Author: Bryan Richardson

Re: Verse reading–1 Peter 4:12-5:11 (day three)
“Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  In our admiration for a lion’s power and elegance, we can forget that the animal is a killer.  Likewise, we justify our decisions to sin in order to pursue the power and elegance we think we see.  But it is the devil we pursue, and he is a killer.  The sin you are justifying today you justify to the devil’s sympathetic ears–and you will hear only approval from him.  That sound of approval will build to a roar, and the devil will turn on you without remedy.

Re: Verse reading–1 Peter 2:11-3:9 (Day Three)
“Now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”  You can do whatever you want—unless you want to find the cure for a heart that runs after lies, turns a blind eye to beauty, fears its own shadow, and helps others dig their own graves.  Without a shepherd, we are dangerous to ourselves and to others.  Without an Overseer, we attempt to rule over everyone else with no thought for love.  We end up with the world we have when the human spirit has its own way with the universe.  But there is a Shepherd.  There is an Overseer.  He knows your soul.  You can return to him.

Re: Verse reading–1 Peter 1:13-2:10 (Day Three)
“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.”  Jesus gave Simon the nickname “Rock”—Peter.  For a time, it seemed as though Peter attempted to live up to what he thought the name signified: Tough, hard, unwavering, unshakable.  He was none of those things, no matter how hard he tried.  It took years of training with Jesus—not trying, but training—to teach him that God was not building a monument out of Peter’s life, but a community.  In this community, the raw materials are the lives of all of us—all “rocks” that Jesus will use when as we leave behind our aspirations to “monument-hood”, and instead accept the weathered beauty that comes as the Lord leads us through difficulty and joy in friendship with him and with one another.

Re: Verse reading–1Peter 1:1-12 (day three)
“You believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”  To believe something is not to close your eyes against reality and pretend that it is true. Rather, it is to order your life according to that which you believe–actually to live as though it were true. If you believe Jesus Christ is alive–bodily resurrected and soon to return–you will live as if all will be well, because for those who count on Jesus Christ, all will indeed be well.  And that is what joy actually is: the all-surrounding sense of well-being.  For the Christian, everything ends with well-being.  The one who counts on Christ knows that promise.

Re: Verse reading–Hebrews 12:18-13:25 (day three)
“If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?”  Sooner or later, everyone fears God.  Those who fear him sooner discover his shocking mercy.  Those who fear him later, when he brings this age to a close, discover their shocking inability to talk him into mercy.

Re: Verse reading–Hebrews 11:1-12:17 (Day Three)
“Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead.” When Abraham heard God tell him to sacrifice Isaac, he knew who was directing him to do such a thing. Abraham already had a long history with God. Each ability of God’s that Abraham saw over time brought him a clearer understanding of God’s power: He knew God could lead him across hundreds of miles of trackless territory to a new home; he knew God could help him lead an army to victory; he knew God could give an old man and old woman a son in their old age. By the time of this demand, Abraham knew God’s character and power—even though he did not know how it would all end. He went up Moriah to where he did not know, based on what he did know of God. That’s faith.

Re: Verse reading–Hebrews 10:19-39 (day four)
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”  While you have today, you can begin to count on Jesus Christ–the only one who can teach you to live an eternal kind of life.  While you are alive in this life, you can decide to hear him, to get to know him.  You might not have much, but you have today.

Re: Verse reading–Hebrews 4:14-5:10 (Day Three)
“He was heard because of his reverent submission.”  Until one fears God, prayer is a placebo.  It might be eloquent.  It might be solemn.  One might even really mean it.  But until one approaches God with the understanding that though he is love, he is also dangerous, prayer will accomplish nothing except to bring a little comfort to the mind—and that only temporarily.  Our Lord took God seriously.  And God heard him.

Re: Verse reading–Hebrews 3:1-4:13 (day four)
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”  While you have today, you can begin to count on Jesus Christ–the only one who can teach you to live an eternal kind of life.  While you are alive in this life, you can decide to hear him, to get to know him.  You might not have much, but you have today.

Re: Verse reading–Hebrews 1 and 2 (day three)
“But in these days he has spoken to us by his Son.”  A friend of mine puts it this way: Jesus Christ is the last word of God.  That is not to say, of course, that God communicates nothing more.  It is to say that there is no fuller expression of God than Jesus.  We pay close attention to last words that people utter.  We figure that if people have only a short time left to say anything, they won’t waste words, but say what really matters to them.  God is certainly not on his deathbed–though many have attempted to write his obituary–but his final word on his identity is his Son.  Do you want to know God?  Get to know Christ.  Go to the Bible.  Find Jesus.  You will see God