Author: Dave Dishman (Page 283 of 481)

I’ve been fortunate to live most all of my life in and around mountains and hills. I grew up in the Ozark Mountains, my first job after college took me to the Flint Hills of Kansas, and now I wake up every day and look at the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

David lived among hills all of his life, encountered the Lord among them, and took comfort in their midst. I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Being from the Ozarks I’ll admit I’m partial to the King James rendering—I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills…)

But hills or mountains, the Lord dwells there. Or prairie or lowlands for that matter.

The solidity of the mountains moved David to write of the security found only under the stable hand of the Lord. He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber…the Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life.

The good news for us today? Those same mountains David gazed upon still stand, and the Lord still watches over me and you. Indeed, even if those hills fall down, the Lord will watch over my coming and going both now and forevermore.

Psalm 121 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Misael Moreno

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