Spiritual Resources Daily Devotions

Streams in the Desert, Cowman-4

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Streams in the Desert by L. B. CowmanCome back tomorrow for a new selection from this devotional book! He went up on a mountainside by himself. (Matthew 14:23) O ne of the blessings of the old-time Sabbath day was the calmness, restfulness, and holy peace that came fro ...

Streams in the Desert, Cowman-3

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Streams in the Desert by L. B. CowmanCome back tomorrow for a new selection from this devotional book! "Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?" "Everything is all right," she said. (2 Kings 4:26) Be strong, my soul! Your loved ones go Within the veil. God's yours, e'en so; Be strong. Be strong, my soul! Death looms in view. Lo, hear your God! He'll bear you through; &nb ...

Streams in the Desert, Cowman-2

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Streams in the Desert by L. B. CowmanCome back tomorrow for a new selection from this devotional book! .perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10) S teel is the product of iron plus fire. Soil is rock plus heat and the crushing of glaciers. Linen is flax plus the water that cleans it, the comb that separates it, the flail that pounds it, and the shuttle that weaves it. In the same way, the development of human character requires a plus attached t ...

Streams in the Desert, Cowman - 1

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Streams in the Desert by L. B. CowmanCome back tomorrow for a new selection from this devotional book! There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. (Hebrews 4:9) T hat rest includes victory: "The Lord gave them rest on every side . . . The Lord handed all their enemies over to them" (Josh. 21:44). "Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:57). A prominent believer once told of his moth ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-7

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for a selection from another book! M odern society lives by the rules of survival of the fittest. "The one who dies with the most toys wins," reads one bumper sticker. So does the nation with the best weapons and the largest gross national product. The owner of the Chicago Bulls gave a compact summary of the rules governing the visible world on the occasion of Michael Jordan's (temporary) ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-6

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for another selection this book! I no longer scorn the eternal rewards mentioned in the Beatitudes as "pie in the sky." What good does it do to hope for future rewards? What good did it do Terry Waite to believe that he would not spend the rest of his life chained to a door in a filthy Beirut apartment, but that a world of family and friends and mercy and love and music and food and ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-4

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for another selection this book! A bsolute ideals and absolute grace: after learning that dual message from Russian novelists, I returned to Jesus and found that it suffuses is teaching throughout the Gospels and especially in the Sermon on the Mount. In his response to the rich young ruler, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, in his comments about divorce, money, or any other moral issu ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-5

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for another selection this book! I f I had been sitting in the audience when Jesus first delivered the Beatitudes, I believe I would have left the event feeling confused or outraged, not comforted. Nineteen centuries later, I still struggle to make sense of them. Yet now, especially as I think back on my teenage days of frenzied legalism, I can see that my understanding has developed ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-3

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for another selection this book! I have placed myself on the edges of the crowd in Jesus' day, as a sincere seeker captivated by the rabbi but reluctant to commit to him. If I turn my attention from Jesus himself to the constellation of people surrounding me, I would see several groupings of onlookers forming concentric rings around him. Farthest away, in the outer circle, are the groun ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-2

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for another selection this book! A modern rabbi named Jacob Neusner, the world's preeminent scholar on Judaism of the early Christian era, devoted one of his five hundred books (A Rabbi Talks with Jesus) to the question of how he would have responded to Jesus. Neusner has great respect for Jesus and for Christianity, and he admits that such teaching as the Sermon on the Mount leave ...

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey-1

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: The Jesus I Never Knewby Philip Yancy Come back tomorrow for another selection this book! I f I had sought a one-word label to describe Jesus to his contemporaries, I would have chosen the word rabbi, or teacher. In the United States now I know of no parallels to Jesus' life. Surely his style had little in common with that of modern mass evangelists, with their tents and stadia, their advance teams and billboards and direct-mail campaigns, ...

Simply Christian, N.T. Wright-7

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! J esus' followers were clearly as puzzled by his resurrection as there had been by much of what he had been saying to them. They were unsure what they were supposed to do next. They were unclear what God was going to do next. At one point, they went back to their fishing. At another point-the last time they saw Jesus before he disappeared from sight for the last t ...

Simply Christian, N.T. Wright-6

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! C hristianity is about something that happened. Something that happened to Jesus of Nazareth. Something that happened through Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, Christianity is not about a new moral teaching-as though we were morally clueless and in need of some fresh or clearer guidelines. This is not to deny that Jesus, and some of his first followers, ...

Simply Christian, N.T. Wright-5

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! T he Christian story claims to be the true story about God and the world. As such it offers itself as the explanation of the voice whose echo we hear in the search for justice, the quest for spirituality, the longing for relationship, the yearning for beauty. None of theses by itself points directly to God-to any God, let alone the Christian God. At best, they wav ...

Simply Christian, N.T. Wright-4

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! H eaven and earth are full of glory, a glory which stubbornly refuses to be reduced to terms of the senses of the humans who perceive it. But whose glory is it? The Christian tradition has said, and indeed sung, that the glory belongs to God the creator. It is his voice we hear echoing off the crags, murmuring in the sunset. It is his power we feel in the ...

Simply Christian, N.T. Wright-3

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! T he young couple gazed into each other's eyes as they sat on the sofa in my study. They had come to arrange their wedding: full of dreams and wonder at discovering such perfection in another person, someone so exactly what they were looking and hoping for. And yet, as we all know, marriages apparently made in heaven sometimes end not far from hell. Altho ...

Simply Christian, N.T. Wright-2

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! T he Christian explanation of the renewed interest in spirituality is quite straightforward. If anything like the Christian story is in fact true (in other words, if there is a God whom we can know most clearly in Jesus), this interest is exactly what we should expect: because in Jesus we glimpse a God who loves people and wants them to know and respond to that lo ...

Simply Christian, NT Wright - 1

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: Simply Christianby N.T. Wright Come back tomorrow for another selection from this book! T here are three basic ways of explaining the sense of the echo of a voice, this call to justice, this dream of a world (and all of us within it) put to rights. We can say, if we like, that it is indeed only a dream, a projection of childish fantasies, and that we have to get used to living in the world the way it is. Down that road we find Machiavelli a ...

SHAPE, Erik Rees - 7

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: S.H.A.P.E: Finding and Fufilling Your Unique Purpose in Lifeby Erik Rees Come back tomorrow for a selection from a different book! I t will be hard to fulfill your Kingdom Purpose if you take on ministry opportunities that don't align with the way God has fashioned you. Too often people settle for good opportunities when they should be embracing great ones for God. If you are more cooperative, don't try to be competitive. If you are natura ...

SHAPE, Erik Rees - 6

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

This Week: S.H.A.P.E: Finding and Fufilling Your Unique Purpose in Lifeby Erik Rees Come back tomorrow for a selection for a new selection from this book! T ake a few moments to think about what you love doing, the tasks you feel comfortable performing. This review will help you discover the specific ways you can make deposits of love through serving. God wants one fact to hit home with us: he "has given each of us the ability to do certain things well" ( ...