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October 22 – 26, 2018

Monday Luke 10:25-29 – Do This and You Will Live What is life, “true life”? Life that is truly life is and should be never-ending, eternal, and without a worry that one day life will end. That’s God’s life—eternal, without beginning, without end. Today’s passage shows a man described as an “expert in religious law”...

October 22, 2018December 17, 2018by
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October 15 – 19, 2018

Monday Luke 16:19-21 Agree or disagree: How Christians spend their money says a lot about what they believe about God. The Lord Jesus has been speaking and teaching with the crowds, among whom are the Pharisees (Luke 12-16). They are not pleased with what they have seen and heard from Jesus. Jesus uses this parable...

October 10, 2018December 17, 2018by
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October 8 – 12, 2018

Monday Devotional One Mark 4:4-20 Continuing our devotional series on the Parable of the Four Soils, we now focus our attention on seed that falls on good soil. Jesus borrows an image from 1st century Galilean agriculture to teach a spiritual lesson. In those days, farmers scattered seed far and wide before plowing, and that...

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October 1 – 5, 2018

Monday Mark 4:7, 18, 19 When we moved to Southern California, our family moved into a house with a large backyard. Since I love fruit and fruit trees, I decided to plant six fruit trees there. I thought that in this way I would have an abundance of fruit. My thinking was that the more...

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September 24 – 28, 2018

Monday Jeremiah 17:5-8 This week’s focus is on the importance of having roots or being grounded in our faith. When we are “rooted,” we can withstand things that come our way because our foundation is solid. This passage in Jeremiah is a great place to start talking about being rooted. Here the prophet paints a...

September 24, 2018September 24, 2018by
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September 17 – 21, 2018

Monday Matthew 13:1-23; Psalm 119:33-36 This week we consider one of Jesus’ first fully-developed parables. Our emphasis will be upon the sower and the hard ground “along the path” where the “seed” couldn’t take root before being “snatched away.” Jesus often used parables for public, larger group teaching, a method that perplexed many, including His...

September 17, 2018September 17, 2018by
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September 10 – 14, 2018

MONDAY Isaiah 40:21-31 Waiting. No one likes waiting. Impatience stirs within us. Anxiety creeps in. The desperate need to take control starts to bubble up inside us. Waiting. Perhaps one of the most uncomfortable things we have to do is wait. Right now, I am in a season of waiting. Waiting on the Lord for...

September 10, 2018September 10, 2018by
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September 3 – 7, 2018

MONDAY Romans 12:1-2 Every day Paul is urging his fellow Christians to present their bodies to God as a living and holy sacrifice. That means that every day that we are alive we should be living for God. We should be leaning into the day in order to live for God. Paul says this kind...

September 3, 2018September 10, 2018by
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August 27 – 31, 2018

Monday Genesis 3:1-19; Habakkuk 1:2-4 Evil, Pain and Suffering: Why? The skeptic reasons, “If God is loving, all-powerful and all-knowing, how can He permit evil and its consequences? Since evil exists, God either is not as described or nonexistent.” Lee Strobel, in The Case for Christ, describes a cartoon featuring two turtles in conversation. Turtle...

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August 20 – 24, 2018

MONDAY Psalm 14:1-3; Psalm 19:1-4; John 1:1-5 Creator or Randomness: Is there a God? Over these next two weeks, we’ll consider the “big questions” that most have pondered periodically. We start with the biggest question, the one on which all else hinges: Is there a God? The two broad, opposing camps here are theists—those believing...