Unashamed Reading Plan

Prayer

Pray today for intentional focus during your study today. Ask that God reveals truth in His word, and that it would impact your walk with Him heading into the weekend

Bible Reading: Philippians 4:8-9

Read these verses three times slowly.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Reflection & Questions

By Preston Kulesha

Those are some pretty high standards to keep our minds focused on, aren’t they? In a world that seems to be the antithesis to all of those things, how are we expected to ‘think about such things’ ALL of the time? I think there are two important things to remember when trying to live according to these verses.

First – This is something that we can work towards, we’re not expected to be perfect at it right away, all of the time. We have to give ourselves some grace if we find ourselves focusing on something other than the given list, because we are working towards bettering our minds and lives! Notice how the author, Paul, says that they have seen him do it, and now it’s their turn. He isn’t expecting perfect execution right away, but something for people to work towards.

Second – Remember that ‘the God of peace will be with you’. When Christ ascended into heaven, He promised that we would receive help, comfort, and assistance from God Himself in the form of the Holy Spirit. While it might be true that it is hard to live a life fully devoted to the given list, God is with you to assist you on your endeavor, and to give you peace if you fall short.

God is asking for perfection from us, but He knows that we cannot achieve that without His divine intervention. That’s why Christ came, and why the Holy Spirit dwells within us. As Christ followers, we do our best to live a life that is worthy of relationship with God, and when we fall short, the God of peace is with us to pick us up, and carry us the rest of the way.

Do you tend to focus on the good in this world, or the bad? What fills your mind the most?
How can you put into practice what you have learned from God recently? (Maybe from today’s reading, or from time with God or a sermon recently!)

Prayer

Talk to God in response to the reading today.

Worship Song

You might use this song today to worship Jesus today:

Bible Reading: Philippians 4:8-9

Read these verses three times slowly.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Reflection & Questions

That’s quite the list of things to think about! True, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. These are the things we should be focusing our minds on. And not only should we think about those things, but we should also be doing these things in real life!

Seems like quite the challenge, right? But the good news is this: we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to be thinking and doing all the right things and all the right things. That’s impossible! But we can work on it and try to be better each day.

The other good news is that we don’t have to do it all by ourselves. God will help us. It even says so in the last part of the verse: “And the God of peace will be with you.” Phew! God is with us and will give us peace when we are struggling to do all the right things!

But even then, with God’s help, we will still never be perfect because we are human and don’t always make good choices. God has given us the gift of salvation because He knows that no matter how hard we try, we will struggle. But because Jesus died on the cross to take on all of our sins and struggles, we have been given the gift of grace.

When you look at the list of things in today’s scripture that we should be thinking about, what is one that you can work on this week?

Pray

Ask God to help you think about good things and to help you live those things too.Thank Him for sending His son to die on the cross to save us from all of our sins.

Unashamed Reading Plan