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What comes to mind when I say the word “father”?

…If you’ve been wounded by a father or another man that you’ve trusted, you may find it hard to trust God. Can I tell you that God is unlike any man you’ve ever known? Even the best earthly father is only a pale reflection of Him.

We need to look to the Scripture for an accurate picture of God. In God’s Word we see a heavenly Father who’s compassionate, merciful, and tender toward His children; a Father who loves to give good gifts to His children; a Father who disciplines His children, but never rejects them.

Regardless of what kind of earthly father you may have had, if you’re a child of God, you have a heavenly Father who loves you dearly and can be totally trusted.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Just Like My Father“

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Someone has said that, “To most people, the greatest persons in the universe are themselves. Their lives are made up of endless variations on the word me.”

Our instinctive reaction to life is self-centered: How does this affect me? Will this make me happy? Why did this happen to me? It’s not enough to be the center of our own universe. We also want to be the center of everyone else’s universe—including God’s.

The apostle Paul understood that God doesn’t exist for us but that we exist for Him. We need to be reminded of these words from Colossians: “All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…that in everything he might be preeminent” (1:16-18).

If you’re tempted to think, “me, me, me” today, would you shift your focus
to Him?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Me, Me, Me”

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Remember this: Coals stay hot if they stay close together, but they grow cold if they’re isolated. You know those last coals left in your fire? If you want to keep them burning, you push them together. If you let one of those hot coals get off by itself, pretty soon the fire will go out.

That’s the way it is in the body of Christ when it comes to revival. That’s why you need to stay close to other people who are serious about seeking God.

You need to have among your friends those who are pursuing God with all their hearts. Why? Because you need the encouragement, you need the accountability, you need the prayer, and you need people in your face saying, “Why are you whining? Are you bitter? How’s your time with God been? Are you walking in the Spirit? How can I pray for you? What’s God doing in your heart?”

We need to be asking each other those questions, keeping our hearts close to each other as we seek to stay close to the Lord.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “The Soil“

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While writing a book on holiness, I began to pray this prayer:

Oh God,
Show me more of Your holiness.
Show me more of my sinfulness.
Help me to hate sin and to love righteousness as You do.
And make me holy as You are holy.

God answered that prayer by starting to expose sin in my heart—things like not controlling my tongue, my appetite, or my spending habits, and loving myself more than I love others. The more we see God’s holiness, the more we’ll be grieved by sin.

First Corinthians 15:34 says, “Awake to righteousness, and do not sin.” God can awaken a new love for righteousness in your heart. Could I challenge you to pray a prayer like that for the next thirty days? Ask God to give you a deeper conviction of sin and to show you more of His holiness.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Seeing God’s Holiness“

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Suppose you knew a teenage boy who said, “I want to think much on all occasions of my dying.”

We might worry about a young man like that. But these words actually came from Jonathan Edwards, who wrote seventy resolutions for his life before the age of twenty.

Edwards was wise enough to realize he needed to make the most of life since death would be a reality.

He said, “I frequently hear people in old age say how they would live if they were to live their lives over again.” So here’s a young man looking at older people, and he hears them say, “I’d like to do this differently if I could live my life again.”

Edwards didn’t want that to happen to him, so he thought through the end of his life while he still had time to shape it. He wrote, “Resolved, that I will live as I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.”

What could you do today that will be an investment in tomorrow?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “On All Occasions“

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Your greatest need is not your financial situation. It’s not your health situation. It’s not your marriage situation. Our greatest need is not to be delivered from our circumstances as the Jews were hoping to be delivered from the Romans.

Our greatest need is to be delivered from our sin, from spiritual captivity. It strikes me that if we have been eternally redeemed from our sin, then we will have the resources of God at our disposal to deal with any circumstance that comes into our life. Because any circumstance that you could describe that would trouble or concern or unsettle you today is, at most, temporal.

God says our greatest need is for eternal redemption. Having that through the blood of Christ shed on our behalf, having been eternally redeemed—we can, with the indwelling Christ, with the power of His Spirit and the power of His grace, face any circumstance.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “The Payment“

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The book of Proverbs tells us that a wise woman builds her house but a foolish woman tears hers down. One way we can do that is in our attitudes. Listen to these Scriptures and think about whether your attitudes tend to build up or tear down your home.

“Help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus . . . ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

We build others up when we meet their needs, not expecting anything in return. But we tear down by conditional giving.

“In everything give thanks.”

We build up by recognizing things to be thankful for. But when we complain about all the things that don’t go our way, we tear our house down.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourself.”

An attitude of humility will build up our house, but selfishness will tear it down.

Are you tearing down or building up your home?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Do My Attitudes Build Up?“

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Before we can interpret and apply God’s Word, we need to understand what it says. Here are a few ways you can answer the question, “What does it say?”

One is to summarize. Write down a brief overview of the passage, including the major points.

Another idea is to paraphrase. Write the passage in your own words.

Or you can ask questions, as if you were writing a news story.

• Who wrote it?
• What happened?
• When was it written?
• Where did this happen?
• How did it happen?
• Why was this written?

Discover what the passage says; then you can apply it to your life.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “What Does It Say?“

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Do your kids see one side of you at church…and another side at home?

Parents don’t usually realize how much their example affects their children. Kids know what their parents’ standards are.

They notice when their parents use language at home they’d never say in public. They notice when their parents belittle each other. They know what kinds of videos parents rent and what they laugh at on TV.

If your kids grow up loving the world more than God, if they don’t have a hunger for spiritual things, will it be any surprise? Will you be prepared to give an account for the way your life influenced them?

As you make choices today, would you remember that your heart for holiness is shaping the character of the next generation?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “An Example of Holiness“

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You really have no idea what’s in store today.

“Mom, I spilled . . .”

“With parts and labor, it’ll come to $527.”

“I forgot to tell you; my science project is due today.”

“I’m calling from the hospital. Dad had an accident.”

There’s one basic issue that will determine how you respond to anything today: What’s your purpose in life? If your goal is to be happy or accepted or loved, then you’ll face a lot of obstacles in meeting it.

But if your purpose is to exist for God’s glory, then you can accept whatever comes as part of His plan and purpose. You’ll embrace the hard things knowing that they were designed by God to make you more like Jesus.

Have you settled that issue? Would you say, “Lord, it’s not about me—it’s about You. All that matters is that You are glorified”?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “One Basic Issue“

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What traits does a godly woman have? The Bible has quite a bit to say about that.

“Ruth 3:11: ‘And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid….All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character.’ ”

Do you have a reputation for being a woman of godly character?

“She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue” (Proverbs 31:26).

Do you spend time with the Word of God so that you can speak wise words to others?

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission” (1 Timothy 2:11).

Do you have a teachable spirit?

“It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman” (Proverbs 21:19).

Do you have a spirit of welcoming people or of pushing them away? Do you find yourself arguing and getting angry easily?

Why not spend some time in the Word of God and ask Him to show you what kind of woman He wants you to be?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “How Does a Woman Act?“

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Proverbs 28, verse 13, is such a pivotal verse here, a key verse. Proverbs 28:13: “Whoever conceals his transgressions [some of your translations say ‘he that covers his sin’] will not prosper, but he who confesses [that’s the opposite of concealing; no more hiding, no more pretending, no more covering, but confessing] and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

Listen, I’ll tell you ladies and this helps motivate me to walk into the light, to live a life of transparent honesty, is to realize that it’s all coming out someday anyway, all coming out in the judgment.

The thing you’re hiding from your husband, the thing you think he’ll never find out, the thing you’re hiding from your parents, the way you’ve sinned against a boss and stolen time or money or possessions or whatever, the thing you did 15 years ago, the thing that you thought was so little but it gnaws at your conscience, if you don’t bring it into the light and confess it, it’s coming out someday.

There’s so many Scriptures that tell us that. Luke chapter 12, verse 2, Jesus said, “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.” Now you think about the secret hidden parts of your life, your past, your present, an emotional entanglement that you’re involved in on the Internet, an email relationship. It’s happening by droves with Christian women.

You think you’re hiding. You think you’re covering. You think your husband will never find out. Jesus said nothing is covered up that will not be revealed. Nothing is hidden that will not be known.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “No Secrets“

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There’s a wonderful truth that’s sometimes hard for us to grasp. That is that God doesn’t make any mistakes.

Other people sometimes may make serious mistakes that affect our lives. But God is always fulfilling His eternal purposes, and they can’t be stopped by any human failure. If we’re in Christ, our lives are in His hands, and nothing can touch us that hasn’t first been filtered through His fingers of love.

Someone has said, “God’s will is exactly what we would choose if we knew what God knows.” When we stand in eternity, we’ll see clearly what we now know only by faith: He truly has done all things well.

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Filtered through His Hand“

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Encouraging others is really important. But as women, we need to be careful not to encourage men in inappropriate ways.

The foolish woman we read about in Proverbs 7 finds a young man and invites him into an immoral relationship. She says, “I came out to meet you, diligently to seek your face, and I have found you.” This married woman is feeding the young man’s need for admiration. She sets him up for moral failure.

Further, when a woman looks for things to admire in a man other than her own husband, it can make her feel discontented with her own marriage. It may even make her more likely to leave what she considers to be a lonely relationship.

Ladies, as you use your words to encourage others, ask God to give you wisdom and restraint in how you encourage men. Ask yourself: Is this the type of admiration that should come from his own wife?

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Feeding Discontent“

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There’s a verse in 1 Peter that shows us that Jesus’ sense of worth didn’t come from what others thought about Him. It came from what God thought.

It says He was “rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him.”

Jesus was rejected by men—those He had created for Himself. He loved them so much He laid down His life. But His value came from being chosen by God. That’s what made Him precious. That’s what determined His worth.

Your worth is also determined by God. He loves you so much that He gave His Son for your sins. Remember that the next time you’re tempted to believe, “I’m not worth anything.”

~Nancy Leigh DeMoss in “Rejected by Men“

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