Daily Devotionals

Hebrews 6:18

Doubts often steal into our lives like termites into a house. These termite-like thoughts eat away at our faith. Usually, we can hold up pretty well under this attack. But occasionally, when a strong gale comes along—a sudden, intense blast—we discover we cannot cope. Our house begins to lean. For some people it completely collapses. It is during these stormy times, during the dark days and nights of tragedy and calamity, that we begin to feel the destructive effects of our doubts—running like stress fractures through the structure of our lives. 

Hebrews 6:20

Human logic breaks down in crisis. The mystery is enormous, and it is the enormity of it all that calls for faith. I’m sorry if that sounds like an overused bromide. But if we could unravel it, why would we need faith? If that were true, all we’d really need is the answer in the back of the book and someone to point it out to us; we’d read it, and that’s all there would be to it. But God’s plan is that we walk by faith, not by sight. It is faith and patience that stretch us to the breaking point. Such things send doubt running. 

Hebrews 6:19

The word picture of an anchor is used often in ancient literature, but it’s used only once in the New Testament in picturing hope as an anchor for our soul. Lots of hymns and gospel songs make use of this anchor metaphor. Every one of them comes back to Hebrews 6:19: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul...” 

There’s something beautiful in this word picture that I would have missed without the insight of one very capable scholar: 

Hebrews 6:19

Somewhere along the many miles of southern California shoreline walked a young, 20-year-old woman with a terminal disease in her body and a revolver in her hand. 

She had called me late one evening. We talked for a long time. A troubled young woman, her mind was filled with doubts. She had advanced leukemia. The doctors told her she would not live much longer. She checked herself out of a hospital because, as she put it, she “couldn’t take another day of that terrible isolation.” 

Revelation 21:1-6

The same Bible that develops the subject of hell also reveals the truth about heaven. What is heaven like? Playing harps all day? Lounging around on Cloud Nine? Living in enormous mansions along solid gold streets? Does it mean we’ll all have long white robes with matching sandals, glowing halos, and big flapping wings? Hardly! 

Heaven is an actual place. A prepared place, designed for God’s redeemed people, those who have accepted God’s free gift of His Son. 

Luke 16:19-31

A particular story Jesus once told comes to my mind every time I think of life after death. Because it is descriptive and brief, we are able to get a fairly uncomplicated picture in our minds of this subject of hell. 

Romans 3:10-18

It doesn’t take a PhD in English Literature to observe that God offers us a gift in salvation. The gift is eternal life, which is directly connected to His Son. 

1 John 5:11-13

Genesis 2:1-3

Following the sixth day of creation, the Lord God deliberately stopped working. He rested. It wasn’t that there was nothing else He could have done. It certainly wasn’t because He was exhausted. Omnipotence never gets tired! He hadn’t run out of ideas, for omniscience knows no mental limitations. He could easily have made more worlds, created an infinite number of other forms of life, and provided multiple millions of galaxies beyond what He did. 

But He didn’t. He stopped. 

Genesis 2:21-22

After God made man, He observed a need inside that life, a nagging loneliness that Adam couldn’t shake. 

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18) 

As a fulfilment to the promise to help Adam with his need for companionship, God got involved: