Pastor Tom's Daily Devotional

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NKJV) 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Here, we have three verses that have so much in them.  Let us take one each day for the next three days.  Verse 16 says, “Rejoice always.” Well, I do not know about you, but if you are living on planet earth and you are still breathing, to do this verse is not always easy.  To rejoice when things are not going our way, or when things are just going badly, is difficult.  Yet this verse tell us to do this, and one thing I have learned over the years is that if God gives us a word in the Bible to do, then He will give us the strength and power to do it. How do we rejoice always?  Well, I believe that we need to see the best in what is going on around us.  We need to be positive, and to know that even if the devil is bringing something against us, our Heavenly Father will get ...

Psalms 91:1 (NKJV) He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. There is no place like the secret place!  It is a place in Him; a place of His rest and His assurance.  It seems like we can never get there, but in this verse, it states that we can.  We can make a decision to get away from the rush of life, and dwell in His presence. I know that we do not always have those big God moments, but I have found that as I make decisions to get away and get with Him, those moments give me the strength to get through the hardest of times. When I talk about getting away, some might think that means I have to fast for 40 days, or go and live in a cave like a hermit.  No, sometimes that secret place can be on a pillow, or a walk, or even a drive.  Do not put restrictions on where God, your Father, can meet with you.  Remember, He is everywhere! This week, or even today when you lay down, talk to Him....

Nehemiah 8:10 (NKJV) Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength. The joy of our Father is our strength.  God wants us to be strong in Him.  True strength is not just muscle, or outward ability, but it is strength within us.  When we look at Samson, he had great strength on the outside, but inwardly he was very weak. As we look to the Word of God, we see that we can do all things through Christ Who strengthens us.  I want my life to be in His strength. Now, this is not to say that taking care of our physical man is not important; it is!  But what we do on the inside, what we do with our character, our true lives, is what is going to last.  So today, make a decision to put together a plan of action for what you can do every day to strengthen your inner man.  It might be to start each day with a devotional like this.  It might be to read a portion of the Bible every day.  It might be to have a quiet time with you...

John 15:15 (NKJV) No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. We used to sing a song that said, “I am a friend of God.”  A person who invited a friend to one of our services asked her friend how she liked the service.  She responded by saying that she had a problem with that song.  She did not think we could be friends with God. Now to me, that is what religion has done to us.  It says that we are so unworthy, and that there is no way that a holy God could be a friend with “worms” like us.  What I see is people who believe their feelings over what God has stated as fact in the Word. I can say over and over that I do not believe in gravity because I do not feel like it is true, but if I jump off a cliff I will see its effect.  The same way we believe in gravity and its effects on us, we believe that we...

Lamentations 3:22-23 (NKJV) Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. 23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Today is a new day!  God, our Heavenly Father, has given us this day to be victorious through His Son, Jesus Christ.  We can look back at our yesterdays and say, “I made so many mistakes,” but this verse tells us that His mercies start new in the morning! So let your mistakes of yesterday be gone, and start a fresh new day!  God has given you this new day, so receive it as a gift from Him.  He wants the best for you, because He loves you and only has your best in mind. In this life, we are going to make mistakes.  We all do!  God, your Father, knows that.  That is the reason that He is giving you a fresh start each day.  Too many people hold onto the hang-ups of their yesterdays, and it keeps them in bondage today.  But that is not how God wants us to live....

1 Peter 5:7 (NKJV) Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7 (AMP) Casting the whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully. When we look at this verse from these two different translations, we get a bigger view of what God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to do with our anxieties, worries, cares, and concerns.  Here it is in one big sentence: Give them all to Him! Why is that?  Because He has much bigger shoulders than all of us put together.  Our bodies and minds were not made for the stress and anxieties of this world, and the Bible says that we are not of this world.  So let us do what the Word says: Cast all of our cares on Him, for He cares for us. What an amazing Father we have, Who loves us so much that He wants to take all of this, cast it away from us, and take care of it for us....