Join Me on a Journey!

A Discipleship Journey

As we approach the end of the year, people commonly make resolutions for the coming year. In that vein, I’d like to invite you to join me on a journey in 2024 – a discipleship journey. This journey will take you deeper into Scripture, and your relationship with Jesus.  How can I saw that so confidently? Because of my personal experience with reading and reflecting on Scripture over the past six years.

The Divine Mentor

In 2017, I audited a class on spiritual formation. One of the texts for the class was the book The Divine Mentor by Wayne Cordeiro. I encourage you to read this book! The thrust of the book is that Scripture is filled with mentors for those who are following Jesus. As we read Scripture each day, and give God time to speak to us, the Holy Spirit teaches us through the words and examples we find there.

I remember receiving the book in the mail, with the other texts for the class. Because The Divine Mentor was the first book that we would be discussing, I started reading it first. That night, I read over 120 pages – I could not put the book down! As I read, I sensed God saying to me: “You need to do this; you need to start doing this tomorrow. This is not sermon study, or preparation for a class you may teach.  THIS IS FOR YOU.” So I committed to start this process of reading and reflecting on Scripture the next morning.

The Beginning of My Journey

As I sat at my desk that next day, I prayed: “God, you know that I’m terrible at journaling. I’ve tried and tried, but it just doesn’t ever seem to click. You need to help me with this.” And then I prayed, “Where do I start? I don’t want to close my eyes and open the Bible at random; where should I begin to read?” (I hadn’t read enough of The Divine Mentor to get to the daily reading schedule which the book recommends.) And God reminded me of something I’d read the night before – a specific reference to the Minor Prophets. So I determined to start reading with the first three chapters of Hosea.

As I read, I came to Hosea 2:16 (NIV): “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’” As I read that, God said, “That! That’s what I want you to do! I want you to want to spend time with me, in my Word, the way you want to spend time with your wife.” Mind blown!

Since then, I’ve invited the congregation I serve to join me on this journey. Each week, I provide a list of the readings for each day, and encourage them to read along together. I believe that just as God will speak to us as individuals, he will speak to us collectively. That’s a powerful thing! And I believe that God will speak to youas you give Him time and attention each day.

My Journey – Daily Reflections on Scripture

My blog posts generally are simply my reflections on one of the Scripture passages for each day. You can look back at my previous posts to get an idea of how I approach this, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do it exactly like I do. The important thing is that you open the Bible, and give God the time and permission to lead you in his way each day.

One other comment. Each year, I use a different translation of Scripture for my daily reading. I started that the second year I did this, because I wanted to avoid the sense of “I know this passage” as I read. For 2024, I’ll be using the Common English Bible. You can pick up a paperback version pretty inexpensively. The CEB is also available on the Bible app, or on the Bible Gateway website (www.biblegateway.com). Of course, you can use any other translation of Scripture as well. Someone asked me once, “What’s the best Bible version for me to use?” My answer was simple: “The one that you’ll actually read!”

(Note: If you regularly read my blog, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything over the past few weeks. I was on vacation between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then became ill during the early part of my vacation. That threw a big monkey wrench into my schedule! As we begin the new year, however, you can plan on seeing 2-3 posts each week of my reflections.)