Encouraging Words Devotional

I wouldn’t want you to read or listen to Encouraging Words and not know how to be sure you’re going to heaven when you die. It’s just too important a matter not to know for sure. Your eternal future depends on whether you have a personal relationship with Jesus, because that relationship determines where you will spend eternity.  So, this devotional is dedicated entirely to just that one thought: do you know for sure that you have a personal relationship with Jesus?

Mephibosheth—what a long and unusual name! It would be hard to print his name on the back of a basketball uniform! Mephibosheth was the five-year-old grandson of King Saul, the first king of Israel.

I’ve found a cure for the blues.  Well, it works for me, anyway, and maybe it would work for you. It’s very simple—just get outdoors and take a look at what God has made. 

Scientists recently discovered in space the largest ball of hot gas that has yet been found. “The size and velocity are truly fantastic,” says one of the physicists who discovered it.

Robert Fulghum says, “Don’t worry that your children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” Yes, like it or not, what we moms do is a pattern that our kids tend to follow. From us they are learning skills for their own lives. So, Paul’s words speak loudly to us when he says, “In everything set them an example by doing what is good” (Titus 2:7).

We usually think of jealousy as being a bad thing—a sin.  On the contrary, you may be surprised to know that the Bible says God Himself is jealous.  But He’s jealous for all the right reasons. You see, God loves you deeply, and when you love someone deeply, you are jealous of anything or anyone who would steal away that love.

Kay Warren, wife of pastor and author Rick Warren, says, “In parenting, if you don’t insist on anything else, insist that your kids learn to obey two words, “Come” and “No.”  She explains that if your children learn to come to you when you call and to accept your “No” when you have to deny them something they want, they will learn to obey God when He uses those same two words.

Before a temple was built in Jerusalem, the people of Israel met in a portable structure called “the Tent of Meeting.” Inside the Tent was an altar for sacrifice as well as a number of other articles, including a bronze wash basin for the priests. God instructed Moses that whenever the priests entered the Tent of Meeting to offer sacrifices, they were to first wash their hands and feet with water from the bronze basin.

She sat across the table from us, and with tears in her eyes, she said, “I’d like to have Jesus in my heart, but I don’t think I can be good enough.”

Those difficult circumstances you’re dealing with right now--how do you see them? As insurmountable? Or as an opportunity for God to do the impossible?