Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Romans 13:11-12 You know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armour of right living. In this life, everything is limited by time. You might want to have another day to complete your revision, but when the examination day comes, there is no more time. You might have lots of worthy things to do, but the aeroplane won’t wait fo...

Romans 13:1

Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. Our society has a high level of cynicism towards those in authority, and the media takes every opportunity to shoot politicians down in flames whenever they slip up. However, the apostle Paul would encourage us to look at our politicians with spiritual eyes and to remember that all authority on this earth ultimately comes from God. Therefore, it is vital that we pray for those in authority and play our part as...

Romans 12:17-18

Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honourable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. The Christian life involves a complete rewiring of the way we think and live. It involves a total revolution in our lives because when someone does something evil to us, the natural reaction is to retaliate. Everything in us makes us want to hit back. We want justice and we don’t want our attacker to think that they can get away with it. Je...

Romans 12:9-10

Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honouring each other. Napoleon once said: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires; but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love.” It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of love. Without love there can be no Church, no blessing, no joy, no future worth having. Everything depends upon love, and here, Paul was co...

Romans 12:7-8

If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly. In three of his letters, Paul talks about the gifts that God has given to Christians, and each list is very different. Here and in Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 12, he makes it clear that every follower of Christ has been...

Romans 12:3

Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. It is vital for all of us to have a true understanding of ourselves. If we go around with an inflated view of our own importance, the whole of life will look distorted. Relationships will be damaged, and we will add layers of difficulty to everyday life. It is just as damaging to ha...

Romans 12:2

Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Every day, our thinking is being shaped by our society. Most of the time, we are totally unaware that this is happening, but there is no way that we can avoid being influenced by the expectations and standards of the people around us, by the information and views that we receive through the medi...

Romans 12:1

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. We use the word worship in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes we use it to refer to a church service, and at other times we use it for a part of the service which is called “a time of worship”, normally consisting of prayers and singing. Here, Paul is using...

Psalm 88:1-3

O LORD, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. This is possibly the saddest of all the psalms. The psalmist cried out to God in a state of total despair. Many of the psalms are referred to as psalms of lament, but this one goes even further and is full of absolute desperation. It is painful to read because it is so bleak, but I am...

Psalm 86:11

Teach me your ways, O LORD, that I may live according to your truth! I wonder what your school teachers were like. I suspect that we all had a wide range of experiences. Some of my teachers were strict, others were encouraging, a few were inspiring. Some seemed to be in the wrong job, others were funny - and some just thought they were funny! Teachers vary enormously, but when it comes to learning about life itself, we need the very best teacher. Here, David recognises that God is that person. God is often spoken of...

Psalm 86:8

No pagan god is like you, O Lord. None can do what you do! There have always been lots of gods on offer. A god is anything that calls for our commitment and devotion, and in every age, there has been a colourful variety of options. I once stayed with a journalist in Mumbai who had a remarkable variety of gods in his flat. There were pictures of many Hindu deities, but Jesus and Mary were there as well. Gods also come in more subtle forms. A person’s family or their job, house, bank balance, ho...

Psalm 86:5

O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help. Sooner or later, everything breaks down. Whether you are thinking of your health, car, bicycle, microwave, computer, vacuum cleaner or heating system, all of them will, one day, encounter problems. In this psalm, David faces up to the fact that we all sin. It’s not pleasant to admit, but we would be crazy to suggest that it doesn’t affect us. Of course, we may try to wriggle out of this by suggesting that...

Psalm 86:1 Bend down, O LORD, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help. Finding peace and purpose in our lives is something that we all want, and the first step to achieving it is recognising that we need God’s help. David, the author of this psalm, was Israel’s king in about 1000BC and had that experience time and again. This was clearly one of those times. He knew that although he was incredibly wealthy and powerful, he simply couldn’t manage without God. Bernard Levin was one of the most respected political commentators in the UK. He...

Psalm 85:8 I listen carefully to what God the LORD is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people. Listening is crucial to every part of life, but that doesn’t mean it is a simple process. It requires a huge amount of thought and care, so it isn’t surprising that courses in listening are widely available these days. There are essentially five stages to the listening process: receiving, understanding, evaluating, remembering and responding. I am sure the psalmist would have seen this as a good description of what it meant to “listen carefully” to the Lord. It’s possible t...

Psalm 84:10 A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked. I wonder if you’ve ever experienced homesickness. I certainly have. I loved the years I spent in India and my Indian friends couldn’t have been kinder or welcoming, but there was still a deep longing to see my family and friends and to experience cold weather! At the time, the phone connection between India and the UK was very poor, and in t...

Psalm 82:3-4 Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people. When I was in my 20s, I lived in an Indian village for a year. I had the incredible privilege of living with a family of Dalits, who have generally been known as untouchables. Dalits form about a quarter of the Indian population and have always been regarded as the lowest of the low. My Indian family was a typical extended family with a granny, mum, dad, three...

Psalm 81:10-11

“For it was I, the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around.” We probably all know the feeling when someone doesn’t want us around. It’s painful. For some reason, they don’t come out with it plainly and clearly, but we get the clear impression that we are not welcome. However, it is much more tragic when people decide that they don’t want God around, an...

Psalm 80:19

Turn us again to yourself, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved. When someone looks at us with their full attention and warmth, it tells us everything we need to know – that we are welcome and that they are on our side. On three occasions in this psalm, Asaph expresses his longing that God’s face would shine upon the people. This psalm was probably written at the time of the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. The destru...

Psalm 78:2-4

I will teach you hidden lessons from our past – stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders. In a speech in the House of Commons in 1948, Winston Churchill paraphrased the philosopher Santayana when he said: “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” This was precisely the concern of Asaph as he wrote this particular psalm, reflecting on fiv...

Galatians 6:18

Dear brothers and sisters, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. The story of John Newton is well known. He first went to sea with his father when he was eleven years old and soon became deeply involved in working on slave ships. It was a terrible experience and, after falling out with the crew of the Pegasus in 1745, he even found himself in slavery. Three years later, he was rescued, and on his return home, he read the Bible and became a Christian. He became a Church of England...

Galatians 6:17

I bear on my body the scars that show I belong to Jesus. Alan Paton wrote a book called [itals]Cry, the Beloved Country[end itals] (Vintage) and was a fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa. He once wrote about his death: “When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for? I couldn’t face that question.” If we are willing to stand up for truth and justice...

Galatians 6:14

As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was clearly a lot of boasting going on among the Galatians! There were those who boasted of the fact that they continued to keep the Jewish law. They continued to practice circumcision and to stand by the Old Testament law. They were convinced that they were doing extremely well and looked down their noses at Paul, who was firmly opposed to circumcision for Christians and who spoke constantly about the inadequacies of the law. Paul was keen to...

Galatians 6:7-8

Don’t be misled – you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. The principle of ‘you reap what you sow’ is both obvious and profound. If you sow a field full of wheat, you would be crazy to expect a crop of potatoes. It’s so obvious, but the message fundamentally challenges the way in which we l...

Galatians 6:6

Those who are taught the word of God should provide for their teachers, sharing all good things with them. It’s not surprising that Paul spoke so clearly about the need to care for teachers in the early Church. They had a crucial role, and if they were not supported by the financial gifts of the church members, they would starve. The Galatian Christians needed to be reminded of their responsibilities. When Paul wrote to his young colleague Timothy, he referred to the need to show respect for church leaders and to ensure that they were we...

Galatians 6:4-5

Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct. In the previous couple of verses, Paul spoke of the importance of helping other people to carry their heavy burdens. Now, he reminds them that they have got their own burden to bear. The word he uses is also used of a soldier’s pack. We all have a certain amount that we have to carry by o...

Galatians 6:2-3

Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. We live in a society that appears to be far more interested in rights than responsibilities. Rights are clearly crucial. The right to free speech, health, safety, care and justice are fundamental to society. However, none of them will ever happen unless we are all willing to take responsibility. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks powerfully put it: “Without responsibility, rights are a cheq...

Galatians 6:1

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Sadly, in every organisation of human beings, things sometimes go wrong. I love the gracious and positive way in which Paul addresses this issue. When someone sins, it’s not the end of the world and we don’t need to make a drama out of it, but action needs to be taken, quickly. The goal is alwa...

Galatians 5:25-26

Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another. Living in step with the Holy Spirit sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Just imagine a life which is full of love, joy and peace, and all the other beautiful fruit of the Spirit. This must surely be life at its best, but, as the apostle Paul knew, the life of the Spirit has to be lived out in a world in w...

Galatians 5:22-23

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These beautiful spiritual qualities are the inevitable result of the Holy Spirit taking control of a person’s life. You can be sure of the genuineness of a person’s spiritual experience when you see these qualities in evidence. It’s interesting that Paul speaks here of the fruit of the Spirit but not the gifts, which are also the result of the Spirit being at work in someone’s life. Perhaps this is because...

Galatians 5:16-17

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. It’s always refreshing when you meet someone who is completely honest. The apostle Paul was such a man. In Romans 7, he gave an astonishingly frank account of how he ticked. He talked about struggling with his sinful nature. He summed it up in this way: “I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want t...

Galatians 5:7-9

You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth? It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. This false teaching is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough! We all know what is to be disappointed. It may be that someone has let you down, or that things just haven’t worked out in the way you had hoped. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is dominated by his deep and agonising disappointment that his readers had al...

Galatians 4:6-7

Because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir. When I hear the word ‘father’, I immediately think of my own father. We probably all do. I think of a gentle and kind Christian man. He was a businessman and a busy member of our church, and he was always absolutely devoted to my mother and his four child...

Galatians 3:11

So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” For the apostle Paul, this was the crunch issue. The only way to be made right with God is through faith. He was addressing many people who believed that obeying the law was crucial for all Christians, but he argued that however well we live, we will always fail. We will never be able to put our relationship with God right by our own...

Galatians 2:20

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. In these first two chapters of Galatians, Paul gives a fascinating summary of his life story since he became a Christian, reminding his readers of his background. He had been so deeply committed to his Jewish faith that he had done everything possible to destroy the Church. Paul makes it clear that when he...

Galatians 1:4

Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. Every now and again, we hear about rescue missions. Brave soldiers are put down behind enemy lines, often in a low flying helicopter, and set some prisoners free. It’s all very exciting and impressive. Here, the apostle Paul talks about us being rescued, and it sounds as if God is coming to transport us out of this world, but that isn’t his purpose. His desire is to leave us i...

Galatians 1:1

This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead. Yesterday, we were reflecting on the call of Isaiah. He was absolutely clear that he was called by God to his challenging ministry. Today, in this reading from Galatians, we meet the apostle Paul hundreds of years later making it clear that he was appointed by God alone. This was no human appointment, but one that God had decided to...

Isaiah 6:8

Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me.” Isaiah’s encounter with God in the temple was so intimate that he was able to overhear God having a conversation. God was wondering who he could send as a messenger, and Isaiah immediately put up his hand and offered his services. Isaiah’s response stands in marked contrast to others, such as Moses and Jeremiah, who offered God reasons why he had chosen the wrong person. Isaiah was willing...

Isaiah 6:5-7 [Isaiah] said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man…” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.” You may have had the experience of cleaning a window with great care. The last smudge has been removed and you are convinced that you’ve done an excellent job, and then you sit down and see the su...

Isaiah 6:1 It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Uzziah had become king when he was 16 and reigned for 52 years. For much of that time, the kingdom of Judah had thrived. Uzziah had listened to the prophet Zechariah and walked in the ways of the Lord. However, later on in his reign he had become arrogant, and on one occasion, he went into the temple to burn incense, a task which only priests could perform. Uzziah was struck down...

Isaiah 5:7 The nation of Israel is the vineyard of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. The people of Judah are his pleasant garden. He expected a crop of justice, but instead he found oppression. He expected to find righteousness, but instead he heard cries of violence. There is only one reason why you would plant a vineyard: because you were wanting grapes. You certainly wouldn’t plant one for the vines’ natural beauty or because you want to make use of their wood, which struggles to burn. This chapter poignantly describes God’s desperate disappointment with his people. They were planted...