Bible Overview Daily Readings

Would you like to get an overview of the whole Bible broken down into daily readings?

Each week on the Riverside website I'll post a new Reading Schedule on the front page with 7 daily readings from the Bible. Beginning June 1st we'll start with Genesis and continue with each book of the Bible in order until we finish Revelation. Our goal is to complete the survey by the start of Advent at the end of November.

Please remember that this is a survey. Our daily readings will only skim the surface of the treasures that are available in each book of the Bible. These readings are intended to give you a taste of the Story of God and His people. Hopefully they will whet your appetite for more. Please feel free to read more than the verses and chapters we've listed.

Be sure to check the Riverside website each week for the new Reading Schedule! While you're there, sign up to receive our Prayer Updates via email.

Cruciform Listening

A couple of worthwhile thoughts about loving others by listening to them:

To Be Heard and On Being a Hearer

My summary: Cruciform Listening = Loving God and others by listening to God and others


[HT: Altogether Too Much Privacy]

Seeking Satisfaction

About a year ago I wrote about two themes that God has woven into my life over the years: seeking His face and drinking His grace. I've recently tried to put those thoughts into verse...

When You commanded, “Seek My face!”
I said, “I will, Lord, by Your grace,
Hide not Your face, O God, from me,
Nor let my soul abandoned be.”

Come thirsty one to Jesus’ side.
Cruciform love will give you life.
Come sate your soul, Spirit receive,
A river-heart forever be

Of all the themes, it seems these two:
Seeking Your face, Drinking of You
Though they appear to be estranged
Are side by side in me arranged

And in Your Word these themes I find
So sweetly bound and intertwined
Clothed in my Christ, I will see Your face
And there be satisfied with grace

Why Would God Ever Answer Me?

If you're anything like me, you sometimes need to be reminded that God does listen. This meditation on Psalm 27:7 by Paul Tripp will encourage you to keep seeking His face in prayer.

I needed that reminder today.

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

Last night I saw a TV promo for a well-known televangelist that disturbed me more than I am usually disturbed by such stuff. At first I was encouraged by what I heard. The smiling TV preacher and his wife were excitedly pumping us up for 2007, proclaiming it "the year of heaven", quoting the well-known petition from the Lord's Prayer: "on earth as it is in heaven". They claimed that in the coming year we should all ask and seek to bring life on earth in line with life as it is in heaven. With this I whole-heartedly agree!

Then came the disturbing description of what heaven on earth would look like. [The following quotes are partially verbatim, mostly paraphrase.] "There are lots of crazy things going on in our world today," said Mr. Televangelist, "all the wars and such." "But in heaven, there is no pain, no sickness, and no poverty," proclaimed Mrs. Televangelist. "That's right," Mr. Televangelist chimes in, "and Jesus promised that He is building mansions for us in heaven right now! Now, that's prosperity! We can have prosperity in the midst of these troubling times!"

So now, let me get this straight: In the midst of all the war, famine, disease, poverty, injustice that run amok on our planet, I as an American Christian should expect God to bless my life with a truckload of pain-free living, great health, and financial prosperity?! No!! That's not the Gospel! Jesus did not die on the cross so that I could have the American Dream! The Gospel is about Jesus Christ dying in my place in order to transform me from a hellish, self-absorbed person into a heavenly, God-obsessed and others-oriented person. And that happens as I get to know Him intimately.

When Jesus said He was going to prepare mansions in heaven for us, He was speaking to us as our betrothed bridegroom. It was Jewish custom for a man and woman to be pledged to marry for about a year before the wedding. During that time the bridegroom would build an addition onto his father's house for he and his bride to share. After the period of engagement concluded, the bridegroom would return to take his bride home for a great wedding ceremony and feast before finally bringing his beloved into the home he had prepared for her, finally enjoying unhindered intimacy together.

Heaven will be pain free and we will enjoy unlimited abundance forever. But health and wealth are not the essence of heaven. Intimate relationship with the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit is the essence of eternal life. "And this is eternal life," Jesus said to His Father, "that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent" (John 17:3). Most of us are, in the words of C. S. Lewis, "far too easily pleased" with health and wealth while the greater joy and treasure of knowing Jesus and making Him known through self-sacrificing service to others is rarely promoted.

The kingdom of God is not about having stuff, but about sinners who are at peace with God, enjoying Him (not merely His gifts), and loving Him and others (this is what righteousness or holiness looks like) by the power of His Spirit (see Romans 14:17). Lord have mercy on me! I want heaven more than I want You!

Asking God for the Good Life

Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live and keep your word. Psalm 119:17

The psalmist prays the prayer that most likely echoes in the halls of heaven more than any other: “Deal bountifully with me, God. Be good to me. Bless me. Let me live. Give me life.” Everyone wants God to do them good, to help them, to give them mercy and grace, to get them out of their troubles, to pour out blessings on them. Everyone wants the good life. This part of the psalmist’s request is not that unusual.

What is out of the ordinary is the purpose for which the psalmist asks God to deal bountifully with him: “that I may live and keep your word.” It’s his reason for living that makes the psalmist’s request for a bountiful life unusual. He defines “the good life” in terms of keeping God’s word. The psalmist believes that living is for loving God and loving others, for that is what keeping God’s word entails, full obedience to God’s law (Matthew 22:36-40). The good life is one that is so full of God’s bountiful goodness that it overflows with blessing back to God and out to others. Jesus taught his followers that the one who is given God’s good life seeks not to be served, but to serve and to give his life away for God and others (Mark 10:45). The Lord’s brother reminds us that to ask for God's blessing in order to spend it on our own passions is to ask wrongly (James 4:3). The Apostle Paul prayed rightly for the Philippians: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more…so that you may approve what is excellent…filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:9-11). The fruit of righteousness consists of obedience to God's Law.

Once again the psalmist teaches us to pray a cruciform prayer: “Father, you have dealt bountifully with us by way of the cross. We know that he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will also graciously give us all good things (Romans 8:32). Give us the goodness and grace of Christ so that we may live a cross-shaped life of loving God and loving others.”