Category: Bible (Page 277 of 419)

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