Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

1 Corinthians 9:19,22-23

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible…To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

I love meeting people who are passionate about something, whatever it is. It may be their love of horses or of a particular football club, or their devotion to gardening. You sense that their whole life is tuned into their passion. Paul was clearly passionate about people finding salvation in Jesus, and here he gives us a very clear insight into how he was wired. He lets us see his strategy for spreading this amazing message: getting alongside people whatever their background or their way of life. Whether they were a Jew or a Gentile, weak or strong, he would look for the common ground as a starting point for him to share the good news of Jesus.

It's always the most incredible privilege to talk with other people about Jesus, but the conversation will never get anywhere unless we can find common ground. Paul’s intention was never to force his faith on another person, and it should not be ours. But he was passionate about giving everyone a chance to hear just how great God is, and that would surely be a great objective for all of us.

Question

In what way can you find common ground with the people you see regularly who don’t know Christ?

Prayer

Thank you, Lord, that we have such good news to share. Amen

1 Corinthians 4:16-17

Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

The disciples learned how to follow Jesus by looking at His example. They saw how He responded to the constant demands of His ministry. They saw His kindness and patience and how He welcomed every kind of person. They were often shocked by the things that He said and by the sorts of people with whom He spent His time.

Paul didn’t have the privilege of observing Jesus’ ministry, but he recognised the crucial importance of people learning by example, and he offered his life as one to be imitated. How else would people learn how to put Christian teaching into practice? In our verses today, he tells the Corinthian church that he is sending his young friend Timothy to them so he can remind them of Paul’s example.

I suspect that we would all become rather coy at the thought of people copying our example. But every day, as we live for Christ, we are being watched. There is no way in which we can hide away, so we need to ensure that we are setting a good example which is well worth following.

Question

Who will be looking at your life today, and what example will you be setting?

Prayer

Dear Lord, thank you for all the people who have set a good example for me to follow. Help me live a life which will help others to follow You. Amen

1 Corinthians 3:5-6

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.

Think for a moment about the Christian leaders that you have known. I’ve been a Christian a long time and I could easily come up with a long list of leaders who have helped me to understand the Christian message. I am so grateful to God for them. To be honest, I can remember very few words that they have spoken even though I must have heard thousands of sermons. However, I can easily remember how they lived their lives – their sincerity, kindness, humour, love, compassion, thoughtfulness and their strength of faith. Their godly example still lives with me.

It is important that we should love and support our Christian leaders, but it is vital that we don’t exaggerate their importance. Their role is simply to point to the God whom they serve. All leaders are frail and vulnerable like the rest of us. They are on the same rollercoaster of life as us, and they have their ups and down. We need to rejoice in their good days and forgive their bad ones but ensure that our focus continually is supremely on the One whom we all serve.

Question

What have you learned from the leaders that you have known?

Prayer

Loving Lord, thank you for all the leaders that You have used to teach and support me in my Christian faith. But most of all I thank you that You are the one who, by Your Spirit, enables me to grow. Amen

1 Corinthians 2:1-3

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.

I once heard about a church that regularly visited the houses nearby. They sent out people two by two and many people got involved. A young girl nervously agreed to join in. She went to one house and a large man came to the door asking in a gruff voice what she wanted. She struggled to speak and then, in a quivering voice, she blurted out: “I’ve come to tell you that Jesus loves you.” The man didn’t know what to say, so he slammed the door in her face. He went inside and slumped into a chair weeping. He could hardly believe what had just happened. He thought deeply about the bravery of the young woman and out of curiosity he went to church, where before long he made a commitment to follow Christ.

I love that story because God often speaks through our weakness more easily than through our strength. That was certainly Paul’s experience. Most of us feel unsure of ourselves when we are given the opportunity to speak about our faith, but we are often at our most powerful when we are feeling nervous and weak.

Question

Can you think of a time when God used you particularly powerfully in a time of weakness?

Prayer

Lord, help me to be willing to speak up for You, even when I am feeling weak and tongue-tied. Amen

1 Corinthians 1:18

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Paul was absolutely sure that the cross of Jesus stood right at the heart of his life and ministry. Nothing was more important than the fact that God showed His perfect love for us by sending Jesus to die the most excruciatingly painful death for us. It was, if you like, the lens through which Paul saw everything. So Paul was determined to take every opportunity to speak about the cross.

But Paul was more than aware that the message of the cross sounded like nonsense to many people. The Greeks were looking for wisdom. They were very happy to listen to carefully reasoned arguments and to enter into learned debate. But the idea of a man dying at the hands of the Romans, showing that He was totally powerless and completely beaten by His enemies, didn’t sound at all wise. It sounded like foolishness. And to the Jews, Jesus’ own people, there was a fundamental problem. In Deuteronomy it was specifically stated that anyone who hung on a tree was cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:23). The cross was, therefore, a total stumbling-block for Jews. It made belief almost impossible.

Paul was well aware of how foolish and problematic his message appeared. But he didn’t try to change it to make it sound acceptable to his hearers. He simply declared that if you want to know the power and wisdom of God there is only one place to look – to the cross of Jesus.

Question

What does the cross mean to you personally?

Prayer – Thank You Lord that when you went to the cross you showed us the full extent of Your love. Amen

1 Corinthians 1:4-5

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way – with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge.

If you know anything at all about the church in Corinth, you will know that it was a disaster area. Everything seemed to be going wrong, but look how Paul starts this letter. He gives thanks for them and for the way in which God has blessed them, and rejoices in the ways that, through Jesus, God has enriched them. I love this! He could have kicked off the letter with a long list of moans, but he doesn’t. He begins with encouragement.

My junior school was very small, so I found my huge secondary school a very bewildering place. I had never been a part of anything like it before. I struggled with the work and didn’t do very well at first. I will never forget the piece of work that I did for a Geography teacher when I was twelve, which he marked as “excellent”. Nobody had ever told me I’d done anything excellent before, and his words changed everything. I saw myself in a new light.

Words of encouragement don’t normally need to be long. They may be communicated in a quick text or on a card or in a brief email. But they can be of amazing importance. They can turn people’s lives around. I wonder what you might be able to say today which will give solid encouragement to someone else.

Question

What was the most significant encouragement that you have ever received, and what did you learn from the experience?

Prayer

Lord, help me to become more encouraging day by day. Amen

Psalm 123:3-4

Have mercy on us, LORD, have mercy on us, for we have endured no end of contempt. We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant, of contempt from the proud.

To be treated with contempt is a horrible experience. To be written off as worthless is agonising, and the Bible tells us about many people who knew just how painful it is. Nehemiah certainly had this experience when he worked to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Many scholars think this might be the background to this particular psalm. Nehemiah was convinced that God Himself had commissioned him to undertake the rebuilding of the city, but that cut no ice with Sanballat and Tobiah, who did everything they could think of to ridicule his efforts.

If you have ever been treated with contempt, you will know what a depressing and discouraging experience it is. Very easily it can dominate all of our thinking and make life a complete misery. It can happen to any one of us, so it is good to see what the psalmist did: turn his attention to the Lord. The psalm begins with these words: “I lift my eyes to you, O God, to you who sits enthroned in heaven.”

The psalmist chose to focus his attention on the Lord, and we need to do the same. He alone, the God of mercy, can set us free from our destructive reactions to life and enable us to face our critics with grace and love.

Question

How have you responded to those who have treated you badly?

Prayer

Loving Father, I realise that I need Your loving care every moment of my life. Please grant me Your strength, grace and wisdom today. Amen

Psalm 122:1

I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.”

This verse has a very special place in British history. It has been used upon the entrance of the monarch at every coronation since that of King Charles 1. Since 1902, Hubert Parry’s magnificent choral setting of the psalm has been sung. It captures beautifully the joy and celebration of this special occasion. The roots of this psalm go back thousands of years, to the time when pilgrims would use these words as they climbed up the hill to Jerusalem and anticipated the incredible joy of worshipping God in the temple. You can sense their excitement as they got closer and closer to the holy city.

There is no building in Christianity which is the equivalent of the temple in Jerusalem. With the coming of Christ, a new covenant was established in which God sought to build a new temple, not with stones or bricks and mortar but in the lives of those who worshipped Him. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”

(1 Corinthians 3:16).

Our circumstances are very different from those of the psalmist, but we can still experience the same joy of meeting together with God’s people for worship. We can still look forward to the experience with gladness and anticipation because, as we meet together, God will be there with us.

Question

What are the things that make you glad to worship with other Christians?

Prayer

Loving God, I thank You for the blessing and encouragement of worship. Help me never to take this privilege for granted. Amen

Psalm 121:1-2

I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

This is one of the best-known and best-loved of all the psalms. The answer to the psalmist’s question is a resounding: “No!” The mountains might look strong and confident, but our help certainly doesn’t come from them – it comes from the Lord. It’s impossible to know what exactly was in the mind of the psalmist when he referred to the mountains. He might simply have been reflecting on their impressive grandeur and strength. But it is quite likely that he was thinking of the fact that people often went to high places like mountains to worship false gods such as Baal. The psalmist wanted to make it absolutely clear that only God Himself is able to meet our needs.

Our God is always on the job. He never slumbers or sleeps. He is continually watching over us. Our family and friends may well be wonderfully supportive and caring. They would do anything for us, but sooner or later they get tired and need to get some sleep. Their support is great, but it’s well short of 100%. God is different. He can be relied upon to be there to support us night and day.

The psalm challenges us all to look hard at our lives and to ensure that we are looking in the right direction for the help that really matters. We need to look to the Lord Himself who made heaven and earth.

Question

Where do you get your help from?

Prayer

Loving God, I thank You for being my constant help and strength. Help me to lean on You today. Amen

Psalm 120:1-2

I call on the LORD in my distress, and he answers me. Save me, LORD, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.

I love the psalms because they span the full range of human experience. Some are full of praise and worship, but others burst out with anger and disappointment. However you are feeling, there are psalms that will be just right for you, because God meets us where we are. We don’t need to pretend to be something that we are not. We can come to Him with our struggles, fears, passions and hopes and know that He will understand us completely.

I’ve had the privilege of visiting a number of Benedictine monasteries in England and France. I have been thrilled to live as part of their worshipping communities for a few days of retreat. Every day there are eight times of worship, and you need to know that I didn’t attend them all! Each week all of the 150 psalms are read or sung, and that seems to me a wonderful rhythm of life. What has often struck me is the ruthless honesty of the psalmists. They hid nothing when they came into God’s presence. They told Him exactly how they were feeling and used language that makes us wince at times.

God wants us to come to Him with exactly the same ruthless honesty and to be confident that He will always answer our prayers. He may not answer us in the way that we want or expect, but He will always answer us.

Question

What experience have you had of God answering your prayers?

Prayer

Loving God, I thank You for the privilege of prayer. Help me to place it at the centre of my life. Amen