Devotions Archive

Masterpiece in The Making

Today’s Truth
And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you (Philippians 1:6, AMP).

Friend To Friend
It took four years of fresco painting for the Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Commonly known as Michelangelo, his time painting was mostly spent alone, on his back, …

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I Need A Friend, Part 1

Today’s Truth
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her (Ruth 1:16-18, NIV).

Friend To Friend
Friendship is the catalyst for every other …

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A Place to Belong

Today’s Truth
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12, NIV).

Friend To Friend
Advertisers are well aware of the need human beings have to belong.  They are banking on it.  How many times have my eyes filled with tears over a television commercial?  A credit card commercial shows a grown daughter taking her elderly mother back to Italy to discover her roots…”The cost? Priceless.” (I cry.)  A horse-drawn carriage glides through the snow on its way to a cozy cottage nestled in the …

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Care Enough To Confront

Today’s Truth
Faithful are the wounds of a friend (Proverbs 27:6, NIV).

Friend To Friend
One of the basic needs of every healthy relationship is the art of confrontation. To confront someone is to meet them head-on in the quest for compromise. Confrontation is an emotional tackle for the purpose of resolving conflict while promoting peace. Just as God separates us from our sin, He calls us to do the same with sandpaper people. We must disconnect who they are from what they do, loving the sinner but hating the sin, looking beyond their weaknesses in search of their strengths.…

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Using Our Words Wisely – Learning From the Best

Today’s Truth
Freely you have received, freely give (Matthew 10:8).

Friend To Friend
This month, I’ve been examining the power of our words.  So today, let’s take a look at how Jesus used his words with his friends and let’s learn from the best.

Jesus was the Master of believing the best in others and encouraging them to reach beyond their own limited view of their abilities. His disciples had witnessed Jesus command a lame man to walk, restore rotting skin to a leprous outcast, remove fever from Peter’s mother with a touch, calm the raging storm, deliver a man …

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Are You Free?

Today’s Truth
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV)

Friend To Friend
I’ve loved God since I was just a kid.  I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior in Mr. Dunn’s Sunday school class when I was just nine years old.  As a teenager, I served God and grew in faith.  I said “no” to the crowd and “yes” to the cross. I was a girl with convictions, a girl of strong disciplines, and a girl of high moral standards …

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Charge It!

Today’s Truth
He (God) is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven (Ephesians 1:7, NLT).

Friend To Friend
Several years ago an interesting cartoon appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature. Little George Washington is standing with an ax in his hand. In front of him, lying on the ground is the famous cherry tree. He has already made his smug admission that he did it because, after all, he “cannot tell a lie.” However, his frustrated father is standing beside him saying, “All right, so you …

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Taming the Tongue

Today’s Truth
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV).

Friend To Friend
Martha is a sweet older woman who is in the intermediate stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  Perhaps one of the most radical changes in her behavior, besides memory loss, is her inability to control her tongue.  Martha has always used her words in a positive way, but in these latter years, her words have become unrestrained.  Her ability to keep unkind or hurtful words from escaping her lips is impaired.  She can’t help it.  …

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Paid in Full

Today’s Truth
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you (Colossians 3:13, NIV).

Friend To Friend
Do you remember the last words of Jesus as He hung on the cross? “It is finished!” The most literal translation would be “paid in full.”

I will never forget paying off my very first car loan. After sending in my forty-eighth and final payment, I celebrated the fact that I finally owned my bright blue and ever-so-compact Chevrolet Vega – from bumper to bumper. There were those who …

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Grumbling, Grumbling, Grumbling

Today’s Truth
Moses also said, ‘You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling again him.  Who are we?  You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD’ (Exodus 16:8 NIV emphasis added).

Friend to Friend
Yesterday we looked at Miriam and how she grumbled against Moses, but Miriam was not the only one who grumbled while heading toward the Promised Land.  The Israelites grumbled at every turn.  God cared for the Israelites by His …

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