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Day 7 - Sabbath - Saturday | Daily Devotions | Connect the Testaments | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

  January 17 Elisha said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see 2 Kings 6:17 This is the prayer we need to pray for ourselves and for one another, “Lord, open our eyes that we may see”; for the world all around us, as well as around the prophet, is full of God’s horses and chariots, waiting to carry us to places of glorious victory. And when our eyes are thus opened, we shall see in all the events of life, whether great or small, whether joyful or sad, a “chariot” for our souls. Everything that comes to us becomes a chariot the moment we treat it as such; and, on the other hand, even the smallest trial may be a Juggernaut car to crush us into misery or despair if we so consider them. It lies with each of us to choose which they shall be. It all depends, not upon what these events are, but upon how we take them. If we lie down under them, and let them roll over us and crush us, they become Juggernaut cars, but if we climb up into them, as into a car of victory, and m...

Day 6 - Friday | Daily Devotions | Connect the Testaments | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

  January 16: Save Us! Genesis 27, Matthew 20:17–21:22 , Ecclesiastes 6:5–12 “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Matt 21:9). Idiomatically, this means: “Save [me], I pray, the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of Yahweh! Save [me], I pray, by the highest!” When the people shout these words about Jesus as He enters Jerusalem, they affirm His divinely appointed role and His ability to save them. And the original psalm that this phrase comes from is about their God, Yahweh. Perhaps the people understood Jesus as one with God (Psa 118:25–26). As He enters Jerusalem, Jesus’ actions align with Zech 9:9, which foretells of a savior-king who will enter on a donkey (Matt 21:5). For first-century Jews, everything lined up to affirm Jesus as God’s way of bringing salvation, and they responded to Him as such. This prompts several questions: how often do we see the alignment between what’...

Day 5 - Thursday | Daily Devotions | Connect the Testaments | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

  January 15: I Understand How They Felt Genesis 26; Matthew 19:1–20:16 ; Ecclesiastes 6:1–4 “Allow the children, and do not forbid them to come to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 19:14). This is the type of Jesus I want to know. It’s easy for me to think of Jesus as a man I see in film or in Renaissance paintings—to make Him somehow distant in the process—but this Jesus is very compassionate and close. This Jesus takes the lowest members in society, outside of slaves, and promotes them to the ultimate status of equality: members of the kingdom of heaven, being God’s kingdom. The disciples didn’t understand this yet; instead they rebuke the people bringing their children to Jesus (Matt 19:14). The people bringing their children simply wanted Jesus to lay His healing hands on them and pray for them; the disciples saw a threat to Jesus’ image. The image Jesus wanted to portray was the opposite. It seems more often than not that I find myself worrying about ...

Day 4 - Wednesday | Daily Devotions | Connect the Testaments | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

  January 14: Unexpected Rivalries Genesis 25; Matthew 18; Ecclesiastes 5:12–20 When in survival mode, you have to compete against anything that could hinder your survival. Strong competitors, like professional athletes, often can’t explain their almost inhuman acts under pressure; adrenaline takes over. The same thing that the ancients used to escape from wild animals is what makes us win. Yet, for all the good that comes from a competitive survival instinct, it can result in ostracizing others. Esau and Jacob, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, reminds us of this. From the prophecy of Yahweh forward, we know that they will be rivals: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger” (Gen 25:23). Yahweh didn’t necessarily desire that the two would feud. A division doesn’t always mean a strained relationship, and the word “divided” in Hebrew doesn’t imply derision. Thos...