NorMel House Devotions

Read Isaiah 43:14-19 The prophet Isaiah warned Judah that its sin would lead to captivity by Babylon. Isaiah also predicted the redemption of God’s people, just as He had rescued them from Egypt. Our text is in the middle of a comforting section on the restoration and regathering of the people of Israel. Isaiah 43:16-17 is a reminder of how God delivered His people from Egypt. However, he doesn't want them to dwell on "the former things." Instead, Isaiah is subtly pointing them forward to Christ's coming. Jesus is the way forward. Jesus, Himself, said, "I am the way, the truth and the light" (John 14:6). Our way to salvation is Jesus. We are to see and be thankful for God's forgiveness for our past sins and look ahead to Christ's coming. In the Israelites case, it would have been His first coming. For us, however, Jesus has already come, so we can look forward to His return. Our text not only calls Jesus the way, but He is also the only "water...

Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians to address several problems going on in the church of Corinth. In our text, he addresses their immorality, divisions in the church, and their spiritual immaturity. It is so important that Paul actually writes about it more than once in the same letter. In chapter 1, Paul appeals to the brothers in the church to agree and be united. In order for this to happen, they must stop quarreling over who they follow. The Corinthians were divided into several factions, each claiming to follow different teachers. Paul points out how completed wrong this is. As he says in chapter 1:13, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?" Paul goes so far as to call them "worldly - mere infants in Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:1). Oh, how easy it is for us to follow false ideas! When things like this creep into the church, we need to remember the very foundations of the gospel. Only ...

  Read Romans 5:1-5 Our passage today is a beautiful piece about rejoicing in our suffering, with a theme of faith, hope, and love. Paul tells us we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is what allows us to go through hardship and suffering and still rejoice. We can rejoice, regardless of our circumstances, because we know that God's plan is being fulfilled. We don't rejoice because of our suffering, but in our suffering because we know our suffering isn't meaningless. Our suffering here is meant to build character and produces hope in God, "and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:2). We are being built up in faith, hope, and love. God has poured out His love, and because of that, we can have faith in His gifts of grace and hope in the future He has planned for us. "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1). Faith, without hope, is dead. We must have faith in...

Read: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11 Paul wrote the second letter to the Corinthians because false teachers were asserting that Paul couldn't be trusted. They said he lied about his plans and wasn't a real apostle. They also accused him of pocketing the collections for the poor. Paul writes the Corinthians to explain why he changed his itinerary, to encourage them to continue in generosity to the poor, and to defend his apostolic authority. In our text Paul is talking about the results of generosity. He uses the analogy of a farmer sowing his crops to show how being generous will bring a generous return. A farmer must sow many seeds if he wants a plentiful crop. As Christians, we should "sow generously" as well. What does that look like? This can be done in many ways. The obvious answer is monetary. We are to give to the poor generously in relation to what we have been blessed with. Another way we can apply this in our lives is that God gives us each different talents and bless...