For 2022 I’m thinking about following Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening mediations. I’ve dabbled in Spurgeon but never committed to a full reflective reading. On the direct Bible reading side, it’s been a bit of a struggle keeping up with the 5 Day Bible Reading Program, but my wife and I have been faithful, listening to Max McLean read the OT in the KJV, while we follow the text, even through the many list of names. Only a few weeks to go to complete the whole Bible.

Certainly, easier than the times I spent reading through the Ten Lists program. Will be celebrating 🥳 my 10th year of reading through God’s word using various plans. For 2022, I may refocus on the M’Cheyne plan but the NT only. Still reading in the KJV, which I turned to first in 2013, so this will also be my 10th. I would never go back.

Btw, my blog writing itself dates back to 2009.

Reading the Bible in 2012

As for Spurgeon here was last nights. Paul was never ashamed of presenting the gospel, as we read here it really should be our focus too.

Rom 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Rom 1:17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Evening

“I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” — 1Co 9:22

Paul’s great object was not merely to instruct and to improve, but to save. Anything short of this would have disappointed him; he would have men renewed in heart, forgiven, sanctified, in fact, saved. Have our Christian labours been aimed at anything below this great point? Then let us amend our ways, for of what avail will it be at the last great day to have taught and moralized men if they appear before God unsaved? Blood-red will our skirts be if through life we have sought inferior objects, and forgotten that men needed to be saved. Paul knew the ruin of man’s natural state, and did not try to educate him, but to save him; he saw men sinking to hell, and did not talk of refining them, but of saving from the wrath to come. To compass their salvation, he gave himself up with untiring zeal to telling abroad the gospel, to warning and beseeching men to be reconciled to God. His prayers were importunate and his labours incessant. To save souls was his consuming passion, his ambition, his calling. He became a servant to all men, toiling for his race, feeling a woe within him if he preached not the gospel. He laid aside his preferences to prevent prejudice; he submitted his will in things indifferent, and if men would but receive the gospel, he raised no questions about forms or ceremonies: the gospel was the one all-important business with him. If he might save some he would be content. This was the crown for which he strove, the sole and sufficient reward of all his labours and self-denials. Dear reader, have you and I lived to win souls at this noble rate? Are we possessed with the same all-absorbing desire? If not, why not? Jesus died for sinners, cannot we live for them? Where is our tenderness? Where our love to Christ, if we seek not his honour in the salvation of men? O that the Lord would saturate us through and through with an undying zeal for the souls of men.