Pastor Tom's Daily Devotional

Psalms 146:5-10 (NKJV) Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the Lord his God, 6 Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; Who keeps truth forever, 7 Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners. 8 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord raises those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. 9 The Lord watches over the strangers; He relieves the fatherless and widow; but the way of the wicked He turns upside down. 10 The Lord shall reign forever—Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord! Our God is a God of freedom.  He is a God of liberty.  Our Jesus came and preached liberty to the captives.  I do not know about you, but I was bound up, and then God came into my life and set me free.  He is a God that looks out for the fatherless and the widow.  He is a God who raises up those who are bowed down. As ...

Romans 8:38-39 (NLT) And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. God’s love is truly amazing.  We sometimes try to understand God’s love with our human mind, but we cannot.  His love is exceedingly and abundantly more than we can think or imagine.  That is why I believe that the Bible says that we walk by faith and not by sight. There is absolutely nothing that can separate us from His love. We, as humans, have a love that goes like this: “You do good to me and I will do good to you.  You help me and I will help you.”  But that is not how God’s love works.  His love i...

Romans 8:6-9 (NKJV) For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. A carnal mind is one that is always thinking of the things of the flesh.  “What am I going to wear?”  “What am I going to eat?”  “What am I going to do with this and that?”  A spiritual mind is one that remains fixed on the things of God.  It is thinking, “How can I please God?”  “What things can I do for the kingdom?”  “Who can I be a blessing to?” You see, to be carnally mined is to be sense-ruled.  To be spiritually minded is to be Spirit-led, and we know that the scripture says that as many as are led by...

Mark 11:25-26 (NKJV) And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. Forgiveness is a word that we do not always want to hear, yet we see from the Word of God that it is the key to answered prayer.  When we live in unforgiveness, it closes the blessings of God in our lives.  You see, Jesus said it so clearly, that if God was willing to forgive us of a debt that we could never pay back, a debt that is huge, then He expects us to be willing to forgive others also. I remember hearing a man of God talking about a vision he had.  He saw a pipe coming down from heaven, and from the top he could see water being pumped into the pipe at the force of a fire hydrant at full blast.  But then he saw that at the bottom of the pipe, the part where he was at, the water was a tr...

Romans 4:17-22 (NKJV) (As it is written, "I have made you a father of many nations") in the presence of Him whom he believed--God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; 18 who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, "So shall your descendants be." 19 And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb. 20 He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. 22 And therefore "it was accounted to him for righteousness." When God spoke to Abraham and told him that he would be a father of a multitude, Abraham did something.  You can find what he did in these verses.  We see that Abrah...

1 Corinthians 11:25 (NKJV) In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." When Jesus shed His blood on the cross of Calvary, it was for the remission of sin.  Now the word remission is so much greater than atonement.  In the atonement, sins were covered by the sacrifice of the bulls and goats, but in remission, our sins are not covered, but washed away!  God does not remember our sins once we ask Jesus into our hearts. It says in Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”  God does not want anything to hinder our fellowship with Him, and He does not want condemnation to hold us back in our lives, so He took the blood of Jesus and accepted it as the sacrifice, once and for all, for the sins of mankind. When we receive communion and we drink that little grape juice, rememb...

1 Corinthians 11:23-24 (NKJV) For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me." Our Jesus not only went to the cross for our sins, the Bible also tells us that other parts of His suffering were for us.  Look with me at Isaiah 53:4-5 (YLT): “Surely our sicknesses he hath borne, and our pains--he hath carried them, and we--we have esteemed him plagued, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 And he is pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace is on him, and by his bruise there is healing to us.” You see, every stripe that came on Jesus’ body was for our healing.  When they put the crown of thorns on His head, we were then able to receive peace in our minds.  God does not do things just for...

1 Corinthians 11:27-30 (NKJV) Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. Many of us receive communion once a month, kind of like a tradition.  But looking at these Scriptures that follow the verses that we use for communion, we can see that there is more to it than just receiving a little bread and grape juice. Here it says, “For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.”  So we see that if we do not understand what Jesus did on the cross for us, we can ...

Matthew 28:18-19 (NKJV) And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:4-5 (NKJV) And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me; 5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." Many people tell us that the last words that Jesus spoke to His followers before His ascension was to “Go,” but by looking at these two verses, He told them to wait, and then go.  You see, Jesus knew how important it was for His followers not to go in their own strength, but to go in the power of the Holy Spirit.  He wanted them filled with His Spirit, and then to go int...