DEVOTIONAL BY BILLY GRAHAM – HOPE FOR EACH DAY

Children of Light

You, brethren, are not in darkness…. You are all sons of light. – 1 THESSALONIANS 5:4-5

The born-again Christian sees life not as a blurred, confused, meaningless mass, but as something planned and purposeful. His eyes have been opened to spiritual truth.

In Christ’s first sermon at Nazareth He said that one of the reasons He had come to earth was to preach “recovery of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18). By nature we are all spiritually blind because of sin. But the Spirit of God helps us see our sin and our helplessness and shows us God’s redeeming grace in Christ. The Spirit reveals the truth of Jesus’ declaration: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).

In the Bible we are called “children of light and children of the day” (1 Thess. 5:5 NRSV), because it pleased God to share His mysteries and secrets with us. We are no longer in the dark—we know where we came from, we know why we are here, and we know where we are going. In the midst of a world living in spiritual darkness, walk as a child of the light!

DEVOTIONAL BY CHARLES STANLEY – ON HOLY GROUND

Christ In You

He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. – John 16:14

How does God Himself, whose immensity cannot be measured, reside in such frail bodies as ours?  How does the transcendent Christ live in finite human temples?

We may not comprehend the vastness of this principle, yet the methods by which God imparts His presence is plain and clear in the Scriptures: Christ lives in us through His indwelling Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit supernaturally brings the reality of Christ into our earthly frames.

As the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is just as much deity as the Father and the Son.  He imparts the life of Christ to us through His residence in our lives.

The Holy Spirit reveals and shares with us all that Christ is.  By making His home in us, He assures us of the presence and power of the risen Christ.

Because the Holy Spirit possesses all the attributes of deity and because he inhabits our mortal bodies, He is infinitely adequate to meet any of our needs.  He is not a God far off but a God who is near.

The resurrected Christ is your sure and steadfast hope for all of life, a hope that is every believer’s to claim because of the indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit.

DEVOTIONAL FROM POSTCARDS FROM HEAVEN – CLAIRE CLONINGER

I Am Closer Than Your Heartbeat

My dearest child,

I am calling you into a place of rest, into a haven of stillness.  The world can be a tyrant, pushing and rushing and driving you.  You need not yield to its merciless rhythms.  I will give to you a peace that the world cannot give or comprehend.  I will place my peace within you.  I will draw you to me out of the rush and confusion and will teach you to enter my rest.

Though the world swirls around you like a mad whirlpool, my Spirit at the center of your being is a fountain of stillness and pace.  There, I am closer than your heartbeat.  There, you can be still and know that I am God.

Enter my rest.  There you will know me.

I am…  God

John 14:15-27

Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will obey what I command. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

²² Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

²³ Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

²⁵ “All this I have spoken while still with you. ²⁶ But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Psalm 71:1-8

¹ In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
² Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness;
turn your ear to me and save me.
³ Be my rock of refuge,
to which I can always go;
give the command to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
⁴ Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of evil and cruel men.

⁵ For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD,
my confidence since my youth.
⁶ From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.
I will ever praise you.
⁷ I have become like a portent to many,
but you are my strong refuge.
⁸ My mouth is filled with your praise,
declaring your splendor all day long.

DEVOTIONAL BY OSWALD CHAMBERS – MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST

Get Moving! (1)

Abide in Me . . . —John 15:4

In the matter of determination. The Spirit of Jesus is put into me by way of the atonement by the Cross of Christ. I then have to build my thinking patiently to bring it into perfect harmony with my Lord. God will not make me think like Jesus— I have to do it myself. I have to bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). “Abide in Me”— in intellectual matters, in money matters, in every one of the matters that make human life what it is. Our lives are not made up of only one neatly confined area.

Am I preventing God from doing things in my circumstances by saying that it will only serve to hinder my fellowship with Him? How irrelevant and disrespectful that is! It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him. Just think of how amazingly relaxed our Lord’s life was! But we tend to keep God at a fever pitch in our lives. We have none of the serenity of the life which is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

Think of the things that take you out of the position of abiding in Christ. You say, “Yes, Lord, just a minute— I still have this to do. Yes, I will abide as soon as this is finished, or as soon as this week is over. It will be all right, Lord. I will abide then.” Get moving— begin to abide now. In the initial stages it will be a continual effort to abide, but as you continue, it will become so much a part of your life that you will abide in Him without any conscious effort. Make the determination to abide in Jesus wherever you are now or wherever you may be placed in the future.