Posts with the category “matthew”

What does famed NFL player Barry Sanders and resurrected Jesus have in common? I am not trying to be disrespectful, but I do have a point. Barry Sanders is considered one of the greatest NFL running b...  Read More

If ever a man had a chance to become a saint it should have been Judas. Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus. For more than two years, he lived with Jesus. He listened to His words, watched His ...  Read More

Every time I get a new Bible, I write the same thing in each one before I start reading. I put it right on the flyleaf. It is a five-hundred-year-old poem a prison convict wrote: “There was a man, and...  Read More

Leonard Ravenhill, one of my spiritual fathers, said: “Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, ‘Le...  Read More

“When the Author steps on the stage the play is over.” This is how C. S. Lewis spoke about the ending of planet Earth. We would call that the second coming of Jesus. This is where we are in today’s re...  Read More

Today’s reading is an intense chapter. It’s about hypocrites and religion—hypocrites in religion. In fact, Jesus said, “Woe to you hypocrites and religious people” eight times! (See verses 13-16, 23, ...  Read More

The Bible never says you have to believe with all your heart, even though it says you must believe in your heart. But when it comes to loving God—that must be done with all your heart. I think God lea...  Read More

Theologian John Calvin said, “To know God as the Master and Bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of Him, and still not go to Him and ask of Him—this would be of as little profit...  Read More

Inevitably when someone well known dies, I get asked, “Do you think that person is in heaven?” Before I respond, I always think of John Newton, the eighteenth-century former slave ship captain who bec...  Read More

J. C. Ryle wrote, “The highest form of selfishness is a man content to go to heaven alone.” I don’t ever want to be content to go to heaven alone. I want to take as many as I can with me. But I have s...  Read More

When I was working toward my undergrad degree in corporate finance, the students would say cash is king. When I was doing my graduate work in theology, the students would say context is king. So many ...  Read More

If you had a chance to ask God a “why?” question, what would you ask him? Why did this bad thing happen to me? Why did my mom pass away? How about a personal failure question? That’s what we find in M...  Read More

Poor Alexander. He was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Maybe you’ve read about his day? From the moment he woke up, one terrible thing after another horrible thing happened to him....  Read More

Abraham Lincoln famously stated, “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.” In today’s reading, we find a woman who had abso...  Read More

As he awaited his death as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, the famed theologian, pastor, and Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote a letter about losing people we love. He wrote, in pa...  Read More

Every day as you read one chapter of the New Testament, the goal is more than just experiencing a feeling of accomplishment but to grow and become more like Christ. Sometimes when you struggle to find...  Read More

While I am writing today’s devotional, a television show about Jack Ryan, the fictional CIA analyst, is trending online. Some knew him as Harrison Ford; for others, he was Chris Pine; and for us old f...  Read More

Conditions or circumstances can affect perspectives. What goes on in our lives can determine our points of view and how we define important things—most seriously, our view and definition of God. Some...  Read More

I want to tell you the history of two groups of people who are in the New Testament—the tax collectors and the zealots. The tax collectors were Jews who collected taxes from fellow Jews for the Roman ...  Read More

Matthew 9 is a chapter that is spilling over with healing and faith. A paralyzed man is brought to Jesus by his friends in verse 2 and Jesus sees the faith of the friends and the paralyzed man walks. ...  Read More

Her name was Agnes and she was from Albania. In 1928, at age eighteen, she went to Ireland and became a nun. Almost twenty years later, in 1946, she received what she described as a call within the ca...  Read More

A concerned husband went to see the family doctor. “I think my wife is deaf,” he said. “She never hears me the first time I say something. In fact, I often have to repeat things over and over.” “Go ho...  Read More

In the first part of chapter 6, Jesus spoke about three personal disciplines that are part of every Christian’s life: giving, praying, and fasting. Note that I said, these three disciplines are part o...  Read More

Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported a story on happiness in different nations around the world. The newspaper’s title gave away the happiness level of people living in the United State...  Read More

It seems Jesus can’t even towel off and get dressed after being water baptized in the Jordan River before Satan shows up and challenges what Jesus has heard. We ended yesterday’s reading in Matthew 3 ...  Read More

A little brother was jealous that his older brother was getting water baptized and he wasn’t. As his father instructed the older brother on what it meant and how special it was, the little guy left th...  Read More

Obedience to God is such a powerful tool. Obedience to God will always keep you one step ahead of the enemy. Obedience to God brings you blessing. And it brings protection and puts you in the right pl...  Read More

The whole of the New Testament starts with today’s reading in Matthew 1. This is the story of stories—and it starts off all wrong. Most adventure stories begin with the wondrous “Once upon a time” so...  Read More