Devotionals Archives - Focal Point Ministries

Don’t Drift

Hebrews 2:1 tells us that “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” Much like a leisurely float down a meandering river, if we choose to relax in the Christian life we can be assured that the tide of our culture...

Four Things God Cannot Do

For years on playgrounds everywhere church kids have been stymied by the agitator’s questions, “Can God do anything? And if so, can he make a rock so big he can’t move it?” While children may struggle with the answer, I hope the rest of us do not...

Opportunities

Followers of Christ always need to be on the look out for opportunities to stand up for Christ and to speak up for his cause. And the more sinful the culture, the more critical it is that God’s people exploit...

Hard Truth

We all work to make our lives as comfortable and pain-free as possible. We buy all sorts of appliances and gadgets to make hard jobs easy, and seek out any available remedy to alleviate our bodily aches and pains. And this makes perfect sense. Only a masochist would...

God-Breathed

The Bible is a “God-breathed” book (2Tim.3:16)—which vividly depicts a set of written words that are so closely associated with the Author that they are to be pictured as though God himself were speaking them with the breath of his own mouth. As such, the written “word of God” is described...

Restoration

As we read through the Book of Jeremiah we are confronted with a very familiar refrain, “God would never do that!” This is what the Lord’s faithful spokesman encountered when he exposed the gaping distance between the standards God had commanded in his word, and the values...

Precarious Paths

In the model prayer that Jesus provided to guide us into the kinds of prayer concerns we ought to habitually bring before the Father, he included the request: “lead us not into temptation” (Mt.6:13). I would hope this recurring appeal for God to direct us around sinfully enticing...

Exclusivity

Many take offense at our call to trust Christ for the forgiveness of their sins because it is so exclusive. They stumble over the words of Jesus when he said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn.14:6). They despise the tone of our evangelism when it echoes...

Pleasing God First

The Bible often reminds us of the Christian calling to please those with whom we interact from day to day. Servants should please their masters (1Tim.6:1), children their parents (Col.3:20), citizens their governing authorities (Rom.13:1), parents should parent without exasperating their children (Eph.6:4), and the list goes...

Self-Serving

How are the decisions we make impacting those around us? Jesus said that we should seek to love others as we would love ourselves (Mt.22:39). Nothing could be more central to that command than for us to spend more time considering how our plans, actions, and words will either...

Well Wielded Words

At mealtime a parent may comfortably give their toddler a spoon, but never a knife. Eventually the child’s place setting will include one, but not until there is the maturity and self-control to safely employ its use. Perhaps this restrictive image is one we should recall when we consider God’s warning that “rash words are like...

Battlefield of the Mind

The progress in our sanctification is fought in the battlefield of our minds. Though the Bible often enlists the word “heart” for the “organ” we must guard so carefully (Pr.4:23), it is important to remember that this Hebrew analogy refers to the faculty of our thoughts, reason, imagination, intention, and contemplation. When God looked on the corrupt...

Exposing Anxiety

When God confronts the sin of anxiety in Philippians 4, his prescribed remedy helps to clearly diagnose the problem –…

Health

Good health is good. It is certainly preferable to sickness and disease. Occasionally you’ll find some concern for it in…

Anger

Anger is admittedly a volatile and dangerous emotion. But it is important to note that it is not always a sinful emotion, and it certainly isn’t always expressed in sinful ways. God gives us adequate warning that...

Superstitions

While Christians affirm that God is supernatural, we of all people should not be superstitious. Yes, we recognize that from time to time in biblical history God has spectacularly suspended natural law as a strategic way to display...

Sola Scriptura

Just before one of the strongest statements regarding the uniqueness and sufficiency of Scripture, the Bible warns us that as time marches on “evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse” (2Tim.3:13). The threat of “evil people” opposing the truth has...

Tolerance

We live in a society where the advocates of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant. We should be careful not to miss…

Exiles

“Exiles!” There’s a word that doesn’t feel good. Consider the ache and frustration of being trapped in a foreign land…

Outlook and Attitude

It doesn’t take long to discover that the Christian life is certainly not a continuous experience of fun and laughter.…

Repent

Like a lot of preachers, Amos confessed he had no aspirations of being one. He told his critics that he…

Perspective

Solomon’s refrain that everything the world has to offer is “utterly meaningless” (Eccl.1:2) becomes easier to affirm the older one gets. It seems that with increasing age comes the increasing realization that the world is truly a rip-off...

Suffering and Trust

If we read through the God-breathed songbook of Israel we’ll find plenty of psalms which remind us that in this life God’s favored people are in no way exempt from serious pain and intense suffering. It is how the psalmists’ deal with their pain...

Let There Be Light

Sometimes the important analogies presented in the Bible are so frequently echoed in our worship, our prayers, and even our conversations, that God’s intended meaning gets lost in our minds somewhere along the way. Consider the frequent...

Unbiblical Thoughts

To grow in our understanding of God and the Christian life requires that we leave behind wrong ideas about God and the Christian life...

Responding to Trials

Modern Christians tend to misplace a good portion of their compassion. Often when they learn of someone who is struggling or hurting, regardless of the reason, they are quick to offer...

Selfish Prayers

James 4:3 diagnoses one of the most insidious problems which always undermines, and often devastates our prayer lives. The problem we’re told, is...

Dependence

Comprehending something of our real and absolute dependence on God is foundational to everything in the Christian life. It is where...

Prayer Perspective

We need to remember the greatness of the God to whom we pray. We often pray small prayers for small things because we’ve forgotten...

Real Biblical Love

“Love” may be a word we hear every day, but it’s rarely employed to describe anything resembling the virtue the Bible calls us to emulate. While there is nothing wrong with feeling good about the things, places, or people who make us feel good, the biblical concept of “love” is something entirely different...