Morning Devotional 093025 Just Ask

Liz’s Morning Devotional: Scripture selected from Upper Room

September 30, 2025 

Acts 17:27-34

God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. 28 In God we live, move, and exist. As some of your own poets said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 “Therefore, as God’s offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. 30 God overlooks ignorance of these things in times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and lives. 31 This is because God has set a day when he intends to judge the world justly by a man he has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” 32 When they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to ridicule Paul. However, others said, “We’ll hear from you about this again.” 33 At that, Paul left the council. 34 Some people joined him and came to believe, including Dionysius, a member of the council on Mars Hill, a woman named Damaris, and several others.

Good Morning! God is nearer than the breath we breathe!

In God we live, move, and exist. Without God, we would stumble about in darkness, moving from one moment, day, week, month, and year until we die into nothingness. When Moses asked the Israelites to choose life and blessings or death and curses, he was relaying God’s Words.

Deuteronomy 30:19, which says, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live". This passage emphasizes that God has presented humanity with a choice between two paths: a path of obedience to Him, which leads to life and blessings, or a path of disobedience, which brings curses and death. 

Paul is offering life to the people of Athens. Those who were ready asked Paul to come and share more after they had taken time to consider Paul’s words. The words Paul shared were foreign to their thoughts and understanding, so they needed to hear some more. 

From the beginning, God has offered all He created the choice of life and blessings. I struggle with understanding why anyone would choose death and curses, but in our decision to choose life, we must also choose to humble ourselves to God’s will. This can be difficult when we think we know what is best. 

Evil disguises itself as things we can’t refuse, and then once we enter, our sight is skewed so that we can’t distinguish between good and evil. When that happens, we must trust the goodness that lies within us and call out to God for a way out, a light to guide us back to Jesus. 

God is always available to take our call.

Loving Lord, you bless us abundantly! We can become blinded by earthly treasures. Thank you for opening our eyes so that we can find our way home to You. Thank you. We love you, Lord! In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen

Thought for the day: Choose life and blessings!

All we have to do is ask! Pastor Liz