Top 5 Devotions
Billy Graham - devotion - God, the Peacemaker
He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord!
—Isaiah 26:3 (TLB)
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s.
You have an ego-a consciousness of being an individual. Of course, you do. But that doesn’t mean that you are to worship yourself, to think constantly of yourself, and to live entirely for yourself. Common sense tells you that your life would be miserable if you followed that course. God is infinitely more concerned about your happiness than you could possibly be and yet He says, “Deny yourself, and follow me.” He knows this is the real path to purpose and fulfillment.
Read his full article here:https://billygraham.org/devotion/god-the-peacekeeper/
Joyce Meyer - Daily devo - Perfect in Christ
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (NIV).
--Matthew 5:48
Pauline Joyce Meyer (née Hutchison; June 4, 1943) is an American Charismatic Christian author and speaker and president of Joyce Meyer Ministries. Joyce and her husband Dave have four grown children, and live outside St. Louis, Missouri. Her ministry is headquartered near the St. Louis suburb of Fenton, Missouri.
Because God is perfect and is working in us, we can also look forward to sharing in His perfection.
We must learn to see ourselves in Christ, not in ourselves. How true it is that if we look at ourselves—at what we are in our own abilities—we cannot be anything except depressed and totally discouraged. But when we look to Christ, the Author and Finisher (perfecter) of our faith, we can enter His rest and believe He is continually working in us (Heb. 12:2 NIV)
We always say, "Nobody is perfect." What we mean is that nobody manifests perfect behavior, and that is a correct statement. Our behavior, however, is quite different from our identities.
The Bible says that faith in Jesus makes us righteous, but in our actions, we don't always do the right thing. I have said for years, "Our who is different than our do." We don't do everything right, but God always loves us. He always sees us "in Christ," through our faith in Him, and He views us as perfect in Christ while we are still being changed by His power.
Trust Him that at this very moment, you are perfect in God's eyes and on your way to perfection, not because of anything you have done but because of who you are in Christ. Trust God to continually work in you to help you mature, grow, and change.
Read his full article here: https://joycemeyer.org/dailydevo
In touch - daily-devotions - Praying in a Crisis
“Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises….
Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.
- James 5:13-20
In Touch Ministries is an American evangelical ministry founded by Charles Stanley, the pastor emeritus of First Baptist Atlanta and the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
When was the last time you cried out to God about something other than personal issues? Sometimes we’re so engrossed in our own life that we fail to see the crises others face. Whether circumstances involve total strangers or hit close to home, it may feel as if such matters are too big for one person’s prayer to make a difference.
Well, don’t believe it. James 5:16 assures us that “the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (NIV). In order to accomplish His will in Israel, the Lord used Elijah’s prayers in a mighty way, even though the prophet was just a human being like us.
Almighty God is able to heal, bring peace, and change circumstances, and He has chosen to let His children participate in the process through prayer. He instructs us to talk with Him about everything (Phil. 4:6) and promises to hear and answer our requests that align with His will (1 John 5:14-15).
You can have an impact on the lives of others when you intercede on their behalf. So let news of a tragedy or problem—regardless of whether it affects you—become a catalyst to talk to God.
Read the full article here: https://www.intouch.org/read/magazine/daily-devotions/prayng-in-a-crisis
Impossible Love Made Possible
When a lawyer asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest, He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37, 39). What an overwhelming assignment!
In our own strength, none of us can live up to this obligation, but the Lord has provided a way for Christians to do the impossible. The indwelling Holy Spirit works to produce His fruit in us, and first on the list is love (Gal. 5:22). In fact, the other eight qualities are really just descriptions of its expression.
Whenever we demonstrate kindness, patience, or gentleness, we see the Lord’s love at work through us, especially when the other person has been unkind and doesn’t deserve such pleasant treatment. This fruit is not produced by trying harder to muster good will toward someone who is irritating or hard to get along with. Instead, think of the process more like sap running through a branch on a grape-vine. The branch doesn’t make grapes; the sap does. In the same way, the Spirit flows through us, producing God’s love in us, so that we can pass it on to Him and others.
Agape love is the reason we are able to care for someone who mistreats us—it’s God’s doing, not ours. Even the adoration we offer the Lord is not something that we can produce in our own heart apart from His assistance. Though the command to love is enormous, God’s grace makes it possible.
Charles Stanley Is the founder and president of In Touch Ministries, which widely broadcasts his sermons through television and served two one-year terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1984 to 1986.
Read his full article here: https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/in-touch/read/devotionals/in-touch-with-charles-stanley/impossible-love-made-possible-in-touch-may-17-11650569.html
Our Daily Bread Ministries - Guilt and Forgiveness
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.
Romans 2:15
Our Daily Bread Ministries (formerly RBC Ministries) is a Christian organization founded by Dr. Martin De Haan in 1938. It is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with over 600 employees. It produces several devotional publications, including Our Daily Bread. The ministry produces radio and television programs, and an online university program called Christian University GlobalNet.
In his book Human Universals, anthropologist Donald Brown lists more than four hundred behaviors that he considers common across humanity. He includes such things as toys, jokes, dances, and proverbs, wariness of snakes, and tying things with string! Likewise, he believes all cultures have concepts of right and wrong, where generosity is praised, promises are valued, and things like meanness and murder understood to be wrong. We all have a sense of conscience, wherever we’re from.
The apostle Paul made a similar point many centuries ago. While God gave the Jewish people the Ten Commandments to clarify right from wrong, Paul noted that since gentiles could do right by obeying their conscience, God’s laws were evidently written on their hearts (Romans 2:14–15). But that didn’t mean people always did what was right. The gentiles rebelled against their conscience (1:32), the Jews broke the Law (2:17–24), leaving both guilty. But through faith in Jesus, God removes the death penalty from all our rule-breaking (3:23–26; 6:23).
Since God created all humans with a sense of right and wrong, each of us will likely feel some guilt over a bad thing we’ve done or a good thing we failed to do. When we confess those sins, God wipes away the guilt like a whiteboard wiped clean. All we have to do is ask Him—whoever we are, wherever we’re from.
Read his full article here: https://www.odb.org/
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