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
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 19, 2024, 8:58 AM
Passage Read: Ephesians 5-6
Meditation Verses: 5:27-30
Thought
Jesus loves the Church so much that He is always working at making her as beautiful to Himself as possible! He began with the sacrifice that paid for her sin, cleansing her from the stain of former sin and gifting her everything she needed for life and godliness. But He also continues in teaching and training her so that she becomes all-glorious on the day He receives her to Himself at the end of this age.
Oct 18, 2024, 9:00 AM
Passage Read: Ephesians 3-4
Meditation Verses: 4:13-15
Thought
Jesus Christ Himself is the goal and the likeness into which we all should be growing. And there is only one Jesus, so there cannot be multiple likenesses to which men attain. Yet Paul makes clear here that there are winds of doctrine and deceitful men who use trickery and deceitful scheming to lead believers astray, who confuse the picture.
Oct 17, 2024, 9:01 AM
Passage Read: Ephesians 1-2
Meditation Verses: 2:1-3
Thought
We all formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air who is still working in those who disobey the Lord. We all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging in the desires of our flesh and mind, being by nature objects of wrath. But when God redeemed us through Christ, we broke from these.
Sep 29, 2023, 3:29 PM
Passage Read: Ephesians 5-6
Meditation Verses: 5:5-7
Thought
No immoral, impure or greedy person has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Interesting that he puts it that way: There is the kingdom of Christ, which would be His millennial reign, and the Kingdom of God, which would be eternity, after Jesus hands everything over to the Father, who creates a new heavens and earth. No immoral, impure or greedy person will have any inheritance in either of those kingdoms, though some immoral, impure or greedy people will "enjoy" Jesus' kingdom, though not really; they'll endure it only until they can rebel at the end of it.
Sep 28, 2023, 3:31 PM
Passage Read: Ephesians 3-4
Meditation Verses: 4:17-19
Thought
As a believer, I'm no longer to live as the Gentiles do, as lost people do. They do not know God and have no clue as to how He ways us to live, because they have hardened their hearts, and so they are clueless about Him. Having hardened their hearts against the truth, they have lost sensitivity to their conscience and to their God-given nature, and replaced that sensitivity with sensuality, seeking feeling from their flash, which leads to indulging all kinds of immorality and impurity, things that God opposes.
Sep 27, 2023, 3:32 PM
Passage Read: Ephesians 1-2
Meditation Verses: 1:18-20
Thought
Paul prays that the eyes of the Ephesians' hearts may be enlightened so that they can see and understand three things: the hope to which God called them, the riches of God's glorious inheritance in the saints, and God's incomparably great power for those who believe, a power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him at His right hand. I too need help, that the eyes of my heart may be enlightened so that I can understand and know the hope to which I've been called.
Sep 30, 2022, 2:04 PM
Passage Read: Ephesians 5-6
Meditation Verse: 5:11
Thought
As Christians, we are called not merely to step out and away from the fruitless deeds of darkness, but we're also to reprove them! We're not just to stop doing them, but to point out that they are unhealthy and unrighteous and hated by God. No wonder Christians get in trouble and become a target of attack by all those that love evil!