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Bible Book(s)/Chapter(s) to read for week 21: Sunday, November 10 to Saturday, November 16, 2024.
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November 8, 2024
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Here are the Bible Book(s)/Chapter(s) to read each day this week. Note that the readings are based on the New American Bible.
Psalms Chapter 119
Meditate on Psalm 119:105.
Ask God to help us to feel peace, even when we can only see one step ahead.
Do you feel a need to make long-term plans for your life? Do you feel anxious when you don’t seem to have any control over what lies ahead? Is there ever really a time when you have any control over what lies ahead?
Psalms Chapters 120-126
Read Psalm 120:6-7 again.
Ask God to help us to love destructive people, without being destroyed ourselves.
Do these verses remind you of anybody in your life? How much emotional energy have you put into relationships with unreasonable people?
Psalms Chapters 127-132
Meditate on Psalm 127 verse 1.
Ask God to help us know if we are supposed to keep trying to open any “closed doors” in our lives or if God wants us to focus on some other, open door. Going through this open door may give us the strength to deal with what’s on the other side of the closed door when God thinks we are ready to go through it.
What “closed doors” have you experienced in your life? How does it make you feel to run up against a “closed door”? What is the cause of this feeling?
Psalms Chapters 133-138
Read Psalm 135:1-3 and Psalm 138:1 again.
Ask God to help us to put more of our real feelings into our actions.
In the shower, do you sing quietly when someone is listening, but with joy and passion when you are all alone? When you hear people singing at church services, do they seem to be putting their hearts into it? Are people afraid of what other people would think of their exuberance or of the quality of their singing voices? Or do you belong to a church in which the musical instruments of the worship team drown out all the voices?
As an exercise, try reading Psalm 136 aloud, and each time that you say that God’s love endures forever, speak loudly and convincingly.
Psalms Chapters 139-144
Read Psalm 139 again slowly.
Ask God to help us to accept how comfortable we feel with God, and with others, in the present and to heal us of anything stopping us from enjoying healthy intimacy, with trustworthy people, in the future.
How does it feel to think about God knowing you so intimately? Does this intimacy comfort you or trouble you? Have some people who were close to you harmed you and made you hesitant (or even afraid) to get close to God?
Psalms Chapters 145-150
Read Psalm 150 again and then skim through a number of the psalms at random. Notice how many psalms include verses praising God.
Ask God to deepen our time of prayer and to learn from the examples in the Book of Psalms what we can apply to our own devotional lives.
Why do you think that God inspired so many of the psalms to include praise? Would God want to hear nice things from us? Would God want to hear us give thanks for what God has done? Do human fathers or mothers want nice things said of them? How can praising God be beneficial to us?
Proverbs Chapters 1-5
In our reading of the Book of Psalms, we observed examples of personal prayer that demonstrated, and encouraged, an unguarded trust in God. The Book of Proverbs, on the other hand, focuses on acquiring wisdom to guard against any inappropriate trust in ourselves and in our fellow, imperfect human beings.
Read Proverbs 1:7 and 3:6 again.
Ask God to reveal to us the deep significance of what it is to fear God, that is, to become more aware of God’s greatness.
What benefit is there in studying God’s character? Have you ever experienced having more of a sense of direction in your life as you increased your time spent in prayer?
A version of this story appeared in the November 10, 2024, issue of The Catholic Registerwith the headline "God’s love will endure forever".
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