trusts you – save me.
You are my God, have mercy on me as I call out to you all day long. I trust you, God. Please give me joy.
You are so good. When I walk close with you, your love and forgiveness overwhelm me. There is no other god like you. Everything you have created joins together to worship you. You are great and marvelous. You alone are God.
I want to learn all about you, LORD, so I can build my life on your truth. Give me an undivided heart which is focused on loving and honoring you.
I will praise you, God, with all my heart forever.
Each day I feel your great love for me. Keep me safe.
I am surrounded by arrogant and confused people who don’t believe in you, God. But I know you are a compassionate and gracious God, overflowing with love and faithfulness.
Open my eyes to what you doing, God. Have mercy on me just as you have given mercy to those who have gone before me. Show me your goodness, LORD, so that others around me will see what a great God you are.
I can talk about your goodness and your grace all day long, Lord, even though it’s often hard to describe how great you are. I tell everyone I know about you. I share with them how awesome you are!
All of my life, God, you have taught me your the truth. I know you well and I tell others about how marvelous you are. I am fulfilling my obligation to pass on your truth to the next generation – to those who are coming behind me.
I know you will be walking closely beside me for the rest of my days.
You are perfect! Your greatness fills the universe and never ends! There is no one like you, God!
Yes, I have had bitter trials and troubles in my life. But you were always there to guide me….
and comfort me….
and restore me.
I will never stop praising your faithfulness, my God! I will sing praise to you! I will shout for joy!
You have saved me and I cannot stop talking about you! No one and nothing can truly harm me when I have you!
When I came to the point that I sincerely believed this, it totally changed what I do with my time, money and talents. I believe that this is what God is going to be talking to me about on judgement day. I am a believer and God has forgiven my sins for all time because of Christ’s death on the cross. It would be against God’s nature to bring up my sins on judgement day – what was the cross for? But God’s Word tells me in several places that Jesus is like the owner of the company who gave his servants – including me – resources and talents before he went off on a long journey. When he comes back, he will hold his servants – including me – accountable for how well we stewarded what he left with us while he was gone..
On Judgement Day, God will give me an evaluation of what I have done with all he has given me.
King David’s declaration in front of all of his people has made this passage in 1 Chronicles 29 one of my favorite. In my head, I imagine King David standing in the middle of huge piles of gold, silver, bronze and precious stones he was accumulating to be used in the building of the Temple of God.
I see David standing in the middle of this fortune with his hands raised to the sky as he acknowledges in front of everyone that all of this – and everything – comes from God.
Let’s join him (my paraphrase) –
We lift up our praise to you, Lord, our God and Father, forever!
You have all the greatness..
all the power…
all the glory…
all of the majesty..
and all of the splendor!
Everything in heaven and on earth is yours.
You, oh Lord, own everything and are in control of it all!
Any wealth or honor we have comes from you.
You rule over everything!
Only you are able to give strength and power to us.
Now, our God, we give you our thanks and we praise your glorious name!
My Lord protects me. I have everything I need. He provides for me and fills my life with his supernatural peace.
He gives me joy and strength for each day. Through his Word, he directs my choices and decisions.
Even when I am going through tragedies and tough trials, I am not afraid. I know God is right beside me. He is guiding me. I feel his arms wrapped around me, comforting me.
No matter what is going on, I know God loves me. He is faithful and he wants the best for me.
I am precious to him – I can feel that in my soul. My heart overflows with thankfulness.
I know, Abba Father, that your love and goodness will never end. You will be with me all of my days here on earth. And you will be walking right beside me when I leave earth to enter heaven.
I ask for a pure heart, O God! I want my life to be focused on you.
Keep me close by your side and grow your spirit within me. Bring back the joy I felt when I first asked you to save me. Give me a faithful heart so I stay near you. Then I will tell others about your saving grace and I will share the truth you have revealed to me.
Please lift the burden of my guilt from me, O God, and I will sing of your goodness forever. When I open my mouth, Lord, let it be to praise you.
I know you don’t want me to just ‘show up’ at church because it’s the right thing to do. I know you don’t want me to give money to the church just because it’s the right thing to do. I know you don’t want me to read the Bible just so I can check it off of my reading plan for the year.
It appears that some people have a direct line to God. When they call (pray), God always responds. Stuff happens.
I believe it’s true – some people have a direct line to God.
Why?
Because they pray in line with God’s will. When I pray for what God wants to give me, I always get it. He has promised me.
God tells me in James 1, when I pray for wisdom, I always get it – in generous amounts. When I pray for more of the Fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit that lives inside of me helps grow and nurture those things. When it’s God’s will for me, he says yes every time.
The key is praying God’s will. What does God want? What is best for his purposes?
To do this, I need to know God well. I need to have his word etched on my heart and mind so that it’s how I think. And – this can be a tough one – I need to put what he wants ahead of what I want. There are times when God reveals to me through his Word what he wants done in a certain situation. Other times, I simply pray Jesus’ prayer, “Thy will be done.”
I can’t give God a list of things I want and expect him to say yes to everything. But when I pray for what God wants – knowing and trusting that what he wants is always best – it happens.
This doesn’t mean I don’t ask God for things I want. He tells us to pray to him all the time on every occasion about everything. It does mean that the answer will not be ‘yes’ if I’m praying out of line with his will.
In 1 Chronicles, King David was trying to bring the Ark of God back to Jerusalem but he was running into big problems. One of his men died because he touched the Ark to steady it. That scared David so he left the Ark with a local family and went on to Jerusalem. There, he realized the issue with the Ark was “we did not inquire of him (God) about how to do it in the prescribed way.” 1 Chronicles 15:13b.
So David consulted God and, when they did it God’s way, they were successful. David danced with joy in front of the Ark as it entered Jerusalem, the City of David.
When I ask God to do things his way, my direct line to God is wide open.
I’m in my 9th consecutive year of reading the entire Bible. A couple years after I started, I changed to the Daily Chronological Bible and it has helped fuel the fire God has placed inside of me to read his Word. Every day. Every year. Several of you have been on this journey with me for quite a while – thank you!
I have a passion for knowing what God has to say about everything. I have learned that its very important to know what God says about a certain topic throughout the Bible – one or two verses just don’t give me the message that God intended. When I read the entire revelation of God, the dots start to connect and I begin to understand the bigger picture.
After my 4th or 5th year of reading the entire Bible, I realized that I could start to point out when someone said something they thought was in the Bible but its not. When I hear something like that, I usually ask the person where that is in the Bible in case I missed it. More often than not, they can’t find it in God’s Word. Exposing the truth like this continues to fuel the fire inside of me.
I appreciate the entire journey through the Bible. The Old Testament used to be a little hard to get through but the Chronological Bible helps a lot by condensing several repetitive sections into one so I only read all the laws once, I only read all the details about building the temple once, etc. It’s significant to me that it takes 9 months to read the Old Testament in the Chronological Bible and only 3 months to read the entire New Testament. This shows the importance to God of the Old Testament. And it tells me I should be reading and studying the Old Testament just as much if not more than the New Testament. Since I’ve started doing this, God speaks just as clearly to me from the Old Testament as he does the New Testament.
Because it is condensed, the Chronological Bible is a great reading Bible, but not a good Bible to study. When I’m studying God’s Word, I get out my study Bible.
I have some favorite parts in the Chronological Bible. I’m in one of them right now so I thought I’d take a break in the journey to share some of the things I really love about how this Bible is organized.
I’m reading David’s story right now and the Chronological Bible places the Psalms David wrote into his story at the time he wrote them. David tells me in Psalm 56 all about his thoughts and fears right after I read about him being captured by the Philistines in Gath. I read in Psalm 34 of David’s gratitude to God for taking care of him after reading how David pretended to be insane and King Achish let him go. I hear David’s prayer in Psalm 142 as I read about him hiding in the cave to avoid being killed by King Saul.
Later in the Chronological Bible, it is organized so that some of the minor prophet’s writings are placed next to the story of the king they talked to. It all makes more sense.
In the New Testament of the Chronological Bible, I find myself reading about Jesus’ sacrifice for me on the cross right around Thanksgiving time. It’s so appropriate and helps me focus my gratitude on the most important thing that has ever happened to me and to our world.
Then right after Thanksgiving comes Christmas and I will be reading Revelations. Wow! When Christ comes again, it’s going to be better than the first Christmas for those of us who have put our faith in him.
And then, on January 1, I start again. In the Beginning….
Come with me on a Journey through the Bible 