A House Divided Against Itself

(The following is the February 13 devotional from my Next Step Devotions book. Before reading it, I suggest you read Mark 3 and pay close attention to verses 22-30.) When religious leaders claimed that Jesus cast out demons by the power of the ruler of demons, he pointed out their illogical reasoning: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If …

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More Good Works; Less Wasted Time

(The following is the October 12 devotional from my Next Step Devotions book. Before reading it, I suggest you read Titus 3 and pay close attention to verses 8-11.) Paul ends his letter to Titus with instructions that, at first glance, seem unrelated to each other: “I want you to insist on these things so that those who have …

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A Warning Against Divisive, Deceitful Teaching

(The following is the July 5 devotional from my Next Step Devotions book. Before reading it, I suggest you read Romans 16 and pay close attention to verses 17-18.) Paul repeatedly writes in his letters about the importance of Christian unity. Christ expects his children to get along. Unity suffers when people create divisions that serve their unholy personal …

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Good Advice From Someone You’ve Never Heard Of

Around the year 1627 a German Lutheran theologian named Rupertus Meldenius wrote a small tract on the subject of Christian unity. The tract was written, according to an article by Dr. Mark Ross, "during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), a bloody time in European history in which religious tensions played a significant role." From that …

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