Peace in my Heart

Over the years i have tried, and often succeeded in, sticking to Bible reading plans for daily reading. I have read through the Bible in a year with the aid of the plan in Our Daily Bread, and taken the time to read the little daily devos that are contained in them. I enjoy reading the Bible and am finding that daily reading, and taking time to read daily, gets easier every time i do it. Especially when i assign a time to read.

Currently, with the aid of the QuickVerse computer program, i am using a plan to read through the Bible in six months. I love this plan. I tried a three month plan last year, and i stuck to my guns and got through it but the daily time investment felt a bit much. With the six month plan im on now, the reading is about half-an-hour a day, which is easily manangable (especially with the school work load). I have also decided that above and beyond this, i will try to read through the Psalms once a month. If someone looks closely at the songs they sing on a regular basis during worship, they will quickly find that many come directly from the Psalms. I love singing, and my heart sings as i read through the Psalms. There is a Peace in my Heart that goes so deep when i commune with God in the Psalms. Selah.

One other thing i have decided to do as part of my daily reading is work my way through Oswald Chamber's "My Utmost for His Highest". I picked this gem up years ago, and have read through a lot of it, but probably not all of it. What i never noticed before was the arrangement of the daily readings. At least so far, the readings are quite significant as a means of preparing oneself for the journey through the next year. Case in point is the heading for January 12 and 13: Have You Ever Been Alone With God? The subheading for the 12th is: Our solitude with Him; and for the 13th it is: His solitude with us. Earlier readings deal with opening our hearts to God anew, focusing our sight on him, and then comes the focal point: Have You Ever Been Alone With God? What an awesome way to center ourselves at the start of a new year! In Song of Solomon God declares that we will have Dove's eyes, that our focus will be entirely on him, and we won't be distracted by the things that go on around us.

Have You Ever Been Alone With God? today, yesterday, before that? Did you take some time to be with him today? There are so many things that we can do to waste our time, and then at the end of the day we say we don't have time to get everything done, or even spend time with God. Have You Ever Been Alone With God?