Category: Daily Inspirational Devotional

Sure, dreams were one way in which revelation might have come to a prophet. (Numbers 12:6, Joel 2:28) But such claims should always be treated with due suspicion, and tested against the whole entirety of God’s Word. (Deuteronomy 13:1-3) “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (I John 4:1) Here, John as well as Paul in I Corinthians 12:3 warns us to “test” the spirits…to discern and evaluate them for trustworthiness. Does it align with the Word of God? And does it honor and exalt Jesus and the Gospel Message? It’s important then to distinguish between the Spirit of Truth (which you can bear witness to) and a spirit of error, or a lying spirit. For just because someone tells you, “I had a dream!” it could merely be an empty and delusional fantasy on their part.

God’s grace isn’t a moment in time but a lifelong journey, filled with His kindness and mercy. His grace is a constant reminder that even when life gets rough and we’re left in pieces, God will never leave us that way. He’ll gather up all those broken fragments and form them into something far more beautiful than we could ever imagine. They then become a mosaic of our life… a coat of many colors that demonstrate it’s only by His amazing grace that we’re here today.

Over the Seasons of my life, I have readily notice that God is faithful to give me a Scripture, Promise, or Sacred Word to cling to as life’s storms batter and toss. Each Season is heralded by His Word… undergirding, strengthening, and offering me hope. So during this particular Season of my life, these three words have been echoing in my mind…Love, Encourage, Serve. We are to love one another, but we don’t have to meet or even know a person to love them. That’s because as Jesus explained in Matthew 6:5-15, we can pray for them. Prayer is something we can do when we hear of a disaster anywhere in the world…knowing God is listening and interceding on their behalf. Next, as we go through our day we will have short interactions with people we may or may not know. This is the time to encourage those around us. (I Thessalonians 5:11, Hebrews 3:13) For it doesn’t take but a moment to engage someone with a kind word and a smile. Finally, there’s serving wholeheartedly as if we’re serving the Lord and not man. (Ephesians 6:7) Therefore, serving others becomes a sacred act of obedience and worship unto the Lord and should be considered the highest form of loving God.

Consider this, long before Zacchaeus needed to see Jesus…God planted that tree along the roadside near Jericho. Now the story in Luke 19:1-10 tells us that Zacchaeus was a despised chief tax collector for the Roman Empire…but yet, he longed to see this man called Jesus. So he climbed a tree to see over the gathered crowd. This symbolized on his part the deep humility and willingness to overcome all obstacles in order to seek out spiritual truth. And Jesus met him where he was, stressing His Gospel Mission to seek and save the lost. We need to remember then that God actively goes before us… clearing obstacles and guiding our steps. (Deuteronomy 31:8, Isaiah 45:2, John 10:4) For everything is under His watchful care and has been prepared for us before the beginning of time.

If you hear the word love today, most times it’s used like a noun. But in the Bible, love is more of a verb. It’s a duty…an action word we’re obligated to perform. God commands us to love one another, love our neighbor, love our spouses, and even to love our enemies. The best place to read about this Agape love is in I Corinthians 13, where the Apostle Paul carefully lays out the type of unconditional, sacrificial, and selfless love we are to imitate. That’s because, as he wrote, Christian love is the ultimate fruit of the Spirit.

There will be Seasons of your life that are about trusting God more than understanding what’s happening. King David called them, “wonderful and too lofty for me to attain.” (Psalm 139:6) Neither did he fool himself, thinking he knew more than God, instead renouncing pride and arrogance, and admitting to God’s all-encompassing omniscience. The scope of God’s knowledge is boundless…it’s both majestic and mysterious…therefore reminding us of our limitations and the need to trust in Him.

In the Book of Psalms there are 58 laments…they are the most numerous type among the 150 Psalms in the Bible. But yet we’ve built a Church culture where expressing sorrow, distress, doubts, fears, exhaustion, or grief feels more like a lack of faith than a cry for mercy. Our performance driven Church culture instead wants us to reply to any inquiry with a quick, “I’m Okay!” We only need to look at Hannah’s heartfelt cry to God from the depths of her despair and the priest’s reply to see how this could be incorrectly judged. From I Samuel 1: 10-15 we find Hannah…barren for years and struggling with the deep sorrow of being childless. Her private & very personal prayer in the Tabernacle that day was earnest, brutally honest, and intentional. It was a faith-filled cry to God affirming her trust in Him in the midst of her anguish. But Eli, the priest, just saw a drunk and “worthless” woman muttering in the pew…of which, she was neither. Thus, laments are a model for our prayers, showing that they are a legitimate and vital expression of honesty, faith, and worship.

This is one of seven “I am” statements in John that demonstrate the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Just like calling Lazarus from the grave, Jesus’ voice brings the dead to life. All the while reinforcing the Gospel Message in the very person of Jesus and by His saving work…that we may be saved and forgiven. And in this we have hope that life for us doesn’t have to end at the deathbed, but continue as an endless life of fellowship with God. That’s because Jesus is the Source of both of our resurrection and eternal life, and belief in Him and in Him alone, ensures life beyond our physical demise.

Suffering is never wasted energy in the hands of a good God. He uses it to deepen our faith, conform us more to Him, and develop a compassion that the world doesn’t understand. In the self-absorbed world today, showing empathetic compassion beyond a few kind words is rare. I Peter 3:8 reminds us to live in harmony with one another in authentic, practical care and emotional understanding. So as the world shakes its head in confusion, take the attributes of God and mirror them to others…or as Psalm 86:15 says, “But You, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”

This is the Apostle Paul’s short letter to Philemon, a fellow Christian and slave-owner to Onesimus…a slave that had run away and had somehow met Paul in Rome, where he converted to Christianity. In this letter, Paul carefully selects his words of fellowship and love one to another… now that the slave and the slave-owner are both Believers. Paul even capitalizes on the meaning of Onesimus’s name, “useful” to prove his now serviceable gifts for the kingdom. The point of his letter is to show gratitude for God’s work of grace , expressing his prayerful desire for all Believers to have spiritual usefulness, unity, and fellowship. And that Philemon, (and us) should demonstrate Christian love as the first rule of human action…transcending all boundaries.