Are you wanting to move closer to God? Have you had a relationship with Him, but drifted away? Do you struggle to do His will, hear His voice or live according to His will? Well, you're not alone! You and I have the same struggles. Here, I'll share my daily Bible readings, thoughts, struggles AND successes. It's my hope you'll be encouraged and know you aren't alone in your journey. I am just a guy who knows he needs to get closer to the Living God in order to live my best life and fulfill myself. What I'm not is a pastor, theologian or philosopher. I'm not smarter, more holy or enlightened than the next person. I'm just a guy trying to follow God's will.
Today is a short prayer for the new month, the nation, our families and our relationship.
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
And it shall come to pass in that day
That the remnant of Israel,
And such as have escaped of the house of Jacob,
Will never again depend on him who defeated them,
But will depend on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. Isaiah 10:20
God holds Israel accountable and uses Assyria to that end. Assyria then becomes arrogant and God holds them accountable. I guess, I shouldn't be surprised when I'm then held accountable too.
Join me in reading Isaiah 10 and be encouraged!
Hear my voice when I call, LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, “Seek his face! ” Your face, LORD, I will seek. Psalms 27:7-8
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. Isaiah 9:2
Have you ever been outside in the dark and couldn't see anything? When it was so dark, you stumbled around. Do you remember what it was like when you saw that first plash of light? The relief and happiness that swept over you? This is what the world experienced when Jesus was born. The earth had been living in darkness and suddenly, Wonderful entered in! The angles and seraphim began to sing.
AW Tozer speaks of it this way, "His name shall be called Wonderful,” and only He can engage and excite the wonder of angels and seraphim and cherubim and archangels and all beings and creatures. Only He is wonderful, and He came to us to reconcile us unto Himself. How beautiful, how wonderful!"
Join me in reading Isaiah 9 and be encouraged!
Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5:20-21
Charles Spurgeon prays the following in his book, The Pastor in Prayer,
"And now we have a prayer to put up to Thee, Great God, and it is this, that in us Thy dear Son may see some portion of the travail of His soul. Lord, let Him see a reward for His sufferings in all of us being repentant for sin, and trusting in God, and confessing His name. We fear there are among us this morning some who still indulge in the sins which brought Christ to death, some that still are trusting in their own righteousness and so are despising His, because if theirs will suffice then His were superfluous. O God, we beseech Thee, bring men away from all their false trusts to rest in the great sacrifice of Thy dear Son.
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? Isaiah 8:19
When faced with a challenge, I often run to friends and family for advice, but shouldn't the first place we turn be to God? He is the creator of all and wants what's best for us, after all!
Join me in reading Isaiah 8 and be encouraged!
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence,
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
And uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Psalms 51:10-12
Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. 2 Samuel 12:7-9
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. Psalms 51:15
Holy Spirit, please pray the perfect prayer through me, so I can praise God in the best way possible. Often, I feel as if my prayers are inadequate, but I'm grateful I can turn to Him and know they will always be just right.
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
Moreover the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 11 “Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.” Isaiah 7:10-11
Have you had to do something for God that you didn't want to do? Isaiah had to. As Spurgeon states, "Isaiah had a very heavy commission from God. He was to go and speak to people who would not hear him and to be to them a messenger rather of death, than of life. Though the message, itself, would be full of life, yet they would refuse it, and so bring upon themselves a tenfold death. As a sort of experiment in his work, he was called upon, first, to go and speak to king Ahaz, that wicked king."
Join me in reading Isaiah 7 and be encouraged when you're struggling to do God's will!
Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Daniel 6:10
Lets let nothing stand in our way of praying to the Lord for our families, country and relationship.
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts. Isaiah 6:5
In Isaiah 6 we see a clear portrayal of what happens to a person in the mystery of the Presence. Isaiah, overpowered within his own being, can only confess humbly, “I am a man of unclean lips!”
I remind you that Isaiah recognized the “strangeness”—something of the mystery of the Person of God. In that Presence, Isaiah found no place for joking or for clever cynicism or for human familiarity. He found a strangeness in God, that is, a presence unknown to the sinful and worldly and self-sufficient human. Isaiah 6:5
Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions. Psalms 51:1
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah
are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. Isaiah 5:7
This scripture while addressing Israel, can also be addressing the United States. We have been blessed by God. He has been generous and kind. We gave Him credit, but have turned recently. Are we experiencing the same outcome as Judah?
Join me in reading Isaiah 5 and be encouraged!
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions —it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:4-10
Grace defined - Unmerited love and favor of God.
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
And it shall come to pass that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy—everyone who is recorded among the living in Jerusalem. When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and purged the blood of Jerusalem from her midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning Isaiah 4:3-4
Kent Hughes says in his Preaching the Word Commentary about Chapter 4, "But not everyone will enjoy him. He will be “the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel.” There will be no rival agendas and pet causes and swollen egos crowding the church of Jesus Christ then. On the Day of the Lord, the Spirit will wash the church clean with judgment and burning (4:4). That is significant. It means we do not find hope in avoiding judgment but in going through judgment. Without it, we remain as we are. But if we submit to God’s “spirit of judgment and . . . spirit of burning,” we change and become holy" (4:3).
I know I usually want God to simply deliver me from trials. I don't like them because they're unpleasant. However, they can produce a wonderful change in us that only adversity can produce. Join me in reading Isaiah 4 and be encouraged!
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise. Psalms 51:15-17
Contrite is defined as - Feeling regret and sorrow for one's sins or offenses; penitent. Let's approach God with this attitude and spirit.
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
See now, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah
both supply and support Isaiah 3:1
In 3:1 God says he is “taking away” something from his people. Then again in 3:18 he says he will “take away” something further. God knows how to enrich us through loss. Sometimes he takes away more than we wish he would, but only to give us more of himself forever. Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And we will not gain what we cannot lose without giving up what we cannot keep. Loss for the sake of gain — this is the way of God for us.
Join me in reading Isaiah 3 and be encouraged!
Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. Ecclesiastes 5:2
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Matthew 6:7
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
They will flee to caverns in the rocks and to the overhanging crags from the fearful presence of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth. Isaiah 2:21
Matthew Henry, a Presbyterian preacher who is best known for his Concise Commentary of the Whole Bible. He lived from 1662-1714. He wrote about Isaiah 2:10 the following thought, "It is folly for those who are pursued by the wrath of God, to think to hide or shelter themselves from it. The shaking of the earth will be terrible to those who set their affection on things of the earth. Men’s haughtiness will be brought down, either by the grace of God convincing them of the evil of pride, or by the providence of God depriving them of all the things they were proud of."
In the same way, I'm reminded of my "folly" when I sin and think I can keep it from God, or at least that's what I tell myself. A solid rationalization is a weapon in my arsenal, but as Isaiah points out, nothing is hidden from God.
Join me in reading Isaiah 2 and be encouraged!
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Let's pray daily for our nation, family and relationship with God. The spoken word is powerful. God spoke the world into existence and in John 1 we read that the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's speak the Word over our land.
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