Today's Devotion
For most of her life, Maud Lewis lived in a pint-sized one-room house with no running water or electricity near Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada. The 10′ x 9′ cottage became her canvas, and she painted almost everything. Birds and butterflies fluttered across the door. Vibrant flowers covered the windows, the walls, the cupboards, the little staircase to the sleeping loft, the woodstove, and the breadbox. Even the dustpan was covered in daisies. She never traveled more than sixty miles in any direction from home. She never saw a work of art by another artist and never attended an art class.…
Your Voice Activates Dominion. When God wants to change someone’s life, He touches their mouth. He puts His Words in our mouth to bring life, salvation, and healing. When God wants to change a city or nation, He always touches someone’s mouth. God touched Isaiah’s mouth with a coal of…
“While Ezra prayed and made this confession, weeping and lying face down on the ground in front of the Temple of God, a very large crowd of people from Israel—men, women, and children—gathered and wept bitterly with him.” (Ezra 10:1, NLT) After years of exile in Babylon, Artaxerxes, king of Persia, decreed that any of the people of Israel who desired were free to return their homeland. Ezra, a priest and scribe, led a group of fellow Jews back to Jerusalem. Their journey took four months, but they were finally in the land God had given them long ago. What…
“Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern and wished for the day.” Acts 27:29 For fourteen days, the wind and crashing waves had bombarded the ship. They cast everything they could spare overboard. Fear filled their hearts. It looked like all hope was gone. But one man among the two hundred and seventy-six aboard had a promise that he would reach Rome. In the night, God appeared to Paul with a message: Verse 23-26 “For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom…
“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” (Psalm 141:3, ESV) As I passed a lady in the grocery store aisle, I overheard a snippet of her phone conversation. “Now I’m going to tell you this, but please don’t share it . . .” I turned the corner about that time, so I never learned whatever juicy bit of gossip she knew. I also wondered how quickly her friend would pass it on. (Now to be clear, most of us do not gossip. We share “interesting information” from time to time. Or perhaps…
Genesis 29:31, “And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated (loved less or neglected), her opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.” Unrequited Love In Genesis 29, we read a gripping narrative of deception, silent suffering, and the most tormenting kind of love: unrequited. Every time I read the story about Leah and Rachel’s competing beauty, their father’s disregard for propriety, and Jacob’s overt declaration of love for Rachel and his dismissal of Leah altogether, I cannot help but feel compassion for the two sisters. It would be awful to be Leah, living in someone else’s shadow, never being…
