Hope For Today
Daily Encouragement for a Healing Heart from the Word of God
Deep pain and brokenness have a way of making Bible study difficult. To help bridge the gap and re-ignite our hunger for the Word of God, we’ve put together a daily devotional designed to help us all lean into God as we heal. May we seek Him daily!
Let the morning bring me word of Your unfailing love for I have put my trust in You. Show me the way I should go, for to You I entrust my life. Psalms 143:8 (NIV)
- Hope For Today
May 20 - Colossians 4:2-6
Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart. Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about His mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains. Pray that I will proclaim this message as clearly as I should. Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.
Are we making the most of every opportunity to let those who are not believers see Christ in us? Or are we often too preoccupied with our own lives (whether it be our own troubles, or our own comfort and pleasure) to be concerned with the unbelievers in our path? I can't speak for all of you, but I can speak for me, and I am a miserable failure when it comes to seizing every opportunity. Mostly because I'm rarely even thinking about sharing Christ when I'm busy with the stuff of life. If you can identify with me in this, then let's look to this passage for a little help. It gives some pretty clear steps we can take to improve our opportunity-seizing success rate. -Let's devote ourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart. Are we taking time to pray with purpose and intention every day? It's important to be praying all day in a more ongoing, conversational type way, but are we setting aside some time daily for "alert minded" prayer? If not, let's start! Let's be sure that this time includes a period in which we just thank God for all He's done and for who He is. -Pray for us too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about His mysterious plan concerning Christ Let's make sure that our "alert minded" prayer time includes time to pray for our pastors, for missionaries all over the world, and for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Let's ask God to give all of us opportunities to share the Gospel, and that we will be able to communicate that message clearly. -Live wisely among those who are not believers and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversations be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone. Are we living wisely in front of our neighbors, the other parents at school, our co-workers? Can they tell that there's something different about us – in a good way? Or are we too busy making a lot of noise about issues that aren't the Gospel, that we're turning them all off to what makes us different? We should stand out, but it should be in a way that draws people toward God, not pushes them away! They should want to pull us aside and ask us, "Why are you like that?" "Why did you do that?" "Why didn't you do that?" The words people use to describe us should include words like: gracious, pleasant, appealing, loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled. If that's not how we live, let's decide to change. Let's ask God to fill us with His Spirit so that we will overflow with these things. And let's be ready to give a right response when people notice and ask us the reason for the hope that we have! We belong to the Lord God Almighty! Let's get busy making the most of every opportunity to act like it!
- Verse of the Day
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