Category: Daily Inspirational Devotional

Philippians 2:12-13 ” …Continue to workout your salvation with fear and trembling, for it’s God Who works in you to Will and to act according to His good purpose.”

We work out, while God is working in…two separate actions, for two separate roles. We are to “work out” our salvation with fear and trembling, not trying to accomplish or earn our salvation, but to “work it out” in order to exhibit unshakeable faith, trust, and hope. This “working out” of our salvation is a life-long process you may hear called Sanctification. In Hebrews 13:21 it tells us that Jesus equips us with everything good for doing His Will as He “works in” us what is pleasing to Him. But remember these roles are set…for there’s no amount of human effort, will, or work that can bring about the “Working in” that the Lord alone does in our life. For only He can “work in” our lives through every good and righteous thing.

Titus 2: 13b-14 ” Our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good.”

With His very life, Jesus, paid the debt of sin, and purchased salvation and eternal life for all sinners. He came to earth to redeem us…He ransomed His life in our place…He rescued us from Hell…He released and set us free from the chains of slavery to sin…and He is refining us for His glory. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, redeeming the very worst of sinners…of which I am one.

Zephaniah 1:12 ” At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.’ “

Just like wine left undisturbed to age, the people of Jerusalem had become smug and proud thinking God wasn’t watching. Isaiah 29:15 warned of this insolence, “Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know?’ ” Their compliancy had gotten to the point that they felt the Lord didn’t see or care about anything they did…that He had forsaken the land and they were free to do whatever they desired…even to the point of arrogantly boasting, Can God judge through such darkness? But it tells us in this Scripture that God did see all they were doing and soon He would be making a thorough inquiry with no one escaping from His divine scrutiny….the glaring and harsh light of His judgment searching the spirit of all men to the innermost being. (Proverbs 20:27)

John 9:1-3 ” As He went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’ “

Most Jews of that day were very familiar with an old Proverb that essentially said, “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” In the Book of Job he restated the Proverb this way, “God stores up a man’s punishment for his sons…” It was assumed then that every temporal misfortune was God’s punishment for a specific sin…and in the case here, his blindness was caused by either the sins of the parents or the blind man himself. And so this is why the disciples saw the man’s blindness had only two possibilities of why it happened…but Jesus offered to them an astonishing third option they had never thought of. It was instead, the divinely ordained spectacular miracle of sight for this man, and for everyone watching, the visible manifestation of God’s glory through the healing hands of Christ.

I Peter 2:9 ” But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”

It tells us here that we have been called out of darkness…but it’s our choice whether we do or not. And that’s where the real struggle begins…the battle between light & darkness, faith & unbelief, good & evil. John 3:19 tells us that, “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” We reject Jesus because His light exposes our sinful ways…and we don’t like that. If we read Ezekiel 8:1-18 we can see how darkness had permeated Jerusalem…from very public to very secretive idolatry within the Temple walls itself…all of the people thinking God couldn’t see them or their evil deeds…but that was far from the truth, “For God Who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness.’ Made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (II Corinthians 4:6) The truth of His light is shining like a high powered beacon, directed at our stubborn hearts…but the choice still remains ours to cross over from darkness to light.

Titus 2:3-5 ” Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanders or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the Word of God.”

In this letter of Paul’s, he was giving Titus instructions on the proper order and conduct of Believers within the Church. But these Scriptures go way beyond the four walls of any Church building. If you profess yourself a Christian, people are watching you. Watching your every action and word… every off-hand remark and callous action. For if you call yourself a Christian, you have become an ambassador for Christ…an example for all to see of just who Jesus is. But when our conduct, character, and discretion is far from what God desires of us, we injure God’s reputation, malign His Name, but more importantly, drag the Gospel through the mud.

Psalm 145:18-19 ” The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them.”

Most of us think that God is too busy to be interested in the things that happen to us. That we are far too insignificant to matter to Him…our troubles unimportant to the God of the universe…our distress inconsequential in the sight of all the pain and suffering in the world. But this Scripture shows us it’s all false thinking on our part. The Lord is near to those who put their faith and trust in Him, that He delights in His favor towards those who fear Him, and that God truly does listen and answer when we cry out to Him. A excellent example of this is Psalm 18:6,16,&19, “In my distress I called to the Lord, He heard my voice…my cry came before Him. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of the deep waters. He rescued me because He delighted in me.”

Psalm 145:15-16 ” The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food at the proper time. You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”

The Lord is open-handed and generous towards us…only desiring to satisfy our needs with His kind provision. He assures us that He will never abandon us…and at just the right time He will supply our desires. But this is where the sticking point comes…His timing apposed to when we think things need to happen. That’s when our impatience and worry take over rather than waiting with hope. God cares for us at just the right time…not too early…not too late…His timing is always perfect. Besides, anxious worry changes nothing. Jesus summed it up well when He said in Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air; they don’t sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

Psalm 145:14 ” The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.”

This verse essentially tells us that the Lord is compassionate towards the weak and restores the erring. The fixed expression for poverty in the Old Testament was, poor and needy, but figuratively poor and needy was also used to express total dependance on God. Throughout the Bible we can see that God gives special attention to the cries of the oppressed…strengthening, sustaining, and protecting them as I Samuel 2:8 says, “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” But the Lord is just as compassionate to those who are going down the wrong path, those bowed down with the weight of sin in their life. The Lord wants to lift those burdens and restore us back to a right standing with Him.

Psalm 145:13b ” The Lord is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made.”

Deuteronomy 7:9 tells us about God’s reliability, ” Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commands.” When it comes to God’s covenantal promises, they are trustworthy, believable, and enduring. But our knowledge of this can never just be “head knowledge”… we must allow it to become “heart knowledge…pervading and shaping every aspect of our life. Or as Joshua 23:14 says, “You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.”