III – Be – Page 9 – SemperVerus

Spiritual Fitness: How Long Does It Take to Read the Bible?

Jesus said the greatest commandment ever given by God—the most important one for us to obey—is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

The best way to obey that command is to read God’s communication to us (the Bible) and to communicate back to God (prayer). In this way our love for him will grow richer every day and our soul will grow stronger in our spiritual warfare against evil and personal temptation.

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the subject of spiritual fitness ]

But you may be thinking you don’t have enough time in a day to complete the reading of the entire Bible. The reality is you do have enough time, since each book of the Bible can be measured in achievable “chunks.”

Almost half the books in the Bible take less than a half-hour to read. Twenty-three of them can each be read in under 20 minutes!

Here’s a chart (by the website desiringGod) of the average time it takes to read each book of Scripture, shown in the order in which each one appears in the Bible:

Spiritual Fitness: How Is Global Christianity Changing?

The 5 life-changing success-generating components of SemperVerus^® work together to cultivate in the members of the SemperVerus Brotherhood™ the strategic and tactical element of self-defense, which includes the intelligent and resolute ability to responsibly protect yourself from menacing spiritual threats, not only physical threats. The former dangers are what we battle when we identify and thwart temptations that diminish the strength of our soul in following Jesus Christ.

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the subject of spiritual fitness ]

Every year the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary presents a snapshot of global Christianity that provides a statistical overview of the world’s 2.5 billion Christians and their activities. Here are highlights from the 2022 Status of Global Christianity report:

How Does Your Character Measure Up?

One of the 5 identifying traits of the SemperVerus Brotherhood is a commitment to “BE,” which means continually developing a rich personal leadership character of exemplary moral and ethical quality.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Secure Your Base (Your Soul) ]

An article on The Art of Manliness website captures the idea. It’s an excerpt from The ROTC Infantry Manual, published in 1942. Here are a few of the listed and defined qualities:

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Be Like Ernest Shackleton ]

Self-Control
Honor, Uprightness, and Truthfulness
Justice, Fairness, Impartiality
Willingness to Accept Responsibility
Initiative and Vision
Decisiveness, Resoluteness, and Perseverance
Earnestness
Courage, Moral and Physical
Alertness, Quick Thinking, Presence of Mind

How are you measuring up?

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the topic of Being ]

Invite SemperVerus^® to present its 5 life-changing success-generating components—prepare, aware, be, know, do—to your organization to inspire and motivate your members.

Join the SemperVerus Brotherhood™!

By semperverus
Posted on 05/08/202112/09/2024
1 Comment on How Does Your Character Measure Up?

The Sixth Sense of Being

In the 1945 movie The Bells of St. Mary’s starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman, and written by Dudley Nichols, a 12-year-old girl reads her essay assigned by her school teacher, on the subject of everyone’s five senses. Except that she adds the sixth sense of “being.”

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the topic of Being ]

As you know, the SemperVerus personal leadership model is comprised of five life-changing success-generating components that contribute to your ability to Stay True:

Prepare
Aware
Be
Know and
Do.

To “Be” for the SemperVerus Brotherhood/Sisterhood is to commit yourself to continually develop rich personal leadership character of exemplary moral and ethical quality.

Or to put it another way, read how the girl in the movie describes it: