I Travel In Time…And I Can Prove It

I Travel In Time… And I Can Prove It!

This might require some deep thinking, but the truth is, we all travel in time… We all travel forward in time one second every second.  Scientifically it is more complicated than this, but I’m not trying to compete with Einstein here. Think of it as if we are all on a train moving forward on a track all moving at the same speed and in the same direction; the train is moving forward at a rate of one second every second.  We are confined by this fact.  It is so much a part of our existence we are hardly aware of it and can hardly imagine anything not existing with these same confines, but God is not confined by this train or this track.  I think of it as if we are in that train on that track and God is in an airplane and can see the beginning and the end of our track and go wherever and whenever He wants to… Again I know this is over simplification, but you start to get the idea (actually He is is ALL places at the same time).  Later I may talk about God in the analogy, but today I want to talk about us riding on this ‘time train’.  I usually prefer reading the NIV Bible, but there are some verses and passages that quite frankly just sound better in the King James Version.  One of those is Hebrews 9:27 ^“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”   We only get one ride on this roller coaster of life.  We can’t go backwards, we can’t go sideways (though I’m not sure what that would accomplish).  We can’t go slower and we can’t go faster.  Therefore it is vital that we make the most of the time we have here on Earth.  So what does that mean????

For me there are a few verses that I look to in order to answer this question.  Micah 6:8 gives us the very basics, the bare minimum when he writes that The Lord requires us to 1.) Do justly  2.) Love mercy and 3.) Walk humbly with God.  If you want to do the very least that you can do, there you have it…but your return on investment will likely be the bare minimum as well.  While I usually prefer larger chunks of scripture, I’m gonna get a little bit choppy here.  In Romans 12: 1 Paul urges us to offer up ourselves as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God.  Then in Ephesians 2:10 Paul says ^“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

So as I read it, if we want to get the most out of this short life in living for Christ, we need to remember that God has good works planned for each of us that He has created us for and that if we are faithful enough to offer ourselves as a sacrifice to Christ that He will use us and fulfill our purpose for our time here in this life.  I don’t know about you, but if I’ve only got one ride on this train of life I want to get the most out of it that I can.

I hope you have found this helpful.  I’ll be honest, I need your feedback to keep motivated, so if you have any questions, or comments or you just found this helpful, please leave a little comment. 

Today’s Minute Bible upload will be The book of Hebrews.

Thanks

The Minute Bible Guy

http://theminutebible.com/

Baby Steps

Baby Steps

As believers it should be our purpose in life to do God’s will.  That’s all well and good if you know what God’s will is, but personally I have never opened my eyes to see an angel, a burning bush or even a talking donkey telling me what God wants me to do.  In reality, even in biblical times, this was not all that common, though it might seem so due to the fact that The Bible spans somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 years.  In my experience, God is usually much more subtle in His directing and we also tend to have much greater expectations as we look for his guidance in our lives.  I am not going to pretend that I know what God’s will is in your life, I barely know what I believe it is in mine. What I will say is that God will let you know what His will is if you let him.   We want God to speak from the burning bush like he did to Moses, but in my experience, He is much more likely to speak as He did to Elijah, after the great wind, after the earthquake, and after the fire, God spoke to Elijah in a low whisper.  The closer we are to God; studying His Word, spending time in prayer etc., the more likely we are to hear his whispers.  

We also want Him to lay out the roadmap for the next 10, 20 or 40 years, and sometimes He does, but that has rarely been the case in my life.  I felt called to ‘the ministry’ at a very young age.  At the time I understood that to mean being a Pastor, a missionary or some other formal (and lifelong) vocation; but that doesn’t seem to be the case for me.  Whenever I started to head in that direction the doors seemed to close for me.  Hmmm what to do now?  God had other plans for me, and He tends to let me in on the plan one step at a time rather than a mile, or a year or a decade at a time. One thing that I came to understand when God laid the idea for The Minute Bible on my heart was a realization that God made me weird because He had some special projects in store for me. Some people might not like the use of the word weird, feel free to substitute unique, different, or peculiar (1 Peter 2:9 KJV) if you prefer.  My point is that sometimes God does let us know what His long term plan is for us, and sometimes He does speak through a burning bush, an Angel, or some serious life event. I believe, more often than not, that He speaks to us in a low whisper when we are close to Him and that He only illuminates the next step (or two or three) on the path and wants us to have enough faith to just take that next baby step and leave the route and final destination up to Him.  That would not be my preferred method, but then again, I am NOT the creator of the universe.

Job certainly didn't know what God's plan was for him, but he continued to trust God even with all he went through and in the end God blessed him for his faithfulness.  Below is a link to the Minute Bible summary of The Book of Job in exactly one minute.

I hope you have found this helpful.  I’ll be honest, I need your feedback to keep motivated, so if you have any questions, or comments or you just found this helpful, please leave a little comment... And don't forget to check out my website http://theminutebible.com

  

Thanks,

The Minute Bible Guy

Who Does God Use?

Who Does God Use?

I love it in James 5:17 where James says that Elijah was a man just like we are… that’s HUGE as far as I’m concerned.  We have a tendency to place Biblical characters on a high, untouchable pedestal in glowing robes with backlit hair to show off their glowing halo; I am convinced that is wrong for several reasons.

First of all, the glowing pedestal perspective implies that Elijah, Moses, David, Peter, etc. had special “powers” of their own rather than revealing the power of God working through them, and that, after all is the most important thing that we should see and remember.  Elijah was a man JUSTlike we are, it was God’s power that made him special.

The second reason I think it is wrong to place Biblical characters on a pedestal is that in doing so, it makes it too easy for us to believe that God could never use us because we’re not Joshua or Elisha or even James; what blessings we miss if we believe that.  Some of my favorite stories in The Bible are the ones where God chose the LEAST powerful people so that HIS power would show through.  Let’s take a quick look at The Bible from the 30,000 foot level to see a beautiful recurring theme that runs through both Old and New Testaments.  Read about Gideon, the least in his family, who were the least in their tribe, that was the least of all the twelve tribes of Israel, how he lead 300 men against 130,000 soldiers and won.  Read about a little boy that killed a giant that the entire Israelite army was afraid of; if you think that story showed little David’s prowess with a sling, you miss the point that the stone was powered by God. Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, Daniel in the lion’s den etc. etc.  It was their willingness to take a step in faith, to be faithful to God even though they knew that they couldn’t do it themselves.  Even the Israelite people themselves were chosen NOT because there was anything special about them (though Abrahams righteousness did have something to do with it) but they were chosen to be a city on a hill to show God’s greatness through them.

Finally, unless we recognize the “humanness” of these folks we can’t see the story through their eyes.  I have always loved history.  Not because I love dates, times and events, but because I love to know what other people have gone through and experienced.  When we recognize that the individuals in The Bible were real people, that they lived, loved, laughed, that they got embarrassed, that they had good days and bad days just like us, then you can get a whole new perspective as you read through The Bible.

Ultimately God uses those who have enough faith to allow themselves to be used by Him.

I hope you have found this helpful.  I’ll be honest, I need your feedback to keep motivated, so if you have any questions, or comments or you just found this helpful, please leave a little comment... And don't forget to check out my website http://theminutebible.com

  

Thanks

The Minute Bible Guy

Speaking of Elijah, Here are links to The Minute Bible's  summary of First AND Second Kings

First Kings:

Second Kings:

What Time Is It???

What Time is it????

One thing that confuses people about The Bible is that it isn’t always in chronological order, I know that was one issue I had for a long time.  Here are some things that I figured out and I hope this helps make studying The Bible easier and more enjoyable for you. 

The first six books are pretty straightforward chronologically.  The next eleven or so books are sort of chronological, after that it gets a little more jumbled. 

The books of Genesis through Joshua tell the story of the Israelite people from the beginning petty much in order from the beginning of time, through The Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), through their captivity in Egypt, their Exodus from Egypt led by Moses, receiving The Ten Commandments and other laws, 40 years in the desert, and finally moving into The Promised Land.

The first part of The Book of Judges is generally chronological but then it begins to cover several different events that were occurring at about the same time, but in different locations.  The Book of Ruth is a completely “modular”; by this I mean that can basically stand on its own without any direct relationship to the rest of The Bible, It’s just the story of a family dealing with issues that families sometimes have to deal with and the narrative of The Israelites is essentially just a historical backdrop.

First and Second Samuel tell the story of the first few kings of Israel, King Saul and then King David.   First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles overlap Samuel some but cover several hundred years of the history of the Israelites.  First and Second Kings tell the history primarily from the viewpoint of the Northern Kingdom beginning with the death of King David,  while First and Second Chronicles tell the story essentially from the perspective of the priests from the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

Chronologically speaking, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther fit best near the end of The Old Testament.  All three of these books take place after the Israelites began to return to Israel following the Babylonian captivity.

Like The Book of Ruth, The Book of Job is a “modular” story; it isn’t dependent on the rest of the Biblical narrative.  It stands up well without much additional Biblical context as Job wrestles with some very difficult questions about pain and suffering and God.  

Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes change gears as they don’t tell stories at all.  Psalms is basically a collection of songs and prayers, The Book of Proverbs is just what it says it is, a collection of proverbs and wise advice, and The Book of Ecclesiastes has King Solomon looking back on his life and a list of ways that he unsuccessfully tried to find fulfillment in his life without God.

Isaiah ushers in the books of prophesy.  Rather than looking at these books as telling a story, I find it makes more sense to look at them each as a Part of the story that is going on around them.  For me it was most helpful to figure out where each of these books fits intothe larger story so that I could understand what role each prophet played in the overall narrative.  When you know wherethey were writing from (northern or southern kingdom), who they were writing to (northern or southern kingdom) and roughly when they were writing, then their prophesies make a little more sense.   The good news is that I put together a very simple chart to help understand the chronology and geography of the major and Minor Prophets that helped me and might just help you too. http://theminutebible.com/study-guide.php

This is The Book of Exodus on YouTube

Genesis Means Beginning

Genesis means Beginning

Actually the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Genesis as “the origin or coming into being of something”

Genesis is not only the beginning of The Bible, but it is also the origin for The Minute Bible.  Growing up in the church I heard all the great Bible stories, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion’s den, Paul’s escape from prison and of course all the miracles that Jesus performed.  The thing I lacked most was how they all fit together, the BIG picture.  It was as if I had all these beautiful Christmas ornaments laying around with no place to hang them.  Then one day while preparing to teach the youth group a series of lessons on the book of Genesis I suddenly realized how it all fits together, well at least I started to realize.  The first eleven chapters of Genesis are the roots, the background, the anchor.  The stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s flood, and the tower of Bebel all set the stage for the introduction of Abraham.  In chapter twelve we meet Abram (later Abraham) who will become the father of the entire Jewish nation and the trunk in this Christmas tree analogy.  Abraham is followed by his son Isaac and Isaac’s two sons Jacob and Esau.  Jacob then has twelve sons which begin the branches that spread out, through the rest of The Bible, to hang all of these lovely Christmas ornaments on.  That was the picture that came to my mind, I hope that helps you see a little more clearly how the pieces of The Bible fit together.

Here is The Book of Genesis in exactly one minute...