[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR TUESDAY FEBRUARY 22

Tue Feb 22 00:10:34 UTC 2022

DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR TUESDAY FEBRUARY 22

WORD OF WISDOM

Keep your head up in failure and your head down in success.

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DAILY DEVOTION

The Most Precious Promise

And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.
1 John 2:25

Pretty much all of us are familiar with empty promises. We've seen
advertisements for products that will supposedly fix all kinds of problems.
We've gotten emails from foreign royalty promising us a fortune in return
for a small advance payment. And most of us have experienced the heartbreak
of having someone let us down when they had promised to help. The strength
of a promise is not in what it offers, but in who makes it. The most glowing
promises in the world are empty and meaningless unless they are backed up by
someone is willing and able to fulfill them.
The most precious promise that has ever been made to any of us is the
promise of salvation through Christ. It is precious not just because it
offers us eternal life in place of the eternal torment we deserve, or
because of the wonders of Heaven that are waiting for us in the future, or
because it does not require any good works or obligation on our part. It is
most precious because it is certain and sure. God has never failed to keep a
single promise that He has made. Solomon said, "Blessed be the LORD, that
hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised:
there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by
the hand of Moses his servant" (1 Kings 8:56).
Being the beneficiaries and recipients of such a certain promise lays on us
a responsibility. Salvation costs us nothing, but it does bring a desire to
live for Him who gave so much for us. Paul wrote, "Having therefore these
promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of
the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians
7:1). The certainty of the promise means that one day we will stand before
the Lord and give an account of our lives. What a joy it will be if we can
stand before Christ having invested our lives on Earth for Him Rejoice today
in the certainty of God's promise of eternal life, and live today in such a
way that you can look forward to His return.

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DAILY BIBLE READING

Deuteronomy 7-9 New King James Version
A Chosen People
7 "When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess,
and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites
and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and
the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the
Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly
destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3
Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to
their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your
sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord
will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall
deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred
pillars, and cut down their [a]wooden images, and burn their carved images
with fire.

6 "For you are a [b]holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has
chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the
peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor
choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you
were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the Lord loves you, and because
He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought
you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of [c]bondage,
from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

9 "Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who
keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him
and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their
face, to destroy them. He will not [d]be slack with him who hates Him; He
will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the
statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.

Blessings of Obedience
12 "Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and
keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and
the mercy which He swore to your fathers. 13 And He will love you and bless
you and [e]multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the
fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase
of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He
[f]swore to your fathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all
peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your
livestock. 15 And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will
afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have
known, but will lay them on all those who hate you. 16 Also you shall
[g]destroy all the peoples whom the Lord your God delivers over to you; your
eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their gods, for that
will be a snare to you.

17 "If you should say in your heart, 'These nations are greater than I; how
can I dispossess them?'- 18 you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall
remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the
great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand
and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. So
shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20
Moreover the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until those who
are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed. 21 You shall not be
terrified of them; for the Lord your God, the great and awesome God, is
among you. 22 And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you
little by little; you will be unable to [h]destroy them at once, lest the
beasts of the field become too numerous for you. 23 But the Lord your God
will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they
are destroyed. 24 And He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you
will destroy their name from under heaven; no one shall be able to stand
[i]against you until you have destroyed them. 25 You shall burn the carved
images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet[j] the silver or gold
that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for
it is an abomination to the Lord your God. 26 Nor shall you bring an
abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You
shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an [k]accursed
thing.

Remember the Lord Your God
8 "Every commandment which I command you today you must [a]be careful to
observe, that you may live and multiply,[b] and go in and possess the land
of which the Lord [c]swore to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember that
the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness,
to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you
would keep His commandments or not. 3 So He humbled you, allowed you to
hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers
know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone;
but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your
garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.
5 You should [d]know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the
Lord your God chastens you.

6 "Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk
in His ways and to fear Him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a
good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow
out of valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig
trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land in which you
will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land
whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 When you
have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good
land which He has given you.

11 "Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His
commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, 12
lest-when you have eaten and are [e]full, and have built beautiful houses
and dwell in them; 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your
silver and your gold are [f]multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied;
14 when your heart [g]is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; 15 who led
you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents
and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water
for you out of the flinty rock; 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna,
which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might
test you, to do you good in the end- 17 then you say in your heart, 'My
power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.'

18 "And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you
power to get wealth, that He may [h]establish His covenant which He swore to
your fathers, as it is this day. 19 Then it shall be, if you by any means
forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship
them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. 20 As the
nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you
would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God.

Israel's Rebellions Reviewed
9 "Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to
dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and
fortified up to heaven, 2 a people great and tall, the descendants of the
Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said, 'Who can stand before
the descendants of Anak?' 3 Therefore understand today that the Lord your
God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them
and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them
quickly, as the Lord has said to you.

4 "Do not think in your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out
before you, saying, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in
to possess this land'; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations
that the Lord is driving them out from before you. 5 It is not because of
your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to
possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the
Lord your God drives them out from before you, and that He may [a]fulfill
the word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Therefore understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good
land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked[b]
people.

7 "Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in
the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until
you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. 8 Also in
Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry enough with
you to have destroyed you. 9 When I went up into the mountain to receive the
tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you,
then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate
bread nor drank water. 10 Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone
written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the
Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in[c] the
day of the assembly. 11 And it came to pass, at the end of forty days and
forty nights, that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of
the covenant.

12 "Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go down quickly from here, for your
people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have quickly
turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made themselves
a molded image.'

13 "Furthermore the Lord spoke to me, saying, 'I have seen this people, and
indeed they are a [d]stiff-necked people. 14 Let Me alone, that I may
destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of
you a nation mightier and greater than they.'

15 "So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned
with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. 16 And
I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God-had made for
yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which
the Lord had commanded you. 17 Then I took the two tablets and threw them
out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. 18 And I fell[e] down
before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate
bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing
wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. 19 For I was
afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was angry with
you, to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me at that time also. 20 And
the Lord was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed
for Aaron also at the same time. 21 Then I took your sin, the calf which you
had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it and ground it very small,
until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that
descended from the mountain.

22 "Also at Taberah and Massah and Kibroth Hattaavah you [f]provoked the
Lord to wrath. 23 Likewise, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea,
saying, 'Go up and possess the land which I have given you,' then you
rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and you did not
believe Him nor obey His voice. 24 You have been rebellious against the Lord
from the day that I knew you.

25 "Thus I [g]prostrated myself before the Lord; forty days and forty nights
I kept prostrating myself, because the Lord had said He would destroy you.
26 Therefore I prayed to the Lord, and said: 'O Lord God, do not destroy
Your people and Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your
greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 27
Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the
stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin, 28 lest
the land from which You brought us should say, "Because the Lord was not
able to bring them to the land which He promised them, and because He hated
them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness." 29 Yet they
are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your mighty
power and by Your outstretched arm.'