Category: <span>Devotions</span>

Monday Devotional One Mark 4:4-20 Continuing our devotional series on the Parable of the Four Soils, we now focus our attention on seed that falls on good soil. Jesus borrows an image from 1st century Galilean agriculture to teach a spiritual lesson. In those days, farmers scattered seed far and wide before plowing, and that...

Monday Mark 4:7, 18, 19 When we moved to Southern California, our family moved into a house with a large backyard. Since I love fruit and fruit trees, I decided to plant six fruit trees there. I thought that in this way I would have an abundance of fruit. My thinking was that the more...

Monday Jeremiah 17:5-8 This week’s focus is on the importance of having roots or being grounded in our faith. When we are “rooted,” we can withstand things that come our way because our foundation is solid. This passage in Jeremiah is a great place to start talking about being rooted. Here the prophet paints a...

Monday Matthew 13:1-23; Psalm 119:33-36 This week we consider one of Jesus’ first fully-developed parables. Our emphasis will be upon the sower and the hard ground “along the path” where the “seed” couldn’t take root before being “snatched away.” Jesus often used parables for public, larger group teaching, a method that perplexed many, including His...

MONDAY Isaiah 40:21-31 Waiting. No one likes waiting. Impatience stirs within us. Anxiety creeps in. The desperate need to take control starts to bubble up inside us. Waiting. Perhaps one of the most uncomfortable things we have to do is wait. Right now, I am in a season of waiting. Waiting on the Lord for...

MONDAY Romans 12:1-2 Every day Paul is urging his fellow Christians to present their bodies to God as a living and holy sacrifice. That means that every day that we are alive we should be living for God. We should be leaning into the day in order to live for God. Paul says this kind...

Monday Genesis 3:1-19; Habakkuk 1:2-4 Evil, Pain and Suffering: Why? The skeptic reasons, “If God is loving, all-powerful and all-knowing, how can He permit evil and its consequences? Since evil exists, God either is not as described or nonexistent.” Lee Strobel, in The Case for Christ, describes a cartoon featuring two turtles in conversation. Turtle...

MONDAY Psalm 14:1-3; Psalm 19:1-4; John 1:1-5 Creator or Randomness: Is there a God? Over these next two weeks, we’ll consider the “big questions” that most have pondered periodically. We start with the biggest question, the one on which all else hinges: Is there a God? The two broad, opposing camps here are theists—those believing...

MONDAY Acts 28:11-31 AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT The Book of Acts is so full of a reporter’s details, told so matter-of-factly that one can only conclude that all the events described—both ordinary and miraculous—actually happened! Being a physician (Colossians 4:14), the author Luke was used to dealing with the plain facts. Indeed, the earlier parts of...

MONDAY Daniel 6:1-24 The Book of Daniel is a prime example of leadership under pressure. It is difficult to pick out just one chapter to support this; Daniel 6 is just one example. Read the whole book!  Charles Spurgeon puts it this way: “… these are times when we need to be as firm and resolute...