Reflective Bible Study

As a follow-up to the prophecy we focused on in our last episode, the passage and prophecy for this week also draws our attention onto Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. However, unlike the prophecy we looked at last week, the passage and prophecy for this episode draws our attention to the specific point in time when Jesus enters Jerusalem. However, the context of this prophecy is different enough for me to suspect the entrance Jesus makes into Jerusalem might be something that happens after Jesus’ return. It is also possible that the Jerusalem this prophecy describes is not the earthly city of Jerusalem, but the heavenly city of Jerusalem that shares the same name. The heavenly Jerusalem we could understand to be God’s city and the place Jesus promised His disciples where He would prepare places for them following His return to Heaven.

With that said, let’s read our prophecy, and then unpack some things we can learn from what the prophet wrote. Our passage and prophecy are found in the book of Isaiah, chapter 62, and we will read it using the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 1 and being guided by the Holy Spirit, Isaiah writes:

¹ For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
And her salvation like a torch that is burning.
² The nations will see your righteousness,
And all kings your glory;
And you will be called by a new name
Which the mouth of the Lord will designate.
³ You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
⁴ It will no longer be said to you, “Forsaken,”
Nor to your land will it any longer be said, “Desolate”;
But you will be called, “My delight is in her,”
And your land, “Married”;
For the Lord delights in you,
And to Him your land will be married.
⁵ For as a young man marries a virgin,
So your sons will marry you;
And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
So your God will rejoice over you.

⁶ On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
All day and all night they will never keep silent.
You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves;
⁷ And give Him no rest until He establishes
And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
⁸ The Lord has sworn by His right hand and by His strong arm,
“I will never again give your grain as food for your enemies;
Nor will foreigners drink your new wine for which you have labored.”
⁹ But those who garner it will eat it and praise the Lord;
And those who gather it will drink it in the courts of My sanctuary.

¹⁰ Go through, go through the gates,
Clear the way for the people;
Build up, build up the highway,
Remove the stones, lift up a standard over the peoples.
¹¹ Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth,
Say to the daughter of Zion, “Lo, your salvation comes;
Behold His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.”
¹² And they will call them, “The holy people,
The redeemed of the Lord”;
And you will be called, “Sought out, a city not forsaken.”

In this amazing passage and prophecy, we get a glimpse of what heaven will be like, and we get a hint at just how eager God is to redeem His people.

However, from the context of the event that Isaiah describes, I see what is being described as blessings, promises, and restoration that happens to heaven and earth following the end of pain, disease, death, and even sin. After the fingerprints of Satan have been removed from the universe, God promises to actively bless the world that had formerly been cursed.

Within this imagery is God entering Jerusalem, and in a slightly paradoxical twist, what we find in the New Testament triumphal entry actually foreshadows the grand entrance Jesus will make into the city of God’s people at the end of this age and the start of the next one.

To draw our attention onto this amazing event, let’s look at Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey that is found in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew chapter 21, starting in verse 6, we read:

⁶ The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, ⁷ and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats. ⁸ Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in the road. ⁹ The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David;
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;
Hosanna in the highest!”

¹⁰ When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, “Who is this?” ¹¹ And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”

With this triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus foreshadows His entrance into the city of God at the end of the age. Not only does this entrance into Jerusalem point forward to this great point in the future of God’s people, this entrance into Jerusalem marks the start of the week that culminates in Jesus being glorified on the cross.

As we look forward to the day Jesus returns and this Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled in the New Heaven and New Earth, are there any promises we can claim from the words Isaiah was inspired to write?

In my own mind, the imagery present in Isaiah’s prophecy about the bride and bridegroom and how God rejoices over us as His bride is an amazing framing about God’s love for us. With few exceptions, those moving towards marriage are eagerly looking forward to their wedding day. Some engaged couples might even pick a date to marry that other people would consider to be too quick simply because they cannot imagine waiting any longer.

I see God’s attitude and love for us this way. In the spiritual wedding between Jesus the Redeemer and God’s people who He redeems, I suspect we have no idea just how excited and expectant God is for the wedding between His Son and His people. Whether we frame being welcomed into God’s family using the metaphor of being adopted or being married in, God wants us included in His family.

Another promise worth drawing our attention to in this prophecy is the protection that God promises to give His city. While the earthly city of Jerusalem has had its share of challenges over the past centuries, and as those living within this city have not always been supporters of God, our attention is drawn towards the New Jerusalem and how this heavenly city moves into eternity with God’s protection. While it is strange to imagine God having enemies to protect His people against after the end of sin and Satan being destroyed, part of the reason why Jesus hasn’t returned could be because God is actively working on this protection as we speak.

While it is a challenging thought to hold onto, the best way for God to protect the universe from sin in the future is by letting sin reveal itself in the present. While some people might be quick to judge God harshly for letting evil thrive in our world and culture today, the most logical reason I have for why He would do this is to actually let evil reveal itself in an already sin-stained world.

By letting evil show how bad it is today, while there is pain, sickness, disease, and death, those who are redeemed in the future will have evidence, experience, and the motivation to keep them from ever wanting anything even remotely like sin to reappear after it has been done away with.

But what of all the pain, disease, cruelty, and death? How could God allow any of this to happen?

While there are several angles that people could use to answer these questions, let me suggest that the perspective of the Life-giver is different our own. Someone who has the power to give life, and the power to restore a life that was lost, is able to see from a different perspective than what we might initially think. I won’t claim to know what God’s perspective on humanity is currently like, but I will say that when those in humanity want to judge God, few, if any, have ever actually stopped to think through what His perspective is actually like. Without considering God’s perspective, it’s easy to judge Him, but any judgment given in this way is flawed at best, because it only allows for half a perspective, or perhaps even less than half a perspective.

I guess I ended up going on a little tangent there. I hope it was helpful to you, but even if it wasn’t, let’s together remember from Isaiah’s prophecy that God seeks after and redeems His people, and that He has promised to redeem and protect them moving forward into eternity.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open by challenging you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life. Intentionally place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus and lean on Him for the strength, wisdom, and guidance to face life in this sinful world. When bad things happen all around us, keep your perspective focused forward, looking towards the end of sin and the recreation of the universe. With Jesus, we will outlast pain, disease, sin, and even death. Even if death affects our life prior to Jesus’ return, we can know that He is the Life-Giver, and restoring life is something well within His ability to do.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow personally closer to God each and every day. Through prayer and study, we open our hearts to God and we invite Him into our lives.

As we continue our year podcasting through Luke’s gospel, we come to a place where Luke describes Jesus teaching His disciples to pray. While Matthew’s gospel gets the majority of attention when looking at this event, the prayer Luke describes is surprisingly simple, while also being incredibly profound.

Let’s read what Luke wrote down, and discover what Jesus wanted the disciples to know about prayer. Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 11, and we will read from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 1, Luke tells us that:

¹ One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

² Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say this:
‘Father:
    May your holy name be honored;
    may your Kingdom come.
³ Give us day by day the food we need.
⁴ Forgive us our sins,
    for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.
    And do not bring us to hard testing.’”

While our passage continues, let’s pause here briefly. With this last request about not bringing us to hard testing, it appears as though the prayer ends. There is no “amen” or any other concluding phrase. This makes me wonder if the last portion of the prayer was lost, or if Jesus is sharing a simple example we can use as a framework for prayer.

Spread throughout the gospels are times when Jesus spent extended periods of time in prayer. Sometimes these prayers lasted for minutes, others hours, and a few even all night long. The example Jesus gives us likely wouldn’t even take us a minute to pray. This tells me that God probably values short, to the point, prayers over long prayers with lots of repetition.

When we look at this prayer Jesus told the disciples, we see four key parts. While some people can easily make acronyms and fancy models for prayer, I won’t attempt to do this. Instead, I will simply share the four big pieces I see in this prayer and how these pieces fit together in a powerful way.

The first portion of the prayer acknowledges God as our Father, and then we give Him glory, honor, and praise. Verse 2 states: “Father: May your holy name be honored; may your Kingdom come.” To summarize this first verse: Our prayer opens with acknowledging God for who He is and looking forward to the arrival of His Kingdom.

The next part of this prayer acknowledges God’s blessings and our requests for our present circumstances. We request our immediate needs focusing on God’s providing for the present moment of time we are living in. This is stated in verse 3 when Jesus says, “Give us day by day the food we need.” Not only do we ask God to be with us each day as we move forward through life, we ask Him to be actively giving us what we need every “present” moment of our lives.

The third part of this prayer focuses on forgiveness in the present, because of forgiveness in the past. We ask God to continue forgiving us because we are forgiving those who have done us wrong. Jesus states this by saying in the first part of verse 4, “Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.” We want God to forgive us and we acknowledge Jesus’ promise that we are forgiven when we choose to forgive others.

The last part of this prayer focuses on protection for our future. While it sounds obvious that we wouldn’t want God to bring hard test or trials into our lives, this statement is a reminder for us that God protects our future. Jesus finishes this prayer at the end of verse 4 by saying “And do not bring us to hard testing”. We want God to protect us from things we cannot bear, and in a subtle way, we are reminding ourselves that God protects us and that anything that comes our way has been allowed into our lives because God knows He can turn it into a positive when we’ve learned from it.

This is Jesus’ model prayer.

In this prayer, we have two parallel progressive themes. The first big progressive theme is that this prayer begins by honoring God, before then asking God to provide for our present, forgive our past, and protect our future!

The second progressive summary still begins by honoring God, but then it asks God to provide for our physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. Our physical needs are represented by our food each day, our spiritual needs are represented by forgiveness, and our emotional needs are represented by our request for protection from the big tests of life.

If we keep all this in mind for our prayer time with God, I believe He will honor our prayers and answer them with our best interests in mind.

However, Jesus still has something else to teach us about prayer. Continuing in verse 5, Luke tells us:

⁵ [And] Jesus said to his disciples, “Suppose one of you should go to a friend’s house at midnight and say, ‘Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread. ⁶ A friend of mine who is on a trip has just come to my house, and I don’t have any food for him!’ ⁷ And suppose your friend should answer from inside, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ ⁸ Well, what then? I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking. ⁹ And so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For those who ask will receive, and those who seek will find, and the door will be opened to anyone who knocks. ¹¹ Would any of you who are fathers give your son a snake when he asks for fish? ¹² Or would you give him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? ¹³ As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In this additional teaching on prayer, Jesus challenges the disciples to pray purposefully and continually until we see God fully grant our request. However, we shouldn’t stop praying when God has started answering our prayers. Instead, we are challenged to shift our prayers from asking for our request to thanking God for answering our prayer.

The last big detail we have time for in this episode is where we should focus our prayer requests. When we ask God for His help, and for things that we need in our walk with Him, He knows exactly what we are asking for and He knows what the best thing we need is. God is more than willing to give us the best gift we need in any and every circumstance. However, it is worth pointing out that God has a much bigger perspective than we do, and this is why His best gifts might not always feel like the best gifts.

God knows exactly what we need, and God knows exactly the way to answer our prayers that leads us, and the most possible people, into a saving relationship with Jesus that ultimately leads into eternal life.

The best gift that God can give us is a gift that He is more than willing to give to us when we ask for it. This gift is His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the best gift God can give us, because the Holy Spirit is the ultimate guide for our lives, and the Holy Spirit is more than willing to bless us with everything we need to lead us into eternity with God when we let Him into our hearts and lives!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to ask Him for His gift of the Holy Spirit. God is more than willing to answer this request and this request is one we should persist in when praying. Also, when praying, always acknowledge God for who He is, and ask Him to provide for your present, forgive your past, and protect your future!

As I also always challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each day. Prayer and study are among the best ways to grow a personal relationship with God and a personal relationship with God is what leads to eternal life. Above everything else, don’t let anyone get between you and your relationship with God!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we approach the halfway point in our year moving through prophecies and connections between Jesus’ ministry and the Old Testament, we arrive at a fascinating prophecy that marks a shift in the prophecies that point towards Jesus. As we will soon read, tucked within a prophecy about one of Israel’s neighboring nations being judged and punished, we discover a little bit of space being dedicated to pointing forward to the coming Messiah.

With this said, let’s read this prophecy, and unpack what we can learn from what is shared about the Messiah.

Our passage and Old Testament prophecy are found in the book of Zechariah, chapter 9, and we will read using the New American Standard Bible. Starting in verse 1, Zechariah writes:

¹ The burden of the word of the Lord is against the land of Hadrach, with Damascus as its resting place (for the eyes of men, especially of all the tribes of Israel, are toward the Lord),

² And Hamath also, which borders on it;
Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise.
³ For Tyre built herself a fortress
And piled up silver like dust,
And gold like the mire of the streets.
⁴ Behold, the Lord will dispossess her
And cast her wealth into the sea;
And she will be consumed with fire.
⁵ Ashkelon will see it and be afraid.
Gaza too will writhe in great pain;
Also Ekron, for her expectation has been confounded.
Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza,
And Ashkelon will not be inhabited.
⁶ And a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod,
And I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.
⁷ And I will remove their blood from their mouth
And their detestable things from between their teeth.
Then they also will be a remnant for our God,
And be like a clan in Judah,
And Ekron like a Jebusite.
⁸ But I will camp around My house because of an army,
Because of him who passes by and returns;
And no oppressor will pass over them anymore,
For now I have seen with My eyes.
⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
He is just and endowed with salvation,
Humble, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
¹⁰ I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
And the horse from Jerusalem;
And the bow of war will be cut off.
And He will speak peace to the nations;
And His dominion will be from sea to sea,
And from the River to the ends of the earth.

In this set of verses, not only do we find a fascinating picture of Jerusalem’s king riding into the city victorious on the back of a donkey, we also get a picture hinted at that God will ultimately purify and accept certain groups of gentiles that many people might think God wouldn’t be interested in.

Primary among these newly accepted groups is the Philistines. There is no shortage of stories in the Old Testament where the Philistines show up and oppose Israel and Judah, appearing first within the stories of Abraham, and moving forward from prior to Israel even entering the promised land, through the judges and the united kingdom, up until the exile and Babylon conquering all of the nations in the region. As I say this, I don’t recall the Philistines showing up in a significant way after this point, but throughout Israelite history prior to Babylon, we find many places where this nation appears.

It is interesting in my mind that immediately after describing how God will purify the Phillistines and make them like one of the clans of Judah, we find God promising protection and pointing forward to a powerful symbol of the King of His kingdom riding into His city on a young donkey.

Moving forward into the New Testament, one of the most well documented events in Jesus’ life is His entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey at the start of the week leading forward to His crucifixion. One place this event is recorded is in Mark’s gospel, chapter 11, which begins by saying:

¹ As they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples, ² and said to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one yet has ever sat; untie it and bring it here. ³ If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ you say, ‘The Lord has need of it’; and immediately he will send it back here.” ⁴ They went away and found a colt tied at the door, outside in the street; and they untied it. ⁵ Some of the bystanders were saying to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” ⁶ They spoke to them just as Jesus had told them, and they gave them permission. ⁷ They brought the colt to Jesus and put their coats on it; and He sat on it. ⁸ And many spread their coats in the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. ⁹ Those who went in front and those who followed were shouting:

“Hosanna!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;
¹⁰ Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David;
Hosanna in the highest!”

In this amazing event, Jesus directs His disciples to go and borrow a young colt for Him to ride on. In a somewhat random thought I just had, if there were no bystanders present to confront the disciples taking the colt, what happened would have looked no different from a theft. It is also interesting in my mind that nothing in these disciples’ instructions to the owners of this colt is any mention that Jesus would be the one using it.

I don’t know if the owner of this colt, or the group of bystanders present, would have been sympathetic towards Jesus’ plans to ride on this young donkey. In this slightly cryptic set of instructions, Jesus basically tells the disciples to say that God needs to borrow the animal, and when God was finished, He would return it to the owner.

Not only was Jesus’ instructions to His disciples a small-scale prophecy, that was fulfilled when they went to borrow the colt, but the colt they ultimately borrowed was one specially set aside in the story of eternity as being the one designated to hold the King of the universe.

It is also amazing in my mind to take one more step back when looking at the fulfillment of this prophecy to realize that when Jesus made the way of salvation open to humanity, the way was made open not just for God’s people in an exclusive sense, but the way was made open for people from every nation to be invited into and adopted into God’s family. On the surface, of Israel’s neighboring nations, God makes the promise that He is willing to forgive, purify, and adopt the nation best known for being against His people.

Forgiveness is a key piece of God’s character, and we can take this prophecy as a promise that even though our past is filled with the stains of sin, mistakes, and regret, God is more than willing to adopt us into His family, and He is willing to purify us and make us one of His children. God loves you and He loves me, and Jesus made possible the way for God to show His love for each of us through what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open by challenging you, intentionally seek God first in your life and place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. Thank Jesus for what He made possible through His death and humbly come before God asking for His help cleaning and purifying your life as He is willing to adopt you into His family.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to discover just how much God loves each of us. Discover in the pages of the Bible a God who is more in love with you than you might first realize, and a God who is more interested in redeeming you than you might be interested in being redeemed.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue moving through Luke’s gospel, we come to a point where we are introduced to two very different individuals, and from the way Luke’s gospel describes this event, I am fascinated by some of the details we see when looking closely at what happened.

First off, this event focuses on two different women, and nothing in this passage is hinted at these two women being married. One of these women is described as having a home, which strongly implies that she was old enough to have an established life, and this is without Luke’s gospel sharing any evidence of a husband.

While it is possible she had a husband who traveled a great deal and who wasn’t present for this event, it is also just as possible that she was divorced or simply had chosen not to marry. There may be other possible explanations, but all the explanations we can think of are really distractions from the big contrast Luke wants us to see as he describes what happened when Jesus meets these two women.

Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 10, and we will read it from the God’s Word translation. Starting in verse 38, Luke tells us that:

³⁸ As they were traveling along, Jesus went into a village. A woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹ She had a sister named Mary. Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to him talk.

⁴⁰ But Martha was upset about all the work she had to do. So she asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work all by myself? Tell her to help me.”

⁴¹ The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha! You worry and fuss about a lot of things. ⁴² There’s only one thing you need. Mary has made the right choice, and that one thing will not be taken away from her.”

In just five short verses, we are introduced to two very different women, and two very different responses to interacting with Jesus.

It is easy to condemn Martha for worrying and fussing while focusing on the details of being a good hostess. It is also easy for us to sympathize with Martha’s irritation over Mary’s lack of help or Mary’s decision to sit listening to Jesus. However, the biggest theme of this passage can get lost in the details if we are not careful.

It is worth noting that Jesus does not condemn Martha for serving or being a detail-driven hostess. While Jesus does call Martha out for where she has placed her focus, this only happens after Martha had become upset about what Mary was doing when compared with what Martha wanted Mary to be doing. In other words, Martha’s expectation for Mary was upsetting her when Mary wasn’t doing what she expected her to do.

This detail is huge, because it points us to a number of big spiritual truths.

First, we can see that our expectations for ourselves have an impact on our spiritual lives. In Martha’s case, the expectation she had placed on herself was that of being the perfect hostess. She wanted every detail accounted for because she knew how special Jesus was and what a big deal it was that He decided to spend time in her home.

Continuing in Martha’s example, we discover that when we don’t meet our expectations for ourselves, we often try to get others to help us meet our expectations. When Martha began falling behind with the details, she tried to get Mary to come and help her catch back up. While the details Martha was fussing and worrying about might have been very temporary things, the way she frames her frustration and request appeared to be more demanding than the situation might have warranted. I don’t believe Martha was in the wrong for asking for help, but she ultimately was called out for the way she demanded help from her sister.

This leads us to another truth: when others choose not to help us achieve our own expectations for ourselves, we can become bitter and angry towards them when they technically have done nothing wrong except for failing to abide by our expectations for them. In Martha’s example, Mary had done nothing wrong except that she chose not to help Martha achieve her expectations for herself. If Mary had gotten up to help Martha, then at the end of Jesus’ stay with them, Martha may have had the feeling of satisfaction, but Mary would definitely have had the feeling of regret and a missed opportunity.

Ultimately, what Jesus tells Martha is a message to all of us. While we may worry or fuss about a lot of things, it is more important that we connect with Jesus personally, and that we don’t try to dictate how other people connect with God. Every person will connect with God in their own way, and for a relationship with God to be truly personal, it must not depend on or include other individuals standing between us and God.

In Martha’s case, her expectation for herself stood between her and her relationship with Jesus, and when she was falling behind achieving her expectation, she expected Mary to help her rather than letting Mary focus on her own connection with Jesus. Jesus pushed back Martha’s upset remarks because Jesus knows that Mary’s simple choice to sit and listen is infinitely more valuable to her connection with Jesus than all the serving and hosting she could do!

In our own lives, we should intentionally spend time sitting and listening to Jesus to stay connected with Him. While serving Him is always a good thing in the big picture, we must never lose our connection with God while being focused on serving Him. In our lives each day, let’s take time to be with Jesus while we also spend time serving Him!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life. Choose to take time to spend with Him and simply be with Him. We can serve God in our lives, but if we serve God to the point of becoming disconnected from Him, we will ultimately lose the life He has called us to be a part of. We can become disconnected from God even while doing great things for Him, and the longer we are disconnected from God, the farther we can drift from Him.

This is one reason why I regularly challenge you to pray and study the Bible for yourself. Through prayer and Bible study, we can keep our connection with God strong, and when we prayerfully open the Bible to study, we are opening our minds to God’s leading and listening for what the Holy Spirit wants to teach us in God’s word. Prayer and Bible study are two of the best ways of staying connected with God!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!