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Order Out of Chaos We serve today the God of order… the God of purpose. However, because of our tendency to make poor choices, we live in a world of chaos and confusion. The bible is filled with major and memorable examples of where God pulled order out of chaos; hope out of desperate futility;

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Light and Darkness This is the theme that the LORD gave to me as He awoke me on this morning with a beautiful sunrise. It is a word and a command from Him to let our light shine today in a world that desperately needs the light that we talked about last week in 1 John chapters 1-3… God’s light.

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Conspiracy Theories and Deflection In today’s verses at the end of Amos chapter 7, one of the religious leaders who served king Jeroboam gave him some horrible counsel. He told the king that Amos was conspiring (making this up) to make Israel look and feel bad. This is very ironic because from what we know of the

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Invasion from Within – A Nation Fooling Itself In today’s message through His servant Amos, God continues to address the reasons why judgment is coming to Israel. In the four previous chapters, He has continued His pattern of saying “because you have done this, I will do this.” But now, He is no longer talking about the deeds

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Invasion from Within – Amos This morning as I awoke, the LORD whispered to me “Amos.” SO I got up and read through this short 9-chapter book about the LORD’s announcement of coming judgment to the northern kingdom of Israel. Amos’ message has a primary focus on God’s coming judgment because of Israel’s

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Hosea – God Desired Knowledge This morning the Lord continued to work on my spirit with additional thoughts on the book of Hosea and the way God went out of His way to get the attention of His people. He had me focus on this idea of how His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge from Hosea 4:6. I went

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The Book of Hosea – A picture of the Gospel and God’s Unending Love The LORD led me in recent days to study and meditate on His word through the minor prophet Hosea. A relatively short book of only 14 short chapters, I was able to read through it several times to lean into what He was trying to tell me. And I walked away from this study with an

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Eternal Focus Jesus was among a gathering of people who had watched for 3 years as He said many things. He had pointed out many things and asked many to examine and consider them for themselves. He spoke to them often about things like truth and deception, light and darkness, love and hatred.

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Invasion from Within – Light and Darkness In our last devotional, we looked at 2 John where John talks about the spirit of division that was present in the midst of this group of church believers. In today’s final epistle of the series, he gets very specific giving names and actions to illustrate the examples of the

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Infiltration from Within by the Enemy In our previous devotionals looking at the epistles of John, we have seen how he was writing this letter as a reminder to a church of believers. It’s a reminder of how they should strive to continue what they have learned and walk in God’s light and in His love. In doing all of

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An Invitation into the Joy of the Light In today’s message we will look at the way the writer of the epistles of John starts this 3-letter series. I call him “the writer” because as you read, you will note that he skips the pleasantries, doesn’t say greetings or even clearly identify himself. No, he gets right to the

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God’s Love and God’s Justice This is a word that the LORD placed on my heart yesterday during a time of conflict. It is based on the general themes of the 3 epistles of John at the end of the bible. The general themes of these books is an admonishment for us to be God’s light in a dark world and for us to be

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Godly Love – Faith is the Center of Power We can be sure that we are children of God when we step back and look closely at our own actions. They demonstrate what we truly believe. Rest assured, brothers and sisters, that God already sees them and He knows. Further, our actions are driven by what we truly believe in our

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More on the Importance of Love in God’s People This is a continuation of yesterday’s devotional from 1 John. Here the writer continues to describe how love is a central theme that is interwoven inextricably in our lives as God’s children. It can be seen in the way we respond both to Him and to others around us… even those

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The God of Love – The God of Compassion This has been a long night indeed. And deep in the middle of it, the LORD gently reminded me of this theme that is woven into the coming day of judgment. Because of our nature, we look at judgment day purely as negative. But as is His way, He looks at this day as the time of

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The Blessing of Pentecost Today we celebrate the Feast of the Pentecost. It is the celebration appointed by God that falls exactly 50 days after what we just celebrated as Easter (the Feast of the Passover). It marks the day when God poured out His Holy Spirit on His people giving us the power to be like

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He Got His Hands Dirty This is the theme with which the LORD nudged me out of sleep today. It is another theme that permeates the bible from beginning to end. It is a theme about intimacy and contamination and a love as only God can love.

In the beginning, the bible describes how the LORD created all

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Being Shrewd as Snakes and Harmless as Doves – Seriously? This is the theme with which the LORD awoke me this morning. He then said it was another timely message. As I lay there and thought about these two statements, I reflected on everything that is happening all around us today (the storms that are raging as if completely out of

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How God Promises versus How We Promise – The Net Effect God’s promises to us come with great authority… the greatest authority that exists and that has ever existed. Understanding this and embracing it in our hearts gives to us the power to endure through faith (hope or waiting on what He promised, even when it makes no sense to us).

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God’s Unchanging Nature Compared to Man’s – 2 Aspects We previously discussed God’s immutability and how this character in Him is a tremendous blessing to us and a foundation of our faith… His promises are Yes and Amen! This morning let’s compare that with the same quality in you and me.

To our shame, man is the picture of change

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Belief that Saves – What Does This Mean? At the end of yesterday’s devotional, we referenced Jesus’ words from John 14:12 when He said “Assuredly I tell you that whoever believes in me will do even greater things than these”. One of the points of emphasis in this statement was His use of the initial word “assuredly.”