he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. – Titus 3:5

A friend of mine was riding his bike one time and turned sharply. His bike slid to where he was almost parallel to the cement. His legs were pinned under the bike and the only thing that kept his face from being cut up was the part of his helmet that stuck out a little bit.

He jumped up, and said, “I’m ok, my helmet saved me.”

Helmets can really help when it comes to riding a bike. My friend made a dumb decision to ride his bike dangerously and thankfully his face was saved from getting cut up because of his helmet. Jesus is a little like that. He’s saved us from the hurt and the pain that we deserved. We’ve made lots of stupid decisions. We’ve messed up more times than we can count. On our own, we don’t deserve heaven.

The good news is that God didn’t see only our failures and shortcomings. He saw an opportunity to display His great love. He didn’t leave us to be scraped up and beaten down by life. Instead, He did what only He could do. He came down to us. God paid the ultimate price for our sins and now we have been given new life and new birth in Christ.

Today’s Truth: When God saw us, He saw an opportunity to display His great love.

Praise the LORD! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever. – Psalm 106:1 (NLT)

Regardless of the difficulty facing you right now, you can give thanks to the Lord. You might think, yeah, but you don’t understand. I’m going through something really tough. I don’t even know if I can make it to tomorrow, let alone give thanks to God.

And it’s true, there are some seasons of life that are really tough. However, even in those rough seasons, we can get help, strength and encouragement simply by praising God.

This morning, I woke up in such a bad mood. I wanted to scream at my entire family. Everything they did made me so mad. So after breakfast, I began to sing. I sang praise songs at the top of my lungs. My family probably thought I was nuts. However, it did something for me.

The stress I was facing didn’t seem as bad. The anger I had didn’t seem nearly as important. Simply because I had taken some time to sing and thank God.

There is power in practicing praise and thankfulness. So even if you don’t feel like it, determine to be thankful and praise God today. It will help strengthen and encourage you to get through the difficulty you’re facing.

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. – 1 John 3:18 (NIV)

It can be really easy to say the “right” things. If someone asked you the question, ‘should you lie?’, you know what the “right” answer is. However, when you’re in a pinch and lying will help you look better, or get out of trouble, what do you do?

Today’s Bible verse is talking about this very thing. It’s telling us that not only saying something matters, it’s also about what you do.

If you say you love other people, but aren’t friendly to the new student, or help encourage the student being bullied, you’re loving people with words, but not with action. Loving someone with action and truth takes guts. It asks you to step beyond what seems comfortable to do what is right. That is what today’s Bible verse challenges us to do.

Today’s Challenge: Will you step beyond what is comfortable, to do what is right?

My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, – Philippians 3:10 (Holman)

What are some of your goals? Do you want to get married one day? Have a successful job or business? What are some of the goals that are driving your life?

In today’s Bible verse, we see that Paul’s goal was to know Jesus and His power. He didn’t want to just fake having a relationship with God. Paul. Paul studied the Bible and knew God in a real way.

He truly accomplished this goal of knowing Jesus because not only did he know the truth, but he applied it to his everyday life. And grew in his knowledge of God and the Bible.

Today will you also make it your goal to know Him and His power? Get into what the Bible has to say about Jesus. Primarily, get to know what happened to Jesus and what that sacrifice has done for us. As you do, you’ll begin to know Him more and the power of His resurrection.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. – Ephesians 4:29

Do you struggle with speaking life-giving words? Do you find yourself always speaking poorly of yourself? Maybe you feel like you’ll never understand algebra and so you say, I’m never going to get this…I’m so dumb.

It’s so easy to fall into negative speech patterns. We let words fly out of our mouths without giving them any attention. However, when we do that, it can bring some negative effects.

Instead, we should be speaking life-giving words over ourselves and others. When we speak words of encouragement and life it’s when we really see good things happen. Decide today to put a priority on speaking words that build yourself and others up. You’ll be encouraged at the good things that follow.