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 19, 2026, 8:50 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 12 - Joel 1
Meditation Verse: Hosea 12:6
Thought
God's call to His people is to return to Him, to observe kindness and justice, and to wait for Him continually. It is not hard, but it is difficult. It is not hard to return to God, but to learn His ways and do them takes time and effort that we would rather spend elsewhere. To practice kindness isn't hard, but it means we can't cheat or deceive or take advantage of others, and we have to make people more important than making money.
Jul 18, 2026, 10:55 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 8-11
Meditation Verse: 11:12
Thought
God just determined not to execute His fierce anger against Ephraim, because He is God and not man. He can overlook sin and forgive. He is not ruled by His passions; He is bigger than those who continually offend Him. He can take the hit. Instead, He promises to roar like a lion, and at His roar, His sons will come trembling from the west and Egypt and Assyria, trembling because He is almighty, because He has roared.
Jul 17, 2026, 7:50 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 4-7
Meditation Verses: 5:11-15
Thought
Trusting in men and following their commands rather than the Lord's is a dangerous thing. It's bad not just because men know little and are more often slaves to their flesh than to righteousness, but more because God is offended that we would trust our own wisdom over His.
Jul 16, 2026, 8:04 AM
Passage Read: Daniel 12 - Hosea 3
Meditation Verses: Hosea 2:11-15
Thought
God promises to destroy all the resources of His adulterous wife, Israel. He promises to take away all her celebrations, all her treasures and cause all her lovers to turn against her. He will then drive her out into the wilderness, where He will speak kindly to her.
Jul 19, 2025, 11:06 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 12 - Joel 1
Meditation Verse: Hosea 14:4
Thought
God called Ephraim to repent and return to Him, and promised to love him freely and heal his waywardness, because His anger had turned away. Those promises are for the repentant, not for everyone. The people of Ephraim who repent and return to the Lord will be healed of waywardness and loved freely because the Lord's anger was already vanquished. But though His anger is gone, His promises are only for those who return to Him in humility and with a commitment to change and learn and live by His ways.
Jul 18, 2025, 8:40 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 8-11
Meditation Verse: 8:14
Thought
There are at least two things revealed in these chapters that have Israel and Judah boldness to ignore the Lord's commands: wealth and security. As Ephraim prospered, they built more idols and palaces. Judah built fortified cities for itself. They thought they had everything they needed, and even the Lord couldn't take it from them. They thought they could withstand any enemy, even the Lord couldn't breach their fortresses.
Jul 17, 2025, 8:38 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 4-7
Meditation Verses: 6:4-6
Thought
Ephraim and Judah have been unfaithful to the Lord. They love wealth and pleasure, they practice prostitution, both physical and spiritual (the former begets the latter). They claim to love the Lord, but refuse to walk in His ways. They will not repent, so God has sent prophet after prophet to cut them in pieces and kill them with words. He has judged them time and again. He did this because He desires mercy from His people and acknowledgment of God from them, not offerings and sacrifices.
Jul 16, 2025, 8:09 AM
Passage Read: Daniel 12 - Hosea 3
Meditation Verses: Hosea 2:13-15
Thought
How can the Lord do this? How can He punish and rebuke His people, then turn and allure them, speak tenderly to them and restore to them all His many gifts? He was jealous and angry and let her go her evil way. Then walled her in, trapped her, until she couldn't reach her former lovers, and only then did she think to return to Him, when there was nowhere else to go. He's not even her first choice!
Jul 9, 2024, 2:11 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 12 - Joel 1
Meditation Verses: Hosea 14:1-4
Thought
This is what repentance looks like: Turning away from our own wisdom and ways, and coming back to the Lord; coming to the Lord and asking for cleansing from sin and that He would receive us, so that we could bring to Him what He deserves, the fruit of our lips, not just words but actions consistent with what we say; confessing that it is the Lord alone that saves, that no other power that we once turned to can deliver us or show mercy to us like the Lord can.
Jul 8, 2024, 2:13 AM
Passage Read: Hosea 8-11
Meditation Verses: 11:1-5
Thought
This hits home. I am not the first father to experience this, nor will I be the last. Even God has endured the rejection of His sons. When they were young, He loved them and called them out of Egypt, out of the world. He taught them to walk, trained them, provided for them, carried them in His arms, healed them, but they didn't know it, they forgot it, it didn't register with them.