Daily Devotions

Grace smashes your pride, but it gives you more reason for confidence than you have ever had before. Read Ephesians 3:1-13 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+3%3A1-13&version=NIV It is a statement of complete assurance and confidence, spoken by a man whose pride had just been smashed. Nebuchadnezzar was the arrogant king of the conquering nation of Babylon. He not only had devastated Judah and taken its people as his captive servants, but he had taken implements from the temple to be used as tools of idol worship, which he commanded everyone in his kingdom to render or face death. The extent of his pride is captured by these words: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30). But while the words were still in his mouth, he was dramatically humiliated by the One who alone has true glory and majesty. By the power of God, Nebuchadnezzar was “driven from among men and ate grass ...

God's renewal project What could be a greater, higher honour than to be a chosen instrument for the most important renewal project in the universe—redemption? 'Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”' (Matt. 28:16-20) Christ’s commission to the disciples is his commission to the church and is his plan for the life of every single believer. No one has been chosen to be just a recipient of the redemptive work of his kingdom. No, everyone who has been chosen to be a recipient has also been commissioned to be an instrument of the work of t...

Why would you be afraid when in Christ you have been completely accepted, eternally forgiven, and richly supplied? Read Philippians 4:10-20 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+4%3A10-20&version=NIV What are the three questions that everyone has asked and is in some way haunted by? 1. Will I be loved? 2. Will people tolerate me once they really get to know me? 3. Will I have what I need to live? In some way, everyone fears rejection, judgment, and poverty. In some way, every person who has ever lived is on a hunt for love and scared to death that he won't find it. That’s why a good love story is always so popular. In some way, everyone fears judgment. She fears the hammer will come down on her because she has failed to measure up and she will spend her life paying for her crimes. That’s why mercy and forgiveness stories quickly get our attention and hit us so deeply. In some way, everyone is afraid of being poor. We're all afraid of not having the provis...

Real faith never calls you to swindle yourself into thinking that things are better than they are. Biblical faith is shockingly honest and hopeful. Read Daniel 3:8-30 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+3%3A8-30&version=NIV Biblical faith is not about wearing a saccharine smile while living in a constant state of religious denial. It’s not about covering the stark and dark realities of a fallen world with overused pseudobiblical clichés. It’s not about praying in King James English because somehow that makes you feel more spiritual. It’s not about priding yourself on your ability to keep God’s rules or thinking you're more sanctified because you're on pace to read through the whole Bible again this year. It’s not about cleaning yourself up on Sunday so your public persona hides the real details of your private spiritual life. It’s not about keeping score of how many years you've gone through without missing a worship service. It’s not about polishing you...

Yes, you live in a world where evil still exists, but the One who conquered sin and death is still with you. Read Isaiah 7:10-17 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+7%3A10-17&version=NIV It is the disastrous duo—the evil outside us and the evil that still remains inside us. It is not just that we live in a world where evil still exists. If that were our only problem, life would be much easier and simpler. No, the danger of the external evil that we all face every day is made incredibly greater by the evil that lives inside us. You see, it is only ever the evil inside you that magnetises you to the evil outside you. Sin is only ever attractive to a sinner. It really is true, “To the pure, all things are pure” (Titus 1:15). The problem is that none of us are yet completely pure. Yes, by the operation of powerful grace, we are purer than we once were. But here is our dilemma: our purification from sin—that work that will not end until every last microbe of sin is eradi...

Don’t be satisfied with anything less than all God’s powerful grace is able to produce in you and through you. Read Philippians 1:3-11 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+1%3A3-11&version=NIV I know it’s my problem and I suspect it’s yours too—we'’re just too easily satisfied. It’s not that we want too much from God. No, the reality is that often we are willing to settle for too little. We are content with a little bit of change, a little bit of growth, or a little bit of maturity. We settle for a little bit of biblical understanding and a little bit of theological knowledge. We say we love redemption and that we are thankful for God’s grace, yet we become spiritually satisfied long before that grace has completed its work. If our parenting seems to be working, if our marriages are livable, if our jobs aren’t terrible, if our finances aren’t a disaster, and if we have nice houses, a good church, and good health, most of us are satisfied. But God is not sati...

God's care comes in many forms. Fellowship is God caring enough to put people in your life to encourage, rebuke, and comfort you. Read the following passage carefully, and when you've finished reading it, read it again: Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Col. 3:12-14) This passage immediately confronts us with the fact that our relationships don’t belong to us. They belong to God for his use for his purpose. We cannot allow ourselves to have an owner’s view of our relationships, as if they exist for the sole purpose of our happiness. Something big, important, and transformational is being said here about us and our relationships, something that we need to know, unde...

If you're God's child, the gospel isn’t an aspect of your life, it is your life - it is the lens through which you look at everything. Read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+2%3A1-5+&version=NIV It has been a theme of my ministry, a sad recognition that has motivated me to speak the things I speak. Thousands and thousands of sincere believers have a huge hole right smack dab in the middle of their gospel. They tend to see the gospel as a thing of the past and a thing of the future; an entrance thing and an exit thing. Sure, they celebrate the forgiveness they have been given and their welcome into God’s family, and they look with hope to the future, when they will be with the Lord forever, but they don’t understand the radical, mind-changing, and life-altering present reality of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don’t grasp that when they came to Christ, it wasn’t just their past and future that changed; no, everything in...

One of the most basic sins in relationships is inattention. Ephesians 5:22-6:9 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5%3A22-6%3A9&version=NIV It really is true that the number one reason that relationships of all kinds go bad is neglect. Here is the structure of every relationship this side of eternity: it is a flawed person in relationship to a flawed person, in a fallen world, but with a faithful God. Since it is a flawed person in relationship to a flawed person, if you are in a relationship, you simply cannot let that relationship coast and expect that it will be okay. It’s like planting a garden. You clear the land, you break up the soil, and you plant, water, and nurture your flowers, but at that point, you do not have the liberty of walking away. Your work has not ended; in fact, it has just begun, because you have planted your flowers in impure soil and in a less-than-perfect environment. Weeds will immediately begin to grow, and if you don’t attend to ...

Somehow, some way, your little kingdom will look very attractive to you today, but it is the very kingdom from which grace works unrelentingly to rescue you. Read Exodus 32 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=NIV The Bible really is a story of kingdoms in conflict, and that battle rages on the field of your heart. It rages for control of your soul. The two kingdoms in conflict cannot live in peace with one another. There will never be a truce. There is no safe demilitarised zone where you can live. Each kingdom demands your loyalty and your worship. Each kingdom promises you life. One kingdom leads you to the King of kings and the other sets you up as king. The big kingdom works to dethrone you and decimate your little kingdom of one, while the little kingdom seduces you with promises it cannot deliver. The big kingdom of glory and grace is gorgeous from every perspective, but it doesn’t always look that way to you. The little kingdom is deceptive and...

Self-righteousness is being more concerned for, and motivated by, the knowledge of the sin of others than your own. Read Matthew 18:21-33 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+18%3A21-33&version=NIV It’s a spiritual rendition of the old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Is self-righteousness the reason for personal spiritual blindness or is personal spiritual blindness the root of self-righteousness? Whatever the case, they motivate and strengthen each other, and because they do, they present a grave danger to anyone who still has sin living inside him or her (that’s all of us). I’ve seen this operate so powerfully in married couples that it locks their marriages in a permanent state of paralysis that precludes any hope of real lasting change. The husband comes with a long list of his wife’s sins, weaknesses, and failures, but with little awareness or concern for his own, and his wife comes armed with a detailed list of her husband’s wrongs, b...

Remember, what is out of your control exists under the careful control of the One who is all-knowing, all-wise, all-good. Read Daniel 6 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel%206&version=NIV Too much of our emotional energy is sapped by worry. Too many of us are captured by discouragement. Too many of us are too often motivated by fear. Too many of us regularly lose sleep because of worry. Too many of us feel our lives are out of control. Too many of us wish that we had power that we will never have. Too many of us are paralyzed by regret. Too many of us wonder where God is and what he is doing. Too many of us feel alone and misunderstood. Too many of us envy the lives of others. Too many of us think that it’s us against the world. Too many of us, when we are assessing our lives, leave out the ultimate explanatory fact—the existence, character, and plan of God. I am convinced that many of us need to take in or return to the worldview that is presented to us in the ...

Mercy is what we have been given and what we are called to give. It is my commitment to suffer with you, just as Christ suffered for me. Read James 2:1-13 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+2%3A1-13&version=NIV Perhaps it is the most normal, most frequent moral contradiction in our lives. Perhaps it is the place where we all stumble the most. Perhaps our failure here demonstrates how much we still need what we so often fail to give to others. How is it possible that we who have been blessed with eternal love far beyond anything that we ever could have hoped to earn could be so regularly unloving to those around us? How could we ever fail to respond in mercy to others when we have been given mercy that is renewed with each new morning? Why are judgment and condemnation often our more natural responses to the sin, weakness, and failure of others than offering them the same grace that we have been given? Why are we so impatient when the extent of God’s patience wit...

Love is more than being nice to people. It’s loving God above all else so that you love people as he commands you to. Read John 13:1-17 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13%3A1-17&version=NIV I am more persuaded every day, as I examine my own relationships and as I observe others in theirs, that relationships are first fixed vertically before they are ever fixed horizontally. Paul captures this dynamic in surprising words in Galatians 5: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (v. 14).  Now, think this through with me. If you had just written, “The entire law of God is summarised by one command,” what would you have written next? Well, I would have written, “Love God above all else.” That seems right. Is it not the greatest of all of God’s commands (Mark 12:28-30)? Is it not the command that must always be first and foremost in our hearts? It seems that good theology would require that this is the “one word” ...

Truth requires you to love and love requires you to be truthful. Read 1 Corinthians 13 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13&version=NIV Contrary to popular opinion, love and truth don’t stand in opposition to one another. In fact, you can’t really have one without the other. To love truth, you have to be committed to love, and to love love, you have to be committed to truth. The most loving person who ever lived, so loving that he died a cruel and bloody public death for crimes that others committed, was at the same time the most forthright and honest truth speaker that the world had ever known. It was not just that the love of Jesus never contradicted his candour and his candour never inhibited his love. No, there was something more profound going on. His commitment to truth speaking was propelled by his love. The biblical call to love will never force you to trim, deny, or bend the truth, and the biblical call to truth will never ask you to abandon Go...

Today you will convince yourself that you're smarter than God and will write your own rules - or will humbly submit to his wise call. Proverbs 6:20-23 says: My son, keep your father’s command and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them always on your heart; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you. For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life It’s often a subtle thing, going on almost unnoticed, but it has huge implications for the way we live. You and I step over God's boundaries because there are moments in our lives when we are able to convince ourselves that we are smarter than God. We tell ourselves that what he says is wrong, isn’t so wrong after all. We convince ourselves that we can disobey God and it will all work out in the end. We tell ourselves that our way is better tha...

When nothing else or no one else in your life remains and is faithful, you can rest assured that God will be both. Read Psalm 90 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+90&version=NIV I love the honesty of the Bible. I love that faith in God doesn’t require you and me to play monkey games with reality. I love that the Bible's description of life in this fallen world is accurate and familiar. Psalm 90 is one of the most honest and descriptive psalms. How’s this for honesty?  “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (v. 10).  Here’s what the psalmist is saying: “Your life will be short and will be marked by difficulty.” Not very good news is it? But it’s true. You live in a fallen world that itself groans, waiting for redemption. You live with flawed people who think, say, and do wrong things. You live in a place where corruption, immorality, injustice, po...

The purpose of the cross is to completely decimate your loyalty to the most seductive/powerful of all idols—the idol of self. Read Amos 6:1-9 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Amos+6%3A1-9&version=NIV You see it in the whines of a little boy, you see it in the entitlement of the teenager, you see it in the needless argument of the married couple over something unimportant, and you see it in the bitterness of the old man. None of us has escaped this disease. It infects all of our hearts. It is the reason for so much of the brokenness, angst, and pain of the human community. It is the foundation of so much unhappiness and generations of war. It is a personal and moral disaster, yet it seduces us all. Its power draws all of us in. We see it in others and deny it in ourselves. It makes for uncomfortable family moments, friendship disloyalty, and violence in the streets. It makes us envious and demanding. It causes discontent to be more natural than thankfulness. It ruins...

Hope for the believer is not a dream of what could be, but a confident expectation of a guaranteed result that shapes their life. Read Psalm 40 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+40&version=NIV We constantly speak in hope language: “I hope my company does well.” “I hope he isn’t mad at me.” “I hope God really does answer prayer.” “I sure hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.” “I hope this sickness isn’t something serious.” If you are a human being, you hope. You attach your security, your sense of peace and rest to something every day. The question is not whether you hope, but what holds your hope. Take a moment to think about hope with me: 1. You hope in something. You could argue that the life of a human being is propelled by hope. From the little momentary hope of the young child for food or a toy to the profound hope of the young adult for meaning and purpose, we all hope. We all place our hope in someone or something, and we ask that person or that thing to deliver so...