Daily Bread: July–September 2018

By Mark Ellis and Tricia Williams

Daily Bread is the Bible reading guide that aims to help you hear from God as you read the Bible. If you've ever asked the question, 'What possible relevance can this verse have for me today?' or 'What difference does this passage make to my life?' then read on...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scripture Union
• Release date: Apr 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785066047

Mark Ellis

Mark is married to Joanne and they have three teenage children. He has held a variety of ministry roles, including worked with a church plant in Malaysia and with students in Scotland. He is currently minister of Grace Church Dundee.

Book preview

What is Daily Bread?

Daily Bread is the Bible reading guide that aims to help you hear from God as you read the Bible. If you’ve ever asked the question, ‘What possible relevance can this verse have for me today?’ or ‘What difference does this passage make to my life?’ then read on…

Why read the Bible?

Reading the Bible is about developing a relationship with God, through dependence on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us to engage with the Bible and to face God’s challenge in the here and now. He will always point us to Jesus Christ, the heart of God’s Word to us, the one who shows us who God is.

Why read Daily Bread ?

Everyone needs a little help when reading the Bible. Sometimes the poetry and prose, history and revelation, or parables and proverbs need some explanation. Daily Bread provides real inspiration each time you read it. Our writers are from all kinds of backgrounds with all kinds of perspectives. We’re sure you’ll be challenged, encouraged, surprised and inspired as God uses the notes to speak into your life.

How to use Daily Bread

Way in

This page introduces both the notes and the writer. It sets the scene and tells you what you need to know to get into each series.

A day’s note

The notes for each day include five key elements: Prepare, Read (the Bible passage for the day), Explore, Respond and Bible in a year. These are intended to provide a helpful way of meeting God in his Word.

Prepare yourself to meet with God and pray that the Holy Spirit will help you to understand and respond to what you read.

Read the Bible passage, taking time to absorb and simply enjoy it. A verse or two from the Bible text is usually included on each page, but it’s important to read the whole passage.

Explore the meaning of the passage, listening for what God may be saying to you. Before you read the comment, ask yourself: what’s the main point of this passage? What is God showing me about himself or about my life? Is there a promise or a command, a warning or example to take special notice of?

Respond to what God has shown you in the passage in worship and pray for yourself and others. Decide how to share your discoveries with others.

Bible in a year

If your aim is to know God and his Word more deeply, why not follow this plan to read the whole Bible in one year?

Editorial

Being

renewed

Over the last 15 years in Edinburgh, Scotland, where I live with another half a million people, 8,000 stopped attending church. That was while the population of the city grew by 50,000. Across Scotland, two-fifths of all church goers are over 65, with half of that number over 75. Whereas in 1984 over 200,000 Scottish children attended church, the figure today is a quarter of that. Only around a third of these numbers attend evangelical churches.* The figures are similar for England, and are mirrored in many Western nations. I’m sure this is as bad news to you as it is to me! Is there any way to turn it around? What can be done?

I genuinely believe that what you are about to do as you hold these Bible reading notes is key to the solution. God’s church will never be renewed simply by creative evangelism or discipleship programmes. God’s church will be renewed when God’s people are renewed: in love, devotion and likeness to Jesus.

This quarter’s readings challenge us not to give up, nor conform to the culture. The prophets Jeremiah and Amos speak out in a nation that had abandoned God. Paul calls the Philippian church to remain close to Jesus in such a culture, and he calls Timothy, a young leader, to speak out in a wayward church. In Matthew 18 to 22, Jesus’ questions probe how fully devoted to him our lives are. Job asks, what is God doing in the trials of my life? 1 Chronicles asks, what is God doing in history? Let these readings challenge you to think and pray and act differently from the culture around you.

Scotland was once known as the ‘Land of the book’ – let’s be people of the book, and see where the Author takes us.

Angus Moyes Editor

* Source: http://www.brierleyconsultancy.com/scottish-church-census

SU article

Three reasons you

don’t read your Bible

As a Daily Bread reader, you obviously value regular Bible reading. But do you still struggle with it? Maybe even at the beginning of this year you committed to some sort of Bible read-through and set to reading four chapters a day. Early zeal meant you tore through the Gospels and enjoyed the drama of Genesis, but before long you ran into rock-solid Romans, or life-draining Leviticus. You missed a few days out, and then… Well, it’s been a while since you found the will to pick your Bible up again.

Every now and then, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, you see it on your bedside table and it stares you out. Often we find that things other than Bible reading suddenly grab our attention. ‘I really ought to mow the lawn!’, ‘I never did write that thank you card to Aunt Daisy!’ ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to bake some bread?’ It’s so easy to drop reading the Bible down the list of priorities just a little bit, and never get around to it. Why is that? There are three very common reasons, and they all have solutions that aren’t so much to do with how disciplined you are, but are more to do with the way you think about the Bible. The first reason isn’t even really a proper reason, so we’ll start with that one and get it out of the way…

You don’t have time

This may be the most common ‘reason’ we give to explain to ourselves why we don’t read our Bible: events of the day got on top of me; my feet have hardly touched the ground; I overslept. Yet, of course, this isn’t a serious reason for missing out on reading God’s Word. We all make time for what we believe we need, and we certainly make time to do what we want! Life is rarely too busy to surf the Internet, watch the television, or tidy the garden. The fact is that our priorities reveal what we truly value, and the ‘not enough time’ excuse is most likely a cover-up of one of the two reasons below. So if this first one is you, admit it’s nothing more than an excuse and read on!

You think the Bible is about you

The first is that deep down, you feel your Bible reading isn’t working – and that’s because you read the Bible with your eyes on yourself. As you read it, you’re looking for practical lessons on life, instructions on how to behave, and commands to go away and do right now. And you find that the Bible doesn’t provide these particularly well.

It’s hardly the best ‘how to’ guide for life: it’s full of ancient history, genealogies, instructions for priests and kings, bizarre-sounding visions, and precious little in the way of direct instructions to you, the reader. Even in the New Testament where things seem a little easier to apply, vast chunks go by without a word on how to live! The whole of Acts passes without even one command to go and do evangelism like Paul did; Romans takes 11 long chapters to get to any application.

This can be immensely frustrating, when what we really want is a quick bit of moral guidance or a nugget of wisdom, and then to get on with our day. The danger is, however, this will lead us to ignore the ‘boring’ bits, allegorise and twist the difficult bits, and generally stick to our favourite bits. We focus on what we think will directly apply to us, and generally avoid minor prophets, or instructions about the tabernacle, and anything about numbers of people in tribes.

The solution to the problem is to realise this: the Bible is about Jesus and not us. We need to take our eyes off ourselves and begin to look at Jesus in the Bible. Despite our desire for quick-fix moral lessons, the Bible is actually given to teach us about Christ so we delight in him. If you’ve found yourself treating the Bible as a moral ‘how to’ guide, start reading it differently. Let the Bible show you the glory and beauty of Jesus, and you will find that as you do, love for him will bubble up inside you. Believe it or not, you will see him held out to you even in those obscure passages you’ve always avoided. You’ll stop dutifully going to the Bible for handy hints for the day, and instead gladly run to it so that Christ will conquer your heart afresh; to take your gaze from yourself and obsess over him instead.

You think your Bible reading is for God’s benefit

When you’ve lost the habit of daily Bible reading, how does it feel? Not like your stomach rumbling or a dry throat; not a spiritual hunger or thirst. It’s a nagging guilt that tells you that if you really cared about God then you would have finished Jeremiah by now. The flipside of this feeling is, of course, the sense of (smug) satisfaction when you do read the Bible regularly. You think, ‘I’m obviously maturing as a Christian!’, and find yourself dropping into conversations that, ‘I was in Ezekiel 47 this morning. Marvellous chapter!’ The diagnosis for you is that you imagine your Bible