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
Jul 31, 2025, 7:00 AM
Passage Read: Zechariah 11-14
Meditation Verses: 11:7-9
Thought
Zechariah is commanded to shepherd a flock marked for slaughter. He is supposed to take care of them, fatten them up and prepare them for destruction. He fires three shepherds in one month; the flock hates him and he grows weary of them. Then he quits. Is he then a worthless shepherd, according to the definition that follows? Does he not care for the lost, seek the young, heal the injured and feed the healthy?
Jul 30, 2025, 7:10 AM
Passage Read: Zechariah 7-10
Meditation Verses: 10:2-3
Thought
There is so much confusion in Israel because of the multitude of their idols and the conflicting voices of their prophets. The diviners speak their own visions and they are false, just made up. They comfort the people, but it is a false comfort, keeping them from repentance and truth. So the people wander in confusion and are easily led astray and oppressed by everyone who comes along. There is no recognition or discernment of truth, there is only one new leader after another, who tells everyone to chase this way or that.
Jul 29, 2025, 6:43 AM
Passage Read: Zechariah 3-6
Meditation Verses: 5:3-4
Thought
Of all the sins to single out, why thievery and false swearing? Both will be banished, with their homes destroyed. God hates theft, whatever form it takes, and God hates those who swear falsely by His name, they much is clear. But there are also do many other things God hates. Are these two just most common? Are they the easiest for men to do? Those who do that things, whatever form it takes, will have their home destroyed and be driven from the land.
Jul 28, 2025, 7:16 AM
Passage Read: Haggai 1 - Zechariah 2
Meditation Verses: Haggai 1:12-14
Thought
The Lord does not say "I am with you" out of the blue or just because He chooses to adopt the people, but He says this in response to their obedience. He sends Haggai to tell them to start working on the temple, and they decide to obey the message and start the work. At that point, God says, "I am with you." And the Lord stirred up the people and they began to work. The Lord is not with us because He chooses us, but because we choose to obey Him.
Jul 27, 2025, 7:05 AM
Passage Read: Habakkuk 3 - Zephaniah 3
Meditation Verses: Zephaniah 3:11-13
Thought
The proud and haughty are the true problem. Those who think much of themselves and their own ideas, they are the ones who think they know better than the Lord and act in ways contrary to His teaching. They cannot bow the knee to the Lord, that's weakness and they despise weakness in themselves and others. They can't even accidentally step into the ways of the Lord, for that makes them look like followers, not leaders.
Jul 26, 2025, 8:13 AM
Passage Read: Nahum 2 - Habakkuk 2
Meditation Verses: Habakkuk 1:2-3
Thought
What is God's response to our cry for justice? What is God's response to our cry against injustice and our pleas for Him to fix things? It is to do what we and our leaders should have done all along: It is to judge and condemn and destroy from the land those who do wrong. Habakkuk is looking on his own people and their wickedness, their perversion of justice, their violence and conflict. So the Lord promises to raise up the Babylonians, to execute God's justice and vengeance on the wicked of His own people.
Jul 25, 2025, 7:27 AM
Passage Read: Micah 5 - Nahum 1
Meditation Verses: Micah 7:9-10
Thought
Jesus quotes from this passage, just a few verses earlier, to describe the days in which His apostles will preach the Gospel of the kingdom. God is speaking about Israel and the judgment coming her way, but He is also speaking about our latter days. The godly have perished from the land, children will dishonor parents and rise up against them. Even a man's own wife cannot be trusted.
Jul 24, 2025, 7:19 AM
Passage Read: Micah 1-4
Meditation Verses: 3:1-4
Thought
God promises a time when these rulers who have abused His people, who think they're still in good with God, though they do everything backwards, calling evil good and good evil, there will come a time when they have the audacity to cry out to God because of overwhelming trouble and God will not answer them. It is amazing to me that they will even bother to cry out to God, but it will likely be because they have cried out to all their false gods and received no deliverance, so they break down and cry out to the God who originally brought them out of Egypt, who is supposed to be Israel's God.
Jul 23, 2025, 7:23 AM
Passage Read: Jonah 1-4
Meditation Verse: 4:2
Thought
Jonah at first refused to obey the Lord, fleeing in the opposite direction, but God wouldn't let him off. Whether in wrath to destroy or just pressure to bring Jonah to repentance, God sent a mighty wind against the ship, so that all despaired of life. In the moment, Jonah was happy to sacrifice himself for the sake of the sailors, and the circumstances ended up a witness and testimony to them of the truth of the Lord!
Jul 22, 2025, 7:04 AM
Passage Read: Amos 7 - Obadiah 1
Meditation Verses: Amos 9:8-12
Thought
This is the promise of the coming kingdom. God will bring Israel to judgment. He will destroy Israel, but not all of it. He will destroy the sinners from within it. He will shake it and cast out the rebellious, the unrepentant, but He will save the faithful remnant. He will not just save them, but exalt them and give them to possess all the nations that bear His name! Not only is God able to sort the faithful from the rebellious, but He is able to multiple and bless the faithful, though perhaps few in number, to possess and rule over all the nations!