Devotionals & Poems

Posts in category Refuge

Our confession of hope

Our confession of hope

Hebrews 10:23 says “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” You will probably recall that we also talked about holding fast our confession in 4:14; there we talked about our confession of faith in our great High priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, and what the […]

Psalm 23 (Part 16, security)

Psalm 23  (Part 16, security)

Psalm 23:6 continues “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord” The word for dwell properly means to sit down, and implies to dwell, remain, settle, and even to marry, which gives us a right to dwell there as a member of the family! Again, where did he say he would dwell? “…in […]

Psalm 23 (Part eleven, discipline)

Psalm 23  (Part eleven, discipline)

“Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me” Psalm 23:4. The rod and staff were the symbol of a shepherd; while the staff may have been used by the shepherd in walking, or as something to lean on, the obvious message here is their function in caring for the flock, and by their use the […]

Psalm 23 (Part eight, testing)

Psalm 23  (Part eight, testing)

  Verse 4 of Psalm 23 opens up saying, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” The picture here is of a dangerous path through a deep ravine with high steep mountains on either side, and no seeming way of escape, so you must move forward in spite of the […]

God, our ultimate warrior

God, our ultimate warrior

As we continue looking at Psalm 46, in verses 8-11 we see God as our victorious warrior. The desolations He makes in the earth are explained by Jamieson-Fausset-Brown as literally, ‘who hath put desolations’, destroying our enemies.” Making wars to cease might refer to the time the angel of the Lord slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers […]

Alpha and Omega

Alpha and Omega

As we approach the end of one year and the beginning of a new I am reminded of Jesus words in Revelation 22:13, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.” He is like the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet which “bookends” everything […]

Getting to know God (Part Nine)

Getting to know God (Part Nine)

In Exodus 17:8-15 Israel wins a great battle over their enemy, Amalek; their victory was not because they had superior military might, but it was by the hand of the Lord under whose banner they fought. We see this as we watch Moses hands, while raised to God (which could be seen as a posture […]

The calm assurance of trusting God

The calm assurance of trusting God

Psalm 62 is a great Psalm of encouragement to those trusting God through times of adversity and testing, those who are established firmly on the rock of salvation having the calm assurance that God is their defense, their strong tower of refuge and safety. When looking at his adversaries the Psalmist sees them as we […]

When my heart is overwhelmed

When my heart is overwhelmed

Have you been in a place where you feel like your heart is overwhelmed with the things around you, with the cares and pressures of this life? It seems that the Psalmist David found himself in such a position in Psalm 61. It is possible that he was away from home on an expedition at […]

God’s Perfect Rest

God’s Perfect Rest

“There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His” Hebrews 4:9-10. God’s work of creation followed by rest in Genesis 1-2 forms a perfect picture of His new creation in us “through the redemption that […]