¡Hola, hola! Friends, we are here, this is our last week of the first round of our Bible Reading Challenge! Praise the Lord! We thank God for each one of you and for the work of His Spirit in your lives. The testimonies we have heard have been really encouraging, and as I mentioned in some other email, the common thing in all these was hearing how much His Word changed you and sustained you through the hardest seasons you went through. This is wonderful to hear because we see again and again that God’s Word is alive and working in us, feeding us, sustaining us, transforming us. We can say with assurance that we never read our Bibles and pray in vain.
We have walked a long trail with some easy parts and other harder parts, and now we have arrived at the top of the mountain and can see the most amazing view: God’s grand redemptive story laid before us. From Genesis to Revelation one main story line, “the reconciling of all things to Himself, whether things on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of Jesus’ cross” (Col.1:20). And this makes us not only know the Lord more and understand our place in the story even better, but we also love Him more.
But as rich as these past eight months have been, we cannot live by what we got from being in the Word these past months. Our lives depend on the Word of God as much as we depend on oxygen and water to live. So we will not stop here. We will take the Book of God and read it, and meditate on it, and pray it, and continue to be transformed by it. We don’t know what lies ahead of us, but we now Who is ahead of us, and we know how our Father works all things together for our good and the glory of His name. So we take courage and do not lose heart, but take our two sleeved habit and wear it every day: reading and praying the Word.
This Summer we will continue reading the word and praying, but will also pay attention to the seam that binds this habit we now love to wear: meditation (memorization). Our summer plan (which starts on Monday, June 4) includes a passage that you will be memorizing (or meditating) starting on Monday of each week and reviewing on Saturday. You can print the passages and carry them with you in your purse, your pocket, and read them 5-6 times a day meditating on them, praying over them, considering them carefully. We really hope you can join us as we dig in deeper into the New Testament this summer. All the information can be found here. (Also, we will not have webinars during the summer, but the weekly emails will continue to be delivered to your inbox.)
This week we will be reading ten psalms and finish with Psalm 119 (the Psalm with which we started), and I trust that you will find it a joy to read and will see how much more the Lord has increased your love for His Word these past months. You will, I am sure, read it with more delight than when we started this challenge.
On our last day, we will read Romans 8 (bonus reading is Romans 1-10). This chapter is a fantastic one to meditate on as we close our Bible Reading Challenge. The chapter shouts good news: “No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” In Adam we fell, we died, we were condemned, the Law was given to show us our desperate need for a Savior and our impossibility to save ourselves. But God always comes to seek and save the lost, so He became man and came, and dwelt among us and being humbled to that point, He died on the cross to redeem His own and deliver us from the condemnation that was upon us. His grace – irresistible grace – broke the yoke and through grace by faith we have been set free, free from all sin, free from all guilt of sin, free from the punishment of sin, free! Free to love God and our neighbor, free to serve Christ and His church, free to proclaim the good news to all, free to live in joy, free to ground our identity in Christ and not in our achievements, failures, neither sins we have committed or sins that have been committed against us. We are free! Free indeed by the blood of the Lamb!
May our prayer this week be, “Father thank you for the freedom we have in Christ, we pray now, give us the assurance we need to boldly proclaim in the midst of our circumstances that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Important end note: Since Monday I will be traveling back home form the other side of the Atlantic, I will be recording our last webinar today, Friday, May 25 at 10:00am, maybe you can join me live?
Under His sun and by His grace,
Becky Pliego and the team of Ladies Fellowship from Christ Church
