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
Jan 28, 2025, 6:23 PM
Passage Read: Judges 18-21
Meditation Verse: 19:25
Thought
There is so much carnage in these last chapters of Judges, not just war, but rape and idolatry. It's like Israel has learned nothing. How far they have fallen! These are not the times or the practices to build a theology on.
Jan 27, 2025, 7:51 PM
Passage Read: Judges 14-17
Meditation Verses: 16:30-31
Thought
What was God thinking when He chose Samson as judge? Was Israel so clueless at this point that Samson was the best He could find? God uses him and blesses him with great strength, but he is no paragon of virtue.
Jan 26, 2025, 7:53 PM
Passage Read: Judges 10-13
Meditation Verse: 10:16
Thought
The Israelites had sinned against the Lord again, abandoning Him to worship the idols of the nations around them. So the Lord allowed the Ammonites and Philistines to oppress them eighteen years!
Jan 25, 2025, 10:46 AM
Passage Read: Judges 6-9
Meditation Verse: 9:57
Thought
The Lord hears the curses we proclaim against others, especially if they have done evil in God's sight. Abimelech killed his brothers and so Gideon's line was almost completely wiped out.
Jan 24, 2025, 10:47 AM
Passage Read: Judges 2-5
Meditation Verses: 2:12-15
Thought
How could a generation arise that didn't know the Lord? Because they dwelt among people who worshiped other gods, and those gods didn't demand obedience, but only gifts, and allowed and encouraged fleshly desires be satisfied in worship of them.
Jan 23, 2025, 10:48 AM
Passage Read: Joshua 22 - Judges 1
Meditation Verse: Judges 1:33
Thought
Each tribe had their challenges. Some pockets of Canaanites and Amorites were too strong and too determined to remain alive and in the land! So the tribes compromised and lived among them, until they became strong enough, then they put them to forced labor.
Jan 22, 2024, 7:54 AM
Passage Read: Judges 18-21
Meditation Verses: 19:29-30
Thought
There are so many problems with this story that no one in it seems aware of; it perfectly illustrates the moral lostness of the nation at this time. The Levite apparently had no normal wife, so he buys a slave to make her his concubine. She plays the harlot against him, which means she committed adultery, then flees back to her home in Bethlehem. Instead of seeking her death and the death of whomever she sinned with, in accordance with the law, he eventually goes to her home and tries to win her back. Noble, forgiving.
Jan 21, 2024, 7:56 AM
Passage Read: Judges 14-17
Meditation Verse: 14:4
Thought
Samson is no paragon of virtue, yet he is chosen by God to plague the Philistines, who rule over His people. He is no model of godliness. Instead, he is ruled by his passions. What were his parents thinking, to raise him to be so unruly? He was supposed to be a Nazirite, set apart to the Lord, but the only part he seemed to have was the hair and avoiding wine and grapes. There was nothing else about him that would mark him as dedicated to God.
Jan 19, 2024, 7:57 AM
Passage Read: Judges 10-13
Meditation Verses: 11:1-2
Thought
Jephthah was the son of Gilead by a prostitute, so Gilead was not a faithful believer in God, at least in his youth. He apparently married after that and had other sons by his wife. Those sons drove Jephthah out of his father's land when they grew up, as if it was Jephthah's fault his mother was a prostitute. His father had taken him in, accepted responsibility for raising him, and likely being the firstborn, he stood to inherit the double portion, so there may have been jealousy over that in the mix.
Jan 18, 2024, 7:58 AM
Passage Read: Judges 6-9
Meditation Verse: 6:13
Thought
Gideon doesn't seem aware of the reasons for God abandoning the people to the power of Midian. He speaks as if God just decided one day to give them up and ignore them. But a prophet was just sent to the people to call out their sin. Does Gideon not realize that their worship of Baal and the Ashtoreth is an affront to God? God didn't give them up to the Midianites for no reason, but it was because they had turned to idols and away from Him. Gideon obviously knew about God, but he didn't seem to understand that worshiping idols and worshiping God was detestable to God.