Davideo7 recently made the KJV Bible available for reading. I have come up with the idea, why don't we get the Christians to read, and comment on a passage they read? This idea came from a Missionary Teen retreat I just went to early December 2014. At this camp, some of the guys shared thoughts on their Morning reading. This could be done here. 

Options for this thread: 

1) We could all share the passage we read, in the current plan/ whatever you use to read.

2) We could start from Genesis and work through as a team.

3) We could "assign" Books to read.

Any suggestions welcome.

For now, we will go with Option 1. If this doesn't work, we can change the way to do this.

This is from Job 1+2
I read in Job today, despite all of his hardships, he still stayed with God. It's a good example, because we often lose sight of the actual purpose. We forget that God only lets us have some difficulty, and Job shows us, that we need to keep our focus on Him! It's hard, especially when things begin to look dark, but trust in Him, and He'll work things out!

If you need a Bible to read: https://www.vizzed.com/bible/passage.php This is the Virtual Bible on Vizzed!

What did you read today? What inspired you?

Would you want everyone to have a discussion about your Bible reading, or just have everyone share independently what they're currently reading?

If we were to discuss a Bible reading, Job 1 and 2 aren't too bad a spot to start! 

Dfsg : independently. It's to share what you read.

I love the idea of this thread, so it's a shame people aren't participating. However, I experienced the same lack of interest when I tried the same thing.  I've actually meant to post in this before today, but I kept forgetting for some reason.

I'm kind of doing two Bible studies right now. One I just started and is the typical study: bits from the old testament, new testament, psalms, and proverbs.  The other is a study of Bible events in sequential order.  Both are quite fascinating, and I actually take notes during the latter.  I read Genesis 28-30 this morning and as I've been reading, I've been keeping a genealogy.  In the past, I've always been bored by them, but when you keep track of who is related to who while you study, there's so much more added to your reading and understanding. It's really been quite phenomenal.

Lately though, I've been giving a lot of thought on how to use the science in the Bible as witnessing opportunities. I really want to take some time to find all those little tidbits and then design a set of questions for nonbelievers.  I think if done correctly, it can be quite a powerful tool.  These questions would be non-confrontational and designed to genuinely figure out what the nonbeliever thinks and why.  Certain facts are undeniable even by atheists and agnostics, so it couldn't be too hard of a task.

Also, I've often given a lot of thought to water and its relationship to various scriptures.  Water is SUCH A big part of so many things... it's absolutely astonishing.  Even from the very beginning, the Bible never states that God created water. Instead, it says that the "Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters".  He ended up gathering them and separating them, but nothing is said of its origins. Then, as you move through the Bible, there are events like the world-flood and the use of water in baptism.  Even if we take a look at the world around us.... we can recognize the fact that water is a NECESSITY of life for every living creature.  Etc etc.  When you start to think about it, the concept of water is something that has very, very deep roots in spirituality.

I would say that part of my problem is the lack of time currently to write extensive thoughts down along with my current Bible reading project, just like last time. If I have a better organization for the second semester in my position, then I would be able to participate on this more daily. I'm a slow poster when it comes to these types of threads so time would be crucial in how often I can do this. If this continues to happen, I will try my best on it. 

play4fun :  Are you still transcribing the whole Bible?

I'm doing two studies right now, one of which I only recently studied.  The one that I've been doing longer, I've been writing my thoughts down for every reading. It's certainly time consuming though, ad after only getting about .. I wanna say 20 - 30 assignments done..... I already need a new notebook.  

At our youth group, the High School guys get together weekly for a Bible study (tuesday nights). We took a little bit of a break for Christmas, but we're back at it again as of this most recent Tuesday. Our theme for this semester is 'Community', and we discussed why God-centered Community is important this past Tuesday.

The passage we looked at was 'Genesis 1:26-27'.

"26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

When I first read it, before our leader started talking, I was thinking 'What could this have to do with Community?'. As we got deeper into the verses, though, we discovered two truths that really show why God-centered Community is so valuable.

Our youth leader started out with a very simple question: 'What two aspects of the importance of community are found in these two verses?'. While it looked, at least to me, like these verses weren't exactly designed to show community at first glance (excluding the first few words of verse 26), reading deeper into the passage showed that I was quite wrong.

First, verse 26 reveals that we are made in the image of God. Because God created us after His own likeness, a trait exclusive to humans, we are given inherent value. That alone should show us that people are worth befriending, worth helping, and worth investing in. However, that still (to me) doesn't show that we should gather together as a diverse community of people. We can recognize and appreciate each person individually, but that isn't necessarily motivation to gather together to appreciate community with one another.

That's where we look a little deeper. If you look at the wording in verse 26, you'll notice that it says 'our image', not 'my image'. God isn't talking about Himself as singular, but as if there were multiple of Him. We know from various other verses in the Bible that this is referencing God's Triunity, His three-in-oneness. The fact that God is working in community with Himself to create us in His image, shows us that He values community. As John 13:13-16 shows us, we are to be modeling our lives after God, so the fact that God values community shows us that we should too. Knowing that we are to value gathering in community provides the motivation to do so, and being created in the image of God provides the ability to see the value in those we gather with. Of course, God created us to glorify Him, so our 'gatherings' should be done in gratitude and out of a desire to learn more about Him.

My apologies if that was a bit unclear, I'm operating on less sleep than I'd like. I'll look at this after I've had a chance to rest a bit, and hopefully clean it up.

(Do you know that your layout is a little too long for the posting area?)

I'm doing a few readings today, but the chapter I took notes on was Genesis 34.  In Genesis 34, Leah's daughter goes out meeting people and is greeted by Schechem, who takes advantage of her.  Shechem had sold land to Jacob earlier in the year, but Jacob (Leah's father, also known as Israel) was on his way home, I believe, and simply needed a place to pitch his tent and allow his family and his animals to rest.  In case you don't know the story well..... although Schechem took advantage of Dinah, he actually fell in love with her and wanted to marry her.  His father set out to make the arrangements and attempt to right the wrong.  While meeting with Jacob and his sons, he suggested that the two families / cities combine forces. That is, he wanted them to intermarry, share land, and trade together.  Although Jacob and Dinah's brothers were very angry over the ordeal, Jacob held his peace... while his sons schemed.  Dinah was actually staying in Schechem's house, so the brothers threatened to remove her if their demands weren't met.  They turned their religious practices into a weapon and claimed that they would abide by Hamor's idea only if all the men in his family and city got circumcised. They claimed they could not morally concede to the peace agreement otherwise.  Schechem loved Dinah so much that he was perfectly willing to comply, and when he and his father went back home, they told their city.  They convinced -every- man to get circumcised by talking about the financial allure of such a decision.  (something like "Think of all their cattle, that will be ours also!")  Circumcision is a VERY painful thing for an adult to go through, however, so all the men in the city were extremely weak.  Three days after their circumcisions,  two of Dinah's brothers (Simeon and Levi) slaughtered every male in the city.  They took Dinah from Schechem's house, looted the cities and homes, and kidnapped all of the wives.  This distraught Jacob, for they had shamed him greatly. When he rebuked them though, they became defensive and would not accept his words.

There is a LOT that can be studied here.  One of the things that stood out to me was how incredible it was that a WHOLE CITY could be convinced to go through something so incredibly painful. There's a reason God instructed that the practice of circumcision should take place 8 days after birth.  Aside from scientific and health purposes, a baby won't remember the pain and trauma of such an act.  Even though Simeon's and Levi's actions were evil, I can't help but wonder about Hamor's and Schechem's city.  Did they agree just for the promise of wealth?  Was a financial gain -that- attractive to them?  Or did they agree simply because they honestly thought this would advance their people?  (In other words, did they agree for selfish or unselfish reasons?)

It makes me realize I should respect people.

People should read the Bible all the way through

Bla : Stop Spamming and creating new users! If you would like to post, then by all means post. BUT, if you do this, I will report it to the Globals, again. 

Global Mods : Please take care of this. 

play4fun : Please Close this, with the two posts above, I will retry this but with some modifications.

darthyoda : It's already been reported, it's a shame that nobody above local is on at the time.