Day 23 Today’s Reading: Matthew 23 Today’s reading is an intense chapter. It’s about hypocrites and religion—hypocrites in religion. In fact, Jesus said, “Woe to you hypocrites and religious people” eight times! (See verses 13-16, 23, 25, 27, and 29.) The word woe is an expression of how dreadful and how awful this is—to take something
Day 22 Today’s Reading: Matthew 22 The Bible never says you have to believe with all your heart, even though it says you must believe in your heart. But when it comes to loving God—that must be done with all your heart. I think God leaves room for the growing faith and doubts that come with
Day 21 Today’s Reading: Matthew 21 Theologian John Calvin said, “To know God as the Master and Bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of Him, and still not go to Him and ask of Him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried
Day 20 Today’s Reading: Matthew 20 Inevitably when someone well known dies, I get asked, “Do you think that person is in heaven?” Before I respond, I always think of John Newton, the eighteenth-century former slave ship captain who became an abolitionist and clergyman. He said, “If I ever reach heaven I expect to find
Day 19 Today’s Reading: Matthew 19 J. C. Ryle wrote, “The highest form of selfishness is a man content to go to heaven alone.” I don’t ever want to be content to go to heaven alone. I want to take as many as I can with me. But I have some hard cases in my