As we approach 2016 one of the areas the session has discussed concerning our growth in Christ is reading through the Scripture together as a church. So, we would like to challenge you to read through the scriptures with us this year...and next!
We all know that one-year Bible reading plans can be very fruitful and challenging. At the same time they can be rigorous and many give up at the sheer amount of reading or because of quickly falling behind. Therefore, our plan is to read through the Bible at a slower pace of two years so we will stay the course as well as reflect and relish the text more.
As to the great importance of this endeavor I have found some very inspiring thoughts in Tim Keller’s impactful book called, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. He quotes J. I. Packer in his famous work Knowing God:
“Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing. . . . Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him. . . . Friends . . . open their hearts to each other by what they say and do. . . . We must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship, as well as an intellectual and volitional one, and could not indeed be a deep relationship between persons if it were not so.”
Keller then goes on to ask, “What is prayer, then, in the fullest sense? Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.”
What this conveys to us is that a deep, growing, prayerful and encouraging relationship with God starts with God’s revelation of himself to us. We meet God in His Word. Our prayers, our fellowship, our heart for mercy to our neighbor and the lost, and our intimacy with God all begins in knowing God and that comes through His spoken and living Word to us about himself.
So would you please join us on this journey to know God through His Word this year? We will have reminders in the newsletter each week but you can print out the plan from this LINK.
Our desire is that of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians 3:14-19:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Peace of Christ,
Patrick
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