Category: Daily Devotions

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds …” (James 1:2) It takes a long time and an incredible amount of pressure to turn a worthless piece of carbon into a valuable diamond. That’s why James writes: “Consider it a sheer gift … when tests and challenges come at you…

“Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:31-32) An elder of the inner-city church where I served advised me that if I was serious about connecting with families in the local neighborhood, I had…

“But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10) Job lost his family and his fortune in a single day. Yet, looking back he wrote, “When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” It takes much more heat to produce…

“You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” (John 15:3) Your new nature is programmed to want to obey God in much the same way a calculator is programmed to compute numbers. When you put in the right information, you get the right response. And when you feed your new…

“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” (John 20:19) Have you ever felt ashamed? I realize that’s kind of a dumb question to…

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22) James writes: “Prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural…

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah.” (John 1:41) Today’s Bible reading is about Jesus’ first followers and how they invited others to come and meet him. John (the baptizer) had met Jesus the day before, and he learned from God that Jesus…

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:36) There are two stories in this Bible passage: The parable about the man beaten by robbers, and the story about Jesus and the expert in the law. The main question from the legal…

“But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven.” (Deuteronomy 11:11) This year look to God for your needs: “The land which you cross over to possess … drinks water from the rain of heaven.” No matter what political party…