surge21- January 6-26, 2020

Bible Reading: Jude Can you believe it’s day 21?! Thank you for being a part of Surge in this season! You have contributed a significant deal to the collective grace we have enjoyed before God. It wouldn’t have been the same if you weren’t there. We round off today reading the single chapter of the Book of Jude. It is a book that provides a timeless admonition to believers. I think Jude’s exhortation is even more timely in a day…

Bible Reading: 3 John We’ve already completed five books on this Surge journey! Between today and tomorrow, we’ll complete another two! We’ve read from Paul, Peter and James. Today, we move on to another writer, John, and we’ll round it off tomorrow with yet another writer! Our reading today is a short, but profound letter from John to Gaius.  You can in some way read it as a story of two members of the Church. On one hand is Gaius,…

Bible Reading: 2 Peter 3 We’re in to the final weekend of our 21 days of Surge! I couldn’t think of a better time to meditate on these profound and heartfelt thoughts from Peter. Peter begins our reading today by encouraging us: “Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), that you may be mindful 2 Peter 3:1-2 NKJV, emphasis mine We all need reminders that stir up our…

Bible Reading: 2 Peter 2 Have you ever looked at a mad person and felt sympathy for the person behind the actions? I have many times, especially when I realize that the person isn’t trying to be mad- he’s actually acting in a way that seems perfectly normal to him! He’s in fact wondering why everyone on the other side isn’t acting the same way he is. His normal is simply now abnormal. John Bevere would say that the big…

Bible Reading: 2 Peter 1 There was this ‘J.J. Arodo’ thing that raved a bit when I was in Secondary School. A senior student would send you to another senior student and ask you to get some textbook written by J.J. Arodo. The new senior would in turn tell you something to the effect that he just gave another senior somewhere some two minutes ago, and ask you to go get it there. And then you’d keep going on and…

Bible Reading: James 5 If you grew up around a typical African parent, you didn’t need to be a Bible scholar reading the Book of James to be reminded about your like-humanity with others. In our reading today, James writes: Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. James 5:17 NKJV For every time you didn’t end up…

Bible Reading: James 4 Have you ever gotten swamped in the intensity of a really competitive event? There are all these tensions swinging and bouncing around; everyone is looking for how to outdo those on the other side of the competition. Tactics are drawn up, strategies are planned and skills are fine-tuned. But as a summary, you work with your teammates against your opponents. If all of life and the details and tensions of our pursuits were to be placed…

Bible Reading: James 3 Have you ever dealt with a ‘little big’ thing?  Maybe a little, but big detail? Like when you didn’t read the instructions before starting a three-hour essay examination, and it was somewhere towards the end that you noticed that you were to attempt ‘either question 1 or 2, and 3 or 4’, not any two questions. And here you are, having spent all your time on question 1 and 2… Little, but big. Or a little,…

Bible Reading: James 2 Have you ever been around someone who is basically managing two life profiles- living as one person here and then as another person there? It seems really bad in the extremes until we really put ourselves under the spotlight and take out the log in our own eyes. If we’ll be honest, in some way or the other, we all deal with disparity. Maybe not some extreme disparity in character, but sometimes, as basic as staying…

Bible Reading: James 1 I love the book of James! Over the next five days, you’ll almost feel like you’re sitting across the table with that your very practical friend, who would look you in the eye and ask you the hard questions. You know that friend that asks you ‘how are you?’ and then actually waits for an answer. The friend who will not take a religious cover up as an answer.  Don’t just tell me ‘we bless God’,…

Bible Reading: Titus 3 Hey surging friend, We’ve crossed the halfway mark of our twenty-one-day journey!  Let’s stay on this and make the second half the better half! Have you ever been rightly placed at a very right moment?  Like you were right there, and right on time, when something happened. You were right there when your long-time crush had a bag slip from her hand, and then you offered to help her carry it to her destination and so…

Bible Reading: Titus 2  How did you feel when you got your first school promotion?  I wasn’t excited one bit about mine! I still recall crying and pleading that I wanted to stay on in the Nursery Class when I had been promoted to Primary 1. My reasoning was quite simple: I had mastered and gotten a good grip on my Nursery Class and all it entailed and didn’t want to step into the uncertainties of a new class. Unfortunately,…