Listen to Pastor Nick read the “Firestarter” and Proverbs 27:1-10.

Hold each proverb in the palm of your hand, contemplating every one as you would a precious jewel. Feel the texture, admire the colors, and listen inwardly as each one speaks to your heart. Taste the wisdom offered to your spirit.

Verse 6 is a way of talking about “tough love.” Verse 8 relates to being at home with God and God with you … wherever you are.

There is a prayer in the 1965 Book of Worship for the Methodist Church that incorporates verse 1: “Since we know not what a day may bring forth, but only that the hour for serving thee is always present, may we wake to the instant claims of thy holy will, not waiting for tomorrow, but yielding today. Consecrate with thy presence the way our feet may go; and the humblest work will shine and the roughest places be made plain …” Receive God into your heart, moment by moment.

Proverbs 27

What are Bible Breaths? Learn More…
Example: Human spirit: lamp of God v. 27

Tuesdays are dedicated to the Old Testament books of history
and the Hebrew “Writings.”
In the season of Advent to Epiphany this year, we read Ruth, Esther and Proverbs 7 to 9 and 27.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information

Listen to Pastor Nick read the “Firestarter” and Joel 2:23-29.

From the center of the surrendered heart of Joel, there wells up a prophet’s voice, which would resound hundreds of years later in Peter on Pentecost. The tension in Joel between judgment and salvation makes a trampoline-like energy that releases God’s Word from the prophet.

For those whose spirits are deaf, blunt and opaque to the presence of the Spirit, the outcome is one of harsh judgment. For those with Jesus in their hearts, there is the joy of salvation.

Take time to let the bottom of your soul spring upward with an energy that comes from knowing that you are a prophet in Jesus. Joel will loosen your heart from sluggishness and self-consciousness into a new freedom and spontaneity in the Lord.

Joel 1-3

Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.
In the seasons of Advent through Epiphany this year we read Isaiah 56 to 66 and Joel 1-3.

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example: Thanks for Your Spirit poured out! Joel 2:28-29

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

A Scenic Overlook on a superhighway invites a choice to both stop and refresh the soul with the beauty of a landscape, or pass the moment by, urged by the need to drive on.

We are about to enter the Lenten movement to Easter. Rather than race right into the journey, Jesus invites us to take a scenic trip to a mountaintop, there to pause in prayer, enfolded by a sense of the wholeness of the journey from death to life. Join Peter, James, and John, the disciples who will be with Jesus in Gethsemane. Curiously, sleep sweeps its covering shadow over them in both places. Can it be that the stretch from glory to suffering catches them and us asleep on either end?

Pause, pray and let the Lord give you one more Epiphany of glory before the descent into the Lenten valley of the shadow of death.

Luke 9:28–36

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example: Embracing the light within

Sundays are dedicated to the Gospels from the Revised Common Lectionary.
In year C, we generally read from the Gospel of Luke.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.