We offer these devotionals for your use in ministering to others and in building up the Body of Christ.  

You can read more of Jim's work in the Christian Life-Times and Love Expressnewspapers.          

   -  Other Devotional Messages (click here)

   -  State of the Church 9-Part Series (click here)

   -  So The World May Believe (click here)

   -  Hour of Power (click here)

   -  Heaven Our Future Home - 7 Part Series (click here)

   -  Trust and Obey - Is There No Other Way? (click here)

   -  Shifting Saints - My Heart's Plea (click here)

   -  Wolves In Sheep's Clothing (click here)

   -  Got Grief?

Featured Devotional.... 

BE ENCOURAGED AND TRUST IN THE LORD

By Jim Biscardi, Jr

The Christian life is not an easy life (1Peter 4:12-13).  But it is the abundant life (John 10:10).  God knew we’d need to depend upon His strength, not our own.  He knew that we needed to let Him work through us, as we surrender our bodies as living sacrifices to Him and be not conformed to this world’s value system but be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2).  He put into us His Holy Spirit, who would lead us to experience the abundant life promised by our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth (John 16:13) through a balanced spiritual diet of prayer, worship, Bible study, fellowship, service, and becoming more than conquerors in every trial and suffering (Romans 8:37).

What problems and difficult circumstances have you come through?  You may be traveling through some right now.  Remember, Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending (Revelation 1:8).  He sees the end from the beginning.  And He works all things together for good to those who love and serve Him (Romans 8:38).  His Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path (Psalm 119:105).  And the steps of a righteous man are ordered of Him (Psalm 37:23).  He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).  He tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” (Proverbs 3:5-6).  Those who ask Him, receive from Him.  Those who seek Him, find that He has already been searching for them, and He runs to embrace them.  Those who knock on His glory-filled throne room, find His door immediately opening to them! (Matthew 7:7-8; Luke 15:11-32).

So where are you journeying?  Have you been robbed and beaten on the Jericho Road (Luke 10: 29-36)?  Have you been born blind (Luke 18: 35-43)?  Have you been crippled since birth (Acts 3: 1-8)?  Have you been suffering with disease for 38 years (John 5: 1-9)?  Are you one of the ten lepers who came to Jesus to be healed?  Are you the one who returned to say thanks (Luke 17:12-19)?  Have you been a notorious tax collector thief, who wishes he’d been a better person (Luke 19:1-10)?  Have the soldiers of this angry world pressed a cruel crown of thorns on your head and led you off to a hill to punish you like a common criminal (John 19:1-3, 16-18)?  Then here this: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, not things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:36-39).

Let the joy of the Lord be your strength (Nehemiah 8:10).  He sees your courage in the battle with what appears to be overwhelming odds.  But you and Him, together, represent overwhelming firepower!  Remember when Elisha’s servant saw all the horses and chariots of Aram surrounding them?  Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened.  And when they were opened, he saw the horses and chariots of fire from God far outnumbered all the others. (2Kings 6:8-23).  He who is in us is greater (by far) than he that is in the world (1John 4: 3-4).  No weapon formed against us shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17)!  And, with every temptation, our Lord provides a way of escape (1Corinthians 10:13). 

Trials and temptations in our lives are to make us better not bitter – the difference between the two is whether you see and embrace an “e” (representing eternal outcomes) or an “i” (representing immediate outcomes).  The eternal outcome is that we are being always shaped into the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  As the Apostle Paul proclaimed, “…that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead….Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3: 10-14).

Jim is an author and itinerant teacher, and leads New Jersey Christian Ministries.  You can reach him at 1-800-363-4410 or mantle1@worldnet.att.net.