Carter Conlon | Daily Devotionals

God has given His church power over darkness. He can put power in your speech and give you words of wisdom, words of knowledge, and giftings of the Holy Spirit. He can give you the power to put away what needs to be put away and to take up what needs to be taken up. We're not looking anywhere else and to anyone else. This is His army. You are the plan of God. You are what He's going to use to defe...

You might be able to say, I've escaped drugs, I've escaped bad relationships, I've escaped drinking. You could probably name many things God has brought you out of. But have you escaped yourself? Have you escaped the heart that does not want to fight for somebody else? It's possible to be thankful for everything that God has done for us and still spend our lives focused mainly on our own needs. Th...

Quite often God calls us when we feel the least qualified to do what He's calling us to do. Why couldn't it have been ten years ago when I was at every prayer meeting? Why couldn't it have been when I was fasting and passionate and completely given to the things of God? Then the call of God comes and reminds us that it was never about us. It was never about our strength, our passion, or our qualif...

What is it that God is asking you to do that you have put on hold? You know you should be doing it. Forgiveness might be one of those things. You will not know the power of God until you and I are willing to do what we know to do. We can't selectively choose what we want from the Word of God and ignore the rest without there being a consequence. God's not asking us to understand everything before...

There's something rising in the heart of believers in Christ that is telling us that something in our time is not right. It's not right that evil is getting the upper hand. It's not right that good is being called evil and evil is being called good. It's not right that our children are falling prey and victims to ungodliness even in their schools. It's not right that our families are under attack,...

In the land where we focus on ourselves, it can get pretty hungry there. The Christian life is meant for so much more, and when we focus only on our own needs, we start to starve. That's what happened to the son in Luke 15. He became so hungry that he wanted to eat the food that was given to pigs. He looked for somebody to give him something, but everybody around him was just as selfish, and nobod...

Be very sure today that God has a purpose for your life. Be very sure that there is an authority that comes with that purpose. Words of wisdom, words of knowledge, gifts of the Holy Spirit, abilities to speak and do things that you could never have done in your own strength, and direction you never could have found through natural ability or reasoning. Be very sure that the power of God will becom...

The pathway to God's power leads often through loneliness. Think about Esther, taken out of her natural family and brought into a place that was unfamiliar to her. Then came a moment when the king had not called for her for 30 days. The calling of God came to her at a time when she felt distant from the king. Many believers today know what this feels like. There are seasons when God seems quiet an...

Be very, very sure of one thing today. Just as the prodigal son once did, if you head towards God, God will get to you before you get to Him. Be very, very sure that He loves you. Be very sure today that He wants to forgive you. Be very sure that He wants to embrace you and take the stain of your failure upon Himself. Be very sure that He wants to cleanse you, to change you, to transform you. He w...

God can make old truths new to our hearts. He can send His word and set people free. He can heal the brokenhearted. He can open the door to those who are captive. He can correct the pathway of those who have deviated from the truth. He can give clarity to those whose minds are confused. He can give strength to those who are weary and give resources to those who are poor. This is simply who God is...

In Luke 15, Jesus told the story of a son who left his father's house and wasted his inheritance living for himself. When he finally returned home, his father embraced him, covered him with a robe, put a ring of authority on his finger, and put shoes on his feet. Now those shoes speak of something important. God has a pathway for you, a plan for your life, a journey He's going to take you on into...

The son in Luke 15 finally came to himself. He did not fully understand his father's house, but he knew it was better there than where he was. He was starving, and in his father's house there was nourishment and plenty of it. You see, his sin of selfishness had found him out. His neglect of what he was called to do had left him spiritually starving. Maybe you're a child of God and you're saying, "...

When you take up your cross, you will find that some people will turn against you. It's almost as natural as breathing. When you go all in for God, there will be a force of hell that comes against you to stop you. You can set your watch by it. Actually, you can be sure of it. I always call Judas an unfortunate necessity in our redemption. Without Judas, there would have been no cross, and without...

In Luke 15, a son asked his father for his inheritance. He wanted freedom, forgiveness, the feeling of knowing what belonged to him, but he took it and went far away from his father's heart. He spent everything that he had on himself. You know, there's a point of healing, a point of learning, a point of growing in grace, but there is also a point of maturity as well, where you and I understand tha...

In the book of Acts, there were 120 failures in an upper room, praying and waiting on God. When God came, He filled them with the Holy Spirit and they became His battle plan in the New Testament. They stood out in the public square without weaponry, without a plan, but they had in their hearts the presence and power of God. They were speaking about Jesus, not about themselves. It was not about any...

Luke 9:23. Jesus said, "If anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." When we first come to Christ, we have a tendency to focus almost uniquely and solely on ourselves. It's about my freedom, my addictions, my needs, my everything. We're babes in Christ, but there's a point of healing, learning, and growing in grace. There's also a point of maturity as...

Luke 23:34. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they do." I once met a missionary who had served for almost three decades in a war-torn country. He came home with certificates, medals, and accolades, but he ended up stuck in his basement and wouldn't come out. He had had a church wounding from almost 40 years earlier, and he had never forgiven the people who had done it. He kne...

There comes a point where we stop coming to the house of God asking, "What's in it for me today?" And we begin to ask a different question: "God, give me something today for somebody else. Give me courage to go into that place and speak to those people. Give me victory in my own life so I can take that victory to others and say, 'Listen, I want to tell you what God has done for me, and he can do i...

Galatians 6:7, Paul the Apostle says, whatever a man sows, that's what he's going to reap. Whatever seed you put in the ground, that's the harvest that you're going to reap. If you plant corn, you're certainly not going to grow watermelons. There's a day coming when you may need somebody to come and help you. You may be as low as you can go and say, "God, please send somebody to help me." But the...

You and I are living in a crisis time in this world. I personally believe that this world is launching its final assault against the lordship of Jesus Christ. You can read about that all throughout the scriptures. There are some particular chapters like Matthew 24 that deal almost exclusively with this moment. Paul the apostle talks about it in the books of Timothy and Thessalonians. I encourage y...

Numbers 32:23 says, Be sure your sin will find you out. When Moses spoke these words, there was a group of people who were considering not going with their brethren across Jordan and helping them establish their home in the promised land. They were actually very comfortable where they were. This would have been the sin of selfishness, self-focus, knowing what to do and then choosing not to do it....

In the book of Esther, the king had not called for Esther for 30 days. Her relationship with the king was not at its pinnacle when the call of God came, yet that was the moment that God chose to use her. Sometimes we imagine God can only use us when everything feels perfect. We think He can only call us when our faith is strong, our prayers are passionate, and our spiritual life feels effortless....

Psalm 23:5. David says, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You may feel today like your life is surrounded by opposition, like everything is working against you. But God does not wait for your enemies to disappear before He blesses you. He prepares a table, as David says, right in the middle of your struggle. What looks like a place of defeat can become a place of provisi...

2 Kings 19:35: In the morning, the Lord had sent an angel and the army was gone. There are moments when you feel surrounded, like everything around you is against you and there is no way out. The voices are loud, the pressure is real, and it feels like you will never escape. But the power of God has not changed. When a righteous man brought his situation before the Lord, God moved in a single nigh...

The kingdom of God advances to those who know where their strength comes from. Walking in the flesh is trying to follow Christ by human will and human ability alone. It will always fail. In the fire, this truth becomes unavoidable. God is building a testimony in your life that cannot be sustained by human effort. When you surrender your rights and yield your life, the Spirit of God takes residence...