Press the arrow to listen to Michael W. Smith sing “Ancient Words” while reading today’s devotional about listening. Read more on how to journal.

Scripture
Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. Revelation 1:3

Observation
I rarely read the Bible. I prefer to listen to the Bible being read with my ears more that taking it in off of the page with my eyes. I like listening better than reading the Scriptures silently to myself. With audio Bibles, it is so easy to have my own personal reader. Every morning I visit http://m.enewhope.org/bible on my iPhone and listen to the day’s readings.

The Bible was meant to be read aloud. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Only since 1450 with the printing press has anyone had a chance to get their hands on a personal copy of the Bible. In fact, only in the past 150 years or so has the Bible been cheap enough for the average family to own one. To read the Bible, one had to go to church or a house gathering where a copy of the Bible was kept to be read aloud.

The Bible was meant to be heard, because words are living things that enter the ears and take over the hearer. Listening to the Bible being read aloud is like a deep soaking rain. Our minds can process faster than the reader can speak.  The extra brain space gives our minds room for imagination. The Holy Spirit also has elbow room to be at work. If God spoke and it was so, then there is something miraculous about Bible promises echoing in our ears. New life is created. Faith arises.

Application
The challenge is to be hear the word and to take it to heart. This is what comes to the ears moving deeper. Being read to is sometimes tedious. The mind wanders. This is where meditation can kick in. Reflecting on the word is what fills in the gaps and changes the heart.

Prayer
Father, often I find I read and forget. I want to be one who reads and remembers because the meaning has saturated me. I ask today, keep the word in my heart safe by causing it too grow with words so deep that can never be extracted. Amen.

Press the arrow to listen to Third Day sing, “Cry Out to Jesus” while reading today’s devtion about God’s interest in you.

Scripture
You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. John 15:16

Observation
If we work too hard for the Lord we can twist things around the wrong way. In our workaholic state, we think, “This ministry is my idea and I have to convince the Lord to be interested enough to help me.” Our prayers turn into frantic attempts to flag down a supposedly disinterested God, while we worry if we will have what we need to finish the job.

Jesus would not have that attitude from his first disciples, nor from us. Instead, this is to be our attitude: this ministry is God’s plan and I am free to ask for whatever I need to get the job done.

Application
The Father is interested. That single thought can lubricate the rusty gears of our ministry and make all things possible. What I have planned today that leads into this week and the coming year is all of top priority to the Lord. He called me to do this with him; I did not appoint myself. Therefore, surprising resources are at the disposal of Him who stoops low and cups his ear to hear what I have to say.

Prayer
Father, today I want to pray like one who is being heard and not like one who is trying to get your attention. I find I like to hear others pray that way, and feel secure when they do. Today, I will pray with that same sense of anticipation. You are listening. Amen.

Press the arrow to listen to Casting Crowns sing “Slow Fade” while reading today’s devotion on the story of your life.

Scripture
All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us. Hebrews 11:39-40

Observation
Thirty-five miles. That is the distance that one thin grey line can be drawn out of a number 2 graphite pencil. That meaningless bit of trivia has been lodged in my brain from a table game we played last Thanksgiving. It made me look at my next yellow pencil with new respect, but shudder at my own finite existence.

I ask myself, “How long of a mark can you make on the pages of history?” For a brief span of years, the point of my personality is pressed on the thin skin of a spinning planet. I leave a mark behind. Too often I write the staff that graffiti is made of, but occasionally I rise to the quality of poetry. A tombstone will mark the full stop where my pencil will bounce off of the page of the earth.

The line of writing left behind, which I call my life, is so incomplete. It is but one line scribbled alongside billions of others, each with a surprise beginning and an abrupt ending. Together we are writing a thing called “history”.

Why can’t my life-line finish God’s story? Why is my life incomplete? There is a marvelous promise at the end of Hebrews 11. The chapter records many life-lines. Each life is an incomplete sentence just like mine. Like words of a book, each human life races across the pages to fill in more of the blank space, but none writing the words “The End.” The promise is that the completion will not happen until all the writers of human life are gathered together in heaven and together we will watch Jesus write the words, “The End.” “For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.”

Application
Today my life-line is racing across the page, heading for an incomplete sentence. The only words that I will write with indelible ink will be those that reached outside of myself and into God with faith. My experience matters, because my faith-story is part of His-story. The greatest is yet to come. The Author of my faith isn’t finished yet and won’t write the final stroke without every human author being there to watch him write the last stroke. Then the party will begin.

Prayer
Father, I so look forward to heaven. I’m writing as furiously as a final-exam-essay-writer toward that goal today. There are many things that puzzle me as I look at what I’ve written. But you have given me hope that this will all work out in the end. I don’t need to know the ending before I die. I’m happy to be buried in question marks. The answer will be at the book signing, when you the author of my life write the last words on the pages of history. Then life will begin. Amen.