Be Not Anxious

        

Christians are to rejoice. To do that, you need only to think of the great things God has done for you. Then we are told not to be anxious, but in our prayers to make our requests known to God. In your biggest problems you have One to whom you can go; and before Him you can pour out your heart with the assurance that He will not leave you without an answer to that great problem. Then we are to fill our minds with those things that are good. They are mentioned in the Scriptures as being things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, of good report, and of virtue. It is upon these things that we are to think. Live positively, not negatively. Once you learn that secret, God will have given you the victory.

Daily Prayer

You know what troubles me today, Lord Jesus. In faith, I give it all over to You and now praise You, knowing Your love will not fail.

Day By Day by Billy Graham

The Beginning of Wisdom

         

I believe we ought to get all the education we can, but we dare not make it our god. John Dewey once defined education as the systematic, purposeful reconstruction of experience; but so much of modern education leaves out God. What we are actually doing is reconstructing our sins. We expand our sins, enlarge them, multiply them. We need education, but not just for the mind and the body; we also need education for the spirit. Man has a spirit, and in our educational system today we need a spiritual emphasis. If we bring up a generation that lacks the wisdom that God can give, they can turn into educated savages and fools. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and education. Let’s make sure our rock is God.

Daily Prayer

Almighty God, I am grateful to You that Your Word educates my spirit and makes me whole.

Day By Day by Billy Graham

Poverty of Soul

No man is more pathetic than he who is in great need and is not aware of it. Remember Samson? Standing there in the valley of Sorek, surrounded by the lords of the Philistines, “ . . . he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.” It has been truly said, “No man is so ignorant as he who knows nothing and knows not that he knows nothing. No man is so sick as he who has a fatal disease and is not aware of it. No man is so poor as he who is destitute, and yet thinks he is rich.” The pitiable thing about the Pharisees was not so much their hypocrisy as it was their utter lack of knowledge of how poor they actually were in the sight of God. There is always something pathetic about a man who thinks he is rich when he is actually poor, who thinks he is good when he is actually vile, who thinks he is educated when he is actually illiterate.

Daily Prayer

Might I always remember the poverty of my soul before Your love invaded my life, Lord Jesus, and I knew You as Savior.

Day By Day By Billy Graham from YOUVERSION

God's Unmerited Favor

        

“Grace,” according to the dictionary, is the unmerited favor of God toward mankind. The word “grace” is used over 170 times in the New Testament alone. Grace is not bought. It is a free gift of almighty God to needy mankind. When I picture Jesus Christ dying on the cross, I see the free gift of God’s grace in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. I sing with the songwriter, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” Your human mind, with its philosophy of an equal return for favors done, can hardly comprehend the full meaning of this grace of God. But when you catch, by the inspiration of God, its full meaning, you will leave the limits of human reasoning and revel in the spiritual riches of divine truth and privilege. 

Yes, the grace of God is a reality. Thousands have tried, tested, and proved that it is more than a cold creed, a docile doctrine, or a tedious theory. The grace of God has been tested in the crucible of human experience, and has been found to be more than an equal for the problems and sins of humanity.

Daily Prayer

Lord, this day help me to come to a more full and abundant awareness of Your bountiful grace. Stimulate me to serve You.

Day By Day by Billy Graham

No Strings Attached

A gift is not a gift unless it is accepted. God has given you His Son, but ownership is conditional on acceptance. God does not force His gift on us, but He asks us to receive by faith the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. A person who deliberately refuses God’s offer of love, mercy, and forgiveness is lost. Most people gratefully receive a gift when given in love. The greatest sin that a person can commit is to refuse God’s love.

Daily Prayer

I reached out for Your gift of Jesus and received forgiveness and eternal life. Thank You, my heavenly Father.

Day by Day by Billy Graham

Practice Good Stewardship

      

We are stewards of our time. God has given each one of us a little “chunk of eternity” called time. These golden moments of opportunity are doled out to us for our benefit and for God’s glory. If we use them wisely, they are woven by God’s omnipotent hand into the fabric of eternity. Henry Thoreau cautioned, “You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.” 

“He who has no vision of eternity,” said Carlyle, “has no hold on time.” 
“Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last” is the sentiment of every man who desires to be a good steward of his time. We are entrusted with a small portion of the capital of time. If we invest it wisely, it will pay dividends throughout eternity.

Daily Prayer

Take away my procrastinating nature—how easy it is for me to waste time. I want to be able to leave a legacy of time spent for You, Lord, because that is eternal.

Day By Day by Billy Graham

Living In His Power

Jesus had a humble heart. If He abides in us, pride will never dominate our lives. Jesus had a loving heart. If He dwells within us, hatred and bitterness will never rule us. Jesus had a forgiving and understanding heart. If He lives within us, mercy will temper our relationships with our fellowmen. Jesus had an unselfish heart. If He lives in us, selfishness will not predominate, but service to God and others will come before our selfish interests. You say, “That’s a big order!” I admit that. It would be impossible if you had to measure up to Him in your own strength and with your natural heart. Paul recognized that he could never attain this heart purity by his own striving.

Daily Prayer
So live in me today that I will be able to radiate Your love and grace, Jesus. 

Day By Day by Billy Graham

The Secret of Happiness

King George V wrote on the flyleaf of the Bible of a friend, “The secret of happiness is not to do what you like to do, but to learn to like what you have to do.” Too many think of happiness as some sort of will-o’-the-wisp thing that is discovered by constant and relentless searching. It is not found by seeking. It is not an end in itself. Pots of gold are never found at the end of the rainbow, as we used to think when we were children; gold is mined from the ground or panned laboriously from a mountain stream.

Jesus once told His disciples, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” The “things” He spoke of were the things that make us feel happy and secure—food, drink, clothes, shelter. He told us not to make these the chief goal of our lives but to “seek the kingdom” and these needs would be automatically supplied. There, if we will take it, is the secret of happiness.

Daily Prayer
Forgive me, Father, for the times when I am anxious. You have promised to take care of all my needs. 

Day by Day by Billy Graham

Living Enthusiastically for God

(Someone else might need to read this too)

Columbus was called mad because he decided to sail the uncharted ocean. . . . Martin Luther was called mad because he presumed to defy the entrenched religious hierarchy of his time. Patrick Henry was considered mad when he cried, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” George Washington was thought to be mad when he decided to continue the war after the winter at Valley Forge, when thousands of his men had died and other thousands had deserted, leaving him only a handful of men. We have become too sophisticated and respectable to be called mad in our generation. Christianity has become so respectable and so conventional that it is now insipid. The salt has lost its flavor. . . . Would to God that the world found us Christians dangerous enough to call us mad, in these days when materialism and secularism are sweeping over the world. Thank God there are those who sacrifice time, talents, social position, and lucrative posts, and who fling aside every advantage in order to serve the Kingdom of God.

Daily Prayer
Instill in me, Lord Jesus, the same savor that the disciples showed as they lived so enthusiastically for You 

Day By Day by Billy Graham

Life Changing Power

  

(Someone else might need to read this too)                   

One day, by a simple act of faith, I decided to take Jesus Christ at His word. I could not come by way of the intellect alone; no one can. That does not mean that we reject reason. God has given us minds and the ability to reason wherever reason is appropriate, but the final and decisive step is taken by faith. I came by faith. Does it work when a person comes, repenting of his sins, to receive Christ by faith? I can only tell you that it worked in my own life. Something did happen to me. I didn’t become perfect, but the direction of my life was changed. I found a new dimension to life. I found a new capacity to love that I had never known before.

Daily Prayer
The day I received You, Lord, it was a childlike act of faith. My whole life was changed!

Day by Day by Billy Graham

In His Image

(Someone else might need to read this too) 

You were created in the image and likeness of God. You were made for God’s fellowship, and your heart can never be satisfied without His communion. Just as iron is attracted to a magnet, the soul in its state of hunger is drawn to God. Though you, like thousands of others, may feel in the state of sin that the world is more alluring and more to your liking, some day—perhaps even now as you read these words—you will acknowledge that there is something deep down inside you which cannot be satisfied by the alloy of earth. Then with David, the Psalmist who had sampled the delicacies of sin and had found them unsatisfying, you will say, “Oh God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.”

Daily Prayer
How I long for You, God, yet so often my heart is drawn away from Your leading. Like David, I desire a clean heart. 

Day by Day by Billy Graham