FOCUS OF THE MONTH (FOM)
CHURCH IS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST
SCRIPTURE OF THE WEEK (SOW)
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it;
– Ephesians 5:25 KJV
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
— Ephesians 5:25 ESV
Wednesday Corporate Fasting Scripture – Isaiah 58 (ESV); Isaiah 58 (KJV)
Friday End of Week Scripture – Ephesians 3:20-21 (KJV)
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ESV Translation Philosophy
The ESV is an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to reproduce the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking full account of differences in grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and exact force of the original.
In contrast to the ESV, some Bible versions have followed a “thought-for-thought” rather than “word-for-word” translation philosophy, emphasizing “dynamic equivalence” rather than the “essentially literal” meaning of the original. A “thought-for-thought” translation is of necessity more inclined to reflect the interpretive views of the translator and the influences of contemporary culture.
Every translation is at many points a trade-off between literal precision and readability, between “formal equivalence” in expression and “functional equivalence” in communication, and the ESV is no exception. Within this framework, we have sought to be “as literal as possible” while maintaining clarity of expression and literary excellence. Therefore, to the extent that plain English permits and the meaning in each case allows, we have sought to use the same English word for important recurring words in the original; and, as far as grammar and syntax allow, we have rendered Old Testament passages cited in the New in ways that show their correspondence. Thus in each of these areas, as well as throughout the Bible as a whole, we have sought to capture all the echoes and overtones of meaning that are so abundantly present in the original texts.
As an essentially literal translation, taking into account grammar and syntax, the ESV thus seeks to carry over every possible nuance of meaning in the original words of Scripture into our own language. As such, the ESV is ideally suited for in-depth study of the Bible. Indeed, with its commitment to literary excellence, the ESV is equally well suited for public reading and preaching, for private reading and reflection, for both academic and devotional study, and for Scripture memorization.
PRAISE & WORSHIP
DAILY DEVOTIONALS
Sunday, June 1, 2025 – OUR THOUGHTFUL GOD – 2 Kings 20:12-19
Our Daily Bread Focus(es): God’s character
Today’s Devotional
“Do you want to see my scar?” My friend Bill had been paralyzed from the chest down after falling off a ladder years ago, and now he was in the hospital for a severe infection acquired during a surgery. As we discussed his new challenge, he lifted his blanket to show me the long incision made to treat his infection. “Does it hurt?” I asked. “I can’t feel it at all,” he said.
As soon as he said it, I felt convicted. During all the years I’d known him as a friend, I’d been unaware that his injury prevented both his mobility and ability to feel. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t had more empathy for him and his injury to better understand what he faced daily.
My lack of thoughtfulness about my friend reminds me of something King Hezekiah of Judah did. When the prophet Isaiah told him that everything in his palace would one day “be carried off to Babylon,” and his own descendants “taken away” (2 Kings 20:17-18), Hezekiah was pleased. “For he thought, ‘Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?’ ” (v. 19). Even though he was a good king, Hezekiah was focused more on himself than on what others would face.
How different God is. “This is love,” John wrote, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son” to save us (1 John 4:10). God cares so deeply for us that He suffered for us, so that we might live in His love forever.
Reflect & Pray
What does God’s thoughtfulness mean to you? How might you think of others today?
Thank You for thinking of me, dear God. Please let Your love flow through me to others.
Click here to find out more about how Jesus suffered for us.
Today’s Insights
The Babylonian king sent envoys to Hezekiah seeking to forge an alliance with Judah against Assyria. In a foolish bid to impress them, Hezekiah showed them the wealth of his kingdom. God was testing Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 32:31). He had previously acted powerfully on Hezekiah’s behalf, but Hezekiah trusted in himself and the military alliance instead of God (see 2 Kings 19:35-36; 20:4-11; 2 Chronicles 32:25). Although Hezekiah repented (v. 26), he brought God’s judgment upon Judah. Later, Jerusalem would be destroyed and the people exiled to Babylon (2 Kings 20:16-19; Isaiah 39). Unlike Hezekiah, God provides the perfect example of loving others.
Today’s Devotional
“Not winning is in fact more powerful than winning,” Professor Monica Wadhwa argues. Her research reveals that people tend to be most energized and motivated not when they win but when they almost win. Falling just short of one’s ambitions tends to give people the motivation to keep growing and striving. Easy victories, on the other hand, tend to cripple energy and motivation.
Wadhwa’s perspective gives fresh insight into Paul’s analogy used in two passages that compare following Christ to running a race: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 and Philippians 3:12-14. In both instances, Paul emphasizes that believers ought to give their pursuit of Christ and the gospel their all, “straining toward what is ahead” (Philippians 3:13) and running “in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24).
The paradoxical truth is that what we’re striving for—faithfully sharing the gospel (v. 23) and knowing Christ (Philippians 3:8)—aren’t things we can ever say we’ve achieved. We’ll always fall short. We’ll never be able to say we’ve “already arrived” (v. 12).
But that’s okay—because it’s the experience of drawing ever closer to Christ that matters. It’s only His strength that empowers and motivates us to pour our whole hearts into pursuing Him—the one who will one day carry us to victory.
Reflect & Pray
How have you experienced growth through falling short? How can falling short encourage you to rely on Christ?
Dear God, thank You that I don’t need to fear falling short, but that You use these moments to continually draw me closer to You.
For further study, read Why Is Confession So Hard?
Today’s Insights
The athletic imagery of running a race used in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 is also seen in Hebrews 12:1-2. The Greek word trechō, translated “run,” is used in both passages. We’re to “run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24) and “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1). The “great cloud of witnesses” (v. 1) included the “sometimes winning, sometimes losing” Old Testament believers. Though perfection will continue to elude us, as we “[fix] our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (v. 2), we can grow in faith and endurance
Today’s Devotional
When Dianne Dokko Kim and her husband learned that their son’s diagnosis was autism, she struggled with the very real possibility that her cognitively disabled son might outlive her. She cried out to God: What will he do without me to care for him? God surrounded her with a support system of other adults raising children with disabilities. He empowered Dianne to trust Him with her often-unexplainable guilt, feelings of inadequacy, and fear. Eventually, in her book Unbroken Faith, Dianne offered hope for “spiritual recovery” to other adults raising children with disabilities. As her son enters adulthood, Dianne’s faith remains intact. She trusts that God will always care for her and her son.
Uncertainties in life can harden our hearts toward God. We may be tempted to place our faith in other things or people, including ourselves. We can, however, depend on “the Rock of our salvation” (Psalm 95:1)—a phrase that points to the certainty of God’s character. “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land” (vv. 4-5).
We can live with unbroken faith, worshiping our “Lord our Maker” (v. 6). We can trust Him to be with us and those we love because we’re “the flock under his care” (v. 7).
Reflect & Pray
How has God shown that He cares for you and your loved ones when you’ve felt helpless? How does knowing the certainty of His character help you trust Him as a promise keeper?
Great God, thank You for promising to care for me.
Watch this video to learn how we can count on God’s promises.
Today’s Insights
Psalm 95 together with Psalms 47, 93, 96-99 are known as “enthronement” or “royal psalms” because they use the image of a king to proclaim God’s absolute reign over the entire spiritual and physical realms—over all creation, history, nations, and peoples. The psalmists proclaimed God’s sovereignty and glory, greatness and power, justice and holiness: He is “the Lord Most High . . . the King of all the earth . . . seated on his holy throne” (47:2, 7-8). He’s “robed in majesty and armed with strength . . . . [His] throne was established . . . from all eternity” (93:1-2). “The Lord [Yahweh] is the great God, the great King above all gods” (95:3). “He is holy” (99:3, 5) and will come to “judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness” (96:13). He’s also “a forgiving God” (99:8). Because of who He is, we can trust Him and worship Him even in difficult times.
Today’s Devotional
“Tis a fearful thing / to love what death can touch.” That line begins a poem written more than a thousand years ago by the Jewish poet Judah Halevi, translated in the twentieth century. The poet clarifies what’s behind the fear: “to love . . . / And oh, to lose.”
In Genesis, an outpouring of emotion occurred when Abraham lost Sarah in death. “Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her” (23:2). The chapter unfolds the beautiful, grief-heavy story of the loss of one of Scripture’s most memorable characters: Sarah, the faithful wife of Abraham, that old woman who’d laughed at the news she’d be a mother (18:11-12) but had cried in pain as Isaac made his way into this world.
We make much of that crisp, humanity-rich verse in John’s gospel: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). The Messiah’s tears at the tomb of Lazarus emphasized Jesus’ loss. To love is indeed a fearful thing. The poet Halevi calls it “a thing for fools,” yet he follows by also naming it “a holy thing,” which it is, especially for those whose faith is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
We love and lose everything from spouses to children to parents to friends to pets, and weeping with “painful joy” is oh so human. Yet for the believer in Jesus, our weeping only lasts for the proverbial night. As David wrote, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Our Father hasn’t left us bereft of hope. us.
Reflect & Pray
What has affected your ability to love? Who is the last person you wept over and why?
Dear Father, please grant me the courage to love.
What does real love look like? Find out more by reading The Marks of Real Love.
Today’s Insights
When we meet Sarah in Genesis 11, she’s introduced as Sarai, the wife of Abram, who “was childless because she was not able to conceive” (v. 30). They lived in Ur of the Chaldeans on the Euphrates River, which archaeologists have discovered was a thriving trade city with a vast library. So, when her father-in-law, Terah, uprooted his family (including his son Nahor and wife and Terah’s grandson Lot) and headed for Canaan, it may have been difficult to leave family and the amenities of a flourishing city. From Ur, they settled in Haran, where Terah died.
There God called Abram to continue to Canaan, where He’d make Abram “into a great nation” (12:2). Many mishaps, missteps, and years later, elderly Abram and Sarai (now renamed Abraham and Sarah, 17:5, 15) became the joyful parents of Isaac, the fulfillment of God’s promise (21:1-7). Sarah died at the age of 127, and Abraham “[wept] over her” (23:2). We too will face grief, but God will lovingly provide the hope and comfort we need.
Thursday, June 5, 2025 – THE GIFT OF GIVING – 2 Corinthians 8:1-7
Daily Bread Focuses: Stewardship
Scripture(s): Acts 20:35; 1 Corinthians 10:24; Galatians 6:10; Proverbs 3:27
Today’s Devotional
In his 2024 address to 1,200 university graduates, billionaire businessman Robert Hale Jr. said, “These trying times have heightened the need for sharing, caring and giving. [My wife and I] want to give you two gifts: The first is our gift to you, the second is the gift of giving.” His words were followed by the distribution of two envelopes each to the unexpectant graduates—five hundred dollars to keep and five hundred to give away to a person in need.
Though Robert Hale’s wealth has allowed him to share like this on more than one occasion, generosity isn’t reserved for those with great means. Believers in Jesus in ancient Macedonia gave out of their poverty so the needs of believers in Jerusalem could be met. Paul said of the Macedonians, “In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity” (2 Corinthians 8:2). He commends them because “they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people” (vv. 3-4).
Those who recognize that they’ve been given much grace from God through Jesus can respond with generous hands to the needs of others. With God’s help, let’s give after the example of the one who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).r.
Reflect & Pray
What can you offer generously to someone? How have you been the recipient of another’s generosity?
Heavenly Father, please help me to give generously to others.
Today’s Insights
A fitting label for the “Macedonian churches” (2 Corinthians 8:1)—Thessalonica and Berea—is “Exemplars of Grace.” These churches were planted by Paul on his second missionary journey in Philippi. Second Corinthians 8 describes these believers in Jesus. They weren’t content simply with being recipients of God’s favor (v. 1); they became channels of generosity. Furthermore, they didn’t allow their destitution to excuse them from sharing with others: “In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity” (v. 2).
As recipients of God’s grace (v. 1), they viewed their participation not as an obligation but as a “privilege” (v. 4). Finally, the giving of their material possessions was the result of their having given themselves first to Christ (v. 5), who, “though he was rich . . . became poor, so that [we] through his poverty might become rich” (v. 9). As we give sacrificially to others in need, we reflect His giving ways.
Hear more about grace and gratitude in Greco-Roman culture.
Today’s Devotional
She looked into my eyes and said, “Don’t waste your pain.” My mind immediately returned to the time years prior when I’d led the memorial service for her young adult son whose life was taken in a car accident. She knew what she was talking about. She knew pain. But she also knew how God could use it to honor Him and help others—something this friend had done so very well. And as I heard her words, they comforted and encouraged me as I faced a serious cancer diagnosis. She was reminding me that God heard my cries and lament, and that He was with me in my pain and might use it to help others in a new way.
Moses also learned that God was with His people in their pain. “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt,” God said. “I have heard them crying out . . . and I am concerned about their suffering” (Exodus 3:7). The Israelites, like us at times, must have felt alone in their pain. But God assured them He had a plan to “rescue them” and that “the cry” of their hearts was heard (vv. 8-9). He would ultimately use their pain to grow their faith, defeat their enemies, and bring Him honor.
In Psalm 90, the only psalm attributed to Moses, he declared that even though our “best years are filled with pain” (v. 10 nlt), God’s “unfailing love” is with us “to the end of our lives” (v. 14 nlt). He lovingly won’t waste our pain—and neither should we.
Reflect & Pray
What does it mean for you to know God hears your cries? How is God using your pain to help others?
Loving God, thank You for hearing my cries and using my pain to help others.
Discover why we believe in a God who allows suffering.
Today’s Insights
“God to the rescue!” is a major biblical/theological theme in Scripture and history. Because of His person and His promises, He’s mindful of the plight of His people throughout the ages. He’s loving, merciful, and compassionate; therefore, He sees the dilemmas and hears the groans of His people (see Exodus 2:23).
And because He’s a promise keeper (v. 24), He acts for the well-being of those who belong to Him. We see this same dynamic in God’s ultimate rescue plan through Jesus (Galatians 4:4-5). Mary sang about such things in Luke 1:54-55: “[God] has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” And God was with Mary and Abraham as they experienced pain in life, just as He’s with us in our pain.
Saturday, June 7, 2025 – AS ONE – 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Our Daily Bread Focus(es): Living with other believers
Today’s Devotional
A seemingly plain table with thirteen simple cups divided across separate panels make up the contemporary painting, “That They May All Be One,” which hangs in Wolfson College at Oxford University. Its simplicity actually emphasizes the significance of the event: Jesus’ last supper with His disciples. The most prominent panel, containing bread and a cup representing Jesus, is surrounded by twelve individual panels to signify the disciples’ presence.
The painting is a beautiful reminder of the meal where Jesus took bread and a cup to start a new celebration for all His followers, the practice of communion. And I appreciate the row of empty panels that complete the picture because the space seems to invite the viewer to join them at the table.
Paul encourages us that “whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Everyone who believes that Jesus’ death and resurrection provides the way for peace with God has a space waiting for them at the table.
And when we proclaim, or remember, Jesus’ sacrifice when we take communion, we act as one community of believers across the world and throughout time. It is as a beautiful image of the unity of the church.
Reflect & Pray
What is meaningful to you about communion? How does communion point to believers’ unity in Jesus?
Jesus, as we take part of the celebration You gave us, remind me that we do it as one community.
Today’s Insights
Paul’s use of the words “on the night [Jesus] was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23) underscores the serious nature of the matter he was addressing. It was Christ who implemented the first Communion (Lord’s Supper), and He did so on the Passover night before His crucifixion. Paul revisits the importance of this ordinance to correct a serious error in the church at Corinth.
He leads into this section by saying, “In the following directives I have no praise for you” (v. 17)—stern words to hear from an apostle of Jesus. The apostle pointed out how there were “divisions” among the people (v. 18). Some were eating too much while others went hungry, and some were even getting drunk. Paul found such behavior appalling and warned of God’s judgment on those who were offending in this matter (vv. 27-32). He concluded by appealing for their renewed unity (v. 33)—a unity we can enjoy today with other sisters and brothers in Christ.
THIS WEEK’S INSPIRATIONAL THOUGHT BY SISTER CLOVIA
THREE THINGS WE CAN GIVE TO GOD
We all have three things we can give to God, our treasure, our talent, and our time.
First, we have our treasure, the finances put under our care. In Matthew 6:21, Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, your heart follows your money.
Then we have our talents. God has blessed every believer with talents. You have natural talents as well as gifts from the Holy Spirit, who has given us all gifts that we should use to serve God; 1 Corinthians 12. Everyone can serve the Lord; you’ll find that it’s a blessing to serve.
Lastly, we have our time; God gives each of us 1,440 minutes to use every day. We have 24 hours to invest. You have to sleep for part of that, but you are responsible for what you do with the remaining hours. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. “
Our treasures, talents, and time are on loan to us from God; give them away with unlimited generosity.
CHRISTIAN-BASED MOVIE OF THE MONTH
***The Daily Devotionals are taken from Our Daily Bread Ministries and the Scriptures are from the BibleGateway.***
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