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Jonathan Petersen
May 17, 2020

Bible News Roundup – Week of May 17, 2020

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Record-Low Share of Houstonians Think Bible Is God’s Actual Word, New Survey Finds
⇨ Houston Chronicle
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Q: What Bible Verse Is Inside George Washington’s Tomb?
⇨ George Washington’s Mount Vernon
⇨ Read John 11:25-26 (KJV and NIV in parallel) on Bible Gateway
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, America’s Religious History: An Interview with Thomas S. Kidd
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⇨ See other Bible News Roundup weekly posts

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Drew Reichard
May 17, 2020

5 Psalms to Contemplate This Week

Read the Book of Pslams (NIV and NKJV in parallel) on Bible Gateway

As COVID-19 continues to plague our world, our nation, and our communities, the importance of turning in desperation to God’s Word cannot be overstated. I’d like to share 5 Psalms that represent a spectrum of emotions, from confidence to despair—sentiments that many of us might feel within the span of a single hour.

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, COVID-19: Bible Reading Plan of Assurance]

It’s essential that we take all of these moments to God. That we hand over to him our impatience and anguish, just as David demands in Psalm 4 (“Answer me when I call to you, / my righteous God.”) That we grapple with such reckless hope as can be found in Psalm 112 (“They will have no fear of bad news; / their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”). That we turn toward him with the world-defying trust that can be found in Psalm 13 (“But I trust in your unfailing love…”)

It’s all here. The Psalms offer us a way to be human before our Creator. I find these 5 especially helpful for defining my own feelings and restoring my faith. Here they are in numerical order, without verse numbers, footnotes, or commentary:

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Guest Post
May 14, 2020

The Quran with Christian Commentary

Buy your copy of The Quran with Christian Commentary: A Guide to to Understanding the Scripture of Islam in the Bible Gateway Store where you'll enjoy low prices every dayThe following is an excerpt from The Quran with Christian Commentary: A Guide to to Understanding the Scripture of Islam. Copyright © 2020 by Gordon Nickel. Published by Zondervan. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

[Browse the Understanding Islam section in the Bible Gateway Store]

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Loving Our Muslim Neighbors During Ramadan]

From the Introduction

The Quran is the scripture of the Muslim community, revered by Muslims around the world and given authority by them to instruct both faith and life. Its 114 chapters, called sūras, are arranged approximately in order of length from longest to shortest. The entire collection is introduced by a short prayer known as al-Fātiḥa, or “the Opening.”

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Mel Lawrenz
May 13, 2020

How to Live the Bible — Thinking Ahead About Rebuilding

howtostudythebible

This is the one-hundred-fourth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

Mel Lawrenz will be offering daily online ministry during this health crisis. Sign up here.

Mel is the author of the upcoming A Chronicle of Grief: Finding Life After Traumatic Loss.

We are living a new and unexpected lifestyle right now. We are dealing with an unwelcome and difficult exile from the normal functions of our lives because of the global health crisis. We know that things will not stay this way forever. That we will be able to return and rebuild. This is the time to size up what rebuilding looks like.

This has been done before.

Man wearing a mask celebrating illustration

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Jonathan Petersen
May 12, 2020

When Escape from Suffering Is Not the Answer: An Interview with K.J. Ramsey

K.J. RamseyWhen your prayers for healing haven’t been answered, the fog of depression isn’t lifting, your marriage is ending in divorce, or grief won’t go away, it’s easy to feel you’ve failed God and, worse, he’s failed you. If God loves us, why does he allow us to hurt?

Bible Gateway interviewed K.J. Ramsey (@kjramseywrites), author of This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers (Zondervan, 2020).

Buy your copy of This Too Shall Last in the Bible Gateway Store where you'll enjoy low prices every day

Explain the chronic illness in your life that prompted you to write this book and the heartbreak of being plundered by the church.

K.J. Ramsey: I live with an autoimmune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), which causes pain, stiffness, and degeneration in my spine and other joints. I haven’t had a day without pain or fatigue in 11 years. Along the way, the Body of Christ has rooted my husband and I in a hope larger than our hearts can hold on our own.

But sometimes arrogance, pride, and unhealed wounds in others’ lives can also make the church a place where hurt threatens our hope instead of forming it. While the pain that happens in relationships in the Body of Christ was not why I wrote This Too Shall Last, I believe it’s important to be honest that the Body of Christ holds the potential for great harm and great healing. Often relationships with other Christians are where we experience our deepest wounds, but it’s also in relationships in the Body that we’ll receive our greatest healing.

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Jonathan Petersen
May 10, 2020

Bible News Roundup – Week of May 10, 2020

Read this week’s Bible Gateway Weekly Brief newsletter
⇨ Bible Gateway Weekly Brief
⇨ Newsletter signupSee the Bible News Roundup archive on Bible Gateway
▼

Support Bible Gateway—Browse the Bible Gateway Store
⇨ BibleGatewayStore.com
▼

Arlington Cemetery’s 105-Year-Old Time Capsule Is Revealing Lost Treasures, Including a Bible Wrapped in Brown Paper
⇨ The Washington Post
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, America’s Religious History: An Interview with Thomas S. Kidd
▼

Biblical Archaeology: Another Casualty of the Coronavirus
⇨ The Jerusalem Post
⇨ Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Latest Biblical Archaeology Research
▼

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Drew Reichard
May 7, 2020

Living in an Atmosphere of Prayer

PERSON'S NAME

“Is it really possible for a Christian to be anxious for nothing?” asks this note from the Believer’s Bible Commentary regarding Philippians 4:6-7.

A sentence later, the commentary author provides the resounding answer: “It is possible as long as we have the resource of believing prayer.”

The Challenge of Prayer

Such an event as the USA National Day of Prayer is a useful reminder and a challenge to us to bring to God all our “prayers and petitions.”

Paul offers the Christians at Philippi this same challenge in Philippians 4:6-7 when he writes:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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Mel Lawrenz
May 6, 2020

How to Live the Bible — Living in the Exile of Pandemic

howtostudythebible

This is the one-hundred-third lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

Mel Lawrenz will be offering daily online ministry during this health crisis. Sign up here.

For a season, “How to Live the Bible” will focus on biblical truths that bear on the global health crisis that has so profoundly affected our lives in these days. Mel Lawrenz is teaching pastor at Elmbrook Church and the author of numerous books including Spiritual Leadership Today.

What do you do when life is suddenly terribly disrupted? When you have to change your pattern of life? When your relationships become disjointed?

This is where we live now. The global pandemic has imposed this on us. We now have fears about an illness that could be fatal for many people. Large numbers of people have suddenly become unemployed. Friends are limited in the contact they can have with each other. In some parts of the world with limited medical infrastructure, large numbers of people are wondering how they will get through this period.

Dying illustration

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Guest Post
May 6, 2020

What Really Matters to Me at the End of My Life?

Caitlin CrosbyBy Caitlin Crosby

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. — 1 John 2:15–17

As I sit in my front yard on my rusty tree swing, I’m watching bulldozers tear down the house across the street. I’m seven months pregnant, getting bigger by the day, and praying my heavier-than-yesterday self isn’t going to send this swing toppling to the ground. (For kicks, fast-forward to a couple months later when I’m still pregnant, and I have now actually broken the swing.) I’m ready to welcome my daughter into the world (and hello, ready to be done being pregnant) and thinking about what makes things last. Are there things that really last in life?

The woman who lived across the street—a sweet 90-something mother and grandmother—recently passed away. She raised a family in that home. She outlived three husbands there. She never got divorced, just lived longer. I’m sure she cooked thousands of meals, experienced great joy, and cried thousands of tears in that house. Now she’s gone, and I watched as each wall that held her precious memories got smashed to the ground and thrown into a dumpster.

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Jonathan Petersen
May 5, 2020

Exegetical Preaching Blog Launched; Uses the NASB Bible Translation

Visit ExegeticalPreaching.comPastors, church leaders, and serious-minded Christians now have a new online source of biblical learning: ExegeticalPreaching.com, a blog dedicated to the critical explanation and interpretation of Scripture.

[Sign up to receive the free email daily Bible verse in the NASB translation from Bible Gateway]

Using the New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition (NASB) (NASB ’95 text edition)—recognized by pastors and Bible scholars for being the “gold standard” among word-for-word Bible translations—as its English base text, ExegeticalPreaching.com provides examples of how to properly interpret a passage of Scripture for personal application as well as public preaching. These “exegetical nuggets” provide pastors with an ideal framework for preparing their own exegetical sermons. It also includes transliterated Greek and Hebrew terms to aid those who are not fluent in the languages.

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    The Bible Gateway Blog features the latest news, announcements, and reflections from Bible Gateway. We hope what you find here will add to your understanding of and appreciation for the Bible.