The Up Devotional

The Lord does battle for you. You may experience difficulty, but never defeat. Let me provide an illustration. A small child walks into a street with his head down. A woman jumps into the street to get the attention of a truck driver who is barreling his way. The driver hits the brakes and swerves […]

Prayer can get hard when life gets hard. I wonder why that is. Maybe we start to wonder whether or not it makes any difference. Or perhaps we just get so tired—emotionally, physically or spiritually—that we just stop doing it. When life is overwhelming, it takes all your energy just to put one foot in […]

[Note: After today, The Up Devotional will go on pause for a week, returning on June 12, 2023.] If you want to read something that tells you that everything is always wonderful and that life should be a non-stop parade of flowers and lollipops, don’t read the Bible. The Bible is too honest for that. […]

“LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.” So prayed Heman in Psalm 88:1. He then went on to chronicle his lack of strength, feelings of death, despair, isolation, grief, sense of betrayal, rejection and terror! One of the things that strikes me about Heman’s prayer is […]

It’s an unpopular thought: Experiences of hardship can make us wiser and better positioned to help others. Here’s why it’s unpopular. When you’re in the middle of hard times, you just want them to end. You want things to be good again. When enduring incredible stress and strain you probably don’t want to hear about […]

Have you ever felt like God has let you down? Perhaps illness has come into your life. Perhaps you wanted a baby and it never happened. Perhaps you experienced a personal and brutal attack. Perhaps you have been so stressed or anxious that you wondered if it wouldn’t just be better if you weren’t on […]

On May 19, 2023 Tim Keller died. He was a best-selling author, pastor and apologist. He spoke to millions, met with Presidents, but was ever down-to-earth. My first introduction to his writing was through his best-seller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. His writing gave evidence of a genuine, biblical faith […]

One of the reasons people have loved the psalms through the ages is because they are so personal and honest.  David was certainly honest with God in Psalm 51. Another example is found in Psalm 88. It’s a look-into-my-aching-heart-and-help-me-urgently type of psalm. A man named Heman had been afflicted since his youth. In verse 15 […]

In Psalm 51:10 David prayed: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” As outlined a few days ago, David had committed multiple sins. Big sins. Snowballing sins. Then he was confronted by the prophet Nathan. Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of repentance. He asked God for mercy […]

Salvation and sanctification are central to Christianity. But if we get them mixed up, it can mess with our thinking. Salvation is being made right with God, both in this life and the next. When you believe in Jesus and what he has done for you on the cross (dying in your place and paying […]

King David sinned. Big time.  He committed adultery with Bathsheba. She became pregnant. Her husband Uriah was in David’s army and away at battle. David invited him back with the hopes that he would sleep with his wife making people think the baby was from him instead.  But in an act of solidarity with his […]

“Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears!” (Psalm 39:12) “God didn’t answer my prayer.” Have you ever said that? Have you ever thought it? In my experience, when someone says that God didn’t answer their prayer, what they usually mean is that God didn’t […]

King David was no stranger to danger. He faced threats (internal and external), sickness, and war. One of the reasons so many people love his psalms is because they are so honest. He demonstrates a wide range of emotions and thoughts while speaking to (or talking about) God, and while going through his various difficulties. […]

The most popular verse in Psalm 46 is verse 10: “Be still, and know that I am God.” In our world of frantic frenzy, scurrying, stress and busyness, the idea of “being still” really appeals to us.  We might not always do it very well, but we sure like it! It makes us think of […]

Let’s continue thinking about perspective.  When we’re experiencing hardship, it’s helpful to zoom out and try to look at the bigger picture. When we do that, we gain a clearer understanding about what is happening around us. Here is why that can be helpful. In the midst of difficulty, our view can become limited. We […]

Perspective is about seeing the bigger picture and right-sizing our problems. Let me explain. When you are looking through a camera lens and want to see more of whatever you’re looking at, you zoom out or go to a wide-angle. You get a clearer picture about what is happening because you can see more. This […]

I recently came across something that was rather encouraging. If it was encouraging to me, I’m sure it will be encouraging to you as well. A seed was discovered in the ruins of King Herod’s palace at Masada in Israel. In 2008, researchers decided to plant the seed in some soil. Low and behold, it […]

Donald McCullough recalls being in the city of Edinburgh a few weeks before beginning his doctoral studies. He was new to the city so didn’t know his way around very well. One evening he went to a concert at Usher Hall. After it finished he headed out into the night, but it was now dark […]

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…” (Psalm 23:6, ESV) Max Lucado tells a story about a mother and her first grade son, Timmy. She became worried when Timmy wanted to walk to school by himself. The mother wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But Timmy thought it […]

Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist. He was also a Jewish man who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. In one of his books he comments on something remarkable: seeing grown adults walk into a gas chamber reciting the Shema. That’s the central creed of Judaism. It is found in Deuteronomy 6:4.* Christians recognize […]

Life can be difficult. We know it’s true from our own experiences. Plus, the Bible tells us as much. But we are not without help or hope. Psalm 23 is very well known. It is read at funerals, underlined in Bibles, tattooed on bodies, and memorized. It speaks of God as a caring Shepherd. He […]

Psalm 1 describes a person who is seeking to be righteous. They delight in God’s teachings and meditate on them consistently (verse 2). Verse 3 describes something important about that person’s life: “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season…” They are a fruit-yielding tree, metaphorically […]

In Psalm 1:2 we are told about a person who is blessed by God. This is a person “whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.” But what does it mean to “meditate”? This word can make us think of some sort of eastern spiritual […]

We’ve been discussing the “way of the righteous” from Psalm 1. It stands in contrast to the “way of the wicked.” Hebrew scholar Robert Alter points out that taking a certain “way” (or “road” or “path”) is a metaphor for a “set of moral choices.”* When I first tried to visualize these two ways, I […]

In the previous devotional I explained how pursuing “the way of the righteous” as articulated in Psalm 1 is about a direction, not perfection. Some of you will have wondered, but what about Matthew 5:48? “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Ah yes, that statement by Jesus has really been a source […]