Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

1 John 5:11-12 'This is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.' Sooner or later, everyone is bound to ask what life is all about. Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, one of the most successful rock groups of all time, asked the question in one of his last songs: “Doe...

1 John 5:4-5 'For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.' We need to be clear that whenever John talks about the world in this passage, he is talking about the world without God. When humankind rejects God, the world is a terrible place, full of si...

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 ha...

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 do so. But with God it is very different. There is nothing that we could ever do to win his love....

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 identify in the early Church. Many of the Christians would have come from completely different religious and ph...

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.' Probably 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 takes us to heart...

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 have had the privilege of being foster parents for the past six years. Those years have helped me to understand in a way that I never knew before how important our relationship is with our parents. To be honest, I think I took for granted the love, security, affirmation and warm...

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...

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). As believers, we have a choice to make: do we allow our energy to be expended on worldly inter...

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, but it is clear that enormous struggles were going on....

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 then we’re lying. Presumably there were people in John’s day who were saying precisely that and he knew it was such...

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. I was gripped by them. To de...

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. It seems to me tha...

Psalm 106:6-7 'Like our ancestors, we have sinned. We have done wrong! We have acted wickedly! Our ancestors in Egypt were not impressed by the Lord’s miraculous deeds. They soon forgot his many acts of kindness to them. Instead, they rebelled against him at the Red Sea.' I strongly recommend that you read through this psalm and the previous one because they are twins. In Psalm 105 we hear about a...

Psalm 105:1-2 'Give thanks to the Lord and proclaim his greatness. Let the whole world know what he has done. Sing to him; yes, sing his praises. Tell everyone about his wonderful deeds.' In this beautiful psalm, the writer rooted his praise in the way in which God had acted in history. He looked back to the way in which God had led Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. Through the years God had been...

Psalm 104:24-25 'O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the ocean, vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small.' Many of the psalmists use the wonder of creation as a springboard for their worship. This particular psalm does so by reminding us of the six days of creation. The poetic lan...

Psalm 103:2-4 'Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies.' This psalm begins with King David talking to himself! He called to mind the fact that his life had been wonderfully blessed by God and concluded that his whole being needed to be...

Psalm 102:11-12 'My life passes as swiftly as the evening shadows. I am withering away like grass. But you, O Lord, will sit on your throne forever. Your fame will endure to every generation.' We are often reminded of the fragility and brevity of life. A couple of days ago, a cyclist was knocked over and killed by a lorry on a roundabout which I often use. Death is never far away, and the psalmist...

John 12:3 'Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.' The anointing of Jesus by Mary was a beautiful act of devotion, but it is hard not to have at least some sympathy for Judas, who pointed out that the precious perfume would have cost the equivalent of...

John 11:33-36 When Jesus saw Mary weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” Very soon after this, Lazarus was brought back to life. But we shouldn’t rush past thi...

John 11:25-26 Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.” Jesus had known for some days that Martha’s brother Lazarus was seriously ill, but he had decided not to visit. So when he finally arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had already been dead for four days. Martha clearl...

John 10:19-21 NLT The people were again divided in their opinions about him. Some said, “He’s demon possessed and out of his mind. Why listen to a man like that?” Others said, “This doesn’t sound like a man possessed by a demon! Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” I am so grateful for the complete honesty of the Gospel writers. They were clearly deeply committed followers of Jesus and it woul...

John 10:14-15 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep.” Years ago, I read a book about Eleanor Philby who was married to the spy, Kim Philby. I was stunned to discover that Eleanor never had any idea that her husband was a secret agent. That seemed incredible to me at the time, but the tr...

John 9:24-25 For the second time the Pharisees called in the man who had been blind and told him, “God should get the glory for this, because we know this man Jesus is a sinner.” “I don’t know whether he is a sinner,” the man replied. “But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!” The Pharisees were fuming. Jesus had just healed a blind man and they were determined to do anything possible to p...

John 8:12    Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” Jesus spoke these words during the festival of tabernacles, which was a seven-day holiday at the end of the harvest. It was one of three pilgrimage festivals, so Jerusalem would have been heaving with peo...