Acts 12 bible reading and devotionals.

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Hydrate Your Soul

Don’t deny your anger.  Don’t dismiss your loneliness.  Your restless spirit.  Your sense of dread.  Don’t let your heart shrink into a raisin.  Hydrate your soul.  Heed your thirst!

Not everything you put to your lips will help your thirst.  The arms of forbidden love may satisfy for a time, but only for a time.  Eighty-hour workweeks grant a sense of fulfillment, but never remove the thirst.

Religion pacifies but never satisfies.  Church activities may hide a thirst, but only Christ quenches it.   Drink him.  And drink of him often!

Don’t you need regular sips from God’s reservoir?  I do.  I step to the underground spring of God and receive anew his work for my sin and death, the energy of his Spirit, his lordship, and his love.

Receive Christ’s work on the cross, the energy of His Spirit.  His unending, unfailing love.

Drink deeply–and drink often!

Jesus said, “…he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”  John 6:35

From Come Thirsty

Acts 12
New International Version (NIV)
Peter’s Miraculous Escape From Prison

12 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.

5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.

8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”

12 When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”

15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”

16 But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.

18 In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.

Herod’s Death

Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there. 20 He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. After securing the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply.

21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

24 But the word of God continued to spread and flourish.

Barnabas and Saul Sent Off

25 When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from[a] Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.


Our Daily Bread reading and devotion

Read: James 4:13-17

Bragging About Tomorrow

 13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city. We will spend a year there. We will buy and sell and make money." 14 You don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while. Then it disappears. 15 Instead, you should say, "If it pleases the Lord, we will live and do this or that."
 16 As it is, you are proud. You brag about it. That kind of bragging is evil. 17 So when you know the good things you should do and don't do them, you sin.

Uncontrollable Unexpected

June 7, 2012 — by Bill Crowder

Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” —James 4:15

Life is full of surprises—some of which take life in unwelcome directions. I still remember the shockwave that hit our family several decades ago when my father lost his job through no fault of his own. With a house full of kids to feed, it was a jarring blow. But as certainly as Dad’s job loss was beyond his control and unexpected, he still knew he could trust God for his future.

As Jesus’ followers, we must recognize that there are things in life that are the “uncontrollable unexpected,” as I call them. To help us in those moments, James 4:13-15 offers this wisdom: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. . . . Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’ ” The people to whom James was writing were making plans while excluding God’s prerogative to direct their lives.

Is it wrong to plan for the future? Of course not. It is unwise, however, to forget that God may allow some “uncontrollable unexpected” events as He sees fit. Ultimately, all that happens is for the best—even when it’s hard to see. We must trust Him and His plans for our future.

I know who holds the future,
And I know who holds my hand;
With God things don’t just happen—
Everything by Him is planned. —A. Smith
We may not know what the future holds, but we can trust the One who holds the future.



My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 7, 2012

The Greatest Source of Power

Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do . . . —John 14:13

Am I fulfilling this ministry of intercession deep within the hidden recesses of my life? There is no trap nor any danger at all of being deceived or of showing pride in true intercession. It is a hidden ministry that brings forth fruit through which the Father is glorified. Am I allowing my spiritual life to waste away, or am I focused, bringing everything to one central point— the atonement of my Lord? Is Jesus Christ more and more dominating every interest of my life? If the central point, or the most powerful influence, of my life is the atonement of the Lord, then every aspect of my life will bear fruit for Him.

However, I must take the time to realize what this central point of power is. Am I willing to give one minute out of every hour to concentrate on it? “If you abide in Me . . . “— that is, if you continue to act, and think, and work from that central point— “you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7). Am I abiding? Am I taking the time to abide? What is the greatest source of power in my life? Is it my work, service, and sacrifice for others, or is it my striving to work for God? It should be none of these— what ought to exert the greatest power in my life is the atonement of the Lord. It is not on what we spend the greatest amount of time that molds us the most, but whatever exerts the most power over us. We must make a determination to limit and concentrate our desires and interests on the atonement by the Cross of Christ.

“Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do . . . .” The disciple who abides in Jesus is the will of God, and what appears to be his free choices are actually God’s foreordained decrees. Is this mysterious? Does it appear to contradict sound logic or seem totally absurd? Yes, but what a glorious truth it is to a saint of God.


A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft

The Spring Break Mistake - #6629

Thursday, June 7, 2012

At first I thought some apocalyptic event had hit our town. Schools were all empty, wasn't a school bus in sight, lots of people suddenly disappeared. Not to worry. It was just Spring Break.

Of course, for many of America's young people, Spring Break is code for "party like there's no tomorrow, baby." Well, after downing lots of booze and sometimes drugs...your internal censors just go off duty. So a lot of folks come back from break with little memory of some big mistakes. Partying that lasts for a night; regrets and scars that can last a lifetime. Going for "break" and coming back broken.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Spring Break Mistake."

There's this lie that sets people up for expensive and hurtful choices. What you do when you're away, when you're alone, when you're anonymous doesn't count. It's not just a lie students fall for. Businessmen on trips, women home alone, guys on the Internet, girls texting, people on vacation or at a party. I'm almost sure that there's someone listening right now who would do anything to erase what they did when they believed that "it won't matter" lie.

It really does matter. Because while you can turn off your internal controls, you can't turn off your conscience. It picks up every wrong thing we do - or, in God's vocabulary, every sin. And, as observed by the wife of a governor who was recently disgraced by the discovery of his long-distance affair: "You can pick your sin; you can't pick your consequences."

So your conscience is always running. And so is your calculator that's adding up the consequences, because as the Bible says, "whatever a man sows, he reaps." That's an inescapable law of the universe. Worst of all, the camera's always running, too. In our word for today from the Word of God, God's camera is described this way, "A man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths." That "Sin City" commercial that says, "What you do here stays here" - forget about it! If God knows, you're caught. Oh, believe me, God knows.

It doesn't matter how drunk you are, how depressed you are, how devious you are, how deserving you think you are. The Bible says, "be sure that your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23). First the thrill, then the bill. The fear of discovery, the trail of cover-up deceit, the guilt, the shame, the loss of self-respect, the stinging regrets, the bleeding relationships, the ugly consequences, and the judgment of God. "For," as the Bible says, "God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

See, nothing good happens when we blow past God's stop signs. That's why we've got to run from the rocks that we've been drifting toward and say "no!" to that seductive, but devilish voice that says "forget about tomorrow; now is all that matters." Oh, tomorrow really does matter.

But what about the memories, the shame of the mistakes that it's too late to change? Well, hope is in the word "forgiven." The very God whose plans for us we trash has made this stunning promise: "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (Hebrews 8:12). Like the wonderful feeling of a shower when you're disgustingly dirty, God says He'll make us clean inside; every sin erased from His book, with our eternal sin-bill paid in full because of a cross. Where Jesus, God's one and only Son, in the Bible's words "carried our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24) and He absorbed the judgment I deserve: The nights that haunt us, that darkness that pursues us, the secrets that are tormenting us, the choices that accuse us. Gone! Forgiven!

That's what happens when a sinner grabs the Savior. It's nothing less than a new beginning. The promise of God is that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17)! And that rebirthing miracle is within your reach right now if you'll just tell Jesus you're pinning all your hopes on Him.

Listen, if that's what you want, I hope you'll go check out our website as soon as you can today - YoursForLife.net. It's all about how you can experience the love of Jesus and the forgiveness of Jesus for yourself this very day.