Daily Devotionals for January 4, 2026

 And He said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart, into a desert place, and rest a while" (Mk 6:31).

In the early days of our lonely pilgrimage, the desert is nothing but burning heat and barren sand. As we "keep on keeping on," we see our desert become full of springs and blossom as the rose.

The Christian will be sure to make enemies. It will be one of his objects to make none; but if to do the right, and to believe the true, should cause him to lose every earthly friend, he will count it but a small loss, since his great Friend in heaven will be yet more friendly, and reveal himself to him more graciously than ever. O ye who have taken up his cross, know ye not what your Master said? "I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother;...

All must die, but all do not die alike; some are cut off suddenly, others by a lingering illness; some die only safe, others happy. Some fear death all their lives, others do not. But death must be viewed through Jesus, or fear it we shall, if we think seriously.

Death is a separation from the body; the second death is a separation from God. The former we must pass through, not so the latter. What shall separate us from the love of God? DEATH? No, we are more...

This is not your rest. § There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. § Behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus.In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. § With Christ, which is far better.God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there...

"I will make them to lie down safely." Hosea 2:18

Yes, the saints are to have peace. The passage from which this gracious word is taken speaks of peace "with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground." This is peace with earthly enemies, with mysterious evils, and with little annoyances! Any of these might keep us from lying down, but none of them shall do so. The LORD will...

Today is our day. No one at any time has ever had any spiritual graces that we at this time cannot enjoy if we will meet the terms on which they are given. If these times are morally darker, they but provide a background against which we can shine the brighter. Our God is the God of today as well as of yesterday, and we may be sure that wherever our tomorrows may carry us, our faithful God will be with us as He was with Abraham and David and Paul. Those great men did not need us then, and we...

This was one of the wisest apostolic utterances. The world is unconscious of its unbelief. It thinks that the reason why it has not more faith, is that there is no more evidence given to it. But no accumulation of evidence would remove the difficulty. A change within, a couching of the moral vision; this is that which is necessary.

The Lord answers this prayer, not in general by giving new evidence, but by inclining us to view and appreciate the evidence before our minds. By leading...

When the Lord in mercy passed by and saw us in our blood, he first of all said, "Live"; and this he did first, because life is one of the absolutely essential things in spiritual matters, and until it be bestowed we are incapable of partaking in the things of the kingdom. Now the life which grace confers upon the saints at the moment of their quickening is none other than the life of Christ, which, like the sap from the stem, runs into us, the branches, and establishes a living connection...

This verse enshrines the important truth that the work of the Lord is not carried on by human ingenuity and strength but by the Holy Spirit.

We see it in the capture of Jericho. It was not the armed might of Israel that caused the walls to fall down. The Lord was the One who delivered the city into their hands when the priests blew the trumpets seven times.

If it had depended on a huge army, Gideon would never have defeated the Midianites, because his army had been thinned down...

The sting of death is sin. § Now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him...

The history of the world is not told in detail in Genesis. We have only a glimpse here and there of the life of the first days. But a few names are preserved from antediluvian generations. The people seem to have lived long - but not to much purpose. All we learn of most of them - is that they lived so many hundreds of years, and...

For Reading and Meditation:     Psalm 42:1-11

Over the past few days we have seen how the psalmist was caught in the hiatus between the moment when he stopped himself from sliding and the moment when he started to climb again. This, we said, is a very critical time - critical because it makes us inclined to accept easy answers. The perplexity did not end when the...

In a recent letter a man from Jamestown, NY, quoted a statement from an editorial, "Three Degrees of Religious Knowledge," . . . and asked for clarification.

The quotation was taken from that part of the editorial dealing with the third degree of knowledge: ?. . . it is knowledge by direct spiritual experience . . . Since it was not acquired by reason operating on intellectual data, the possibility of error is eliminated."

The letter comments on this as follows: "This...