DEVOTIONAL BY BILLY GRAHAM – HOPE FOR EACH DAY

Everlasting Love

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. – JEREMIAH 31:3

Who can describe or measure the love of God? Our Bible is a revelation of the fact that God is love. When we preach justice, it is justice tempered with love. When we preach righteousness, it is righteousness founded on love. When we preach atonement for sin, it is atonement necessitated because of love, provided by love, finished by love.

When we preach the resurrection of Christ, we are preaching the miracle of love. When we preach the abiding presence of Christ, we are preaching the power of love. When we preach the return of Christ, we are preaching the fulfillment of love.

No matter what sin we have committed, no matter how black, dirty, shameful, or terrible it may be, God loves us. We may be at the very gate of hell itself, but God loves us with an everlasting love. The proof? Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, went to the Cross for us. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

DEVOTIONAL BY CHARLES STANLEY – ON HOLY GROUND

Unworthiness

I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins. – Isaiah 43:25

God never ridicules us or makes us feel unworthy. Instead, we read these words of Jesus:

Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. (John 15:9 NASB)

If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31–32 NASB)

I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15 NASB)

Love and truth. God is love and the source of all truth. The love He has for you is the same love He has for His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives you this love through His grace and mercy. It is a pure love, not tainted by guilt or obligation.

Regardless of how deep your past transgression may be, God is near to free you with the truth of His Word. Nothing is stronger than His love. When He forgives, He forgets (Ps. 103:12; Isa. 43:25). Once you have confessed sin, there is no need to beg or plead for His forgiveness. It is a done deal!

You can walk freely in the light of His love because He calls you His child. Your life is inscribed within the palm of His hand.

You are the apple of His eye; all of heaven rejoices at the sight of your name written in the Lamb’s blood.

DEVOTIONAL FROM JESUS CALLING – SARAH YOUNG

Receive My Love

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. – HEBREWS 4 : 14 – 16

Open your mind and heart—your entire being—to receive My Love in full measure. So many of My children limp through their lives starved for Love, because they haven’t learned the art of receiving. This is essentially an act of faith: believing that I love you with boundless, everlasting Love. The art of receiving is also a discipline: training your mind to trust Me, coming close to Me with confidence.

Remember that the evil one is the father of lies. Learn to recognize his deceptive intrusions into your thoughts. One of his favorite deceptions is to undermine your confidence in My unconditional Love. Fight back against these lies! Do not let them go unchallenged. Resist the devil in My Name, and he will slink away from you. Draw near to Me, and My Presence will envelop you in Love.

John 3:16-21

¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Psalm 103:6-12

⁶ The Lord works righteousness     and justice for all the oppressed.

⁷ He made known his ways to Moses,     his deeds to the people of Israel: ⁸ The Lord is compassionate and gracious,     slow to anger, abounding in love. ⁹ He will not always accuse,     nor will he harbor his anger forever; ¹⁰ he does not treat us as our sins deserve  or repay us according to our iniquities. ¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,     so great is his love for those who fear him; ¹² as far as the east is from the west,     so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

DEVOTIONAL FROM MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST – OSWALD CHAMBERS

Out Of The Wreck I Rise

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? — Romans 8:35

God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says – “I will be with him in trouble.” It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man’s life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We are “more than conquerors in all these things.” Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.

“Shall tribulation . . . ?” Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may – exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you.

“Shall anguish . . . ?” – can God’s love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?

“Shall famine . . . ?” – can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?

Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God’s character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it – the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.