Daily Devotions by Steve Holm
Daily Devotions
1 Thessalonians 1:6-10..“And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.” vss. 6-7 During his ministry in Macedonia Paul and his companions knew that they were being watched carefully, not only by their opponents but by those who had come to believe in their message. At this time…
Daily Devotions
1 Thessalonians 1:1-5..“We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” vss. 2-3 So far as we know this is the first line of Paul’s first letter to any of the congregations that he had ever visited. It’s touching that the first thing he says is that he is…
Daily Devotions
Philippians 4:7-9… Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” vs. 8 As the election season stumbles into its final week in the midst of a remarkable run of slanderous, misleading, and lying campaign commercials and mailings, the anonymous billionaire influencers are getting ready to double and triple their contributions. That…
Daily Devotions
Philippians 4:1-7… “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” vss. 4-5 Sometimes we don’t always catch the little reminders that Paul gives us in his letters. Here he catches our attention with his exhortation to rejoice always, and his next words seem almost an afterthought. “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” But it’s not an aside, this is probably one of Paul’s deepest desires for…
Daily Devotions
Psalm 23… “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;” vss. 1-2 While the scribes who gathered the psalms and placed them in various collections believed that this was a psalm of David, it was obviously written from the viewpoint of a sheep. And reading it from that perspective brings particular delight as we imagine ourselves being totally devoted to a shepherd we trust to…
Daily Devotions
Isaiah 25:6-9..“And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever.” vss. 7-8a Often we think that our hope for the victory of life over death comes from our New Testament scriptures, i.e. the good news of resurrection found in the gospels and epistles. But actually we see that message of hope clearly stated in the teachings of Isaiah and…
Daily Devotions
Isaiah 25:1-5..“For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.” vs. 4 Isaiah became a prophet through a call that he had received in the course of a remarkable temple vision. It had been a shocking experience and he said “yes” to the Lord before they had become acquainted. But as the years passed and their relationship deepened, Isaiah came to…
Daily Devotions
Philippians 3:8-14..“Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” vss. 13-14 Paul knew that no matter how much he had accomplished, he wasn’t yet what he one day would be. It wasn’t that he lacked perfection and somehow had to clean…
Daily Devotions
Philippians 3:4b-11..“Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” vs. 7 Paul had impressive credentials. Not only was he a proud member of the tribe of Benjamin, he had the best education possible for an up and coming religious leader. He was a member of the Pharisees, the strictest branch of Judaism, and he’d made a name for himself by hunting down and terrorizing Christians. His zeal was unmatched! But a chance…
Daily Devotions
Psalm 80:12-15…“Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.” vss. 12-13 After Martin Luther had published the 95 Theses in Wittenberg in October of 1517, a firestorm erupted all across Europe. There were scholarly debates and conferences as various scholars weighed in and attempted to refute Luther’s teachings. Rome was aware of…
Daily Devotions
Psalm 80:7-11..“You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.” vss. 8-9 The psalmist seems to be aware of the vineyard parable used by the prophets to describe the chosen people and doesn’t hesitate to use that same imagery in his prayer for the restoration of Israel. It is a powerful metaphor. Grapevines covered the slopes of the mountains in…
Daily Devotions
Isaiah 5:1-7.. “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.” vs. 1 Isaiah imagines the Lord singing a love-song for the nation of Israel and it’s rather like a country western. It starts with an image of a vineyard, one planted with care on a very fertile hill, but the refrain turns dark in a hurry, “when I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield…