Daily Devotional 7-21-2021
Jas 4:11-12 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. (12) There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you–who are you to judge your neighbor? To slander and judge one another is totally incongruous to the humble spirit God desires. Furthermore, to judge another is actually a judgment of God’s Law itself. His Law is a mandate over all people. No one dares assume a haughty position over it. The slanderer is sentenced by the Law; the self-righteous judge is jeopardized by the Law; only the humble person is honored. True justice or righteousness is rendered when a believer subjects himself to God in humility and…
Daily Devotional 7-20-2021
Gal 6:7-8 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. (8) Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Although it is true in a general sense that we reap whatever we sow, it follows an exhortation on Christian giving. Viewed in that light, we see that sowing to the flesh means spending one’s money on oneself, one’s own pleasures and comforts. Sowing to the Spirit is using one’s money for the furtherance of God’s interests. Those who do the former reap a harvest of disappointment and loss right here on earth because they learn as they grow older that the flesh they lived to please is decaying and dying. Then in the age to come they lose eternal rewards. Those who sow to the Spirit will…
Daily Devotional 7-19-2021
Act 20:24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. As the apostle weighed this outlook in his mind, Paul did not think that his own life was the great consideration. His ambition was to obey God and to please Him. If in doing this, he would be called upon to offer up his life, he was willing to do so. No sacrifice we could make would be too great for the One who died for us. All that mattered was that we finish our race and complete the ministry which we received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. No title could better express the good news which Paul preached—the gospel of the…
Daily Devotional 7-18-2021
1Ti 1:13-14 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. (14) The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. That Paul had broken the Ten Commandments before his conversion is abundantly evident from this verse. He speaks of himself as formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man.. The first sin is a matter of words only. The second describes suffering inflicted on others for their religious beliefs. The third includes the idea of cruelty and abuse. But Paul obtained mercy. He did not receive the punishment he deserved because he did these things ignorantly in unbelief. In persecuting Christians, he thought he was doing God’s service. Since his parents’ religion taught the worship of the true God,…
Daily Devotional 7-17-2021
1Ti 1:5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Perhaps the most important thing to understand in this verse is that commandment does not refer to the Law of Moses or the Ten Commandments. This is brought out clearly in the NKJV: Now the purpose of the commandment is love. … Paul is saying that the goal or aim of the charge which he has just given Timothy is to produce not just orthodoxy but love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith. These things always follow when the gospel of the grace of God is preached.
Daily Devotional 7-16-2021
1Pe 1:17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. Instead of imitating the ungodly world with its fads and fashions, our lives should reproduce the holy character of the One who called us. To be godly means to be Godlike. God is holy in all His ways. If we are to be like Him, we must be holy in all that we do and say. In this life we will never be as holy as He is, but we should be holy because He is.
Daily Devotional 7-15-2021
Jas 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. It is not enough to receive the implanted word; we must obey it. There is no virtue in possessing the Bible or even in reading it as literature. There must be a deep desire to hear God speaking to us and an unquestioning willingness to do whatever He says. We must translate the Bible into action. The word must become flesh in our lives. There should never be a time when we go to the Scriptures without allowing them to change our lives for the better. To profess great love for God’s word or even to pose as a Bible student is a form of self-deception unless our increasing knowledge of the word is producing increasing likeness to the Lord Jesus. To go on gaining an intellectual knowledge of the Bible without obeying…
Daily Devotional 7-14-2021
Heb 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” This virtue to cultivate is contentment. That is, let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. I should say so! He has Christ; that is enough. Covetousness breaks fellowship with God and hinders spiritual progress. The greatest riches a person can have lie in possessing Him who promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Daily Devotion 7-13-2021
Mat 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. The impossibility of living for God and for money is stated here in terms of masters and slaves. No one can serve two masters. One will inevitably take precedence in his loyalty and obedience. So it is with God and mammon. They present rival claims and a choice must be made. Either we must put God first and reject the rule of materialism or we must live for temporal things and refuse God’s claim on our lives.
Daily Devotional 7-12-2021
Heb 7:15-16 And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, (16) one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. Levitical priests were ordained only if they could prove their ancestry from Levi, and must be replaced at death by another of the same line. By contrast, Jesus holds the Melchizedek priesthood forever because he possesses an indestructible life. It is not merely endless; by its very nature it cannot be ended! How precious it is to us that we can build an everlasting relationship with Lord Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, who loves us, dies & lives for us and reconciles us to God!