The 260 Journey

Day 37 Today’s Reading: Mark 9 If there was anything you ever wanted to tell people, it would be what happened to three disciples on a mountain in Mark 9:2-7. The conversation might go like this . . . “Guess who I saw today? Moses. Oh yeah, and Elijah. And guess whose voice I heard? Audible voice? God’s! Yep, God Himself. I know what He sounds like now.” These are the ultimate bragging rights. See...

Day 36 Today’s Reading: Mark 8 Today’s reading opens with a familiar story. But if we examine it closely, we will notice something really puzzling and even humorous. We’ve all heard the saying, “Experience is the best teacher,” but it is simply not true. Experience is not the best teacher; it never has been and never will be. Maturity doesn’t always come with time. Sometimes age brings nothing mor...

Day 35 Today’s Reading: Mark 7 In today’s reading, Jesus makes a statement to religious people that we have to put the spotlight on. Jesus speaks to the Pharisees and Scribes these cutting words about their relationship to the Bible, God’s Word. Let’s read it from The Passion Translation: “You abandon God’s commandments just to keep men’s rituals, such as ceremonially washing utensils, cups, and o...

Day 34 Today’s Reading: Mark 6 No one would disagree that Jesus had all the potential to heal anyone, anywhere, anytime. Can you imagine having the person who could heal you, your child, your family, or your marriage right in your town and nothing happens? How is that possible? By limiting Jesus. We have only two times in the Gospels that Jesus was shocked and both have to deal with the issue of f...

Day 33 Today’s Reading: Mark 5 Wow, today’s reading is filled with action, miracles, and healing. It’s nonstop from verse 1 to verse 43. Mark 5 starts with a town demoniac who lived in a graveyard and acts as the welcoming committee for Jesus and the disciples and ends in a house where a dead twelve-year-old girl’s body is laid out and a bunch of laughing people who think Jesus is out of His mind....

Day 32 Today’s Reading: Mark 4 I want to tell you two stories about storms, Jesus, and a bunch of guys (the twelve disciples) in a boat. Both storms had winds and fear. But their endings were different. We encounter the first storm in today’s reading. Let’s read about it together: On that day, when evening came, He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took Him...

Day 31 Today’s Reading: Mark 3 When you want to know the definition of a word, you look in the one trusted place that settles all doubt—the dictionary. When you think of the dictionary, you think of one name—Webster. But do you know who this Webster is? Noah Webster was a devout Christian. His word speller was grounded in Scripture, and his first lesson began, “Be not anxious for your life, what y...

Day 30 Today’s Reading: Mark 2 I’ve never played poker in my life. I’m not saying that to sound righteous or religious, I’m just saying it. That being said, I had to google if four of a kind beat a full house. It does. That’s our story today. I want to show you this concept in Mark 2 in which two things are competing. In one verse we find a full house and in another verse we find four of a kind. (...

Day 29 Today’s Reading: Mark 1 Today’s reading showcases the cool way Jesus began His ministry. Who Jesus healed, what He healed, and where He healed it, makes this amazing. Take a look at this passage: [The people] were amazed at [Jesus’] teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit; an...

Day 28 Today’s Reading: Matthew 28 What does famed NFL player Barry Sanders and resurrected Jesus have in common? I am not trying to be disrespectful, but I do have a point. Barry Sanders is considered one of the greatest NFL running backs of all time. He holds many of the coveted NFL records. Two things make Barry iconic in the sport’s world. First, his elusiveness. Barry’s ru...

Day 27 Today’s Reading: Matthew 27 If ever a man had a chance to become a saint it should have been Judas. Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus. For more than two years, he lived with Jesus. He listened to His words, watched His miracles, and yet this man deliberately planned to betray Him. No one in history had a better chance than Judas. The rich young ruler only met Jesus once, and yet Ju...

Day 26 Today’s Reading: Matthew 26 Every time I get a new Bible, I write the same thing in each one before I start reading. I put it right on the flyleaf. It is a five-hundred-year-old poem a prison convict wrote: “There was a man, and they called him mad; the more he gave, the more he had.” That prison convict was John Bunyan. The more he gave, the more he had . It doesn’t mak...

Day 25 Today’s Reading: Matthew 25 Leonard Ravenhill, one of my spiritual fathers, said: “Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, ‘Leonard, you took Me too seriously’?” This chapter makes us take eternity seriously. Jesus starts right away in verse one with, “God’s kingdom is like . . .”...

Day 24 Today’s Reading: Matthew 24 "When the Author steps on the stage the play is over.” This is how C. S. Lewis spoke about the ending of planet Earth. We would call that the second coming of Jesus. This is where we are in today’s reading. This chapter is very sobering; it’s all about the last days just before the Author steps on the stage. In the 260 chapters of the New Testament, there are 318...

Day 23 Today’s Reading: Matthew 23 Today’s reading is an intense chapter. It’s about hypocrites and religion—hypocrites in religion. In fact, Jesus said, “Woe to you hypocrites and religious people” eight times! (See verses 13-16, 23, 25, 27, and 29.) The word woe is an expression of how dreadful and how awful this is—to take something as powerful as God and pretend.   This is the a...

Day 22 Today’s Reading: Matthew 22 The Bible never says you have to believe with all your heart, even though it says you must believe in your heart. But when it comes to loving God—that must be done with all your heart. I think God leaves room for the growing faith and doubts that come with belief. But when it comes to love, we can make a choice immediately. Love is our greatest weapon agains...

Day 21 Today’s Reading: Matthew 21 Theologian John Calvin said, “To know God as the Master and Bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of Him, and still not go to Him and ask of Him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him and he had the map.” Jesus gave us a map and it’s called pr...

Day 20 Today’s Reading: Matthew 20 Inevitably when someone well known dies, I get asked, “Do you think that person is in heaven?” Before I respond, I always think of John Newton, the eighteenth-century former slave ship captain who became an abolitionist and clergyman. He said, “If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second,...

Day 19 Today’s Reading: Matthew 19 J. C. Ryle wrote, “The highest form of selfishness is a man content to go to heaven alone.” I don’t ever want to be content to go to heaven alone. I want to take as many as I can with me. But I have some hard cases in my relationship circle that need a miracle. I bet you do too. If you know someone who needs to be saved, fortunately, today’s reading in Matthew 19...

Day 18 Today’s Reading: Matthew 18 When I was working toward my undergrad degree in corporate finance, the students would say cash is king. When I was doing my graduate work in theology, the students would say context is king. So many Bible verses get their punch from context, not from a denominational bent. One of those punchy passages is in Matthew 18. I couldn’t tell you how many prayer meeting...

Day 17 Today’s Reading: Matthew 17 If you had a chance to ask God a “why?” question, what would you ask him? Why did this bad thing happen to me? Why did my mom pass away? How about a personal failure question? That’s what we find in Matthew 17! The disciples failed at something they were empowered to do and did not know why they’d failed. The disciples had tried to heal a young man and were unabl...

Day 16 Today’s Reading: Matthew 16 Poor Alexander. He was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Maybe you’ve read about his day? From the moment he woke up, one terrible thing after another horrible thing happened to him. From finding gum in his hair to tripping over his skateboard to dropping his sweater in the sink while the water was running. And when his brothers found wonde...

Day 15 Today’s Reading: Matthew 15 Abraham Lincoln famously stated, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.” In today’s reading, we find a woman who had absolutely no other place to go but on her knees in front of the Son of God. This has to be the craziest story on prayer in the entire New Testament. Sometimes it’s...

Day 14 Today’s Reading: Matthew 14 As he awaited his death as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, the famed theologian, pastor, and Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote a letter about losing people we love. He wrote, in part: There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first t...

Day 13 Today’s Reading: Matthew 13 Every day as you read one chapter of the New Testament, the goal is more than just experiencing a feeling of accomplishment but to grow and become more like Christ. Sometimes when you struggle to find time for God’s Word, it isn’t because you’re busy, it is because you’re experiencing spiritual warfare! This book is a supernatural book and changes people’s l...