Daily Devotions

If you're God’s child, when you sin, you can run toward God and not away from him, because all your sin is covered by the blood of Jesus. Read Revelation 21 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+21&version=NIV There are two starkly contrasting scenes, one at the beginning of the Bible and one at the end. In the beginning scene, we see Adam and Eve quickly clothing themselves and hiding from God in the guilt and shame that is the sad result of their sin (Genesis 3). It is a disaster too horrible to be expressed with the limited words of human language. Blessed with an unimpeded relationship with the Lord, Creator, and King of the universe, blessed with a garden lush with every good thing, they really did have it all. They were made by God and made for him. Their lives were meant to have him at the center. They were hardwired to enjoy eternal fellowship with him. Love for him and worship of him were to be the two principal motivators of all they did. How could t...

There is a significant difference between amazement and faith. God doesn’t just want to blow your mind; he wants to rule your heart. Read John 20:24-29 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+20%3A24-29&version=NIV It is an important distinction, one that is not made frequently enough. Faith surely does engage your brain, but it is fundamentally more than that. Faith is something that you do with your life. True biblical faith doesn’t stop with thought - it radically rearranges the way that you approach everything in your life.  Amazement is what you experience when you are taken beyond the categories that you carry around to explain or define things. Amazement is a step in the faith process, but there is a huge difference between amazement and faith. Pretend you're standing next to me in Milsons point near Luna Park. We're looking at one of those crazy rides. Now, that ride amazes both of us, but we're not about to strap in. Amazed? Yes, but we will not put o...

When you think you're righteous, you expect others to be righteous as well, so you become demanding, judgmental, and constantly disappointed. Read  Matthew 23 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+23+&version=NIV So much of our disappointment in relationships is not because we have an unrealistic view of others, but because we have a distorted view of ourselves. When we are harsh, impatient, critical, irritated, judgmental, curt, and unkind with others, we are revealing more about what we think of ourselves than about them. Confused? Let me explain. Late on a Thursday night, you go into your teenager’s room to ask him something. You can barely open the door because of the debris that is in the way. There are dirty clothes, 3 day old food items, and pieces of tech gear in a tangled pile. You can’t believe it! You have had enough! So you explode: “I never thought one of my children would turn out to be such a slob. Don’t you have an ounce of self-respect? I sh...

Discouragement focuses more on the broken glories of creation than it does on the restoring glories of God’s character, presence, and promises. Read Joshua 1 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua+1&version=NIV They were standing on the borders of the land that God had promised them. It stretched out with beauty before their eyes. They had sent explorers into the land to check it out. The report came back that it was rich and lush, producing sweet and succulent fruit. But the children of Israel were not jumping up and down in celebration and anticipation. They were not chomping at the bit to get going. They were doing quite the opposite; they were digging in their heels and refusing to move at all.  They stood there grumbling against the Lord, saying: “Because the Lorp hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us. .. . ‘The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified...

God is unwilling to be your means to what you call the “good life.” Your relationship with him must be your definition of the good life. Read John 10:1-18 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+10%3A1-18&version=NIV We do tend to turn God into a delivery system. We get excited about what he can do for us and what he can give us. We fall into thinking of prayer as asking God to sign the bottom of our self-composed, self-oriented, individualised wish lists. You know, what would we like God to give us that we can’t give ourselves? We set our hearts on things that we think will make us happy. Perhaps it’s the love of another person and our detailed picture of marital bliss. Perhaps it’s a certain level of affluence and all the things we could experience and enjoy as a result. Maybe its ministry success, influence, and acclaim. Maybe it’s freedom from sickness or suffering. Perhaps it’s just a good week or a nerve-free job interview. Maybe it’s a succulent steak, a good h...

No, you don’t know what you'll face today, but your sovereign Saviour does, and his mercies are new and fitted for what you will face. Read Hebrews 1 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=heb+1&version=NIV They are gloriously comforting words, the kinds of words that need to live fresh in the minds of all of God’s children this side of eternity. Listen to Hebrews 4:14-16: Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Consider the hope that is built into these words: 1. We have a High Priest. If all this passage said were this, it would be amazing. The fact that Jesus sits now at the Father’s right hand and ma...

What you worship is not best shown on Sunday morning, but demonstrated by your words and behaviour the rest of the week. 1 Chronicles 16:28-34 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Chronicles+16%3A28-34&version=NIV The word worship is widely misunderstood. Most people who hear the word worship immediately think of some kind of corporate, formal religious activity. Perhaps what comes to mind is a gathering of pilgrims to lay candles at the feet of Buddha; the singing of a hymn with a thousand fellow believers; or a gathering of a small group on a Wednesday night. In other words, for most people, worship is a word that summarises the outward spiritual activity of their lives. But the Bible employs this word in a fundamentally different way. The Bible portrays us not just as people who occasionally worship, but as worshipers. It’s not just that we have a religious aspect to our living. No, this worship thing is much more foundational than that. We have been designed by Go...

The temporary pleasures of this present world are meant to point you to the lasting pleasures of knowing God. Read Titus 2:11-14 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus+2%3A11-14&version=NIV The story didn’t end the way the crowd thought it would: When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” .. . Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. .. am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the liv...

Through difficult relationships and circumstances, God works to expose your heart so you will seek the grace that can be found only in him. Read 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+4%3A7-18&version=NIV Where does your mind go, where does your heart run, when difficulty enters your door? None of us likes to suffer. None of us enjoys dealing with the unexpected. We all like our plans to work and our dreams to come true. We all want a life that is comfortable and predictable. The normal person simply doesn’t esteem the spiritual value of hardship. Because of this, it tends to be difficult for us to stay on God’s agenda page. If our goal for our lives is temporal personal happiness, whatever our definition of that may be, then we're going to live in a street-level agenda conflict with our Saviour, no matter what our confessional theology may be. Many Christians live right there. They say they believe in the truths of Scripture, they say t...

I still need to be rescued from me because as long as sin remains, I'll be drawn to desire, think, say, and do what God names as evil. Read  Romans 7:14-25 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=+Romans+7%3A14-25&version=NIV Maybe it’s because it happens in little moments that we are able to look at it without concern. What am I talking about? Our struggle with sin. It happens in the little moments of life, so it is easy to see what is a very serious thing as not such a big deal. Let me explain. You and I don’t live only in big moments. We probably make only a couple of big, life-altering decisions our whole lives. Not many of our biographies will find their way into the history books. Years after we die, as our descendants gather for reunions, they will struggle to remember even the big events of our lives. We all live in little, unnoticed, unremarkable, mundane moments of life, and because we do, it’s very easy to back away from the seriousness of our struggle with...

Confession is a grace. Only grace can convince you to abandon your righteousness and run to the merciful arms of the Lord. Read Acts 3:11-26 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+3%3A11-26&version=NIV Confession is not natural for us. It’s natural for us to think of ourselves as more righteous than we are. It’s natural to blame our wrongs on others. It’s natural to say our behavior was caused by some difficult circumstance we were in. It’s natural to exercise our inner lawyers and defend ourselves when we're confronted with a sin, weakness, or failure. It’s natural to turn the tables when being confronted and tell our accusers that they are surely bigger sinners than we are. It’s natural to see ourselves more as law keepers than as lawbreakers. It’s natural to point to our biblical literacy or theological knowledge as proof of our spiritual maturity. It’s natural to be more concerned about the sin of others than our own. It’s natural to be more critical of the attit...

No amount of guilt or shame can do what grace is able to do—make us people who delight in the Father's will. Read Mark 7:1-23 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7%3A1-23&version=NIV You will never understand your struggle with sin unless you grasp that, at its very bottom, sin is a heart problem. It’s not first a problem of bad behavior, although it always goes there. It’s not first an external temptation problem, although it causes us to give in to temptation’s draw. It’s not first a location or situation problem, although it expresses itself there. Sin is a matter of the heart. Let me explain what this means. The Bible uses many terms for the inner, spiritual, thoughtful, desiring, motivational you, but all those terms are gathered together and summarized by one big collective term: heart. It is one of the most often used terms in the Bible. In fact, I am persuaded that you cannot understand the transforming message of the Bible unless you understand this term....

If you are in Christ, you've been chosen to transcend the borders of your own glory, to reach out toward a greater glory—the glory of God. Read Luke 9:23-36 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+9%3A23-36&version=NIV The disciples were glory-confused, and because they were, they were also glory thieves. They desperately needed a life-changing glory display, and did they ever get one - the transfiguration! And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said  “Th...

It’s only in the mirror of God’s Word that you see yourself accurately, and only in his grace that you find help for what you see. Read Hebrews 3:12-13 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+3%3A12-13+&version=NIV I've seen it again and again over the years. Maybe it was a husband and wife, an angry teenager, a person who had lost their way in life, or a leader who had gotten himself into trouble. For all of the vast differences in the situations and struggles, they shared a common theme. All of these people thought they knew themselves, but they didn’t. They all thought that they saw themselves with accuracy, but they didn’t. They all wanted me to agree with the assessments they had made of themselves, but I couldn't. They all suffered from the same disease, but they denied it. It didn’t take long for me to realise that I was experiencing firsthand a universal human condition that the Bible talks about. It’s called spiritual blindness. Sin blinds, and because...

It never works to ask people to do for you what only God can do. It never works to wait for God to do what he has clearly called you to do. Read Matthew 19:16-30 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19%3A16-30+&version=NIV Here's the principle (which surely is easier to write out than it is to live): you can’t look horizontally for what you will get only vertically, and you can’t wait vertically for what you have been called to do horizontally. We all get these two confused again and again.  Many people may believe it is their spouses duty to bring them happiness. Such a person is actually acting as if it’s okay to put their inner sense of well-being in the hands of another human being. The person next to you is never a safe source of your happiness because that person is flawed and will inevitably fail you in some way. Only God is ever a safe keeper of the security, peace, and rest of your soul. Here is the bottom line—earth will never be your saviour. Ear...

It would be amazing if a God of awesome glory recognised our existence, but for him to welcome us into his family is grace beyond amazing! Read Ephesians 1:15-23 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+1%3A15-23&version=NIV It is just so incredible, so counterintuitive, and so beyond anything else in our experience that it is very hard for us to wrap our brains around its majesty. There is no human being so creative and imaginative as to be able to pen such a story. You can read the story in Scripture and still not be blown away by its glory because you just don’t have categories to understand its depth and breadth. In fact, it takes what this story is about for you to fully understand what this story is about. Only the gift of divine grace is able to help you grasp even a portion of the wonder of divine grace. The expansiveness of God’s initiative of grace is so beautiful and transformational that it is the reason John Newton chose the best qualifying word, amaz...

No need to carry the burden of ownership of your life today. You've been bought with a price, so you don’t belong to you anymore. Read 1 Corinthians 7:21-23 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7%3A21-23&version=NIV You and I have been freed from carrying the burden of all the regrets of the past, of our needs in the present, and of all the unanswered questions of the future. We have been freed from living with the anxiety that comes from thinking that we have no greater resources than we can provide for ourselves. You and I have been freed from the stress of thinking that we have to figure it all out on our own. We have been freed from worrying about needing to control things that are actually beyond our control. You and I don’t need to wring our hands wondering what is coming unexpectedly down the road. We don’t have to fear that we won't have enough or that we'll come up short. You and I don't have to panic at the thought that, in the end, w...