Tag Archives: Bible

John MacArthur

John MacArthur – Strength for Today – Enjoying a Bountiful Harvest

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“Bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

Your fruitfulness is directly related to your knowledge of divine truth.

Every farmer who enjoys a plentiful harvest does so only after diligent effort on his part. He must cultivate the soil, plant the seed, then nurture it to maturity. Each step is thoughtful, disciplined, and orderly.

Similarly, bearing spiritual fruit is not an unthinking or haphazard process. It requires us to be diligent in pursuing the knowledge of God’s will, which is revealed in His Word. That is Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1:9, which he reiterates in verse 10.

The phrase “increasing in the knowledge of God” (v. 10) can be translated, “increasing by the knowledge of God.” Both renderings are acceptable. The first emphasizes the need to grow; the second emphasizes the role that knowledge plays in your spiritual growth.

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Wisdom Hunters

Wisdom Hunters – Commended by Christ 

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Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. Revelation 3:10

My high school studies were not my best effort. Many times I would wait to the last minute and spend late nights memorizing information. Yes, I could repeat a lot of facts, but I comprehended very little. My college undergraduate and graduate days were much different. Rita and I married after our freshman year—now I felt very responsible to excel at my education. Some professors rewarded those who patiently worked throughout the semester: who took to heart the lectures and completed the homework exercises. The disciplined learners were exempt from the final exam.

Christ commended the church at Philadelphia for keeping His commands and for their patient endurance. Yes, only one of the seven Asian churches rose above the world’s expectations, yet imperfectly but wholeheartedly followed Jesus. This local body of believers hid God’s word in their heart, so they would not be ashamed and feel the need to hide from their compassionate Creator. Their persistence to patiently follow the Lord gave them endurance from the Lord. God provides a way out of temptation or grace to carry on through trials. He commends perseverance.

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Turning Point

Today’s Turning Point with David Jeremiah – As Time Draws Near

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And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.

Romans 13:11

Recommended Reading

Psalm 91

The morning headlines hit us with alarm as we realize we’re drawing closer to the season of our Lord’s return. One of our great comforts is what the Bible says about the Lord shielding His people in times like these.

  • Psalm 17 says we are hidden under the shadow of His wings.
  • Psalm 27 says we are hidden in the shelter of His tabernacle.
  • Isaiah 49 says we are hidden in the shadow of His hand.
  • Psalm 32 says that God is our hiding place.
  • And Colossians 3 says our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

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Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – No Condemnation

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Therefore, [there is] now no condemnation (no adjudging guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live [and] walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.—Romans 8:1

I should have known better,” Cindy cried out to me. “All the signs were there that he wasn’t the man for me.” She had gone through two years of a painful marriage, of verbal and finally physical abuse. Then her husband left her for another woman. Now she felt doubly condemned—condemned for marrying him in the first place and condemned that she couldn’t hold the marriage together.

“If I had been a good Christian, I could have changed him,” she moaned.

I could have confronted her and said, “Yes, you did see the signs and you ignored them. You opened yourself up to this kind of treatment.” I didn’t say those words and wouldn’t. They would not have helped Cindy.

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Girlfriends in God

Girlfriends in God – Stop Doubting Your Value, Part One

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Who is man that you are mindful of him?

Psalm 8:3-4

Friend to Friend

I may look confident and put together on the outside (when I’m not in my yoga pants and a ponytail) but on the inside I often wander back to that little girl who questions her value and wants to make a difference.

There are lots of ways this inner struggle presents itself in me …

  • I tether my value to how I look.
  • I tether my value to how my jeans fit.
  • I tether my value to how I perform.
  • I want my husband and kids to love me perfectly,
even though they can’t.
  • I want to love others perfectly, but I don’t, so I
juggle guilt like a hot potato.
  • I get distracted and waste time, so I feel unproductive.
  • I want to make a difference, but I try to do too
much.

Continue reading Girlfriends in God – Stop Doubting Your Value, Part One →

Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Great and Mighty Things

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“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” (Jeremiah 33:3, KJV).

How long has it been since you have prayed for great and mighty things – for the glory and praise of God?

I find in God’s Word at least six excellent reasons you and I should pray for “great and mighty things”: to glorify God; to communicate with God; for fellowship with God; because of Christ’s example; to obtain results; and to provide spiritual nurture.

There is a sense in which I pray without ceasing, talking to God hundreds of times in the course of the day about everything. I pray for wisdom about the numerous decisions I must make, for the salvation of friends and strangers, the healing of the sick and the spiritual and material needs of the Campus Crusade for Christ ministry – as well as for the needs of the various members of the staff and leaders of other Christian organizations and the needs of their ministries.

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Ray Stedman

Ray Stedman -The Heart of the Gospel

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Read: Isaiah 53:1-6

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

This, of course, is the very heart of the gospel, the good news. Jesus took our place. As Peter puts it, He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, (1 Peter 2:24). He took our sins and paid the price for them. He had no sins of his own and Scripture is very careful to record the sinlessness of Jesus himself. He was not suffering for his own transgressions, but for the sins of others. One writer has put it rather well,

It was for me that Jesus died, For me and a world of men. Just as sinful and just as slow to give back His love again. And He did not wait until I came to Him. He loved me at my worst. He needn’t ever have died for me If I could have loved Him first.

That is the problem, isn’t it? Why do not we love him first? Why is it that we can only learn to love our Lord once we have beheld his suffering — his excruciating agony on our behalf? It is because of our transgressions, as this passage declares. They have cut us off from recognizing the divine gift of love that ought to be in every human heart.

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Words of Hope

Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Samson and Delilah

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Read: Judges 16:1-31

If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me. (v. 17)

The names “Samson and Delilah” live in popular imagination as a romantic ideal. One only needs to read the Bible to learn that’s not true. Samson did love Delilah (love is not used to describe his other sexual pursuits), but it’s hard to say exactly what Delilah felt. She played Samson for a fool—repeatedly—with tragic consequences.

In his commentary on the Book of Judges, Australian scholar Barry Webb suggests the story of Israel is mirrored in Samson. Israel was set apart from other nations by God’s election, Samson was set apart from other people by his Nazirite vow. Israel went after foreign gods, Samson went after foreign women. Samson wound up blind, which is a fitting description of Israel as Judges winds down.

Deuteronomy 7:3-4 prohibited intermarrying because the future of the nation was at stake. Samson knew this, but he couldn’t help himself. Delilah was his undoing, or, more accurately, the shaving of his hair which canceled his Nazirite vow was his undoing. Although he was supposed to deliver Israel from the Philistines, he mixed with them constantly. He never acted like he wanted to be set apart. The result is that unlike the other judges, there is no rest for the land under Samson. He failed to deliver Israel, and all he really accomplished was to kill a bunch of Philistines. After Samson’s death Israel’s downward spiral will continue—and get worse.

Prayer:

Lord, help us resist temptation and stay true to you.

https://woh.org/

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie –Persistent Prayer

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Now they came to Jericho. As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”—Mark 10:46–47

I wonder whether Bartimaeus, a blind man, would have been healed by Jesus if he had simply sat in silence when Jesus walked by. Would Jesus have stopped and turned toward him and touched him? Perhaps. But there were a lot of blind people around during Jesus’ earthly ministry. There were a lot of deaf people. There were a lot of people with leprosy. There were a lot of people with all kinds of physical problems.

But Jesus didn’t heal all of those people, did He? In fact, we usually find in Scripture that Jesus responded to the people who called out to Him. In the case of Bartimaeus, he cried out, and his voice was heard. It probably helped that he screamed. We do not need to scream in our prayers, necessarily, but we do need to be persistent.

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Kids 4 Truth

Kids 4 Truth International – God Holds Everything Together

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“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do not appear.” (Hebrews 11:3)

Did you ever wonder what holds this world together? Why don’t we fall apart as we walk around? Why don’t the planets spin out of their orbits? What keeps the sun (a huge flaming ball of gases) all together instead of splitting up into thousands of flaming little sun-balls? What holds our insides in and keeps the outsides out? If you think of water in a pitcher, the pitcher holds the water in and keeps everything else out, right? But what is it that holds the pitcher together? As we walk around outside, we do not fall apart. Why? Because our skin holds us together! But what really is it that keeps your skin holding together?

Some say that Newton’s Law of Gravity holds us together, or a bunch of other recognized scientific laws. Isaac Newton did not create gravity, though; he just discovered it. Who invented gravity and designed it to do what it does? Some people say they just don’t know what keeps the universe running.

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The Navigators

The Navigators – Jerry Bridges – Holiness Day by Day Devotional – Some Things Don’t Change

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Today’s Scripture: Philippians 4:11

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

Contentment with what we have is worth far more than all the things we don’t have. The person living on the basis of merit is never content. One day he thinks he isn’t being rewarded fairly by God; the next day he’s afraid he has forfeited all hope for any reward. Far better to adopt the biblical attitude that grace doesn’t depend on merit at all, but on the infinite goodness and sovereign purpose of God. I would much rather entrust my expectations of blessings and answers to prayer to the infinite goodness of God and his sovereign purpose for my life than rely on all the merit points I could ever accumulate.

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The Navigators

The Navigators – Leroy Eims – Daily Discipleship Devotional – The Barren Places

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Today’s Scripture: Esther 1-2

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. – Jeremiah 17:7-8

As far as I know, the book of Esther is the only book in the Bible in which the central figure rose to prominence by winning a beauty contest. But Esther never considered her promotion selfishly. In fact, she put everything on the line, including her life, to do the will of God in a very difficult situation.

For Esther and her people, the Jews, circumstances were bad. They had been taken captive from their homeland many years before and were second-class citizens in this place. Now a plot was being hatched to exterminate them from the face of the earth. But the hand of God was leading Esther and her Uncle Mordecai in what seemed to be a God-forsaken place.

Continue reading The Navigators – Leroy Eims – Daily Discipleship Devotional – The Barren Places →

Moody Global Ministries

Moody Global Ministries – Today in the Word – JONAH’S DISOBEDIENT REST

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Read Jonah 1:1-16

In April 2014, the driver of a Chicago Transit Authority train fell asleep at the wheel as she approached the terminal at O’Hare airport. The train jumped the tracks and crashed into the terminal, destroying an escalator. Later it was revealed that she had fallen asleep at the wheel before.

You might say that Jonah repeatedly fell asleep at the wheel, wreaking havoc on others and himself. Commanded by God to go to Nineveh, Jonah fled in the opposite direction to Tarshish (v. 3). His goal was not only to avoid going to Nineveh, the capital city of Israel’s brutal enemy Assyria, but also to escape from God’s presence.

He couldn’t outrun God. The Lord pursued Jonah by sending a storm so fierce that the sailors feared for their lives. Unperturbed by either the storm or their terror, Jonah went below the deck and literally fell asleep. The outraged captain woke Jonah and urged him to pray. Notice the great irony here. Throughout Jonah’s story, even after he is finally forced to obey the Lord’s command, idol-worshiping pagans seem to have a greater sense of piety than God’s prophet.

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Denison Forum

Denison Forum – THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN IS AFFECTING MARRIAGES

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“There’s something about Mr. Trump that makes it hard for people who love him, and people who hate him, to love each other.” So states The Wall Street Journal, reporting on marital rifts being created by Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy.

One couple has set its rules: When Mr. Trump appears on the evening news, one or the other must leave the room, or they must flip to the National Geographic channel. And they never discuss him in the bedroom.

Politics are getting more divisive by the day, it seems. In last night’s Republican presidential debate, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz repeatedly attacked Mr. Trump, who responded in kind. And Bernie Sanders is sharpening his criticisms of Hillary Clinton on the eve of the South Carolina Democratic primary.

Michael Scherer notes in Time that America’s presidential contests “are designed to be brutal passion plays, the best alternative to the bloody wars of succession humanity used in centuries past.”

And so it has been across our history.

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Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – Fighting the Battle Against Sin

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Read | 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

God established protective boundaries for His children because He knows the dangers of disobedience—for both the transgressor and others affected by the sin. His Word warns us not to give in to temptation but to follow Jesus Christ in a life of sacrifice, which is the only way to true contentment.

In contrast, the world says satisfaction is found in acquiring goods, wealth, status, and friends. Satan whispers the lie that gratification comes from self-indulgence. His goal of turning us away from God started with his temptation of Adam and Eve. The Creator had given them access to every tree in the Garden of Eden except one. The first man and woman stepped outside the limit set by the Lord, ate the forbidden fruit, and became separated from Him. Satan used doubt (“Has God said?”), deceit (“You surely will not die”), and self-delusion (“You will be like God”) to achieve his aim (Gen. 3:1-5). He made rebellion against God—which is the root of all sin—seem very attractive. And the enemy’s methods are the same today.

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Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Go Fever

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Read: Numbers 14:39-45

Bible in a Year: Numbers 12-14; Mark 5:21-43

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. —Psalm 37:7

On January 28, 1986, after five weather-related delays, the space shuttle Challenger lumbered heavenward amid a thunderous overture of noise and flame. A mere 73 seconds later, system failure tore the shuttle apart, and all seven crewmembers perished.

The disaster was attributed to an O-ring seal known to have vulnerabilities. Insiders referred to the fatal mistake as “go fever”—the tendency to ignore vital precautions in the rush to a grand goal.

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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Behold, the Crucified

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Even modern English Bible versions often end up retaining the rather un-modern term “behold” in their translations of the Hebrew word hinneh and the Greek word idou. This is because there is no other equivalent English word that quite does the job that behold does. All the three terms—Hebrew, Greek, and English—have a certain gravitas, and, whenever used, command us to pay careful attention to what follows.

In John’s narrative of the trial and the crucifixion of Jesus, there are five occurrences of the term—three coming from the mouth of the unwitting prophet, Pilate, and twice from the mouth of our Lord Jesus. Each occurrence summons us to a facet of the person and work of Christ.

In John 19:4, “Pilate came out again and said to them, ‘Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.’” We may render Pilate’s words as: “Behold, the Guiltless One!” Christians have always claimed, and will always claim, that Jesus, the Innocent, bore the sins of a guilty world. When his executioners twisted together a crown of thorns and thrust it upon his head, little did they know that they were enacting a prophetic truth! For in that single image—the crown of thorns on his head—is encapsulated the central Christian claim: that this guiltless-but-crucified one bore upon himself the guilt and curse of the whole of creation. Remember: “Cursed is the ground because of you… Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you.”(1)

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John MacArthur

John MacArthur – Strength for Today – God Is Faithful to Care for Us

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“God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9).

God is completely faithful to do what He has promised.

We live in a day of unfaithfulness, don’t we? Some husbands and wives are unfaithful to their marriage vows. Children are often unfaithful to the principles taught by their parents. Parents are often unfaithful to meet the needs of their children. And all too frequently we are unfaithful to God.

Only God is always faithful, a fact often celebrated in Scripture: “Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God” (Deut. 7:9). “Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens, Thy faithfulness reaches to the skies” (Ps. 36:5). “Great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:23).

Let’s look at several areas in which God is faithful to us. First, He’s faithful in taking care of us. Peter says, “Let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right” (1 Peter 4:19). The word translated “entrust” is a banking term that speaks of a deposit for safekeeping. We’re to give our lives to our “faithful Creator,” who is best able to care for us because He created us. “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

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Wisdom Hunters

Wisdom Hunters – Should You Be Passionate? 

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Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.   Galatians 5:24

“Passion” often gets mixed reviews. On the one hand, we have many verses in Scripture that tell us to put to death the passions and desires of the flesh. In fact, we’re told to flee worldly passions! Yet, on the other hand, Scripture seems to encourage in us passionate living. In the Psalms we see passion on great display, with the psalmist longing for the Lord “more than sentries long for the dawn” (Ps. 130:6).

The secret to understanding passion in Scripture is to focus on the object of our desire. Desire in and of itself is not a bad thing! When we’re told to put to death the desires of the flesh, this doesn’t mean we’re meant to live passionless and emotionless lives! The Christian life is never simply the turning away from sin and death, but is always at the same time the call to turn towards that which is good, holy, and true.

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Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Get Alone With God

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But when you pray, go into your [most] private room, and, closing the door, pray to your Father, Who is in secret; and your Father, Who sees in secret, will reward you in the open. —Matthew 6:6

Jesus rose early to be alone with God, but Peter pursued Him to let Him know that everyone was looking for Him (see Mark 1:35-36). When you get alone to pray, it may seem that everybody tries to hunt you down. But Jesus sought time alone with God so He could focus on His purpose.

We see the scenario of Jesus praying alone and then meeting the needs of others again and again. Jesus went throughout Galilee preaching and driving out demons. When a leper begged to be clean, Jesus touched him, and the leprosy completely left him (see Mark 1:39-42). If Jesus needed to be alone with the Father before He ministered to others, so do we.

From the book Starting Your Day Right by Joyce Meyer.

http://www.joycemeyer.org