Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

2 Timothy 2:25-26 It’s not the easiest thing in the world to speak with those who oppose you. Many people in that position are likely to be forceful and strident in their tone. They want to win their argument and convince their opponent that they are absolutely wrong. But Paul urged his young friend Timothy to be gentle in the way that he confronted his many opponents. Why was that? Because he kne...

2 Timothy 2:24 Every Christian is a servant of the Lord but there is no doubt that in this verse, Paul is particularly thinking of the responsibilities of church leaders. Clearly they cannot serve the Lord if they are prone to pick quarrels but, more than that, they need to be kind to everyone. Kindness is a word which reflects the nature of Jesus. This doesn’t mean that church leaders should avoi...

2 Timothy 2:20-21 Here Paul is describing the Church. It is made up of very different people who have a wide variety of roles. Paul’s concern is that Timothy should live in a state of constant readiness for whatever the Lord might want him to do. But he could only do that by keeping himself pure. Paul had his eyes wide open to the challenges that Timothy would face as a young leader in a non-Chris...

2 Timothy 2:15-16 It’s always a pleasure to see someone who is a good worker. They may be an accountant, a cleaner, a lawyer or a shop-worker but, the moment you see them at work, you know that they are fully committed to the task. However, it is very easy to be less than that. Laziness can be a temptation in any walk of life, and that includes Christian teachers. It is possible for them to look f...

2 Timothy 2:9-10 If it were possible to extinguish Christianity through violent persecution, it would have been snuffed out long ago. But it is a fact of the last 2,000 years that the persecution of the Church has simply accelerated its growth. Tertullian, an author in the second century, wrote: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Most of us have had no experience of violent pers...

2 Timothy 2:6 Paul was well aware of what a hard job it was to be a Christian leader. When he wrote to the Corinthians, he told them he was “pressed on every side by troubles”. He knew what it was to be perplexed, hunted down and to live in constant danger of death (2 Corinthians 2:4-11). He didn’t want Timothy to have any illusions about the challenges that would face him and, so, having compared...

2 Timothy 2:5 I wonder if you remember that agonising moment in the 2022 Commonwealth Games when our amazing 4x400m women’s relay team was disqualified. It was all the more painful because they seemed to have won the race. They gave a confident and delighted interview straight after their success, only to learn that Jodie Williams and Victoria Ohuruogu had stepped out of lane on the second leg of...

2 Timothy 2:3-4 It’s not surprising that the apostle Paul often referred to soldiers in his letters. He had seen plenty of Roman soldiers in his time and, no doubt, had often reflected on the life that they lived. They provided him with a powerful metaphor for the Christian life. On their website, the British army identifies six key values. All of them could be applied to the Christian life. They...

2 Timothy 2:2 Every sensible organisation needs to reflect on its succession planning. Leaders come and go and it’s important that careful thought is given to the way in which potential new leaders are identified, trained and appointed. This was basically Paul’s concern in this verse. He had trusted his young friend Timothy to teach the Christian truths but Timothy, in turn, needed to look out for...

2 Timothy 1:13 Living the Christian life doesn’t come naturally to any of us. We all need teaching to help us to live for Christ. However, there’s a problem with the word ‘teaching’ - it tends to make us think about classrooms and exams. We might be tempted to think that there is a textbook somewhere with the answers to every question of the Christian life. But there isn’t. The teaching that we ne...

2 Timothy 1:12 Security is a big issue in our society. Billions of pounds are spent each year in the attempt to keep things safe. Nothing could make it clearer that, sadly, we live with a massive level of insecurity. I’ve only once lived in a house which had its own safe. It was so heavy that we never attempted to move it, but we found it the best place to hide chocolate biscuits when our children...

2 Timothy 1:9 When Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus, everything changed. He moved from darkness to light. He experienced the forgiveness of his sins and entered into a new life with God which would never end. His whole life changed direction and he became an enthusiastic champion of the Christian faith, encouraging everyone to discover this salvation for themselves. In this verse, he reminds...

2 Timothy 1:8 This isn’t the first time that Paul had spoken about the issue of shame. In his letter to the church in Rome he declared boldly that he was “not ashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16). There’s no doubt that he said this because he knew many people thought he should feel shame. Paul had been brought up in the strict disciplines of the Jewish faith. He was a Pharisee and had studied unde...

2 Timothy 1:7 The apostle Paul wanted his young friend Timothy to be the best. There was no question that Timothy was going to face enormous challenges. He would continually confront opponents to the Christian faith, but he would also face issues of Church organisation and discipline. He had a tough job ahead of him. Paul knew it was vital that he was neither fearful nor timid. From the references...

2 Timothy 1:5-6 When I was a boy one of the great pleasures of Saturday afternoons was that I would light a bonfire with my dad. I came to love the smell of bonfires, probably because it reminded me of those happy moments. And the greatest pleasure of all was the process of getting the fire going. Sometimes we struggled but then, by fanning the flames carefully, we would have the joy of seeing the...

2 Timothy 1:3 Paul’s second letter to his young friend Timothy is deeply moving. Paul knew that he was close to death and was keen to do everything he could to encourage, strengthen and direct Timothy in his ministry. He knew that it was absolutely vital Timothy had a clear conscience. We all have a conscience, which helps us to know the difference between right and wrong. When we trudge through l...

Mark 16:6-7 Long ago, I remember an old man telling me of an experience he had as a teenager. It happened during the first world war, when many of the young men from his village had gone to fight in France. Some families received the terrible news that their sons had been killed, but one family heard that their son was “missing believed killed”. Everyone encouraged the family to believe that their...

Mark 16:1 As soon as the Sabbath came to an end, these three women started their preparations for anointing the body of Jesus. The Sabbath ends about 40 minutes after sunset, as soon as three stars are seen in the sky. That was probably between 5:30 and 6pm. They knew that they wouldn’t have time to anoint Jesus’ body; that would have to wait until the Sunday morning. But they had enough time to g...

Mark 15:37-39 One of the reasons I love the Bible is that it is always bubbling with life and continually has new things to say to us. I know these verses extremely well but only today have I been struck by the fact that, just before Jesus breathed his last, he let out a loud cry. This is the last thing that you would have expected of a man dying on the cross. It would have been hard for Jesus to...

Mark 14:22-24 There are many different ways to convey a message. In the Old Testament, we often see the prophets acting out their message. One such moment was when Ahijah tore his robe into twelve pieces and gave ten of them to Jereboam to demonstrate that ten of the tribes would make him king (1 Kings 11:29-32). Jeremiah also used actions to emphasise his messages. In Jeremiah 27:2, we find him w...

Mark 14:8-9 Jesus said this after a woman had anointed him in Bethany. It was clearly an amazing moment. It was quite usual for a house guest to be greeted by being given a few drops of perfume. What was extraordinary about this particular incident is that the woman deliberately broke open the whole perfume bottle. The onlookers immediately responded to the apparent waste of money. The perfume was...

Mark 12:29-31 The Jewish teachers of the law were famous for two things. Firstly, they took hold of the 613 laws that were given to Moses and added layer upon layer of other regulations. But they also enjoyed being able to reduce the whole law to a short sentence. That’s what Jesus does here. He took the vast weight of the Jewish law and summed it up with the command to love God and one’s neighbou...

Mark 11:16-17 The Temple in Jerusalem was an impressive building, occupying a vast 30-acre site in the heart of the city. It was divided into distinct parts, with the commercial activity all taking place in the extensive Court of the Gentiles. This area was bordered by a low wall, on which notices hung, indicating that the penalty for any non-Jew going beyond it was death. The trading area was ext...

Mark 11:9-10 Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem shows us his extraordinary courage. He could have slipped quietly into the city. But in deliberately entering on a donkey, everyone knew that he was making a powerful statement. He was declaring for all to see that he was indeed the Messiah, the one who had come to save his people. Their praises show that they were entirely clear what was happenin...

Mark 11:1 Jesus lived most of his life in the Galilee region, which was about a four-day journey north of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, he paid many visits to Jerusalem and had some good friends in the area. His particular friends were Mary, Martha and Lazarus who lived in Bethany, just outside the city. Clearly, in one of his visits there, he had prepared the ground for his final triumphal entry into...