Our Daily Bread For Thursday 22 May 2025: Love Worthy of Our Life
OUR DAILY BREAD DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE FOR 22 MAY 2025
Welcome to Today’s Study of Our Daily Bread Devotional Message to inspire and bless you! Read, Study and, Meditate over and over again. Let the blessings of God rest upon you!
Our Daily Bread For Thursday 22 May 2025 Message
Topic: Love Worthy of Our Life
Bible in a Year: 1 Chronicles 16-18; John 7:28-53
Bible Verse: Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. Matthew 16:25
Today’s Scripture: Matthew 16:21-28
Insight: After Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Christ speaks plainly about His imminent suffering, death, burial, and resurrection (v. 21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; 26:2). Peter rejected a Messiah who would suffer and die, but he was severely rebuked by Jesus (16:22-23). In the wilderness temptations at the start of Christ’s ministry, Satan offered to make Him king without the suffering (4:8-10). Peter’s idea of the kingly Messiah was the same as Satan’s—the crown without the cross. But going to the cross to die for sinful humanity was the primary reason Jesus came. To prevent His crucifixion is what Satan wanted. Jesus recognized that the same satanic source was behind Peter’s rejection of the cross (16:23). By: K.T. Sim
Our Daily Bread For Thursday 22 May 2025:
William Temple, a twentieth-century English bishop, once concluded a sermon to Oxford students with the words of the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” But he cautioned against taking the song lightly. “If you mean [the words] with all your hearts, sing them as loud as you can,” Temple said. “If you don’t mean them at all, keep silent. If you mean them even a little, and want to mean them more, sing them very softly.” The crowd went quiet as everyone eyed the lyrics. Slowly, thousands of voices began to sing in a whisper, mouthing the final lines with gravity: “Love so amazing, so divine / Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
Those Oxford students understood the reality that believing in and following Jesus is a serious choice, because it means saying yes to a radical love that demands everything from us. Following Christ requires our entire life, our whole being. He plainly told His disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). No one should make this choice flippantly.
Yet following Jesus is also the way to our deepest joy. Life with Him, we’ll discover, is the life we truly desire. It appears to be a great paradox. However, if we respond to God’s love, believe in Christ, and relinquish our selfish, shortsighted demands, we’ll find the life our soul craves (v. 25). By: Winn Collier
Reflect & Pray
What will believing in and following Jesus cost you? What will you gain?
Dear God, following You isn’t easy, but I want to give You my life and my all.
