Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Acts 2:16-17 What you see was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.’ When Peter spoke these words, he was addressing huge crowds of Jews who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the harvest festival known as Pentecost....

Psalm 59:17 O my Strength, to you I sing praises, for you, O God, are my refuge, the God who shows me unfailing love. Is your life a struggle at the moment? I’m really sorry if so, but I want you to know you’re not alone. In this psalm, like many others, David pours out the detail of his struggles. He feels physically threatened and compares his opponents to vicious dogs, snarling as they prowl th...

Psalm 57:8-9 Wake up, my heart! Wake up, O lyre and harp! I will wake the dawn with my song. I will thank you, Lord, among all the people. I will sing your praises among the nations. I have always loved singing and have sung with many choirs over the years. Many of you may have had a similar experience. You will know what a joy it is to contribute your little sound to the united voice of a choir....

Psalm 56:8 You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Everything seemed to be going wrong for David when he wrote this psalm. He was being attacked continually by the Philistines. They were constantly slandering and spying on him, looking for an opportunity to kill him. But amid it all, David affirmed his confidence in...

Psalm 56:1-3 O God, have mercy on me, for people are hounding me. My foes attack me all day long. I am constantly hounded by those who slander me, and many are boldly attacking me. But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. On a number of occasions, I have stayed in Benedictine monasteries in this country and in France. The monks’ way of life is very different from my own, but I have been i...

Psalm 52:8-9 But I am like an olive tree, thriving in the house of God. I will always trust in God’s unfailing love. I will praise you forever, O God, for what you have done. I will trust in your good name in the presence of your faithful people. This passage begins with a ‘but’ because David is contrasting himself with Doeg the Edomite, who had been seeking to stir up trouble for him with Saul. D...

Jeremiah 29:4,5,7 This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce…And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” God’s people refused to list...

Jeremiah 18:1-4 The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.” So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over. My own attempts at pottery were a miserable failure. When I saw my teacher doing i...

Jeremiah 17:21-23 This is what the LORD says: Listen to my warning! Stop carrying on your trade at Jerusalem’s gates on the Sabbath day. Do not do your work on the Sabbath, but make it a holy day. I gave this command to your ancestors, but they did not listen or obey. They stubbornly refused to pay attention or accept my discipline. We were reflecting yesterday on the importance of maintaining goo...

Jeremiah 17:7-8 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit. We’ve all got a choice: we can rely on human beings or on God. J...

Jeremiah 14:14 The LORD said: “These prophets are telling lies in my name. I did not send them or tell them to speak. I did not give them any messages. They prophesy of visions and revelations they have never seen or heard. They speak foolishness made up in their own lying hearts.” Jeremiah had some very harsh things to say. He needed everyone to know that if they didn’t change their ways, they wo...

Jeremiah 13:16 Give glory to the LORD your God before it is too late. Acknowledge him before he brings darkness upon you, causing you to stumble and fall on the darkening mountains. For then, when you look for light, you will find only terrible darkness and gloom. We are all good at putting things off. It might be filling in our tax returns, making things right with an aggrieved neighbour, buying...

Jeremiah 10:12-13 The LORD made the earth by his power, and he preserves it by his wisdom. With his own understanding he stretched out the heavens. When he speaks in the thunder, the heavens roar with rain. He causes the clouds to rise over the earth. He sends the lightning with the rain and releases the wind from his storehouses. The fact that God created the world is the foundation of the Bible’...

Jeremiah 10:2 This is what the LORD says: “Do not act like the other nations, who try to read their future in the stars. Do not be afraid of their predictions, even though other nations are terrified by them.” If you’ve ever looked at a horoscope, you’ll probably have concluded that it is all a lot of nonsense. They may have told you that today is a good day to make friends, or to avoid puddles or...

Jeremiah 9:23-24 The LORD says: “Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches. But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the LORD.” What are the things you boast about – the things that give you the most pride and pleasure? For many people, it’s their family, but for...

Jeremiah 8:21 I hurt with the hurt of my people. I mourn and am overcome with grief. The power of Jeremiah’s prophecy lies in the fact that he didn’t stand at a distance from the people. Their hurts were his hurts, and he described himself as being heartbroken and having grief that was beyond healing (Jeremiah 8:18). He knew that they were suffering because they had abandoned God’s way and had fou...

Jeremiah 7:5-6 I will be merciful only if you stop your evil thoughts and deeds and start treating each other with justice; only if you stop exploiting foreigners, orphans, and widows; only if you stop your murdering; and only if you stop harming yourselves by worshiping idols. Most of the time, we probably think of justice as being in the hands of other people. We look to the police and the law c...

Jeremiah 6:16 This is what the LORD says: “Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls.” I struggle to remember the days before I used satellite navigation. However, I drove for many years before the luxury of these devices, and I would often come to a crossroads and wonder which way I needed to go next....

Jeremiah 3:22 “My wayward children,” says the LORD: “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.” Jeremiah went to great lengths to show just how far people had wandered away from God. He used incredibly strong language. He talked about them acting like a prostitute running after many lovers, and pictured them sitting by the road waiting for customers (Jeremiah 3:2). Israel had totally a...

Jeremiah 2:13 [The Lord says:] “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me— the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!” In a country like Palestine, cisterns are a vital way of storing water for the long, hot and dry summers. The porous limestone rock needs to be lined with plaster in order to make them watert...

Jeremiah 1:9-10 Then the LORD reached out and touched my mouth and said, “Look, I have put my words in your mouth! Today I appoint you to stand up against nations and kingdoms. Some you must uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow. Others you must build up and plant.” Being a prophet is a tough job, and Jeremiah was just about to learn how demanding it was going to be for him. We all love shar...

Jeremiah 1:6-7 “O Sovereign LORD,” I said: “I can’t speak for you! I’m too young!” The LORD replied: “Don’t say, ‘I’m too young,’ for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you.” Jeremiah followed in the well-worn tradition of trying to avoid doing what God was calling him to do. His words remind us of Moses, who responded to God’s call from the burning bush with a long list of re...

Proverbs 26:14 As a door swings back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed. The writer of the Proverbs has a great deal to say about laziness, and he is terrified of it. He sees it as the surest route to poverty and, in a society without a welfare state, that could easily spell starvation and even death. Fighting the war against laziness starts at the very beginning of the...

Proverbs 25:28 A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls. It’s always tragic to see someone who is drunk. They stagger around with no clear sense of direction, their speech is slurred and you worry that they’ll fall over and hurt themselves. There are many other less obvious examples of a loss of self-control. Some people lack self-control in their spending or eating and...

Proverbs 25:25 Good news from far away is like cold water to the thirsty. This wonderful proverb doesn’t make much sense in our modern world where communications across the globe are instant. However, I remember the days before such impressively instant communications. When I lived in India, we had to communicate by post, and it could take a couple of weeks for letters to arrive from the UK. The h...