Solid Joys Daily Devotional

The worth and beauty of the Son come not just from his majesty, nor just from his meekness, but from the way these mingle in perfect proportion.

By all means work. But always look to the Lord for the decisive, supernatural work needed to fulfill his purposes.

Never grow weary of exploring and exulting in the inexhaustible privilege of being “in Christ Jesus.”

The Father’s infinite pleasure in his own perfections is the fountain of our everlasting joy and forgiveness.

The extent of Christ’s reign reaches to the smallest and biggest enemy of his glory in your life, and in this universe. It will be defeated.

God rejoices in the works of creation because they point us beyond themselves to God himself.

The sweetest experience of God’s love is conditional on our transformation into the kind of people whose emotions and choices and actions please God.

Day and night are saying one thing: God is glorious! Turn away from the creation as your supreme satisfaction, and delight yourself in the Lord of glory.

God is love precisely because he relentlessly pursues the praises of his name in the hearts of his people.

If God loves us enough to make our joy full, he must not only give us himself; he must also win from us the praise of our hearts.

God’s pursuit of praise from us and our pursuit of pleasure in him are the same pursuit.

The Bible is a window that opens onto the sunrise glory of the risen Christ.

Christ’s resurrection is God’s declaration that we cannot work our way to glory, but that he intends to do the impossible to get us there.

You will always be better off to obey than to disobey Jesus, even if that obedience costs you your life.

Authentic speaking about God’s goodness and greatness must come from the soul. Blessing God with the mouth without the soul would be hypocrisy.

If we are to be sexually pure, God must have the supreme place in our feelings and thoughts.

All the other gifts of the gospel — forgiveness, justification, propitiation, eternal life — exist to make fellowship with God possible.

The death of the Son of God is outrageous enough, and the glory of God that it upholds is great enough, that God is vindicated to forgive our sins.

The power of God to fulfill your resolves will come to you as you trust in the future grace of his promises.

When we see the face of Christ, we see the face of God. And we see the glory of his face when we hear the story of the gospel of his death and resurrection.

Grace is not only God’s disposition to do good for us when we don’t deserve it. It is also a power that makes good things happen in us.

We know more of the mystery of our redemption than David did. We know Christ. But we lay hold of the mercy in the same way he did.

The gospel is the good news that God bought for us the everlasting enjoyment of God.

Stand in awe and be at peace, knowing that no natural event is outside of God’s wise and good purposes, and perfect control.

God made humans in his image so that the world would be filled with reflectors of God. Images of God. So that nobody would miss the point of creation.

God is totally committed to the perseverance and eternal security of his blood-bought children.

Yahweh is a proper name (like Peter) built out of the word for “I am.” It teaches us that God absolutely is.

Between eternity past in God’s predestination, and eternity future in God’s glorification, none is lost.

God will honor the work of his Son by raising our bodies from the dead, and we will use our bodies to glorify him forever.

God has justified us. There is only future grace in front of us. Satan cannot overturn that decree.

Sometimes God makes seemingly strong people weaker so that his divine power will be the more evident.

Suffering must not drive you from God. Instead, it should drive you from everything but God.

Faith is like muscle tissue: if you stress it to the limit, it gets stronger, not weaker. When your faith is tested, the result is greater capacity to endure.

Our sovereign God says there is an appointed number of martyrs. They have a special role to play in planting and empowering the church.

Strengthen your heart and renew your courage by fixing your gaze on the invisible truth you see in the testimony of those who saw Christ face to face.

If you don’t fight lust with a seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer forever.

The heart that loves money is a heart that pins its hopes, and pursues its pleasures, and puts its trust in what human resources can offer.

The way to thwart the devil is to strengthen the very thing he is trying most to destroy — your faith.

Jesus is interceding for us today that our faith may not fail. Our endurance in faith and joy is finally and decisively in the hands of God.

When God’s word feeds faith’s appetite for God, it weans our hearts away from the deceptive taste of lust.

Trusting God’s future grace comes by hearing the word. Therefore, preaching the word to ourselves is all-important in overcoming spiritual depression.

The Bible is replete with saints struggling with sunken spirits. But God includes such testimonies so that we might use them to fight the unbelief of despondency.

Prayer is the great link of faith between the soul of the saint and the promise of God’s future grace.

God promises not merely that we will find grace “to help in time of need,” but that the grace is well-timed by God.

Moment by moment, God supplies the strength in which we serve. He does this because the ongoing, inexhaustible supplier of power gets the glory.

Whatever added signs and wonders God may show to amplify our witness to Christ, they will come through his grace and power.

Believe in the promise that in this day God will be at work in you to will and work for his good pleasure.

Paul prayed for grace for the day, trusted that it would come with power, and then acted with all his might.

You may think you need to save your life in order to do your ministry. On the contrary, how you lose your life may be the capstone of your ministry.

Costly acts of love don’t just happen. They are impelled by a new appetite — the appetite of faith for the fullest experience of God’s grace. We want more of God.