Read: Matthew 6:7-13

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (v. 8)

I like to be persuasive. If someone hears my argument but disagrees, I try again with a different approach. As my prayer journals attest, it’s easy to take the same approach with God: to try to pray as persuasively as possible and keep working the angles until we’ve got a clear shot at a ‘Yes.’ But Jesus says this is the wrong way to go about things. The reason for Jesus’ rebuke is a beautiful one: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Maybe if you worship a powerful deity far, far away, you are left to scramble, cajole, or argue your way in. But that is a sad alternative to having a loving Father, who is attuned to all our needs, which is what the Heidelberg Catechism refers to as our “unshakable foundation,” the confidence of knowing that “even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord” (A. 117).

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Jesus’ Prayer →

Read: Acts 5:12-16

Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles (v. 12)

Do miracles still happen? One school of thought is that even if miracles happened in Bible times, they don’t happen anymore. But if miracles cannot happen now, how is it they happened then? Has the fundamental reality of the universe somehow changed? What power today prevents God from intervening in human affairs in amazing, extraordinary ways?

Another line of thought is that miracles ceased when Jesus left the earth. But that’s not true. Long after Jesus left, “many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles” (Acts 5:12). Paul healed a man crippled from birth. Peter raised Dorcas from the dead. Jesus had assured the disciples that “whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do” (John 14:12).

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Do Miracles Still Happen? →

Read: John 11:38-46

He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” (v. 43)

The raising of Lazarus is the masterpiece of Jesus’ miracles, and by far the most expensive—it cost him his life. At the outset of his ministry Jesus made wine flow from water, and now he makes blood run warm again in a man dead in a tomb. Death had met its match, and that was the last straw for some of the mourners as they left to tattle to the authorities. “So from that day on they made plans to put him to death” (John 11:53).

Many New Testament miracles show people cooperating with Jesus, so to speak. That is, they have faith, they trust, they take up their mat and walk, they go show themselves to the priests, they fish from the other side of the boat. But Lazarus does nothing to cooperate. He is inert, a corpse. So much for God needing our cooperation. On that day in Bethany God acts alone, intervening in human affairs, doing what only God can do—raise the dead.

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – The Raising Of Lazarus →

Read: Matthew 14:22-33

So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. (v. 29)

Ask yourself this question: “Where do I find myself in this sacred story?” Are you sitting in the boat, a place of safety and security? Are you striding boldly across the sea? Or maybe you’ve begun to sink, crying out, “Lord, save me!”

The most decisive moments of life happen when, trusting in Jesus, we step out of the boat. Perhaps you’ve been unhappy in your job for too long, and the time has come to step out of the security it offers and pursue the work you sense you were created to do. Perhaps you’ve avoided speaking up, afraid you might be rejected, or afraid to disagree with a powerful person, and the time has come to tell it like it is. Perhaps your church keeps declining, getting older, getting smaller, afraid to adapt, afraid to step out into the community, and you are beginning to realize that unless you change, you have no future.

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Get Out Of the Boat →

Read: Mark 8:22-26

Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. (v. 25)

How observant are you? On a stoplight, which color is on top—red or green? When water in your sink goes down the drain, does it swirl clockwise or counter clockwise? How many matches are there in a standard pack? Sometimes the things with which we are most familiar are the very things we have most difficulty seeing.

Despite decades of reading and studying the Bible, I keep discovering things that I hadn’t noticed before. Only recently did it occur to me that to heal the blind man of Bethsaida, Jesus had to touch him twice. The Gospels record over 30 healing miracles Jesus performed, and in all those miracles one touch was enough. But in this instance healing requires a second touch. This is a two-stage miracle, and Mark doesn’t give us any clue as to why.

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – A Second Touch →

Read: Mark 5:1-20

. . . there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. (v. 2)

Who is to blame for this poor man’s problems? When you are possessed, and you keep hurting yourself and hurting others, whose fault is that? Is the Gerasene demoniac himself to blame, or is he at the mercy of external forces that make him do hurtful things that he doesn’t want to do?

A young boy watches, daily, as his mother is abused by his drunken father. The boy grows up, becomes a man, begins to drink, and now he abuses his wife. Whose fault is that? Whose sin is to blame?

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Who Is to Blame? →

Read: John 5:1-9

He said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” (v. 6)

She never knew it, but behind her back people called her Boo-Hoo, because she was always talking about how badly she’d been treated in life. She’d been cheated, mistreated, shortchanged, passed by, unfairly dealt with. Other people always got the big break she deserved. Nobody gave her a chance. Nobody understood her. Nobody appreciated her. It’s like she had a tape player in her head, and whenever she opened her mouth out came this sad song. Boo-Hoo.

“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asks. And immediately, out comes the tale of woe: “I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up . . . while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus doesn’t offer sympathy. He doesn’t commiserate. All Jesus wants to know is: “Do you want to be healed?”

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Do You Want To Be Healed? →

Read: Mark 2:1-12

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (v. 5)

There are two ways to get to the top of a tall oak tree—you can roll up your sleeves and start climbing, or you can sit on an acorn. The four friends in the Gospel of Mark, these guys don’t sit on acorns. Unable to get near Jesus on account of the crowd, the four friends scramble up onto the roof and tear open a hole so that they can lower their paralyzed buddy down into the room where the Lord is teaching. Faith always finds the opening that doubt doesn’t think is there.

Surely there is a link between miracles and faith. “All things are possible for one who believes,” said Jesus (Mark 9:23). Again and again in Scripture we hear Jesus say to the person who has been healed, “Your faith has made you well.” But in this miracle it’s also the faith of the friends, apparently, and not just the faith of the paralytic, that moves Jesus to action. The Lord looks up and sees the four hopeful faces looking down, and he looks down and sees the hopeful face looking up, and “. . . when he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” When he saw their faith.

Heaven hears the prayers of the supplicant, but the faith of one’s friends is also involved. How many miracles are waiting to happen, waiting for faithful friends to bring the needy to the feet of Christ?

Prayer:

Lord, increase my faith.

Author: Lou Lotz

https://woh.org/

Read: John 2:1-11

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. (v. 11)

What is a miracle? The Greek word for miracle is semaios, which means sign. Like all signs, miracles point to something beyond themselves. They point to God. A miracle is not a magic trick; it is a sign that God is at work in human affairs.

The Lord’s first sign took place at a wedding, when the mother of Jesus—John never calls her Mary—informs her son that, “They have no wine.” Initially, Jesus refuses to get involved. But what son can hold out for long against his mother’s wishes? The six stone jars are filled to the brim with water, and the water becomes wine. And not the cheap, inferior wine that was usually served later on. No, this was the good stuff.

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – The Best Is Yet to Be →

Read: Judges 19:1-30

Such a thing has never happened. (v. 30)

Sin and evil are not the same thing. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), but not all sinners practice evil. The world is full of good and decent people, sinners one and all. Sin is directed at God. It is being out of right relationship with God and violating his law. Evil is directed at God’s creation, harming or destroying what God has made.

The story of the Levite’s concubine is pure evil. It is an illustration of how low Israel has sunk. There are parallels in the story of Sodom, found in Genesis 19. But Sodom was not Israel. This is. The exodus and giving of the law have happened, but Israel has no moral compass.

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Sin and Evil and the Levite’s Concubine →

Read: Judges 13:3-5, 14:1-19

Let me now put a riddle to you. (14:12)

The story of Samson not only contains riddles, it is a riddle. Although some think of him as a Hebrew folk hero, I prefer the words of one commentator who called Samson “an oversexed buffoon.” His story is the longest in the Book of Judges, and he is the final judge mentioned in the book. Rather than being the wonderful culmination of the story, he is more of a puzzling disappointment. Samson’s life was chaotic, and chaos follows for Israel throughout the rest of Judges.

Samson was consecrated by his mother to be a Nazirite, someone set apart to serve God. The rules for Nazirites are spelled out in Numbers 6, all of which have to do with ceremonial cleanliness. Usually someone kept a Nazirite vow for a short period of time. Samson was supposed to be a Nazirite for life.

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – The Riddler →

Read: Judges 11:29-40

Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. (v. 30)

This is disturbing. I wonder if Jesus had this story in mind when he said what he did about making vows in Matthew 5:33-37. “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matt. 5:37 NIV). The results of Jephthah’s tragic vow certainly look like the work of the evil one. The downward spiral of the judges continues.

Jephthah’s name in Hebrew means “he opens,” (there is a linguistic relationship to the Aramaic word “ephphatha” Jesus uses in Mark 7:34 to open the ears of a deaf man) and both Jephthah and his daughter agree he had to keep his vow after opening his mouth to the Lord. Besides the sad result for his daughter, the problem for Jephthah came from the way he made the vow in the first place. He was trying to control God through making a promise. People do this all the time—I wonder how many “if you get me out of this I will serve you forever” prayers God hears in a day. But God does not respond to human attempts to bribe or cajole him.

Although there are parallels to the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22, what stands out are the differences between the two stories. God commanded Abraham and provided a substitute offering. God did not command Jephthah. The vow was Jephthah’s misguided attempt to control God, who stayed terribly silent through the whole ordeal.

Prayer:

Help us have a right relationship with you.

https://woh.org/