11 Saturday Aug 2012
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God is able to turn bad situations into good for our lives. Psalm 60:5 promises us that God is able to save those He loves, Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered. It is not always the way we want delivery, but He knows what is best for us. We must have faith and trust in Him to know what is best for us.
10 Friday Aug 2012
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In today’s reading Psalm 2:8 stood out to me, Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. All we really have to do is ask of God and He will bless us. It’s not always the way we think He will bless, but it is always within His perfect plan that allows us to look back and know how much He wants to take care of us.
09 Thursday Aug 2012
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Verses 17 and 18 stood out to me today, 17 I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. 18 For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. This is why it is so important to spend your own time in God’s word, so that you know the accuracy of what you are being taught from sermons and books. If we rely solely on a person’s opinion, without checking the validity of their teaching, we risk the potential for being misled into inaccurate information.
08 Wednesday Aug 2012
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From now on when someone asks me why we do this blog I’m going to point them to Romans 15:4, For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. The knowledge of scripture and understanding the history behind it affects our attitude toward our present and future. The more we know and understand about what God has done in the past, the more confidence we will have in what He will do about our future. Being diligent about reading God’s word increases our trust in God’s perfect plan and will for our lives.
07 Tuesday Aug 2012
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Sometimes we as Christians like to base our moral beliefs on our opinions or cultural bias rather than God’s word. When each of us stands before God, we won’t have our friends, family, or neighbors there with us. We will be accountable for our own lives and not that of anyone else’s. Verses 10-12 makes it clear, You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: “ ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ ” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. In the end, we will all stand before God and our eternity will be based on our own merit and the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
06 Monday Aug 2012
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Verse 9 in today’s reading clears up a lot of confusion about Christian love, The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul is simply saying we should use love as our gauge for all that we do. If we love others first, we will always do what is right. We need to focus on treating others the way we want to be treated. Do we want to be fed, clothed, and have housing? Then we need to work on those same things for others around us.
05 Sunday Aug 2012
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It is good to have a healthy self-worth. We should never think of ourselves as being less than what God has created us to be. At the same time, it is important to take an accurate assessment of ourselves and know that our identity comes from our relationship with God. Verse 3 says, For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. We are only as good as the measure of faith we have in God. We can never have true success without the Father. We may be successful in the eyes of the world, but our true measure comes from how we compare in the light of eternity.
04 Saturday Aug 2012
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Never once has God ever been caught off guard when I needed to receive His grace. Verse 32 states this as being part of His perfect plan, For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. God owes us nothing, yet He has given us everything we need. Verse 35 hits me right between the eyes, “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” God’s grace is not owed to me, but it is a gift I do not deserve and receive gladly. His love is always so amazing to me!
03 Friday Aug 2012
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I have a very simple thought today and it comes from verse 11, As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” I pray that God reminds me daily to show His grace and mercy to everyone around me no matter who they are or what they have done. It is easy for me to pick out the big sins and feel they are different than any other form of disobedience. But God’s mercy and grace spans the spectrum of all sin. May I be reminded daily when I react to people’s imperfections around me. The truth is, my imperfections are more like planks when compared to their thorns.
02 Thursday Aug 2012
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Verses 14-16 in today’s reading are tough ones for me, 14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. Don’t get me wrong, I trust in God wholeheartedly, but my human understanding sometimes gets in the way. Earlier in the chapter, Paul uses the example of Jacob and Esau; one of the twins He had mercy and the other He allowed to be hardened. It doesn’t make sense to me, but God’s plan is perfect. He does things for a specific purpose in mind and I need to accept it and wait to see how it plays out. As I get older, I am beginning to understand there are something’s I will never understand. There are some things I don’t need to understand. I simply need to trust God and know He can turn what seems to be a bad thing into something that is used for His glory. More importantly, grace comes from God alone. There is nothing I can do to receive any more or less of it. It comes from one source, and that is God’s perfect sovereignty.
Daily Devotion 