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
Aug 17, 2023, 4:38 PM
Passage Read: John 21 - Acts 1
Meditation Verses: Acts 1:6-8
Thought
His disciples want to know when He will restore the kingdom of Israel, but Jesus tells them they're not going to know the plan of the Father. Their responsibility and duty will be to witness for Christ. Their mission wasn't to just wait for Him to set up His kingdom, but to tell others who He is and that He is coming again to restore the kingdom. As much as I might think to the contrary, I don't need to know the when in order to tell people that it will happen.
Aug 16, 2023, 2:11 PM
Passage Read: John 19-20
Meditation Verses: 20:28-29
Thought
Believing in Jesus means recognizing Him as Lord and God. His resurrection doesn't merely mean that our sins are paid for, but that Jesus has authority over life and death, that He is greater than any human being, that He is indeed God, and therefore also Lord of every man and all creation. He has all power and all authority. If He can conquer death, then He has power we cannot fathom, and authority to match. He is Lord and God.
Aug 15, 2023, 2:13 PM
Passage Read: John 17-18
Meditation Verses: 17:22-23
Thought
Jesus' prayer for His disciples and all of us who believe in Him through them is for our unity, that we would be completely united with each other and more importantly with Christ. The goal He has in mind is that we all know Him and His Father well, and that be what unites us. It is not supposed to be that we all claim to believe in the same God, but that our understanding of God brings us together as one.
Aug 14, 2023, 2:15 PM
Passage Read: John 15-16
Meditation Verse: 15:6
Thought
It's either remain in Jesus or perish. There is no other option. To remain in Jesus requires obedience to His commands and holding fast to them. His number one command is to love other believers as Jesus loved His disciples. He's speaking specifically to the Eleven, and He loved them by teaching them the truth about Himself and His Father before dying for them. He modeled compete obedience to His Father, which is love for God and results in love for people.
Aug 13, 2023, 2:17 PM
Passage Read: John 13-14
Meditation Verse: 14:31
Thought
The world must learn that Jesus does exactly what the Father commands. Except the lesson the world took away was that Jesus was a nobody. He was easy to capture, condemn and kill. And then they were done with Him. They didn't understand that He was doing everything His Father desired. They will eventually understand those things, especially when Jesus returns to reign in power. But the Lord God is teaching His lessons even if no one understands, even if no one will understand until He comes in power.
Aug 12, 2023, 2:18 PM
Passage Read: John 11-12
Meditation Verses: 12:49-50
Thought
The Father's command leads to eternal life, so Jesus faithfully repeated what the Father told Him to say. He didn't change it or add His spin to it, knowing that to do so could distort its meaning and sap it of power. The words of Jesus are deliberately spoken, just as are all the words of Scripture, carefully repeated and recorded from the Father. To change them is to distort the meaning and change the message and threaten the power they contain, which is disastrous for those who hear it.
Aug 11, 2023, 2:19 PM
Passage Read: John 9-10
Meditation Verses: 10:25-26
Thought
Jesus' miracles were enough to convince anyone to believe that He was the Son of God and the Messiah. They should have been enough to convince anyone. But not everyone has been chosen to believe, not everyone is a sheep of God's choosing. Those who have not been given to Jesus cannot believe, and even some who claim to believe are not His sheep. His sheep listen to His voice, they do what He says. And they are not put off by anything He says.
Aug 10, 2023, 2:20 PM
Passage Read: John 7-8
Meditation Verse: 7:4
Thought
Jesus is doing things and gathering crowds, so that it seems obvious to everyone that He wants to be a public figure, to be famous. But He also keeps telling people He heals not to tell about Him. Jesus is surrounded by crowds almost every time He heals someone, what's the use of telling people not to tell who He is? But Jesus isn't trying to be a public figure, He's not seeking attention for Himself for the sake of seeking attention. He lives to do His Father's will.
Aug 9, 2023, 2:21 PM
Passage Read: John 5-6
Meditation Verse: 5:3
Thought
There were a great number of disabled people lying by the pool, yet Jesus singled out one guy who would not believe or honor Him. When confronted by the Pharisees, the man panicked and claimed not to know who Jesus was. When Jesus found him later and warned him not to sin anymore, the man sought out the Pharisees who rebuked him and told them it was Jesus. Because of this, the Pharisees began to persecute Jesus.
Aug 8, 2023, 2:23 PM
Passage Read: John 3-4
Meditation Verse: 4:50
Thought
This is what Jesus desires of everyone, to take Him at His Word, to believe whatever He says without doubting. That's the kind of faith I want to have. But I'm too full of my own knowledge and wisdom that keep me from the simple faith of a child. It's my own intellect that makes me question and doubt the simple truth of Jesus' words, of God's words. Even Paul writes and calls believers to become fools for God, to abandon the wisdom of this world for the wisdom of God.