Walk in Wisdom
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These daily devotionals are written to help you remain rooted and grounded in God's Word each day. We have one devotional for each weekday, and one for the weekend.
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Latest Devotional
A Nazirite New Year
Numbers 6:1-4
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the LORD, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. … All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins.”A Nazirite vow is a special vow of consecration, a way for pilgrims already seeking the face of the Almighty to draw a little nearer, to move further up and further in as Lewis poignantly wrote it in The Chronicles of Narnia. But it’s always difficult, always against the grain of our ambitions, and always a battle between the will and the appetites.
Imagine if God had prescribed the opposite here though. What if he’d inverted it, that is? Think of how many devoted, life-long Nazarites you’d see joining this pilgrimage if God had said something like, “Pig out in your love for Me! Get drunk in your commitment! Vow that from this day forward you’ll only eat the tastiest, juiciest fruits and drink only the sweetest, most feel-good liquors!” What if the lines, ‘Eat drink, and be merry!’, and ‘Seek first the Kingdom of heaven’ were one and the same?! Had that been the case, Abraham’s descendants might’ve outnumbered the stars in a single generation.
But that isn’t the way to progress, is it? We know intuitively that consecration to any cause requires self- sacrifice, self-discipline, and self-deprivation, which is why we make resolutions every new year to overcome yesterday’s shortcomings and re-commit to doing better today. But a Nazirite vow goes deeper than merely getting out of credit card debt or losing weight or starting a new hobby. The ultimate ambition of this hallowed enterprise isn’t basic self-improvement, but spiritual advancement. And that requires getting away from the din of our fleshly impulses long enough to hear the whisper of the Spirit.
Today, for the next twelve hours or so, make a Nazirite-type resolution to God, friend. Give up something good, something sweet, something beneficial, something like coffee or your favorite TV show or a trip to the gym—the favorite fruit of your vine—and feast on the LORD by faith instead.
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Love is Jealous, Love is Kind
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Get Your Hard Hat Ready
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Blue Collar Cloth
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Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Fanny Crosby’s hymn ‘All the Way My Savior Leads Me’)
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Beyond the Blue
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A Most Sacred Order
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Awaiting the Dawn
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Tribal Standards
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Count Me In
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Hallelujah!
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Servant Status
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Enduring Love
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Don’t Light the Fuse!
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The Last Word
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Don’t Wait . . . Sing Now!
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God Knows Best
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Gunning for Bear
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Parental Endowment
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Steadfast, Immovable
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Paying Penance?
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Stone-Blind
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Going the Extra Mile
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A Priceless Pearl
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Revenge Denied
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Trying Your Patience
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By Faith, Not by Sight
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Begging Your Pardon
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Lift That Weight!
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Keep Swinging
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The Heavens Declare
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Let’s Go Fishing!
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Parking Space #23
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Measureless Grace
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No Man Left Behind
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Completing the Puzzle
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Skeletons in the Closet
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Deposits and Investments
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Piercing the Darkness
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You’re on Candid Camera!
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Dry Bones
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Without Love
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Father Knows Best
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Putting on the Dog
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The Dreaded Word: Practice!
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Walking in the Spirit
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Down Memory Lane
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The Stops of a Good Man
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Truly Good News
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The Good Shepherd
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People of the Word
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Imitating Christ
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The One Left Standing
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Invisibly Involved
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“Not Guilty!”
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But You, O Lord . . .
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God Uses Broken Things
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Then Comes the Good Part!
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Go to God
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Light Up the Runway!
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Faith is . . .
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I Believe I Will
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Under Evaluation
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Minority Rule
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Sabbath Psalm (Adapted from Albert B. Simpson’s hymn, ‘Yesterday, Today, Forever’)
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The Melody of Raindrops
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Inverse Psychology
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Right Between the Eyes
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Bon Appetit
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Our Word
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Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Jane C. Bonar’s hymn, ‘Fade, Fade, Each Earthly Joy’)
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Dirt in the Divine
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Open Your Eyes!
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Gray Hair and Long Branches
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A Matter of Trust
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A Begrudging Virtue
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Sabbath Psalm (Revision of William T. Sleeper’s hymn, ‘Jesus, I Come’)
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The Least of These
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Remedial Purity
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Mad Goat Disease
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Joyful Sorrow…And Other Paradoxes
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Seeing Double
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Sabbath Psalm (Revision of John M. Neale’s hymn ‘Art Thou Weary?’)
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Cleaning House
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The Buck Stops With You
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The Seminal Covenant
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Word from our Land-LORD
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Stop the Spread
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Sabbath Psalm (From Lidie Edmunds hymn, ‘My Faith Has Found a Resting Place’)
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A Less-Than-Perfect Conception
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Altars and Alterations
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The City Center
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Hold Your Peace
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Fight the Tide
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Sabbath Psalm (Revised from Dora Greenwell’s hymn, ‘My Savior’)
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Hearts Ablaze
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The Glory in the Commandment
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New Dawn
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The Big Six
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The Hermeneutic of Hindsight