International Bible Reading Association - IBRA

International Bible Reading Association - IBRA IBRA is a group of people from across the Church in the UK and around the world committed to daily Bible reading together.

We are in the mainstream but often have a radical twist. Since 1882 we have funded Bible study in developing countries and the UK.

'He expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!' (Isaiah 5:7)Isaiah sings a love song about a vin...
11/06/2026

'He expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!' (Isaiah 5:7)

Isaiah sings a love song about a vineyard — tended with every care, given the best soil, defended, worked, waited on. And the harvest is sour grapes. The image is of a God who has invested everything and received nothing in return. Not anger first. Grief first.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Raj Bharat Patta draws out the social dimension of Isaiah's metaphor. Justice and righteousness were not optional extras in the covenant relationship — they were the expected fruit. When they failed, it wasn't a private religious matter. It was a broken relationship with the God who planted and tended and waited.

He expected justice. He expected righteousness. He still does.

📖 Let the prophets shape your social conscience: Be guided through their words https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Where are you expecting to produce fruit but offering something sour instead? Be honest with God today.

After chapters of judgment, Isaiah turns: a branch, a remnant, a canopy.'A shade by day from the heat, and a refuge from...
10/06/2026

After chapters of judgment, Isaiah turns: a branch, a remnant, a canopy.

'A shade by day from the heat, and a refuge from the storm.' (Isaiah 4:6)

The hope that grows where everything else has been cut down.

Find hope https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

'For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD.' (Isaiah 3...
09/06/2026

'For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD.' (Isaiah 3:8)

Raj Bharat Patta writes about severe floods in his hometown in India — water rising, families stranded on rooftops, the church building becoming a refuge for a community that had nowhere else to go. Life came to a standstill. Systems failed. Leadership faltered.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reading uses that experience to illuminate Isaiah's warning to Jerusalem: what happens when the structures a society depends on — leadership, justice, community trust — begin to collapse. Isaiah is not gloating. He is grieving. He loved the city he was warning.

The question the passage leaves us with is both political and personal: what do our speech and our deeds say about what we actually believe?

📖 Read the prophet who loved the city he warned. Will you understand his words? https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Pray today for places where systems are failing and communities are being left without support. Name one specific situation.

'The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled, and the LORD alone will be...
08/06/2026

'The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled, and the LORD alone will be exalted on that day.' (Isaiah 2:11)

Isaiah speaks into a culture saturated with self-reliance — a people whose sense of privilege and power had become their identity. They had forgotten who had given them everything they had. And Isaiah announces what happens when the scaffolding of human pride meets the reality of God's justice.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Raj Bharat Patta draws the connection to our own moment. The language of pride and self-sufficiency — personal, corporate, national — is not hard to find in contemporary life. Isaiah's word is not primarily about punishment. It is an invitation to a different kind of standing: the humility that looks up rather than around.

The LORD alone will be exalted. Everything else — every achievement, every status, every empire — finds its proper scale.

📖 Let Isaiah's vision reorder your priorities. Let us guide you https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Sit with this phrase today: the LORD alone will be exalted. What in your life is competing with that?

A new week begins — and this week in Fresh from The Word 2026, we step into one of Scripture's great prophetic voices.Th...
07/06/2026

A new week begins — and this week in Fresh from The Word 2026, we step into one of Scripture's great prophetic voices.

This week's notes come from Raj Bharat Patta — a Methodist minister, theologian, and proud bearer of multiple identities: Dalit, Christian, Asian, immigrant, academic, husband, father, friend. He writes from the UK, with a life shaped by India, Manchester, and decades of cross-cultural ministry.

He's guiding us through Isaiah 1–39, one of the Bible's most towering books, full of judgment and breathtaking hope, written to a people who had forgotten what faithfulness looked like.
This week's theme: Rescued from Judgment.

'The LORD alone will be exalted on that day.' (Isaiah 2:11)

📖 Read this week's Bible commentary https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Ask God this week to show you something in Isaiah you've never noticed before.

'His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.' (2 Peter 1:3)He was crossing the street quickly, he...
06/06/2026

'His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.' (2 Peter 1:3)

He was crossing the street quickly, heading for the chapel. Someone called out. He turned - a recycler with a cart full of bottles, cardboard, the accumulated small salvage of a hard day's work. I don't have any cash, he thought, reaching for his wallet. But the man wasn't asking for money.

Pastor, would you pray for me?

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reading from Dafne Plou closes the Grace week with this moment and with Peter's extraordinary claim: God's divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life. Not most things. Not enough to get by. Everything. The recycler knew what he needed. A prayer. The presence of God, offered through another human being.

We have more to give than we realise.

📖 Discover what you've already been given by God https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 What do you have today that someone else needs — not money, not impressive resources, but presence, prayer, attention? Give it.

💗 Partner with IBRA in sharing God's word globally: https://bit.ly/4qXSXrj

'Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.' (Luke 6:30)The whispers...
05/06/2026

'Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.' (Luke 6:30)

The whispers started before the service even began. There are pickpockets here. Some have been in prison. Pastor, watch your handbag. And yet here they were, in church, not for money or food, but for something harder to name.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reading from Dafne Plou arrives at the hardest edge of grace: the neighbour who makes you uncomfortable. The person whose presence feels like a risk. Jesus doesn't qualify the instruction. Give to everyone. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Not after they have demonstrated trustworthiness. Now.

Grace that only extends to people we feel safe with is not the grace Jesus describes.

📖 Let the whole Jesus challenge your comfortable faith: Do you understand the BIble? https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Ask God today to show you one person you've been keeping at arm's length — and what a small act of grace toward them might look like.

'Don't be afraid. I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan.' (2 Samuel 9:7)Mephibosheth expe...
04/06/2026

'Don't be afraid. I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan.' (2 Samuel 9:7)

Mephibosheth expected to be ignored. He was the grandson of Saul, the king David had replaced. In the ancient world, new kings eliminated old royal lines. The safest thing was to stay invisible, stay small, never be found.

But David was looking for him. Not to punish, to honour a covenant made with a dead friend.
Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Dafne Plou draws out what this scene reveals about grace: it is not passive. It seeks. It goes looking for the people who have made themselves invisible, who consider themselves dead dogs, who expect nothing. And it sets a place at the table.
Grace is not the removal of obligation. It is the fulfilment of love.

📖 Encounter the God who seeks: - get free guidance through the Bible https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Who in your life has made themselves invisible, expecting nothing, staying small? Ask God how you might show them kindness today.

'God loves a cheerful giver.' (2 Corinthians 9:7)A congregation in Argentina wanted to send children from a shanty town ...
03/06/2026

'God loves a cheerful giver.' (2 Corinthians 9:7)

A congregation in Argentina wanted to send children from a shanty town to summer camp. The children had never been on a holiday in their lives. Would the money come? A group of young leaders started sharing the vision — at work, at university, among friends. Their enthusiasm was contagious. The donations started coming.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Dafne Plou shows what cheerful giving looks like in practice — not guilt-driven obligation but joy-driven generosity, catching fire from one person to the next. Paul's instruction to the Corinthians is not a fundraising technique. It is a description of what happens when grace has genuinely taken hold.

Generosity is not a discipline to be managed. It is a fruit to be grown.

📖 Let Scripture shape your giving: Buy Fresh from The Word 2026

🙏 Is there something you've been thinking about giving — time, money, energy — that you've kept putting off? Ask God what cheerful might look like for you today.

💗 Support IBRA's global mission: https://bit.ly/4qXSXrj

'We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spi...
02/06/2026

'We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.' (Colossians 1:9)

Paul prays for a community he has never met. He has heard about their faith and love, and he hasn't stopped praying for them since. Not for their success or safety — for their understanding. That they would know God's will, be filled with wisdom, and grow in the knowledge of God.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Dafne Plou asks us to sit with that prayer and consider our own. Do we pray enough for our own communities — not just in crisis, but for depth, for wisdom, for the kind of knowing that sustains faith through difficulty?

Understanding is a gift, not an achievement. It grows under prayer.

📖 Grow in understanding with our free Bible guide - one day at a time: ibraglobal.org.uk

🙏 Pray Paul's prayer for someone in your church community today — not for a specific need, but for wisdom and a deeper knowledge of God.

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