Daily Archives: September 6, 2026

Today in the Word

Today in the Word – Moody Bible Institute – Home at Last

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Read Ezra 2:1–2

There’s nothing quite like coming home after a long trip. It is wonderful to sleep in your own bed, eat familiar foods, and pet the family dog. You relax in a way that’s just not possible when you’re away. You are safe. You are secure. You are home.

God’s people had been in exile for decades—that’s a very long time in a place where they don’t speak your language or eat foods unfamiliar to you. They had endured many years in a place that was uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and often inhospitable. We might be tempted to skip over these two verses in Ezra 2 and the long list of names that follow. Instead of reading too quickly past names that get stuck in our mouths (Reelaiah? Zerubbabel?), let’s reflect on the joy these verses represent. These people have been gone for seventy years. This wasn’t a trip across town. And it certainly wasn’t a vacation or a long cruise around the Mediterranean. No, this was forced exile. It was enslavement. It was horror, shame, and abasement.

At last, they were returning home! God had heard His people’s cries for rescue from exile, just as He heard the cries of the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt (Exod. 2:23–25). God brought His people out of Egypt many centuries before this story, and He led them through wilderness to a land flowing with milk and honey. He did this because of His promises to Abraham (Gen. 15:18–21). God promised to discipline His people when they sinned against Him (Deut. 28:15–68). And finally, God promised to restore His people (Jer. 33). Here, in these short verses, God fulfills Jeremiah’s glorious promise of restoration. Here, God rescues His people once again as “they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to their own town” (v. 1).

Go Deeper

How have you seen God’s restoration in your life? What sort of emotions does this record of God’s faithfulness create in your heart?

Pray with Us

We know the pain of separation from what is comfortable and familiar, God. Please show us where we can grow in the moments that are uncomfortable, even when it is hard.

My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.Isaiah 32:18

 

 

 

https://www.moodybible.org/

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread – Contending for the Faith

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Save others by snatching them from the fire; 
to others show mercy, mixed with fear. Jude 1:23

Today’s Scripture

Jude 1:20-23

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Today’s Devotion

A twenty-seven-year-old student studying in Japan had to be rescued from Mount Fuji twice in one week! After being airlifted during his first climb due to dangerous conditions, he realized he’d left his phone and other belongings behind. Four days later, ignoring warnings, he returned to the mountain, only to need to be rescued again—this time suffering from altitude sickness. His story made headlines for its rarity but also because he’d knowingly trekked back into danger.

This account mirrors a spiritual reality—we often tend to head back to what God has rescued us from. Jude captures this tension in his little letter. Written to a church threatened by false teachers and moral compromises, he exhorted believers “to contend for the faith” (1:3), not just for themselves but for others too. Jude challenged them to snatch others “from the fire” (v. 23)—taking an active role in shielding struggling believers from false teachers. As believers in Jesus, we can’t simply stand back and watch others flounder and fail.

Today, God is calling us to rescue others and to resist returning to the place we were rescued from. His grace will rescue us more than once, but it also calls us to live like we’ve already been rescued. Through God’s strength, let’s contend for the faith and help others be built up in the “most holy faith” (v. 20).

Reflect & Pray

How can we show mercy to believers who doubt? 
What does it mean to show mercy mixed with reverent fear?

Dear God, please help me contend for the faith and help those experiencing doubt.

Today’s Insights

Because of the prevailing environment in Jude’s day—which included “ungodly” spiritual leaders who were promoting damaging doctrines (1:4)—he wrote an urgent, intense letter to believers in Jesus whom he addressed as “dear friends” (vv. 3, 17, 20), sometimes translated “beloved.” He strongly urged the believers “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (v. 3). The King James Version uses stronger language, rendering the Greek word epagōnizomai as “earnestly contend.” It means “to struggle for,” “to exercise great effort and exertion for something.” It was used of athletic contests to describe the struggle and effort expended by the athletes. The faith refers to the teaching of Christ and the apostles that was believed and practiced by His followers. Today, God will help those who’ve heard and responded to the truth of Scripture to earnestly “contend for the faith,” remain faithful, and encourage others who are being deceived by false teachers.

For further study, read: Reclaiming Hope

 

 

http://www.odb.org

Denison Forum

Denison Forum – Ministry amid the midterms

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When to be prophetic and when to be pastoral

Midterm elections are always important, but some can feel more important than others. This year, control of the House and the Senate is very much in question, with a variety of issues on the table that could be decisively affected, among them:

  • Data centers
  • Freedom of religion vs. Sharia law
  • The war in Iran
  • US support for Israel
  • Immigration enforcement
  • Democratic socialism
  • Efforts to impeach the president.

How do pastors serve faithfully amid such division and distraction?

“I see my torpor and my negligence”

St. Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) is so called because he is commonly listed among the four key “doctors” of the Western Church, alongside Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome. Serving as the pope in Rome during plague, floods, and invasions, he organized church resources to feed the poor, often inviting impoverished people to his personal table. He preached the gospel from church to church and saw himself as a servant of the servants of God.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Ministry amid the midterms →

Days of Praise

Days of Praise – Sojourners

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by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

“For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” (1 Chronicles 29:15)

All of God’s people, whether ancient Israelites or modern Christians, need to recognize that we are mere “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). This world is not our home, as the old gospel song puts it, and we must not let our roots get down too deep in this materialistic world.

The words of our text are in David’s last recorded prayer before his death. He was a great king and very wealthy in material things, but he still recognized that his real home was not in the earthly Jerusalem but in heaven.

So should we. The apostle Paul wrote, “For our conversation [the Greek word here literally means ‘citizenship’] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). We are merely serving in this world as “ambassadors for Christ,” and our business here, representing the court of heaven, is to urge men, “in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Why should we spend time and money beautifying a home on Earth when Christ has gone to prepare a mansion for us in heaven (John 14:2)? Remember Abraham, who by faith “sojourned . . . in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles” (Hebrews 11:9). “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11:16).

Also remember Paul, who had “no certain dwellingplace” (1 Corinthians 4:11), not to mention the Lord Jesus Himself, who had “not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). We do well, therefore, to “pass the time of [our] sojourning here in fear” (1 Peter 1:17)—that is, reverential fear of God (never fear of man)—as good citizens of our heavenly country. HMM

 

 

 

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

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Keep Your Promises

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He who honors those who fear the Lord (who revere and worship Him); who swears to his own hurt and does not change; [he who] does not put out his money for interest [to one of his own people] and who will not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

Psalm 15:4-5 (AMPC)

There are times when I make a commitment to do something that later I regret. Then I try to figure out some way to get out of doing what I said I would do. I argue, “God, surely You don’t want me to do this thing and miss this other great opportunity.”

The only thing the Lord ever says to me is, “You gave your word, Joyce. Be a woman of integrity, and I will bless you.” If we are people of integrity, God will bring other good opportunities around another time with even more blessings.

Prayer of the Day: Lord, help me keep my word even when it costs me. Make me a person of integrity, trusting You to bring greater blessings in Your time, amen.

 

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org