Month: February 2024

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. “ 1Corinthians 13:7 (NIV)

Jesus believes in you. There is plenty of proof in the Bible!

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20 NIV).

“Everything is possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23 NIV).

“If you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more” (Matthew 21:21 TLB).

Jesus believes you can do great things because when you place your trust in him, his Spirit lives inside you. He also wants you to help others believe this about themselves. The apostle Paul offered this encouragement: “I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you” (Romans 1:12 NCV).

Each day you encounter people with low self-esteem. Everybody has insecurities. And many people are repeatedly playing a tape in their mind of how someone said to them long ago that they wouldn’t amount to anything.

How can people reverse that curse? You can help them start believing what Jesus says about them instead of believing what other people say.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:7, “If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him” (TLB).

That’s what God wants you to do. He wants you to show faith in others so they can believe what God says about them.

One of the best ways we do this in the church is by being part of a small group. When you have a really tough week and you’re doubting and down and discouraged, you need a group of trusted people who will believe for you. And you can do the same for them! Followers of Jesus don’t just believe in Christ. We also believe in each other.

Your faith can help grow the faith of others as you believe in them like Jesus believes in you.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”

Romans 15:7 (NIV)

What God does for you, he wants you to do for other people.

God accepts you unconditionally. That doesn’t mean he approves of everything you do, but he accepts you, no matter what you’ve done. And God says he wants you to act similarly toward everybody in your life.

One of the ways you demonstrate acceptance to someone else is to look at them and listen to them. When you look someone in the eye, you’re declaring that they matter to you. The highest form of love is focused attention.

Love looks, and love listens. What about you—do you look and listen? When someone at work drops something off at your desk, do you say anything to them? When somebody serves you at a restaurant or a clerk helps you in a grocery store, do you look them in the eye and say, “Thank you”? It may seem like a small thing. But when you give someone your attention, even for just a moment, you affirm their value as a person and show that you accept them.

The Bible says in Romans 15:1, “We must bear the ‘burden’ of being considerate of the doubts and fears of others” (TLB).

We all have fears and doubts. Acceptance means you listen to others’ fears and doubts. When people have doubts about God, you need to first listen and show that it doesn’t change your love or acceptance. Why? Because this is how God loves us.

When we doubt, God’s love does not change. When we are fearful and unwilling to trust, God still accepts us. This is how he wants us to love other people.

Loving like Jesus means you accept other people the way Jesus accepts you. And when his love flows through you, it’s possible for you to love others unconditionally.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Many of the people scolded him and told him to be quiet. But he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”  Mark 10:48 (GNT)

If you’re going to make a fresh start with faith in your life, you need to face your fears. Don’t let them control you! Fear has an incredible ability to paralyze our potential—to keep us from launching out and having faith in our lives.

When we choose fear over faith, it makes us skeptical—we’re afraid of trying anything new. It makes us selfish—we’re afraid to commit to God and to others. It makes us short-sighted—we focus on the past and not on the future.

A man named Bartimaeus faced a fear that is familiar to many of us: the fear of rejection. He was blind and wanted to be healed. He knew that to shout out to Jesus over the crowd wasn’t the right thing to do. He knew that people would look down on him for it, but he was desperate. And he knew that Jesus Christ was the only one who could help him.

So he got Jesus’ attention. The Bible says, “Many of the people scolded him and told him to be quiet. But he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” (Mark 10:48 GNT).

And look what happened: When he shouted out to Jesus, everyone around him told him, “Don’t do that. Be quiet. Don’t make a scene. Surely Jesus Christ isn’t interested in you. He has more important things to do.”

The devil whispers things like that to a lot of us. When an opportunity for faith comes into our hearts, thoughts like, “God surely wouldn’t be interested in me” or “Don’t make a scene” or “What would people think of me?” keep us from having faith. When you see an opportunity to change, there are all kinds of shouts from inside and around you that tell you not to rock the boat.

But God is asking you to do something greater than you’ve ever done before: He’s asking you to depend on him completely. Don’t you think that’s going to feel a little bit scary? Of course it is.

When God asks something of you, you have a choice. Are you going to fall back on your fear and stay the way you are? Or are you going to tame your fear and step forward in faith?

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  John 13:35 (NIV)

The sign of a Christian is love. How many people know you’re a Christian because of your loving lifestyle?

We sing about love, talk about love, pray about love, and study love. But do we show it? To develop love as your life principle and make it your greatest aim, you need to take action as soon as you finish reading this devotional—because love acts!

Here’s what you need to do to develop a loving lifestyle.

First, start acting lovingly in your relationships. Have you acted unlovingly toward someone? It’s time to seek reconciliation. Make things right with your kids, your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your parents, or someone at school or work.

Then, start increasing the number of relationships you have. If the most important aim in life is to love, then we need to build as many relationships as possible. Why? Because the world will know about God’s love by the way Christians love each other—and by how Christians love other people around the world.

You cannot live a loving lifestyle as a hermit. You spell love T-I-M-E. It takes time to love other people. If you love your friends, you’ve got to spend time with them. If you love your kids, you spend time with them. If you love Jesus, you have to spend time with him too.

Love always costs time and energy. But it’s always worth it.

Can you imagine what would happen if everyone in the church loved like this—if we all committed ourselves to acting in love and giving our time unselfishly so that people could get a taste of how much God loves them? It would change the world. It would grow God’s Kingdom. It would make God so happy.

People are attracted to Christ more than they are persuaded to him. They’re attracted by the love of God shown through the people who claim to follow him. And they won’t care what we know until they first know that we care.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”  Colossians 3:13 (NLT)

A lot of people think God carries grudges. They picture God up in heaven, waiting to zap them for anything they do wrong.

Here’s what God is really like: “I am the God who forgives your sins, and I do this because of who I am. I will not hold your sins against you” (Isaiah 43:25 GNT). God wants to forgive, and he has done everything necessary to forgive your sins in Christ.

Even before the world was made, God was already planning in Christ to forgive your sins. He knows every wrong thing you’re going to do. None of it surprises him! Before you were born, God made a plan to offer you forgiveness for all the guilt that’s in your life.

That’s why God can say this: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1 NIV). Condemnation is gone because of what Jesus Christ did for us. He offers unconditional, complete, consistent, eternal, by-grace forgiveness in all of our lives. What a relief! You don’t have to suffer or pay for your sins now or in eternity. They’re paid for by Jesus Christ. You are forgiven if you accept that gift of salvation from Jesus.

Once you recognize that you’re forgiven, you are then enabled and strengthened to forgive other people.

How do you do that? “Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others” (Colossians 3:13 NLT).

Take a good look at yourself, and you may see ugliness, selfishness, and sin. But the important thing is how God sees you. You are his creation, a masterpiece designed to live for him and bless others.

When you take a good look through God’s eyes, you see the forgiveness that only he can give. By accepting his forgiveness in your life, you’ll be able to offer it to others.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:8 (NLT)

Everything that Jesus did for you, he did out of love. The Bible says that God made you to love you. The only reason you’re alive is because you were made to be loved by God.

If God didn’t want you alive, your heart would stop instantly; you wouldn’t even be breathing right now. God made you and wants you alive so he can love you and so you can love him back.

God didn’t just say he loved you; he showed it. The Bible says, “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8 NLT). Look at that again. It says, “while we were still sinners.” Before you even knew God or knew you needed God in your life, Jesus died for you.

There’s a myth that says we have to clean up our act before we can come to God: “I’ve got to get it all together. There are a few things I’ve got to get right in my life first, and then I’ll come to God.” No, you can come to God with your problems—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It’s like when we brush our teeth before we go to the dentist for a cleaning or when we wash the dishes before we put them in the dishwasher. Why do we do this?

God says, “No, no! You don’t have to clean up your act. Just bring it all to me. Bring me all your problems. I have all the answers. Come as you are.”

The Bible says, “He will send down help from heaven to save me because of his love” (Psalm 57:3 TLB). That’s what Jesus did with his life, death, and resurrection. He sent himself from heaven to save us because of his love.

If you don’t act on this news, then the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are wasted for you personally. They make no difference in your life when to comes to your salvation. They’re like a gift that you see but refuse to open.

The Bible promises, “You will be saved, if you honestly say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and if you believe with all your heart that God raised him from death. God will accept you and save you, if you truly believe this and tell it to others” (Romans 10:9-10 CEV).

God is not asking you to make a promise you cannot keep. God is asking you to believe a promise that only he can keep.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”  Hebrews 12:1 (NLT)

The most important word to remember for your spiritual journey may be a surprising one: “no.”

Your faith journey is a long one. Too many people start off strong but putter out before the end. God wants you to go the distance.

Your spiritual life is like a marathon—and you can’t run a marathon with a barbell in your hands. In fact, people often quit their faith journey early because everything they’re carrying wears them out.

So, to run your spiritual race well, you need to de-clutter.

Consider these images:

In the middle of the ocean, a cruise liner can get pretty fast. But if you add a hundred lifeboats to it, it’ll slow down.

Plug a battery into one lightbulb, and it’ll last a long time. Plug it into 15, and it drains quickly. Plug it into 100, and it’ll drain even more quickly.

That’s what happens to you when you try to do too much. You need to learn to say “no” to some things that are good because they keep you from doing your best.

Hebrews 12:1 says, “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down” (NLT).

These weights aren’t bad or sinful. They’re just unnecessary. A weight in your life could be a job, a relationship, or a hobby. It’s something that slows you down from what God wants to do in your life. And it’s not worth it.

Consider what weights are slowing you down—and start stripping them off today!

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”  Hebrews 12:1 (NLT)

Home-field advantage can mean everything in sports. Teams who play at “home” often have a far better record than those on the road. When a team has fans cheering them on, they can often outplay their ability.

The Bible says that you too have an audience cheering you on. Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (NLT).

Nothing you do is private. You have an audience. Heaven is watching. But that’s not meant to freak you out. It should encourage you—because it means you have a cheering section. The Bible says that everyone in heaven is cheering you on.

You probably realize that God knows everything. The Bible says, “The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth” (2 Chronicles 16:9 KJV). The Lord doesn’t miss a thing. He knows your ups and your downs, every thought you have, every concern, every victory—everything. 

But you’re also surrounded by “a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith.” Moses is watching you. Abraham is watching you. Every believer who has ever lived is in the stands watching you live out your faith.

And they’re cheering you on. When you’re scared, they’re rooting for you to be courageous. When you want to give up, they’re urging you to keep going. When you feel insignificant and forgotten, they’re in your corner.

Everyone at some point feels like no one believes in them, like they can’t seem to get a break or do anything right. When you feel like that, remember you’re never alone. Your heavenly cheering squad believes you can do hard things with God’s help.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.”   Hebrews 11:39-40 (NLT)

It’s not easy to live by faith. We live in a broken world. The weather doesn’t work right. Our bodies don’t work right. Our relationships don’t work right.

As Adam was leaving the Garden of Eden, God told him that life would be hard—and it is. There’s a cosmic battle for your life going on inside of you and outside of you. You battle with your own sinful nature. You also battle against Satan himself, who wants nothing more than to “steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10 NLT).

And, sometimes, it just gets to you. You want to give up.

But in Hebrews 11, God urges you to hang on in faith because he hasn’t forgotten you, and he will fulfill his promises to you. He promises to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). He promises to take away your tears (Revelation 7:17). And he gives you many other promises throughout his Word.

Hebrews 11 mentions a long list of biblical heroes who demonstrated faith in God’s promises: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, and others. Though they endured difficulties, they kept going in their spiritual journeys.

Hebrews 11:39-40 says, “All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us” (NLT).

When you feel like giving up, do more than just hang on. Believe and trust in God’s faithfulness to keep his promises. And remember that God isn’t limited by your time on Earth to fulfill his promises. He has all of eternity to keep his Word.

Let those promises give you hope for all that God is doing in you and for you—even when it’s tough.