Guidelines For Living Devotional

Why You Should Find Out About The Holy Spirit

When a group of Bible students were reciting the words of a creed they had learned, one girl stood and said, "I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and Earth." Another followed, "I believe in Jesus Christ, God's Son who was crucified, buried and rose again the third day." There was a pause, then a girl's voice rang out, "I think the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit is absent today!"

Why You Should Take Positive Action Today!

Years ago 18-year-old Paul Whittaker was admitted to Oxford University in England where he studied for a degree in music.  Whittaker, though, was different from most students in college.  Totally deaf since birth, yet he played the organ and directed choirs, reading lips as he sat in his lectures at Oxford and going on to earn postgraduate degrees in music.  He then founded a non-profit called Music and the Deaf, helping deaf people enjoy music. Paul is a motivational speaker and helps people “feel” music in13 different countries around the world. 

What Does It Mean To Repent?

A man walked into a bank, handed the teller a threatening note and walked out with a bag of money containing more than $3,000.  The man was never caught, but the whole thing has authorities baffled.  It began a few months later when the bank received an envelope which had been mailed from a distant city containing a cashier's check in the name of a Mister R.E. Morse as in the word "remorse."  Along with one of the checks was the following note: "My faith in Christ as my Savior has impelled me to undertake this reimbursement and I hope to be able to pay it off within six months."

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Quit Even When Things Are Tough

One of the strange things about trials is that when they knock at our door or sneak through the back door of our lives, we never quite expect them.  Yes, we know that other people face them, but not us.  When we do go into combat with them, we also feel that nobody else has ever faced the same intensity of testing nor do they understand.

Here’s How To Respond To A Hostile World

There is a common perception in the world today that faith in Jesus Christ will exempt us from the trials and hardships of life, especially those associated with our health, our happiness, and our prosperity.  Then when people buy into this concept and discover all together too soon that their prayers will not always turn back the hostility of a world who thinks Christians are bigoted and strange, they become disappointed and feel disillusioned.

Why A Christian Can Expect Trouble

On a warm summer day, July 19, 64 AD, fire broke out in the poor quarters of Rome near the coliseum.  In those days the streets of the city were narrow and were used primarily for foot traffic.  Many buildings in that area had been built of wood, and in the dry heat of summer they burned quickly. In only hours, there was a conflagration unlike anything Rome had ever seen.  The Temple of Luna was consumed along with the Shrine of Vesta...hundreds, then thousands, of people were homeless. 

Here’s Where To Find A Satisfying Life

It could have been a scene out of a horror movie. The naked man lived alone in a graveyard. In fact, no one would even get near him. They had tried but he was so strong that when they chained him up, he snapped the chains, broke the irons and fled to the hills, crying out and cutting himself with sharp stones. Yes, cutting--just like the harm desperate people inflict on themselves today.  Do you realize that there’s nothing new in Satan’s playbook of despair? He still drives people to all types of self-harm and death every chance he gets.

How Much Should You Confess About Your Past?

The issue never really goes away:  How much should you confess to your husband or wife about your past life?  Or even your present life?  Following a series dealing with the consequences of infidelity, we were bombarded with several variations of the same question.  One person wrote, "I have confessed my sins to the Lord and truly experienced the joy of His forgiveness as I claimed His blessings, but I always thought I did not need to confess to my husband or to anyone.  Am I wrong to believe that I'm completely forgiven of my sins even without having to confess this to my husband?"

Here’s An Encouraging Way To Connect With God

The Psalmist wrote that when Israel went into captivity in Babylon, "There on the poplars we hung our harps" (Psalm 137:2).  In other words, the music stopped and the song was ended, but when they returned to their land, the harps came down and the music started again.

Do You Read The Bible?

I was standing in an ancient Chinese temple, now a temple of the people, in Canton, China.  As we listened to our guide tell how the Chinese people had been liberated from old religious beliefs, a young man who was studying English at the university approached a tourist to try out his English.  He spoke pleasantly for a few minutes in broad generalities, and then asked, "Do you have a Bible?"