Year: 2025
December 2025
- Devotional Isaiah 11:10-16: Signal for the Nations
Jesus’ birth is not just a story of presents and angels singing in the sky, it is the arrival of the Messiah, God’s signal…
- Devotional Isaiah 11:1-9: The Righteous Shoot
While Christmas typically takes us to the wonderful passages of Isaiah 7 and 9, the coming Messiah was prophesied throughout Isaiah and the whole…
- Devotional Ezra 6:19-22: New Exodus, New Passover
The returned exiles had finally restored and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, and in March 516 BC celebrated its completion. In April, they celebrated…
November 2025
- Devotional Ezra 6:16-18: Celebrating God’s Goodness
Today we do not have a physical temple at a central location, but God’s temple is his church. Wherever his church meets to worship…
- Devotional Ezra 6:1-15: Completed at the King’s Command
Just the same today, God can move the hearts of bureaucrats and leaders to complete his will. While that may mean opposition decreed for…
- Devotional Ezra 5: God’s Presence Despite Opposition
Opposition is an ongoing reality. We have been warned. But Jesus is with us. We have been encouraged. The eyes of God watch over…
- Devotional Ezra 4:6-24: Ongoing Opposition
The point of this passage is that the devil is always opposing God’s work. Whether it was in the days of Cain and Abel,…
October 2025
- Devotional Ezra 4:1-5: Opposition and Discouragement
We see Satan’s opposition and discouragement agenda play out with the returnees from exile to Judah. While things had started mostly well, with the…
- Devotional Ezra 3:6-13: Building God’s House
The returnees from exile were also starting something new, rebuilding what had been destroyed and ruined. For them, it was a time of excitement…
- Devotional Ezra 3:1-6: Prioritising Worship
For the Israelites who returned to the ruins of the Promised Land, you might think that rebuilding homes, building businesses, planting crops, and repairing…
- Devotional Ezra 2: God Keeps His Promises
Ezra 2 is all about God keeping his promises. Yes, it is a long list of names. But they were the faces that went…
- Devotional Ezra 1: God is still in control
Things had gone terribly wrong for God’s People in the Old Testament. They had lost their independence, been taken into exile, the temple destroyed.…
September 2025
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 3:16-18: Final Blessings
Paul’s letter closes with an encouragement of final blessings to the Thessalonian congregation. To prove that his letter, containing many blessings and also some…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15: The Blessing of Work
Sadly some in the Thessalonian church were not pulling their weight, and relying on others for their welfare. Paul had strong words for those…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5: Pray with Confidence
Paul’s letter encourages the Thessalonian church to pray with confidence. Despite Paul’s exciting life, and the ups and downs the Thessalonians faced, Paul was…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17: Comforted and Established
God’s goodness to us is the outpouring of his covenant love, his love which saves us. It is a love which is always shown…
August 2025
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15: Secure Salvation
In the face of a terrible coming evil, and the restrained foretaste of it already lashing their lives even then, it could be tempting…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12: Strong Delusion, Stronger Saviour
Reading of a great apostasy immediately preceding Christ’s return can place us in the same mental place as feeling outmatched by trouble or temptation.…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 2:5-8: Lawlessness Brought To Heel
Paul’s teaching on the Man of Lawlessness, otherwise known as the Antichrist, is exactly the type of teaching where this error can occur. But…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 2:3-5: Man of Lawlessness
While time will reveal who Paul was speaking about, we are left with plenty that explains the Antichrist’s purposes. And while we might disagree…
July 2025
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3: You Haven’t Been Left Behind
The Thessalonian church were worried that they had been left behind in a sense as well. Except it was a far greater concern than…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 1:10-12: Sharing in Christ’s Glory
Jesus’ return will be the final victory and glorification of Jesus by everyone, everywhere. Nobody will be able to deny Jesus that victorious moment,…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9: The Terrible Reality of Hell
We cannot shy away from what the Bible teaches, even when it makes us uneasy. Hell is a terrible reality. The eternal punishment of…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 1:5-8: God’s Righteous Judgement
Read 2 Thessalonians 1:5-8 “Judge not!” may be the most popular incomplete and incorrect quotation of Scripture by modern Westerners today. Our culture does…
- Devotional 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4: Growing in Faith and Love
What then would Paul consider a successful church? Thankfully we have an answer in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonian Church. Paul’s idea of…
June 2025
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:23-28: Holiness by Grace
Paul’s previous sentences encouraged the Thessalonian Christians in their responsibilities toward God, by living to please God and not quench the work of the…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22: Responsibilities towards God
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 Parents spend a lot of time explaining how children should behave, especially towards other people. Towards their friends and classmates.…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:14-15: Covenantal Community of Love and Care
After encouraging the Thessalonian congregation to love and support their leaders, Paul turned to the way in which individuals in the congregation, and the…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13: Love Your Leaders
After encouraging us to look forward to Christ’s return with the knowledge that we are no longer under God’s wrath, Paul’s letter to the…
May 2025
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11: Better Days Coming
God calls us to vigilance and discipline against the sinful temptations in the world, as we await Christ’s return. We are to build each…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:4-8: Children of the Light
We too are children of the light. Being children of the light means being delivered from God’s judgement, and having the sure hope of…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 5:1-4: Thief in the Night
From encouraging the Thessalonians to take heart that, whether dead or alive, Christians would rise from the dead or the earth to join Christ…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18: Hope Even in Grief
In this passage, Paul certainly does address the end times – specifically the return of Christ. But he does so with a purpose in…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12: Loving One Another
Because showing love for one another is a vitally important part of being a Christian. For each other, as fellow adopted brothers and sisters…
April 2025
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8: Called to Holiness
The Thessalonian church, like ours today, was called to God’s standard of holiness. As people come to faith in Christ, or grow up in…
- Devotional Luke 23:44-49: Good News for a Dark Day
Three miracles, three pictures of how that terrible Friday is Good Friday for us. Darkness showing Jesus’ suffering God’s judgement in our place. A…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13: Pastoral Prayer for Progress
In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, we come across another of Paul’s powerful prayers. It reveals Paul’s view on the power of God,…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 3:6-10: Growing in Faith and Love
While we long for, and pray for, God to grow our churches and make new converts and disciples, the truth is that biblical faithfulness…
March 2025
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:5: Showing You Care
Paul’s ministry did not preach a Christianity where trusting in Jesus solves all your problems, but where trusting in Jesus solves your biggest problem…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16: Not Ordinary Words
The word of God was proclaimed by men. It was written by men too, inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:15-16). It did…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 2:9-12: Eyes on the Goal
In verses seven and eight, Paul described himself as being like a spiritual mother to the Thessalonian church, taking care of them, and showing…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8: Traits of Effective Ministry
Previously in this letter to the church at Thessalonica, Paul had emphasised how word of their imitation of him had reached his ears and…
February 2025
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 1:6-10: Imitators
What was important about that affliction was not so much the presence of it, but how they reacted. They did not grumble and complain…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 1:2-5: Paul’s Reason for Thanksgiving
Paul’s life certainly had its ups and downs, but Paul also recognised the need to give thanks for the good things God gave. One…
- Devotional 1 Thessalonians 1:1 – The Only Source of Grace and Peace
The letter to Thessalonica was a letter that was primarily from Paul, but also written on behalf of his fellow labourers in the Gospel,…