Life With Jules, and other stuff

Recently, I decided to do Bible roulette. Not the typical way I read the Bible, but I felt the need to just let God guide me this time. Anyway, after saying a prayer I opened my Bible to see what I needed to read that morning. It opened to Proverbs 19:23. "The fear of the Lord leads to life, an he who has it will abide in satisfaction;  He will not be visited with evil." (NKJV) Of course, the version I read was the NIV: "The fear of the Lord leads to life; then one rests content, untouched by trouble." But after looking at a few translations, I found the NKJV was the one I preferred. I think because of the word "evil" being used. So, I then decided to do a quick word study and looked up the following words: fear, life, satisfaction, abide. Here's what I found: fear (Hebrew = yir'ah) - reverence life (Hebrew = chay) - alive satisfaction this word gave me some difficulty as the Strong's only showed  2 occurrences in the book of Numbers. So I we...

I began reading Exodus again yesterday. Yes, again! I lost my place so I started over. Is that silly or what? Nah!! Anyway, I didn't make it past verse 5 in the first chapter! D'oh!! I couldn't get past the names for some reason. So it made me think "Why are names so important in the Bible anyway?" I began to do a little research on each of the names of Jacob's sons. There was: "Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin; Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher." (Exodus 1:2-4, NKJV). I looked up the meanings of each name. Reuben = behold, a son Simeon = obedient; listening Levi = attached or pledged Judah = praised Issachar = reward; recompense Zebulun = to honour; to dwell (zaval) or gift; dowry (zeved) Benjamin (hebrew: Binyamin)= "son of the right hand" or "son of the south"           (this one is interesting because he was originally named Ben-oni, which means "son or my             pain") ...

What is the best way to read the Bible? Do you start at Genesis and read through Revelation? Or do you follow a specific plan such as Matthew 24, Daniel and Revelation to understand better End Times? Maybe there's a better way. No matter how you read the Bible, you should do just that: read the Bible. Study the Bible. Learn the origins of words that may have been taken slightly out of context through several translations. Oh, and find the Bible version that best works for you. Personally, I enjoy the New International Version (NIV) and the King James Version (KJV). The KJV because I love the sound of the words in old English. We don't speak with thou's, thy's and thine's anymore, so it can be a bit more challenging at first. Have you ever read Shakespeare? Yeah, it's something like that. I also am prone to read the New King James Version (NKJV). The idea is to find a version that hasn't removed verses because we have to face it, some versions are incomplete....