Category: <span>Devotions</span>

Monday Matthew 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” —Matthew 13:44 In the ancient world there were no banks. Often the ground of one’s property was...

Monday Psalm 22; Matthew 27:39-46; John 19:23-24 This week we consider Old Testament pictures and prophecy of Jesus Christ. Many Christians mistakenly spend little time in the Bible’s first 39 books, under-appreciating their relationship with the Gospel and New Testament. Let’s start with a Scripture particularly meaningful to me: Psalm 22, the “Messianic psalm.” In...

Monday Matthew 18:21-35; Mark 14:66-72; John 21:15-17 Peter is so relatable that and human that I find him easy to appreciate. Playing the “teacher’s pet” in today’s featured scripture, Peter tries to impress Jesus and others with his insights and generosity regarding forgiveness. He increased the ancient Jewish standard for forgiveness, three times (Amos 1),...

Monday Luke 10:25-29 – Do This and You Will Live What is life, “true life”? Life that is truly life is and should be never-ending, eternal, and without a worry that one day life will end. That’s God’s life—eternal, without beginning, without end. Today’s passage shows a man described as an “expert in religious law”...

Monday Luke 16:19-21 Agree or disagree: How Christians spend their money says a lot about what they believe about God. The Lord Jesus has been speaking and teaching with the crowds, among whom are the Pharisees (Luke 12-16). They are not pleased with what they have seen and heard from Jesus. Jesus uses this parable...

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...