STANDING FIRM February 8, 2020 | Esther 2:19–20 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue A 2019 study reported that as many as 64 percent of twentysomethings who grew up in the church have walked away. A new book from the Barna Group, however, takes a look at those who chose to stay. In Faith for Exiles, David […]
KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG February 7, 2020 | Esther 2:12–18 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Can you imagine having a full year of spa treatments? It might sound luxurious to us, but for the young women in Susa, any pleasure that might have been enjoyed was certainly mixed with grief, fear, and shame. When it was […]
WHO IS IN CONTROL? February 6, 2020 | Esther 2:8–11 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue It is easy to feel, when life is going well, that we have the world by the tail. We seem to be in control of our life. But other times, we feel helpless. Life seems to happen to us, and in […]
February 5, 2020 | Esther 2:5–7 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Have you ever found yourself in a new place, forced to navigate within a different culture? Today, we meet Esther as she is about to leave the Hebrew world where she was raised and enter the decadent Persian world into which she has been thrust. […]
THE PLANS OF THE POWERFUL February 4, 2020 | Esther 2:1–4 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Have you ever been anxious to see God intervene in a difficult situation? It can be frustrating when it seems like God is not acting as quickly as we’d like. In Esther chapter 2, we see the stage being set […]
February 3, 2020 | Esther 1:13–22 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue When we use a “slippery slope argument,” we assert that a relatively small event will launch an inevitable chain of increasingly worse events that will ultimately end in disaster. The problem is that the slippery slope argument isn’t sound reasoning; rather, it is a logical […]
February 2, 2020 | Esther 1:9–12 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue In literature, the “inciting incident” is an event that captures the reader’s attention and moves the story forward. Today, we read about the inciting incident in Esther’s story. Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He […]
January 31, 2020 | Hebrews 13:20–25 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue This month we have been inspired by the examples of fellow believers. Each of them was committed to reading God’s Word and understood its transformative power. Evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody often said, “The Bible was not given to increase our knowledge, but to change our […]
January 30, 2020 | Acts 10:23–48 DEVOTIONS. This Month’s Issue Mary McLeod Bethune was the 15th of 17 children, the first of her parent’s children born out of slavery. Mary attended Moody Bible Institute in 1895, where she prepared for missionary service to Africa. Unfortunately, her application was denied by a mission board because of […]
January 29, 2020 | Exodus 4:1–12 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Dr. Erwin Lutzer served as senior pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church for 36 years. Preaching has been part of his life for decades, but many may not know that he had to overcome shyness. As a requirement to graduate from high school, students had to […]