Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

1 Peter 2.9 NLT 'You are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.' In the Old Testament we learn that God decided that the people of Israel should be his chosen people. In Exodus 19 and Isaiah 43 they are described in a number of ways, and h...

1 Peter 2.4-5 NLT 'You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honour. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple.' In the Old Testament, huge attention is given to the building of the Temple. King David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and longed to give it a proper...

1 Peter 2.2-3 NLT 'Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.' Babies are not subtle in their demand for milk. When they need feeding they are very happy to let everyone know about it! Peter uses this powerful imagery to describe a young Christ...

1 Peter 2.1 NLT 'So get rid of all evil behaviour. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech.' In the previous chapter Peter commanded his readers to love one another. He now spells out what that will involve, because if we are truly to love other people then bad behaviour must stop. There’s no way in which a church can be dominated by love when there is deceit, hypocrisy...

1 Peter 1.23 NLT 'You have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.' Terry Pratchett, the famous humourist and novelist, wrote, “It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.” Life here on earth is indeed brief, but Peter encourages us to...

1 Peter 1.22 NLT 'You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.' When you become a Christian, you are immediately a part of a world-wide family – the Church. You suddenly have brothers and sisters that you’d never had before! One of the most exciting characteristics of...

1 Peter 1.15-16 NLT You must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” I suspect that we all respond in much the same way to the command that we should live holy lives. We feel a closeness to Isaiah who went into the Temple one day and was overwhelmed by the holiness of God. He responded with embarrassment, not on...

1 Peter 1.14 NLT 'So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then.' D.L.Moody, the famous Victorian preacher, once said, “There will be no peace in any soul until it is willing to obey the voice of God.” The problem with the word obedience is that we are inclined to see it as restrictive. Because...

1 Peter 1.13 NLT 'So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.' In this opening chapter of his first letter, Peter writes a great deal about salvation. He looks forward to the day when we will see the completeness of our salvation, set free from every trace of sin and all su...

1 Peter 1.6-7 NLT 'Be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold.' Let’s not play games. Hard times are hard. Nobody likes going through difficulties or facing challenges. To have to en...

1 Peter 1.5 NLT 'Through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.' I wonder how you or I would cope with persecution from the civic authorities. Just imagine what it would be like to live with the knowledge that the police are after you, simply because you are a Christian. This is precisely the ex...

1 Peter 1.3-4 NLT 'Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance— an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.' I wonder if you are waiting for an inheritance. If so, I wish you well but, as you probably know, things don’t always work out in the way that we might hope. Many potential inheritances are eaten up by...

1 Peter 1.3 NLT 'All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.' When Peter wrote these words the storm clouds were gathering, and the church was soon going to be facing very sharp and painful persecution. Many Christians were going to die, and Peter was well aware that he needed to equip...

1 Peter 1.1 NLT 'I am writing to God’s chosen people who are living as foreigners in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.' I wonder where home is for you. The older one gets the more interesting the question becomes because there are so many potential candidates. Perhaps it’s the place where you were born. I left my birthplace when I was 18, but I still look back at it...

Psalm 96.1-3 NLT 'Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Sing to the Lord; praise his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.' Many people see life as being divided into two categories – the sacred and the secular. The sacred is, for example, what we do when we go...

Psalm 95.6-7 NLT 'Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today!' These words of invitation are often used at the beginning of church services to remind us of how wonderful God is, and how much he deserves our worship. But although God is perfect...

Psalm 94.18-19 NLT I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O Lord, supported me. When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer. Sharing honestly and openly what God has done in our lives is incredibly powerful. The most wonderful thing about testimony is that nobody can deny it. Other people might choose to interpret our experiences differently from us, but...

Psalm 93.4 NLT 'Mightier than the violent raging of the seas, mightier than the breakers on the shore— the Lord above is mightier than these!' I was brought up by the sea and have always enjoyed the sight of waves breaking on the shore. I love the rhythm of the waves and the drama as they crash onto the beach in their own unique way. There is a timelessness about waves, and it is easy to understan...

Psalm 92.1-3 NLT 'It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to the Most High. It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning, your faithfulness in the evening, accompanied by a ten-stringed instrument, a harp, and the melody of a lyre.' Throughout the Psalms, we are continually reminded of how good it is to worship God. In Psalm 84.10 the psalmist says that he would rather...

Psalm 91.2 NLT 'This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him.' I will never forget where I was when I heard the news of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. I was buying carpet with my wife in a large store in Exeter and was standing at the till. A woman was describing to the shop assistant the awful events in such a way that...

Psalm 90.10 and 12 NLT 'Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away. Teach us to realise the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.' It’s wonderful that so many people are living to the age of 100. In the UK there are more than 15,000 centenarians and that figure is about double the...

Psalm 89.8 NLT 'O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies! Where is there anyone as mighty as you, O Lord? You are entirely faithful.' Faithfulness is a wonderful word. To find someone who is absolutely trustworthy and dependable is an incredible blessing and the psalmist is convinced that God is exactly that. He looks into the heavens and reflects on the awesomeness of creation and concludes that God is enti...

Matthew 28.8-9 NLT 'The women ran quickly from the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to give the disciples the angel’s message. And as they went, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they ran to him, grasped his feet, and worshiped him.' The women who found the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning clearly experienced a riot of emotions. They h...

Matthew 27.57-60 NLT 'As evening approached, Joseph, a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. And Pilate issued an order to release it to him. Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth. He placed it in his own new tomb, which had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entranc...

Matthew 27.54 NLT The Roman officer and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said, “This man truly was the Son of God!” When Jesus died on the cross at three o’clock in the afternoon, the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and there was a great earthquake. It’s no wonder that the soldiers, toug...