Daily Archives: September 22, 2025

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread – Recognizing Jesus

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Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? John 14:9

Today’s Scripture

John 14:8-14

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Today’s Devotional

Richard Griffin was Queen Elizabeth II’s personal police officer for fourteen years. Accompanying her on a picnic in the hills near Balmoral Castle one day, they met two American hikers. “Have you ever met the Queen?” they asked, not recognizing the monarch in plain dress. “I haven’t,” the Queen quipped, “but Richard here meets her regularly!” Thrilled to meet someone close to royalty, the hikers then handed the Queen their camera, posed with Richard, and asked her to take a photo!

It isn’t the first time someone has been in the presence of an important person unawares. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it,” Jacob said after encountering God in a dream at Bethel (Genesis 28:16). And when Philip asked Jesus to show the disciples the Father, Jesus replied, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Like the hikers, the disciples had been ready to hand Jesus the camera, not recognizing He was the one to zoom in on (vv. 10-11).

Like the Queen that day, Jesus hasn’t always been recognized for who He really is. Beyond a “wise teacher” or “great moral leader,” He’s God in the flesh and King of the world (1:14; 18:36). What a revelation it is when we discover it!

Reflect & Pray

What would you say to Jesus if you met Him on a picnic trip? Who do you understand Him to be?

 

Dear Jesus, I praise You today for being the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and far more than I can ever grasp.

 

Learn more about the divinity and humanity of Jesus.

Today’s Insights

Lack of spiritual sight wasn’t limited to those closest to Jesus. The beginning of John’s gospel says this about people not being able to see Christ for who He is: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (1:10-11).

Yet Jesus had expectations for those who were closest to Him—those who’d heard His words, who’d seen and experienced His works. He rebuked His disciple for not recognizing Him: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?” (14:9). When we honestly and prayerfully evaluate the words and works of Christ as seen in the Gospels, the Spirit can open our eyes and hearts regarding His identity as God’s Son and the King of Kings, and we’ll be welcomed into the family of God (1:12-13).

 

http://www.odb.org

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Free to Follow the Spirit

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Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (emancipation from bondage, freedom).

2 Corinthians 3:17 (AMPC)

Although I have taught many times before on the subject of legalism as a deterrent to a Spirit-led life, I want to elaborate on it more because I believe it is a tremendous hindrance to hearing from God.

I don’t believe we can experience joy unless we are led by God’s Spirit, and we cannot be led by the Spirit and live under the law simultaneously. A legalistic mentality says that everyone has to do everything the same way, all the time. But God’s Spirit leads us individually and often in unique, creative ways.

God’s written Word says the same thing to everyone, and it is not a matter of private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20). This means God’s Word does not say one thing to one person and something else to others. However, the direct leadership of the Holy Spirit is a personal issue.

God may lead one person not to eat sugar because of a health issue in that person’s life. That doesn’t mean no one can eat sugar. People who are legalistic try to take God’s Word to others and make it a law for them.

I once heard that by the time Jesus was born, the scribes and Pharisees had turned the Ten Commandments into two thousand rules for people to follow. Imagine trying to live under that kind of law. That’s bondage!

Jesus came to set captives free. We are not free to do whatever we feel like doing, but we have been set free from legalism and are now free to follow the Holy Spirit in all the creative, personal ways in which He leads us.

If He knows each time we sit down or stand up and took the time to tell us about in His Word, then surely He sees and cares about everything else.

Prayer of the Day: Holy Spirit, I ask You to free me from legalism. Help me embrace the joy of Your personal, creative guidance and follow You with confidence, not comparison or control. In the name of Jesus, amen.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Denison Forum

Denison Forum – Church leadership: Check your fears

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In all my life, I have never seen so many people afraid of so many things.

War, poverty, disease, crime, shortages, violence, and suffering are in news reports on any channel, through the internet, and even intruding upon “social” accounts.

I don’t discount fears. They are real, and they have a way of adding up.

Is it any wonder that Jesus continued to say “fear not” in his time with the disciples?

Do you fear man or God?

We just fear so many things and so often. But, in Luke 12, Jesus goes to the core of fear and divides it into two disparate categories: those who fear man and those who fear God.

He starts with a warning about the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when we create a public impression to hide our real motives. It’s as though we wear a mask and play-act at who we really are because we are afraid of people. Being a fake is no laughing matter to God, and, as a pastor, I find it especially poignant that Jesus is exposing religious leaders as fakes.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t give this warning to the multitude who are crowding on top of one another to get to him but to the twelve because they needed it. Jesus knew even they could fall to hypocrisy, and Jesus loved them enough to say the hard truth to them. They need to beware, to watch out, because that small bit of spiritual leaven is dangerous.

And what a picture of hypocrisy Jesus gave when he called it leaven. You and I know the implications: something that can start small and grow, something that works its way through the entirety of where it is placed, and something that is hard, if not impossible, to remove.

Doesn’t that describe fear well too?

Hypocrisy is born of the fear of man and he said it was the leaven of the Pharisees as it had filled their lives.

What if Jesus called you a hypocrite?

Think about all the things you might be afraid of and ask yourself this: “How afraid would I be if Jesus called me a hypocrite”?

Your answer determines which column you fit in.

The Fear of Man column isn’t really afraid of his opinion.

But if you line up under the Fear of God column, these are chilling words.

It also shows just how far away from God religious people can be. Didn’t they know they were pretending to be someone they were not?

And they had to be shocked at how Jesus was able to see through their pretense, but there is no indication that they ever considered listening to him and making a change. They fit into the description of verse 4: they feared man, not God.

Can that be true today?

Are there religious people, even those serving in ministry, who fear men more than God?

If Jesus warned the disciples, it seems that answer is yes.

When my focus changed

The church I serve started as a plant. During those early days when money was tight and the future uncertain, a few people banded together to try to force a change in the direction of our mission.

Eventually, they left. As you know, they seldom leave silently.

I was experiencing my first real fear of man as a pastor and it must have shown. One of our early leaders pulled me aside and told me he was praying I wasn’t “snakebit.” He had grown up in the country, where a snake bite could alter your behavior and make you live with fear of the next snake. He reminded me that I was here to serve God and he loved me and believed in me.

In those few words, I realized my focus had changed and I never saw it coming.

I was looking at and fearing man so much I had not even given a glance toward the God who called me. I have come to believe that it’s a constant struggle for most pastors. So let me encourage you that if you feel that way, you are not the first, and you don’t have to live with that fear.

Even the great prophet Jeremiah was afraid and needed straight talk about fearing man and he got it! “Get up and dress and go out and tell them whatever I tell you to say. Don’t be afraid of them, or else I will make a fool of you in front of them” (Jeremiah 1:17 TLB).

Then, just like the heavenly Father that God is, he seems to pull Jeremiah close in verse 19 and says,  “‘They will try, but they will fail. For I am with you,’ says the Lord. ‘I will deliver you.’”

It’s like Oswald  Chambers said, “The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

I do not want to fear everything else. I want to fear God.

The benefits of fearing God

As ministers, we have already made the big decision to follow Jesus in a life of ministry, but sometimes we need to be reminded of some of the benefits of fearing God:

  • I have a singular focus on God.
  • I don’t have to fear man.
  • I accept the blessing of personal conviction rather than run from it. God is drawing me to be close to him.
  • I am in a relationship with the only One who knows me completely and still loves me.
  • I don’t labor alone but with him.
  • I don’t know what is next, but God does.
  • I am part of something eternally significant.
  • I can pray with confidence.
  • I am on the winning side. We’ve read the Bible, and we know how this ends.

I’ll end with the testimony of David: “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed” (Psalm 34:4–5).

 

Denison Forum

Days of Praise

Days of Praise – Redeemed!

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by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Peter 1:18-19)

How glibly we use the terms redeemed, redemption, and ransom. But what do they mean, and more importantly, what did Christ’s act of redemption mean?

Three Greek words and their derivations are used in the New Testament to denote various aspects of this truth. In our text, “redeemed” comes from lutroo, which means to set free, buy back, or ransom. Christ’s innocent blood, sacrificed for us, bought us back. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12).

Redeemed from what? From slavery to sin. Jesus taught, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Thankfully, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13). The Greek word here is exagorazo, meaning to buy up, to ransom from the market place (i.e., agora), which could be called “the slave market of sin.” He ransomed us, redeeming us from the horrors of slavery to sin by His death on the cross.

The final word is apolutrosis, “to ransom in full.” He has paid the full penalty! “It is finished” (John 19:30), He said as He died. In Him alone “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7).

Each of us needs to appropriate His plan, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). JDM

 

 

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

My Utmost for His Highest

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers – The Disciple’s Master

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Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. — John 13:13 kjv

To have a master and to be mastered aren’t the same thing. To have Jesus as a master means that there is someone who knows me better than I know myself, someone who is closer than a friend, who is able to satisfy the deepest longing of my heart. It’s to belong to someone who gives me the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have Jesus as my master is all this and nothing less.

To be mastered is different; it implies coercion or force. Jesus Christ never enforces obedience. At certain times, I wish he would, but he doesn’t. At other times, I wish he’d leave me alone, but he won’t.

“Ye call me Master and Lord.” We call Jesus our Lord and Master, but is he? “Master” and “Lord” have little place in today’s vocabulary. We prefer “Savior,” “Teacher,” and “Healer.” The only word to describe the experience of having Jesus as master is love, and many of us know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we use the word obey. We use it to mean the submission of a weaker person to a more powerful person. In the Bible, obedience is based on a relationship of equals: the relationship of the Father and the Son. Our Lord wasn’t God’s servant; he was God’s Son. Jesus obeyed his Father because he loved him.

Our relationship to Jesus is to be the same as his relationship to the Father. If instead we think we are being mastered, it is proof that we have no master. To take this attitude toward Jesus is to be far from the relationship he wants. He wants us in a relationship in which he is easily and effortlessly Master, so much so that we aren’t even conscious of it. All we know is that we love him, and that we are his to rule.

Ecclesiastes 10-12; Galatians 1

Wisdom from Oswald

The Christian Church should not be a secret society of specialists, but a public manifestation of believers in Jesus. Facing Reality, 34 R

 

 

https://utmost.org/

Billy Graham

Billy Graham – Salvation Is an Act of God

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There is salvation in no one else! Under all heaven there is no other name for men to call upon to save them.

—Acts 4:12 (TLB)

Salvation is an act of God. It is initiated by God, wrought by God, and sustained by God. The faith that saves the soul is described as faith in Christ as the Son of God—not as a good man or a great man, but as the uniquely begotten Son of the living God!

This is consistent with the witness of the entire New Testament and with the proclamations of the first preachers of the Gospel. All proclaim the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ as deity.

Prayer for the day

Lord Jesus, Son of God, I worship You unreservedly and praise Your holy name.

 

 

https://billygraham.org/

GuidePosts

Guideposts – Devotions for Women – Flawless in His Eyes

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You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.—Song of Solomon 4:7 (NIV)

In God’s eyes,, you are perfect, a stunning masterpiece. You are His treasured child, made whole through Christ’s selfless act on the cross. Welcome His perspective of you, let it redefine how you see yourself and lift your spirits. Your beauty is not defined by your actions or your physical appearance, but by the simple, profound fact that you are deeply loved by God.

Lord, help me to see myself through Your eyes, understanding that I am beautiful and flawless in Your sight.

 

 

 

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

News and Info

It Is God Alone That Secures Our Nation’s Liberty And Peace

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A Call Back To Our Foundations: It Is God Alone That Secures Our Nation’s Liberty And Peace

 

This week, in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, many are asking whether incendiary words are fueling violent deeds. A recent Reuters poll found roughly two in three Americans believe harsh political rhetoric encourages violence. And when U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on a podcast that the Trump administration would target “hate speech,” the backlash from conservatives was swift; she later clarified that any focus must be on true threats of violence, not the nebulous catch-all of “hate speech.”

But is speech the core problem? Jesus taught, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Words reveal what is inside; they do not create it. If the heart is diseased, our discourse will be too.

Our descent into violence did not begin with profanity-laced accusations on the floor of Congress. It began when our leaders — and many others — abandoned the founding truth that rights come from God, not government. The Declaration of Independence asserts that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” That conviction restrains government from becoming tyrannical and restrains citizens from taking justice into their own hands. When rights are treated as government-issued rather than God-given, they can be revoked when inconvenient — and trampled by those willing to intimidate.

That rejection rests on a deeper shift: the denial of transcendent truth. The Founders called some truths “self-evident” — fixed, enduring, above politics. Today, truth is too often reduced to preference or power. In that vacuum, disagreement is not argued; it is punished. Without a shared standard, the loudest crowd, the angriest rhetoric, or the most ruthless actor prevails. Violence becomes the ultimate argument.

Beneath even that lies the loss of God as Creator. If we are not made in His image, human life has no inherent worth. If He is not the Author of life, life can be discarded whenever it is inconvenient or intolerable. Remove God from public life, and the ground under human dignity crumbles; nothing durable remains to resist the slide into total lawlessness.

History offers sobering case studies. The blood-soaked revolutions and regimes of the 20th century — Soviet communism, Maoism, Nazism — were driven by ideologies that denied God, discarded objective truth, and devalued people. Once God was rejected, persons became expendable, and mass violence followed. We are not immune to similar consequences if we persist down this path.

That is why this moment calls us back — not merely to America first principles, but to the eternal foundation beneath them. We must recover the conviction that there is a Creator who gives life, endows rights, and establishes truth. From that foundation, we can demand just laws, reject political revenge, and rebuild a culture where freedom and justice flourish. This renewal begins close to home: pastors preaching without fear or favor, parents shaping tender consciences, neighbors refusing to dehumanize opponents, and citizens insisting that every person bears the image of God.

So let us pray, speak the truth in love, and stand with courage — calling our nation back to the God who alone secures both our liberty and our peace.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Source: A Call Back To Our Foundations: It Is God Alone That Secures Our Nation’s Liberty And Peace – Harbinger’s Daily