Message for Pentecost 4 – Proper 7, Sunday, June 25, 2023

My Dear Brothers & Sisters,

“Come Holy Spirit we need you  Come Sweet Spirit we pray  Come with your strength and your power Come in your own special way”

The Psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”  Ps.119:8. In an effort to encourage his congregation to be more diligent in the reading and study of the Bible, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a young Scottish pastor, wrote, “If you are led by the Spirit, you will love the Bible.”  He urged them to learn something new out of the Bible every day, to be wiser in their Bibles than in the newspaper.  What good, he asked, will all that you ever read in the newspaper do when you are dying?  He was writing long before the electronic media made news available in dozens of different ways, but the message is simple, we need a daily diet of the “good news” in our daily devotional life to enable us to remain spiritually healthy.

Let me encourage those who do not have a discipline of daily Bible Reading to get hold of one of the many aids provided in the form of Bible Reading Notes to assist them in developing the practice.  I know that there are several persons who make use of “FORWARD DAY BY DAY” which in addition to setting out the readings for each day, gives a short commentary on one of the readings.  I would also like to recommend, THE WORD FOR TODAY, which provides three months of daily Bible verses and comments.  Quite popular too is OUR DAILY BREAD which is readily available in Christian Bookshops and provides readings for the whole year.  Let us talk to one another and see how we can involve more and more members of all ages in this practice.

I would also like to encourage a wider participation in our Daily Morning Prayer at 7:00 a.m. Monday to Friday and weekly Bible Study Programme in the Cure every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.  Don’t miss this week’s study!

You will note the repetition of the word encourage, and there are several verses that call upon us to encourage one another, but I will leave with you the verse from 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.”

Think on these things!

Contributed