A PEEK INSIDE
Encouragement for every
day of the year.
Here are a few devotionals to give you a taste of what’s inside.
Day 89
Hosea 11:8-9
Hosea’s wife was a prostitute. God kept telling Hosea to take his wife back into his marriage, even after she would sleep with other men. Hosea pursuing his prostitute wife is more grace than she ever deserved, and this is a perfect picture of God’s never-ending love for us. He chases us down in our filth. We don’t deserve to be God’s own, but he wants us anyway. He never gives up on us, even in the last minute of our lives, just like the murderer who hung next to Jesus on the cross. It’s too good to be true.
Day 113
John 3:1
People hated Jesus. He was not always the most popular guy. We shouldn’t expect to be the most popular person either. Some people will like us and others won’t. Our calling in life is not to please others everywhere that we go. It’s more than okay to love others while still disagreeing with their opinions, whether it be based on politics or religious ideas. We are courageous and bold. We can love but stick to the truths of the Bible. We must know who we are in Jesus and be confident of that.
Day 116
John 3:17
I once had an experience in Memphis, TN where God whispered to my heart and told me to give my only umbrella to a homeless man at a red light. It was raining hard, and I had preschool-aged children. I really didn’t want to give my umbrella away. I remember assuming that the homeless man would probably lose my umbrella and that I would also have to go buy a new one. This was a selfish thought but one based on previous experience with the homeless. Clearly the condition of my heart was not empathetic. However, I obeyed God by giving the man the umbrella and was very blessed weeks later when I saw that same man in the same place using my umbrella outside on a day when it was flooding. The truth is that I will never know what it’s like to live in the rain without shelter. God cared about that man. The recipient of my umbrella may have made some bad decisions in his life that put him on the street, or maybe he was a child of abuse with mental health problems. It’s not for me to decide if he was worthy of an umbrella. The heart of God ached when he saw one of his kids standing in the rain, and he wanted someone to provide a very small need for him.
Day 140
Psalm 16:4-6
Many of us allow the fear of the future to be crippling. This is why God commands us to stay in the day and not worry about the future. He knows, as our creator, that we are not capable of holding thoughts of the future inside our brain without holding fear and anxiety. The scriptural promise written above states that we have a beautiful inheritance in our future. We trust that the Lord holds our future in his hands no matter how we feel, no matter what the present circumstances are. Our Father oversees our lives. If he loves us, and if he holds us, then what do we have to fear? It becomes very clear that a way to fight anxiety is to only think about today without worrying about tomorrow according to Matthew 6:34. Fear vanishes if we practice this. Even death is not scary when we know the one who holds us for all eternity and prepares something better for us than what is in this earthly life.