Tag Archives: christianity

The Navigators

The Navigators – Leroy Eims – Daily Discipleship Devotional – God’s Unfailing Love

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Today’s Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-11

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! – 1 John 3:1

Bible scholars and theologians usually list the attributes of God under two headings: His natural attributes and His moral attributes.

His natural attributes tell us of a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, eternal. His moral attributes tell us of a God who is holy, righteous, faithful, full of mercy and kindness, and who is love. To contemplate any one of these attributes by itself staggers us. But it is His undying love for us that thrills our hearts.

Some years ago my wife and I were visiting the home of friends who live in Oklahoma City. We arrived midafternoon, and my wife went into the living room to join a ladies’ Bible study. I went into the back bedroom to prepare a message I was to give that night at a church banquet.

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Moody Global Ministries

Moody Global Ministries – Today in the Word – THE DISCIPLES’ FOOLISH REST

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Read Matthew 26:36-46

Many churches observe an Easter vigil. This service is usually held at night after sunset on Holy Saturday and before sunrise on Easter Sunday. In some, the mood is somber as believers reflect on Christ’s death and burial. In others, the mood is celebratory as they serve communion and practice baptism.

In today’s text the disciples observed a different kind of vigil. On the night of His betrayal, Jesus asked the disciples to “keep watch” with Him as He prayed in Gethsemane (v. 38). The mood just prior to this was unsettling, as Jesus celebrated His last Passover with them. The disciples bickered amongst themselves about which of them was the greatest (see Luke 22:24). Peter argued with Jesus when He washed his feet (John 13:8). They were deeply disturbed when Jesus told them that one of them would betray Him (Matt. 26:22). It must also have unnerved them when Jesus changed the traditional Passover liturgy and instituted the Lord’s Supper (Matt. 26:26–29).

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Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley –Overcoming Habitual Sin

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Read | Titus 2:11-14

Sin does not play favorites. It works its way into everyone’s life without regard to age, race, or economic status. Regardless of the form it takes, sin always tempts us to choose our own way over God’s way. Rebellion is harmful and addictive, and repetitions of sinful behavior lead to more of the same, until the action is so ingrained in our lives that we cannot stop. We become enslaved to it.

The descent into a pattern of disobedience begins in our minds. Once our thinking is involved, the influence extends to our behavior, eventually progressing until we are more entrenched than we ever imagined. Deception permeates the whole process. We tell ourselves there is no harm in what we’re doing—after all, other people behave the same way.

Sin’s demands keep increasing, and yet its benefits are only short-term. Eventually, we experience emptiness instead of satisfaction, pain in place of comfort, and loss rather than gain. Habitual sin splits our mind and emotions. Then we spend less time meeting our responsibilities and more time satisfying cravings. Our care and concern for others diminish, too. Over time, feelings of guilt and entrapment can take their toll and lead toward self-destruction.

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Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — How to Grow Old

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Read: Isaiah 46:4-13

Bible in a Year: Numbers 15-16; Mark 6:1-29

I will sustain you and I will rescue you. —Isaiah 46:4

“How are you today, Mama?” I asked casually. My 84-year-old friend, pointing to aches and pains in her joints, whispered, “Old age is tough!” Then she added earnestly, “But God has been good to me.”

“Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life,” says Billy Graham in his book Nearing Home. “I am an old man now, and believe me, it’s not easy.” However, Graham notes, “While the Bible doesn’t gloss over the problems we face as we grow older, neither does it paint old age as a time to be despised or a burden to be endured with gritted teeth.” He then mentions some of the questions he has been forced to deal with as he has aged, such as, “How can we not only learn to cope with the fears and struggles and growing limitations we face but also actually grow stronger inwardly in the midst of these difficulties?”

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Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Reflecting Humanity

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French playwright Moliere once uttered this curious line: “Nearly all men die of their medicines, and not of their maladies.”(1) Musician Tori Amos asserts something similar in the chorus of one of her songs: “She’s addicted to nicotine patches/she’s afraid of a light in the dark.” Both of these artists are perhaps known for exposing the hypocrisies of society in biting verse. Through satire, Moliere sought to amuse but also to instruct his audience with the peculiarities of human behavior, while Amos croons of life as she sees it, through blunt, often angry, lyrics.

Certainly, artistic observation of humanity can rouse insight and inspire an inward look at our own lives. Do these artists communicate a common truth about the human condition? I think they might. We have all known people who seem blind to their own maladies, people who would prefer their pain to change. But I also believe there is something that communicates the complexities of human behavior even more accurately.

Abraham Heschel referred to Scripture not as humanity’s theology, as it is often received, but as God’s anthropology. In these ancient Scriptures, human behavior, human emotion, human duplicity is all depicted with curious accuracy. And often, in these pages, that God knows us far better than we know ourselves is displayed in the form of a question. To study the great questions posed in Scripture is a remarkably convicting study in human nature and behavior. But even more remarkable, the New Testament scriptures offer an answer to these questions of what it means to be human. In the person of Jesus Christ, we are shown one in whom the Triune God’s purposes of creation are fulfilled, the future of creation embodied, and humanity is given the invitation of one who is making us more human.

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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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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.

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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.

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Presidential Prayer Team

Presidential Prayer Team; J.R.- Foundation Fundamentals

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How often do you go to church on Monday? Unless you are the church custodian, probably not a lot. But here’s an interesting fact about one of the greatest churches ever known, London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, and one of the greatest preachers, Charles Spurgeon. Every Monday, the church was packed to the rafters for “prayer meeting,” an event Spurgeon called “the spiritual thermometer” of his church. “I always give all the glory to God,” he wrote, “but I do not forget that He gave me the privilege of ministering from the first to a praying people. We had prayer meetings that moved our very souls; each one appeared determined to storm the Celestial City by the might of intercession.”

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Psalm 127:1

Does God hear “crisis” prayers – those made on a deathbed, or in a foxhole, or in a crumbling house? Yes, certainly, but how much better to make prayer the foundation of your week and a fundamental of your life rather a last ditch salvage operation.

America was built on a firm foundation, mostly by praying men and women who understood that the Lord must be the builder. Today, pray that the nation’s citizens will again be praying people – and let it begin with you!

Recommended Reading: James 5:13-20

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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.

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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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