Open the Bible UK Daily

Colin Smith
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3 minute daily Bible reflections from Open the Bible UK, authored by Colin Smith, read by Sue McLeish.

  1. 17h ago

    Is It Really Possible to Know That God Loves You?

    Note then the kindness and the severity of God.Romans 11:22No generation has been so often told that God loves us, and no generation has struggled more to experience God’s love. One reason for this is that our ideas about God’s love have become sentimental. We have failed to take God’s wrath seriously, and losing touch with God’s wrath, we’ve lost touch with His love. When you grasp this truth of the Divine wrath, you will begin to see the extent of the Divine love. Your eyes will be opened to what was happening at the cross, and how this was an outpouring of God’s love for you. The Divine wrath shows you what you were saved from, and it tells you what it took to save you. When you see the Divine wrath poured out on the Divine person at the cross—God absorbing the wrath of God—you will know that God loves you. The Son of God endured this to redeem me? That is true love. Grasp this and your soul will begin to sing, “Love so amazing, so divine, deserves my soul, my life, my all.” Maybe you thought that God’s wrath shows how much God hates you. Can you see, through the cross, that it might show how much He loves you? Maybe this truth has caused you to hate God. Could it be that today, through the cross, this truth might bring you to love God?

  2. 1d ago

    Why Did Jesus Come into the World? Why Did He Have to Die? And What Was the Cross All About?

    Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.Isaiah 53:5Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). On the cross, He became the sin bearer: “He himself bore our sins in the body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). “He… bore our sins” means that Jesus came under all the consequences that sin brings. On the cross, He absorbed the Divine wrath. He entered into all that hell is, so that those who come to Him should never know what it is like. Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for us, so that we could know the love of God through Him. Have you taken this truth seriously? This is a truth that should make us tremble. If it were not for the grace and mercy of God to us, personally, in Jesus Christ, we all would endure a future in which we were against God and God was against us forever, a future in which we have no place for God and God has no place for us. People who reject Jesus will endure the gnawing of an activated conscience in which they see the full extent of their own sin. They will have clear knowledge that there is a God of love and that they could have been reconciled to Him, but now He is beyond their reach because they chose to live without Him. They will live with unending regret and a loathing of self because of their own wretched choices and the miserable consequences. They will experience an ongoing rebellion against God that keeps foaming up from within, from which there is no deliverance. Like the addict who keeps going back to what he knows is destroying his life, apart from Christ we would all spend an eternity in the company of those who are in rebellion against God, with no one to blame but ourselves. Have you considered what Jesus has saved you from?

  3. 2d ago

    Why Is It So Important to Believe the Right Things about God?

    We were by nature children of wrath.Ephesians 2:3This does not mean that if we do some bad things, the wrath of God will come on us. We are children of wrath by nature. That means, by nature, we are absorbed with self and drawn to sin. By nature, we want to be our own gods. By nature, we were under the wrath of God. Some people say, “I cannot believe that if a person doesn’t believe the right things about God, he or she will go to hell.” But John tells us, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). John does not say, “If you reject Jesus, God’s wrath comes on you.” He says, “If you reject Jesus, God’s wrath remains on you.” It’s already there. By nature, we are children of wrath. Your reaction to this teaching about the wrath of God will tell you whether you have really embraced the truth we looked at about our sinful nature. The reason that all people are liable to the wrath of God is that God must destroy sin and sin is in us by nature. The new heaven and the new earth will be the home of righteousness, so sin can never enter there. But sin is in us by nature. That’s the problem. So, by nature, we can never enter. If we were to enter, which we cannot, we would defile the place that God is making. We need to be made holy first, and that is why we desperately need Christ. Can you see today why, apart from Jesus, it would be impossible for anyone to get into heaven?

  4. 3d ago

    Is the World Getting Better?

    We… were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.Ephesians 2:3One of the greatest problems with evolutionary theory is that if it were true, the world should be a better place by now. If we are getting better, surely by now, war should have ended, children should be safe, and women should be treated with dignity and respect. Surely by now, we should have achieved world peace, and wise government with freedom and justice for all. Why can’t we ever get there? Every new generation says: “The world shouldn’t be like this!” But if world history tells us anything, it is that sin is a problem for which there is no human solution. Sin is a monster, and our only hope of getting better is for this monster to be completely destroyed. In Psalm 55, David cries: “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy! Attend to me, and answer me… Destroy, O Lord, divide their [the wicked] tongues; for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it; ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace (55:1-2, 9-11). Notice where Psalm 55 ends: “But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction” (55:23). In an evil world, where might is right, this is the psalmist’s only hope. A God who cannot destroy evil, or who does not have the will to do so, is of no help to us. The good news is that David’s prayer will be answered. God will bring the wicked down into the pit of corruption. God will create a new heaven and a new earth where sin will be no more. This is our hope. Without it, there will never be a world with peace and freedom and prosperity and justice and joy for all—never. What are the top three problems in the world today that you would like God’s wrath(judgement) to bring to an end?

  5. 4d ago

    Have You Completely Missed Your Biggest Problem?

    We… were by nature children of wrath.Ephesians 2:3This verse is disturbing, but its meaning is clear—the default position of every human life is that we are under the wrath of God. To help us grasp the importance of this, here is a parable... Imagine a beautiful church with stained-glass windows, hundreds of years old, located in the center of town. Pastor John, a wise, kind, and godly man—the kind of man you can talk to, especially when you know you’re in trouble—has served at this church for over 30 years. One day Ben comes into the church looking for Pastor John. He is troubled and he needs to talk. “How can I help you, Ben?” Ben looks down and mumbles, “Pastor John, how can I be a more generous person? …I don’t have peace about what I’m doing with my money. Maybe I need to give more.” Pastor John senses Ben isn’t getting to the point. “Is there something else you want to tell me?” “I’ve been taking money from other people’s pension funds.” As Pastor John is about to speak, the office door flies open: “Pastor John, Pastor John, there’s a bomb in the basement! You have to get out!” Ben says he wants to be a more generous person. But there’s a bigger problem—he has stolen two million dollars from his company’s pension fund, and he is facing jail time. But the biggest problem is that there is a bomb in the building, and if they don’t get out, all of Pastor’s John’s wisdom and all of Ben’s fear about going to the police will be irrelevant. You may want to become a better person. You may even feel that there is stuff in your life that needs to be sorted out. But towering over these two is a problem of altogether different proportions—we are, by nature, children of wrath. Are you so focused on becoming a better person, or on sorting some things out in your life that you’ve completely missed the biggest problem?

  6. 5d ago

    What Do You Believe About Your Heart?

    We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.Ephesians 2:3In the 1990s, filmmaker Woody Allen left the woman he had been in a long-term relationship with to be with her adopted daughter. When asked why he would do such a thing, he responded by saying, “The heart wants what it wants.” That is exactly the teaching of Ephesians 2:3. So, all of us have to make a choice, and that choice will derive from what we believe about the state of our hearts. If you believe that your heart is good, you will follow the inclinations of your heart and live on impulse, as Woody Allen did. But if you believe what we are learning from theBible, you will learn to distrust your own heart. When someone says, “Follow your heart,” your antenna will go up and you’ll say, “Follow my heart? My heart is sinful. If I follow my heart, it will lead me into all kinds of sin and folly.” The singer Lady Gaga recorded a platinum song “Born This Way,” with the following lyrics… My mama told me when I was young, “We are all born superstars…” “There’s nothing wrong with loving who you are”, She said, “Cause He made you perfect, babe”, So hold your head up, girl, and you’ll go far”, Listen to me when I say I’m beautiful in my way, ’Cause God makes no mistakes, I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way Don’t hide yourself in regret, Just love yourself, and you’re set, I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way Is it possible that you are believing and teaching others the same thing she is?

  7. 6d ago

    What Role Does Imagination Play in Our Sin?

    Carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.Ephesians 2:3If the fires have burned low in your marriage, expect your sinful nature to produce thoughts about divorce. Something within you will say, “You deserve better than this. There’s another person out there for you.” If you are discouraged in ministry, expect the sinful nature to produce thoughts about quitting. The sinful nature will say, “You deserve better than this. There’s something else you could do.” The sinful nature will always produce these cravings, strong desires, and intense longings. The Christian life is a constant battle against the impulses of sin that remain in our flesh. If you are a Christian, your sin is forgiven, but it has not yet been expelled. You are now involved in a lifelong struggle against the desires of the sinful nature. Thomas Boston, in his book Human Nature in Its Fourfold State describes how the imagination enables the sinner to indulge the cravings of his heart. He wrote the following words in 1729, long before we had cameras, TV, the Internet, or TikTok. [The sinful mind]… supplies the lack of real objects to the corrupt heart, that it may make sinners happy at least in the imaginary enjoyment of their lusts. The corrupt heart feeds itself with imagination-sins. The unclean person is filled with speculative impurities. The covetous man fills his heart with the world, though he cannot get his hands full of it. The malicious person fills his mind with acts of revenge. The envious man…beholds with satisfaction, his neighbour laid low. Every lust finds the corrupt imagination a friend to it in time of need. This the heart does, not only when people are awake—but sometimes even when they are asleep; whereby it comes to pass that those sins are acted in dreams which their hearts pant after when they are awake. Can you identify a recent time when you allowed your imagination to run wild by indulging your cravings?

  8. Oct 18

    What Does Sin Look Like in Us?

    The desires of the flesh and the mind…Ephesians 2:3The Keto diet is the one where you can eat high fat foods but no carbs. This appeals to some people—a diet in which you can eat steak and bacon. But it doesn’t usually last long, because after a few days your body starts craving bread. What are the desires of the mind? What are the cravings of the flesh? Here are ten examples. You will recognise them immediately. When you succeed, the sinful nature produces pride.When others succeed, the sinful nature produces envy.When you do good, the sinful nature is self-righteous.When you do wrong, the sinful nature goes into denial.When you suffer, the sinful nature indulges in self-pity.When you don’t get what you want, the sinful nature gets irritable, frustrated, and angry.When your work is not recognised, the sinful nature gets resentful.When you are in a conflict, the sinful nature produces self-justification.When you hear about the love of God, the sinful nature produces unbelief.When you hear what the Bible says about sin, the sinful nature responds with evasion. Learn to read your own heart. Learn to detect the voice of your sinful nature. Have you heard this voice recently? When?

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About

3 minute daily Bible reflections from Open the Bible UK, authored by Colin Smith, read by Sue McLeish.

Information

  • Creator
    Colin Smith
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    1.2K
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Colin Smith
  • Show Website
    Open the Bible UK Daily

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