Dec, 18 2022
Matthew 5:16 says, "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." I encourage you to draw near to Christ and find hope in knowing that when we pray according to His will, our prayers will be answered.
November 28 2022
Salvation a devotional from a well know christian.
Noah was one of the Bible's most gifted seafarers. He built a massive ship that housed his family and all kinds of animals. And with God's help he navigated 40 days and nights of storming and flooding. Then they all waited months for the waters to recede.
It must have been extraordinary to see the waters coming from all directions—from the ground, from the sea, from the sky—a cataclysm bringing destruction on the earth. Though Noah had built the ship and prepared for this over many years, the force of the storm and the scale of devastation must been shocking and overwhelming for Noah and his family.
Yet God had prepared a way of salvation. God taught Noah how to build the ark. And when the flood came, God guided Noah, his family, and all the animals to a place where they could land. God also promised that a flood like that would never come again.
The Bible shows that God's justice flows together with his love and mercy. Despite the trauma and destruction of the flood, God provides shelter and promises new and full life. Today we see this even more clearly in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for all who believe in him!
Noah was one of the Bible's most gifted seafarers. He built a massive ship that housed his family and all kinds of animals. And with God's help he navigated 40 days and nights of storming and flooding. Then they all waited months for the waters to recede.
It must have been extraordinary to see the waters coming from all directions—from the ground, from the sea, from the sky—a cataclysm bringing destruction on the earth. Though Noah had built the ship and prepared for this over many years, the force of the storm and the scale of devastation must been shocking and overwhelming for Noah and his family.
Yet God had prepared a way of salvation. God taught Noah how to build the ark. And when the flood came, God guided Noah, his family, and all the animals to a place where they could land. God also promised that a flood like that would never come again.
The Bible shows that God's justice flows together with his love and mercy. Despite the trauma and destruction of the flood, God provides shelter and promises new and full life. Today we see this even more clearly in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for all who believe in him!
Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do . . .
—Philippians 4:9
Integrity is the glue that holds our way of life together. What our young people want to see in their elders is integrity, honesty, truthfulness, and faith. What they hate most of all is hypocrisy and phoniness. That is why it is important for us to go to church, to read the Bible, and to say grace at the table. Let them see us doing what we would like them to do.
A Pessimist.
It is true that when a pessimist's life is threatened he behaves like other men; his impulse to preserve life is stronger than his judgement that life is not worth preserving. But how does this prove that the judgement was insincere or even erroneous? A man's judgement that whisky is bad for him is not invalidated by the fact that when the bottle is at his hands he finds desire stronger than reason and succumbs. Having once tasted life, we are subjected to the impulse of self-preservation. Life, in other words, is as habit-forming as cocaine. What then? If I still held creation to be 'a great injustice' I should hold that this impulse to retain life aggravates the injustice. If it is bad to be forced to drink the potion, how does it mend matters that the potion turns out to be an addiction drug? Pessimism cannot be answered so. Thinking as I then thought about the universe, I was reasonable in condemning it. At the same time I now see that my view was closely connected with a certain lopsidedness of temperament. I had always been more violent in my negative than in my positive demands. cs lewis.
Over and over in the Bible, God hears and responds to the needs of women, named and unnamed. Jesus interacts with woman after woman, offering everlasting water to a disgraced woman at a well, restoring a demon-possessed son to his grief-stricken mother, receiving the spilled-out offering of Mary of Bethany, and encouraging Mary Magdalene's broken heart in the first resurrection encounter.
Nov 8 2022 My desire
PSALM 27:4 One thing I have desired of the LORD, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD, And to inquire in His temple.
David wrote this Psalm because he knew that God was everything to him. He knew the God have made away for him. God was his protector, and he could depend on God to help him get over his many foes; those who did not like him.
You may be like David caught in a situation where all things are against you. Knowing God is there bringing peace to your soul gives hope. His temple is the place all of us should want to be. There Jesus Christ the Son of God will have what we need. No more trouble for all that put their trust in Go
John 9:2
The disciples see a man who was born blind, and they assume that his blindness is someone's fault. This was a common way of thinking about suffering in those days. Sickness and disability were often believed to be a result of sin somewhere in the family line.
If we think about it, we can see how people could fall into that kind of thinking. It has happened in many cultures. If a person has a disability or a terrible disease, or if they are down and out in hardship, it can be convenient to blame them or their family or even their friends or community. It calms our fears if we can state a reason or a cause for something we don't understand—or don't want to.
In this story Jesus complicates things even more by implying that God allowed the man to be blind so that his healing by Jesus could help people see the works of God being done. This is hard to understand—there is no getting around that. Human suffering is a lot more complicated than we would like to believe. Sin has broken this world in ways that go beyond our understanding.
But at the same time, this story offers comfort because we see that God can and will work to bring good out of challenges and suffering. God works for our good in all things and he has redeemed us in Christ. When the works of God shine through adversity, he shows in a unique way that he is good and loves us.
God wants all His children to be filled with the Spirit, but many of us aren't sure what this means. While every believer is indwelt by God's Spirit, the extent of His rule is determined by our obedience.
Try thinking of it as a voluntary choice to surrender to the Holy Spirit's control—to be sensitive to His leadership and guidance, obedient to His promptings, and dependent upon His strength. Those who have surrendered to the Spirit's leadership are continually being transformed into Christ's likeness, but the degree of surrender determines the level of transformation.
Even though good works and faithful service come from the Spirit, they're not automatically signs that we are fully yielded to Him. Remember, the surrender we're talking about involves character, not simply our actions. Serving in some manner can sometimes be easier than loving the unlovable or being patient with difficult people. But when the Spirit oversees our life, He is able to do through us that we can't do ourselves.
Each believer decides who rules his or her life. Even those who try to avoid the issue by making no choice at all unknowingly opt for self-rule. The fullness of the Spirit and godly character await those who choose God over self.
A shared devotion from others.
October 29, 2022
Psalm 1 is called a wisdom psalm because we learn that happiness results from our choice to follow God's direction of life. In this psalm the writer sets forth two ways or two directions in life. One is the right way that leads to happiness, and the other is the wrong way that leads to misery.
The man will be blessed by God for this man keep God in his life. This man does not let the world control his way. He will not indulge with the sins of others. God knows him and he will be like that tree that God like. This will bring good fruit to the Lord, and he loves to walk in truth.
The other man can't bring good fruit because he don't have God in his life. The man can't bring good fruit for he cares about the things in the world. The things he does will be drift away in the wind.
The blessed godly man will inherit the home in heaven and the ungodly man will go opposite from the Lord forever.