Kerusso Daily Devotional

The diversity of life on this planet is astonishing, good, bad, beautiful, painful. Our world is a place of blessing, and it’s also a struggle for a lot of people. Each of us has a whole batch of issues to deal with every day, ranging from physical challenges to emotional needs. And a fascinating element in all this is how we see contentment.  What is it? Where is it found?  Is it lasting? Matthew...

Hers is the greatest motherhood story of all time. You know who she is. Magnificent Mary! Her story has been told many times, but how grateful we are that it’s recorded in Scripture. Whatever God’s reasons for choosing this particular woman to give birth to Jesus, we know that she must have loved the Lord with all her heart. And just think how her head and heart must have been spinning when the an...

Are you a woman blessed with the gift of a wonderful mother-in-law? We can hardly think of a more important relationship. Through the ages, this mentoring friendship has sealed families and nurtured them. Likewise, we easily see the pain inflicted when this relationship isn’t good. In the Old Testament, we read of a really remarkable mother-in-law. She showed great kindness to a young woman at jus...

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be close to Jesus when He was on the earth? It would have been amazing to be in His inner circle. We know of a remarkable woman, a family member, who would have been able to be around to watch the most amazing life unfold. Her name was Elizabeth. An aunt of Jesus. We read in Luke that everyone thought that the time for Elizabeth to become a mo...

We think of her as a genteel Southern lady, and she was that, for sure. But Ruth Bell Graham was so much more. While her husband was away so much, preaching to the masses, she was preaching to her own little flock. The result was children who became adults, and in turn shared the Good News of Jesus with others. Anne Graham Lotz and Franklin Graham didn’t just fall out of the sky! Proverbs 27:17 sa...

If you’ve been fortunate to hold a newborn, you know what it’s like to be thunderstruck by the delicate features. Everything is miniature. And then the eyes open. You’re in love. Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” A baby is a blessing and a gift from the Lord. All life is precious; it doesn’t matter if the parents are famous or completely obscure. In that warm bundle...

Of all the gifts God gives His children, joy is perhaps the one closest to heaven on earth. Who isn’t aware just how wonderful it feels to experience true joy? It is as if the Lord has freed a prisoner. When American POWs returned from captivity in Vietnam, the looks on their faces as they emerged from the planes carrying them to freedom…well, no one will ever forget that! Psalm 16:9 says, “Theref...

Have you ever been fooled by someone? Doesn’t feel good, does it? But the absolute worst is when we fool ourselves. We try to manage some problem on our own, or analyze why our boss is so mean. But the Bible has a better way of thinking about it. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” We have to do two things here: give total control to G...

Gwen closed her eyes and didn’t dare to even breathe. Japanese troops were right outside her house, looking for her and other missionaries. It was World War 2, and American forces in the Philippines were nearby. Just when Gwen and her friends thought someone would throw open the trapdoor to their basement hiding place, loud voices began getting dimmer. The enemy troops were distracted, and left in...

When trouble is on the horizon, it can be hard to trust in God’s promises and to believe He has a plan for us. The book of Judges in the Old Testament gives us an awesome example of trusting God in the story of Gideon. God called Gideon to lead Israel into battle with the Midianites, who had a sizable army of 135,000 men. Gideon gathered an army of 32,000 men to battle with the Midianites, but des...

Life is a process. We know that if we’ve lived very long at all. And this week, we’re talking about the process of trusting God. John 16:24 says, “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” Could Jesus meet our needs by just giving us something instantly? Of course. He made everything! And sometimes He does that; the miracles he...

Do you need a miracle? If we’re honest and open to the truth, miracles have always been a part of our world. In the beginning, God made a dazzling world full of diversity, beautiful animals, gorgeous sunsets, streams of water. He also made us to enjoy it all, and to keep it for Him. But just like the entrance of sin into our world, which marred the original beauty, we sometimes get weighed down wi...

Only a person who is willfully blind could deny that miracles happen today. They didn’t end at the shore of the Red Sea. Malachi 3:6 says, “I the Lord do not change.” From this, we can logically see that the Bible’s powerful and majestic miracles didn’t stop in the first century. They’re still happening. God didn’t suspend the love he dispenses in the form of miracles.  Taylor McCaffrey was an alc...

Charles Darwin and some of his friends saw a certain beauty and order in evolution, believing that random processes can bring about living systems. That anyone survived what a poet has described as ‘nature, red in tooth and claw,’ is a miracle for naturalists. Others believe miracles, if you can call them that, happen because some impersonal cosmic force allows them. There’s not much comfort in th...

The late writer Christopher Hitchens was a skeptic who claimed that miracles are born from nightmarish ignorance, and that they often are simply 10th-hand reports from illiterate peasants. Wow. The flaw in his argument, of course, is that it isn’t really an argument. It’s simply a rant against God, and the fact is, unexplainable miracles happen every day in our world, but Hitchens’ views are share...

We’re starting a series today on miracles. They’re one of the most popular subjects in culture. We’re fascinated by them. We want them to happen, and we love it when they happen to us. But what is a miracle? Do they happen in our world today? Lots of questions.  Skeptics claim that miracles are impossible. Chad and Mandy Stacy saw one of them when their son, Ethan, was born with leukemia, and over...

Have you ever had the pleasure of waking up in a cozy cabin…after you’ve let the fire go out from the night before? If you don’t get out of bed and put more wood in that furnace, the squirrels or raccoons aren’t going to do it for you! Much more serious is the tendency to get lazy about the fire inside us to share the love of Christ. After so many years of being a Christian—especially living in a...

As followers of Jesus, we are meant to be witnesses. And Christ’s majesty and power are meant to blanket our world. He is intimately aware of you, and where you are in life. Isaiah 60:1 says, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.” When we trust Christ—when we believe the simple Gospel—we are called to get in the game. Sitting on such good news doesn’t ma...

Think of what Jesus was asking of His followers. He had just risen from the dead. That doesn’t happen every day. His ministry had been destroyed, so they thought. He wasn’t coming back. But then He did. Only days after being killed on a brutal Roman cross, Jesus was standing in front of his friends, looking very much alive. And He was telling them their futures were dicey. Mark 16:15 says, “He sai...

Table salt today is so common, it becomes another thing we take for granted. You go to the store, pick a cylinder or jar of salt off the shelf, then go home. You don’t even think about it. Now, consider that 1,000 and more years ago, if a person wanted to use salt on his dinner, this required some prior work. A lot of work! The Romans boiled seawater in huge, lead-lined pans. So valuable was salt...

Defending the faith can sometimes be a subjective thing. As examples of extremes, we have seen the Crusades, and the modern form is perhaps an aggressive “pitch” to someone who isn’t a believer. The thing is, it’s great to be zealous for our faith, but let’s also be disciplined. We don’t want to alienate a person who might otherwise listen. To put it simply: an angry Christian is usually a lonely...

Spring is the season of new life. As we finish up our series on the Psalms, we come to the most famous one of all. Psalm 23:1–2 says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.” This psalm contains some of the most famous words ever written. It has everything: beautiful language, a man’s raw, honest heart...

One of the things that sets God apart from all others is His ability to tell us what is going to happen. We read about this in Isaiah 46, where He says, only He knows the end from the beginning. An amazing example of this is found in Psalm 22, and it’s almost surprising how many people are not aware of it. Psalm 22:11 says, “Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.”...

From the time he was a young shepherd in the wilderness, David had deep relationship with God. He escaped enough dangerous situations to know that God was always with Him and was his deliverer. Psalm 91:1–2 says, “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’” This psalm is...

Nothing is more basic to life than creation itself. The Bible tells us that God alone has the power to truly create, and the beauty of language in Psalm 139 explains this fully. Some believe the psalmist was writing in part about the creation of Adam. Psalm 139:1–3 says, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You disce...