Every Day Light with Selwyn Hughes

For Reading and Meditation:     Esther 1:10-12

The next person we meet in the kingdom of Xerxes is his wife, Vashti, the queen. We know very little about Vashti except that she was, to all appearances, a sensible, respectable and very beautiful woman. On the seventh day of the great banquet, King Xerxes, heavily under the influence of alcohol, directs his...

For Reading and Meditation:     Esther 1:13-22

Vashti';s refusal to obey the king's command threw the whole palace into an uproar. The Persian regime was established and built on the concept of law and order. So deeply ingrained was this idea that even the king himself was subject to the laws that he signed. Greatly embarrassed...

For Reading and Meditation:     Matthew 5:1-11

Today we begin a study of one of the most powerful and profound passages in Scripture - the Beatitudes. They form the first part of the Lord's teaching in what is known as the Sermon on the Mount and were addressed to His disciples. My hope is that our study of the Beatitudes will have a great impact on our spiritual...

For Reading and Meditation:     John 2:12-25

Yesterday we touched on the statement of a psychiatrist, Dr James Fisher, who said that when searching for the positive attitudes which made for good mental health, he came across the Beatitudes and realised that he need search no longer. After nearly fifty years' experience of helping people with mental, emotional and...

For Reading and Meditation:     Romans 13:7-14

We continue considering on the fact that the Beatitudes are the finest prescription for mental and spiritual health that has ever been given. It is helpful to keep in mind at this stage in our meditations that the Beatitudes are be-attitudes, not do-attitudes; the doing comes out of the being. Some ministers and...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 Corinthians 6:12-20

We are still focusing on this important thought that our attitudes play an important and determinative part in our physical health. One doctor told me that immediately he receives the current edition of Every Day with Jesus, he quickly scans it to see if I have written anything along the line of the...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

Now that we have spent a few days meditating on the fact that the Beatitudes provide us with the right mental and spiritual attitudes for healthy and abundant living, we are ready to begin focusing on the first of these profound statements: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of...

For Reading and Meditation:     Mark 6:45-51

Yesterday we said that we all want to be happy - and rightly so. This is a deep-rooted instinct which God has built into us. But happiness is not something you make but something you receive. You cannot make happiness any more than you can make love. You can express love but you cannot make love. So it is with happiness....

For Reading and Meditation:     Mark 10:13-31

Today we ask ourselves: If happiness is not something we can create but something we receive, how do we go about receiving it? Listen again to the words of Jesus: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." What does it mean to be "poor in spirit"? There are those who tell us that the words...

For Reading and Meditation:     John 1:1-14

We ended yesterday by saying that the first step toward mental and spiritual health is self-renunciation and receptivity. I must be willing to acknowledge my need of Christ, stop striving to find happiness and instead receive Him into my life then, like the disciples we talked about the other day, I have reached the shore...

For Reading and Meditation:     Mark 10:46-52

We are seeing that the first step to mental and spiritual health is receptivity - we must be willing to empty our hands of whatever we are holding and receive Christ. Life has been defined as response to environment. You and I live physically when we respond to our physical environment - we take in food, light and air....

For Reading and Meditation:     Luke 8:40-56

We continue meditating on Christ's first prescription for happiness: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Over the past few days we have seen that the phrase "poor in spirit" refers not to material poverty, but spiritual poverty - a willingness to throw away our own self-sufficiency and...

For Reading and Meditation:     Luke 19:1-10

We spend one more day meditating on the first of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Dr Raymond Cramer, the minister and psychologist whom I mentioned earlier, says that in the psychology of Jesus, it is the one who has a problem that gets the Master's attention. When...

For Reading and Meditation:     Galatians 2:15-21

We turn now to consider the second of our Lord's Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). It is important to note that there is a very definite order in these sayings of Christ. Every one is carefully thought out and is given a...