Daily Devotionals

Hebrews 10:15-25

One of the most encouraging things about new years, new weeks, and new days is the word new. Webster reveals its meaning: “refreshed, different from one of the same that has existed previously...unfamiliar.”

Best of all, it’s a place to start over. Refresh yourself. Change directions. Begin anew.

Jonah 1–4

To start over, you have to know where you are. To get somewhere else, it’s necessary to know where you’re presently standing. That’s true in a department store or a big church, on a freeway or a college campus...or in life, for that matter. Very, very seldom does anybody “just happen” to end up on the right road. The process involved in redirecting our lives is often painful, slow, and even confusing. Occasionally, it seems unbearable.

Luke 11:5-8

James 1:12

Persistence pays.

It’s a costly investment, no question about it. But the dividends are so much greater than the original outlay that you’ll almost forget the price. And if the final benefits are really significant, you’ll wonder why you ever hesitated to begin with.

Matthew 11:28–30

The definition reflects devastation:

Trauma: An injury (as a wound) to living tissue caused by an extrinsic agent...a disordered psychic or behavioural state resulting from mental or emotional stress.

Ephesians 3:14, 16

If you haven’t read yesterday’s reading, I’d like to ask you to do that. It’s crucial that you understand that God has given Christians an extra inner reservoir of power that is more than a match for the stuff life throws at us. In the verses we studied yesterday (Philippians 4:13; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Ephesians 3:14, 16; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 Corinthians 10:13), it’s called several things: strength, power, divine nature, ability.

So, if we have this miraculous ability, why do we struggle so?

Let’s get specific.

Hebrews 10:35-39

Mark 4:1–25

As you waved goodbye to your friends at church last Sunday, what mental darts were left stuck in the target of your thinking?

Can you remember those pointed challenges from the man who stood before you with Bible in hand? How many hours have passed since you sat there, opening your ears and heart to counsel from God’s always-relevant Book? A few dozen maybe?

1 Peter 3:15

Tom Skinner, the gifted black evangelist, penned a book with a title that won’t let me go: 

If Christ Is the Answer,
What Are the Questions?

I like that...not only because it’s creative, but because it strikes a chord in my soul that harmonizes well with the voices of many searchers in society.

John 7:1–14

As we’ve been discussing, there are certain times when it’s necessary to keep quiet, to relax, to back off. Intensity often leads to futility. Like the little boy who plants the seed and then nervously digs it up every day to see if it is growing. Waiting is as necessary as planting and fertilizing.