What is this book?
A set of study notes on 16 subjects related to learning about the things of God.
How is this book organized?
Each chapter consists of a letter to David from his father, Dan. The letter is followed by four essays presented which are related to the letter sent to David.
These letters are presented in a personal style, similar to what I might have sent to my Son if he was not already with Jesus. They represent the conversations I wanted to have with my son in his college years as he was becoming a man. These conversations never happened.
The essays from Dan’s Journal were first generated to answer questions that Pepper (my life mate) asked about the things of God. Eventually, I noted a few people at a Men’s group I attend at Pantano Christian Church had similar questions. Mid 2023 I started posting the essays on a WhatsApp discussion room for this men’s group. In 2024 Pepper created and now administers a blog site (www.shalomtalk.blog) with a wide range of daily postings including the essays.
You will note some of the essays from Dan’s Journal in this book are written to answer Pepper’s questions to me about things of God. You may also encounter essays addressed to Taylor, Jacob, and others. These people are friends of mine who asked questions. The Scripture quotes in the letters are thick, dense, on purpose. They provide an easy tool to demonstrate the wisdom of reading things in context rather than pulling bits of text out of Scripture to make a point.
Most of the essays were written to fit on a single page (some spill over to a second page). The one-page essay is a compact way to express things in my mind. Most of us recall that Ronald Regan required his staffers to limit background data for decisions to a single page. If it took more space, he felt there was more than one topic on the page. When I write, I am praying and meditating on the topic. I retain the essays on my laptop hard drive that function like a personal Prayer Journal.
Why does this specific book exist?
I am presenting one man’s opinion on a credible learning process and a few life observations to help jumpstart your growing faith. Why do you need this? Walking with God is a daily exercise of focus on the will of God. Your walk with God will always be a process of reducing your intervention in decisions and increasing God’s influence on your decisions. The pursuit of God’s wisdom is imperative to simplifying and clarifying your walk with God. The Spirit of God is the best teacher in the universe. Typically, we struggle to be good students. But, with practice we can become good students.
What should we do? We would be fools not to avail ourselves of the opportunity to learn from the God’s word. We need to root around in the deepest caverns of Scripture to glean every nugget we can locate. You will benefit from a proper learning approach and a toolkit that helps you to gather, interpret, and retain data. We all want to make the best use of our time. We all want to know God’s plan for our life, for our family, for the community we live in. This is a path to getting started.
We all need to study Scripture with a toolkit.
Studying is not that same as reading. Studying is the lifelong process of teaching yourself; we need a toolkit to help with studying. What are the things you might need in your toolkit to wrap your mind around Scripture? In every chapter of this book, David asks his father for advice on how to select a simple set of tools to fill his toolkit (learning strategy) and to mine the word of God. As a father will always do – Dan points his son in the right direction and then lets David make the decisions. My intent in these notes is not to ‘tell you how to think’. Rather, I hope to provide sufficient intel to find your way into Scripture and let the Holy Spirit teach you. The study is designed to provide you with a vocabulary that will make learning more productive.
Vocabulary matters
Learning Scripture starts with a proper vocabulary; learning is expressed with a proper vocabulary. Vocabulary is learned from the Word of God.
Learning requires effort from us
We need to know how to teach ourselves, so we are not dependent on others for what we know. What we believe matters. The last thing I want is to tell the one true living God on Judgement Day – I’m sorry. I just did what they told me to do.
You should know how to learn new things
Stick your head in the book. Breathe the message into your heart. It matters. You will be amazed at how patient the Holy Spirit is with a person whose heart is hungry for things of God. I finished university as a computer scientist. My time in the military morphed my skillsets towards system engineering and led me to start my own company. I am now retired. I quickly learned in the business game, to survive you need to know how to learn new things, to learn new things, you must Learn how to Learn. Why? Because a few years after you leave school your learning gets stale, new things emerge, technology leaves you behind. Do not misunderstand the message here, I am not saying for a second that God’s wisdom and knowledge change. He is timeless, his truth stands forever. But our capacity to wrap our mind around his wisdom deepens as we grow in Jesus. We need to know how to mine wisdom from Scripture.
Scripture speaks God’s wisdom
But how? How do we learn things outside the classroom, away from the group, alone with God? With the proper tools, we learn from The Holy Spirit. We learn from the best. The Spirit helped our forefathers develop tools such as a reference bible, concordance, Greek and Hebrew dictionary, bible dictionary, and systematic theology book to jump start our study. We rely on the Holy Spirit to set the direction of our study, apply the right combination of tools to the problem, finesse our conclusions, and correct us when we are just plain incorrect in our assessment. Choose your tools carefully. Listen to the Holy Spirit always.
What are the takeaways I hope you find in this book?
- Understand the difference between exhaustive truth and revealed truth.
- Determine what God is about – who, what, and why, AND where we fit into the puzzle.
- Find out how wisdom imprints our heart from God – embrace wisdom as the maker’s mark on our life – the light to the path we walk.
- Figure out how to teach yourself. Learning never stops – our interest changes as we learn and grow in the Lord – but learning never stops.
- Differentiate between acquisition of knowledge, transformation of the heart, and infusion of your mind with God’s marvelous plan.
- Generate your own research toolkit and wall of truth (or some variation of that theme).
Who is the Author of this Book?
My name is Dan Livingston. I was born in the Ozzie and Harriet era (early 50’s) when music was transitioning from big band to guitars. Miles Davis was learning a new style of Jazz. Many years later I fell in love with his soft gentle Jazz – I learned to improvise on the guitar and love to make a little music from time to time. I was a soldier for years with a family heritage of military and government service. I was a government contractor and a business owner. Now I am retired. I came to know Jesus in 1975.
This is the part in every book where the author talks about his family. I am not proud of my history. I am the product of two divorces. I have no one to blame but myself. One of my daughters is a bit distant from me at this juncture. I have never met most of my grandchildren. I send letters. I do not blame them for ignoring me. Obstinance is my middle name. Yet, persistence has served me well over the years. Jesus will reconnect me with my daughter when the time is right – his time – not my time. I keep sending letters. At the moment, I hang out with Pepper, my life mate and maintain contact with my younger daughter.
My walk with Jesus
I remember a long time ago, after a few years of devouring Scripture, I gradually realized I had been everywhere in Scripture. Just like Johnny Cash’s song, I have been everywhere man, I’ve been everywhere. As you might guess, in those days my hat size was expanded considerably to cover my enlarged head. I still have a little trouble with hat size.
Then came Francis Schaefer. I was on deployment in Spain and had a little time off, and drifted to the local military library, looking for something to read. I found Francis Schaefer. My head exploded with the realization that I was just getting started on Scripture, I knew nothing.
I spent years reading Schaefer, C.S. Lewis, A.W. Tozer, Thiessen, and Walvoord and others for bits and scraps of wisdom. Additionally, I read the antiquities (Augustine, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and others). Every one of these men pointed me back to Scripture, to learn a much deeper and abiding explanation of God’s Word. Then my son died from a horrible disease.
For a while, I was fine. But gradually everything went south – I wondered why David (my son) died and who was in control of that mess… Not a good place to be. Stuff happened. Divorce happened.
For a while, after my first divorce, I was a little distant from the one true living God and the Church. More stuff happened. My second divorce happened. It took a while; But Jesus DID NOT toss me in the trash, HE came after his rebel (me), HE kept standing in front of me to GET MY attention, tapping his foot. Eventually I stopped running, I yielded, repented, gradually felt his forgiveness, and worshiped – why? Because HE KNEW, even when I was not able to act on it — I needed HIM!
God’s Word is alive – pure truth
His words are sharper than any sword you could imagine. His Spirit penetrates deeply into our heart and finds the most peculiar things that we hang on to. His Spirit roots out the gunge and troubled ideas. He places the ideas out into the open where they wilt in the Arizona sun. Even the rocks crumble in the Arizona sun. Only his words remain.
Our thoughts are completely open to the God we serve. His Word helps identify troubles and housekeep our heart. A clean house is a happy house. My friends, please read Scripture to housekeep the temple that you live in.
Love the God you serve, love your wife and kids, love your neighbors, love yourself. Learn to live at peace with others. Play nicely with others. Make your sandbox a nice place to be. Help others get through the day. Go forth, do great things…. In Jesus name, Amen.