Daily Devotionals

Proverbs 12:3

I want to be quite direct with you. Secular thought has taken a tragic toll on the servant of God's distinctiveness. 

This has begun to influence the church. Many a believer has surrendered his mind to the world system. 

The uniquely Christian mind, therefore, is a rare find. Humanism, secularism, intellectualism, and materialism have invaded our thinking to such a marked degree our testimony has become diluted—in some cases, non-existent. 

Ephesians 5:1-2

God says we are to be "imitators" of Him, which really means we are to "mimic" Him. Since God is a God of freshness and change, so we should be. 

Are you open to change in your life? Are you willing to risk? Are you flexible enough to innovate? Are you willing to tolerate the sheer possibility of making a massive change in your direction for life? 

"Lord, is it South America? Great! Or Indonesia? I'll do it. I'll move or change my profession. Fine! Are You leading me into a new venture? I'll do it. Count me in!"

How do we live with worry and stress and fear? How do we withstand these joy stealers? 

Let me be downright practical and tell you what I do. First I remind myself early in the morning and on several occasions during the day, "God, You are at work, and You are in control, and, Lord God, You know this is happening. You were there at the beginning, and You will bring everything that occurs to a conclusion that results in your greater glory in the end." 

Isaiah 55:8

God is the Potter; we are the clay. He's the Shepherd; we are the sheep. He's the Master; we are the servant. 

No matter how educated we are, no matter how much power and influence we may think we have, no matter how long we have walked with Him, no matter how significant we may imagine ourselves to be in His plan...none of that qualifies us to grasp the first particle of why He does what He does when He does it and how He chooses to do it.

1 John 2:15

If you want to stay clean, even when you're walking alone in the dark, low-ceilinged coal mine of the corrupt and secular culture, you need to remember a few practical things—four come to mind.

1. Pay close attention to what you look at.... Our eyes seem to be the closest connection to our minds.  

2. Give greater thought to the consequences of sin than to its pleasures.... Nobody ever mentions the ugly underside of pleasurable sins. 

Genesis 6:17-18

God informed Noah of His plan: He was going to destroy the world with a flood. 

So for 120 years, by faith, Noah followed the Lord's leading. He gathered the materials; he built the ark, probably to the ridicule of everyone around him. After all, this was a world that had never known rain; the earth was watered from beneath. 

Ecclesiastes 8:17

There are numerous riddles in life that remain wrapped in mystery and shrouded inside an enigma. 

The sea, for example, is an unexplainable phenomenon.... There are diseases that still remain a mystery...yet we seem to have little trouble going on through life with dozens of riddles still unanswered, hundreds of mysteries still unsolved.

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Psalm 140:7

If you determine to live according to biblical standards, be sure that your enemy is seeking to devour you. You will encounter the darts of the Devil. 

Someone put it this way: "Whoever desires to walk with God walks right into the crucible." All who choose godliness live in a crucible. The tests will come. But all is not lost. Far from it! 

Our great hope and assurance is that the One in us is greater than the one in the world.

Romans 11:33-34

The New American Standard declares that last phrase: "How unfathomable His ways!" 

Maybe you've come to discover this in your own experience. You've tried to "trace out His path" and you can't pull it off. You've tried to fathom His "unfathomable" ways and you can't. It just doesn't compute. It blows your microprocessor.