Pastor Parker

As we enter 2022, I am sure that we all need God’s word, and we need encouragement to immerse ourselves in it. We need our thoughts to be saturated in it, we need our hearts to be filled up with its message, and we need our prayers to be fueled by its truths. I want to give you all some ideas and resources that I have found helpful in the past, and some resources that I will personally be using in 2022.

Bible Reading
You all may already have a favored Bible reading plan. I follow the M’Cheyne Bible Reading plan. The Gospel Coalition has a great article from Don Carson about the excellencies of this Bible reading plan which takes you through the whole Bible once a year and the Psalms/New Testament twice in a year.

If you are the podcasting sort and tend to fall behind, you may find this interesting: you can listen to your Bible readings each day in podcast format. I don’t recommend making this the regular way that you do your Bible reading, but this has swooped in to save my day more than once.

If you are an average reader, it should take you about 15 minutes of reading a day to complete reading the Bible in a year. Time yourself some time, and you’ll be surprised how much time you have to spare, and how little time reading your Bible actually demands. If you do nothing else that I suggest here, please have a plan for reading your Bible, and think of everything else as the cherry on top.

Devotional Reading
I’m going to suggest a number of books that I plan to use this year in addition to my Bible reading plan.

Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship by Jonathan Gibson
One of the challenges of our time with God is having a structure and focus to our times of private worship with the Lord. Jonathan Gibson developed an order of worship for his own private and family use during the COVID-19 lockdowns. His book includes a 30 day rotation of calls to worship, recommendations for intercessory prayer, reading from God’s law, prayer of illumination, bible reading (the M’Cheyne plan), confession of sin, and other elements of biblical worship. If you find that your own family worship or private worship could use something to focus you, this may be of help. (Amazon: https://amzn.to/3mFEdih Westminster Books: https://bit.ly/3EAN6jt)

The Promises of God: A New Edition of the Classic Devotional by Charles Spurgeon
Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening has been a mainstay of my own devotional life since I was a teenager. I was unaware of this devotional that Spurgeon had developed until Crossway reprinted it with some revised language. Each reading is centered around a promise of God from Scripture. There are plenty of them to fill a year! I have only started using the book this past week, but have been well fed from this book’s riches and I look forward to using it in 2022. (Amazon: https://amzn.to/3qzsza1 Westminster Books: https://bit.ly/32qSWa6)

In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms by Dane Ortlund
If you found yourself helped by reading Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly you may find some benefit from reading this series of devotionals meant to walk you through the Psalms. I am not planning on using this as consistently as the other two books I’ve mentioned, but some of you may find this book to be a blessing. (Amazon: https://amzn.to/315uLNH Westminster Books: https://bit.ly/3qtDmlS)

I am so looking forward to a new year with you all, as we develop the habit of setting our eyes on Jesus Christ each and every day.

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Parker