Solid Joys Daily Devotional

“All things are possible with God!” — in front the words give hope, and behind they give humility. They are the antidote to both despair and pride.

God’s call is irresistible in the sense that it can overcome all resistance. It is infallibly effective according to God’s purpose.

We see the sun by means of seeing the rays of the sun. So also we see God the Father by seeing Jesus.

The Word that God spoke by his Son is the decisive Word. It will not be followed in this age by any greater word or replacement word.

When Christ redeems marriage, he does not dismantle loving headship and willing submission. He restores it.

Husbands and wives should seek to live after the distinctive model of God’s pure and glad design for Christ and the church.

The first priority in praying is to ask our heavenly Father to cause his name to be hallowed. In us. In the church. In the world. Everywhere.

The union between Christ and his bride is so close that any good done to her is a good done to himself.

Jesus did not want a dirty and unholy wife. Therefore, he was willing to die to cleanse her so that he could present her to himself.

You can steal to get; or you can work to get; or you can work to get in order to give.

It is a horrifying thing to use your God-given life to commit adultery against the Almighty.

One of the main reasons we so often fail to have consistent habits of happy, fruitful prayer is simply that we don’t plan to.

God takes out our old proud hearts and gives new soft ones, which are easily humbled and crushed by the sin that remains.

The very heart of God’s glory is the fullness of grace that overflows in kindness to needy people.

God aims to be our servant, because he aims to get the glory as the Giver.

God is glorified when we turn away from ourselves to him in the confidence that he will provide the help we need.

The greatest news is that the cross upholds the worth of God’s glory, the honor of his Son, and the eternal salvation of his elect.

The good news is that God himself has decreed a way to satisfy the demands of his justice without condemning the whole human race.

All the omnipotent energy that drives the heart of God to pursue his own glory also drives him to satisfy the hearts of those who seek their joy in him.

Be freed from the burden of bearing your own load. Let God do that work. God loves to show his God-ness by working for us.

When we share in the happiness of God, we share in the very pleasure that the Father has in the Son.

When you lay down the burden of vengeance, God will pick it up.

Imagine being able to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever. One day, God’s delight in his Son will be in us.

God does not need us. Instead, his infinite self-sufficiency spills over in love to us who need him.

If none of God’s purposes can be frustrated, then he must be the happiest of all beings.

The quest for joy is not optional, but commanded.

Joy is not a mere option alongside worship. It is an essential component of worship.

Take up the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit for help, lay the promises up in your heart, and fight the good fight — to live by faith in future grace.

God’s greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of his grace by making sinners happy in him.

The truth of Christ frees us from the slavery of sin, for the freedom of holiness.

Confidence in God’s absolute control is the source and power of radical obedience to the call of God.

The Bible is no empty word. It is your very life — the foundation and kindling of your joy!

What sustained Christ in the dark hours of Gethsemane was the hope of joy beyond the cross.

When it comes to being a candidate for grace, your background has nothing to do with God’s choice. That’s good news.

You have a possession in heaven that is better, and lasts longer, than anything this world can offer.

God intends for particular promises to help you fight against particular anxieties.

The Lord has spoken: It is more blessed to love than to live in luxury! More blessed now, and forever.

In Jesus Christ we who are born of God have the unspeakable privilege of knowing Yahweh as our Father.

Only Jesus, the Son of God who died and rose for us, can make us truly free.

Sit down to the feast of joy in Christ and worship the King of Glory. The banquet hall is very large.

To see God, and know him, and be in his presence is the soul’s final feast.

Two things have to be true if your joy is never to be taken from you. One is that the source of your joy lasts forever and the other is that you last forever.

If we live by faith in God’s promise of future grace, it will be very hard for anxiety to survive.

God will see to it that you are not tested in any given day more than you can bear.

God will certainly take his energy and creative skill, and use it to care for his children since they will live forever.

Jesus helps us to fight the good fight against unbelief and to be free from anxiety.

The way you fight the good fight for faith is by meditating on God’s assurances of future grace and by asking for the help of his Spirit.

If you treated your salvation no longer as a gift, but as a purchase, God would no longer be the free benefactor.

You can’t give anything to God or do anything for God that he hasn’t first given to you and done for you.

Fear not. Your adversaries can do no more than God grants. And he will grant you the faith you need. Those are gospel promises.

Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ because Christ is alive and is still loving us right now.

God loves us so much that he will not allow our preciousness to become our god.

In the old covenant, the gracious enabling power to obey God was not poured out as fully as it is since Jesus.

If you feel vulnerable, you can say to God, “Lord, help me. I’m not even sure how to pray.” Trust that he will respond and will help you.

This is one of the beauties of the biblical doctrines of grace: their worst devastations prepare us for their greatest delights.

God is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice.

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.