Daily Devotion for February 2, 2026
Prayers
Scripture
Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Audrey Assad’s beautiful and comforting song brings the peace of Christ into our ears and hearts.
and I steady my heart on the ground of Your goodness.
When I’m bowed down with sorrow I will lift up Your name
and the foxes in the vineyard will not steal my joy.
Chorus:
Because You are good to me, good to me,
You are good to me, good to me
You are good to me
I lift my eyes to the hills where my help is found.
Your voice fills the night raise my head up and hear the sound.
Though fires burn all around me I will praise You, my God,
and the foxes in the vineyard will not steal my joy.
Your goodness and mercy shall follow me
all my life;
I will trust in Your promise.
Music and Lyrics by Audrey Assad
Prayer for Renewal in Christ
My Father, if Your mercy had boundaries, where would be my refuge from just wrath? But Your love for me in Christ is without measure. Thus, I present myself to You with sins of commission and omission, against You, my Father, against You, Adorable Redeemer, against You and Your stirrings, O Holy Spirit, against the dictates of my conscience, against the precepts of Your Word, against my neighbours and myself. Enter not into judgment with me, for I plead no righteousness of my own, and have no place to hide my iniquity. Pardon my day dark with evil.
This morning I renew my repentance. Every morning I vow to love You more fervently, to serve You more sincerely, to be more devoted in my life, to be completely Yours; Yet I soon stumble, backslide, and have to confess my weakness, misery and sin. But I bless You that the finished work of Jesus needs no addition from my doings, that His atonement is sufficient satisfaction for my sins.
If future days be mine, help me to amend my life, to hate and abhor evil, to flee the sins I confess. Make me more resolute, more watchful, more prayerful. Let no evil fruit spring from evil seeds my hands have sown; Let no neighbour be hardened in vanity and folly by my want of watchfulness.
If this day I have been ashamed of Christ and His Word, or have shown unkindness, malice, envy, lack of love, unadvised speech, hasty temper, let it be no stumbling block to others, or dishonour to Your name. O, help me to set an upright example that will ever rebuke vice, appeal to goodness, and evidence that lovely are the ways of Christ.
For the Forgotten
O merciful God, take pity on those souls who live this day alone, without friends or family, forgotten by all. Bring the comfort of your Spirit to them, I pray, and let them know the most blessed company of all. Grant them to find the consolation of friendship in this life, and bring them into the light of your word, so that when they pass from this life, they may find eternal joy.
Meditation
“Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”
Benediction
God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and Spirit of God amidst us, direct our way unto you. Make us to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you; to the end we may establish our hearts unblameable in holiness before you, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.
Wings
Run, John, run, the Law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands,
Far better news the gospel brings,
It bids us fly and gives us wings.
~ John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Galatians 3:15-18 (BSB)
rothers, let me put this in human terms. Even a human covenant, once it is ratified, cannot be canceled or amended. 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many, but “and to your seed,” meaning One, who is Christ.
17 What I mean is this: The law that came 430 years later does not revoke the covenant previously established by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God freely granted it to Abraham through a promise.
DP Parallel Bible (3-Column) - Galatians 3
Notes on the Scripture
The Heirs of Abraham (Galatians #34)
Our study of Galatians is, as promised, what scholars today call “granular”: tearing it down and examining tiny details. We looked at some true minutiae in the previous commentary; but we don’t want to miss the forest for the trees. So what does Gal. 3:15-18 mean in broader terms, for our faith today?
The Jews considered themselves the children of Abraham. It was the very essence of their racial and religious identity. The broad message of Gal. 3:15-18 destroys this fundamental tenet of Jewish belief. It is not the Jews who are heirs of God’s favor, but those who hear the Gospel in faith, whether Jew or Gentile.
One proof Paul uses is the precise language of the (Hebrew) Scripture. God told Abraham he would honor His promise not only to Abraham, but to his descendant — not his descendants, plural, but to his descendant, singular. One person would inherit; and this person was Christ, the descendant of Abraham by blood, and the Son of God by spirit. The Law, as we saw previously, could not affect or alter God’s promise.
Christ, possessing God’s promise to Abraham as the sole heir, then named all who loved Him as His own heirs. We became heirs with Christ, the adopted children of God. We have been shown that any attempt to attain righteousness before God by our own actions is futile. This was the purpose of the Law of Moses.
We must understand the futility of our attempts to become so good that God will favor us. Our salvation is not and cannot be the product of our strivings. The Law humiliates us, in the sense of creating an absolute humility. From our realization of our sin comes humility, and from our humility comes our realization that only God can save us. For God has saved us. He has delivered on the promise He made to Abraham, by giving His Son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice to cleanse us from our sins.
We might reflect here that Abraham offered his own son as a sacrifice, but that God did not accept the sacrifice of Isaac; instead, he showed Abraham a ram caught in a thicket. (Genesis 22) Abraham had to demonstrate his faith by his willingness to sacrifice his son, but only the son of God Himself would suffice to cleanse the world’s sin.
Paul’s language to the Galatians is rather harsh in places, but through it we find the sweetness of the gospel and the most blessed comfort possible. All that is required is our faith in God’s promise. The law says: Do this. The gospel says: Accept this. Whatever our roles and experience in life, we can see our many failures in all sorts of ways. Satan wants to use these failures to discourage us; Paul tells us that our failures are inevitable and meaningless: we cannot earn salvation by success and we cannot lose it by failure.
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
