Month: May 2024

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 8 Day 4

But now finish doing it also, so that just as there was the readiness to desire it, so there may be also the completion of it by your ability. ¹² For if the readiness is present, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

2 Corinthians 8:11-12

This love that God has stirred up in your heart, let it live.  Those things this love has inspired, do them and do them all the way to the end.  Before we give a gift, we have to go get a gift, but the celebration isn’t over until we give the gift.  Where we are ready to give, we won’t be the regretful of not.

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 8 Day 3

But just as you abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge and in all earnestness and in the love we inspired in you, see that you abound in this gracious work also. ⁸ I am not speaking this as a command, but as proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also.

2 Corinthians 8:7-8

Don’t be afraid to prove your love and don’t settle to just profess it.  If we can’t prove it, what good does it do to profess it.  Where there is no effort, there is no earnestness.  If we’re going to say it, we need to show it

The Kitchen Table Devotionals

2 Corinthians 8 Day 2

For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, ⁴ begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints, ⁵ and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God

2 Corinthians 8:3-5

Real love begets real love.  These believers who were touched by the love of God gave according to their ability and beyond their ability.  They were able to give and they were able to give beyond what they were able because they were able to think beyond what they were able.  This privilege only belongs to those who haven’t spent their love on themselves thus creating a disability to give to God and others.  The real love we have in our hearts shows up in both our ability and disability to give. 

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 8 Day 1

Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, ² that in a great ordeal of affliction, their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality.

2 Corinthians 8:1-2

Great love begets great love.  When we make room in our hearts for God, we find room in our hearts for others to know the same God and the same love we have found.  There is a joy in giving that only comes from knowing God and His gifts for us.

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 7 Day 4

I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. ¹⁰ For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

2 Corinthians 7:9-10

The only way to clean a dirty heart is through repentance.  This act is preceded by sorrow that there is no room for God in our hearts.  This act is followed by forgiveness and freedom through Jesus without regret.  There is a sorrow of regret and that insufferable.  There is a sorrow of repentance that brings salvation.  Regret fills our hearts with self-judgment, but repentance fills our hearts with the Savior’s judgment, moving into our hearts forgiveness, freedom, and favor in Him.

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2 Corinthians 7 Day 3

But God, who comforts the depressed, comforted us by the coming of Titus; ⁷ and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you, as he reported to us your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me; so that I rejoiced even more.

2 Corinthians 7:6-7

When there is room in our hearts, God brings messengers and ministers to fill our hearts.  Sometimes there is nothing like a real friend to fill the hollow spots left by the defilement of the world.

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 7 Day 2

Make room for us in your hearts; we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one.

2 Corinthians 7:2

What defiles the heart fills the heart.  When we let God deal with the problems in our hearts, we make room for God’s people in our hearts.  God can do anything He wants without us but does everything He wants with us and through us using people who have made room in their hearts for Him.

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 7 Day 1

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

2 Corinthians 7:1

It’s hard to hold onto promises when we’re holding on to problems.  This is where God leaves it up to us.  He makes the promises and makes them reality in our lives, but we have to choose to drop the problems in our hearts, with our hands, and from our own heads.  Be afraid of a life of a life without God and the power to deal with the problems of life.  Jesus made a way!

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 6 Day 5

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? ¹⁵ Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,
“I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.

2 Corinthians 6:14-16

Vanity lives in relationships that are bad for us.  If you want to make your life count, make your relationships count, beginning with your relationship with God.

The Kitchen Table Devotional

2 Corinthians 6 Day 4

You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections.

2 Corinthians 6:12

We are never restrained by those who are living right, but rather we find ourselves restrained by what we do that’s wrong or evil.  The trouble a person finds himself in is probably always the result of his own choosing somewhere in his own history.  Don’t live this wonderful life in vanity, it’s created to give you victory.