TODAY’S BIBLE READING CHALLENGE:
Job 1:1-3:26
1 Corinthians 14:1-17
Psalm 37:12-29
Proverbs 21:25-26
Job 1:1 — Why study Job?
Job 1:21 — I have a friend that has gone through the loss of his family (Job 1:15, Job 1:19), the loss of financial provisions (Job 1:17), and also the loss of good health (Job 2:7). Today, you may be facing these same challenges, or you may know someone who is. If you aren’t being challenged right now, thank God for this season of blessing. If you are, this is the book to read!
Job 2:13 — Sometimes the best thing you can do for your friends is to sit silently by. Job’s friends did well until they opened their mouths.
1 Corinthians 14:5 — It would be exciting to have a cool spiritual gift to be seen by many (or even just your friends), or to be admired or even envied. But as we read in 1 Corinthians 14:12, your value is not in how impressive your gift is, but in how it edifies the church. From Preaching Today:
Edward Kimball is probably not known to you. He lived over a hundred years ago. He was a Sunday school teacher in Boston, where a young teenager became part of his class. The young man was a country boy. He didn’t know the ways of the city or of the church. But he came to Kimball’s Sunday school class.
When the teen first came to his class, Edward Kimball handed him a Bible. When Mr. Kimball said, “Turn to the Gospel of John,” the country boy didn’t know how to find the Gospel of John. Edward Kimball recognized what was happening, and while the other boys were snickering, he opened the Bible to the Gospel of John and handed it back. When he asked the boys to read, the country boy fumbled as he read.
But Edward Kimball had a big perspective, and he saw possibilities in the boy. Kimball worked with him, and after some months he went down to the store where the boy was working, went into the back room where he was stacking boxes, and led Dwight to Jesus Christ. That was the beginning of the ministry of Dwight L. Moody, this continent’s greatest evangelist during the last century.
Psalm 37:16 — Contentment … whether it’s with your spiritual gift or with your financial state. For at the end, you will be satisfied in the days of famine (Psalm 37:19)! You will not be begging bread (Psalm 37:25)! You will not be forsaken by the LORD (Psalm 37:28)!
Psalm 37:23-24 — Mac Lynch of the WILDS wrote the song “The Steps of a Good Man are Ordered by the LORD“:
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