M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

4 The wife of one of the prophets’ disciples pleaded with Elisha.

⁵ The widow went away from Elisha and enclosed herself in a room with her sons. One at a time, her sons held a container before her, and she poured. ⁶ Soon all of the containers were filled.

It was then that the oil ran out. ⁷ The widow then went back to Elisha, the man of God.

⁸ One day, Elisha traveled to Shunem. There was a well-known woman who lived there, and she convinced him to eat something. So whenever he walked by her house, he went in and ate.

¹¹ Elisha went by their house to eat one day, and he went and lay down in the upper room. ¹² He spoke to his servant, Gehazi.

So Gehazi called out her name, and she came to him.

Gehazi called out her name, and she came and stood at the entrance to the room.

¹⁷ But that time next year, the Shunammite woman did conceive and deliver a son, just as Elisha said she would. ¹⁸ When the child was older, he walked out to his father, who was harvesting the fields with the reapers.

²⁰ The servant brought the child inside to his mother; and about noon, while the boy was sitting in his mother’s lap, he died. ²¹ She took his lifeless body and laid him down on Elisha’s bed. She then closed the door and went away.

²⁴ She prepared the donkey and gave instructions to her servant.

²⁵ She rode quickly toward the man of God who was staying about a day away on Mount Carmel. As she approached, Elisha saw her at a distance.

²⁷ When she approached the man of God at the mountain, she fell to the ground and hugged his feet. Gehazi approached to pull her away, but the man of God stopped him.

Elisha then stood up and followed her to her house. ³¹ Gehazi went ahead of them and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but nothing happened. The boy did not move or make a sound. Gehazi went back to Elisha and reported this to him: “The boy did not wake up.”

³² Elisha arrived at the house and saw the lifeless body of the boy lying on Elisha’s bed. ³³ He went into the room, closed the door behind both of them, and prayed to the Eternal. ³⁴ Elisha approached the boy and lay down, placing his mouth on the boy’s mouth, his eyes on the boy’s eyes, and his hands on the boy’s hands. He covered the boy with his own body, and warmth returned to the boy’s body. ³⁵ Elisha turned around and paced back and forth in the house, then he went back into the room and covered the boy’s body with his own body. The boy sneezed seven times, and then he opened his eyes.

Gehazi told the Shunammite woman to go inside the room, and she did.

³⁷ She fell to the floor before Elisha’s feet, bowing to the ground, and she wept with happiness. She picked up her son and left the room with him.

³⁸ Elisha returned to Gilgal, and he found that there was a famine throughout the entire country. While the disciples of the local prophets were sitting with him, he told his servant to find a big pot and make a big stew for the prophets’ disciples.

³⁹ A man walked out into the fields to look for herbs, and he came across an uncultivated vine and picked enough wild gourds from it to fill the folds of his cloak. He chopped up the gourds and tossed them into the large pot of stew, not knowing what they were. ⁴⁰ Those who prepared the stew gave helpings of it to the men. While they were eating the stew, they cringed and pushed the bowls away from them. They could not eat it.

They brought him some meal, and Elisha threw it in the large pot and renewed the stew.

Everyone ate it, and there was nothing wrong with it this time.

⁴² Sometime later, a man from Baal-shalishah brought some food from the firstfruits of the harvest to the man of God: in his sack were 20 barley loaves and fresh produce still in the husk.

⁴⁴ He handed out the food to them; and exactly as the Eternal One said, they ate and had food to spare.

1 Paul, an emissary^[a] of Jesus the Anointed commissioned by order of God our Savior and Jesus the Anointed, our living and certain hope), ² to you, Timothy, my true son in the faith.

May the grace, mercy, and peace that come only from God the Father and our Lord Jesus the Anointed mark your life.

³ As I said that day I left for Macedonia, stay in Ephesus and instruct the unruly people in the church, once and for all, to stop teaching a different doctrine. ⁴ Tell them to turn away from fables and endless genealogies. These activities just cause more arguments and confusion. Instead, they should concern themselves with welcoming in and bringing about the reign of God, which is all about faith. ⁵ Our teaching about this journey is intended to bring us to a single destination—a place where self-giving love reigns from a pure heart, a clean conscience, and a genuine faith. ⁶ Yes, some have walked away from these traits and have fallen into a life of endless blabber and nonsense— ⁷ they wish to become scholars of the law, but they don’t know what they are talking about, and they make these grand pronouncements but clearly don’t understand what they just said.

⁸ You and I know the law is good (if used in the right way), and ⁹ we also know the law was not designed for law-abiding people but for lawbreakers and criminals, the ungodly and sin-filled, the unholy and worldly, the father killers and mother killers, the murderers, ¹⁰ the sexually immoral and homosexuals, slave dealers, liars, perjurers, and anyone else who acts against the sound doctrine ¹¹ laid out in the glorious, holy, and pure good news of the blessed God that has been entrusted to me.

¹² I thank our Lord Jesus the Anointed who empowers me, because He saw me as faithful and appointed me to this ministry. ¹³ Despite the fact that at one time I was slandering the things of God, persecuting and attacking His people, He was still merciful to me because I acted in ignorance apart from faith. ¹⁴ But He poured His grace over me, and I was flooded in an abundance of the grace and faith and love that can only be found in Jesus the Anointed.

¹⁵ Here’s a statement worthy of trust: Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King, came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them all. ¹⁶ But it is for this reason I was given mercy: by displaying His perfect patience in me, the very worst of all sinners, Jesus the Anointed could show that patience to all who would believe in Him and gain eternal life. ¹⁷ May the King eternal, immortal, and invisible—the one and only God—now be honored and glorified forever and ever. Amen.

¹⁸ Timothy, my dear child, I am placing before you a charge for the mission ahead. It is in total agreement with the prophecies once spoken over you. Here it is: with God’s message stirring and directing you, fight the good fight, ¹⁹ armed with faith and a good conscience. Some have tried to silence their consciences, wrecking their lives and ruining their faiths. ²⁰ Hymenaeus and Alexander are among these; I have had to hand them over to Satan so they might learn not to speak against God.

This vision followed the first I had just a couple of years earlier. ² In my vision, I looked and suddenly found myself in the fortress-city of Susa in the province of Elam. I was standing next to the Ulai Canal. ³ When I looked up, I saw a ram near me standing on the bank of the canal. The ram had two horns, both of which were long, but one was even longer than the other. I watched as the horns grew, and the longer came up after the other, the shorter horn. ⁴ As I looked, the ram charged to the west, the north, and the south. It defeated all the other beasts in its path, and there was no one great enough to rescue its victims from the ram’s power. It did whatever it liked, and with each conquest, it grew stronger.

⁵ As I was trying to figure out what I was seeing, suddenly a male goat came from the west to challenge the ram. It moved so quickly across the face of the entire earth that it seemed his feet never touched the ground. On its head the goat had a prominent horn sticking out between its eyes. ⁶ He approached the ram with the two horns—the same one I had seen standing by the Ulai Canal—and charged at it with a violent rage. ⁷ I saw the goat in reckless fury butt the ram and shatter his two horns. The ram had no power to stand against its foe, so it was thrown to the ground and trampled to death; there was no one great enough to rescue the ram from the goat’s power. ⁸ With this conquest, the male goat with the prominent horn took the place of his rival and grew more powerful. But at the height of his power, the great horn was broken off, and four prominent horns grew in its place, each one pointing toward one of the four winds of heaven.

⁹ A fifth, smaller horn grew out of one of these new horns. Its power grew, and its influence reached toward the south and toward the east and toward the beautiful lands of promise. ¹⁰ Then it grew straight up to challenge the army of heaven; it knocked some of the heavenly beings and stars to the ground and trampled them beneath it. ¹¹ The horn grew even greater, and in its arrogance came up against the Prince of the heavenly army. It halted the daily sacrifices to Him and took control of His established sanctuary. ¹² As a result of this great rebellion, the heavenly army and the daily sacrifices were handed over to the horn. For a time it cast truth to the ground and succeeded in everything it tried.

¹³ Then I heard two heavenly beings in conversation with each other.

¹⁵ As I, Daniel, was trying to understand the meaning of this vision I had seen, suddenly, someone who looked like a human stood in front of me. ¹⁶ I heard a human voice call out, coming from somewhere between the waters of the Ulai Canal.

¹⁷ So the one called Gabriel moved closer to me; as he did, I became very scared. I fell to the ground, my face down.

¹⁸ As he was speaking, I slipped into a deep sleep—my face pressed to the ground. But Gabriel touched me and helped me stand to my feet where I was before.

Psalm 116