Three hundred sixty-five positive, pithy, practical, heart-probing, moral-focused reads, three hundred sixty-five words each, ranging from topics of normal life smarts to Christian teaching, every read is built on a Bible-centered worldview and sometimes even says so.
By Jesse Steele
Available through Amazon’s print on demand and coming soon to ebookstores everywhere
Read here at watchstandpray.com/365
Read the Introduction here at watchstandpray.com/intro
Though the subtitle reads “Moral Motivation”, I do not consider myself any moral authority by any means. Morality is a topic society is hungry for. It would be a crime not to spread the news: Morals are good.
Note that the title is not “Moral Perfection”. I write these words to myself as much as to everyone else. As the words suggest, this work is both a motivation for morals and a set of moral-centered motivationals.
I was inspired by my many students and friends, as well as Oswald Chambers. I was introduced to his work when a kind of spiritual grandmother in my life gave me a copy as I went off to Moody. My Utmost for His Highest, the gold standard of Bible-based devotionals, was a collection of notes from Chambers’s widow; our loved ones often know our best values best. He died at 43 years old of a health condition. His first book, Biblical Psychology, was published five years before that. If he could address both Bible and culture at such a young age, I can too.
I write this at 37 years old. When I first wrote this Introduction, I had only finished the first read, drafted about eleven other candidate reads, and had a list of about 180 for other topics, at least 100 of them Bible Theology topics. Most of those are rants I have given to friends on more than one occasion. It seems, according to the fact that his wife took notes of what he would say at home, Oswald was a bit of a “ranter” like myself. What writer/teacher isn’t?
My father would also go on “wisdom rants”. He called them “little Walter thoughts”. Our family treasures them today. Toward the end of his life, he started to write them down, but most of what he said remains only in memory. I don’t want that for my own ideas for future generations. Although I have written political columns, Bible teachings of many kinds, fiction, and numerous other pieces in various genres, nothing I ever wrote before this really had “Jesse thoughts”. This does.
Oswald Chambers brought us all something special. His daily readings aren’t just “Bible study”. They were real, passionate, and natural from the moment. Those kinds of “household wisdom rants” have the strongest “didactic” teaching impact in childhood. Some of our best books are the ones we don’t know we write. Oswald remains unique in the devotional world.
The lesser among devotionals can often be with cliche, are quite dry, belong best under dust on a coffee table’s lower shelf, or were invaluable for readers from another time. Many good Bible devotionals are aimed at novice Bible readers who love Jesus and need elementary teaching to enrich their busy, hectic lives. There are many rich daily-Bible books, such as 365 Read-Aloud Bedtime Bible Stories, the “Uncle” Arthor Maxwell collections, and it goes without mention that Max Lucado and my dear friend, Joe Stowell, are generally awesome. But, all of these are heavily focused on traditional Bible-preaching topics.
What about the professional? What about the Christian who wants to minister through the marketplace or in government?
As humans, we are partially responsible for who we are and partially responsible to accept what we cannot change about who we already are. One thing we cannot change is our need for a moral compass. Like open source software and peer-to-peer relationships, we must do to others as we would have them do to us. And, like the turtle dove, bald eagle, lar gibbon, prairie vole, albatross, French angelfish, black vulture, barn owl, black-necked swan, shingleback skink, pot-bellied seahorse, European beaver, sandhill crane, and macaroni penguin—humans are hardwired to mate for life. When the alpha male and alpha female gray wolves mate for life, it establishes a social structure that protects the pack. Humans also depend on social structure, another thing we cannot decide nor change.
Human society is sadly plagued by an idea that circulates like an invasive virus—that we can construct our own moral code and that each different moral code is equal to all others. For man-made morals, this is true; insufficient, they are all equally wanting. The Bible teaches that lies, including man-made morals, are promoted by the devil, who prowls like a lion seeking anyone to devour. Don’t take the bait.
That devil wants to destroy our lives, starting with his lie that we can survive life with our own morals. He wants us to think that any moral code is sufficient, so we will ignore the morals that protect us from injury.
A moral code for humankind cannot be created by humankind. Morals relate to those things we cannot change—but must accept—about who we already are. Such insight can only come from the source of our existence.
The Bible claims that it comes from God, through the personalities of its many authors, and that studying it regularly produces good results. That makes it a candidate for a moral compass—not from ourselves, but from above. The Bible proves itself to be from God, not with its overwhelming archaeological, scientific, and historical supporting evidence—but the Bible proves that it is what it claims to be by doing what it claims to do through the positive effect on our lives as we read it daily.
Joshua 1:8, Isaiah 2:8, John 8:44, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, 1 Peter 5:8
