My Daily Life Journal Reading

If you use the Life Journal and participate in the daily readings, I would like to hear from you and your perspective on each day’s reading. Please feel free to join in the linky that I post below, so others too, who uses the Life Journal/or SOAP method to read the bible can participate.

Don’t feel obligate to have to blog about each passage to be read, but if anything, feel free to share those passages that have the most impact on you that day.

There maybe some days that you may read your daily reading and find nothing to jot down in your journal or on your blog and that’s okay, but there maybe other days, that you will find yourself inspire.

This is about you being encouraged to have a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father, and spending each day with Him, You and Him.

I also have a November bookmark with this month’s readings, that you are more than welcome to download and print for your own use, to keep up with the daily readings.

It is my prayer and hope that this will be an encouragement to establish a personal daily reading as well.

To find out more about using the S.O.A.P. method, here’s a link to an ehow article and here’s the link to the Life Journal to find out more what it is, and how you can use it for your own daily bible readings. If you don’t want to order the journal or if it’s not available through your local church, another method is simply, buy a journal or notebook or even blog about your life journal readings.

Disclaimer: I am not personally affiliated with the church that the link goes to, but merely share it as a resource of what the Life Journal is, how to order it.
Today’s Life Journal Reading is from:

• Job 23,24
• Mark 11,12

I am using the NKJV bible for the readings.

Scripture

Mark 12:32-34

   
³² So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. ³³ And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
³⁴ Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” But after that no one dared question Him. (Mark 12:32-34, New King James Version)

Observation:

 This is a vivid reminder of what our pastor was preaching about yesterday; We can go to church, read our bible, wear shirts proclaiming our faith, give big tithes, but it all means nothing, if in our hearts and our actions to each other, be it Christians or not, we do not emulate what our Father in Heaven gives to all of us without pre-conditions, judgement or personal thoughts.

Service to our Father, is more than just a personal relationship; It’s not going to gain us brownie points, if we grab control of the lighthouse lamp and pick and choose, who WE decide to sign the light on and if that person or that person or that person, doesn’t meet our own criteria, than we decide, they are not worthy. That’s not our job or call.

Service to our Father, is serving Him by loving the Rehabs, the Sauls, the stubborn Peters, the undesirables, the inconvenient, the get on our nerves, the “they offended me”, that is service to Him, for He did the same for us, without conditions or criterias.

Praise our Father, that He did not decide the same for us that we were “too undesirable” or not in our comfort zone or “inconvenience Him”.

Sometimes, we don’t know all the story of what is going on in someone’s life;Assumption doesn’t pass for facts. Sometimes people have more going on than we realize, but wear masks to hide the pain or engage in behaviour that for us, maybe wrong, but for them, are cries of help and desperation.

Service to them is service to Him and worth more than the offerings we can sometimes give.

Our pastor challenged us.

Go beyond our comfort zone.

Don’t do something to be recognized by others or people around us.

Do something to let Him know that you are listening to Him and doing this, not for yourself, or for the people who can see you, but for Him.

 

Application:

As mention above:

Go beyond our comfort zone.

Don’t do something to be recognized by others or people around us.

Do something to let Him know that you are listening to Him and doing this, not for yourself, or for the people who can see you, but for Him.

 

Take the challenge and go beyond our comfort zone. It’s not about what the people around us think, but what our Heavenly Father thinks.

Challenge ourselves to look at our lives, however mundane it may or may not be and do it for Him and Him only.

An interesting story was told yesterday.

Someone had shared about a lady they knew, who worked at the meat deli. She was always exuberating pure joy and a smile no matter what the circumstances, and one day, the person who was sharing the story, shared that they watch someone asked the lady, “Why was she so happy”.

The deli lady replied it was because no matter what she was doing, it was in service for Him (our Father in Heaven) and that is who she does what she does.

We take for granted something as simple and mundane as the act  of slicing meat, but for the deli lady,the act of serving strangers every day,was an act of service to Him.

How often do we go about our lives, frustrated or bored or asking why we are doing what we are doing, and what was the whole point?

What if we stop grumbling or complaining and instead, look at it with the fact, that, we may not get accolades from other people or a pat on the back, but that no matter what we are doing, it is all for Him.

That changes things.

Seeing it that we don’t have to just volunteer at church, or tithe, but just the simple act of doing everything we do, however big or small, is a service to Him, our Father in Heaven.

It does changes mine.

No one may ever know what I am doing, read what I am writing, but you know what, that’s okay, because ultimately, it’s not about me, you or us…It’s about Him.

It’s all in service to Him.

 

Prayer:

Lord-You are TOO awesome and bigger than everything. You are the big screen tv that we should be focus on and not the ones in our living rooms or anywhere in our lives.

Thank You for being stronger than the foundation that holds our houses together and being above, even the tallest mountains in our lives and I pray and hope You will remove always the idols and blinds that keep us from seeing You for You.

Lord, in this “me” and “we” world, lift up the veils from my eyes, our eyes and help us remember that ultimately in the end, it’s not about us, or getting recognition, and for many of us, so what if no one knows who we are; It’s about You; No one else.

Lift us out of the “we care what others have to think about us” and place us in “We care about what YOU think”. Stop us from worshipping the idols that fall so subtly in our lives that it displaces You in areas of importance and become more important than You and challenge us, to get real  and get inspired and get focused on You.

In the Name of Your Son, I pray, Amen.

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