Pastor Tom's Daily Devotional

Pastor Diane Feola Psalm 91:5-8  (AMP) You shall not be afraid of the terror of the night, nor of the arrow (the evil plots and slanders of the wicked) that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor of the destruction and sudden death that surprise and lay waste at noonday.  A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you.  Only a spectator shall you be [yourself inaccessible in the secret place of the Most High] as you witness the reward of the wicked. We are continuing with Psalm 91, and it just gets better and better.  In these verses, we learn that no matter what horrible plagues or calamities come on the earth, they will not touch us.  Verse 5 is a key.  Do not be afraid!  The enemy tries to make you afraid.  He wants you to look around at all that is going on around you.  Faith in God’s great love and grace will calm all those fears.  God is for ...

Pastor Diane Feola Psalms 91:3-4  (AMP) For [then] He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.  [Then] He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings shall you trust and find refuge; His truth and His faithfulness are a shield and a buckler. To continue on from yesterday, when we dwell in the secret place of the Most High, when we say of the Lord, He is our Refuge and Fortress, THEN He delivers us!  He wants to deliver us from every trap of the enemy, and from everything the devil would like to ensnare us with.  1 Peter 5:8 says that the devil walks around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  If we stay close to Father God, we stay in His protection.  And we learned yesterday, no foe can withstand Him.  Hallelujah! He also delivers us from the deadly pestilence.  There are so many new diseases and strains of diseases.  There are so many who become fearful of flu season,...

Pastor Diane Feola Psalms 91:1-2  (AMP) He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall remain stable and fixed under the shadow of the Almighty [Whose power no foe can withstand].   I will say of the Lord, He is my Refuge and my Fortress, my God; on Him I lean and rely, and in Him I [confidently] trust! For the next several days we are going to look at Psalm 91 from the Amplified Bible.  We need to see this Psalm of protection as very personal, and very relevant for us today.  We can grab a hold of this Psalm, and confess it for our families and ourselves. Right from verse one, we see where we need to stay if we want to be safe.  We need to stay in that secret place, so close to Father God that we are in His shadow!  That is where no foe can defeat us because no foe can withstand His power. Look at what happens if we remain very close to the Most High.  We are stable and fixed .  Our life becomes very consistent....

James 1:22-25 (NKJV) But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. God does not want the Bible to become just a book of rules and regulations.  He wants His Word to be our life, to be our strength, and to be our everything.  That is why it is so important to not let the Bible be just a book we read , but a book that we live .  God’s Word is truth, and everything else in life has to bow to it. When I make a decision in my life to let God’s Word take first place and to do what it says, it changes everything!  It changes my attitude, it changes the way I see thi...

John 8:31-32 (NKJV) Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” When we take time each day to abide in the words of Jesus, it makes us a true disciple of His.  You see, if we call ourselves Christians, yet do not know what the Commander-in-Chief’s orders are, then how can we move in His will?  As we open the Bible and read the amazing Word of God, it truly sets us free! God's Word is a lamp to our feet; it is a compass throughout our lives.  It will guide us and lead us in all that we do.  We can call the Bible a roadmap for our lives here on earth.  There is no other book on planet earth like it.  So many have tried to destroy it, and many are still trying, but I can say with bold confidence that they, and we, will be gone one day, but God's Word will continue marching on! In today’s passage, Jesus is talk...

Hebrews 11:1-3 (NKJV) Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Our God is a NOW God.  He knows the past and the future, but He is a now God.  All that He is doing is in the now, because our God is a God of faith.  This is the way that God sees us also.  He sees us healed now .  He sees us set free now .  And this is the way that God wants us to see ourselves: through His Word.  He wants us to see it done now .  Not tomorrow.  Not in the sweet by-and-by.  NOW! Faith in the now gives substance to the things that we hope for.  If we always see it as future, than it is still in the hope realm, because hope is not substance.  Let me show you what I mean.  The Bible declar...

Romans 14:10-13 (NKJV) But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 11 For it is written: "As I live, says the LORD, Every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God." 12 So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. 13 Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way. Many look at these verses and say, “What a scary day that is going to be, to stand before Christ and give an account for our lives.”  But we need to remember one thing: All of our sins are washed away because of the blood of Jesus!  You see, when you received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, His blood, and His work on the cross, made you the righteousness of God, in Him. So what does this mean?  In the Greek, this word judgment seat is talking about the bema seat, or the ...

John 20:11-17 (NKJV) But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. 13 Then they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him." 14 Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, "Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away." 16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him, "Rabboni!" (which is to say, Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, "Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; ...

Colossians 1:15-18 (NKJV) 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. When we look at Jesus, do you know Who we see?  We see the Father God!  Jesus is Almighty God in the flesh.  It is so hard for us as humans to see God, because He is a Spirit, but when Jesus put on flesh and became like us, we could see God.  Now we could understand Him. So what is God like?  He is everything that Jesus is like.  Jesus never made one person sick.  He only went about doing good and healing all that were opp...