Solid Joys Daily Devotional

We won’t bear tomorrow’s load on today’s resources. Today’s mercies are for today’s troubles. Tomorrow’s mercies are for tomorrow’s troubles.

Come to God in prayer, to confess your sins, and to accept, as needy little farmyard chicks, the direction of God into the barn of his protection and provision.

God delights in having his name known and honored. The first and most important prayer that can be prayed is, “Hallowed be your name.”

Sheer sowing produces reaping. You must remember this, even when your tears tempt you to give up.

Trust Christ, no matter what. Go with him, no matter where. You cannot lose in the end.

When you are cast into the cellars of affliction, remember that the great King keeps his best wine there.

The biblical criterion for misplaced shame and for well-placed shame is radically God-centered.

It is good not to talk very long about God without talking to God. Frequently interrupt your talking about God by talking to God.

When Christ died and rose again, Satan was defeated. Jesus struck the decisive blow at Calvary.

Don’t just do good things for your enemies. Desire their best, and express those desires in prayer, even when they’re nowhere around.

Jesus is not just alive from the dead, but he is alive as the King who will reign forever — of his kingdom there will be no end.

Salvation is secured for all who are written in the book of life, not because of their deeds, but because Christ was slain for them.

Sometimes God will strengthen your faith directly. But most of the time, he does so through another person.

O God, help us to feel worse about our own shortfalls than the failure of others.

If you live inside the massive promise of Romans 8:28, your life is more solid and stable than Mount Everest.

In the Father, you are under God’s care and protection. In the Son, you are under God’s charge and authority.

Only one thing satisfies the heart whose treasure is in heaven: doing the works of heaven. And heaven is a world of love!

Our perseverance doesn’t rest decisively on the reliability of our own resolve. It rests decisively on God’s work to keep us trusting him.

God will not spare any effort to give you all that Christ died to purchase — all things, all good, and all bad working for your good.

When others abandon you, strengthen your heart with God’s inexorable oath: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Because Christ rose from the grave, God’s children are forgiven. No one can successfully bring a charge against those who are in Christ.

Never reduce Christianity to a matter of demands and resolutions and willpower. It is a matter of what we love, what we delight in, what tastes good to us.

When we trust Jesus, his presence and promise is so satisfying that we are not dominated by the alluring pleasures of sin.

Hear God say to you in all your troubles, “I will deliver you. You will triumph in the end. You will be more than a conqueror.”

Knowledge doesn’t guarantee godliness. But it seems that ignorance guarantees ungodliness. The power that leads to godliness is given through knowing God.

When temptations come, arm yourself with this thought: When my Lord suffered and died to free me from sin, I died to sin!

Whatever else gives way, whatever else disappoints, whatever else fails, God’s all-encompassing promise of future grace can never fail.

If there is any hope for eternity in the presence of God, we need a Redeemer, a Substitute, a Savior. Christ died and rose to be that hope.

Good news! Eternal life is a free gift to all who will trust in Christ as Lord and Savior and supreme Treasure of their lives.

The salvation Jesus obtained through his blood was everything it takes to save his people, not just part of it.

Prayer is the confident plea for God to make good on his promises of future grace — for Christ’s sake.

Christ can promise universal victory because he is sovereign. He knows the future because he makes the future.

Since Satan’s doom is sure, and he knows it, we can always remind him of it when he tempts us to follow him.

God is so powerful and so gracious that in the end he will turn ruthless nations to revere him. He cannot fail.

Because of Christ, we say Amen to God in our prayers to show that God gets the glory for the future grace we are counting on.

With all the power in the universe and with the absolute right to do as he pleases with what he made, God is for us.

The mercy and the sovereignty of God are the twin pillars of your life. They will stand by your deathbed, and with strong and tender hands lift you to God.

Your prayers are the aroma of heaven, sweet smelling before the throne of God and before the Lamb.

Pride is a form of unbelief. Faith admits need. Pride won’t. Faith banks on God. Pride won’t. Faith casts anxieties on God. Pride won’t.

A mustard seed of faith is infinitely closer to being a mountain of faith than it is to being no faith. There is an infinite difference between a spark and no spark.

How can you experience an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Meditate day and night on the promises of God.

You cannot sink so low in despairing of your own resources that God does not see and care. He is at the bottom waiting to catch you.

Turn from self and come to Jesus as your source for true joy. His fullness will satisfy your itch of emptiness.

There are no lapses in God’s commitment or in his joy in doing good to his children — to those who trust him.

The evidence of God’s power in our lives is not the absence of our willing, but the strength and joy of our willing.

When some fear or craving threatens to lead us into sin, we are to take the sword of the Spirit and kill it.

Pilate’s authority over Jesus was subordinate to God’s authority over Pilate. So, Jesus did not fear.

God declares us righteous, which gives us unshakable security in the face of tremendous suffering.

The hope of the resurrection radically changed the way Paul lived. His life counted. His suffering was meaningful.

God’s wrath was once on us. But because he made us alive, all that wrath is removed. He is now 100% for us.

Take heart. If you have faith in Jesus, God himself declares, “You are greatly loved.”

The clearest answer in Acts to the question why a person believes the gospel is that God opens the heart.

Those who suffer for Christ will receive the Holy Spirit’s power and rest at their greatest hour of need.

The fullness of Jesus Christ is a divine, accessible, glorious, delivered, blessed, true fullness.

Jesus Christ is exuberant with omnipotent service for the sake of all who trust him.

Because of Jesus’s resurrection, he now has the glory for which we were made. Our ultimate destiny is to see him as he is.

When it’s forty degrees warmer in your freezer than it is outside, the message is clear: Don’t mess with God.

Christ said Paul was going to Rome. And that was that. No ambush can stand against the promise of Christ.

Oh, how sweet are the designs of God in the sovereign salvation of hardened, hopeless sinners!

Do you desire God? Will you trust him? The word of God to you is: God is worthy and God is able.

Every step Jesus took on the Calvary road meant, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Jesus is the end for which the universe was made, and the means that makes that end possible to enjoy.

When you desire the city of God above everything else on the earth, he is not ashamed to be called your God. Your life pleases him.

It is a most striking thing how personal and national suffering drew Abraham Lincoln into the reality of God, rather than pushing him away.

Amazingly, Paul connects our liberation with Jesus as our Master, and he connects our new slavery with Jesus as our Messiah.

Living and dying by faith means having new desires and seeking new satisfactions.

Take all the things that drive this world, and ponder how much better and more abiding God is.

Submitting to God enables us to have the supremely satisfying experience of not being God, but admiring the Godness of God.

God surely has reasons for waiting to give you the breakthrough you have sought for decades. Keep asking in hope.

Because Jesus died in our place, he guaranteed that every good deed will prosper — sooner or later.

The main task of all the ministries of the church is helping people see the greatness of what Christ has purchased for everyone who will value it above the world.

Suffering has a great sin-killing effect. The more pure we are, the more clearly we see God.

We should emphasize that God loves and forgives for his own glory because the Bible does, and because it makes clear that God loves us with the greatest love.

God forgave us when we first believed in Christ. Then, from that broken, joyful, grateful, hopeful experience of being forgiven, we offer forgiveness to others.

Christians are included in the Davidic covenant. What David received, we will also receive in Christ Jesus.

Don’t let your ignorance of the micro reasons for suffering cause you to overlook the massive help God tells us in his word of his macro purposes for us.

Irresistable grace does not mean grace cannot be resisted. It means that when God chooses, he can and will overcome that resistance.

There is no hope for God’s people unless he causes them to return from their leaping into sin and unbelief.

Feeling rotten about your sin is not the same as repenting from it. But it can lead there.

The same God who feeds billions of birds every hour around the world will take care of you.

We get the help; God gets the glory. That arrangement keeps us humble and happy, and keeps him supreme and glorious.

Times of suffering and deliverance are both God’s stages of care for you. He has not left you or forsaken you.

Jesus will take care of you when you take care of others. That’s why there were leftovers after Jesus fed the multitudes.

Jesus provides an ever-present, ever-living witness to the removal of the Father’s wrath from us.

When Jesus says, “I will grant him to sit with me on my throne,” he promises us a share in the rule of all things.

Jesus anchored the happiness of suffering saints in the reward of heaven. And he anchored the happiness of successful saints in the same.

If we don’t call to mind what God has said about himself and about us, we will languish. Never forget that our God is the God of the impossible.

Every little thing you do that is good is seen and valued and rewarded by the Lord. And he will pay you back for it.

Yield to the sovereignty of God in all the details of life, and rest in his infallible promises to show himself mighty on your behalf.

Receive Christ, welcome Christ, embrace Christ — not just as your fire insurance policy, but as your eagerly awaited Treasure and Friend and Lord.

Be patient and loving as despairing people wake up from their dark night and regret their hasty words.

What act could be more one-sidedly free and non-negotiated than one person raising another from the dead? This is the meaning of grace.

Our emotions are governed in large measure by what we consider — what we dwell on with our minds.

When the command of God comes with the creating, converting power of the Holy Spirit, it gives life. And we believe and rejoice and obey.

Freedom from greed comes from the deeply satisfying faith in God’s future grace.

If God exists, then he is the measure of all things, and what he thinks about all things is the measure of what we should think.

When God judges believers in the end, he will forgive us all our sins and grant us life everlasting.

God is not the God of some grace. He is the God of all grace — including the infinite, inexhaustible stores of future grace that we need to endure to the end.

Christ promises to work for us, and to be for us so much that, when our missionary life is over, we will not be able to say we’ve sacrificed anything.

God gives both the sustaining grace we need in times of trouble, and the suffering which makes us depend on his grace.

This is God’s will for you and this is why Christ died: that you would draw near to God.

Satan is helpless to do the one thing he wants to do most: damn us. Christ bore our damnation.

Does your faith make you eager to forsake sin and make progress in holiness? That’s the kind of faith God requires.

The strength of your faith does not uproot trees. God does. The object of your faith is more important than the quantity of your faith.

If you are a Christian, death is no longer a punishment for sin. Your sin has been put away by the death of Christ. Christ took the punishment.

Be thankful for the past grace from the last year, and be confident in the future grace for the new year.

The lifetime of this year passes before our eyes, and we face the inevitable question: Did we live it well?

When God works in our hearts by the blood of Christ, we feel and think and act in ways more pleasing to him.

Flee from the wrath of God, tremble with joy that you are saved, and rescue others along the way.

Study the glory of God. Treasure it in all things and above all things. Then study your soul. Know why you treasure glories that are not God’s glory.

God did not create humans in his image to be aimless, like lifeless leaves blown around in the backyard of life. He created us to be purposeful.

Christ’s death was judgment on him because he bore our sins (not his own), and it was mercy toward us who trust him.

Jesus offers you a clear purpose for living, hope that your failures will be forgiven, and help in your fight against sin.

Jesus appeared in the world for two reasons: to help us stop sinning, and to satisfy God’s anger when we do sin.

Look to Jesus this Christmas. Receive the reconciliation that he purchased. Don’t put the gift on the shelf unopened.

The whole Bible is written that you might be awakened to the wonder that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world.

Jesus’s birth was not a coming into being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person.

If you want to give a gift to God this Christmas, walk off the assembly line of sin and don’t go back. Take up your place, instead, in the picket line of love.

Forgiven, we are indestructible. Satan’s plan was to condemn God’s followers in God’s own courtroom. But now, in Christ, there is no condemnation.

Distrust God’s mercy, and all is lost. But conquer here, and nothing can harm you for a million ages.

God put our sins on his Son and judged them there, so that he could put them out of his mind, and deal with us mercifully and remain just.

God delights to show his power through apparent defeat. He sometimes retreats in order to win strategic victories.

Jesus came that we might have Life, now and forever. Make your Now the richer and deeper this Christmas by drinking at the fountain of Forever. It is so near.

The meaning of Christmas is that God takes salvation, puts it in your heart, and seals you as his child.

Our High Priest is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. No Old Testament priest could ever say that.

Jesus came to orient all our attention on himself, ministering for us first on Calvary as our final Sacrifice and then in heaven as our final Priest.

In dying, Christ de-fanged the devil. How? By covering all our sin. This means that Satan has no legitimate grounds to accuse us before God.

Giving gifts to Christ is like fasting — going without something to show that Christ is more valuable than what you are going without.

Let this Christmas be the time when you ponder what it means — what it costs — to worship and follow Jesus, the Messiah.

God influenced the stars in the sky to get a little handful of foreign magi to Bethlehem so that they would worship his Son.

Christmas proves how Jesus is Messiah — a King, and Promise-Fulfiller — for all the nations, not just Israel.

The key that unlocks the treasure chest of God’s peace is faith in the promises of God.

God could have seen to it that Jesus have a room at his birth. But that would have been a detour off the Calvary road.

Do not think, because you experience adversity, that the hand of the Lord is shortened.

For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done.

The only people whose soul can truly magnify the Lord are people like Elizabeth and Mary. So, this Advent, imitate their lowliness and cheerful humility.

This Advent, bend the efforts of your imagination to make the wonder of Jesus’s arrival visible for your children.

No matter how dirty with sin you are, through Christ you can see the light of God’s glory and believe.

Our greatest problem is alienation from God. The only solution is the blood of Christ.

At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one’s own greatness. But genuine gratitude glorifies God because it admits that we need him.

The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is.

Our salvation is as secure as Christ’s priesthood is indestructible. His deity and resurrection from the dead secure his indestructible priesthood for us.

A life that gives glory to God for his grace and a life of deepest gladness are the same life. And what makes them one is thankfulness.

When Christ died for us, he did not buy the freedom from having to hold fast, but the enabling power to hold fast.

It is as unlikely that God will break his word of promise to bless us as it is that he will despise himself.

Getting ready to feast on all God’s word is not first an intellectual challenge; it is first a moral challenge.

A thankful spirit is others-exalting and glad-hearted. Therefore, pray for a great awakening of humble gratitude.

Death is gain because Christians will then be perfect, pain-free, rested, at home, and with Christ.

Because we have a Great High Priest, the throne of God is a throne of grace.

The word of God is our only hope. It is sharp, living, and active. Therefore, be of good cheer in your battle to believe.

Don’t be a fatalist. Be a Christian. Change is possible. God is alive. Christ is risen. The promises are true.

Take up the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit for help, lay the promises up in your heart, and fight the good fight — to live by faith in future grace.

When you feel discouraged and anxious, cling to God’s promises to be with you and uphold you.

When you marvel at the wonders of creation, do not marvel at the processes of chance but at the creativity of God.

The Bible’s warnings are written that you might believe and endure, and have life.

Satan cannot destroy us. In fact, God turns all his attacks finally against him and for us.

Becoming a Christian and being a Christian happen in the same way: by hoping in Jesus.

When anxiety blurs our vision of God’s glory, it does not mean that we are faithless. It means our faith is being attacked.

One day, we will see God’s glory, and marvel at it in such a way that he will be glorified in us for all the world to see.

It is possible to pursue God without glorifying God. If we want our quest to honor God, we must pursue him for the joy of fellowship with him.

There are precious experiences of the love of God that require that we fight pride, seek humility, and cherish the nearness of God.

Loving acts are genuine to the degree that they are not done begrudgingly.

Being a Christian is a very serious business, though not a sour business. We are simply blood-earnest about being happy in our great salvation.

What you thought was a mere struggle with an anxious disposition might really be a far deeper struggle with trusting God.

It is truer in suffering than anywhere else that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Whether we focus on the riches of the reward or the refining effects of suffering, God’s purpose is that our joy in suffering be sustained.

We exhibit the sufferings of Christ when we ourselves suffer for those we are trying to win.

God designs suffering not only as a way to wean Christians off of self and onto grace, but also as a way to spotlight that grace and make it shine.

Be satisfied in Jesus so that you do not get lured downstream by deceitful desires.

Suffering proves our allegiance to Christ’s goodness and reveals his worth as an all-sufficient prize.

Jesus himself makes up for every sacrifice he will ever call us to make. It is worth it to lose it all in order to gain Christ.

God has a people in every people group. He will call them through the gospel with Creator power. And they will believe!

“All things are possible with God!” — in front the words give hope, and behind they give humility. They are the antidote to both despair and pride.

God’s call is irresistible in the sense that it can overcome all resistance. It is infallibly effective according to God’s purpose.

We see the sun by means of seeing the rays of the sun. So also we see God the Father by seeing Jesus.

The Word that God spoke by his Son is the decisive Word. It will not be followed in this age by any greater word or replacement word.

When Christ redeems marriage, he does not dismantle loving headship and willing submission. He restores it.

Husbands and wives should seek to live after the distinctive model of God’s pure and glad design for Christ and the church.

The first priority in praying is to ask our heavenly Father to cause his name to be hallowed. In us. In the church. In the world. Everywhere.

The union between Christ and his bride is so close that any good done to her is a good done to himself.

Jesus did not want a dirty and unholy wife. Therefore, he was willing to die to cleanse her so that he could present her to himself.

You can steal to get; or you can work to get; or you can work to get in order to give.

It is a horrifying thing to use your God-given life to commit adultery against the Almighty.

One of the main reasons we so often fail to have consistent habits of happy, fruitful prayer is simply that we don’t plan to.

God takes out our old proud hearts and gives new soft ones, which are easily humbled and crushed by the sin that remains.

The very heart of God’s glory is the fullness of grace that overflows in kindness to needy people.

God aims to be our servant, because he aims to get the glory as the Giver.

God is glorified when we turn away from ourselves to him in the confidence that he will provide the help we need.

The greatest news is that the cross upholds the worth of God’s glory, the honor of his Son, and the eternal salvation of his elect.

The good news is that God himself has decreed a way to satisfy the demands of his justice without condemning the whole human race.

All the omnipotent energy that drives the heart of God to pursue his own glory also drives him to satisfy the hearts of those who seek their joy in him.

Be freed from the burden of bearing your own load. Let God do that work. God loves to show his God-ness by working for us.

When we share in the happiness of God, we share in the very pleasure that the Father has in the Son.

When you lay down the burden of vengeance, God will pick it up.

Imagine being able to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever. One day, God’s delight in his Son will be in us.

God does not need us. Instead, his infinite self-sufficiency spills over in love to us who need him.

If none of God’s purposes can be frustrated, then he must be the happiest of all beings.

The quest for joy is not optional, but commanded.

Joy is not a mere option alongside worship. It is an essential component of worship.

Take up the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit for help, lay the promises up in your heart, and fight the good fight — to live by faith in future grace.