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 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 4:19May 31
Complete faith in Christ is not only the gateway to Life but also the pathway of Living. “The just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17). Russell Kelso Carter, author of “Standing on the Promises,” made a profession of faith in Christ at age 15, but in his words, “I made a common mistake; I didn’t forsake my old companions and habits, and for fourteen years I lived an up-and-down experience…My soul cried for deliverance, and God’s unlimited promises stood out like stars above me. But I wasn’t willing to pay the price.” At age 30, his health completely broke; doctors couldn’t help. But, he writes, “I felt persuaded it would border on blasphemy to ask God for a strength which I didn’t propose to use wholly for Him.” Kneeling in his mother’s home, he “made a consecration that covered everything. All doubtful things were swept aside…A quietness came over me and I found the Bible wonderfully open and marvelously satisfying.” Life now “was by the power of God alone.”
Today’s Reading: Psalms 14-16 Memorize: Mark 2:17May 30
Ravi Zacharias writes: “In the 1950s, Encyclopedia Britannica published its fifty-five-volume set, The Great Books of the Western World. One of the gifted minds behind the series was Mortimer Adler. The opening volume is a compilation of the great themes addressed by seminal thinkers during the last two millennia. Fascinatingly, the longest essay is on God. When Adler was asked why that particular theme merited the lengthiest treatment, he answered without apology: ‘Because more consequences for life follow from this one issue than any other issue you can think of.’ He was right. Every life is built fundamentally and finally on one’s view of God. For the Christian, the foundation is not built merely on the assertion that God exists but on the added claim that God was revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. A commitment of mind and heart affirming that Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be…is at the heart of the Christian faith.” — Why I Am a Christian, p 267
Today’s Reading: Psalms 11-13 Memorize: Mark 2:5