Devotional
As the Deer Pants
…of the water that I will give him will never thirst again, Jesus to the woman at the well. Do your prayers usually ask God for things, or do they also make room for longing for God himself? Pray Psalm 42:1-5 today, and…
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Studies, reading plans and every single day within them, alongside devotionals and articles. Search by title, book of the Bible, passage or topic.
Bible studies (25)
Devotional
One Beggar Telling Another
…city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, "He told me everything that I did." WEB The woman at the well has no training and a complicated past that Jesus names plainly…
Devotional
Your Faith Has Made You Well
Mark 5:34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be cured of your affliction.” WEB This woman had suffered for twelve years and spent everything on physicians without improvement,…
Chapter study
Genesis 22: The Mountain Where God Revealed the Gospel
…ending with Rebekah. Genesis 24:15 Identifies Rebekah as the young woman later brought to marry Isaac. Notice what this list supplies for a part of the story that has not happened yet within Genesis 22. Repetition that…
Chapter study
Genesis 4
…it silently. What is not in doubt is the shape of the sentence: doing well and not doing well are set against each other, a danger is named, and Cain is told to rule. Genesis 3:16 The same pairing of desire and rule,…
Chapter study
Philippians 4: Contentment Learned in Chains
…things apart as you read. What the text says is that Paul exhorts each woman to think the same way in the Lord, that he asks a fellow worker to help them, and that they laboured with him in the gospel with their names…
Devotional
Mercies New Every Morning
…whole point of it. Hesed is not affection that lasts while things go well. It is faithfulness that outlives betrayal. So when Jeremiah says the Lord's hesed never ceases, his readers heard a legal and personal claim at…
Reading plan
The Gospel of John in 21 Days
…you see who Jesus is. In the same way, when he brings in a feast, a well, a shepherd or a vine, he is reaching back into Israel's Scriptures, where those images already carried meaning, and showing you that Jesus is…
Reading plan
Wisdom: Proverbs in 31 Days
…address rightly matters. This is a parent teaching a child how to live well before life forces the lesson, which is why the tone is affectionate rather than stern. Israel's court needed administrators who could judge…
Devotional
A Fountain of Life
…appears often in Proverbs for the traps set by folly, by the immoral woman of chapters 5 and 7, and by hasty speech. The book treats danger as something that catches people gradually and often invisibly, which is…
Devotional
Greater Is He Who Is in You
…gives does not rest on the believer's skill in the fight but on who indwells them. Overcoming is described here as already accomplished, not merely hoped for. The comparison is between the Spirit in you and the spirit…
Devotional
The God Who Sees Me
…sees, is not a title given by a prophet or a patriarch. It comes from a woman with no status and no power, who discovers that being overlooked by everyone else did not mean being overlooked by God. God sees the people…
52 Week Journey
Week 37: Healing and Weakness
…By His Stripes We Are Healed The suffering servant carries sickness as well as sin. Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on…
Reading plan day
The Gospel of John in 21 Days, day 5: Living water
Jesus crosses every social boundary of his day to speak with a Samaritan woman at a well, and offers her living water that will become in her a spring welling up to eternal life. The conversation that follows shows how…
Reading plan day
Wisdom: Proverbs in 31 Days, day 31: Faithfulness
The book closes with a description of a woman whose worth is far above jewels, whose days are filled with diligent, practical, faithful work. The final word on wisdom in Proverbs is not a theory but an ordinary life…
Chapter study
John 15: The Vine, the Branches, and the Friends of God
…and they miss that everything from here to the end of chapter 17 may well be spoken while the group is walking through Jerusalem toward the Kidron valley and the garden. That detail changes how the vine image lands.…
Chapter study
Psalm 23: The LORD Our Shepherd
…and both of them are kind. Then the final line moves from following to dwelling. The journey that began in a field ends in a house, and the shepherd never asks the sheep to leave it. What does Psalm 23:6 say is…
Chapter study
Romans 8: No Condemnation, No Defeat, No Separation
…Paul does not say the Spirit is available to you. He says the Spirit dwells in you, and that anyone without the Spirit of Christ is none of his. What does Paul say a mind set on the flesh is aimed at, compared with a…
Verse study
I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever (Psalm 23:6)
…beveit YHWH Hebrew The form can be read as 'I will return' or 'I will dwell,' from the same root shuv used of the restored soul in verse 3. The psalm's end and its middle share one verb. The destination is belonging,…
52 Week Journey
Week 52: Finishing Well
Scripture is honest that beginning well is not the same as finishing well. Kings who started with real devotion to God ended their reigns compromised, and disciples who once left everything to follow Jesus were still…
Dig Deeper
Does God promise to supply all my need, and what counts as need?
…that came from you, a sweet-smelling fragrance, an acceptable and well-pleasing sacrifice to God. The verse immediately before. Their gift is described in the language of the altar, and then Paul promises supply to the…
Dig Deeper
Is anxiety a sin, and what does "be careful for nothing" require?
…these things. The garrison at the gate and the discipline of what you dwell on are not competing ideas. God's peace stands watch, and the believer stops feeding the fear. philippians-4-be-anxious-for-nothing Is anxiety…
Bible study
Philippians 4: The Peace That Guards
…our ability to explain or reproduce it; it is not proportional to how well we have analysed the problem.
Bible study
Psalm 23: The Shepherd Who Goes Before You
…and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 'Follow' translates radaph, to pursue, a word usually used of hunters. Goodness and covenant love hunt the believer…
Bible study
Romans 8: No Condemnation, No Separation
…are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Paul's assumed normal Christianity is Spirit-indwelt. There is no second tier of believer here. v.15 You have received the Spirit of…
Bible topics (21)
Biblical concept
Living Water
…believed in him were to receive. Genesis 26:19 Isaac's servants dig a well and find a spring of living water, an ordinary phrase for flowing water as opposed to water stored in a cistern. Scripture later takes this…
Place in Scripture
Mountain
…the highest heaven cannot contain God (1 Kings 8:27), and Jesus tells the woman at the well that the hour is coming when worship is not fixed to this mountain or Jerusalem (John 4:21-24). The mountains are appointed…
Biblical concept
Bread of Life
…heated jar. Grinding was done every morning, because flour did not keep well and the loaves went hard by evening. A woman's day began at the millstone, and the sound of it in a town meant life was going on as normal.…
Biblical concept
The Incarnation
…God and fully human. Colossians 2:9 says the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, and Hebrews 2:17 says he was made like his brothers in every way. Genesis 3:15 God tells the serpent that the seed of the woman…
Place in Scripture
Wilderness
…The first wilderness scene in Scripture is God finding a runaway woman nobody else was looking for. Deuteronomy 8:2-3 Why God led them the way He did, and what it revealed. Hosea 2:14 I will allure her and bring her…
Topic study
Hope: The anchor that holds when everything else gives way
…a bank balance, a diagnosis that improves, a child who turns out well. None of these are evil. They are simply too small to carry the weight of a soul, and eventually each of them tells the truth about its own limits.…
Topic study
Prayer: Speaking with the God who has already spoken
…and Moses puts his own name on the line. Hannah: the prayer of a barren woman 1 Samuel 1:10 Hannah pours out her soul in the temple, so honestly that Eli mistakes her grief for drunkenness. Scripture never asks us to…
Biblical concept
Covenant
…8:6-13 God's covenant promises depend on people keeping their side well enough. The Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15 is sealed by God alone, with no matching obligation placed on Abram in that scene, and Jeremiah 31…
Biblical concept
Day of the LORD
…judgement of what opposes God and the arrival of the new city where he dwells openly with his people. Scripture never asks its readers to calculate the date of this day. It asks them to be ready for it. The day of the…
Biblical concept
King and kingship
…11 shows a king using the very powers Samuel warned about to take a woman and dispose of a man. By the time Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, deliberately fulfilling Zechariah 9:9, the crowd is shouting for a…
Biblical concept
Kingdom of God
…that God's reign had arrived was therefore heard as political as well as spiritual, which explains both the crowds and the opposition. Josephus, Antiquities and Jewish War Records Roman administration of Judea and the…
Biblical concept
Light of the World
…the feast, and the dancing by their light. The Mishnah was written down well after the temple stood, so the practice it records cannot be dated precisely to the years of Jesus' ministry. text John places this saying…
Biblical concept
New Creation
…to the whole world. New heavens and a new earth are promised, with God dwelling among his people. Isaiah 65:17 God promises through Isaiah that he will create new heavens and a new earth, so complete a renewal that the…
Biblical concept
Oil and anointing
…Him grow up. And then the last anointing before the cross comes from a woman with a jar worth a year's wages (John 12:3-7). The King is anointed, but for burial, and Jesus defends her when the room objects to the waste.…
Biblical concept
Responsibility
…for their own acts. In Genesis 3:11 to 13 God questions the man and the woman one at a time, each answers by pointing elsewhere, and neither answer removes what follows. Genesis 4:7 puts responsibility in the plainest…
Biblical concept
Resurrection
…now. If the dead are not raised, he says elsewhere, people might as well eat and drink for tomorrow they die. Believing resurrection is real is meant to steady how a person spends their life, their risks, and their…
Word and phrase
Righteousness
Righteousness in Scripture is relational as well as moral. It means conformity to God's standard and standing accepted before him, and Romans 3 says all have fallen short of it. Romans 1:17 speaks of a righteousness of…
Biblical concept
Sacrifice and offering
…10:4). Genesis 3:21 Before any altar is built, God clothes the man and woman with skins, which required a death. Abel's offering in Genesis 4:4 is the first offering that is named as accepted. Leviticus 17:11 The reason…
Biblical concept
Salvation
…Nobody flags down a lifeboat because they are already swimming well. Romans 10:9 puts the response in the plainest terms available: confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, and that is receiving what God has…
Biblical concept
Shepherd
…which is why the shepherd passages in the prophets read as political as well as pastoral. Greek ποιμήν poimen shepherd The word behind good shepherd in John 10 and behind pastor in Ephesians 4:11. The office in the…
Biblical concept
Son of God
…power, but the Father already names him beloved Son at his baptism, well before the resurrection, so the resurrection confirms and displays the sonship rather than beginning it. Matthew 3:17 Romans 1:4 Because Jesus is…
Questions and answers (14)
Bible question
What does it mean to be born again?
…to that house. Lydia, whose heart was opened Acts 16:13-15 A businesswoman already worshipping God, listening to Paul beside a river. Nothing dramatic and nothing scandalous in her story. The Lord opened her heart to…
Bible question
Does God hear my prayers?
…and Jesus never rebukes her for it. Christ takes the request of a woman with no covenant claim and answers it. That is the mercy the whole gospel runs on, and it means your lack of standing is not what decides whether…
Bible question
What is faith?
…is the diet of faith. Hebrews 11:6 Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. WEB Without faith it is…
Bible question
Who is God?
…is spirit, so he is not confined John 4:23-24 Jesus tells a Samaritan woman that the argument about the right mountain for worship is being overtaken. Because God is spirit, the Father seeks worshipers rather than…
Bible question
Why is Jesus called the Son of God?
…as he came up from the water. This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. The wording joins Psalm 2:7 to Isaiah 42:1, king and servant in one sentence. The title is publicly conferred at the start of his…
Bible question
What is grace?
…is the clearest proof in Scripture that salvation is not payment. The woman who anointed his feet Luke 7:36-50 She came into a Pharisee's house with a reputation everyone in the room knew, and was silently despised for…
Bible question
Can the Bible be trusted?
…to him from the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” We heard this voice come out of heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. We have the more sure word of prophecy; and you do…
Bible question
Does God provide for my needs?
…and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well. WEB Three passages together give the promise, its measure and its timing. Read them before any explanation, and notice how carefully each one is…
Bible question
How can I grow spiritually?
…for the word that follows, showing growth includes subtraction as well as addition. epichoregeo Greek to supply abundantly, to add lavishly Behind 'add' in 2 Peter 1:5 is a word originally used for a wealthy patron…
Bible question
How do I know God's will for my life?
…by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God. WEB A renewed mind proves what God's will is. Guidance comes through a transformed way of thinking rather…
Bible question
How do I recognize false teachers?
…protect them through sound teaching. 2 Peter 2:18 For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error;…
Bible question
How do I study the Bible correctly?
…study ends in obedience, not information. The Bible records readers as well as writers, and shows what careful and careless reading look like. Ezra, who set his heart to it Ezra 7:10 Ezra worked with a people who had…
Bible question
How do I trust God when life is difficult?
…is usually grown in the delay rather than in the fulfilment. Waiting well is not passivity, it is the main work of faith. The promise Abraham trusted reached its end in Christ, in whom all nations are blessed (Galatians…
Bible question
How should I pray?
…of a day? Lord, let me speak with you in the middle of my work as well as behind a shut door. Can I be angry or complain in prayer? Scripture preserves many prayers of complaint and confusion, which shows what God is…
The Sunday Study
One deep study, every week.
Verse-by-verse teaching with historical context, and a prayer to close. Nothing else in the email.