Rated R

via TJC

Full confession.  Some of my favorite movies are the rated R violent movies with a lot of fighting, shooting, sex and other questionable material.  Films like Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix trilogy, and even goofy movies like The Expendables just draw me in. I’m not recommending them as great material for growing as a Kingdom Man but let's just be honest about how they call to us men. Going through much of the Old Testament is a lot like these great movies.

Spending 39 weeks last year going book by book through the Old Testament gave us an overview of the messy world sin created after God’s perfect plan was compromised in the Garden of Eden.  It didn’t catch God by surprise.  He loved us enough from the very beginning to gift us with free will and the ability to make decisions, even bad ones.  The result was an R rated world filled with death, destruction and broken people.  

There was something else for us to see though.  We got to encounter the character and nature of an awesome God.  His anger toward sin is often hard to stomach and pushes many to pull away.  His love toward his creation stands out through all the mess though.  He never abandons His people.  He disciplines them for sure, but He never gives up on them.  Along the way He shows that He has a long term plan for all of us, using key men and women along the way to point us toward his ultimate plan to redeem us.

The Old Testament can be really hard to read through but we hope this last year at least invited you to dig deeper into an R rated library of books that introduces you and brings you closer to God of whose Kingdom we are all a part.

Daily Battle Order

Go look up one of the many Bible reading plans available online (my current favorite is the Bible Recap).  Talk to your wife, and maybe your kids, about investing a year in not just reading our thoughts on the books of the Bible but in reading through it yourself.  It WILL NOT be easy.  Some of the books are downright hard to get through.  It WILL be worth it.