Daily Bread Archives

February 8, 2021February 3, 2021

My Stronghold

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” ~ Psalm 27:1^ESV

There will be situations that arise that will invite the spirit of fear into your life, but fear not for the LORD Himself is a shield round about you. Though the world might seem dark and gloomy, He is the light of your salvation. Though the wicked threaten and rage against you, the LORD God Almighty is the stronghold in your life.

The word stronghold means a place or a means of safety; in other words, He is your safety and your protection. Now understand that God thinks in terms of eternity because He is eternal, He is infinite, and He dwells outside of time. We live bound to time, so it’s hard for us to understand the concept with our finite minds.

But know this, though the people rage, though the enemy Buffet you, though the situation seems hopeless, God is your strength, and your protection, He will deliver you.

Heavenly Father, thank You for being a wall and a shield around me. Teach me to lean and depend on You. No matter the circumstances, or even the outcome, let my love for You never diminish. But rather, let me keep my eyes, thoughts, and hope turned towards eternity and the things of God. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Resist and Worship

⁸Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹And he said to Him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’” ¹¹Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to Him. ~ Matthew 4:8-11

The Bible states, resist the devil, and he will flee. But how does one resist? By not giving in, but it doesn’t just end there; otherwise, the tempter will wear you down. When Jesus was being tempted, He resisted, and the devil kept chipping away. It wasn’t until He began to worship God that the devil left Him for a more opportune time, and then angels came and attended Him.

So, the moral of the story is, the devil will flee when you worship. Make it a point today to have a good time of worship with your family and see the difference it will make, the peace it will bring. Remember that angels are ministering spirits that bring comfort from God in times of turmoil.

Our Heavenly Father, please give us Your spirit of worship so that we can worship You in spirit and in truth. Direct our thoughts and our prayers, and when we know not what to pray, let Your Holy Spirit make intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Praise Him With Your Talents

“¹ Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty heavens! ²Praise Him for His mighty deeds; praise Him according to His excellent greatness! ³Praise Him with trumpet sound; praise Him with lute and harp! ⁴Praise Him with tambourine and dance; praise Him with strings and pipe! ⁵Praise Him with sounding cymbals; praise Him with loud clashing cymbals! ⁶Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!” ~ Psalms 150

The Psalmist says to praise the LORD, but he doesn’t give just one way to praise the LORD. He says to praise the LORD with trumpets, cymbals, harps, lutes, tambourines, dance, etc., because there is no one way to praise the LORD. As long as we are lifting up the LORD, there is no “right” way to praise Him. Painting, singing, dancing, writing, drumming are all ways of praising God. So praise the LORD with the talents He has bestowed upon you.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Praise Him With Your Talents!

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Let The LORD Build

“Unless the Lord builds the house,those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” ~ Psalms 127:1

Sometimes we depend on our own might instead of the might of God. We try to build our career, ministry, relationships, etc., according to our own strength, so we labor in vain. For what home is strong unless it is built with bricks upon a sturdy foundation?

Don’t live your life according to your own strength because you will wear yourself out. You were never meant to do this alone. Let the LORD establish you. Let the LORD lead you. Don’t try to do it according to your strength, but according to the strength of God. Spend time in prayer and worship because that’s when the Spirit of God moves in your life and builds you and your house up.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Let The LORD Build.

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Thrive

“²³In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” ~ Proverbs 14:23

We have become a people of complaints. We complain about everything. As a church, we have forgotten what it means to be thankful. We tend to look at the glass half empty instead of half full. We’re so busy complaining about what we don’t have instead of what we do have. We don’t see how blessed we are. We have become a selfish, self-serving people.

When we look back at the Bible and see what those who have gone before us went through so that we can have all that we do, we really need to be thankful. When I look back at what my grandparents and great-grandparents did and what they went through so that their children and their children’s children could have better lives, it’s very humbling. They were innovative. They found ways to stretch very little.

My grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations were generations that took the bad, the ugly, and made good out of it. They didn’t make excuses that things were too hard; they didn’t make excuses that they didn’t have the education to be successful. They took what little they had, and they made so much out of it. Little to no education, no help, but they fought, they strove, and succeeded. They believed they could, so they did. They were a generation that had the fear of God in them and believed they could do anything.

Where is that in today’s world? Would they be disappointed if they saw what we did with their hard work? What we did with their sweat and tears? We complain so much that we envy and hate those who have more than we do instead of fighting for a better life. We give up and accept the plate that has been set before us. Why don’t we fight for a better future?

Those of us who grew up with it all, are we at a disadvantage? We shouldn’t be, but it seems like we’ve done the complete opposite than past generations. We’ve taken the good and beautiful, and we’ve turned it to the bad and the ugly. With all of the education we have at our fingertips, the opportunities, and the technological advances, we should be the generation making a difference. Making things better. Correcting past mistakes. But instead, we’ve become complacent and entitled. We no longer believe in working hard; instead, we want hand-outs.

What does that get us? Just enough to survive. Do you want to survive or thrive? I implore you to take advantage of what you have because I guarantee it is more than the generations before us could have ever dreamed of having. Be better than what you have come from. Never forget where you come from. Be thankful for what you have, but always strive for better.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Thrive.

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Thank The LORD

“¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” ~ Matthew 28:18-20

As the majority of us are Non-Jews, this verse can be very encouraging. Before His death and resurrection, Jesus said He only came to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. To His disciples, He said only go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. But something shifted in the Spiritual when He died and rose again; Gentiles were grafted in because now, Jesus gave us The Great Commission, to go out and make disciples of all nations. Sometimes we don’t even see the bigger picture because we get caught up in how amazing it is that we, Gentiles, were grafted in. But Paul takes that a step further, from just Gentiles, but the entire Earth being grafted into the Overwhelming, Never-Ending, Reckless Love of God. Paul said in Ephesians 1:4-6 that before the world’s foundation, God chose us (humanity) to be adopted to Himself through Christ Jesus.

So, before we were separated as Jew and Gentile. Before we ever sinned. Before Adam ever ate the fruit. And before there was even a foundation, God saw that we would sin, and therefore created a way to adopt us from darkness. For every sin we’ve committed, are currently committing, and are going to commit, Jesus died for. Jesus took the weight of all of our sin on Himself, taking our place on the cross. And then 3 days later, rising from the grave and finishing it all, for death has lost its sting and the grave has lost its power over us. For now, when we die, we are called to our new home, Heaven.

Thank you, LORD, for bearing our punishment. For taking our lashing. For paying our debt. You alone could bear our suffering on your back. You alone could overcome the grave, for we sin, not fully understanding what our sin cost. Some of us refuse to even acknowledge what You went through, and yet, You still did it knowing all of this. Knowing that we would betray You, spit in Your face, and call You a liar, You still got off of Your throne and came down to Earth to save us. Thank You, LORD Jesus, for paying our debt. In Your Holy and Precious Name, Amen.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Thank The LORD.

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The Tempted

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” ~ Matthew 4:1

A lot of people don’t realize that there is a difference between temptation and sin. The above Scripture goes on to say that Jesus was hungry, so He very much wanted something to eat. Therefore, His temptation to turn those stones into some nice soft yeast rolls with some good hot chocolate and have Himself a good ole time was very real. But He didn’t sin because He didn’t act on the temptation. Please understand that if the temptation is not appealing, then it is not a real temptation.

Jesus had just fasted 40 days in the desert and was starving, so tempting Him with a giant house wouldn’t be very tempting to a starving Jesus. The point is, in order to be a true temptation, it has to be appealing to the one being tempted, and that is not the sin. The sin happens when we act on those lustful desires called temptation. We know it’s not a sin, for Jesus was without sin, and He was tempted. So, don’t be discouraged when you are tempted; everyone is tempted, but stand strong and overcome as Jesus did.

Heavenly Father, give us the spirit of wisdom and discernment so that we may know the schemes and tactics of the evil one. Protect our minds from evil and lustful thoughts. And when we are tempted, help us to know that You will provide a way out so that we will never fall. Also, help us to understand that when we are tempted, we have not sinned. It is not until we have acted on those temptations that we have crossed the line into sin. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Remember The Sabbath Day

“⁸ Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, ¹⁰but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” ~ Exodus 20:8-11

We often overlook this commandment as unnecessary. We can’t see a need for it. Why is that? We see a need for all the other commandments except this one. I may be wrong, but was this not the first commandment God Himself observed? He rested on the seventh day. Now let’s clarify, the seventh day doesn’t have to be Saturday or Sunday, but the Seventh Day of your workweek.

For instance, if you work Friday through Wednesday, your Sabbath would be Thursday. Though I do like not working on Sundays, that’s not everyone’s reality as Pastors work Sundays. Therefore, their Sabbath could not be a Sunday. Here’s what I’m getting at, God created each of these commands for our benefit. And if God needed a day of rest, don’t you think you need one as well? Pastor Robert Morris once said, “God can do more in six days than you can do in seven.” So don’t overwork yourself; take time out to rest.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Remember The Sabbath Day.

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January 31, 2021January 27, 2021

Let Your Legacy Point To God

“Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up on the roof to talk with them. ‘I know the Lord has given you this land,’ she told them. ‘We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. For we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed. No wonder our hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below.’” ~ Joshua 2:8-11^NLT

Rahab was a woman living in sin behind the walls of Jericho. Even though she didn’t know the LORD, she heard of Him and what He did for the people of Israel. Even behind the walls of Jericho, she was able to see God at work in the lives of the Israelite people. Imagine the walls of Jericho as a spiritual blinder keeping anyone inside of them cut off from any word of God. This is what the world is today. It’s surrounded by giant walls that try to keep out the Holy Spirit, but if we allow God to work in our lives, the walls of Jericho will begin to open, and they will be able to hear of the good news.

God can’t reach others without you. Though that sounds blasphemous, God doesn’t move without partnering with someone first. God could have easily destroyed Pharaoh, removed His people from Egypt, destroyed all the inhabitants of the land without Moses, Aaron, or Joshua, but God uses people. He uses us so that He can build a relationship with us and use that relationship to reach others. Allow God to do the miraculous through you so that His Name and His Greatness may be spread throughout the world, even passed the great walls of Jericho.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Let Your Legacy Point To God.

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Pick Up Just Enough

“Then Moses told them, ‘Do not keep any of it until morning.’ But some of them didn’t listen and kept some of it until morning. But by then it was full of maggots and had a terrible smell. Moses was very angry with them.” ~ Exodus 16:19-20^NLT

While in the wilderness, God rained down Manna for the Children of Israel to eat. Now God made a strict rule, only pick up enough for that day and don’t keep any until morning. But not everyone listened, so what they picked up spoiled and was filled with maggots. I believe God did this to build trust. He was saying, “look, I got you, okay? I got you. I will provide food for you every day. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to wonder what you will eat tomorrow because I will provide for you. You just have to trust me.”

I believe that’s what He still does today. He tells us not to take on too much and trust Him, yet we work on Sundays, we work overtime because we have the fear that we won’t be able to pay the bills. And I’m not saying that isn’t a real fear, but God said to put Him first, and He will provide everything you need. So don’t miss Church or miss time with God because of work, work but make time for God, and you will never be without. You will have enough to pay your bills and buy food. Just place your faith in God instead of yourself.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Pick Up Just Enough.

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