Introduction (Walk Thru the Bible Series)

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Welcome to Out of Zion with Susan Michael, an exploration of the Bible and the land of

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Israel.

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From ancient biblical sites to the story behind the stories, join Susan on a journey through

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the most exciting book on the planet.

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Hit the subscribe button for future episodes which will deepen your faith and bring the

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Bible to life.

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And now here's our host, Susan Michael.

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Well, hey there.

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Welcome to Out of Zion podcast.

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And today we're going to introduce our new series and I am so excited about this.

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We're beginning a one year walk through the Bible series.

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And every week I'm going to share with you what I've read that week from the Bible and

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little tidbits, pieces of information that just help it to make sense.

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And to help you understand that grand story that's behind the stories.

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But better than that, I invite you to read through the Bible with me.

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Now maybe you've never read through the Bible before and that's a little intimidating to

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you.

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But I will tell you I'm here to help you and I invite you to join me.

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Maybe you're like me and you are a student of the Bible and every few years you just

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like to do a read through.

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And that's what I like to do.

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And now's the time.

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This is my year to do another read through the Bible.

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But you know, I hear a lot of people now, a little distraught over the last year, the

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events, the change in the world around us, the turmoil, the divisions, the anger.

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And many are saying they just want to pull back and spend some time with the Lord and

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just refocus and hear from Him for the days in which we live.

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That's exactly where I am.

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And that's why I know that now is the time to give the Lord the next 12 months and read

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through the Bible and allow the Holy Spirit to transform my life.

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And so I invite you to join me.

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The first thing that you need to do if you want to join me on this trek is go to the

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out-of-zion-show.com website.

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Click on Walk Through the Bible and request your free download.

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It's a Bible reading guide that we're going to be using and that will guide you through,

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tell you where we are, what we're reading.

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So be sure and download that and then we're going to send you instructions, very clear

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instructions, exactly what tools we're going to use, what tips we have for you.

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We have made it so easy for you to do this and to read through.

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You know, some of you have been with me from the beginning and some of you are new.

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So I don't want to assume that you've listened to the 3D Bible series.

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I encourage you, if you've got some free time over the next couple of weeks, to go back

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and listen to some of the 3D Bible series, especially part one and part two, where I

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talk about why it's important to study the Bible, why it's important to spend time in

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the Bible.

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And then I talk about how we should approach the Bible, how we should read it in our approach

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of the Bible.

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And it's really, that whole series is very foundational for what we're about to do in

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reading through it.

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So if you've got free time, I really encourage you to go back and listen to some of the 3D

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Bible.

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But let me just review for you a few of the points.

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Reading your Bible is not just about gaining head knowledge.

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It's not just an intellectual exercise.

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Sure, you're going to learn a lot from it.

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The Bible is, it has everything you need to know to live your life.

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Morality, ethics, guidance.

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I mean, it's, you're going to learn so much.

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You will gain a lot of head knowledge.

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But that's not all that there is to it.

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But since the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, when you spend time in the Bible,

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you're actually spending time in fellowship with the very Holy Spirit that has inspired

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those pages, that has anointed those pages.

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And what you'll find is that as you're reading, all of a sudden, a scriptural just jump off

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the page into your heart.

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And you know, it's like, wow, that's for me.

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And I want you to have that opportunity that every day of your spending time in God's word,

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that you have that opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak to you on a personal level,

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guidance for your life, guidance for your ministry.

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And it may be insight and understanding of the days in which we live and things that

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you need to do and to be prepared for.

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So allow the Lord that time through spending time in the pages of the Bible.

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But you know, reading the Bible is also important because as I say, it's just the most exciting

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book on the planet.

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I mean, it is a book that has been written by, it's got 66 different books written by

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over 40 different authors written over a period of over 1500 years.

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And yet when you're reading it, it's like you sense the same Holy Spirit that was in

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behind these events and behind the writing of these events.

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And it's miraculous how that it's all talking about the same God and how that, you know,

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3000 years ago, their insight into who God was, we can still learn from that today.

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We don't have, we're not any more advanced than they were 3000 years ago.

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And there's so much that we can gain from studying this book.

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You know, some of the oldest writings in the Bible are over 3500 years old.

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I mean, it's really amazing.

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And yet it's so extremely accurate.

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The stories are so detailed down to small details.

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And we kind of miss it because we're reading it from a 21st century American or Christian

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perspective and we don't know the Middle Eastern mindset.

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We don't know the Jewish religion.

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We don't know the Hebrew culture.

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We don't know the language.

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And so many of the details just roll off, just go right over our heads.

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But when you begin to read it from that historical context, you pick up all of these details.

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It just make it come alive.

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But you know, I want to encourage you that the words of the Bible, the wisdom that we

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have in the Bible is worth so much.

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And we tend to look at the Bible as a duty.

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I need to read the Bible.

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It's a duty.

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It's one more thing on my list of things that I need to do because it's the right thing

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to do.

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It's the Christian thing to do.

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But I want you to back up a minute.

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And there are some verses in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms, that describe

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the beauty of the Word of God in such magnificent ways.

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And we come to understand that the Jewish people, their approach to God's Word is very

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different.

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It's not about duty.

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And it's not something that's dry and old.

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It's about honey to the lips.

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It's like sustenance.

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It's like my portion today.

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What God has for me today, my portion of the richness of His Word that I can take in and

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let it build me from within.

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Let it do its work inside of me.

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So I want to read to you a few verses out of Psalm 119.

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Verse 103 says, How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.

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Do you like honey?

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Can you kind of taste the sweetness of honey?

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And yet here the Psalmist is saying, Your words are sweeter to me than honey.

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It's something I want.

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It's something that every day I long for and I look for and I take from it.

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And it's sustenance for my being.

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The two verses down it says, Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

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God's Word is going to show us what we need to know to live our life before Him today.

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It is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

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Or verse 127, I love your commandments more than gold.

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Can you say that?

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If somebody offered you a buoyant of gold or a Bible, what would you go for?

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Think about this.

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I love your commandments more than gold.

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Gold is fleeting.

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Gold is here one day, it's gone the next.

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Gold corrupts, but the Word of God is powerful and it's eternal and it's there for us every

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day of our life, every season of our life, every season of this world that we live in.

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That's the value of God's Word.

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Jesus said in Matthew 4.4, He said, It is written, man shall not live on bread alone,

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but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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Now let me say that again.

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Man doesn't just live on bread that we eat our food, but we live on every word that comes

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from the mouth of God.

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Jesus is very clear here.

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We need to take in the Word of God every day just as much as we need to eat bread and

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partake of food.

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It feeds our soul.

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It feeds our spirit.

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It feeds our mind.

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And it is a connection between us and the living God.

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You know, there is a principle in the Bible that comes from Thessalonians, from 1 Thessalonians

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523, and it's what I call the Spirit, Soul and Body principle.

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And I talk about this in the 3D Bible.

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But this verse in 1 Thessalonians says that, Now may the God of peace sanctify you and

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may your spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless.

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So the point I want to make here is that we are tripart beings.

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We are made up of a spirit.

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We're made up of a soul, which is our mind and our emotions, and we're made up of a body.

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We're not just a body, and we're not just a spirit, and we're not just a mind and emotions.

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We are made up of all three, and we go through life tending to our body.

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We eat every day if we're good.

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We exercise.

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We try to take care of our health.

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We go to the doctor.

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We try to be healthy.

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We try to take care of our body because we know when the body gives out, that's it for

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all of life, right?

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Our body is important, so we spend a lot of time maintaining our body.

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And many of us tend to our mind and our emotions too, and maybe we do that by reading the Bible.

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Maybe we do that by going to university and getting a degree, and we're feeding our mind

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with information.

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We're reading the news.

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We're learning everything we can every day to do our jobs better or to be knowledgeable

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of the world around us.

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And then there's our spirit.

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How are we feeding our spirit?

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How are we making our spirit strong?

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One way is spending time in the Word of God because the Word of God doesn't just feed

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our minds, it feeds our spirit.

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Of course, we also have to go out and we exercise our faith and we exercise our spirit.

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But critical to all of this is spending time in the Word of God and letting it build us

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up in our spirit as well as in our mind while we tend to our bodies.

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So I cannot express enough the importance of what we're going to do this year in this

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walk through the Bible.

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And I want to explain to you why we're going to read through the Bible chronologically.

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Not everybody should read through the Bible chronologically every year.

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It's not that this is the only way to read your Bible.

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This is only one way.

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And I personally like to do it every three or four years.

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It's like, okay, it's time now.

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I want to read through the Bible again chronologically.

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I want to focus on the story.

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And there's nothing like it.

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And so that's why I'm so looking forward to what we're going to do.

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But there are, while you're reading through the Bible chronologically, I encourage you

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to make a note, have a notepad or paper in your Bible.

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And to make a note of every time you come up with a, hey, I'd like to know more about

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that.

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So that next year, you're going to have a list of subjects that you are curious about,

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that you want to study deeper.

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And you can then take them one by one, buy books, look for Bible studies and go deeper

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on those subjects.

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When you're reading through the Bible chronologically, you don't always have time to do that.

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And I know that some people really like to take their time and do more in-depth studies

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and all the power to you.

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That's beautiful.

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Do it.

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It's just my experience that every once in a while, we benefit from taking a year and

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just doing a straight read through using a chronological Bible as good as the one that

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I recommend called the Daily Bible.

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So we're going to begin next week with Genesis 1.

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And we're going to read through Genesis 1 through about 20.

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And I have to warn you that Genesis 1 through 20 covers roughly about 2,000 years.

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So it's a lot of information, a lot of stories.

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But I'm going to review it with you next week and pull out a few little tidbits for you.

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And I've already begun reading ahead because I want to prepare these videos.

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And I've already learned some exciting things later on in Genesis and in Exodus.

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And so I can't wait to share those with you and to walk through the Bible with you.

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So first, if you're interested in doing this with me, please click on Walk Through the

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Bible and download your Bible reading plan at a step number one.

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Then we're going to send you a little video.

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It's going to explain to you a few other things you can do to get ready.

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If you're hearing today's video and it's already past February 1, we've already begun

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reading, but don't let that stop you.

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Just start where we are.

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I don't care if it's May, June, July, August.

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Just go ahead.

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If God is speaking to your heart to do this, then download your reading guide and you have a choice.

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Either pick up where we are on this date or you can go back to the beginning and start on

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your own with your own dates and the videos are all there every week.

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You can go on, watch the next episode and you can do it yourself from the beginning.

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Or you can just pick up where we are and then once we finish the Bible, you can go back

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and start at Genesis 1.

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It's up to you.

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My goal is to build a program where anybody can start reading through the Bible at any time.

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They don't feel like they have to wait for a certain date or a certain program.

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We want to make it easy for you.

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My personal goal is I want you to understand what you're reading.

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So we're not just going to give you some scriptures.

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This is this week's reading.

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Read it and come back and tell me what it said.

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We're going to give you the readings.

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I'm going to recommend a Bible that's going to give you a little review each day.

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And then I'm going to review it and I want to help you to understand what you're reading

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and to understand your Bible so that it comes alive for you.

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May 2021 be the year your Bible popped up like one of those

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Hallmark pop-up cards. May this be the year the Bible for you.

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So join me on the Walk Through the Bible series.

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Step number one, download your reading guide so we can then send you the rest of the instructions.

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We've made it very, very easy.

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I cannot wait to see you back here next week and to begin walking through the Bible with you.

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Until then, God bless.