BibleScribbler

Coffee, a Bible, and a Napkin to Scribble On

Reading the Bible in a Year

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With the new year comes a new chance to get on a Bible reading plan. As a family and at the mission we are doing the Chronological reading plan according to the folks at ESVBible.org. If you have never read the Bible all of the way through, or if you’ve never had the adventure of reading it through in the order that it happened, I suggest you check this out.

ESV Chronological Reading plan at ESVBible.org

ESV Chronological Reading plan as a printable and checkoffable worksheet.

I want to plug reading the Bible at the website: If you buy an ESV study bible they give you a free unlock for all of the study Bible notes online. You can also use the notes section to write your own notes and then every few months dump them to Evernote for archiving. It’s really cool to be reading the Bible and come across a digital note you made 2 years ago (and not be distracted by 1,253 other people’s notes at the same time.)

The other thing is don’t let this reading plan be an opportunity for pride or shame. If you miss a day, press on, don’t give up. If you work 5 days ahead, shut up and praise the Lord. I’m currently in the 5th year of a “through the Bible” reading plan that was only supposed to take one year!

Nothing grows you spiritually like reading the Bible deeply and responding daily.

Growing from Jail

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Yesterday I got to talk to a guy that had spent the summer in jail. At one point in his time there, he got in a fight and spent 12 days in the "jail within the jail." – no windows, a shower every 3 days, and they passed his food to him through a slot in the door. He said it was really miserable but he wouldn’t deny that he deserved it.

In his summer in jail, he read through the Bible three times, in three different translations. He said the NLT was easy to read, but he wanted to aquaint himself with the older language of the KJV, so he read it once through too.

He said he is now closer to God than ever before. He read through the 5 books of Moses, got out of jail and went back to his dad and said, "Why didn’t you ever read this and tell me that God was always with me?! Why didn’t you tell me that God went along with me through every one of my trials in life?!"

Pretty awesome. He is now in his late 30s and is eager to learn more about, and draw closer to Jesus.

Day 1 at the new ERM

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Tonight I left work after about a 14 hour moving extravaganza. Over the course of about 13 hours, we moved over 150 homeless men from our old facility to our new one. It was exhausting, full of unexpected questions, and tiring.

After our first dinner and our first chapel service, everyone began to settle in to the new place. Curfew is at nine o’clock, so we figured the check-ins would slow to a halt by then. I had been walking around, tying up loose ends, checking to see that I didn’t put any old guys in top bunks or young & spry guys in bottom bunks.

A guy I’ll call Sean came up to me. “Dan, can I show you something?” We walked into the suite reserved for men in our discipleship program. We stood just inside the door so as to be unnoticed. Four guys were playing pool and one was turning off the air hockey table.

“Would you *look* at these guys? They are *so happy!* They are hanging out & playing pool together!” One guy waited his turn & flipped the TV station from a commercial to a rerun of Jeopardy.

“Ok, Sean, look at this.” I took him into the kitchenette where two guys were talking about protein shakes. J.T. was sitting with a Bible journal, writing his daily entry. Across the table was another guy with a bag of chips from the vending machine and his Bible open.

We went down the hall and I showed Sean the atrium. “There is a euchre game. Those other guys are watching women’s NCAA. In the cafe (which is what we call the room with our vending machines) there are 5 guys watching & talking about the discovery channel. If you go over to the Man Cave you’ll see 7 guys watching Top Gun (in seats that used to be at Roberts stadium).”

“That’s just what all of this is for, isn’t it! It’s really being used!” Sean could see it was really turning into the mission we wanted — even on the first night.

“It’s cool! Praise The Lord!” I said.

“Hey Dan,” a guy named Bob caught me at the door. “When are the prayer rooms that you mentioned open? I just want to go read and pray.”

“We’ll do that tomorrow,” I said. “We’ve opened enough cool stuff today.”

3 memorable moments from my first year at the Rescue Mission

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I was asked to write down the three most memorable events from my first year as the Spiritual Life and Program Director at the Evansville Rescue Mission. I’m really glad I did this, and I hope I do it every year.

1. Launch of the men’s program

We are now fully rolling in the men’s discipleship program. We go through Lifetime Guarantee every 2 months, with a new class every time. It is really great to talk about it every week and see how the guys’ have different questions in every class. Without fail, week 4 and 5 is where the greatest breakthroughs take place. I’m not sure if it’s because by that time we’ve weeded out the guys that are taking the class just to stay here longer, or if that’s when the guys really come out of the fog, but if I were going to guess when guys are most likely to get saved or get baptized, I’d say it would happen during week 4 or 5. I will never forget the look on one guys’ face when he said, “You mean to tell me that just because I’ve sinned I’m still a Christian and I’m not lost?!” I always look forward to that.

2. Watching men ‘get it’

There is a guy in my program that never read a Bible. He never wanted to be around it or people that read it. He came to the mission and started painting out at camp and working all over the place. When I first started, I started a Bible study as an elective before I could get a program going. He came to it and went after it whole-heartedly. He also began reading through the Bible from front to back.

He came into my office one day and he said, “I’m thinking something, and I want to run it by you and you tell me if I’m on the wrong track.”

I said, “Ok, go for it.” He said, “I think maybe God sort of handed us over to sin, just so that He could buy us back and show that He cared for us enough to buy us back.”

I said, “Have you read Romans yet?” He said no. (He had a common phrase, whenever I mentioned a book of the Bible, he would either say “I remember that” or “I haven’t gotten there yet.”)

I opened up Romans 11:32 “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.”

“I think you’re on the right track.” I said. “Well how about that!” He said.

3. Watching men recover from a fall

There have been a few guys in my program that have fallen back into their old habits. One took a pass while his brother was dying under hospice care and between the hospital and his brother’s house he got drunk. Another guy got reconciled to his wife after sending pornographic texts to another woman, only to look at porn again several months later. Another man disappeared over a weekend and showed up 2 weeks later, understanding he couldn’t come back into the ERM until his restriction was up, but needing a copy of his driver’s license that we had on file. He had lost license along with his wallet and everything he had on him.

In all three of these cases I got to walk with these guys, through their guilt and shame, and back to the risen Savior. All three of them expressed that they had not expected me to respond the way that I did. They were encouraged in their faith and one guy (the guy that couldn’t come back) encouraged me and said, “That’s exactly what you are here for, isn’t it?”

I guess if I am running after Jesus, and seeking Him more and more in my life, whenever I see Him show up, THAT is one of those memorable moments. There are many more than this, but these are the three I’ll record for this year.