Psalm 132 bible reading and devotionals.

Click to listen and download:

Max Lucado Daily: Simplify Faith

“He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” Matthew 10:40, NKJV

How do you simplify faith? ... Simplify your faith by seeking God for yourself. No confusing ceremonies necessary. No mysterious rituals required. No elaborate channels of command or levels of access.

Psalm 132

A song of ascents.

1 Lord, remember David
    and all his self-denial.
2 He swore an oath to the Lord,
    he made a vow to the Mighty One of Jacob:
3 “I will not enter my house
    or go to my bed,
4 I will allow no sleep to my eyes
    or slumber to my eyelids,
5 till I find a place for the Lord,
    a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
6 We heard it in Ephrathah,
    we came upon it in the fields of Jaar:[a]
7 “Let us go to his dwelling place,
    let us worship at his footstool, saying,
8 ‘Arise, Lord, and come to your resting place,
    you and the ark of your might.
9 May your priests be clothed with your righteousness;
    may your faithful people sing for joy.’”
10 For the sake of your servant David,
    do not reject your anointed one.
11 The Lord swore an oath to David,
    a sure oath he will not revoke:
“One of your own descendants
    I will place on your throne.
12 If your sons keep my covenant
    and the statutes I teach them,
then their sons will sit
    on your throne for ever and ever.”
13 For the Lord has chosen Zion,
    he has desired it for his dwelling, saying,
14 “This is my resting place for ever and ever;
    here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it.
15 I will bless her with abundant provisions;
    her poor I will satisfy with food.
16 I will clothe her priests with salvation,
    and her faithful people will ever sing for joy.
17 “Here I will make a horn[b] grow for David
    and set up a lamp for my anointed one.
18 I will clothe his enemies with shame,
    but his head will be adorned with a radiant crown.”


Our Daily Bread reading and devotion

Read: John 15:8-17

8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

Still Bearing Fruit

October 7, 2012 — by Dave Branon

By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. —John 15:8

Sometimes the harvest comes late. Sometimes you sow seeds of hope without really knowing it. Sometimes the fruit of your life comes in a way and time you would never expect.

My daughter Melissa had accepted God’s gift of salvation at a young age. But she never saw herself as some great Christian who could change lives. She was just a high school junior trying to cope with a job, school, and sports while balancing friendships—just a kid trying to live as God would want her to.

Yet, in 2002 when He welcomed her into heaven when she was just 17, her faith in Christ and her faithful life stood on their own. No advance warning. No time to make things right with others. No new opportunities to “bear much fruit” (John 15:8).

Melissa tried to live in a way that was pleasing to God—and her life is still bearing fruit. Just recently, I heard of a young person who trusted Jesus as Savior at a sports camp after a coach shared Melissa’s story.

All of us are writing a story with our lives—one that affects others now and in the future. Are we living to please God? We don’t know when the Lord will call us Home. Let’s live every day with an eye on the harvest.

Only the truth that in life we have spoken,
Only the seed that on earth we have sown;
These shall pass onward when we are forgotten,
Fruits of the harvest and what we have done. —Bonar
A fruitful harvest requires a faithful life.


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

The Nature of Reconciliation

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him —2 Corinthians 5:21

Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.

The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.

A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.