This perpetual calendar includes:
- Remarkable testimonies of souls won to the Savior
- Explanations of gospel concepts
- Answers to frequently-asked questions
- Stories of real-life witnessing opportunities
- Encouragements and tips for sharing the glorious gospel
June 7
Abdullah did not see why the Messiah must die for our sins. I took him to Genesis, telling him the story of a holy, faithful, and loving God who created humans to enjoy a close relationship with Himself. Next, we heard of God’s prohibition to Adam (2:16-17). I asked Abdullah, “Did God tell Adam that if he ate the forbidden fruit he must begin to pray, fast, give alms, and perform good deeds to ‘balance out’ his bad deeds?” “No!” replied Abdullah, “God told Adam, ‘In the day you eat of it, you will surely die!’” By going back to this original story, Abdullah understood that the penalty for sin was death and separation from God (something his religion had not taught him). In Genesis 3, we saw how sin infected the human family, but that, on the same day, God gave a promise to send a Savior and painted a picture (the first blood sacrifice for sinners and a covering for their shame). By the death of an innocent victim, God could punish sin without punishing the sinner. — P. B.
Today’s Reading: Psalms 37-39 Memorize: Mark 14:55-56June 6
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). Repentance simply means “a change of mind.” Man naturally does not think rightly about himself, sin, God, or the way of salvation. In order to be saved, he must be re-educated by the Word of truth. This change of thinking should lead to believing God: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom 10:17). In reality, repentance is agreeing with God concerning the verdict that I deserve to be executed for my sins. Such repentance should evidence itself in “fruits” or “works” suitable for repentance (Mt 3:8; Acts 26:20). If a person is told something he did not know before, for example that the road he was traveling ended in a precipice, a change of mind would surely lead to a change of direction, otherwise he has not truly had a change of mind, has he?
Today’s Reading: Psalms 34-36 Memorize: Mark 10:15June 5
Charles Finney writes: “I once labored in a village in New York where Universalism prevailed. The leading man among them had a sick wife who sympathized with his views. I called to see her, and endeavored to expose the fallacy of her delusion. After I left, her husband returned, and his wife, her eyes being now opened, cried out to him, ‘O my dear husband, you are in the way to hell—your Universalism will ruin your soul forever!’ He was greatly enraged, and, learning that I had been talking with her, his rage was kindled against me. ‘Where is he now?’ ‘Gone to the meeting,’ was the reply. ‘I’ll shoot him,’ he cried; and seizing his loaded pistol, he started off. When he came in I was preaching from the text, ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’ He listened awhile, and then, all at once, in the midst of the meeting, he fell back on his seat, and cried out, ‘O I am sinking to hell! God, have mercy on me.’ And of course He did.
Today’s Reading: Psalms 31-33 Memorize: Mark 8:36-37June 4
The authors of the Epistles, writes J.B. Phillips, “had a tremendous sense of the overwhelming Moral Perfection of God. The insistence on the only safe approach to God being through Christ is due to this acute sense of the peril of a sinful being coming within range, as it were, of the blazing light and purity of God. God, by His very Nature, must mean instant destruction to all evil, and whereas all religions attempt ‘bridgeheads’ towards Him, it is only through Christ that a real and safe bridge has been built between man, who has morally failed, and God, the incredibly active and powerful Source of all Life, Love, Goodness, Truth and Beauty…Christ defeated Evil and then, overcoming a revulsion that men can hardly begin to imagine, He deliberately allowed Himself…to experience in Person the ultimate consequence of Evil. These early Christians can hardly find words to express their awed appreciation of the free, but costly, Bridge built for Man by this Act of God.”
Today’s Reading: Psalms 28-30 Memorize: Mark 8:34-35June 3
Christian apologist Josh McDowell explains that the change in his life when he trusted Christ convinced his father that there was hope for him as well. McDowell writes: “After I trusted Christ, my life was changed in six to eighteen months. But my father’s life was changed right before my eyes. It was as if someone reached down and switched on a light inside him. He touched alcohol only once after that. He got the drink as far as his lips, and that was it—after forty years of drinking! He didn’t need it anymore. Fourteen months later, he died from complications of his alcoholism. But in that fourteen-month period, over a hundred people in the area around my tiny hometown committed their lives to Christ because of the change they saw in the town drunk, my dad.” McDowell concludes: “You can laugh at Christianity. You can mock and ridicule it. But it works…because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives. — Why I Am a Christian, p 288
Today’s Reading: Psalms 25-27 Memorize: Mark 8:31June 2
“No man in the world today has such power as he who can make his fellow men feel that Christ is a reality.” So wrote Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933). What does the Bible say? “To His saints…God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:26-27). “Praying…for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel” (Eph 6:18-19). “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us makes manifest the fragrance of His knowledge in every place” (2 Cor 2:14). What could be a greater influence than this? Pursue faithfully whatever avocation you are called to in order to pay the bills, but do not miss your “vocation” (see Eph 4:1), the spreading of this three-fold influence: Christ in you, the hope of glory; the mystery of the gospel; and the fragrance of His knowledge by us in every place. Christ is the supreme reality!
Today’s Reading: Psalms 22-24 Memorize: Mark 6:34June 1
J. Budziszewski abandoned the Christian faith in his youth. His explanation is telling: “At the bottom of all atheism is self-deception…Self-deception means playing dumb. It means pretending to ourselves that we don’t know what we really do; it means playing at being ignorant though we are really in the know. I suggest that we human beings play dumb with God. We lie to ourselves, and one of the things we lie about is our knowledge of his reality. Psalm 14 opens with a remark that is often misunderstood: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The psalmist is not calling the man a fool for thinking there is no God but for telling himself there is no God, though deep in his mind he knows better. Unbelievers do not disbelieve, they reject.” And why? “Finding that we were made in God’s image, we worship the image in place of God…the real significance of my idolatries was that they seemed to annihilate God so that I could be God.” — Why I Am a Christian, pp 50, 58
Today’s Reading: Psalms 17-21 Memorize: Mark 4:19