Scripture

On New Year’s Day 2020, New South Wales and Victoria jumped north by 5.9 feet. No, you did not miss an earthquake. The change is being made to fix a 5.9 foot inaccuracy that has crept into the GPS coordinates, caused by Australia slowly drifting north. Australian GPS was last updated in 1994, and the entire country has moved nearly six feet since then.

Australia sits atop one of the fastest-moving tectonic plates in the world. It moves about 2.5 inches north-east every year. “That’s about the speed your hair or fingernails grow,” says NSW Surveyor General Narelle Underwood.

In the days of paper maps that tectonic drift did not pose a real problem. That meant Australia could get away with the slight inaccuracy that has crept in since the coordinates were last set in 1994. But paper maps have gone the way of the dinosaurs; we use GPS now. And GPS notices. That's because GPS satellites precisely locate you on the surface of the Earth. Effectively the coordinate you have from your GPS has already moved 5.9 feet.

Add in the inaccuracy of GPS itself – it is accurate to about 16 feet – and that explains why you can sometimes open Google Maps and discover yourself trapped inside a building or drowning in a lake.

The project is handy for the average person, but its real value is in the future. Driverless cars, for example, need precise GPS data to know which lane they are in, and driverless tractors need to be able to get right up to the fence line without plowing it down.

Possible Preaching Angle: Everything on earth changes, including the mighty continents. But for believers there are three crucial foundational things that will never change: God doesn't change, His Word doesn't change, and His promises do not change. These are settled forever in the heavens.

A 2025 report from the American Bible Society suggests that Bible use is rising—especially among young adults who, until recently, were among the least likely to open a Bible at all.

According to State of the Bible: USA 2025, the percentage of U.S. adults who read the Bible outside of church at least three times a year increased from 38% to 41% in the last year. That’s roughly 10 million more adults engaging with Scripture—marking the first increase in Bible use since 2021.

The sharpest rise appears among millennials, where reported Bible use jumped by 29% in a single year. Gen Z also showed noticeable movement. It’s a striking turnaround, especially considering that both groups have typically lagged behind older generations in religious activity. But the numbers may not be as clear-cut as they seem.

The study also found that Scripture engagement—a metric that factors in not just Bible reading, but how much Scripture influences someone’s choices, relationships, and worldview—rose from 11% to 15% among Gen Z, and from 12% to 17% among millennials.

The study defines Scripture engagement broadly, factoring in a range of self-reported behaviors and attitudes. It also relies on a survey sample of just 2,656 adults—a relatively small group to draw sweeping generational conclusions from, especially when measuring a spike as large as 29%.

Still, even if the numbers are more hopeful than definitive, they point to a growing spiritual curiosity among younger Americans. You can read the full report here.

Every year, YouVersion announces which Bible verses are the most shared, bookmarked, and highlighted by its users. The list often includes the classics like Jeremiah 29:11 or John 3:16, but this year, the app announced that Philippians 4:6 took the top spot.

The Scripture reads: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Yeah, that checks out for 2024.

YouVersion founder and CEO Bobby Gruenewald believes this verse’s popularity shows that people are regularly turning to God when they face stress and daily struggles.

Gruenewald said, ‘In many cases, our anxiety comes from holding onto worries that we aren’t meant to carry. To me, this verse being sought out the most this year is an illustration that our community is seeking God in prayer and choosing to trust Him to carry their burdens—and we’re seeing that supported in the data.’

Imagine the thrill of opening your mailbox and finding a crisp, white envelope waiting for you. The anticipation builds as you tear it open, as you discover a check nestled inside. It's more than just a piece of paper; it's a tangible promise that money is waiting you when you cash it. The check might be from an employer, a tax refund, or an unexpected birthday gift from a grandparent.

While writing checks may be less popular than it used to be, 54% of Americans still wrote a check in the past year. In fact, according to a recent survey by GOBankingRates, 17% of Americans are still writing checks on a monthly basis — and 23% of Gen X Americans are still sending checks on a monthly basis. In 2021 the Federal Reserve reported $27.23 trillion in checks were written.

Now suppose in the busyness of life you forgot about the check or misplaced it, only to find it months later. You begin to wonder, is this thing still any good? If grandma had sent cash, there would be no question, since cash is always valuable. But, how long is a check good for? The check was a promise of cash, but is the promise still any good?

Most old checks aren't valid forever. A personal check is generally good for at least six months. If you don't deposit a check right away, you may not receive the money even if your bank agrees to accept the check. That's because the account the check was drawn on may have been closed or not have insufficient funds to back the check.

The bottom line is that cashing a check promptly ensures that you can access the funds without issues, such as the check bouncing or having it go stale.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This would make a good introduction to a sermon on the enduring promises of God which never go out of date, or cannot be redeemed because of insufficient funds or the account being closed. God will never refuse to honor his promises (Rom. 9:6-8, 2 Cor. 1:20). But it is a good idea to claim God’s promises promptly to begin enjoying his gift to you.

If you’re on the operating table, you don’t want your surgeon to say to a nurse, “Hand me one of them sharp thingamajigs.” You want him to have a specific name for a specific tool to perform a specific job.

Words matter. The medical field has distinctive terminology by which it carefully defines diseases, medicines, instruments, and the like. When it comes to our bodies, we have very high expectations of our doctors. They better know what they’re talking about.

We should expect no less—indeed, far more—when it comes to pastors, priests, and teachers of the Word of God. They handle the word of truth. They minister to body, soul, and mind. They better know what they’re talking about. We don’t want to hear from them, “Now that divine power is doing some religious stuff in you.” Precision in language is necessary. We want God’s Word unapologetically, lovingly, and carefully proclaimed to us.

Mary Jones was about eight-years-old when she became a Christian. Having learned to read, she wanted to own a Bible in her native Welsh language. But in 1800, Bibles were expensive and hard to come by in Wales. A Bible owned by a relative of Mary's, who lived several miles from her home, was her only access.

So, she saved for six years until she had enough money to buy one of her own. When she sought out the Bible, she was told that a Mr. Charles was her best hope. The only problem was that he lived some 20 miles from Mary's home.

Undeterred, she walked the entire way, barefoot, to find Mr. Charles and fulfill her dream of owning her own Bible. Mary’s story lives on today at a visitor center in Wales dedicated to her memory.

The story of Mary Jones's Bible does not end with her. In 1802, at a meeting with church leaders in London, Mr. Charles recounted her dedication to owning her own Bible. He was there to urge a solution to the lack of affordable Bibles in Wales.

A pastor there named Joseph Hughes asked if a new society could be formed. But he went further, asking, “If for Wales, why not for the United Kingdom? And if for the Kingdom, why not for the world?”

That question was eventually answered, with the help of William Wilberforce and other members of the famous Clapham sect, by the formation of the British Foreign Bible Society. Today, it works with an international network of other Bible societies to produce and distribute millions of Bibles in hundreds of languages around the world. All of this stems from one girl's determination to own her own Bible.

When researchers for the American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report saw 2022’s survey statistics, they found it hard to believe the results. The data said roughly 26 million people had mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible in the last year.

“We reviewed our calculations. We double-checked our math and ran the numbers again … and again,” John Plake, lead researcher for the American Bible Society, wrote in the 2022 report. “What we discovered was startling, disheartening, and disruptive.”

In 2021, about 50 percent of Americans said they read the Bible on their own at least three or four times per year. That percentage had stayed more or less steady since 2011.

But in 2022, it dropped 11 points. Now only 39 percent say they read the Bible multiple times per year or more. It is the steepest, sharpest decline on record.

According to the 12th annual State of the Bible report, it wasn’t just the occasional Scripture readers who didn’t pick up their Bibles as much in 2022 either. More than 13 million of the most engaged Bible readers—measured by frequency, feelings of connection to God, and impact on day-to-day decisions—said they read God’s Word less.

Currently, only 10 percent of Americans report daily Bible reading.

Jeopardy fans were furious after the contestants on an episode failed to answer a “simple” question about the Lord's Prayer during the game. Players Joe, Laura, and Suresh were unable to give the correct answer to former host Mayim Bialik's question about filling in the blank: “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, ____ be thy name,’" Bialik said. The group made an error of biblical proportions by not even attempting to guess the correct answer as the stage remained silent until Bialik gave the answer.

But the saddest thing happened over the next day or two on X. Jeopardy fans and lots of former or current church-going people started piling on with anger and shock at the contestants' inability to answer the question. Here are some of the posts:

“That’s ‘hallowed,’ you heathens!”

“Hey, Jeopardy geniuses … It's HALLOWED. Sheesh, what a sad world we live in.”

“OOF. Watching @Jeopardy tonight, and none of the contestants knew the words 'hallowed be thy name' in the Lord's Prayer,” one user lamented.

“You gotta be kidding me no one knew ‘hallowed.’”

“Screaming Hallowed! They didn't know the ‘Our Father.’ #Jeopardy,” wrote another.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Condemnation; Mocking - Rather than mock and condemn, it would have been much more fruitful to gently instruct those who don’t know the content, context, or relevance of the Lord’s Prayer. 2) Bible; Morality; Knowledge - Is it any wonder that the world is in the moral state that it is? People are perishing and being misled because of an ignorance of God’s Word (Hos. 4:6).

As part of a push to "sinicize" religion (to make it Chinese in character), the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a 10-year project to rewrite the Bible and other religious texts. In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously confronts the accusers of a woman caught committing adultery, saying "let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her." The chastened accusers slink away and Jesus says to the woman, "‘Has no one condemned you?' 'No one, sir,' she replied. 'Neither do I condemn you,' said Jesus. 'Go away, and from this moment sin no more.'"

A beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy. Unless you’re a CCP official. Then it's a story of a dissident challenging the authority of the state. A possible sneak preview of what a Bible with socialist characteristics might look like appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020. The rewritten Gospel of John excerpt ends, not with mercy, but with Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death.

The 10-year project to rewrite the Bible, Quran, and other sacred texts is all part of Xi Jinping’s quest to make the faithful serve the party rather than God. At the 19th Party Congress, Chairman Xi declared "We will … insist on the sinicization of Chinese religions, and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist." In other words, Xi Jinping has no problem with the first commandment, just so long as he and the CCP are playing the role of God.

Yet, even under intense persecution, faith persists throughout China and the number of faithful grows. There are accounts of underground churches, brave clergy, and steadfast believers every bit as courageous as saints of the early-church.

The CCP wishes for there to be nothing higher than their authority, and views love for anything besides their Marxist-Leninist regime with vicious jealousy. In an interview the pastor of one Chinese church stated, "In this war … the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man." The pastor ended with an assessment "[The PRC rulers] are doomed to lose."

Kenyon Wilson, a professor at the University of Tennessee, wanted to test whether any of his students fully read the syllabus for his music seminar. Of the more than 70 students enrolled in the class, none apparently did. Wilson said he knows this because on the second page of the three-page syllabus he included the location and combination to a locker, inside of which was a $50 cash prize. But when the semester ended on December 8, students went home and the cash was unclaimed. Wilson wrote on Facebook “My semester-long experiment has come to an end. Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure.”

Wilson said he wanted to include the hidden clues to brighten up the semester during the pandemic. “Teaching in a pandemic, I’m trying to do creative things and, you know, make it interesting. The syllabus is a really dry document, but I thought if my students are reading it, I might as well reward them.”

Tanner Swoyer, a senior studying instrumental music education, said that he felt “pretty dumb, pretty stupid” when he saw the professor’s post about the money in the locker.

Wilson said he was not disappointed with his students. When he was a student, he most likely would have also missed the clues, he said. “We read the parts that we deem important. You know, what’s the attendance policy? What are the things I need to do to pass this class? And then there’s other stuff. On the first day of the semester I pointed out: ‘Hey, there are some new things in the syllabus. Make sure you, you know, make sure you catch them,’ and then no one did.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Alertness; Bible reading; Scripture – Believers need to read the Word of God with careful attention because there are many hidden riches to be discovered; 2) Prayer; Promises of God – God has given us very great and precious promises in his Word which we can claim by faith through prayer (2 Pet. 1:4).

Amid the increasing number of self-service check-out stations cropping up at grocery stores and other vendors, companies have devised a unique measure to deter potential shoplifters—mirrors.

Initially people assumed it was used to ensure shoppers “look good” before checking out, these reflective devices are actually there to make prospective pilferers feel guilty. This might sound ineffective on its face as robbers would presumably just steal with no one monitoring their actions.

However, mirrors are psychologically proven to make people feel guilty. According to a study in the journal “Letters on Behavioral Evolutionary Science,” people who are in a “self-aware” situation such as in front of a mirror are less likely to engage in “antinormative behavior” like stealing or cheating than those who are not.

The study noted that when participants were subjected to mirrors, their “private self-awareness was activated” and influenced “decision-making” despite the lack of social cues. “These results suggest that socially desirable behavior is influenced by mirrors.”

However, the study authors admit that the mechanism behind self-awareness’ effect on behavior is not well understood—perhaps the mirror makes people “reflect” on the crime before even committing it. Psychology Today postulated that mirrors “allowed people literally to watch over themselves” and therefore “made them more likely to behave in a more upright way.”

In general, experts argue that mirrors aren’t enough to prevent shoplifting at self-checkouts, which are notoriously susceptible to theft due to the lack of personnel. Scams have included weighing meat as fruit, and even scanning bootleg barcodes attached to people’s wrists before walking out without paying.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Bible; Scripture; Word of God - A person can look into a manmade mirror and soon forget what they have seen and go ahead with their sinful plans. However, when we look into the perfect law of God, we see a true and undistorted image of ourselves. God designed this so that our actions will be brought into alignment with his will and so that we will do what is pleasing to him. (Jam. 1:19-25, Heb. 4:12-13)

Should consumers who worry about the origins of their clothing, coffee, and chocolate focus on a more spiritual item: the Bible? Chances are good that your favorite Bible was printed in China. The over-whelming majority of Bibles sold are printed there, said Mark Bertrand of Bible Design Blog. He said: “A lot of people have misgivings about that. Some of it is, ‘Oh, our Bibles are printed in Communist China.’ Others are concerned about the economic situation, about what conditions these Bibles were produced under.”

The Chinese government’s restriction of Bible distribution is also troubling, said ChinaAid’s Bob Fu. “When brothers and sisters are being persecuted and arrested for their beliefs based on the same Bible, what does it mean to purchase an exported copy that says Made in China?”

China’s only legal printer of Bibles, Amity Printing Company, published its first Bible in cooperation with the United Bible Societies in 1987. Since then, more than half of the 100 million Bibles printed every year have been printed in China (50 million in 2019), making China the world’s biggest Bible publisher.

Printing Bibles is more difficult than printing other types of books, and requires a certain amount of expertise. That’s because of the specialized printing requirements for a complex book such as the Bible. Bibles require thin paper that cannot be fed into standard printing equipment, leather covers, stitched binding, color pages and special inserts such as maps. Most printers outside China do not have the range of facilities to manufacture the same Bibles.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Maybe Westerners seeing “Made in China” on their Bibles, can be a reminder to pray for those who made these Bibles. 2) God can use any instrument he chooses to spread his Word, even unbelieving, communist China (Isa. 55:11).

Do you have a habit of picking up books that you never quite get around to reading? If this sounds like you, you might be unwittingly engaging in tsundoku - a Japanese term used to describe a person who owns a lot of unread literature.

Proffesor Andrew Gerstle of the University of London explains the term might be older than you think. It can be found in print as early as 1879. The word "doku" is a verb meaning "reading" and "tsun" means "to pile up.” So, when put together, "tsundoku" has the meaning of buying reading material and piling it up.

Does it only work for books? You might not be surprised to know some people have applied the term to other aspects of their lives. In a popular post on Reddit people discussed how this term could explain their relationship with films, television shows, and even clothing. One of the most popular interpretations concerned video games, with various people referencing their "vast, untouched software libraries" on game distribution platforms like Steam.

Possible Preaching Angle:

How many of us find ourselves with the tsundoku habit of buying Christian books or new versions of the Bibles but never reading them? Or going to Christian seminars, taking copious notes, but never referring to them again? Let’s be “doers of the Word and not hearers only!” (Jam. 1:22).

Ernest Shackleton is famous for leading the voyage of the Endurance and her crew to the Antarctic, and despite cataclysmic failure, leading his men out alive. Their boat was crushed, they lived on ice floats, sailed lifeboats hundreds of miles in terrible sea conditions, climbed mountain peaks, and yet not one man was lost.

Shortly after their vessel, the Endurance, was crushed, Ernest urged his men to lighten their loads and take only two pounds of personal items. To illustrate this point, he tore two pages out of his Bible, and dropped it in the snow. Here is the full story from the South Georgia Museum:

On July 16, 1914, as the Endurance Expedition was getting underway, Queen Alexandra (widow of King Edward VII) visited the ship. The Queen presented Shackleton with a Union flag, a replica of her own standard, and two inscribed copies of the Bible.

Later, trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea, Shackleton and his men had to quit their stricken ship and begin desperate measures to save themselves by hauling boats and stores across the ice. Each man was allowed to keep just 2 pounds of personal gear. Setting a good example, Shackleton discarded what at other times might be judged his most valuable and precious belongings – gold coins and other valuables and the Bible. He tore some pages from the Bible before he left it, the flyleaf with the Queen’s inscription, the 23rd Psalm and a verse from the Book of Job.

The Queen’s inscription from Psalm 107:24 reads, “May the Lord guide you through all dangers by land and sea. May you see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.” The verse from the book of Job 38:29-30 reads, “Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, And the face of the deep is frozen.”

Another crew member retrieved the Bible Shackleton had discarded and carried it home. It is now in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When all is lost, where do you find your hope? Scripture, even a page or two, can provide comfort in the midst of deep uncertainty and trial.

Sometimes, all it takes is a minor inconvenience to ruin your whole day. It has been revealed that the most stressful time of the day is 7:23am. On average people will experience three dramas each day, with the first drama of the day typically happening by around 8:18am. These stressful situations could be anything from being stuck in traffic or waking up late, to spilling things on clothing, and tripping in public which are also likely to make people feel foul.

The research found that tiredness, an interrupted night's sleep, and a busy day at work were among the top causes of such dramas. Zuzana Bustikova, a spokesperson for a wellbeing brand, said: "Often when we think 'drama' we think big, but the research shows how much of an impact seemingly small niggles can have on our daily moods.”

According to the survey, the following are some of the top everyday “dramas” adults experience:

• Getting stuck in traffic
• Spilling something down clothing (food, drink, make-up, toothpaste)
• Waking up late and being late for work
• Struggling to find a parking space
• Forgetting bags at the supermarket
• Public transport being cancelled
• Sending a text message to the wrong person
• Checking your bank balance and having less money than you expected
• Clothes you want to wear being in the wash
• Realizing an email you thought you’d sent is in your “drafts”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Taking small steps to build our emotional resilience, even on those difficult days, can make a huge difference in helping us live life to the fullest. For a Christian these small steps can include having a regular quiet time with God every morning. This will center our thoughts on him and give us resources to meet life’s frustrations and stresses that are inevitable each day.