Journal

• Please use one of the prompts below to get your journaling started.

  • Explore your fears and what’s behind them.
  • Write about a relational conflict you are experiencing.
  • List out all that you are grateful for.
  • Recall a significant reaction, conversation or event.

   Here are some tools to help you with the devotionals:

  • A Guide to Journaling & Prayer
  • A Guide to Self-Reflection
  • A Chart to help articulate feelings

Bible Passage: Hebrews 1 (ESV)

¹ Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ⁴ having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

⁵ For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,

    today I have begotten you”?

Or again,

“I will be to him a father,

    and he shall be to me a son”?

⁶ And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,

“Let all God’s angels worship him.”

⁷ Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,

    and his ministers a flame of fire.”

⁸ But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

    the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

⁹ You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you

    with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

¹⁰ And,

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,

    and the heavens are the work of your hands;

¹¹ they will perish, but you remain;

    they will all wear out like a garment,

¹² like a robe you will roll them up,

    like a garment they will be changed.

But you are the same,

    and your years will have no end.”

¹³ And to which of the angels has he ever said,

“Sit at my right hand

    until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?

¹⁴ Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?

Commentary

Hebrews is a long, sustained argument, in which the author moves back and forth between an argument (based on Scripture) and exhortation. What drives the argument from beginning to end is the absolute superiority of the Son of God to everything that has gone before; this is what his exposition of Scripture is all about. What concerns the author is the possibility that some believers under present distress will let go of Christ and thus lose out on the Son’s saving work and high priestly intercession, and thus their own experience of God’s presence; this is what the interspersed exhortations are all about.

Fee, Gordon D. and Stuart, Douglas, How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour (MI: Zondervan Academic, 2009), 390.

How is God addressing me today? 

• What is the theme of this passage in one sentence?
• Write out some key verses from this passage.
• How is God speaking to me through this passage? What are some lessons or applications for my life?

Prayer