Daily Bible Verse

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Jeremiah 1:9 KJV
Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.


The Power of Voice

The most powerful orators in history are often those leaders who’ve used their voices to bring about positive change. Consider Frederick Douglass, whose speeches on abolition and liberty spurred a movement that helped lead to the end of slavery in the United States. What if he’d chosen to be silent? We all possess the capacity to use our voice to inspire and help others, but the fear of speaking out can be paralyzing. In the moments when we feel overwhelmed by this fear, we can look to God, our source of divine wisdom and encouragement.

When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet to the nations, he immediately began to doubt his own abilities. He cried out, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young” (Jeremiah 1:6). But God wouldn’t allow Jeremiah’s fear to get in the way of his divine calling to inspire a generation through his voice. Instead, He instructed the prophet to simply trust God by saying and doing whatever He commanded (v. 7). In addition to affirming Jeremiah, He also equipped him. “I have put my words in your mouth” (v. 9), He assured him.

When we ask God to show us how He wants to use us, He’ll equip us to carry out our purpose. With His help, we can boldly use our voice to make a positive impact on those around us.


Reflect & Pray
When have you been afraid to use your voice? How might you rely on God’s strength and wisdom to speak up?

Heavenly Father, give me the strength to use the power of my words to influence those around me for the better.


Insight
The account of God calling the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4–10) emphasizes that it’s God who calls and equips us. God emphasized that Jeremiah was called to his prophetic work even before conception (v. 5). Similarly, the apostle Paul described God calling him to his work before he was born (Galatians 1:15). Jeremiah responds much like Moses (Exodus 4:10) and questions whether he’s best suited for the work (Jeremiah 1:6). As with Moses, God responded by insisting on Jeremiah’s obedience and assuring him that His power would be with him (vv. 4–8). Then God “touched [Jeremiah’s] mouth,” which likely indicated purifying him, and put His own words in his mouth (v. 9). Finally, Jeremiah is told of the unique focus of his prophetic work, which would both “uproot and tear down” (v. 10).
 

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My home internet is out so I can't post the Daily Bible Verse.

I'm so sorry. Catch up tomorrow after the repairman fixes it. 
 

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Galatians 5:1 KJV
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.


Live in Freedom

In Texas, where I grew up, there were festive parades and picnics in Black communities every June 19. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I learned the heartbreaking significance of Juneteenth (a word combining “June” and “nineteenth”) celebrations. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation giving them their freedom—two-and-a-half years earlier. Enslaved people in Texas kept living in slavery because they didn’t know they’d been freed.

It’s possible to be free and yet live as slaves. In Galatians, Paul wrote about another kind of slavery: living life under the crushing demands of religious rules. In this pivotal verse, Paul encouraged his readers that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Believers in Jesus had been set free from external regulations, including what to eat and who to befriend. Many, however, still lived as if they were enslaved.

Unfortunately, we can do the same thing today. But the reality is that Jesus set us free from living in fear of man-made religious standards the moment we trusted in Him. Freedom has been proclaimed. Let’s live it out in His power.


Reflect & Pray
How have you been trapped by religious rules? How have you experienced freedom in Christ?

Jesus, thank You for setting me free from the burden of oppressive rules.


Insight
The book of Galatians addresses one of the toughest issues the early communities of believers in Jesus faced: how to understand and relate to the requirements of Mosaic law, especially for gentile believers. Should gentile believers be required to be circumcised and to follow other aspects of Mosaic law? Some were teaching this very thing. Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus, however, convinced him that the law should be interpreted differently—as leading to and finding fulfillment in Christ (Galatians 2:19–21). To require believers to follow the law when Christ had already made them right with God and won their freedom (5:1, 4–6) would be “a different gospel . . . no gospel at all” (1:6–7).
 

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James 1:27 KJV
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.


True Religion

The summer after my sophomore year of college, a classmate died unexpectedly. I’d seen him just a few days prior and he looked fine. My classmates and I were young and in what we thought was the prime of our lives, having just become sisters and brothers after pledging our respective sorority and fraternity.

But what I remember most about my classmate’s death was witnessing my fraternity friends live out what the apostle James calls “genuine religion” (James 1:27 nlt). The men in the fraternity became like brothers to the sister of the deceased. They attended her wedding and traveled to her baby shower years after her brother’s death. One even gifted her a cell phone to contact him whenever she needed to call.

True religion, according to James, is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (v. 27). While my friend’s sister wasn’t an orphan in the literal sense, she no longer had her brother. Her new “brothers” filled in the gap.

And that’s what all of us who want to practice true and pure life in Jesus can do—“do what [Scripture] says” (v. 22), including caring for those in need (2:14–17). Our faith in Him prompts us to look after the vulnerable as we keep ourselves from the negative influences of the world as He helps us. After all, it’s the true religion God accepts.


Reflect & Pray
How have you seen true religion played out? How can you display genuine faith to others?

Heavenly Father, open my eyes to see where I can help the most vulnerable as You lead me.


Insight
Four men named James appear in the New Testament. Which one of them authored the book of James? James the brother of John was martyred in ad 44 (Acts 12:2). Most scholars believe the letter was written ad 48 or later. James the father of Judas (not Iscariot) is mentioned only once (Luke 6:16), so it’s unlikely he wrote it. Some think the author is James the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3:18). However, most scholars believe the writer to be James the half-brother of Jesus. Immediately after Jesus’ ascension to heaven (Acts 1:9–10), we find a reference to this James (v. 13). The text tells us that after the ascension, the disciples returned to an upstairs room along with “the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and . . . his brothers” (v. 14; see also Mark 6:3). James the brother of Jesus met a vital qualification of apostleship; he’d seen Jesus following His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7).
 

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Step by Step

A dozen teams, each including three people standing shoulder to shoulder, prepared for the four-legged race. Each outside person bound to the person in the middle by colorful rags at their ankles and knees, every trio locked their eyes on the finish line. When the whistle blew, the teams lunged forward. Most of them fell and struggled to regain their footing. A few groups chose to hop instead of walk. Some gave up. But one team delayed their start, confirmed their plan, and communicated as they moved forward. They stumbled along the way but pressed on and soon passed all the teams. Their willingness to cooperate, step by step, enabled them to cross the finish line together.

Living for God within the community of believers in Jesus often feels as frustrating as trying to move forward during a four-legged race. We often stumble when interacting with people who hold different opinions from us.

Peter speaks of prayer, hospitality, and using our gifts to align ourselves in unity for life ahead. He urges believers in Jesus to “love each other deeply” (1 Peter 4:8), to be hospitable without complaining, and to “serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (v. 10). When we ask God to help us communicate and cooperate, we can lead the race in showing the world how to celebrate differences and live together in unity.


Reflect & Pray
When have you struggled to work with someone who was different from you? How has God helped you?

Mighty God, please help me communicate and cooperate with others as I learn to love like You.


Insight
Peter’s instruction in 1 Peter 4:7–11 includes basic but essential truth about believers in Jesus and spiritual gifts. One way to view spiritual gifts is to see them as channels for dispensing the multiple expressions of God’s favor to people in the church and the world. “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (v. 10). God gives the gifts; believers receive them and utilize them as “stewards”—those who have household oversight with attendant responsibility and accountability. Rather than the itemization of gifts seen in Paul’s writing (Romans 12:3–8; 1 Corinthians 12:4–11), Peter mentions the two major categories under which all gifts fall—speaking and serving (1 Peter 4:11). The abundance of God’s grace requires many outlets. Understanding these things can promote unity and prompt us to ask God to use us to serve Him.
 

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Romans 10:17 KJV
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.


Faith Comes from Hearing

When Pastor Bob suffered an injury that affected his voice, he entered fifteen years of crisis and depression. What, he wondered, does a pastor do who can’t talk? He struggled with this question, pouring out his grief and confusion to God. He reflected, “I only knew one thing to do—to go after the Word of God.” As he spent time reading the Bible, his love for God grew: “I’ve devoted my life to absorbing and immersing myself in the Scripture because faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God.”

We find the phrase “faith comes from hearing” in the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul longed for all of his fellow Jewish people to believe in Christ and be saved (Romans 10:9). How would they believe? Through the faith that “comes from hearing the message . . . through the word about Christ” (v. 17).

Pastor Bob seeks to receive and believe in Christ’s message, especially as he reads the Bible. He can only speak for an hour a day and has constant pain when he does so, but he continues to find peace and contentment from God through his immersion in Scripture. So too we can trust that Jesus will reveal Himself to us in our struggles. He will increase our faith as we hear His message, whatever challenges we face.


Reflect & Pray
How could immersing yourself in Scripture strengthen your faith? How have you found contentment even when life is challenging?

Loving God, You give me hope even when I feel stuck and in pain. Shape me into the person You want me to be.


Insight
In Romans 10, Paul explains why the Jews are still not saved. To these Jews, the way to have a right standing with God was to meticulously keep the law. But God’s way is that they must believe in Jesus (Romans 10:3–4). Paul spelled out God’s way of salvation: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (v. 9). It’s the same for all people—whether Jews or gentiles—for Christ “is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him” (v. 12). Paul reaffirms the necessity of believing in Jesus by saying, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (v. 13).
 

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Sorry I overlooked the DB verse yesterday.





2 Thessalonians 3:3

But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.


God’s Mighty Power

The seemingly impossible happened when hurricane-force winds changed the flow of the mighty Mississippi River. In August 2021, Hurricane Ida came ashore on the coast of Louisiana, and the astonishing result was a “negative flow,” meaning water actually flowed upriver for several hours.

Experts estimate that over its life cycle a hurricane can expend energy equivalent to ten thousand nuclear bombs! Such incredible power to change the course of flowing water helps me understand the Israelites’ response to a far more significant “negative flow” recorded in Exodus.

While fleeing the Egyptians who’d enslaved them for centuries, the Israelites came to the edge of the Red Sea. In front of them was a wide body of water and behind them was the heavily armored Egyptian army. In that seemingly impossible situation, “the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land . . . and the Israelites went through the sea” (Exodus 14:21–22). Rescued in that incredible display of power, “the people feared the Lord” (v. 31).

Responding with awe is natural after experiencing the immensity of God’s power. But it didn’t end there; the Israelites also “put their trust” in Him (v. 31).

As we experience God’s power in creation, we too can stand in awe of His might and place our trust in Him.


Reflect & Pray
When have you experienced a display of God’s power in creation? How did that lead to a greater trust in Him?

Creator God, please help me to trust You more when I see awesome displays of Your power.


Insight
Some critics attempt to read a contradiction into Exodus 14:21, claiming that it first says Moses parted the sea, and then the text says God did it. However, there’s no contradiction. It was God who commanded Moses, “Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water” (v. 16). God did something similar in Exodus 4, when Moses’ staff became a snake (vv. 2–4). God often used the staff or hand of Moses or Aaron to initiate the plagues (see chs. 7–10). But it was always God who accomplished these supernatural acts.
 

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John 6:12 KJV
When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.


He Makes Us New

As a traveling executive, Shawn Seipler wrestled with an odd question. What happens to leftover soap in hotel rooms? Thrown out as trash for landfills, millions of soap bars could instead find new life, Seipler believed. So he launched Clean the World, a recycling venture that has helped more than eight thousand hotels, cruise lines, and resorts turn millions of pounds of discarded soap into sterilized, newly molded soap bars. Sent to people in need in more than one hundred countries, the recycled soap helps prevent countless hygiene-related illnesses and deaths.

As Seipler said, “I know it sounds funny, but that little bar of soap on the counter in your hotel room can literally save a life.”

The gathering up of something used or dirty to give it new life is also one of the most loving traits of our Savior, Jesus. In that manner, after He fed a crowd of five thousand with five small barley loaves and two small fish, He still said to His disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted” (John 6:12).

In our lives, when we feel “washed up,” God sees us not as wasted lives but as His miracles. Never throwaways in His sight, we have divine potential for new kingdom work. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). What makes us new? Christ within us.


Reflect & Pray
When have you felt you possessed little value? How has Jesus given you new life?

When I feel worthless, dear Father, help me see my new life in You.


Insight
Stating there were twelve baskets of leftovers (John 6:13) is a remarkable detail in an account that begins with the seeming impossibility of feeding the crowd. The disciple Philip notes that it would take “more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” (v. 7). Even if they had the means to buy that much bread, it would likely have been impossible to find that much available from local villages and towns, which wouldn’t have been expecting so many buyers.

The miracle has some parallels to the account in 2 Kings 4:42–44. There, during a time of famine (v. 38), God multiplied twenty loaves of barley bread. Like the disciple Andrew (John 6:8-9), Elisha’s servant questioned putting a small amount of food before so many. But in both miracles, there was enough for all—with leftovers (2 Kings 4:44; John 6:12–13)!
 

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1 Corinthians 11:26 KJV
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.


Remembering the Sacrifice

Following the Sunday morning worship service, my Moscow host took me to lunch at a restaurant outside the Kremlin. Upon arrival, we noticed a line of newlywed couples in wedding garb approaching the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the Kremlin wall. The happiness of their wedding day intentionally included remembering the sacrifices others had made to help make such a day possible. It was a sobering sight as the couples took pictures by the memorial before laying wedding flowers at its base.

All of us have cause to be thankful for others who’ve made sacrifices to bring a measure of fullness to our lives. None of those sacrifices are unimportant, but neither are those sacrifices the most important. It’s only at the foot of the cross where we see the sacrifice Jesus made for us and begin to understand how thoroughly our lives are indebted to the Savior.

Coming to the Lord’s Table to take Communion reminds us of Jesus’ sacrifice—pictured in the bread and cup. Paul wrote, “whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). May our times at His Table remind us to live every day in remembrance and gratitude of all Jesus has done in us and for us.


Reflect & Pray
When you approach the Lord’s Table, how do you view it? How can you use it as an opportunity to give thanks for Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf?

Loving God, nothing could ever repay the priceless display of love evidenced in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Help me to display my gratitude for what He’s done for me.


Insight
The Greek word epaineō means “to applaud—commend, laud, praise.” The word is used six times in the New Testament; it occurs four times in 1 Corinthians 11, where it’s translated “praise” (vv. 2, 17, 22 [2x]). Paul “praised” the Corinthians for their mindfulness of him and for following his teaching (vv. 2–16), but there was no such commendation (vv. 17–34) for the way they observed the Lord’s Supper. The self-centered indulgence that was going on among them was inconsiderate and harmful (vv. 18–22). What they were (supposedly) commemorating was the self-giving sacrifice of Jesus, yet they’d lost sight of it. Such irony and inconsistency compelled Paul to write, “So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat” (v. 20). His warning—for the Corinthians and for us—is that those who take Communion without due consideration for Christ and others do so in an unworthy manner.
 

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Matthew 6:21 KJV
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.


Easy Money

In the late 1700s, a young man discovered a mysterious depression on Nova Scotia’s Oak Island. Guessing that pirates—perhaps even Captain Kidd himself—had buried treasure there, he and a couple of companions started digging. They never found any treasure, but the rumor took on a life of its own. Over the centuries, others continued digging at the site—expending a great amount of time and expense. The hole is now more than one hundred feet (thirty meters) deep.

Such obsessions betray the emptiness in the human heart. A story in the Bible shows how one man’s behavior revealed just such a void in his heart. Gehazi had long been a reliable servant of the great prophet Elisha. But when Elisha declined the lavish gifts of a military commander whom God had healed of leprosy, Gehazi concocted a story to get some of the loot (2 Kings 5:22). When Gehazi returned home, he lied to the prophet (v. 25). But Elisha knew. He asked him, “Was not my spirit with you when the man got down from his chariot to meet you?” (v. 26). In the end, Gehazi got what he wanted, but lost what was important (v. 27).

Jesus taught us not to pursue this world’s treasures and to instead “store up . . . treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20).

Beware of any shortcuts to your heart’s desires. Following Jesus is the way to fill the emptiness with something real.


Reflect & Pray
What do you long for the most? What pursuits and obsessions have left you feeling empty?

Dear God, I give my desires over to You. Please help me crave the treasures that You value.


Insight
The king of Aram offered a reward to anyone who could heal Naaman of leprosy (2 Kings 5:5–6). After God used Elisha to heal Naaman, Elisha refused to take any reward. However, Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, was greedy and abused his trusted position. He deceitfully solicited 75 pounds of silver and two sets of clothing from Naaman (vv. 22–24 nlt). For his greed and deceit, Gehazi was severely disciplined (v. 27).

Scripture makes it clear that greed is improper for a believer in Jesus (Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5), especially one who professes to serve God (1 Timothy 3:3, 8; Titus 1:7).