Solid Joys Daily Devotional

The unwillingness of others to repent will not hold the saints hostage. Hell cannot blackmail heaven into misery.

Faith in God's promises must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith.

What can sustain the will to die for others, when you are innocent? Jesus banked on love and future joy.

The experience of future grace often depends on whether we will take refuge in God, or whether we will run for cover to other shelters.

There is a fear that is slavish and drives us away from God, and there is a fear that is sweet and draws us to God.

What's at stake in fleeing covetousness and fighting for contentment in future grace is eternal life.

Whenever we sense the slightest rise of covetousness in our hearts, we must turn on it and fight it with all our might using the weapons of faith.

God is glorified when the power to be holy comes from humble faith in future grace.

The fight for good works is a fight to believe in future grace. Therefore, learning to fight for holiness by faith in future grace is supremely important.

The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. Faith embraces God — not just his promised gifts — as our treasure.

Grace is not simply the pardon of our sins; it is the power to press on in obedience. We trust in God's ever-arriving gracious power to enable us to do what we should.

When we hear God's promises and trust him with courage, fearing the reproach brought upon God by our unbelief, then he is greatly honored.

Prayer ascribes to God the right and honor to be the free and sovereign God that he is to choose and to save sinners.

The prayer of the upright that delights God comes from a heart that at first feels precarious in the presence of God. It trembles at his word.

The Lord is pleased not by those who treat him as a needy watering trough, but as an inexhaustible, all-satisfying spring.

With God the honeymoon never ends. He is infinite in power and wisdom and creativity so that there will be no boredom for the next trillion ages of millenniums.

God's anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger. He is infinitely energetic with unbounded and unending enthusiasm to do us good.

God did not spare his own Son, because it was the only way he could spare us and still be a just and holy God.

Not only are spiritual gifts a work of God's free grace in our lives, but so also is the very faith with which we use those gifts.

In order to live the radical lives Christ calls us to live, we must embrace him as the only one who can truly satisfy our souls.

Our hearts exploit our minds to justify what our hearts want. Our deepest desires incline our minds to perceive and think in a way that will make our desires look right.

If we recognize our sin, fight it, and cling to the cross of Christ as our hope, then God will hear us and answer our prayers.

Worship is all the acts of the heart and mind and body that intentionally express the infinite worth of God.

The faith that justifies and the faith that sanctifies are not two different kinds of faith.

The best news in all the world is that our alienation from God is ended. We have been reconciled to the Judge of the universe.

Be devoted to glorifying the dependability of God. Lives of faith are the great mirror of his faithful love and provision.

Open your eyes to the better country, the city of God that he has prepared for us, and let yourself desire it with all your heart. God will not be ashamed to be called your God.

Faith glorifies God because it is a future-oriented confidence in God's integrity and power and wisdom to follow through on all his promises.

We don't become heirs of Abraham's promises by working for God but by being confident that God works for us.

Why does faith not nullify the grace of God? Because faith calls all attention to grace and magnifies it, rather than nullifies it.

The worship of daily obedience is not at bottom a burdensome giving to God, but a joyful getting from God. That is the true service that God demands.

Faith nullifies boasting and glorifies grace. Wherever faith looks, it sees grace behind every praiseworthy act. So it cannot boast, except in the Lord.

God has wise and holy purposes when he does not answer our prayers as we want. Trust him. He knows what he is doing.

The sovereign grace of God can turn the unplanned place and the unplanned pace into the happiest ending imaginable.

We can know that our sins are taken away and that we will be safe in the judgment, if we trust Christ in such a way that it makes us eager for his coming.

Patience is indeed a fruit of the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit empowers us (with all his fruit) through hearing with faith.

What feels to us like a waste is what God plans. He works through the most hopeless circumstances.

Our election is unconditional in the strictest sense. Neither our faith nor our obedience is the basis of it. It is free and utterly undeserved.

When we sit down to calculate the cost of following Jesus — when we weigh the “worst” and the “best” — he is worth it. Abundantly worth it.

Jesus knows all his sheep by name; that is, he knows them individually and intimately.

God is so eager to work for us that he goes around looking for more work to do for people who will trust him.