Daily Archives: August 15, 2024

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread – Convicted and Freed

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Bible in a Year :

I acknowledged my sin to you.

Psalm 32:5

 

Today’s Scripture & Insight :

Psalm 32:1-7

“I didn’t do it!” It was a lie, and I almost got away with it, until God stopped me. When I was in middle school, I was part of a group shooting spitballs in the back of our band during a performance. Our director was an ex-marine and famous for discipline, and I was terrified of him. So when my partners in crime implicated me, I lied to him about it. Then I lied to my father also.

But God wouldn’t allow the lie to go on. He gave me a very guilty conscience about it. After resisting for weeks, I relented. I asked God and my dad for forgiveness. A while later, I went to my director’s house and tearfully confessed. Thankfully, he was kind and forgiving.

I’ll never forget how good it felt to have that burden lifted. I was free from the weight of guilt and happy for the first time in weeks. David describes a time of conviction and confession in his life too. He tells God, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away . . . . For day and night your hand was heavy on me.” He continues, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you” (Psalm 32:3-5).

Authenticity matters to God. He wants us to confess our sins to Him and also to ask forgiveness of those we’ve wronged. “You forgave the guilt of my sin,” David proclaims (v. 5). How good it is to know the freedom of God’s forgiveness!

By:  James Banks

Reflect & Pray

How has being authentic with God helped you? How has Jesus’ forgiveness lightened your load and changed your life?

Thank You for forgiving my sins when I confess them to You, loving Father. Please help me to always be authentic with You.

 

 

http://www.odb.org

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Knowledge and Confidence

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To you it was shown, that you might realize and have personal knowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him. Out of heaven He made you hear His voice, that He might correct, discipline, and admonish you; and on earth He made you see His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire.

Deuteronomy 4:35-36 (AMPC)

One night I was lying in bed and heard a noise upstairs. The longer I listened to it, the more frightened I became. Finally, shaking from fear, I went upstairs to see what it was. I had to laugh when I discovered it was ice cubes falling in the ice tray from the ice maker. It just happened that the way they were falling was making a noise they did not normally make.

Lack of knowledge causes fear, and knowledge removes it. Knowledge will help you have confidence. If you are going for a job interview, make sure you are prepared and have all the knowledge you will need with you to answer questions the interviewer may ask you. We live in a world today where knowledge is as close as your computer. Not only can you do online research about the company you’re applying to, but you can find tips on how to have a successful interview!

Prayer of the Day: Lord, equip me with the knowledge I need to be confident, and grant me the kind of confidence that leads to success. Point me to what I need to know to be effective for You, amen.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Denison Forum

Denison Forum – How a young mother survived a grizzly bear attack

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What is the path to personal meaning?

Vanessa Chaput, age twenty-four, was jogging recently on a paved trail near a highway and residential homes in Yukon, Canada. Her German Shepard Luna was with her. Suddenly, she was attacked by three grizzly bears. She said later that the largest one “took my head in its mouth, and I ended up on the ground.” In that moment she thought, “I’m not ready to leave my daughter and my husband,” so she just “went into survival mode,” refusing to give in to the massive animal. The bear suddenly let go of her head, perhaps because her hair clip exploded in its mouth. Luna’s barking may also have scared the bear away.

She was hospitalized for ten days, receiving more than thirty stitches on her head, back, arm, and ear. She has a broken arm as well. “I am very shocked at how lucky I am,” she says. “I’m extremely thankful that God was watching over me that day.”

“Man cannot live without meaning”

Vanessa’s refusal to die and leave her daughter and husband powerfully illustrates Nietzsche’s reflection I quoted earlier this week: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Ideas change the world, for good or for bad.

As examples of the latter:

  • The Paris Olympics were successful in large part because 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers, and 22,000 private security guards protected the games from terrorists driven by jihadist ideology.
  • The teenage terrorists who allegedly targeted as many as twenty thousand Taylor Swift fans in Austria were motivated by the same resurgent ISIS ideology now threatening the West.
  • China’s autocratic leader, Xi Jinping, is enabling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in order to vindicate Marxist doctrine.
  • Israel’s jihadist opponents are motivated by an ideology that paints the Jewish state as the enemy of Islam.

On the positive side, Arthur Brooks writes in the Atlantic that we can find meaning in life through coherence (how the events of our lives fit together), purpose (having goals and direction), and significance (a sense of our inherent value).

As the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius advised:

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. Therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Pastor and author Paul Powell likewise noted:

If we are the illegitimate offspring of thoughtless order, then we have no identity and life has no meaning. However, if we have been created by God, then we have little problem with knowing who we are. Here is a person created in the image of God and for fellowship with God.

He then quoted Albert Camus: “Here is what frightens me: to see the sense of this life dissipated. To see our reason for existence disappear. That is what is intolerable. Man cannot live without meaning.”

How do we find it?

Three paths to finding personal meaning

One: Acknowledge our need for divine wisdom

David reported: “God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God” (Psalm 53:2). What was the result? “They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one” (v. 3). Paul echoed the same: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

This means that you and I need wisdom beyond our fallen minds. The first step to finding it is seeking it no matter our circumstances. Consider this resolution: “On my best day, may I remember that I still need God as desperately as I did on my worst day.”

Two: Submit to the Spirit

My wife framed this promise for me years ago, and I have it on my desk where I can see it today: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). When we submit to the Spirit, we can be led by the Spirit (John 16:13).

Consequently, I invite you to join me in praying these words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: “Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will.”

Three: Live by biblical truth

Charles Spurgeon said, “The word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed.” As British philosopher J. V. Langmead Casserley observed, we do not break God’s commandments—we break ourselves on them.

Part of living by Scripture is persuading others to do the same (1 Peter 3:15). George Orwell noted, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” Athanasius (died AD 373) resolved: “If the world is against truth, then I am against the world.”

In No God But God, Os Guinness writes:

“As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has reminded us, just as a shout in the mountain can start an avalanche, so a word or stand for truth that does God’s work in God’s way in God’s time can have an incalculable effect.”

How will you “stand for truth” today?

NOTE: Every night before we sleep, we face a choice: replay the day’s stress or embrace God’s wisdom. . . and the peace that comes with it. With Wisdom Matters, the new 365-evening devotional by Janet Denison, you can end your day focusing on God’s word and a verse of Scripture that will guide you the next day. Get your copy of Wisdom Matters today.

Wednesday news to know:

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“The Christian truth is attractive and persuasive because it responds to humanity’s deepest needs.” —Pope Francis

 

Denison Forum

Days of Praise

Days of Praise – The Order of Melchizedek

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by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

“The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4)

The importance of this intriguing verse is indicated both by the fact that it is the central verse of a great Messianic psalm (quoted at least 12 times in the New Testament) and also because this one verse constitutes one of the main themes of chapters 5–7 of Hebrews, where it is quoted no fewer than five times (Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:17, 21) and where Melchizedek himself is mentioned nine times. It refers to the fascinating personage glimpsed briefly in Genesis 14:18-20. Melchizedek (meaning “King of Righteousness”) is said to have been “King of Salem” (or “Peace”), but there is no record, either in secular history or elsewhere in the Bible, that there ever was such a city or earthly king. He was also called the “priest of the most high God” (Hebrews 7:1), and he suddenly appeared, then disappeared as suddenly as he had come.

Commentators mostly have assumed that Melchizedek was the chieftain of a small settlement of which we have no record, but this hardly does justice to the exalted descriptions of him in Scripture. He was obviously greater than Abraham (Hebrews 7:4) and Aaron, the founder of the Levitical priesthood. Furthermore, he was “without father, without mother,…having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually” (Hebrews 7:3). Such language is hardly appropriate merely because no genealogy is recorded.

If one takes the Bible literally, such statements could be true only of God Himself, appearing briefly in the pre-incarnate state of the Second Person as King of all peace and righteousness. Now this same divine Person, “because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him” (Hebrews 7:24-25). HMM

 

 

https://www.icr.org/articles/type/6

 

My Utmost for His Highest

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers – Signs of the New Birth

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You must be born again. — John 3:7

How can someone be born when they are old?’ Nicodemus asked. . . . Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit’” (John 3:4–5). When someone dies to every self-righteous impulse, to their religion and their virtues and everything they’ve been leaning on apart from Jesus Christ, then they may be born of the Spirit and receive into themselves a life that was never there before. This new life manifests itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness.

“To all who did receive him . . . he gave the right to become children of God” (1:12). Is my knowledge of Jesus based on personal spiritual perception or on what I’ve heard others say? Do I have something in my life that connects me to Jesus Christ as my savior? The bedrock of any spiritual history must be personal knowledge. To be born again means that I see Jesus with my own eyes.

“No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (3:3). The new birth brings with it a new power of vision that enables me to discern God’s rule. Am I discerning it? Or am I merely hunting for miraculous signs of his kingdom? When I am born again, I see that his rule was there all along.

“No one who is born of God will continue to sin” (1 John 3:9). Have I stopped sinning, or am I merely trying to stop sinning? To be born of God means that I have received from him the supernatural power to stop sinning. The Bible never asks, “Should a Christian sin?” It says emphatically that no one born of God will continue to sin. The effect of the new birth in us isn’t simply that we receive the power to stop sinning; it’s that we actually stop sinning. First John 3:9 doesn’t mean that we can’t sin; it means that if we obey the life of God in us, we needn’t sin.

Psalms 91-93; Romans 15:1-13

Wisdom from Oswald

We never enter into the Kingdom of God by having our head questions answered, but only by commitment.
The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption

 

 

https://utmost.org/

Billy Graham

Billy Graham – Wonders of Nature

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These things that were written in the Scriptures so long ago are to teach us . . .
—Romans 15:4 (TLB)

In the wonders of nature we see God’s laws in operation. Who has not looked up at the stars on a cloudless night and marveled in silent awe at the glory of God’s handiwork? Who has not felt his heart lifted in the spring of the year, as he sees all creation bursting with new life and vigor? In the beauty and abundance around us we see the magnitude of God’s power and the infinite detail of His planning; but nature tells us nothing of God’s love or God’s grace. Conscience tells us in our innermost being of the presence of God and of the moral difference between good and evil; but this is a fragmentary message, in no way as distinct and comprehensive as the lessons of the Bible. It is only in its pages that we find the clear and unmistakable message upon which all true Christianity is based.

Distracted? Here’s how you can focus on God.

Lea este devocional en español en es.billygraham.org.

 

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GuidePosts

Guideposts – Devotions for Women – This Is the Way

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Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”—Isaiah 30:21 (NIV)

Make time to focus on God. Keep silent and enjoy His presence. Let His spirit speak deeply to your heart as He shows you His ways. Listen and trust Him because His answers are always right. He will grow you in holiness and love as he leads you to a life of abundance.

Heavenly Father, I believe in Your power. I put all of my faith in You.

 

 

https://guideposts.org/daily-devotions/devotions-for-women/devotions-for-faith-prayer-devotions-for-women/

Every Man Ministry

Every Man Ministry – Kenny Luck -Why Silence?

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Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.  ––1 Kings 19:11-12

When I talk about the importance of getting alone with God, guys inevitably ask, “You mean, reading my Bible and praying?” Yes, that’s a big part of it—but not exactly what I’m talking about. For hundreds of years Christians practiced silence and solitude as part of their spiritual ritual. And let’s face it, it was a lot easier to find a quiet place to hear from God in 1524 than it is in 2024.

Particularly prior to the Industrial Revolution, living in sync with one’s natural environment was just what people did. Prior to 1000, even, it’s believed that the number of people living in urban settings was less than 5%. By 1800, this number reached about 8%; and by 1900 it had increased to around 16%. The vast majority of folks were in rural areas and lived an agrarian lifestyle—farming, raising livestock, etc. People didn’t need to “get away” into nature—that’s just where they lived. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th century that people increasingly left the countryside to live in the new and growing cities.

With urbanization I believe we lost something that God never intended for us to lose: our familiarity with silence and solitude. Most of us have not only lost touch with the natural world God created, we’ve lost touch with the ability to meet Him there—away from the lights, people, noise, and stress. We are a people increasingly isolated from the ways and means by which we hear God most clearly: when we are alone in a quiet place.

Depending on your life stage, it can be tough to get alone with God to not “do” anything. Just listen. Just sit. Just be in His presence. Sound hard (or boring)? At first, yeah. It can be. But like everything else, practice is the key. Get away for a few hours or for a day—just you and your Bible—and spend some time alone with God in a natural, relaxing place. If you can’t do that—no car, no time, etc.—then go to a quiet park. Or on a walk to a quiet place in your neighborhood. Listen for His voice; practice tuning your ear to His frequency. Try not to “talk” to Him—even if for just five minutes to start—and just listen.

Listening to God in silence is a dying art. The Father is looking for men who are willing to master the craft and teach it to others.

Father, help me find solitude and silence so I can hear You more clearly. 

 

 

Every Man Ministries