Tag Archives: daily devotion

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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.

I pray for the leaders of our nation and for those in authority over us at all levels of government. I even pray about the clothes I wear, on the basis of the people I am to meet – that the way I dress, as well as my words and actions, will bring glory to God.

But there is another sense in which there is a set-apart time each day for prayer – I often kneel quietly before the open Bible and talk with God as I read His Word.

Before I begin to read the Bible, I ask the Holy Spirit, who inspired its writing, to make my reading meaningful. Throughout the reading I often pause to thank God for His loving salvation and provision, to confess the lack in my own life revealed by the Scriptures, to ask Him for the boldness and faith His apostles displayed and to thank Him for new insights into His divine strategy for reaching the world with the gospel.

Bible Reading: Jeremiah 33:4-8

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: Today I will call unto God, expecting Him to show me great and mighty things beyond anything I have ever experienced, for His glory and for the blessing of those about me, that they may know that God does supernatural things in response to the faith and obedience of His children.

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Presidential Prayer Team – Feel the Weight

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How much does water weigh? When you dive under it, you feel no weight of it. But fill a tub with water and balance it on your head and the burden will soon make you weary. The same can be said of sin.

Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.

The ones who have been led into sin and continue in it are deceived and hardened by it until they become cocky in their disregard of others and make a mockery of sin. They rarely will see the wrong in what they do and are not weighed down by it. Proverbs 10:23

But if you begin to be aware of what sin is and what it is doing in your life, you will experience a weight that becomes ponderous and burdensome. Wisdom and understanding come to the person who understands their sin and its consequence. You can delight in knowing that Christ took your sin on Himself to give you a cleansed heart.

Beloved, pray that this nation realizes it is under the weight of sin. It is not a joke and there are consequences. Ask God to reveal His truth and revive the hearts of all – leaders and citizens alike.

Recommended Reading: Hebrews 12:14-28

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Greg Laurie – Staying Usable

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Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me—2 Corinthians 12: 9

Do you think having a vision of heaven might make you a little arrogant? Imagine sitting around with a group of people who were talking about where they went for vacation. We went to Hawaii. . . . We went to Tahiti. . . . We went to Italy. . . .

The apostle Paul could say, “I went to heaven.”

“No, no! Where did you go, Paul? Really.”

“Heaven—I went to heaven.”

“Yeah? What was it like?”

“I can’t really explain it. But it was better than where you went.”

So that Paul would not be filled with pride, God allowed adversity into his life to keep him humble and usable. Writing about this experience, Paul said,

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:8–10)

God may allow hardship in the life of a Christian. In Paul’s case, it was “a thorn in the flesh” (see 2 Corinthians 12:7). We don’t know what this thorn in the flesh was, exactly. Whatever it was, Paul asked the Lord to take it away three times, and three times He said, “My grace is all you need.” God allowed this hardship in Paul’s life to keep him usable in His kingdom. And he was very usable.

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Max Lucado – A Worship-Hungry Heart

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Parents, what are your children and others learning from your worship?  Do they see the same excitement as when you go to a basketball game?  Do they see you prepare for worship as you do for a vacation?  Do they see you hungry to arrive, seeking the face of the Father?  Or are others seeking the face of the Father while you’re seeking the face of your wristwatch?  Do they see you content to leave the way you came?  They are watching.  Believe me.  They are watching.

Do you come to church with a worship-hungry heart?  Our Savior did. May I urge you to be just like Jesus? Prepare your heart for worship. Let God change your face through worship.  Your heartfelt worship is a missionary appeal. Let others hear the passion of your voice as they see the sincerity in your face, and they may be changed.  I know you will be!

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A Tangible Place – Greg Laurie

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I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell. That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses—2 Corinthians 12:3–5

Periodically books are written in which people claim to have had visions of heaven. But there is an instance of someone’s writing about heaven that we know is legitimate. The apostle Paul went there, and he wrote a few verses about it in 2 Corinthians 12.

Certainly a topic as exciting as this would have merited its own book, with a title and byline such as The Book of Heaven by the Apostle Paul. He could have told us all about it. But he didn’t.

That is not to say there are no descriptions of heaven in the Bible, because the apostle John spoke at great length about heaven in the book of Revelation and gave us descriptions of it that are a little bit difficult, quite frankly, to wrap our minds around.

But all Paul would say about heaven was, “I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell” (2 Corinthians 12:4).

The word “paradise” that Paul used here appears three times in the New Testament. The first time we see it is when Jesus spoke to the criminal on the cross next to Him and said, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Another time it is used is in Revelation 2:7, to describe our future dwelling place. It is sometimes translated as the royal garden of a king, which means there was no verbiage to really do justice to the meaning of the word. There was really nothing you could say to express it.

But here is the thing we need to know: Heaven is a tangible place, not a state of mind. The King James Bible uses the word heaven 582 times in 550 different places. Heaven is a real place.