Our Daily Bread Devotional

Jon was installed as full professor in a prestigious college. His older brother David was pleased, but, as brothers do, he couldn’t resist teasing Jon how he’d wrestled him to the ground when they were boys. Jon had gone far in life, but he’d always be David’s little brother.

It’s hard to impress family—even if you’re the Messiah. Jesus had grown up among the people of Nazareth, so they struggled to believe He was special. Yet they were amazed by Him. “What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son . . . ?” (Mark 6:2-3). Jesus noted, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home” (v. 4). These people knew Jesus well, but they couldn’t believe He was the Son of God.

Perhaps you were raised in a godly home. Your earliest memories include going to church and singing hymns. Jesus has always felt like family. If you believe and follow Him, Jesus is family. He “is not ashamed to call [us] brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). Jesus is our older brother in the family of God (Romans 8:29)! This is a great privilege, but our closeness might make Him seem common. Just because someone is family doesn’t mean they’re not special.

Aren’t you glad Jesus is family, and more than family? May He become more personal, and more special, as you follow Him today.

“I didn’t do it!” It was a lie, and I almost got away with it, until God stopped me. When I was in middle school, I was part of a group shooting spitballs in the back of our band during a performance. Our director was an ex-marine and famous for discipline, and I was terrified of him. So when my partners in crime implicated me, I lied to him about it. Then I lied to my father also.

But God wouldn’t allow the lie to go on. He gave me a very guilty conscience about it. After resisting for weeks, I relented. I asked God and my dad for forgiveness. A while later, I went to my director’s house and tearfully confessed. Thankfully, he was kind and forgiving.

I’ll never forget how good it felt to have that burden lifted. I was free from the weight of guilt and happy for the first time in weeks. David describes a time of conviction and confession in his life too. He tells God, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away . . . . For day and night your hand was heavy on me.” He continues, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you” (Psalm 32:3-5).

Authenticity matters to God. He wants us to confess our sins to Him and also to ask forgiveness of those we’ve wronged. “You forgave the guilt of my sin,” David proclaims (v. 5). How good it is to know the freedom of God’s forgiveness!

The beautiful bride, gripping her proud father’s arm, was poised to make her way to the altar. But not before the entrance of her thirteen-month-old nephew. Instead of carrying the more common “ring”—he was the “Bible bearer.” In this way, the bride and groom, as committed believers in Jesus, wanted to testify to their love for Scripture. With minimal distraction, the toddler found his way to the front of the church. How illustrative it was that the toddler’s teeth marks were found on the leather cover of the Bible. What a picture of activity that’s fitting for believers in Christ or those who desire to know Him—to taste and take in Scripture.

Psalm 119 celebrates the comprehensive worth of the Scriptures. After declaring the blessedness of those who live by God’s law (v. 1), the author poetically raved about it, including his love for it. “See how I love your precepts” (v. 159); “I hate and detest falsehood but I love your law” (v. 163); “I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly” (v. 167).

What statements do we make about our love for God and His Word through how we live? One way to test our love for Him is by asking, What am I partaking of? Have I been “chewing” on the sweet words of Scripture? And then accept this invitation, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (34:8).

When Joni Eareckson Tada speaks of Rika, she highlights her friend’s “deep, time-tested faith in God” and the endurance she’s developed while living with a debilitating chronic condition. For more than fifteen years, Rika has been bedbound, unable even to see the moon from her room’s tiny window. But she hasn’t lost hope; she trusts in God, reads and studies the Bible, and as Joni describes it, she “knows how to stand firm during fierce battles against discouragement.”

Joni likens Rika’s tenacity and persistence to that of Eleazar, a soldier at the time of King David who refused to flee the Philistines. Instead of joining the troops who took off, “Eleazar stood his ground . . . till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword” (2 Samuel 23:10). Through God’s power, “The Lord brought about a great victory that day” (v. 10). As Joni observes, even as Eleazar hung on to the sword with determination, so too does Rika cling to “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). And there, in God, she finds her strength.

Whether in glowing good health or battling discouragement over a chronic condition, we too can look to God to deepen our stores of hope and to help us to endure. In Christ we find our strength.

There’s a man people hire as they’re dying, paying him to show up at their funerals and reveal secrets they never shared while they were alive. The man has interrupted eulogies. He’s asked stunned officiants to sit down when they started to object. He once stood to explain how the man in the casket had won the lotto but never told a soul and for decades pretended to be a successful businessman. Multiple times the hired man has confessed infidelity to a widowed spouse. One might question whether these actions were exploitative or enacted in good faith, but what’s obvious is people’s hunger to be absolved of past sins.

Having someone else confess for us (especially after we’re dead) is a futile and risky way to deal with secrets. These stories, however, reveal a deep truth: we have a need to confess, to unburden ourselves. Confession cleanses us of those things that we’ve hidden and allowed to fester. “Confess your sins to each other,” James says, “and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (5:16). Confession releases us from burdens that bind us, freeing us to commune with God—praying with a heart open to Him and to our faith community. Confession enacts healing.

James invites us to live an open life, confessing to God and those closest to us the pains and failings we’re tempted to bury. We don’t have to carry these burdens alone. Confession is a gift to us. God uses it to cleanse our heart and set us free.