READING:
One-year plan: Job 23-27, Acts 22:22-23:22
Two-year plan: Judges 7:1-8:21, Luke 11:33-54
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First, I wrote today’s blog on my site based on the reading from Job today. I will focus on the Acts passage for this devotion, but I encourage you to go to www.chucklawless.com and read my brief thoughts about Job’s struggle—especially if you’re wondering where God is today in your own life.
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In some ways, today’s New Testament reading could not be more contrasting with my point about Job in my daily blog. Job wondered where God was, but he trusted that God was working out His plan in Job’s life. Paul, on the other hand, experienced a supernatural presence of God in a most trying time.
The days had been rough for Paul. He had experienced a violent mob, an arrest, an almost-scourging, and violence again among the Sanhedrin. So strong was the ongoing opposition to Paul that the commander of the forces feared for Paul’s safety and ordered him taken to the barracks. There, apparently alone, he knew God’s presence: “the following night, the Lord stood by him and said, ‘Have courage! For as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so it is necessary for you to testify in Rome’” (Acts 23:11). No matter what he faced, Paul knew, “the Lord stood by him”—and that’s all he needed to know.
That’s all you and I need to know, too, even when our faith struggles with sensing God’s presence.
PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do you need to trust God for anything in particular today?
DAILY PRAYER: “God, thank You that You are always, always trustworthy.”
TOMORROW’S READINGS:
One-year plan: Job 28-30, Acts 23:23-24:27
Two-year plan: Judges 8:22-9:21, Luke 12:1-7
