Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

1 John 4:11-12 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. You cannot see the wind, but you can easily see the effects that it has. Equally, you cannot see electricity, but we have no doubt that it exists because of all that it does. No one has...

1 John 4:10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Most of the love that we experience in our lives is reciprocal. We love other people, and they love us. Sometimes we have taken the initiative and, on other occasions, they have done so. It is very different with God. There is nothing that we could ever do to win his lov...

1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. There have always been false teachers, but they must have been particularly difficult to face in the early Church. Many Christians would have come from completely different religious and philosophical b...

1 John 3:16 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. The most famous verse in the whole Bible is John 3:16: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” It’s a wonderful verse, and it takes us to heart of the...

1 John 3:1 See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! My wife and I had the privilege of being foster parents for a number of years. Those years gave me a new understanding of how important our relationship with our parents is. To be honest, I took for granted the love, security, affirmation and warmth of my own parents, but I now treasure those a...

1 John 2:26-27 I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. Our world today is very different from the one that John knew, but I suspect that if he w...

1 John 2:15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. John’s concern here was very similar to that of Jesus when, in the Sermon on the Mount, he said that it was impossible to serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24). We have a choice to make as to whether we will allow all our energy to be expended on worldly in...

1 John 2:9-10 If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. The letters in the New Testament give us a great insight into the life of the early Church. These were exciting years for the Church, but enormous struggles were going on. Th...

1 John 1:8-9 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to God, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. John couldn’t have been more blunt. If we claim to be sinless, we’re lying. Presumably, there were people in John’s day who were saying precisely that. He knew it was such a dange...

1 John 1:3-4 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy. As a teenager, I developed a great interest in the law, and often visited the local Magistrates’ and Crown Courts. To describe these as eye-openi...

1 John 1:1 We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. Most of the letters in the New Testament start with a greeting in which the author identifies himself. The only exceptions to this are the letter to the Hebrews and this first letter of John’s. It seems to me tha...

Luke 19:26 “To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.” In this parable, Jesus spoke about servants who had all been entrusted with some money. Two of them managed to multiply the original amount enormously, and the king was thrilled when he discovered this. However, the third servant played it s...

Luke 19:5-7 When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.” Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled. Everyone loves to be called by name. It is particu...

Luke 18:35; 40-43 As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind beggar was sitting beside the road…When Jesus heard him, he stopped and ordered that the man be brought to him. As the man came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord,” he said, “I want to see!” And Jesus said, “All right, receive your sight! Your faith has healed you.” Instantly the man could see, and he followed Je...

Luke 18:31-33 Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus said, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true. He will be handed over to the Romans, and he will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit upon. They will flog him with a whip and kill him, but on the third day he will rise again.” A few days before Jesus’ death on...

Luke 18:16-17 Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Jesus continually surprised people, but his reaction to children would have been particularly astonishing...

Luke 16:10-12 “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?” We all...

Luke 15:20-21 “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’” Of all the stories that Jesus told, the parable of the prodigal son is the most famous, and it takes us to the hea...

Luke 15:8-10 Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbours and say, “Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.” Almost everyone has got a moving story to tell of the time when they lost something very precious. For me, it is...

Luke 15:4-5 If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. This is such a beautiful story. You can picture the shepherd as he makes sure the 99 precious sheep are safe and warm and t...

Luke 13:18-19 Then Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? How can I illustrate it? It is like a tiny mustard seed that a man planted in a garden; it grows and becomes a tree, and the birds make nests in its branches.” A mustard seed is tiny – between one and two millimetres. You would hardly notice it because it so small, but it can grow into a huge plant, commonly more than two metres tall...

Luke 12:21 Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God. I love the fact that most of Jesus’ stories are told in very few words. Our verse today is the punchline to a very brief story he told about a rich farmer who’d had such a successful harvest that he realised he needed to build more barns. He said to himself that he could now settle back and enj...

Luke 10:41-42 The Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” It seems to me that some people are naturally activists. They are always up and doing. Other people are naturally reflective. They want to stand back from life and consider everyt...

Luke 10:33-34 Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. I love the parable of the Good Samaritan, not least because it would have come as such a complete surprise to J...

Luke 9:51 As the time drew near for him to ascend to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. There’s a wonderful description of the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 50:7, which says he set his face like flint. He was absolutely fixed on heading in one definite direction in obedience to the Lord. That’s precisely what we see here in this verse in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus knew exactly what was goin...