Weekly Challenge: Let my speech be pleasing in God's sight. 

From my daily devotional, by Billy Graham:

The problems of the world could be solved overnight if men could get victory over their tongues. Suppose there was no anger, no profanity, no lying, no grumbling or complaining; suppose there were no dirty stories told, no unjust criticism-what a different world this would be! The Bible teaches that a man who can control his tongue can control his whole personality. We should ask ourselves three questions before we speak: Is it true? Is it kind? Does it glorify Christ? If we would always think before we speak, there would be much less evil speaking, and there would soon be a spiritual awakening that would sweep the church in America.

Weekly Challenge: Only use God's name in a positive context.

It wasn't until Tim and I began dating that it was brought to my attention that I was using the Lord's name in vein, a lot. I would say things like, "Honest to God" and "Oh my God." I wasn't doing it in a malicious way, but I was still using His name in a way that was not reverential. Exodus 20:7 says, "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." When I use God's name it should be in blessing others, crying out to Him in prayer or praise, and expressing His majesty. I thought I was doing pretty well in this department, but then last night Tim caught me saying, "Oh my Lord" when the stench from Wilma's farted hit me. Definitely not using God's name in the right way on that one! I'm glad it happened though, as it show me that I still need to make a conscious effort to use His holy name properly. 

Now that I've learned the order of the books of the Bible, it's time to memorize the authors of each of these books. In doing so, I hope to gain more understanding about the Word as I learn about these historic men. Since some of the books are named after the authors themselves, it shouldn't be as challenging as memorizing the book order (which I really struggled with!). I feel like I'm back in school with all this memorizing =).

Weekly Challenge: Memorize the order of the New Testament books.

Last week I attempted to memorize the order of all the books in the Bible, but I only succeeded in memorizing those of the Old Testament. Some of the names are so strange, especially at the end of the Old Testament, making the challenge more difficult than I anticipated. So this week, I'll work on memorizing the order of the New Testament books. Wish me luck!