Jeremy Hoover

How do you respond when someone betrays you? What do you do when your friends turn their backs on you? How deep does your trust in God go?

Use this devotional guide to help you work through Psalm 109 and answer some of these questions.

This is the devotional guide for September 25-October 1, 2011. It's an exploration of the "one another" passages in the New Testament.

This is the devotional guide for September 11-17, 2011. The questions are from Proverbs 6, James 3:13-17, and Ephesians 4:17-32. The theme is centered around gossip and unwholesome speech.

Please share this with others if you find it useful and helpful.

On Sunday, I preached from Colossians 3 on the theme of "How to Grow Spiritually." If you think of spiritual growth as a puzzle, these are the pieces of the puzzle that will enable you to grow spiritually.

In my opinion, if you do these things, you will grow spiritually. Obviously, I am not taking away from the work of God. This is about creating space for God to work. We need to both cooperate with God and build basic foundations for God to work with.

Look over this list. How many of them are you doing? Which are you not doing? How good or consistent are you with them? Is anything missing? What do you think?

1. Attend worship every Sunday.
2. Attend at least one class each week for teaching and fellowship and to model good behavior for others.
3. Read at least one chapter of the Bible each day, reading through books.
4. Record the main idea of each chapter in a notebook and compile, over time, a base of information you can use in your own teaching and understanding.
5. Look for ways to apply the main idea you took from your daily reading.
6. Pray every day over your main idea, for yourself and for others.
7. Always be working on training and teaching one other believer to do these same things.
8. Always be working on mentoring an unbeliever in faith, doing these same things, and teaching by example.

Questions are from Proverbs 4:20-5:6 and Colossians 3:1-17. The focus is on spiritual growth: what is it, and how do we do it.

As usual, please share this with others if you find it useful.

This is the devotional guide for August 28-September 3, 2011, containing questions from Proverbs 4 and Matthew 6.

Thanks for clicking on the tag to either "Family Devotional Guides" or "Home Devotional Guides." I'm now consolidating all these under the tag "Devotional Guides." You may find older devotional guides by following either tag "Family Devotional Guides" or "Home Devotional Guides".

This is the devotional guide for August 21-27, 2011, which includes questions from Proverbs 3 and Matthew 5.

Please share with others and use it in your devotional time, and your family's devotional time, for your spiritual enrichment.

I used to know someone who was notorious for one-upping people. If I related a story, he had one better. If someone else stated an opinion of how he actually did something, this person knew how to do it better. Yet, while I and others were out accumulating working knowledge based in experience, this person stayed home, watched TV, and somehow added to his "knowledge base."

At the risk of being provocative, may I suggest that many Christians are just like the person I wrote about above? Many Christians look at church leadership, or ministers, or elders, or deacons dismissively and with a critical eye. Leadership struggles to make the right decision, consulting with many members, and yet are themselves dismissed by the armchair Christian who "knows" why such a program will not work or how something could have been "handled better."

This behavior is neither useful nor productive. Many decisions made in churches actually are based in reason and discussion that is focused on practical matters. No leadership makes a decision they hope or think will fail. Yet, they struggle to get buy-in because the armchair Christians hold it up because their perspective wasn't followed (or whatever). These "know" better, but too often are holed up in a small criticism circle; they are not actually out there doing anything.

Sure, there is a way to learn without testing and doing. But before you are critical about what someone else is or isn't doing (according to your opinion), or about how they are doing something, trying walking in their shoes first. Get out and do something. Show your results. Demonstrate reasons from your experience why you are in disagreement.

In short, stop being an armchair Christian and get in the game! If we each focused on doing what we know on an individual level, I firmly believe we would cut our church problems by two-thirds.

Gain knowledge...and then do!

This week's booklet includes questions and prayer focuses from Proverbs 3:1-12 and Matthew 7:13-27.