Pastor Tom's Daily Devotional

Romans 10:9-10 (NKJV) That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. What an amazing promise from the Word of God that God, our Father, wants each and every person to be saved.  He made this great plan of salvation within the reach of every person.  He did not make it just for the high and mighty.  He made it for you and me! I think of a man named Martin Luther.  He tried to live a holy life for God, and even became a monk, but He found out that no one can live holy enough to reach God’s standards.  Then he saw in the Bible that, “The just shall live by faith.”  He received the revelation that salvation was a gift from God, accepted by faith in Jesus Christ, and not on our own merits.  Once he saw this, it was like a ten-ton weight was ta...

Deuteronomy 28:13 (NKJV) And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. When our Heavenly Father states that He wants us to be the head and not the tail, above only and not beneath, I believe Him.  How about you?  These things from the Word of God cannot be real to us until we believe them and say them about ourselves. In Romans 10:9-10, it shows us how to be saved, and this works the same with everything in our lives.  We need to confess the Word and believe it for it to manifest in our lives.  Too many people just want it to fall on them like ripe cherries off of a tree, but anything good in life must be worked on. I am always amazed how God did not make the nuts just fall for the squirrels, and how the ants store up for winter so they will have plenty to survive.  In fact, a...

Romans 6:23 (NKJV) For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Sin has brought death into our world.  In this verse, it says that the wages of sin, is death.  Well, one thing I can tell you is that we were all “good sinners” before we knew Christ, if you know what I mean.  But once we accepted Jesus into our lives, He gave us the power to overcome sin. Sin does not have to gain the victory in our lives, because God's gift is so much greater than the devil’s power.  When we accept God's gift of grace, it brings justification into our lives, and justification means that God, my loving Father, sees me just as if I have never sinned. Can you imagine that today?  You are totally free from all guilt and condemnation.  Never do I have to go through a day looking over my shoulder thinking that God is going to get me for that.  As the old song goes, "What can wash me white as snow?  ...

Psalm 121:1-8 (NKJV) I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help? 2 My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. 4 Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. 8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore. What an amazing Psalm of protection!  Our God is our help; He is our protector.  Our God never sleeps, and in this mixed up world, I am so grateful for His protection.  It seems like every day that we open the paper or read the news, there is some sort of disaster in our world.  It could be a natural disaster like a hurricane, or a record storm of some sort, or it cou...

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (MSG) Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. 27 Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, 28 chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? 29 That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. 30 Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. 31 That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God." Today, as we wrap up this mini-series on “Why not us,” I want us to look at how the Message Bible brings these verses out.  God looked down from heaven, and He chose us in spite of us.  Th...

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (NIV) Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." I love the way this verse speaks of us. Not many of us had everything going for us, but God still chose us for this great salvation!  As we continue to look at different people in the Word of God that may have had it, then lost it, and then got it back, I think of Joseph....

1 Corinthians 1:27 (AMP) [No] for God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame. The next person that I want us to look at is Rehab.  Her story is found in Joshua 2.  You see, the Bible does not give the occupation of every person, but it does tell us hers.  Rehab was a prostitute, yet God sent the spies to her house, and I believe that the reason He did is because He saw that she had a pure heart; a heart of faith.  Here is what the Bible says about her: Joshua 2:1, “Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove. He instructed them, ‘Scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho.’ So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night.” Then we see in Hebrews that she is in the “Hall of Faith” with other great men and women of ...

1 Corinthians 1:27 (NLT) Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. We looked at King David yesterday.  Even though his father rejected him, God did not, and when it was time for Him to come to the next step, he was ready.  We see this in the great story of David and Goliath.  When David came to where the children of Israel were fighting the Philistines, he was immediately put down by his older brother: 1 Samuel 17:28-30 Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab's anger was aroused against David, and he said, "Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle." 29 And David said, "What have I done now? Is there not a cause?" 30 Then he turned from him t...

1 Corinthians 1:27 (NKJV) But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty. When you look through the stories of the Bible, one thing stands out: God does not do things like the world does.  He operates the way He wants to, and nobody is going to tell Him differently.  We see this so clearly in the type of people that He uses.  He does not go for the high and mighty.  He goes for the low and humble, and makes them into who He wants them to be.  For the next few days, I want us to look at different people in the Bible, and see how God chose them and used them. King David:  David was a young man that watched his father’s sheep.  One day when the prophet Samuel came to anoint one of his sons to be the next king of Israel, his father never even called him to come in to meet this great man of God.  Yet after Samue...