I’ve also been to Israel and back since the last post. What a wonderful opportunity to see the Holy Land! Maybe I can post something on it later, but all I can say is that it was the trip of a lifetime. I’ll never read my Bible the same again. When you get over there and see where all the stories took place it brings everything to life. One lesson that stands out is how practical Jesus was in his teaching. If you read the Biblical passage standing where He would have delivered the message, you see how He used the world around Him as the illustrations for His teaching. It’s a great lesson for all teachers of the Bible to apply.

We’ve also moved closer to our goal of church planting. As many of you know, we are planning on starting a church in the Raleigh, NC area. Currently I am looking more specifically at a suburb outside of Raleigh called Knightdale. With the completion of a new section of the I-540 bypass around Raleigh, this sleepy little town has been the location of a massive influx of people. In fact, the Raleigh area as a whole has exploded. There are 167,000 people projected to move into the area between 2008-2014. This massive growth, combined with a general lostness makes Raleigh a prime spot for a church plant. Knightdale itself has grown 69.9% since 1990. It has attracted my attention not just because of the growth, but because no other church planters have been going there. In other news, about a month ago Jenny and I had our church planting assessment. This was a huge step to go through. With the completion of the assessment, we have the green light to continue through the planting process. As more developments arise, I’ll keep you posted, but continue to keep us in your prayers as we seek the Lord’s will for future ministry.

Lastly, I want to invite all of you to be a part of our prayer network. I know many of my readers are already on my e-mail list, but we need more. Prayer is the fuel for the journey! Without prayer we could do nothing! I will be sending out prayer updates about every other week unless an urgent need arises. I would like to ask all of you to pray for us at least once a week. If you would like to get our prayer e-mail click here to send me a message. You can also follow me on facebook or twitter. I update both of these daily, and you’ll be able to stay up to date with me there.

“Wait a minute,” you might say. “I do read!” Really! What? Are you reading magazines, journals, novels, fiction, non-fiction, theology, or a number of other categories? All those genres are good, but are you limiting your reading to just one?

I must confess that the idea for this post came from reading another blog entitled Between the Times. It’s a blog written by several of my former seminary professors at Southeastern. Dr. Bruce Ashford wrote a series of six blogs on Disciplined Reading. If you have the time, I encourage you to read them. I found them extremely helpful. Reading has been a personal struggle for me over the years. In my younger days, reading was not a priority for me. I missed out on so many great opportunities in my middle and high school days. However, in college, when I entered the Word of Bible Institute, I was forced to read, and read I did. At first it was difficult, but then I found that I enjoyed it. As I continued through my under-grad and graduate education that enjoyment turned into a love!

I want to spend the next few posts talking about what I learned from Between the Times, as well as some of personal thoughts or experiences. I will leave you with a quote that has stuck with me for quite some time. I have heard it quoted many times, and I’m not sure who the original author is but here’s the quote:

“It’s been said that five years from now, we will be the same people we are today except for the books we read, the people we meet, the places we go, and the risks we take.”

Check out the Florida Baptist Witness article here.