Personal Devotions
Notes from Mark's personal Bible reading and meditation
With a goal to apply one truth from each day's reading to my life that day
Nov 4, 2025, 8:23 AM
Passage Read: 1 Thessalonians 3-4
Meditation Verses: 4:3-8
Thought
Sexual immorality is one of the biggest temptations and problems facing believers. There are others, but this one perhaps more than any other gets spoken against the most. It was common then, it is common now. God saved us to live holy lives, meaning especially lives free from sexual immorality in any and all of its forms, but somehow believers today don't consider many of their immoral ways to be wrong!
Nov 3, 2025, 1:19 PM
Passage Read: 1 Thessalonians 1-2 Meditation Verses: 2:2-6
Thought
Paul is not preaching to make converts, but to announce what God has done and leave the message and the Spirit to do their work. So he feels no compulsion to make his message pleasing to men, but only a compulsion to make his message and his ways pleasing to God. That's also what gives him courage to speak the message even after having been abused in previous cities; opposition doesn't silence him.
Nov 2, 2025, 6:54 AM
Passage Read: Colossians 3-4 Meditation Verses: 4:12-13
Thought
Epaphras is like Paul also a prisoner, according to the letter to Philemon, which should be a companion letter to this one. Yet Epaphras is not silenced or hindered in ministry or in love for his people. In prison, he has more time to pray, and Paul testifies that Epaphras is working hard for them even while in chains!
Nov 1, 2025, 8:44 AM
Passage Read: Colossians 1-2
Meditation Verses: 2:1-3
Thought
Both near the end of Chapter 1 and here Paul makes mention of his sufferings for the churches, including the Colossians, whom he hasn't even met. It is deliberate, as he says clearly here. He wants them to know how much he is struggling for them, so that they would "be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they would have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
Oct 31, 2025, 3:33 PM
Passage Read: Philippians 3-4
Meditation Verses: 3:10-12
Thought
Paul knows that salvation is by faith alone. He just said he considered all those things that made him the ideal Jew, righteous by his own pedigree and efforts, rubbish in order to gain Christ and obtain from Him the righteousness gifted by God. Yet here, just a few verses later, he almost sounds like he hasn't yet obtained salvation and must still pursue it.
Oct 30, 2025, 9:37 AM
Passage Read: Philippians 1-2
Meditation Verses: 2:20-21
Thought
Paul praises Timothy as a higher example of what he just called the Philippians to do and be. He called them to a humility that considers others better and that looks out for the interests of others as well as for their own. That's already a tough but amazing challenge. But then he calls them to pattern their humility after Christ's, who went further, who gave up all claim to Himself and submitted Himself to the Father as a slave, a servant without rights over Himself.
Oct 29, 2025, 6:48 AM
Passage Read: Ephesians 5-6
Meditation Verses: 5:5-7
Thought
Immorality, impurity, greed, anyone who practices these things in any of their forms, has no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God. They will not be saved. So Paul has simple and clear instructions: Avoid all these things, be as far from them as possible, so that there's not even a hint of them among the believers!
Oct 28, 2025, 7:46 AM
Passage Read: Ephesians 3-4
Meditation Verses: 4:24-27
Thought
The new self is created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. For me to put it on means that I must no longer conceal any truth, but walk in honesty and genuineness, especially with other believers because we are members of one body. Paul follows that up with this instruction not to sin in my anger.
Oct 27, 2025, 6:41 AM
Passage Read: Ephesians 1-2
Meditation Verses: 1:18-20
Thought
Paul's prayer is always instructive. His desire for these believers and therefore me and every other believer he might know of is that we know the hope to which we have been called, the riches of God's glorious inheritance in us saints, and His incredible power for us who believe. He goes on about the power, that it is the same power that brought Jesus back from the dead and raised Him to the highest place at God's right hand!
Oct 26, 2025, 8:15 AM
Passage Read: Galatians 5-6
Meditation Verses: 6:13-15
Thought
These people who think a man must be circumcised in order to be saved don't understand what they're talking about! They are picking and choosing what commands of the Old Testament they should obey, instead of recognizing that the Law is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you obey all of it or else you're condemned.