'Spirit' Tagged Posts (Page 4)
Daily Devotions
When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.” vs. 4 Psalm 4:1-4 The psalmist is here advising his enemies to think twice about the harm they might intend to do to him. Rather than simply acting on their feelings and saying something they will regret, he says they should take to their beds, consider options and then be silent. This is timeless wisdom! Many of us are plagued by runaway tongues and end…
Daily Devotions
When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” vss. 22-23 John 20:19-25 The gospel writer John understood that the Holy Spirit could not be contained and said that it was like the wind. We could hear the sound of it but not know where it was coming from, or where…
Daily Devotions
For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” vs. 5 2 Corinthians 4:5-6 Sometimes we encounter people who have a bit of a glow about them, and not because they’ve been drinking. It’s the radiant look in their eyes, a light that we sense comes from deep within them, a light…
Daily Devotions
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.’ Elisha said, ‘Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.’” vs. 9 2 Kings 2:9-12 Elisha’s request may seem strange to us, but he was making a reference to the inheritance laws of Israel, where the first-born son, at the death of his father, was awarded a double share of the inheritance. Elisha is asking Elijah…
Daily Devotions: May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020 John 14:15-17 … “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” vs. 17 Spirit-talk is almost always mysterious; it’s the language we use when we try to describe the everyday nearness of God, and that’s close to an impossible task. Some people, many people maybe, never seem to get what we’re saying…
Daily Devotions: March 26, 2020
March 26, 2020 Romans 8:10-11 … “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” vs. 10 Sometimes when we read words like this in the Scripture, we long for the life which they promise, and we wonder what it might be like if Christ were actually in us. And we wish someone would tell us how we could actually make that happen. Does it take a…
Daily Devotions: June 4, 2019
June 4, 2019 For full passage click: Psalm 104:24-30 …“When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.” vs. 30 According to the psalmist, all creatures of the earth and sea, great and small, including the great Leviathan, were made and are sustained by God. More than that, none of them could survive apart from the presence of God’s spirit. In other words, the universe itself has an intimate connection to God…
Daily Devotions: February 4, 2019
February 4, 2019 To read full passage click: Isaiah 6:1-4 …“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” vs. 1 Isaiah gifts us with a description of his call to prophetic ministry and even gives us the year, somewhere around 740 BC. He was in the temple and had a vision of God’s presence. It was overwhelming and changed his life.…
Daily Devotions: January 16, 2019
January 16, 2019 To read full passage click: Psalm 36:8-9 …“For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” vs. 9 For the material-minded, life in this world can be pretty dismal. Pleasure is connected to accumulation and success is measured by financial portfolios. There’s a game to be played and massive energies are exerted to be on the winning side. Little attention is paid to compassion or service–everything depends on power and domination.…
Daily Devotions: April 17, 2018
April 17, 2018 Acts 4:8-12…“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” vs. 12 The disciples were ecstatic! They had such good news for their leaders…and for the entire world. Through the Holy Spirit they had come to believe that Jesus was the Christ and that through him God’s salvation had come to humanity. As they traveled about proclaiming that audacious message it seemed…
Daily Devotions: April 16, 2018
April 16, 2018 Acts 4:5-7…“When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’” vs. 7 When the religious authorities in Jerusalem heard that the disciples were preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead and were actually healing the sick, they ordered them to be arrested. They weren’t an impressive group–just a few Galilean fishermen and some hangers-on. When the wealthy, well-educated priestly types saw…
Daily Devotions: April 15, 2018
April 15, 2018 Luke 24:44-48…“Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,” vs. 45 Being familiar with the scriptures wasn’t enough for the disciples to have a clue about what had happened in Jesus. Nowhere was there a straightforward indication that the promised messiah would suffer, be crucified as a criminal, and then die. One option would have been for them to completely abandon the Hebrew scriptures and focus on building a new faith tradition–something no one ever seriously…