For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
If you are too stubborn to change your behavior when people give you well-deserved criticism you will be suddenly destroyed with no hope for redemption.
Are we like the psalmist? Are we glad when they say, “Let us go to the House of the Lord?” or do we think, “It is so boring there?” Or worse yet, are we the people who cause others to say that the house of the Lord is boring? Let us strive to make the gathering of God’s people a place where others want to be. Let us strive to make the gathering of the Lord’s people something that those who love the Lord are sad when they cannot be there.
If we do what is right we demonstrate that we are righteous in the same way that Christ is righteous, but if we keep on sinning we demonstrate that we belong to the devil. We cannot belong to both God and the devil, we must choose one or the other. And how do we know what is right? We know what is right by loving our fellow believers and acting out that love. Jesus gave us an example of what real love was when He gave up His very life for us. Therefore we should be ready and willing to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ (and those we hope will be our brothers and sisters in Christ).
Cain murdered Abel because Abel did what was pleasing to God and Cain hated him for it. In the same way the people of this world are likely to hate us. While the people of this world may hate us, we should love them because God desires for them to become our brothers and sisters. Those who hate others are no better than murderers. In fact, they are murderers. It is not possible to be both a murderer and a loving child of God.
The angel Gabriel recounts to Daniel the fall of the Persian Empire to Alexander the Great and the four kingdoms into which his empire was divided. The account describes the conflict between the two which fought over the land of Israel. The key message in all of this is that God is in control of history and knows what comes next.