Daily Devotionals for May 18, 2026

WHEN Herod beheaded John, his disciples took up his body and buried it, and went and told Jesus. Let us imitate their example, and carry all to Jesus. He loves to listen to the tale of human woe. He can and will sympathise with us in all our trials and troubles. He is our Father, and to whom should the child tell his troubles, but to his kind and tender parent? He will direct our steps, avenge our wrongs, and turn all things to our advantage. Does business go wrong? Are enemies active? Is...

Our Savior Jesus Christ … has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. § I am the resurrection and the life. § Because I live, you will live also. § We have become partakers of Christ. § Partakers of the Holy Spirit. § Partakers of the divine nature. § “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. § Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an...

In coming to God we should place ourselves in His presence with the confidence that He is the aggressor, not we. He has been waiting to manifest Himself to us till such time as our noise and activity have subsided enough for Him to make Himself heard and felt by us. Then we should focus our soul"s powers of attention upon the Triune Godhead. Whether One Person or Another claims our present interest is not important. We can trust the Spirit to bring before our minds the Person that we at the...

A heart of flesh is known by its tenderness concerning sin. To have indulged a foul imagination, or to have allowed a wild desire to tarry even for a moment, is quite enough to make a heart of flesh grieve before the Lord. The heart of stone calls a great iniquity nothing, but not so the heart of flesh.

"If to the right or left I stray, That moment, Lord, reprove; And let me weep my life away, For having grieved thy love"

The heart of flesh is tender of God's...

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ" (Phil. 3:7).

As far as our Father is concerned, the early and middle years of the Christian life have to do primarily with our spiritual development. Maturity must underlie all abiding effectiveness. Most of our service during this time is learning...

When the people of Israel grumbled about the lack of water at Kadesh, God told Moses that water would flow if he would speak to the rock. But Moses was fed up with the people by now, so he lashed out at them, saying, "Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of the rock?" Then he smote the rock twice with his rod. By his angry words and disobedient action, he misrepresented God to the people. The result was that he forfeited the privilege of leading the children of Israel into the...

Having had a taste of the power of these our enemies, we look disconsolately around, much desiring, but little hoping, that a deliverer may appear. We discover some, perhaps, who excel in virtue. But we see at once that they can never medicine us to that sweet peace which they themselves possess. They may instruct; but we need something more than instruction; there is that within us which laughs at instruction, human or divine. If some angels would only come and tarry with us for a season;...

Amos 4:4-13

Amos probably was a Judean. He was a small farmer and shepherd. He cultivated a few sycamore trees whose fruit was lightly esteemed. He owned a little flock of sheep, sheep of a peculiar breed which yielded an excellent kind of wool. He pastured his sheep in the wilderness of Judea.

Bethel, the ecclesiastical capital of the Northern Kingdom, was the principal scene of his preaching. "Go to Bethel and sin!" cried the...

Gideon said to them, “I would like to make a request of you, that each of you would give me the earrings from his plunder.” For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites. So they answered, “We will gladly give them.” And they spread out a garment, and each man threw into it the earrings from his plunder. . . . Gideon made it into an ephod and set it up in his city, Ophrah. And all Israel played the harlot with it there. It became a snare to Gideon and to his house.Do...

"And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten." Joel 2:25

Yes, those wasted years over which we sigh shall be restored to us. God can give us such plentiful grace that we shall crowd into the remainder of our days as much of service as will be some recompense for those years of unregeneracy over which we mourn in humble penitence. The locusts of backsliding, worldliness, lukewarmness, are now viewed by us as a...

Very admirable was his occupation. If those who spend so many hours in idle company, light reading, and useless pastimes, could learn wisdom, they would find more profitable society and more interesting engagements in meditation than in the vanities which now have such charms for them. We should all know more, live nearer to God, and grow in grace, if we were more alone. Meditation chews the cud and extracts the real nutriment from the mental food gathered elsewhere. When Jesus is the...

For Reading and Meditation:     Psalm 139:1-24

We continue meditating on the right way to handle our negative feelings. We said yesterday that the two wrong ways to handle hurting emotions are to deny them or express them. Denial pushes them down inside us, while expression dumps them on to other people or things. Neither of these, in my view, is a Biblical way of...

The most effective argument for Christianity is still the good lives of those who profess it. A company of pure-living and cheerful Christians in the community is a stronger proof that Christ is risen than any learned treatise could ever be. And a further advantage is that, while the average person could not be hired to read a theological work, no one can evade the practical argument presented by the presence of holy men and women. To the sons and daughters of this tense and highly...