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
Sep 22, 2024, 7:33 AM
Passage Read: Romans 4-5
Meditation Verse: 5:12
Thought
Through Adam, sin entered into the world and brought death with it. Death spread to all men because all men also sinned, even without any specific Law having been given. All men weren't condemned in Adam's sin, but through the sin that entered into the world through him. Sin crouches at every man's door, seeking to possess him, and sadly every man gives into it, such that God can say that every inclination of our hearts is only evil from childhood.
Sep 21, 2024, 7:35 AM
Passage Read: Romans 2-3
Meditation Verse: 2:1
Thought
It is so interesting to read that those who pass judgment on others are guilty of doing the very same things. Like there's a heightened sensitivity to the things we feel guilty about doing, and perhaps we want to identify others who are worse than us so that we can feel better about ourselves. But that's never the solution to sin, to find someone worse so that we don't have to deal with our same sin. The solution is to identify our sin so that we can root it out. And here is a way to identify my sin: In what areas am I inclined to judge others? Those areas point to my sin, according to Paul here.
Sep 20, 2024, 7:36 AM
Passage Read: Acts 28 - Romans 1
Meditation Verses: Romans 1:28-32
Thought
Turning away from God results in all kinds of depravity, not just sexual immorality and perversion, but all kinds of unrighteousness and wickedness and greed and murder and strife and gossip and arrogance and rebellion against parents and all kinds of unkindness. God stands for every form of righteousness and goodness, and when men decide they no longer need to listen to Him, they open themselves up to every form of evil.
Sep 19, 2024, 8:45 AM
Passage Read: Acts 26-27
Meditation Verses: 26:20,23
Thought
Paul proclaims Jesus as the Christ, who was foretold to have to suffer and rise from the dead, so that forgiveness of sins could be given to anyone who turns from their own ways to God, displaying their faith and repentance by deeds that line up with repentance. Faith in Christ should result in repentance and a changed life that shows faith and submission to God. God being God, we have no business deciding how we'll conduct ourselves, but must learn from Him and do as He does.
Sep 18, 2024, 8:46 AM
Passage Read: Acts 24-25
Meditation Verse: 25:11
Thought
Paul had been in prison two years, and he was no closer to Rome and no closer to being set free. Whatever means God intended to use to bring him to Rome to testify had not materialized. For two years he had had conversations with Felix, and now Felix was gone and Paul was still a prisoner. It became clear to Paul that he would need to appeal to Caesar, especially when offered the chance to return to Jerusalem. That was going backwards not forward.
Sep 17, 2024, 8:48 AM
Passage Read: Acts 22-23
Meditation Verse: 23:16
Thought
God had already promised to Paul that he would testify for Christ in Rome. Though Paul was willing to die for Christ in Jerusalem, the Lord had other plans, such that He had Paul's nephew in the right place at the right time, to hear the plot against him and report it to Paul and the soldiers guarding him.
Sep 16, 2024, 8:49 AM
Passage Read: Acts 20-21
Meditation Verses: 21:11-14
Thought
Paul and those with him, representatives from each of the churches that gave a gift for the Jews in Jerusalem, kept hearing that Jerusalem would end badly for Paul. So in several of the places where they stopped, the believers begged him not to go, as if prompted by the Holy Spirit to do so. But Paul's understanding and commitment was that he should go and needed to go. No matter what was said or who begged him, he wouldn't change course. Had he given his word to deliver the gift personally?
Sep 15, 2024, 8:52 AM
Passage Read: Acts 18-19
Meditation Verse: 19:6
Thought
Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit, though Luke didn't record him receiving the Spirit like this, with a noteworthy response. Yet Paul was laying hands on others and the Spirit was coming on them. Paul went on to write much of the New Testament, which has become the standard of Christian truth and teaching. Yet nowadays there are two prominent groups that seem to lay aside Paul's teachings to the greatest degree: Those that are in the process abandoning all of Scripture and creating a new god after their own likeness, and those who claim and appear to have the Holy Spirit in dramatic form.
Sep 14, 2024, 8:54 AM
Passage Read: Acts 16-17
Meditation Verses: 17:24-27
Thought
Paul is not afraid to speak the truth, even if it's offensive to people. He is not offering an alternative religion that people can choose to believe or not, but telling them the truth about the universe, that it is God's creation, and He alone is God and alone worthy of worship. He gently but definitively rebukes all their ideas about God, even though it could enrage them.
Sep 13, 2024, 8:56 AM
Passage Read: Acts 14-15
Meditation Verse: 14:22
Thought
Paul and Barnabas have suffered tribulation in their efforts to take the Gospel to the nations of the Roman empire, but what tribulations do the people who remain at home need to go through? There is perhaps hatred of them by the Jews who had rejected Jesus as Messiah, that may have periodically boiled over into persecution. But if they just sit around and mind their own business, working diligently to provide their own needs, who will care about them, what tribulation will come upon them?