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
Dec 31, 2022, 7:40 AM
Passage Read: Joshua 6-9
Meditation Verse: 7:7
Thought
So quickly Joshua goes from knowing the Lord had promised them this land and told them to go in (they crossed the Jordan in miraculous fashion!) to conviction that they had sinned against the Lord and He intended to destroy them for their greed. Someone among them had sinned against the Lord, and the Lord intended for the community to put that man to death, but He had not overthrown His stated purpose for Israel to give them the land.
Dec 30, 2022, 7:41 AM
Passage Read: Joshua 2-5
Meditation Verse: 2:10
Thought
It's amazing that the only thing they've heard, or the only thing they remember of all they've heard about Israel, is the beginning and end of their forty year journey to Canaan: the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of neighboring kings. They haven't heard or remembered all their failures that kept them wandering in the desert and killed the military men that came out of Egypt.
Dec 29, 2022, 7:08 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 32 - Joshua 1
Meditation Verses: Deuteronomy 34:10-12
Thought
There is no one in all the Old Testament who did the miraculous deeds that Moses did. No other prophet did as many or as mighty works as Moses. Yet, his deeds are all done by God; he didn't actually do anything but obey the Lord and do what He commanded. Elijah did a few miracles, Elisha did a few more. Isaiah did one or two? Jeremiah and Ezekiel did nothing. None of the minor prophets did miracles.
Dec 28, 2022, 7:10 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 28-31
Meditation Verse: 31:27
Thought
Moses knows how rebellious the Israelites have been, and he knows they will continue to be rebellious. If they have rebelled in his presence, how much more will they rebel in his absence. What a discouraging thing to say! What a discouraging thing to think! What a discouraging thing to know! It's like his whole life and mission is a failure. Sure, he got them to the promised land, but he had to wrestle with the Lord to do it--not because the Lord was wrong, but because He was right!
Dec 27, 2022, 7:11 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 24-27
Meditation Verses: 25:5-9
Thought
The wife of a man who dies leaving no son is to become his advocate, ensuring that his line does not die out. The man's brother is supposed to marry her and raise up a son to carry on his brother's line. If he won't, his sister-in-law is supposed to plead with him and enlist the aid of the elders to press him to do this. She has this obligation to her husband even after he is dead. She doesn't live for her own purposes, but for her husband's line.
Dec 26, 2022, 7:14 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 20-23
Meditation Verse: 23:7
Thought
The Lord said that He loved Jacob but hated Esau, such that he would destroy their land and nation. But He did not allow the Israelites to hate them, and in fact made provision for their descendants to be added to Israel from the third generation onward. They and the Egyptians could be included as Israel from the third generation, but Moabites and Ammonites were unwelcome for at least ten generations.
Dec 25, 2022, 7:15 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 16-19
Meditation Verse: 19:9
Thought
To love the Lord is to walk in His ways, which He has explained in this Law. John says the same thing in his first letter. To love God is to obey His commands, these commands about how to treat one another and how to purge sin from among ourselves. We cannot say we love God and at the same time ignore what He has said. Of course, unless society supports the consequences, we cannot carry out sentence as we wish, but we can treat all people the way God instructs us to treat them.
Dec 24, 2022, 7:16 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 12-15
Meditation Verses: 14:22-23
Thought
For agricultural communities, the tithe would be gathered annually, at the beginning of the harvest. How much food would that be? It could be a huge amount, depending on the size of the flocks and fields. But for us, we are usually paid every other week. What would it be like to take the tithe and use it to celebrate before the Lord each paycheck? If a whole church came together to celebrate their tithe twice a month, there would be too much food!
Dec 23, 2022, 7:18 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 8-11
Meditation Verses: 10:12-16
Thought
Throughout Scripture, there is only one right response to the mercy and undeserved kindness of the Lord: humble submission to His commands, which were given for the people's own good. God's commands are not evil, nor are they too hard for us, but they do require a change of heart, from selfish to caring of others. That's the hardest part. We want to follow our fleshly desires, to live for ourselves and our pleasures, even at the expense of others.
Dec 22, 2022, 7:19 AM
Passage Read: Deuteronomy 4-7
Meditation Verses: 5:28-29
Thought
Everything the people said was good, but the Lord knew what was really in their hearts. Forty days later they would be making new gods and worshiping them. What they said was good, but what they would become was not. They promised to obey the Lord through His messenger—they wanted someone else to do the scary work of knowing God and His desires, then come tell them.