Daily Devotion
June 7, 2025
Philippians 2:21 “For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s”
Paul wrote these words to the church at Philippi when he said he was sending Timothy to them. He said he didn’t have anyone else like Timothy who genuinely cared for their welfare. Take a second to let that sink in. It’s a convicting thought for me as to how much we are so daily self-absorbed with so little time to dedicate ourselves to the things of Jesus Christ. I know there are pastors and other Christian workers who are deeply involved in the things of God but I can’t help but wonder if sometimes it’s because it’s their occupation, their career. I wonder if all the people who are getting paid for religious and church service suddenly stopped getting a paycheck how it would affect their fervor for the Lord. Nowadays, churches pay about everybody who appears on the stage and almost everyone who has some involvement in church ministries. You can’t watch a sermon or teaching on TV or the internet without it being constantly interrupted by an advertisement from the speaker about their latest and greatest book, available wherever books are sold. And we get it; all these things are a part of current Christianity but it still calls to me for a heart-check to stop and consider if the race I say I’m running for Christ is because I’m seeking the things of Jesus Christ or if I’m involved in the religious theatre. The spectacle of Christianity but not the personal reality of a loving, serving relationship with the Lord. Paul is saying that Timothy was different; He truly cared about people and God’s work. We get the idea that he, like Paul, would preach if there was no money involved and even if they were persecuted, beaten, and humiliated as Paul and many others were, they would remain faithful to Jesus Christ and the ministry. Let’s admit it: Seeking our own, and looking after our own interests occupies most of our time, and in the large picture, it can’t be helped. That’s not what the statement is about. It’s about the cause of Christ and whether or not we are willing to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Whether or not we will serve the Lord even if it costs personal suffering and sacrifice and do it willingly, unmotivated by expected compensation of some sort; Be it the praise of others or gifts and salaries. Praise God when we can see the Lord as our source, supplying all our needs and the fields of souls as our calling.
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June 6, 2025
2 Timothy 4:6-7 “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”
2 Timothy is the last letter Paul wrote before he was executed. He was an old man, had preached for over 30 years, and penned these words from a dark prison cell where he had been locked for several months. Bible historians tell us his cell had no window, only an opening above where food was dropped to him and water lowered. It was a miserable, cold, dark, damp, and lonely place where he spent the last bit of his life. He asked Timothy to send a cloak he had left at Troas along with some books and parchments of Old Testament scriptures. We might expect him to be sad, discouraged, and even bitter that he had served the Lord faithfully only to come to the end of his days in such a place with execution by beheading looming. But it was the opposite. Some have called this chapter “Paul’s Song” because he revealed his heart and in no way appears to regret anything. In verse 8, he declares victory: “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing”. When you read these words, can you say like Paul, “I am ready”? He is referencing the Old Testament Drink Offering that was poured out to the Lord and sees his life as a life of sacrifice for God’s glory. “I have fought a good fight” speaks of the Christian life and all we battle against. We might not feel like we have always fought a good fight but we can take comfort that we were on the Lord’s side of the battle. The course refers to the Christian life as a race that we run and just as we had a starting line at our new birth, we have a finish line ahead of us and by God’s Grace, we will finish what we started. Paul testified in Acts 20:24, “Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy”. “I have kept the faith” speaks of the perseverance of the saints and that we will keep believing. Praise God, we fight a good fight, on the God side of the battle. We will finish the race the Lord laid before us and we will not stop believing!
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June 5, 2025
James 5:17-18 “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit”
The scripture here makes sure we understand that Elijah was a person like us. God tells us this to defeat the lies of the devil that the prophet’s power of prayer was because he was more than a man and was holier than we are. But the Holy Spirit inspired these words after verse 16, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” to give us the faith to believe that when we pray, God is at work. One thing about Elijah’s prayer to stop the rain was that it was a prayer in line with God’s Word. He had a scriptural basis for his prayer that looked back to Deuteronomy 11:16-17, “Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD’S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you”. This completely described the backslidden condition of Israel when Elijah prayed the prayer of faith and the rain stopped. When we know what the Bible says about a matter, then we know God’s will concerning it. Then when we pray with the scripture as a guarantee, our prayers have power, backed by the truth of God’s Word. Elijah didn’t just pull the idea of God shutting off rain out of his imagination or his desire to manipulate the situation. As he prayed, he could speak to the Lord about the promise He made in Deuteronomy, point out the sins of Israel, and ask the Lord to keep His promise. His faith in prayer rested on what God said and that God cannot lie. Are you praying for something right now, wanting or needing an answer from God? Then ask the Holy Spirit to direct you to what God has already said in the Bible concerning your situation and make those scriptures the foundation of your prayers. Use your concordance or cross-referencing resources and write down every passage you can find that concerns your request. Then, remember we are all just like Elijah and have God’s ear open to us. Pray, pray, and keep praying, resting your faith and hope on God’s faithfulness to keep His promises. Halleluiah!!
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June 4, 2025
Judges 7:7 “And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand”
The Midianite army numbered 135,000 and the Israelite army numbered 32,000. But God told Gideon 32,000 were too many because when they defeated Midian, they would boast about their strength and abilities and not give God the glory. So, Gideon told everyone who was afraid, to go home and 22,000 went home. God said that’s still too many and when He was finished testing them, only 300 men were left. God took those 300 and defeated the large Midianite army. Our lesson today is that the Lord often chooses the weak, the incapable, the lowly, and the outnumbered to do His work. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29, “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence”. We sometimes feel inadequate and unqualified to serve the Lord, to step up and put ourselves out there. But we know the Bible stories like how David, a youth with a sling and a small stone, by the power of God, killed a fierce, trained giant warrior. David’s victory came from his submission to the Lord and as he ran to face Goliath, he said, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel”. Do you believe that nothing is impossible with God? Do you believe through Him you can do all things? The story of Gideon with his 300 soldiers, is the account of a battle that seemed impossible but God gave the victory. Let’s give ourselves completely to the Lord with all our weaknesses, flaws, and limitations. 1 Corinthians 1:31, “That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord”.
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June 3, 2025
John 5:24 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life”
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. When we take it together with John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”, we have the plan and promise of God to save all who will believe. At first, it may seem the two verses are contradictory. One says when we hear the Word of Christ and believe on the Father, we receive eternal life. The other says when we put our trust in Jesus we receive eternal life. But they go together because the Father and the Son cannot be separated and we must look to them as a whole. The complete unity of the Father and Son is declared in John 10:30, “I and my Father are one” and in John 5:22-23, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him”. Consider 1 John 2:22-23: “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also”. The Jews said they believed in God the Father but when they heard the Words of Jesus, they would not believe that He was the Son of God. But when we hear the truth of Jesus Christ and receive Him as our Savior, believing that He is the only begotten Son of God, we are believing 1 John 4:9, “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him”. Saving faith is not trusting the church, our confessions, baptism, religion, or anything else including our good deeds. It is trusting Jesus, the Son of God, and that He alone will save us. Don’t think that people in the average church pew believe this gospel and don’t believe because it’s been preached a time or two that everyone is settled in the matter. People need to hear it over and over because the enemy is always at work to discredit salvation by grace through faith alone. Even those who are saved can often get confused over the complete sufficiency of Christ Jesus to save all who trust in Him.
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June 2, 2025
Job 13:15 “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him”
What does it take to have the resolve, the fortitude that Job showed when he was at the lowest point in his life? He had lost everything and all that was left was his life but his steadfast faith in God was such that he declared that even if it came to losing his life, his trust in God would not waver. That’s the opposite stance of the seed that fell in rocky ground or among thorns in Luke 8. It’s more like the house that was built on the rock and when storms, wind, rains, and floods beat it, it was still standing firm. For us, that type of faith comes when we anchor our hope in Christ alone. There’s an old hymn that says, “His oath, his covenant, his blood, support me in the whelming flood; when all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand: all other ground is sinking sand”. But Job lived long before Jesus was born and yet he had such faith in God that nothing could move him. It takes a God-view of all creation and the underlying determination that all things exist because God made them and, when it comes to choosing to follow anything created or the Creator, we choose the Creator. And, by anything created, we mean not only tangible things, but ideas, theories, systems, and anything else concocted by humans including religions. Unshakable faith means we don’t have to understand our circumstances; we trust God unconditionally. Job didn’t know why he had lost everything and was suffering pain but he determined to trust God even though he was looking for answers to explain his situation. That’s the idea of, “But I will maintain (Plead, reason, dispute) mine own ways before him (Offer my defense)”. Unshakable faith doesn’t mean we stop trying to understand why God works the way He does and it’s not wrong to ask Him. Have you come to that place in your faith in God that no matter what happens, you will declare steadfast trust in Him? He gives and sometimes He takes away but He promised that He will never leave or forsake us and that like Job, all that seems bad that comes our way He will turn it all for our good.
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June 1, 2025
Matthew 20:34 “So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him”
Jesus asked these blind men what they wanted and they said they wanted to see. Today’s verse says that the Lord touched their eyes and immediately they were healed. When we pray for God to help us, to do something we’re trusting Him for, we usually want Him to respond immediately as He did in this miracle. A lot of our Lord’s miracles took place this way. Jesus would speak or touch people and immediately they were healed or delivered. In Luke 4:39, Peter’s mother-in-law was sick and the Bible says that Jesus, “stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them”. Many times in the gospels the word “immediately” is used to tell us how quickly circumstances responded to the Lord’s words or touch. But notice the account of the healing in John 9:6-7: “When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing”. Here, Jesus gave the man a command, a duty to do, that was a part of his healing. Sometimes the answers to our prayers come with some responsibility on our part and God wants us to be involved and act in line with His instructions. He does not always want us to passively wait for Him to immediately show up when there are things we should do. The blind man acted on faith when the Lord told him to go specifically to the pool of Siloam and wash. Sometimes God wants us to forgive someone we’re holding a grudge against before He will answer our prayers. Sometimes He reveals a scripture to us He wants us to act on. Then there are times He wants us to ask someone to pray with us and partner with us in our petition to the Lord. A part of our prayers should be to ask God to show us if anything is blocking Him from acting, anything that’s grieving the Holy Spirit, or anything we should do in faithful obedience to His will. He told Moses to lift up his rod and stretch out his hand and the Red Sea parted. We can pray, “Lord I know that You can answer me immediately but if there’s any part You want me to have in this, show me clearly, reveal it to me, and give me the grace to obey”.
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