Devotional
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Daily Readings: James 3:13-18 and Romans 11:33-36 We’ve been seeing all week how James extols the virtues of divine wisdom and calls us to humbly trust God’s plan and pursue a life of practical wisdom – thereby expressing our deep love for God, inheriting the rich blessings God has in store for us, and avoiding
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Daily Readings: James 3:13-18 and Isaiah 11:1-9 Isaiah 11 was a Messianic prophecy, which boldly declared hundreds of years in advance that the Messiah would be empowered and enabled by the “Spirit of the Lord”. His life would be characterised by Spirit-given wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. This was
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Daily Readings: James 3:13-18 and Proverbs 2:1-22 Today, let’s think about those two types of wisdom James identifies. First there is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” wisdom. As we saw earlier this week, Godly wisdom is the pursuit of what is pleasing to God. By contrast, James points out that “earthly” wisdom is the pursuit of selfish
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Daily Readings: James 3:13-18 and Psalm 111 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” Psalm 111:10 This famous principle is echoed in various places in Scripture, for example Job 28:28; Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10. But what exactly does it mean? I believe that the fear of the Lord involves holding God in such reverence,
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Aaand we’re back! After a two week break, our daily devotions on the “Life Letter from James” resume today. Our theme this week is wisdom, and our focus passage is James 3:13-18. Before we begin, though, let’s note that “wisdom” is the understanding of what to do in a given set of circumstances in order
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Daily Readings: 1 Peter 5:8-10 and James 1:1-18 1 Peter 5 outlines the spiritual battle that goes on whenever a believer faces trials and suffering, and Peter’s advice to the beleaguered and suffering believers is: “Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
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Daily Reading: James 1:1-18 and Matthew 5:1-12 In our passage from Matthew, verses 6 & 10 are clearly very closely related. They read as follows in the Good News translation:6 “Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully! … 10 “Happy are those who are persecuted because they do
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Daily Reading: Psalm 19 The great Christian theologian, St. Augustine, articulated an idea that was held by a number of early “Church Fathers”, when he wrote that there are in fact two holy books by which God is revealed to us – the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. Psalm 19 appears to
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Daily Reading: Psalm 104 “1 Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendour and majesty.” As we read Psalm 104, we should bear in mind that psalms are poetry. They are not history, books of law, scientific theories, letters or Gospels. The psalmist is expressing deep truth in poetic imagery. In this particular
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Daily Reading: Job 38 By the time we reach chapter 38 of the Book of Job, this embattled man and his friends have been wrestling with the great question of human suffering, and God’s place in our suffering. For his friends it was theoretical, but for Job it was all about his personal experience of
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