Posts with the category “personal-devotion”

Good Morning Church Family – Journey Through JohnRead John 11:17-27 Devo Thought: Have you ever been so sure of a belief only to find out that you have been partially wrong in your understanding? I re...  Read More

Read John 11:7-16 Devo Thought: As you read the gospels, have you ever noticed that Jesus sometimes asks really odd questions?...  Read More

Read John 11:1-6 Devo Thought: My guess is that everyone listening to this today has been through a moment or two in your life where everything feels like it is out of control. We’ve all likely had ...  Read More

Read John 10:30-42 Devo Thought: This passage deserves a longer and more thorough treatment, so today I’m going to address one thing. Jesus starts with “I and the Father are one.”...  Read More

Read John 10:17-29 Devo Thought: Once saved, always saved…anyone ever heard this phrase? Basically, it is the idea that once we have been saved by Jesus, we cannot lose that salvation. It is based o...  Read More

Read John 10:16 Devo Thought: I love passages like this one. The truth about our faith is that it is exclusive. There really is one way, one truth, one life....  Read More

Read John 10:11-15 Devo Thought: At this point in the story of John 10, Jesus uses another metaphor to describe himself and his relationship to his people. He says, “I am the good shepherd.” What m...  Read More

Good Morning Church Family – Journey Through JohnRead John 10:7-10 Devo Thought: What is the purpose of a door? A door provide entry to a place. It can also deny access to an area. A door can give you...  Read More

Read John 10:4-6 Devo Thought: Last time, I mentioned our dog, Maggie. I wanted to include her again today....  Read More

Read John 10:1-3 Devo Thought: A little over eight years ago our family got a dog. Her name is Maggie. She is a boxer-lab mix, and she is the best dog I’ve ever had. ...  Read More

Read John 9:18-34 Devo Thought: I wanted to hone in and focus on a particular phrase in this long passage today....  Read More

Read John 9:13-17 Devo Thought: Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”...  Read More

Read John 9:8-12 Devo Thought: While Julie and I lived in Starkville, we attended First Baptist Church. We were active and involved in the life of our small group (a young married class) and in the...  Read More

Read John 9:6-7 Devo Thought: I remember, when I was working at my first job, my boss told me to go and clean up an area at the back of the store. He didn’t give me all the details of why he needed...  Read More

Read John 9:3-5 Devo Thought: Anybody ever heard of an auto stereogram? An auto stereogram is a a 2D image that creates an optical illusion of a 3D scene. These are the pictures that you must stare...  Read More

Good Morning Church Family – Journey Through JohnRead John 9:1-2 Devo Thought: Have you found yourself looking at someone else’s situation and thinking I wonder what they did to bring this on themselv...  Read More

Yesterday, we looked at the passage where Jesus pointed out that the crowd of religious leaders aren’t really children of Abraham. Instead, they have a different father altogether, and they won’t like...  Read More

Have you ever heard of the etymological fallacy? A fallacy is a mistake in our logic or thinking. Specifically, the etymological fallacy is the mistake that a word’s meaning comes from its origin inst...  Read More

In this passage, we have a continued interaction between Jesus and the religious leaders. They keep thinking that they know who he is, and Jesus keeps assuring them that they don’t know who he is. Jes...  Read More

Just as there had been a water pouring ceremony at the Feast of Tabernacles, there was also a candle lighting ceremony. The Jewish texts that describe the ceremony don’t reveal the meaning of the cere...  Read More

esterday, we read about a woman who was caught in the act of sin (specifically adultery), and instead of a death sentence, she receives grace from Jesus. I left the very last sentence out yesterday be...  Read More

There are times in Scripture where someone in one of the stories very clearly stands as a representative of all of us. In this passage, the woman caught in adultery is this person. Her accusers bring ...  Read More

Questions are incredibly useful in helping people communicate. They invite clarification. They allow for elaboration. Sometimes, they even expose and reveal motivation. In this passage today, a charac...  Read More

There is a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan where the character Captain Miller, played by Tom Hanks, reveals where he is from and what his former profession was before leaving to fight in World ...  Read More

I remember a couple of years ago when we told our kids that we were going on a Disney vacation with a family that are our dear friends. In this particular case, we told them several months we were goi...  Read More

A few years ago, my family went on vacation with some great friends of ours. We went to Nashville and part of the trip turned into a karaoke night. Several members of the group mounted the stage and s...  Read More

Have you ever had a moment in life where you realized pretty quickly you had judged a book by its cover and had judged incorrectly? I remember that happening here one time. Back when Brother Phil was ...  Read More

People misunderstand Jesus all the time. Lots of people say that they think Jesus was a great moral teacher, but that’s really all he was. In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes about it thi...  Read More

Have you ever showed up to a meeting thinking that the agenda was going to be focused on one particular issue and the meeting turns out to be about something completely unrelated? If you’ve ever been ...  Read More

Have you ever had that moment in your life when everything seems to completely out of control and where everything is falling apart? If you haven’t yet, I want you to know that you will. I don’t say t...  Read More

Today, I want to address a passage that has been the source of debate for centuries. In fact, it was this passage that was the source of one of the great debates of the Reformation, which was the hist...  Read More

Where are you from? This is a pretty important question. The answer to this question tends to lead people to assume lots of things about you. Depending on how you answer this question, people may assu...  Read More

After coaching for a number of years, I have learned how important it is to have a plan. The team needs a plan when it comes to how to approach a season and how to approach an individual game. On the ...  Read More

When I was a kid, I was a terribly picky eater. I probably ate four things: Poptarts, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chicken nuggets, and bread. Now, I would eat just about any kind of bread. I l...  Read More

Enough is a funny word. When is enough actually enough? If we are talking about money, well, you probably always use a little more money (although statistically speaking, the person making $75,000/yea...  Read More

Fear is a fascinating thing. It is our response to perceived danger. The danger may be real or not, but our response to whatever may be happening is certainly real. When fear happens, the amygdala of...  Read More

Have you ever heard of doing the right thing for the wrong reason? The way T.S. Eliot put it in his play Murder in the Cathedral is, “The last temptation is the greatest treason/To do the right thing ...  Read More

Today, we are continuing to look at the sign of the feeding of the five thousand from John’s Gospel. Last time, we talked about Jesus’ question to Philip. This time, we will look at the response of Ph...  Read More

In this passage, we see a miracle that’s recorded and every single one of the gospel accounts. This means it was really important to the ministry of Jesus and made a huge impression on the disciples a...  Read More

Jesus finishes his thoughts on his position as the Son of God gives him authority to do and say the things that he does and says. In this passage, he focuses in on what he calls witnesses. I like to t...  Read More