The Daily Devotional Blog

" Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will send you out to fish for people" ( Matthew 4:19). That's what Jesus said when he called His disciples to follow Him and some of them literally dropped their nets and followed Him. What do you think it meant when Jesus asked them to drop what they were doing, follow Him, and He would make them fishers of men?  Do you think he meant take men to go fishing in the lake? Of course not. It meant those men, like all of us today, can and should use what we have to get people to Jesus; to cast our nets to get people to see the light that they're missing out on.  Yesterday I heard Christine Caine speak and she was amazing. One of her gifts is, going after the bad guys regarding human trafficking and her other gift is inspirational speaking. Caine is doing what she was born to do to make fishers of men. She's helping people and she's spreading the word of God to empower people to do likewise. We can al...

I write a lot about keeping the right people close and not being bothered with the things that are  distractors, because I've been through all of that.  Many of us have, haven't we? Yet we have to appreciate what we do have. We have to value the people, places, and things we do have. And even though we mess up and fall short sometimes, we still have those people in our lives who still love us and who we love, in spite of it all. Nothing and no one is perfect, but God. In fact just yesterday I wasn't as thankful as I should have been regarding a blessing the Lord gave me. I had forgotten in a moment about being thankful for a certain thing, because it didn't look the way I thought it should look. Then I quickly thought again and realized it was a huge blessing. I repented (asked for forgiveness to God). My point?  "Whoever can be trusted [ thankful , my word] with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will al...

Some months back I wrote a blog post about focus (May 25, 2016). You can access that article by clicking here . In the article I said quite a bit about staying on track and not getting distracted by the people, places, and things that try to throw us off course. Focus means pushing through the difficult and not being comfortable with easy. Don't chase easy -- winners don't do easy. Part of being successful in what the Lord wants for us is doing what few people do. It's being inconvenienced and being drawn into the positive. It's also about staying away from the little things that can get us out of sync with walking towards God. Be careful with things and people like that. Case-in-point, I talk to this certain person from time to time (sometimes out of obligation, but that's another blog post) and every time we talk, the person is either gossiping about someone or putting others down. Of course I want no part of that, so I either shift the conversation to somet...

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit ( Psalm 34 :18). That's another way of saying the Lord will revive our heart when needed. He is in the heart mending business just in case we need a heart change or a heart transplant. He's a miraculous God who will rejuvenate us in a heartbeat. Do you need Him for anything? Do you need help with a downcast heart? If so, today I've come to encourage you to stay in the race, to keep looking up, to continue to be optimistic, and to be faithful about your life. Some of us have been through more than the next person and some of us haven't. Yet we may all still hurt, because pain is pain and pain is painful. Some of us hurt deeper and longer, because the wounds went in pretty deep. Yet, the Lord is near us. The Lord saves us. That's means the Lord God will revive your spirit and bring you back to life. Wake up mighty men. Wake up mighty women. Your blessing is coming and I...

Just about everybody knows what blueprints are. They give us direction. They layout our plans for building whatever it is we want to build. They enable us to have a detailed outline or plan of action. In one word, blueprints are: necessary . Without them it would be almost impossible to build a sound, solid, reliable structure that makes sense. Without them we would be virtually incapable of following a trusted process.  Could you imagine going through life without a blueprint? To do so with be a life without God guiding us. It would be a life of wandering from here to there with no direction, no plans, and not an iota of where the Lord is guiding us. We wouldn't have a clue. Such, would be a life of ho-hum no matter how happy and secure we seemed. Why wouldn't we want to know the direction of the path the Lord is leading us? In Psalm 25 :4/5 David said, "m ake me to know your ways, Oh Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, ...

Nice house, isn't it? But we know that everything that glitters isn't gold, don't we? Just because something looks good on the outside doesn't mean it's all good on the inside. We have to consider the foundation. Any house built on sand won't stand. It has to be built on a solid reliable foundation. People are no different. It doesn't matter how good someone looks, we have to have a great foundation. If not, when we fall we will have difficulty getting back up. Having a foundation on God makes us more durable. Having a foundation on God means relying on Him ( Psalm 18 :2). The Lord is my sure foundation. How about you? We have to be wise about this. For,  "everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand" , says the Lord (see Matthew 7:24-27 ). So I ask, what do you stand on? How was your house built? It makes a huge difference, you know. For daily encouragement,...

I must admit, I have a problem with a stingy selfish spirit.  It's my pet peeve. I don't like it when we're in a position to help someone and we don't. I'm not talking about helping leeches or people who aren't helping themselves. Trying to help such people is like running in water. You can't do it and you can't go anywhere. I'm referring to us helping people who are helping themselves to do better. Those of us who can help in some way, it doesn't matter how big or small, should do so. Isn't there something each one of us can do for somebody at some point? Isn't there something we possess that God blessed us with that we can bless somebody with? It doesn't always have to be money. Growing up, my mother and aunt loved baking. They always had baking stuff around the kitchen and could whip up a cake in an instant. So guess what people often got from them? Yep, you guessed it, tasty cakes and pies too. Russell Wilson, the profession...