Daily Hope Devotional

To experience significance in life, you must serve with others in ministry. Ministry just means doing good to other people. Significance does not come from status or a hood ornament on your car or a logo on your shirt. Significance does not come from a bigger salary. Significance does not come from sex. Significance comes from service. Significance comes when you start thinking about other people more than yourself and you give your life away. You cannot be selfish and significant at the same time. The Bible says in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each of you has received a gift to use to serve others” (NCV). The talents you were given are not for your benefit. God gave them to you for the benefit of the people around you. You are shaped for significance, and you find that significance by using your gifts and talents and abilities to serve other people. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says, “Two people are better than one, because they get more done by working together. If one falls down, the other ...

“He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow.” (Ephesians 4:16a NLT, second edition) There are some things you will never learn on your own. You only learn them in community. To grow and develop your potential, you must learn from other people. For instance, you can only learn forgiveness in relationships. You can’t learn that on your own. You can only learn loyalty in relationships. You can only learn love in relationships. You can’t learn kindness or faithfulness or graciousness or unselfishness without others. In fact the most important things you need to learn in life require that you be in relationship to other people. You can’t do it on your own. If you want to build your potential, you must learn from others. Where is the best place to do that? In the family of God. In the Body of Christ. In the church. Ephesians 4:16 says, “He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does ...

“We are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around …. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of His body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we?”  (Romans 12:4-5 MSG) We only learn who we are in relationship. We only learn our true identity in community. You’ll never learn who you really are by yourself. You only learn it in relationships. That means you must connect with others for fellowship. If you had been born and lived your entire life to adulthood with no human contact, you wouldn’t have the slightest idea who or what you were. You wouldn’t even know you were a human being. You only know that because you’re in relationship to other human beings. You learn your identity by being in relationships. The Bible says we need to be connected to God’s family, the Body of Christ: “We are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets ...

To strengthen your faith, you must unite with others in worship. Worship is for God, but it also has benefits for you. Here are two of the biggest benefits of corporate worship: It renews your faith, and it restores your joy. Isaiah 40:31 says, “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (NIV). How many times have you gotten up on a Sunday morning and said, “I am so tired. I really don’t have any energy to go to church,” but then you went to church and worshipped and afterward you were more energized? That happens because worship renews you. It strengthens you. It strengthens your faith. You’re not going to get your strength renewed by watching golf on tv. That’s just going to make you lazier and lazier. You get renewed by worshipping God with other believers. As a pastor, sometimes I think of myself like the coach in the boxing movie “Rocky.” Rocky is out ther...

“Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.” (Psalm 126:5-6 NLT, second edition) You need to plant by faith, not by your feelings. Do you think that every day a farmer wakes up excited to go to work on his farm? No. It’s hard work! But if a farmer only worked his crops when he felt like it, not much would get done. He may not want to get up early. He may not want to go harvest and plant and weed. But he does it anyway. Let me make a little confession: I don’t always feel like being nice to people. I hate to admit it! Sometimes I want to be cranky. Sometimes I just want to say, “Leave me alone!” I don’t always feel like being kind. I don’t always feel like being generous. I don’t always feel like giving people hope. I don’t always feel like preaching. But I don’t happen to live by my feelings. I happen to live by faith. Sometimes I plant when I’m tired. Sometimes I plant w...

When you’re persecuted, harassed, and face opposition, you need to respond with a blessing. Jesus says in Luke 6:27-29, “Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also” (NLT, second edition). Who does that?! Not many people, actually. It’s what sets Christians apart, because it’s not a natural or popular or easy response. It takes a lot of courage to do those things! Any fool can fight back. Any wimp can retaliate. Any idiot can say something mean back. Even parrots can be taught to curse. God wants you to love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who hurt you, and turn the other cheek. Is that easy? No. You can only do it by being filled with God’s love. And, it is the most powerful form of witness. When you refuse to retaliate and instead respond in l...

There are people out there who say God wants everybody to be a millionaire. God never wants anybody to have cancer. God never wants any problems in your life. But the Bible says sometimes suffering is God’s will for your life. Why? Because it makes you more like Jesus. It deepens your faith. It brings you rewards in Heaven. It builds your character. It teaches you to worship instead of worry. There are three kinds of suffering in the world. Common suffering is suffering that’s common to everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re Baptist or Buddhist or Muslim or atheist or whatever. Everybody suffers certain things. When a hurricane comes into town, it doesn’t just pick on Christians. There is suffering in the world that we all share in common. The second kind of suffering is carnal suffering. That’s suffering you bring on yourself from your own sin. If I go out and live a very loose immoral life and get a sexually transmitted disease, that’s my fault. It’s not God’s fault. It’s no...

When you face opposition because of your faith, you need to recognize the source of the opposition. It’s not other people. It’s not your coworkers. It’s not a political party. It’s not some other nation or religion. It’s not a competitor. The pressure you feel to cave in or be quiet or sit down when you should stand up, that pressure is not coming from other people. It’s really coming from Satan. In Revelation 12:10 Satan is called  “the accuser of the Christians.”  His number one job is to put you down. There is an unseen spiritual battle going on all around you. This pressure to keep you from doing the right thing is not really coming from other people. They’re just weapons. Most of the time they don’t even know they’re being used. The real issue is spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:12 says,  “We are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world”  (TEV). Satan knows it’s stupid to attack Jesus Christ direc...

You should never be embarrassed for standing for the truth and doing what’s right. The Bible says in 1 Peter 4:16, “It is no shame to suffer for being a Christian. Praise God for the privilege of being called by His name!” (NLT, second edition) Let me ask you some questions: Is an insult going to kill you? No. Is a putdown going to kill you? No. Is somebody calling you a name or labeling you because you’ve made a stand for Christ going to hurt you? No. Is some troll on the Internet who’s trying to bait you and get you in an argument going to take you down? No. It’s not going to kill you. You need to understand something that will liberate your life: You don’t need other people’s approval to be happy. You may have been trying to get the approval of a certain person for many years. I hate to tell you, but if you haven’t got it by now, you’re not going to get it. The good news is you don’t need it! You don’t need anybody’s approval in order to be happy. No matter what you do ...

“[God] has restored our relationship with Him through Christ, and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships. In other words, God was using Christ to restore His relationship with humanity. He didn’t hold people’s faults against them, and He has given us this message of restored relationships to tell others.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19 GW) When you want to repair a relationship where there is conflict, you have to focus on reconciliation, not resolution. There’s a big difference! Reconciliation means reestablishing the relationship. It doesn’t mean you’ll remarry your ex; it just means you’re at peace with each other. Resolution means you resolve every disagreement, and that just isn’t going to happen. Because the truth is, there are some things in your marriage, your friendships, and your work relationships that you’re just never going to agree on, because we’re all different. But you can disagree without being disagreeable. That’s called maturity. That’s called wi...

Christianity is not for weaklings, wimps, or the faint of heart. It takes courageous men and women to follow Jesus. People all over the world are suffering like we will never suffer as Americans. But what is it costing you to follow Christ? It’s unlikely you’ll ever have to deal with violent oppression. But you deal with silent repression every single day as our culture becomes more and more secularized and anti-Christian. When you are faced with opposition because of your faith, it’s natural to feel afraid. So how do you get rid of the fear of opposition? How do you get rid of the fear of disapproval? How do you get rid of the fear of being rejected? You need to be filled with God’s love. The Bible says there’s no fear in love and perfect love casts out all fear. When you face opposition, you focus on God’s love for you. People who rest in the assurance of God’s love aren’t afraid of rejection. They aren’t afraid of disapproval. The Bible says in 1 Peter 3:14-15, “If you su...

When you feel pressured by the world because you love Jesus and other people don’t, you need to remember three things: 1) Opposition can make you more like Jesus.  Jesus says in John 15:18-20, “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted Me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to Me, they would listen to you” (NLT, second edition). If you’re going to grow up and be like Jesus Christ, then you’re going to have to go through the things Jesus went through, including loneliness, discouragement, stress, and temptation. What makes you think God would spare you when He didn’t spare His Own Son from those things? 2) Opposition will deepen your faith.  Your faith is like a muscle. A mu...

When you meet someone to resolve a conflict, you first have to confess your part of the problem. Then, you need to listen for the other person’s hurt and perspective. We think we argue over ideas. But we actually argue over emotion. Any time there’s a conflict, somebody got his feelings hurt. Somebody felt abused. Somebody felt slighted. It’s not the ideas that cause the conflict. It’s the emotion behind the idea. Hurt people hurt people. The more people are hurting, the more they lash out at everybody else. People who aren’t hurting don’t hurt others. People who are filled with love are loving toward others. People who are filled with joy are joyful to others. People who are filled with peace are at peace with everybody else. But people who are hurting inside are going to hurt others. They’re going to lash out. If you want to connect with people, you must start with their needs, their hurts, and their interests. If you want to be a good salesman, you don’t start with your pro...

One of the most important life skills that you have to learn is conflict resolution. If you don’t, you’re going to spend a lot of your life miserable, because we’re imperfect people, and we have conflict almost every day of our lives. If you want to resolve conflict, you’re going to have to make the first move. That means you’re going to have to ask for God’s help, because it takes courage to approach someone you are in conflict with and tell that person you want to sit down and work it out. Then, you don’t start with what the other person has done wrong. You don’t start with a bunch of accusations or ways that you’ve been hurt. You start with what’s your fault. The conflict may be 99.99 percent their fault. But you can always find something to confess! Maybe it was your poor response, even if it came out of defensiveness. Maybe it was your attitude. Maybe it was the way you walked away. You have weaknesses in your life that others see clearly but you’ve never seen. Those ar...

Integrity demands that every area of your life is treated with the same intensity. You have the same commitment to excellence in your marriage as you do in your career. You have the same commitment to excellence in ministry as you do in your parenting. Let me give you six ways you can work this week to become a person of integrity. You become a person of integrity by … 1) Keeping your promises.  People of integrity keep their word. If they say they’ll do it, they do it. If they say they’ll be there, they show up. The Bible says in Proverbs 25:14, “People who promise things that they never give are like clouds and wind that bring no rain” (TEV). 2) Paying your bills.  You may not think this is a big deal, but it’s a big deal to God. Do you spend more money than you make? That is a lack of integrity. Do you get yourself in debt for things that you can’t pay off? That is a lack of integrity. Psalm 37:21 says, “The wicked borrow and never pay back.” 3) Refusing to go...

It may be tough for you to read a message about integrity, because you’re replaying in your mind all the times you’ve fallen short, all the opportunities you had to show integrity and didn’t, all the moral failures in your life. We could all make a similar list of failures. St. Augustine said that the confession of bad works is the beginning of good works. If you are serious about becoming a man or woman of integrity, the first step is to admit that you haven’t had integrity. You just admit that you don’t always keep your promises. You often gossip, and you like it. Sometimes you slack off at work. You pretend to be someone you’re not. Just admit it all to God! A lot of people segment their lives and think they can live with integrity when they are harboring sin in one area of life as long as it doesn’t affect the other areas. I call this the Titanic myth. The Titanic was supposed to be the first unsinkable ship because it was the first ship to segment and compartmentalize the...

In a world that is absolutely obsessed with appearance and image, how in the world do you keep it real when everybody else is faking it? They don’t have integrity. They’re scooting by and they’re skimming and they’re cheating. They’re not keeping their promises. How do you keep it real? There’s only one way. You’ve got to care more about God’s approval than the approval of other people. That’s the only way you’ll ever become a man or woman of integrity. Because if you care about what God thinks, then you’re going to do the right thing. If you care more about what other people think, you’re often going to do the wrong thing. Psalm 119:9 says, “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to Your Word” ( NIV). The only way you’re going to know what God approves of and what He thinks of you is by reading the Bible. You must stay in God’s Word! If you don’t, you will not have the strength and the stamina to live with integrity. If I don’t have a dail...

The Bible says that God blesses those who have integrity (Matthew 5:8). So what are the blessings you can expect when you live your life with authenticity and a pure heart? 1) Personal Confidence When you have integrity, you become the kind of person that other people like to be around because you know who you are and where you’re going. Proverbs 10:9 says,  “People with integrity walk safely, but those who follow crooked paths will be exposed”  (NLT, second edition). When you don’t have integrity, it’s like walking on an icy path after a snowstorm. You’re putting every bit of your energy into trying not to fall. When you have integrity, you’re standing on solid ground. 2) A Lasting Legacy Your greatest legacy is your integrity, because it will last from generation to generation. Everything else that you do gets lost. When you’re gone, your money will be divided among your family, and it’s going to be spent. Your work will be given to somebody else. All the trop...

The Bible says in Matthew 5:8, “God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God” (NLT, second edition). To “see God” means to experience the presence of God. Believers who have a pure heart get to feel the power of God. They get to know the purpose of God for their lives. They get to live in the peace of God. They experience the pardon of God. Do you want to be one of those people? We don’t talk a lot these days about being pure in heart, but we do use the word “integrity.” To have integrity does not mean you are perfect, because if it did, none of us would have it! So what does it mean to have integrity? 1) Integrity is wholeness. A lot of people think of their life like a pie, and the different parts of their life are the pieces of the pie. This slice of the pie is my career. This is my work life. This is my spiritual life. Then this is my family life. That one is my social life. Then over here is my secret life — my compulsions, addictions, and the things...

In yesterday’s devotional, we talked about seven facets of mercy. Today, I want you to consider some personal application questions for each of the aspects. I want to challenge you to commit an act of premeditated mercy in each of these categories this week. Wait. Isn’t there a tension between mercy and personal responsibility? Yes, there is. But I have personally decided that if I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of being too gracious, too merciful, and too forgiving. You can go overboard on mercy — just look at what Jesus did on the cross. So, how will you be merciful? 1) Be patient with people’s quirks.  Who is that person in your life who has irritating quirks? How can you practice patience with that person this week? 2) Help anyone around you who is hurting.  Who around you is obviously hurting that you can help this week? If you can’t think of anybody, then you’re not paying attention. Look closer! 3) Give people a second chance.  Who do ...