Author: Dave Dishman (Page 277 of 475)

In the first century widows lived a precarious existence. While some possessed property and financial resources, many suffered after the death of their husband. Few jobs existed for widows, and most were dependent on family for help.

This grew into a big enough problem for Paul to address with Timothy. As the church leader in Ephesus, Timothy needed wisdom to deal with a growing crisis of widows.

Paul wrote a long list of instructions. When to care for widows, when to wait, when to encourage them to re-marry, how to charge them to spend their days.

While this at-risk group of women challenged Timothy’s congregation, they also proved a valuable opportunity. As the church supported and valued widows, people in the surrounding city noticed. The widows served others and passed on the love they received.

At a time when many widows sat ignored and grew destitute, a little church in Ephesus reached out to help. This care for the vulnerable yields one clue as to how a few scattered assemblies in the Mediterranean world grew to the world-wide body of believers we see today.

Not only was it the right thing to do, but care for the vulnerable spread the faith. It remains the right thing for us to do today, and few things we do as Christians get noticed more than how we care for the vulnerable among us.

1 Timothy 5 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Mikita Yo

If you are reading through the Bible with me in 2022, then when you finished reading today’s selection you are officially halfway through—congratulations!

The reading plan I use orders the readings chronologically and includes both Old and New Testament readings daily. But if you were to start at the left cover of the Bible and read straight through, at the halfway point you would read Psalm 103:1-2 (due to an even number of verses, these two form the middle crest):

Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

As we read the Scriptures, we discover his benefits. As we read over and over, those benefits sink deeper and deeper into the pools of our soul.

The time and energy and sacrifice and challenge necessary to read all the Bible pays off. Your soul, indeed all that is within you, thanks you.

Halfway through reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Walter Walraven

From the time you and I were infants we passed through various types of training, things like potty training and learning to eat with a fork. After conquering those mountains, I learned to swim (pretty well) and play the piano (not so good), to catch a baseball and read a book. All skills we must practice in order to get better. As an adult I trained as a communicator and I worked to develop as a gardener.

If you want to get good at anything, you have to practice, to hone your technique, to train.

So should it surprise us when Paul tells Timothy, the young church-planter, to train yourself to be godly?

How to set about such training? Paul encourages Timothy to focus on the Lord. Command and teach the truth. Set an example in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity. Read the Scriptures publicly. Listen to the Holy Spirit and lean into his gift in your life. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Stay diligent. Persevere.

Just like athletic training or intense study or gaining new expertise, we train ourselves to be godly.

Notice we don’t gain godliness through a mysterious force or a bolt of lightning. You won’t find your personal regimen toward godliness on social media or even in the many good books on the Christian life.

Instead, open the scriptures and focus on the Lord and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. Don’t merely nod to the concepts you discover—give yourself wholly to them.

Then do the same thing tomorrow and the next day.

And never stop.

1 Timothy 4 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Bruno Nascimento

I learned early on as a communicator to analyze my audience. A good speaker tells different jokes to a pile of middle-school boys than to a roomful of their mothers (of course, the same jokes go big with their fathers). But if mom’s in the audience, a wise communicator tempers the lingo about gases and smells.

Solomon dedicated his new temple in grand fashion, partying for 14 straight days and sacrificing thousands and thousands of sheep and cattle. The sheer scale of it all boggles my mind.

Although Solomon created a magnificent house for the Lord, he knew the Lord wouldn’t live there. All the pomp and circumstance and magnificence and ceremony wouldn’t insure the Lord stuck around. So Solomon asked this of the Lord:

May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day. Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

I so appreciate this prayer of humility. Solomon knew the Lord cannot be manipulated with a fancy building. He asked for two things the Lord grants the humble—to hear and to forgive.

It makes me think of a prayer I learned long ago, and Christians have prayed for ages:

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner.

If like me you’re sometimes not sure what to pray, and like Solomon you understand your audience, then this is a good place to start.

1 Kings 8:29-30 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Biel Morro