Latest Thoughts of the Day

Haggai 1:13

7/6/2025

Then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people, "I am with you", declares the Lord.

This is followed by the account of God stirring the hearts of leaders and people alike, and enabling them to take comfort from God’s reassurance. The people come to the worksite and take up the work with a renewed enthusiasm, generated by His word and His enablement to receive His word. And this latter is what we need, O Lord. We have your word now for thousands of years, but it has only had power in the lives of Your people when You have sent Your spirit into our hearts. The tasks for You that we face today deserve a level of involvement from us that we cannot muster on our own. For Your glory, send Your Spirit, that we might serve in a manner that honors Jesus.

Zephaniah 2:7

7/5/2025

It will belong to the remnant of the house of Judah; there they will find pasture. In the evening they will lie down in the houses of Ashkelon. The Lord their God will care for them; He will restore their fortunes

Six hundred years before Christ the Gaza strip is occupied by invaders, and God is promising to give the land back to His people. All the evidence of foreign occupation will be removed, and shepherds will be keeping their flocks where the enemy had interposed himself. The hope of peace and safety and provision has always been on the table between God and His people, and the outcome has always been determined by His people being willing to submit to His rule. Israel has lost again and again their land. Lord, help us to get back close to You. Give us a heart that loves Jesus.

Habakkuk 2:7

7/4/2025

Will not your debtors suddenly arise?Will they not wake up and make you tremble? Then you will become their victim.

God is planning the doom of Babylon, which He is raising up to punish Israel. One of Babylon’s greatest vulnerabilities is her financial state as a nation. For booty to feed your war machine takes a lot of steps, so debt is crucial to war success. God envisions as one of Babylon’s calamities all her debtors rising up to demand payment. If all our debtors rose up to demand our payment, we would be in trouble, too! And, spiritually, if we were called to account for all our sins, we would utterly perish. Crucial to our salvation is redemption. The debt we owe to God is immeasurable. It would take eternity to pay. But God sent His Son to pay the debt for us. Thank You, Jesus.

Nahum 1:7

7/3/2025

The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.

This wonderful reassurance is remarkable for its being in the middle of a most dreadful description of the havoc and destruction God is bringing upon Assyria. God will destroy enemies who have turned from repentance and forgiveness to an empire-building that put the world in terror. Destruction for them began outside of Jerusalem, where 185,000 soldiers were slain by the Angel of Death. Eventually, the end of all is near. But what about people of God caught up in the chaos? In the midst of it all, they will know God as their refuge and strength. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. There is peace at the center of the storm. “My peace I give unto you. Let not your hearts be troubled”, says Jesus.

Micah 3:5

7/2/2025

This is what the Lord says: "As for my prophets, who lead my people astray, if one feeds them they proclaim 'peace; if he does not, they prepare to wage war against him.:

People in official positions of leadership and guidance are entirely consumed by pursuing their own personal profit. They support and encourage those who contribute and they plot to overthrow those who are not useful to this end. There is no fear of God in them. Eventually God will destroy completely the entire system these men manipulate, but the spirit of selfishness and pride continues wherever it can. Men and women are concerned for “number one.” And such were we before God took hold of us—by nature children of wrath, even as others. Jesus died to set us free from self as well as free from sin. Number One in our lives has become Jesus.

Jonah 2:3

7/1/2025

You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

Jonah remembers the panic-attack moment when he saw that the swirling catastrophe after the sailors had thrown him to was in fact the hand of God casting him. He saw that it was God hurling him into the sea and he remembers with vividness the experience. The waves and the breakers were God’s. Perhaps when a man knows he is running from God it comes more quickly to his mind that the present calamity is from Him. But the car speeding toward us before our crash is God’s car, too. Every detail, whether good or bad is under the Lord’s direction. For those that are His, God works all things together for good. Our worst moments can bring us to Jesus.

Obadiah 7

6/30/2025

All your allies will force you to the border; your friends will deceive and overpower you; those who eat your bread will set a trap for you, but you will not detect it,

Obadiah’s mission is not salvation, but the declaration of doom. The day of grace will pass, and the guilty will reach a point of no return. Esau always hated Jacob, and millennia of enmity will bring final and complete destruction. Allies will force you to make the wrong decision, friends will stab you in the back, your best customers will contribute to your bankruptcy. God gave you every blessing you had, and He will take them all away. Lord, we are in Your hands, and we are guilty. You have promised us deliverance, and by Your grace we have been enabled to receive it. You did not want us to perish, and you sent Jesus.

Amos 3:5

6/29/2025

Does a bird fall into a trap on the ground where no snare has been set? Does a trap spring up from the earth where here is nothing to catch?

The people of Israel feel secure and safe because they are prospering materially, but their behavior toward God is setting them up for destruction. And it won’t just be bad luck. A bird is not snared out of nowhere. Traps don’t spring up of themselves. Amos will go on to say, “When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?” Do we think we will escape the consequences of our evil? Are we trusting to luck? What we sow, we reap, and everything will be judged. Lord, help us to see Your hand and take seriously Your word. Help us see obvious and necessary connections. Help us draw near in repentance and faith to Jesus.