OUR DAILY BREAD DEVOTIONAL READING MAY 22, 2025, THURSDAY ODB MESSAGE
Our Daily Bread 22nd May 2025 Devotional, Thursday TOPIC: Love Worthy of Our Life
BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: 1 Chronicles 16-18; John 7:28-53
KEY VERSE: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.- Matthew 16:25
TODAY’S SCRIPTURE
Matthew 16:21-28
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
INSIGHT FOR TODAY
After Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Christ speaks plainly about His imminent suffering, death, burial, and resurrection (v. 21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19; 26:2). Peter rejected a Messiah who would suffer and die, but he was severely rebuked by Jesus (16:22-23). In the wilderness temptations at the start of Christ’s ministry, Satan offered to make Him king without the suffering (4:8-10). Peter’s idea of the kingly Messiah was the same as Satan’s—the crown without the cross. But going to the cross to die for sinful humanity was the primary reason Jesus came. To prevent His crucifixion is what Satan wanted. Jesus recognized that the same satanic source was behind Peter’s rejection of the cross (16:23).
Our Daily Bread 22nd May 2025 Devotional, Thursday Message:
William Temple, a twentieth-century English bishop, once concluded a sermon to Oxford students with the words of the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” But he cautioned against taking the song lightly. “If you mean [the words] with all your hearts, sing them as loud as you can,” Temple said. “If you don’t mean them at all, keep silent. If you mean them even a little, and want to mean them more, sing them very softly.” The crowd went quiet as everyone eyed the lyrics. Slowly, thousands of voices began to sing in a whisper, mouthing the final lines with gravity: “Love so amazing, so divine / Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
Those Oxford students understood the reality that believing in and following Jesus is a serious choice, because it means saying yes to a radical love that demands everything from us. Following Christ requires our entire life, our whole being. He plainly told His disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). No one should make this choice flippantly.
Yet following Jesus is also the way to our deepest joy. Life with Him, we’ll discover, is the life we truly desire. It appears to be a great paradox. However, if we respond to God’s love, believe in Christ, and relinquish our selfish, shortsighted demands, we’ll find the life our soul craves (v. 25).
REFLECT: What will believing in and following Jesus cost you? What will you gain?
PRAY: Dear God, following You isn’t easy, but I want to give You my life and my all.
Our Daily Bread Ministries (ODB) is a Christian organization founded by Dr. Martin De Haan in 1938. It is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with over 600 employees. It produces several devotional publications, including Our Daily Bread. our daily bread devotional for today audio our daily bread booklet. (Our Daily Bread 22nd May 2025 Devotional)