Daily Devotional 10-14-2021
2Co 1:20 For every one of God’s promises is “Yes” in him. Therefore, through him we also say “Amen” to the glory of God. All the promises of God, no matter how many they are, find their fulfillment in Christ. All who find in Him the fulfillment of God’s promises add their Amen. Open our Bibles at a promise, we look up to God, and God says, “You can have all that through Christ.” Trusting Christ, we say, “Amen” to God. God speaks through Christ, and we believe in Christ; Christ reaches down and faith stretches up, and every promise of God is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In and through Him we appropriate and take them to ourselves and say, “Yes, Lord; I trust You.” This is the believing yes. All of this is to the glory of God through us. He is glorified when it dawns on human souls…
Daily Devotional 10-13-2021
Col 1:21-22 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds expressed in your evil actions. (22) But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him— Reconciliation is necessary because people are alienated (“cut off, estranged”) from life and God. Before conversion the Colossian believers also were enemies or hostile to God in their minds as well as in their behavior, internally and externally. Sin begins in the heart and manifests itself in overt deeds. It pleased the Father by Him (Christ) to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross. In other words, it was not only the Godhead’s good pleasure that all fullness should dwell in Christ, but also that Christ should reconcile all things to Himself. From this, we can see that the expression of God’s Glory in…
Daily Devotional 10-12-2021
Eph 4:17-18 Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their thoughts. (18) They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. The Ephesian believers who were Gentiles were not to walk as the Gentiles do, or as implied, as they had once walked. Gentiles walked in the futility of their thinking. The word for “futility” suggests being void of useful aim or goal. Unbelieving Gentiles failed to attain the true purpose of the mind, namely, to receive God’s revelation which would guide them in their conduct. Since their minds could not receive God’s revelation, their understanding was darkened, being separated from the life of God. Their alienation is because of their ignorance of God; and this…
Daily Devotional 10-10-2021
Deu 32:46-47 he said to them, “Take to heart all these words I am giving as a warning to you today, so that you may command your children to follow all the words of this law carefully. (47) For they are not meaningless words to you but they are your life, and by them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.” After reciting all the words of the song, Moses told the people to consider seriously (take to heart) the words of the song. If they would meditate on the certainty and severity of the judgment that the Lord would send on them for their apostasy, the Song of Moses could serve as a powerful deterrent to future rebellion. The threat of the Lord’s retributive justice was given for their spiritual health. A healthy fear of the judgment set forth in the song…
Daily Devotional 10-8-2021
Jas 1:19 My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, Another element of effective communication is to listen carefully to what others are saying. Knowing this is not our nature. Good listening is particularly important for a peacemaker. It improves your ability to understand others, it shows that you realize you do not have all the answers, and it tells the other person that you value his or her thoughts and opinions. Even if you cannot agree with everything others say or do, your willingness to listen demonstrates respect and shows that you are trying to understand their perspective. This can help create an atmosphere of mutual respect that will improve communication. With God’s help you can develop listening skills.
Daily Devotional 10-8-2021
Col 3:12 Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, When we need to talk with others about their faults, we should ask for God’s help to resist our tendency to hammer people into submission by dwelling on their failures. Of course, we sometimes need to show them where they have sinned and fallen short of God’s ways. But that should not be the primary focus of our words, because judgment inevitably discourages. With God’s help we can instead offer hope by drawing attention to the wonderful news that God has forgiven our sins through Christ and is eager to help us change our ways.
Daily Devotional 10-7-2021
Jas 4:2-3 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. (3) When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. The sad fact is that there are wars and fights among Christians. To suggest that this paragraph does not apply to believers is unrealistic, and it robs the passage of all its value for us. What causes all this fighting? It arises from the strong desires within us which are constantly struggling to be satisfied. There is the lust to accumulate material possessions. There is the drive for prestige. There is the craving for pleasure, for the gratification of bodily appetites. These powerful forces are at work within us. We are…
Daily Devotional 10-6-2021
Joh 16:21-22 When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world. (22) So you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy from you. Jesus illustrated the truth of pain replaced by joy by the pain of childbirth followed by the joy of new life when a child is born. The disciples were entering the process of pain (your time of grief), but the light of joy was just ahead. When they saw Him after His resurrection, their joy erupted – joy that will never end since He died to sin once but now lives forever.
Daily Devotional 10-5-2021
Exo 34:6 The LORD passed in front of him and proclaimed: The LORD—the LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, The words merciful and gracious convey the idea of “overwhelmingly gracious.” long-suffering: The idea of the Hebrew idiom is that God is very slow to anger. In our idiom, we would say He has “a very long fuse.” The Hebrew word for goodness means “loyal love”; the word for truth means “faithfulness,” “truth,” and “constancy.”
Daily Devotional 10-3-2021
Isa 64:4 From ancient times no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him. The remnant implores God to rend the heavens and come down in fury on His adversaries. They recall previous interventions of God, unique manifestations of the only true God who acts for the one who waits for Him. They remember that God shows favor to those who delight in practical righteousness, but they have incurred His anger by their long-continued sins, and wonder if there is any hope for people like them to be saved.