Devotionals Archives - Page 4 of 12 - Focal Point Ministries

Reliance on God

King Asa was a righteous leader of God’s people. This ancestor of Christ and third king of the divided kingdom was a devout reformer who abolished the worship of foreign gods, put an end to cultic prostitution, and even dethroned his family members who disdained obedience to Yahweh. The Bible says God brought...

Loving God

When the call of God on our lives and the message for us in Scripture is distilled into one line it reads like this: “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.” This was the central command of Old Testament Judaism (Dt.6:5) and it was the primary imperative...

Isolation

There is too much spiritual danger inherent in Christians choosing to be isolated. The New Testament model shows us Christians who are interested and involved in each other’s lives. Paul shared his joys and victories, as well as his hurts and struggles...

Light

Jesus said that people prefer darkness rather than light because people don’t want their sinful deeds exposed (Jn.3:19-20). Of course this is an analogy. Your willingness to sit in the sun or your desire to dim the lights in the family room has nothing to do with...

Contentment

Recently, after seeing a “Christian” book entitled How to Get Everything You Want, I was reminded of God’s call to contentment. The Apostle testified to living out God’s expectation for his creatures. He wrote, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances...

All Knowing God

Our God is a God who knows and perceives all things. He intimately knows all things past, all things present and all things future. He is a God for whom nothing is concealed. With him there are no secrets, there is no darkness and nothing is shrouded from his total awareness and full comprehension. God would

Forgiveness and Happiness

Knowing that we are truly forgiven should naturally give rise to real joy and genuine happiness. When forgiveness is real, having been secured by those contrite sinners who have thrown themselves on the grace and mercy of our forgiving God (who has paid the ultimate price in...

Work

Working is a gift from God – a pre-fall, pre-sin, pre-curse gift. While sin’s consequence injected obstacles and pain into the equation (“the ground will produce thorns” leading to work “by the sweat of your brow” – Gen.3:18, 19), the commission to work preceded the fall...

Bible Abuse

If only we could see how often we abuse the Bible (and therefore, its Author) in an effort to bolster and justify our personal views and proclivities. The process is called “isogesis” – presupposing our own interpretation and views and “reading them into” a passage of Scripture when they...

Worship God Now

One day God will make all things right. He will straighten out what’s crooked and smooth out the rough places (Is.40:3-4; Lk.3:5), not the least of which is the humiliation of the proud. For “all mankind will see God’s salvation” – a salvation most have chosen to ignore and...

For God’s Sake

While most people believe God saves people for "people’s sake" (i.e., because of his attraction to them and his inner compulsion to promote and honor them), Psalm 106:8 tells us that God is in the business of saving sinners...

Righteous Anger

While most Christians are chasing a modern fantasy of an irenic and affable day-to-day Christian experience, may we recognize the truth that we cannot be godly without regularly feeling and periodically expressing righteous anger...

Love

Love is not as easy or pleasant as it sounds. It is effortless to say “I love you” but so hard to demonstrate in real life. The Bible calls Christians to love “not with words or speech but with actions and truth” (1Jn.3:18). It is not that the words are wrong, but they...

Unwholesome Talk

God’s word commands followers of Christ to “not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths” (Eph.4:29). Often the Bible gauges our spirituality by our vocabulary (Jms.3:2-12). If our words are unsavory Jesus provides the needed...

Christian Life

Some have tried to avoid the concept of “Christ’s life for me and my life for Christ” depicted in the gospel exchange (cf. 2Cor.5:15; Mt.13:44-46; Lk.14:28-33; Mt.10:37-39; et al.) by imagining a dichotomy in the Christian life. They suggest that there are...

Forgiveness

God’s forgiveness is complete. Because God is too pure to approve or tolerate what is evil (Hab.1:13; Ps.5:4-5; et al.), to say that we are God’s beloved children because we are accepted by God in Christ, is to make a gigantic claim that assumes that our...

Our Sin

The Bible says we are all born with a built in double standard – the one we apply to those around us and the other we apply to ourselves. We are innately proficient in detecting the sins and transgressions of others, but we are inept in perceiving our own. Consider the freeway foibles...

Rebellious Decisions

Recently the Supreme Court summarized another decision to move our country and its laws further from biblical principles by stating that their ruling epitomized “the progress of a maturing society.” As we often see throughout biblical history in general, and the book of Judges in...

Truthfulness

In Psalm 15 David recounts key virtues of a godly character – a kind of character that he says will experience intimacy with God. At the top of the inspired list we find the attribute of truthfulness, as we might expect. How can one claim to

Coveting

Do you covet? Most would say, “not really” or “not too often.” But I wonder how in tune we are with the presence of this subtle sin? Even when we recognize its presence in our hearts, how quick are we to minimize its gravity? It seems we will more readily admit...

God’s Ownership

Living the Christian life as we ought requires that we periodically ponder the significance of the biblical statement: “You are not your own; you were bought with a price” (1Cor.6:19-20). When we recognize that God not only gives us...

Resting

Taking a break was God’s idea. It assumes we are diligent in our work. Even the statement he uses to institute a weekly break is couched in the reminder that we were never designed or commissioned for a life of luxury “six days do your work” but then we must...

Get Wisdom

The Bible repeatedly tells us that God’s wisdom is readily available to us and would enhance our lives in countless ways, including the expansion of our lot in eternity, but sadly we choose to leave much of it unclaimed. The diagnosis? We love our sin way too much. We’re told that...

Live by Faith

The Bible tells us that, for the time being, we have to function in the Christian life without the benefit of “seeing” the important and eternal things that we live for and live by (2Cor.4:18; 5:7; 1Pet.1:8; et al.). Our hope in God – his forgiveness, his blessing and his presence, just to name a few...

Baptism and Salvation

“Does baptism save you?” The best answer is actually a question: “Which one?” Unfortunately, the word “baptism” causes students of the Bible a lot of confusion because, like a few other select Greek words, it is not translated – it is simply transliterated. Were it translated it would

God’s Dwelling

When King Solomon had completed construction on the most magnificent, costly and beautiful edifice Israel had ever seen, he admitted during his dedicatory prayer that their new and expansive house of worship was far too...

Perfection

It has been observed that our insatiable appetite for what is perfect should be a clue that this world is not our home. Who can argue with the fact that we all spend plenty of time and effort imagining and pursuing flawless realities that...

Biblical Tension

It has been rightly said that we should never use biblical truths in unbiblical ways. We make this costly error at times without knowing it. We may be hailing some aspect of God’s word with a resolute focus while unwittingly beginning to utilize that affirmation to deny some other forthright teaching of Scripture. Take for instance our confidence in the sovereignty of God, which is of course a...

Self Examination

The Bible often reminds us to not forget. It tells us to hang on to what we’ve learned and to build on the gains that we’ve made in the Christian life. The goal is not to be nostalgic, but to be sure to “live up to what we have already attained” (Phil.3:16) “remembering what we’ve received and heard” so that we can “obey it” (Rev.3:3). This requires purposeful...

Money

Most of us at, one point or another, have said in frustration “I hate money!” While that may sound better than the alternative which is prohibited in Scripture (1Tim.6:10), it is obviously not how God would have us live. God knows we will have to...