Category: Biblical Support

Reflections on My Journey through The MANual: Year 3 of GodBuddies

Throughout this year, I’ve been on a journey through The MANual, my NIV Bible for Men. Each week, I wrote a GodBuddy post containing lessons from a book (or group of books) of Scripture. These lessons are written primarily for men but many are certainly also applicable to women. In this final post of the series, I share my reflections on this journey. I hope it encourages you to take the same journey at some point in your life. (When you are ready, here is a page with links to all posts so you can easily access any lesson).  Why Take This Journey? At the beginning of the year, I challenged you to join me on this journey through the Bible primarily to help you. But it also was to help me! Over the years, I’ve found it difficult to stick with a Bible reading plan or devotional book for

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MANual Lessons: John’s Revelation of the New Kingdom

My year-long journey through The MANual, my NIV Bible for Men, has reached the end of the Christian New Testament. The book of Revelation is one of hope about the victorious Savior’s return to rescue His people and settle accounts with those who deny Him. But it’s also a warning for believers about the final judgment about their commitment to following Jesus Christ.   In the End, God Wins! The book of Revelation (not Revelations with an ‘s’) is apocalyptic literature. This is a type of Jewish literature about the cataclysmic events that will transpire at the end of the world. The imagery and puzzling symbols make it one of the most difficult of the entire Bible. Even today, interpreters have drawn widely different conclusions about whether historical or current events are revealing the end times foretold in the book. Regardless of these debates, the fundamental message is clear though:

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MANual Lessons: Hey Jude! Don’t Be Afraid (of speaking against heresy)

With apologies to the Beatles for my misuse of their 1968 hit song title for this post, this lesson from The MANual is not from Paul McCartney. As we near the end of this “long and winding road” in my year-long journey through my NIV Bible for Men, we stop at the last of the personal letters (epistles), which comes from the half-brother of Jesus. In the second to last book of the New Testament, Jude reminds us to keep strong in the faith and oppose the heresy spoken by false teachers in the world. It’s kind of like dismissing the theory you can play a Beatles’ song backward for a hidden message (OK, I will stop with the Beatles references!). Heresy Defined  According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the basic definition of heresy is “adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma.” Wikipedia defines Dogma as a “set of beliefs accepted

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