Insightful Musings on the New Testamentby
Ray Sparre, NU class of '67
Ray has a wealth of experience as a Husband, Father, Pastor, Missionary, and student of the Word. He believes and practices his faith where the rubber meets the road. You'll find his writings to be practical, insightful, and grounded in a truly Christ-centered world view.
Below are links to a printable daily Bible reading guide which Ray has followed, and an archive of all his daily devotional writings for 2010 and 2011.
| Daily Reading Guide | 2011 Devotion Archives | 2010 Devotion Archives |
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1 Jan 11
Good morning, dear ones…at 8:32am.
I was sleeping when the clock struck 12. But some nearby fireworks woke me. It sounded kind of like a battle. In the mix, someone nearby fired a bunch of 3-round bursts from a sizeable handgun—at least that’s my guess. With or without all the noise and falderal, we have a new year begun. Now we need to figure out what we want written in this new notebook before circumstance writes it anyway.
And I still need to figure out how I’m going to approach this routine of doing up devotional-type essays on a daily basis. Whew! It’s really not all that easy…but I’ll just give it a good try and see how it goes.
My present idea is to utilize the book of Proverbs. Since there are 31 chapters to accommodate the 31 days of a typical month, I could try to extract 12 ideas from each chapter—one each day. But I’m thinking it may also be good to spill over into the Psalms.
May your first day of 2011 be blessed as you seek His rule.
Love, Dad/Ray
1 January 2011
Proverbs 1
Focus: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…” Proverbs 1:7.
Right thinking yields right living. Wrong thinking yields wrong living. Viewing human life in these simple terms is, I believe, an expression of right thinking. It’s really not very complicated. How can it be otherwise?
Addressing this universal need for right thinking is the clear aim and theme of this book of Proverbs. If we can agree that right thinking is a universal need, and that this book offers a valuable resource for meeting that need, shouldn’t there also be a universal pursuit of this book and its contents? Yes. However, right thinking is NOT the universal beginning point of mankind. According to Biblical revelation, it’s really quite the opposite. The universal sin nature renders us universally foolish. And a “fool” in Biblical use of the word is one who is morally and rationally deficient when they don’t need to be. Therefore, verse 7 of this first chapter offers a concise overview of the facts before us. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.”
It only makes good sense to me that if I fail to pursue and conform to the first half of this verse, I automatically become the second half by default. I acknowledge that I have a lot of ongoing homework.
“A bore is someone who tells you his life story from A to Zzzzz.”