Morning, February 23
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Bible League: Living His Word
. . . God is love. Everyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them. If God's love is made perfect in us, we can be without fear on the day when God judges the world. We will be without fear, because in this world we are like Jesus. Where God's love is, there is no fear, because God's perfect love takes away fear. It is his punishment that makes a person fear. So his love is not made perfect in the one who has fear.

God is so identified with love that the Apostle John can say that God is love. God is love and "we live in God and God lives in us" (I John 4:13). It makes sense, then, that if God lives in us, the lives we lead will be lives of love. We are only reflecting the God of love who dwells within us. For John, love is so central to the Christian walk of life that it is his main criterion for determining if someone is a Christian: "Everyone who loves has become God's child. And so everyone who loves knows God" (I John 4:7).

When the God of love dwells within us we should have no fear of God. This is because God's "perfect love takes away fear." People who fear God have not had their love made perfect in God. Fear of God is a sign that one's relationship to God is not in proper order. For the non-Christian, the key to getting it into proper order is to accept Jesus Christ. If you do that, then John quotes Jesus as saying, "My Father will love them. My Father and I will come to them and live with them" (John 14:23). For those who have already accepted Christ, the key is to have faith that the God of love truly loves us, despite our weaknesses and shortcomings. The key is to take up the shield of faith and quench any fiery darts of fear Satan may throw at us (Ephesians 6:16).

Let us not fear the day when death approaches and the day when God judges the world, for the God of love loves us and dwells within us. Let us allow His perfect love take away all our fear.

Bible in a Year
Old Testament Reading
Numbers 8, 9, 10


Numbers 8 -- The Seven Lamps; Levites Set Apart; Retirement at Fifty

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Numbers 9 -- The Passover and Cloud above the Tabernacle

  NIV   NLT   ESV   NAS   GWT   KJV   ASV   ERV   DRB


Numbers 10 -- The Silver Trumpets; Israelites Leave Sinai

  NIV   NLT   ESV   NAS   GWT   KJV   ASV   ERV   DRB


New Testament Reading
Mark 5:1-20


Mark 5 -- Jesus Sends the Demons into the Pigs, Heals the Woman with Bleeding, Raises Jairus' Daughter

  NIV   NLT   ESV   NAS   GWT   KJV   ASV   ERV   DRB


Reading Plan Courtesy of Christian Classics Etherial Library.
Tyndale Life Application Daily Devotion
As the deer longs for streams of water,
        so I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
        When can I go and stand before him?
Insight
As the life of a deer depends upon water, so our lives depend upon God. Those who seek him and long to understand him find never-ending life.
Challenge
Feeling separated from God, this psalmist wouldn't rest until he restored his relationship with God because he knew that his very life depended on it.
Morning and Evening by Spurgeon
Hebrews 13:5  I will never leave thee.

No promise is of private interpretation. Whatever God has said to any one saint, he has said to all. When he opens a well for one, it is that all may drink. When he openeth a granary-door to give out food, there may be some one starving man who is the occasion of its being opened, but all hungry saints may come and feed too. Whether he gave the word to Abraham or to Moses, matters not, O believer; he has given it to thee as one of the covenanted seed. There is not a high blessing too lofty for thee, nor a wide mercy too extensive for thee. Lift up now thine eyes to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, for all this is thine. Climb to Pisgah's top, and view the utmost limit of the divine promise, for the land is all thine own. There is not a brook of living water of which thou mayst not drink. If the land floweth with milk and honey, eat the honey and drink the milk, for both are thine. Be thou bold to believe, for he hath said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."In this promise, God gives to his people everything. "I will never leave thee." Then no attribute of God can cease to be engaged for us. Is he mighty? He will show himself strong on the behalf of them that trust him. Is he love? Then with lovingkindness will he have mercy upon us. Whatever attributes may compose the character of Deity, every one of them to its fullest extent shall be engaged on our side. To put everything in one, there is nothing you can want, there is nothing you can ask for, there is nothing you can need in time or in eternity, there is nothing living, nothing dying, there is nothing in this world, nothing in the next world, there is nothing now, nothing at the resurrection-morning, nothing in heaven which is not contained in this text--"I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."

Daily Light on the Daily Path
Hebrews 12:24  and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.

John 1:29  The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Revelation 13:8  All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.

Hebrews 10:4,5,10  For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. • Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, "SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME; • By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Genesis 4:4  Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering;

Ephesians 5:2  and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Hebrews 10:22  let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Hebrews 10:19  Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,

New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif. All rights reserved. For Permission to Quote Information visit http://www.lockman.org.

Evening February 22
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