The Daily Memo

You may not want to think of yourself as a sheep, but that is a term Jesus used to describe His children. His sheep are all those who have trusted Him as Savior—and they are the ones for whom He laid down His life. Scripture says these sheep are identified by three characteristics: They know their Shepherd, hear His voice, and follow Him. Our Shepherd knew us before the foundation of the world. He sought us when we were lost, calling us each by name into His flock. We…

“Understanding your identity in Christ is absolutely essential to your success at living the victorious Christian life…The more you reaffirm who you are in Christ, the more your behavior will begin to reflect your true identity.” From Victory Over the Darkness, by Dr. Neil Anderson Here’s what God’s Word has to say about it. John 1:12 I am God’s child John 15:15 I am a friend of God Matthew 5:13 I am the salt of the earth Matthew 5:14 I…

Almost every little boy loves playing “Cowboys and Indians.” However, kids pretending to fight in the Wild West is quite different from real warfare with real weapons. Take, for example, the frontier practice of staging surprise assaults using flaming arrows. This tactical strategy caught the other side off guard. Flaming arrows would start a fire on a canvas covered wagon, disrupting military lines and causing the occupants to focus on the blaze rather than the…

The way to render a man happy, is to engage him with an object that will make him forget his private troubles. — Pascal Don't be fooled by the apparent innocence of the object you've chosen as an idol; what is the function of it? Most of our idols also have a perfectly legitimate place in our lives. That's their cover, that's how we get away with our infidelity. The prophet Isaiah gives an example of this when he marvels at a man who cuts down a…

A Roman soldier “girded his loins” with something more akin to a girdle than a belt. (A manly one, I’m sure.) Most scholars agree that more than any other piece of the soldier’s clothing or equipment, this girdle—with its intricate decor and elaborate buckles—distinguished a soldier from a civilian. It wasn’t some optional, secondary accessory, like the kind you or I might add to an outfit. It was a strategic, primary focal point of…

Imagine life without mobile phones, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth devices, or microwave ovens. That’s the way it is in the little town of Green Bank, West Virginia, known as “the quietest town in America.” It’s also the location of the Green Bank Observatory, the world’s largest steerable radio telescope. The telescope needs “quiet” to “listen” to naturally occurring radio waves emitted by the movement of pulsars and galaxies in…

In April 2019, a suburban neighborhood in Victorville, California, became buried in tumbleweeds. High winds pushed the rolling thistles into the development from the adjacent Mojave Desert where the plant grows. At maturity, the pesky weed can grow to up to six feet in height—a formidable size when it releases itself from its roots to “tumble” with the wind to scatter its seeds. Tumbleweeds are what I picture when I read Jeremiah’s description of a…

John Spillane is a para-rescue jumper sent into the North Atlantic, into the worst storm of the twentieth century, the perfect storm, as the book and film called it, to rescue a fisherman lost at sea. When his helicopter goes down, he is forced to jump into pitch blackness from an unknown height, and when he hits the water, he’s going so fast it’s like hitting the pavement from eighty feet above. He is dazed and confused—just as we are when it comes to the…

When we’re too preoccupied to hear God’s voice, He may get our attention by giving us a restless spirit. The book of Esther gives us a wonderful example of this. In the sixth chapter, we see that King Ahasuerus “could not sleep so he gave an order to bring the book of records, the chronicles, and they were read before the king” (Est. 6:1). As a result, Ahasuerus became aware of an assassination plot that had been foiled by a man named Mordecai.…