Category Archives: Daily Devotionals

As a Christian, you have the unique ability to live both now and also in the future.

Do you ever confuse “hope” with “wishing”? When you say, “I hope I get a better job,” or “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” do you have confidence that what you hope for will actually happen? Or is your hope more like a wish? For the Christian, hope is believing. We put our hope in God, that what He says in His Word is true. And we put our hope in Jesus, that what He did on the cross counts for us now and for the future.

We can believe by faith that Jesus lives in us here on Earth, and we can look forward with complete confidence that Jesus is coming again to take us to heaven. This is not wishing hope. This is real hope, the kind that enables us to live for God now while we look forward to living with Him in the future.

We should live in this evil world with self-control, right conduct, and devotion to God, while we look forward to that wonderful event when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed. Titus 2:12-13

God will never see holiness in us unless He sees Jesus in us.

We shouldn’t be concerned when we come across things in the Bible that puzzle us. God’s Word is a book with many layers, kind of like an onion. Some verses are more on the surface and easily understood, while others are deeper and take more time.

The Bible’s teaching on holiness is one of those deeper truths. We clearly understand verses that say, “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). But when we run across a verse that says, “But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God–who chose you to be his children–is holy” (1 Peter 1:15)–well, that’s tough to understand. How can sinners be holy?

The only way for us to be holy before God is for God to see Jesus–the purest of the pure–in our lives. Our job isn’t to try to be holy, but to let Jesus live through us.

For you know that God paid a ransom to save you…with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him for this purpose….And he did this for you. 1 Peter 1:18-20

Don’t let your dreams die.

It’s in our nature to dream. There are the dreams you dream when you’re asleep, and there are the dreams you dream when you are awake. Let’s talk about your daydreams for a minute.

When your daydreams drift to fantasy worlds and unrealistic results, they’re pretty useless. But when you use your dreams to focus on something better for yourself and others, they can be very motivating. One big dream every Christian should have centers on the stuff God has prepared for us beyond this life on Earth (1 Cor. 2:9). This is not a fantasy land (although the mansions and gold streets may seem like that).

Heaven is for real. When you dream of heaven, you are dreaming of something very realistic. This should give you tremendous motivation to serve God on Earth and love Him with your whole being.

What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. Hebrews 11:1

You don’t realize the meaning of Christmas until you take Jesus out of the manger and put Him in your heart.

How silly it would be to receive a gift this Christmas and leave it unopened. You would never do that. It might look pretty sitting under the tree, or on a shelf (after the tree has been chopped into kindling), but the decorative value of the package is likely to be minimal compared to the usefulness of the gift itself.

Many people never realize the real meaning of God’s Christmas gift–His Son, Jesus. They keep Him wrapped in a religious package, and then set Him on a shelf in their life because He has some decorative value to them. But they never tear away the religious wrappings. They never take Him out of the box and have a real relationship with Him.

Please, don’t make the tragic mistake of keeping Jesus under the wrapping. Enjoy the full benefit of Him by getting to know Him personally and intimately.

The Savior–yes, the Messiah, the Lord–has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David! Luke 2:11