Read Hebrews 12:7–29 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11 I am sure that few children believe it when their parents say, “This hurts me more than...
Read Job 4—5 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking?” Job 4:1–2 Job’s friends were silent for seven days (2:13), and Job later wished they had stayed that way (13:5). Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered...
Read 1 Peter 1:13–16 Prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:13 “Prepare your minds for action” (or, “Gird up the loins of your mind” KJV) simply means, “Pull your thoughts together!...
Read Romans 7:14–25 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. Romans 7:15 The law cannot give life—it can only show sinners that they are guilty and condemned. This explains why legalistic Christians and churches...
Read Job 42:1–6 Then Job replied to the LORD: “I know that you can do all things.… Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42:1–2, 6 Job knew he was beaten. Quoting God’s very words (vv. 3–4), Job humbled himself before the Lord and acknowledged His...
Read 1 John 3:16–17 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 1 John 3:16 In these days of multiplied social agencies, it is easy for us Christians to forget our...
Read Galatians 5:1–15 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 It is Christ who has made us free from the bondage of the law. He freed us from the...
Read Hebrews 5:9–10 Once made perfect, [Jesus] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. Hebrews 5:9 When Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a young preacher in London, his successful ministry aroused the envy of some of the clergy, and they attacked him with various kinds of slander...
Read Ecclesiastes 9:1–4 Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! Ecclesiastes 9:4 Death is not an accident—it is an appointment (Heb. 9:27 KJV), a destiny that nobody but God can cancel or change. Life and death are in the...
Read 1 Peter 4:12–16 Rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 1 Peter 4:13 It is an honor and a privilege to suffer with Christ and be treated by the world the way it treated Him. “The...