Kerusso Daily Devotional

Hers is the greatest motherhood story of all time. You know who she is.   Magnificent Mary!   Her story has been told many times, but how grateful we are that it’s recorded in Scripture. Whatever God’s reasons for choosing this particular woman to give birth to Jesus, we know that she must have loved the Lord with all her heart.   And just think how her head and heart must have been spinning when...

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be close to Jesus when He was on the earth? It would have been amazing to be in His inner circle.   We know of a remarkable woman, a family member, who would have been able to be around to watch that most amazing life unfold.   Her name was Elizabeth. She was the aunt of Jesus, and she was also a mother.   We read in Luke that everyone thought...

Are you a woman blessed with the gift of a wonderful mother-in-law? We can hardly think of a more important relationship. Through the ages, this mentoring friendship has sealed families and nurtured them. Likewise, we easily see the pain inflicted when this relationship isn’t good.   In the Old Testament, we read of a really remarkable mother-in-law. She showed great kindness to a young woman at j...

We don’t even know her name, but we know what she did.   Let’s just say there was great strength in her household!   Known only as the wife of Manoah, from the Israelite tribe of Dan, this godly woman was unable to have children. But then, in a kind of foreshadowing of another, more famous visit by an angel hundreds of years later, she was told by the Angel of the Lord that she would become pregna...

She’s not very well known, even though she’s in the Bible.   But Jochebed…who’s heard of her? Raise your hands.   This great woman deserves a bigger story in our culture, because she modeled what it means to act with bravery, and to value all life.   Exodus 2:3 says, “But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child...

Communism kept half of Europe locked up for much of the 20th century. For 75 years, the oppressive system took most freedoms away from its ordinary citizens. The political system responsible for tens of millions of deaths seemed almost indestructible. Then, almost suddenly, the system built on restricting freedom just collapsed. The end came so quickly that all the most experienced analysts and di...

Today we conclude our four-part series on prayer, Prayer 101. The big question for today is, "Does God always answer prayer?"    Since prayer is, by nature, personal, we often want to know how things are going to turn out, even before we start praying. We wonder if God will actually answer our prayer. Maybe not as dramatic as some stories, but still if we're honest, we would like an...

Welcome back to Prayer 101. Today's big question is, “Should I pray to Jesus or to God?”   Most people at one time or another wonder who they should address when starting a prayer. The Christian concept of the Trinity has caused people to hesitate to pray. It's like, “Who do I pray to?”   Luke 6:12 says, “One of those days, Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night pr...

Welcome to prayer 101. The big question for today is: How do you develop a prayer life?     The answer to how we develop a healthy prayer life is really not that complicated. It's all about choice. We can learn to pray first by reading scripture and taking notice of the hundreds of prayers offered by believers just like us. We can also talk with veterans of prayer in our own life, those who a...

Humans were built for language and communication.    It's one of the bits of creative genius God used when He formed His highest creation. And apart from regular communication, whether it's the written word or verbal, we have a great gift from a loving God: prayer.   Prayer is an intensely personal way to communicate with our Creator, the One who knows everything about us.   Jeremiah 29:...

Do you need a miracle? If we're honest and open to the truth, miracles have always been a part of our world. In the beginning, God made a dazzling world full of diversity, beautiful animals, gorgeous sunsets, streams of water. He also made us to enjoy it all, and to keep it for Him. But just like the entrance of sin into our world, which marred the original beauty, we sometimes get weighed do...

Only a person who is wilfully blind could deny that miracles happen today. They didn’t end at the shore of the Red Sea. Malachi 3:6 says, “I the Lord do not change.” From this, we can logically see that the Bible’s powerful and majestic miracles didn’t stop in the first century. They’re still happening. God didn’t suspend the love he dispenses in the form of miracles.    Taylor McCaffrey was an al...

Charles Darwin and some of his friends saw a certain beauty and order in evolution, believing that random processes can bring about living systems. That anyone survived what a poet has described as ‘nature, red in tooth and claw,’ is a miracle for naturalists. Others believe miracles, if you can call them that, happen because some impersonal cosmic force allows them.   There's not much comfor...

The late writer Christopher Hitchens was a skeptic who claimed that miracles are born from nightmarish ignorance, and that they often are simply 10th-hand reports from illiterate peasants. Wow. The flaw in his argument, of course, is that it isn't really an argument. It's simply a rant against God, and the fact is unexplainable miracles happen every day in our world, but Hitchen's v...

We're starting a series today on miracles. They're one of the most popular subjects in culture. We're fascinated by them. We want them to happen, and we love it when they happen to us. But what is a miracle? Do they happen in our world today? Lots of questions.    Skeptics claim that miracles are impossible.   Chad and Mandy Stacy saw one of them when their son, Ethan, was born with...

It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire. The island nation had expanded its reach around the world for hundreds of years, and the Union Jack flew over many countries. But as happens with earthly kingdoms, the sun did set. Today, the British are back to being basically just that island nation.    The Bible talks about a kingdom that will have no end. What do we mean when we ta...

Sharing our faith should be exciting to us. It is exciting. When we consider the free grace God gave us through His Son, telling others about Jesus should be on our priority list every day. For whatever reason, many find it very awkward to talk to others about Jesus. We can talk about just about anything else, though. That's why it's crucial that we look at sharing the gospel as an inten...

The Bible's book of Daniel tells us that one day knowledge and innovation will increase exponentially in our world. And it could be surmised that the prophet was looking ahead to our day, but maybe he was looking even further. The technological advances of the 21st century are no secret. In the ancient world, an ocean voyage could take months. Now, a person can have breakfast in New York City...

Today we're continuing our series on sharing the gospel, and what we're covering today is about the Great Commission. Have you heard that term before? Christianity's great at using terms the general public isn't familiar with, and sometimes we use terms even we aren't familiar with as believers. A recent study shows that more than 50% of us churchgoers don't know what...

Today we're kicking off a five-part series on sharing the gospel. And this will run the gamut from what the gospel is, to how to do it and what that means, and how to put that into practice. And so as we begin, we really need to understand what is the gospel, and more importantly, who is Jesus Christ.   Sometimes the best place to start is at the beginning. That might sound funny, but what we...

When Hurricane Katrina rolled through, the spinning white satellite image on TV screens actually looked evil. For residents of New Orleans waiting for that hurricane, that's exactly what it felt like. Thousands of people were affected by the brutal storm that poured in from the Gulf. In many ways, the city still hasn't recovered. But in the chaos, God was there.   For more than 20 years,...

Do you like scary movies? Is an evening spent looking through your fingers appealing to you?   It is to a lot of people. Some of us really like to be scared!    But hopefully, that doesn’t translate to real life. Screaming in a dark theater can actually be fun, but you don’t want to live a life of fear.   Psalm 23:4 tells us, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fe...

Have you ever been in such a dark place that you wondered if God cares about you, or if He even exists? Maybe it’s all some cosmic joke, right?   We’ve all been there. Humans doubt. We doubt ourselves, we doubt product labels, we doubt our kids. We question everything.   But the worst one is trying to figure out where God is in the middle of life’s great difficulties. Sometimes the world is just f...

The giant redwoods of the American Pacific Northwest are among nature’s most beautiful scenes. As tall as skyscrapers, and big enough to drive a truck through.   It is said that the redwoods are so powerful and strong in part because even these plants have a sense of community. Separated, or as a single tree, the root system is much more vulnerable. But planted with partners all around, the pictur...

At an address in Columbus Ohio in 1900, former slave Booker T. Washington kept the room spellbound. This man, who had built Tuskegee Institute to lift blacks out of economic bondage, was revered around the world.   But he said something that surprised more than a few in the audience. He said that one of his main priorities for the Institute was hiring more Bible teachers!   Washington, who had bee...