June 24, 2020 | Habakkuk 3:16–19 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake, I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running […]
June 23, 2020 | Isaiah 51:1–6 DEVOTIONS. This Month’s Issue Entropy is the natural tendency for things to become more and more disorganized. The second law of thermodynamics describes it as matter’s tendency to lose energy and decline into disorder when left to itself. My sock drawer is the perfect example of entropy! My neatly […]
June 22, 2020 | Galatians 2:7–16 DEVOTIONS .. This Month’s Issue Even after Peter’s life-changing restoration by Christ, he remained human. That means he was also not exempt from additional failures. One day, while Peter was praying on a roof in Joppa, God gave him a vision. Peter saw a sheet full of unclean animals […]
FAILING JESUS June 21, 2020 | Luke 22:31–62 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue When we think of Peter, disciple of Jesus, we often remember how he denied knowing Jesus three times after the crucifixion. But before we consider his failure, we also want to emphasize that Peter finished well. According to tradition—and as Jesus hinted in […]
June 20, 2020 | Psalm 51:1–17 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Do you ever feel torn between repentance and praise? Pondering this issue, Bible scholar Michael E. Travers explained: “It is this tension between guilty sinner and righteous God that creates the paradox of praise in the penitential psalms. When God forgives the sinner for his […]
June 19, 2020 | James 4:13–17 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue We tend not to regard sins of omission as real sins or real failures. But they are, as is clearly taught in the book of James. Teaching on faith and good deeds, James, the pastor of the Jerusalem church, gave a striking example: What if […]
June 17, 2020 | Numbers 14:17–38 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Even after God forgives our sinful failures, there may be lingering consequences. On the 150th anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1995, the denomination officially lamented and repudiated its slaveholding history. Pledging to work toward racial reconciliation, they apologized “for condoning and/or perpetuating individual […]
June 16, 2020 | Genesis 4:1–16 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue The “snowball effect” describes how one sin leads to another. For example, a child steals a cookie, then lies to her mother about it. A man gossips about his boss, then tries to cover it up. A woman cheats on her taxes, then rationalizes it […]
June 15, 2020 | Hebrews 12:1–3 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Christ’s death on the cross was an amazing act of sacrificial love. But was it joyful? Why does Hebrews 12 say that Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before him” (v. 2)? Pastor and theology professor Geoff Holsclaw explained that in this verse […]
June 14, 2020 | Philippians 1:12–18 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue “You may find yourself fighting against God if you fail to realize as Paul did here that the whole of your past has had the hand of God in it . . . even with failure in the past,” said author Paul Little, speaking about […]