Author: Dwight Clough

[God] satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. — Psalm 103:5A little desire snuck into the back of my mind. It was an evil desire, but it tasted good to me. Wanting to be a good Christian, I knew, of course, that I couldn’t allow it in my mind. I tried to ignore it and and move on with other thoughts.But the Lord stopped me. "Why did you desire that?" He asked me.I wanted to squirm out of it. I was talking and praying with my wife, and to really deal with…

[God] redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion. — Psalm 103:4This, of course, is what we are trying to do with our lives. We are trying to find some noble purpose, some worthy cause to live and die for. We are looking for a better life. The better life that so often eludes us has not eluded God. We may be chasing rainbows, but God owns the pot of gold. To the person next to you, you might just be another person making widgets or answering the phone. But to God your life has…

[God] forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. — Psalm 103:3We often focus on the terrible price Jesus paid so that our sins might be forgiven. This is important, but I think the Lord also wants us to see how much He values His children. This is the point of the story of the Prodigal Son. The father puts the best robe on his wayward son and puts a ring of authority on his finger.God is in the business of reversing the effects of human sin. All of us have made terrible choices. But our bad choices are…

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord … — Isaiah 6:1King Uzziah pushed and bullied his way into the temple (2 Chronicles 26) to demand an audience with God. Uzziah’s leprosy was a lingering reminder that God declined the interview.But God showed Himself to Isaiah. You could say the purpose was to give Isaiah his commission. But it was more than that. The words of Isaiah ring out with a kind of clarity that only comes when someone has had a vision of the Almighty. During Isaiah’s lifetime, the boot of Assyria fell on the neck…

By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. — Acts 3:16I often think about the verse, "And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it from whose face earth and heaven fled away and there was found no place for them." When God is revealed, everything is transformed. I can’t find words strong enough to express what happens when God makes His entrance.I was asking the Lord why faith was so important to Him, and I think He was telling me that faith provides an avenue for…

So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. — Acts 3:5The man in this passage was lame from birth. His expectations were molded by his limitations. He would never walk. He would never work. He would always beg. In his world, there were only two kinds of people — those who gave him money and those who didn’t. You could draw a small circle and write inside it with tiny words, "our expectations." For that is what they are — tiny compared to the gift of God.We hope for money, or some improvement in our…

"Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." — Acts 11:9What has God made clean? Is it not His own children — you and I — who are washed? (1 Corinthians 6:11)Part of the adventure of the Christian life is making the discovery of who we really are. How many of us have felt embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, dirty, inadequate? We all have felt some or all of those feelings. But when God forgives, He also offers us the grace to forgive ourselves. When God washes us, He wants us to look in the mirror and see clean.The gospel…

… to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve Him without fear … — Luke 1:74If we really understood the truth, could anything frighten us? The Bible says, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, what can mortal man do to me?" Well, mortal man can do quite a bit. But Paul, who received "quite a bit" from the hand of mortal man said, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us." What does…

Guest devotional by James R. Jones (continued from yesterday)When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? — Psalm 8:3-4Yesterday we learned that if every star in the universe were shrunk down to the size of the head of a pin, those stars would fill 3 billion stadiums to overflowing.Now, add to this knowledge these facts: The mother of our son’s wife is a dear elderly woman who makes baby blankets as…

Guest devotional by James R. JonesWhen I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? — Psalm 8:3-4I read recently that if every star in this incredible universe could be made the size of the head of a pin — and then if all these stars could be poured into Miami’s Orange Bowl Stadium (Can you imagine how many stars it would require to make a depth of only one foot?), all these…