Home
Amber
- Articles
- Blog
- Explainers
Bible
- Devotionals
Library

Browsing Category

Come King Jesus Advent Devotional

Nothing Found

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.

About Me

Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a writer, curriculum designer, and life-long Bible student turned teacher. I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with my husband of 20+ years and our four ever-entertaining daughters.

Subscribe & Follow

Are you tired? I want to help you find rest in Jesus. Subscribe to Rest Notes, my monthly devotional e-mail, and get my free e-book, Start With Rest.

Get "Start With Rest" + Rest Notes

Let’s Meet Up on Instagram

My 13 year-old offered to teach our @onestory.bibl

My 13 year-old offered to teach our @onestory.bible lesson this morning.
.
Look at the joy on her face. The Holy Spirit knows no age limits.
.
#onestorybible
#bibleproject
#homeschoolbible

When my youngest turned 5, she asked for - and rec

When my youngest turned 5, she asked for - and received - a Blue Diamond pan for her birthday. And she was so excited to receive it that the Blue Diamond company sent her a complete set of Blue Diamond pans.

She has graciously allowed us to cook with her pans for the past year and a half (since “nothing sticks to Blue Diamond”), but yesterday, she reasserted ownership.

I sure hope “Diamond don’t break” holds up to this kind of heat.

*cue sound of pans crashing to the floor in the hallway*

A long time passed…and then things happened fast

A long time passed…and then things happened fast.

It wasn't just an evil king. It was 950 evil prophets who acted as pets to the king's evil wife.

And a drought that kept on going.

Obadiah (Servant-of-Yahweh) was in charge of King Ahab's palace, so he had a front row seat to all the evil. Yet he didn't just sit and watch it happen. When Queen Jezebel started killing the prophets of Yahweh, Obadiah risked his life to hide and feed a hundred of them.

But there was one highly sought after prophet that no one could find: Elijah. His very name proclaimed that Yahweh-is-God. Where was Elijah. And where was Yahweh?

So a long time passed for Obadiah and everyone else. Then, King Ahab sent him on a mission to search the country for water and grass. And things happened fast. By the end of the day, the long drought was over. The 950 evil prophets were dead. And it was the beginning of the end for Ahab and Jezebel.

Obadiah couldn't have seen it coming. No one could.

Yahweh intervened when no one expected it.

The Bible invites us to locate ourselves in God's story. So take heart, Servant-of-Yahweh. Whatever drought you are in, whatever evil is right in front of you. A long time may pass, but Yahweh is God. So when we least expect it, things can happen fast.

In the meantime, we keep going. We keep intervening. We keep serving Yahweh above all.
.
#biblegram #onestorythatleadstojesus #1kings18 #bibleproject #dailydevotional #dailydevotion #dailydevotions #themessage

I love how some books have the ability to forge bo

I love how some books have the ability to forge bonds. Saw someone with this book in her hands last week. Immediate connection as we visited over our favorite prayers.

I suspect her motivation to practice and her motiv

I suspect her motivation to practice and her motivation to bug her big sisters may, in fact, be one and the same.
.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out if I can - and should - parlay this into practice motivation for the lot of them.
.
It could get loud and pitchy. Please advise.

I listened to the Worst Story in the Bible long be

I listened to the Worst Story in the Bible long before the sun rose this morning. I knew it was coming and that the darkness was fitting.

It's the story of a very young woman - a sex slave - whose death mattered more than her nameless life. It starts with her failed escape and progresses to the brutal gang rape, murder, and mutilation of her body.

And then tens of thousands of men staked their lives on defending her murderers. Instead of acknowledging the evil, they protected the "worthless men" and aligned themselves with them.

Their defense of evil brought about a civil war.

By the time the war was over, over 25,000 defenders - and their entire families - were dead. In the entire tribe of Benjamin, only 600 men escaped. Throughout the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, they are referred to as the smallest tribe. This is why.

But the "winners" were blind to evil as well. In their supposed righteous indignation of one neglected young woman's death, they killed *all* of the young women of the tribe of Benjamin. When they realized they had committed near genocide and made a foolish oath that ensured Benjamin's demise, they were horrified.

So they provided wives for the survivors with a trail of more death, kidnappings, and forced marriages.

Lest you think I'm reading contemporary morality into ancient culture, the point of the book of Judges is "everyone did as they saw fit." It serves to illustrate the brokenness of humanity - even the brokenness of God's covenant partners.

Evil is easy to spot when someone else is doing it. It's much harder when we are doing as we see fit and find ourselves on the defense.

But to pray "forgive us our sins" is to confess that we, too, are collectively broken. Our hope lies not in defending evil but in aligning ourselves with the upside-down ways of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.

#onestorythatleadstoJesus
#bibleproject
#biblereading
#womenintheword
#dailydevotional
#dailydevotions
#dailyword

I’ve been listening to Judges this week. The wor

I’ve been listening to Judges this week. The worst story in the entire Bible comes tomorrow. But as the book gets progressively worse, I’ve been letting the brokenness of humanity sink in. Because that is what this book illustrates. As does the entirety of the Torah.

Even though children’s story Bibles mistakenly paint these broken humans as heroes.

And my OT prof saw fit to explain that Jephthah *really* hadn’t sacrificed his daughter like the Canaanites around him.

Don’t get me started on how sex-crazed Samson was and how it blinded him and how it still blinds people to this day.

But the thing that caught my attention this morning came as a post-script to a story of a Levite who became a priest at a personal shrine for an idol. The Levite goes nameless the entire story -and then his identify comes out. It’s Moses’ grandson. And then we find out that “he and his sons were priests for the tribe of the Danites till the day the land went into exile” (HB).

Yes, this was the family legacy of the man who told all of Israel, “Impress them on your children.” Impress what? The love of Yahweh and the wisdom of His commandments.

If that doesn’t speak to the sheer brokenness of humanity. To why Jesus needed to created a New Humanity. To why our very lives - and our children’s lives - are dependent upon the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

This Spirit teaches us a new way to live that Abraham, and Israel, and Moses could only dream of. In God’s story, Jesus is the only hero.

A cheeky artist is among us.

A cheeky artist is among us.

Braces off + doting grandparents = popcorn celebra

Braces off + doting grandparents = popcorn celebration 🎉

She showed such diligence and self-control with adhering to her orthodontist’s “no-no” list. I’m honestly a little sad for her that she had to share all this popcorn 😆

Follow on Instagram

My 13 year-old offered to teach our @onestory.bibl

My 13 year-old offered to teach our @onestory.bible lesson this morning.
.
Look at the joy on her face. The Holy Spirit knows no age limits.
.
#onestorybible
#bibleproject
#homeschoolbible

When my youngest turned 5, she asked for - and rec

When my youngest turned 5, she asked for - and received - a Blue Diamond pan for her birthday. And she was so excited to receive it that the Blue Diamond company sent her a complete set of Blue Diamond pans.

She has graciously allowed us to cook with her pans for the past year and a half (since “nothing sticks to Blue Diamond”), but yesterday, she reasserted ownership.

I sure hope “Diamond don’t break” holds up to this kind of heat.

*cue sound of pans crashing to the floor in the hallway*

A long time passed…and then things happened fast

A long time passed…and then things happened fast.

It wasn't just an evil king. It was 950 evil prophets who acted as pets to the king's evil wife.

And a drought that kept on going.

Obadiah (Servant-of-Yahweh) was in charge of King Ahab's palace, so he had a front row seat to all the evil. Yet he didn't just sit and watch it happen. When Queen Jezebel started killing the prophets of Yahweh, Obadiah risked his life to hide and feed a hundred of them.

But there was one highly sought after prophet that no one could find: Elijah. His very name proclaimed that Yahweh-is-God. Where was Elijah. And where was Yahweh?

So a long time passed for Obadiah and everyone else. Then, King Ahab sent him on a mission to search the country for water and grass. And things happened fast. By the end of the day, the long drought was over. The 950 evil prophets were dead. And it was the beginning of the end for Ahab and Jezebel.

Obadiah couldn't have seen it coming. No one could.

Yahweh intervened when no one expected it.

The Bible invites us to locate ourselves in God's story. So take heart, Servant-of-Yahweh. Whatever drought you are in, whatever evil is right in front of you. A long time may pass, but Yahweh is God. So when we least expect it, things can happen fast.

In the meantime, we keep going. We keep intervening. We keep serving Yahweh above all.
.
#biblegram #onestorythatleadstojesus #1kings18 #bibleproject #dailydevotional #dailydevotion #dailydevotions #themessage

I love how some books have the ability to forge bo

I love how some books have the ability to forge bonds. Saw someone with this book in her hands last week. Immediate connection as we visited over our favorite prayers.

I suspect her motivation to practice and her motiv

I suspect her motivation to practice and her motivation to bug her big sisters may, in fact, be one and the same.
.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out if I can - and should - parlay this into practice motivation for the lot of them.
.
It could get loud and pitchy. Please advise.

I listened to the Worst Story in the Bible long be

I listened to the Worst Story in the Bible long before the sun rose this morning. I knew it was coming and that the darkness was fitting.

It's the story of a very young woman - a sex slave - whose death mattered more than her nameless life. It starts with her failed escape and progresses to the brutal gang rape, murder, and mutilation of her body.

And then tens of thousands of men staked their lives on defending her murderers. Instead of acknowledging the evil, they protected the "worthless men" and aligned themselves with them.

Their defense of evil brought about a civil war.

By the time the war was over, over 25,000 defenders - and their entire families - were dead. In the entire tribe of Benjamin, only 600 men escaped. Throughout the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, they are referred to as the smallest tribe. This is why.

But the "winners" were blind to evil as well. In their supposed righteous indignation of one neglected young woman's death, they killed *all* of the young women of the tribe of Benjamin. When they realized they had committed near genocide and made a foolish oath that ensured Benjamin's demise, they were horrified.

So they provided wives for the survivors with a trail of more death, kidnappings, and forced marriages.

Lest you think I'm reading contemporary morality into ancient culture, the point of the book of Judges is "everyone did as they saw fit." It serves to illustrate the brokenness of humanity - even the brokenness of God's covenant partners.

Evil is easy to spot when someone else is doing it. It's much harder when we are doing as we see fit and find ourselves on the defense.

But to pray "forgive us our sins" is to confess that we, too, are collectively broken. Our hope lies not in defending evil but in aligning ourselves with the upside-down ways of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.

#onestorythatleadstoJesus
#bibleproject
#biblereading
#womenintheword
#dailydevotional
#dailydevotions
#dailyword

I’ve been listening to Judges this week. The wor

I’ve been listening to Judges this week. The worst story in the entire Bible comes tomorrow. But as the book gets progressively worse, I’ve been letting the brokenness of humanity sink in. Because that is what this book illustrates. As does the entirety of the Torah.

Even though children’s story Bibles mistakenly paint these broken humans as heroes.

And my OT prof saw fit to explain that Jephthah *really* hadn’t sacrificed his daughter like the Canaanites around him.

Don’t get me started on how sex-crazed Samson was and how it blinded him and how it still blinds people to this day.

But the thing that caught my attention this morning came as a post-script to a story of a Levite who became a priest at a personal shrine for an idol. The Levite goes nameless the entire story -and then his identify comes out. It’s Moses’ grandson. And then we find out that “he and his sons were priests for the tribe of the Danites till the day the land went into exile” (HB).

Yes, this was the family legacy of the man who told all of Israel, “Impress them on your children.” Impress what? The love of Yahweh and the wisdom of His commandments.

If that doesn’t speak to the sheer brokenness of humanity. To why Jesus needed to created a New Humanity. To why our very lives - and our children’s lives - are dependent upon the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

This Spirit teaches us a new way to live that Abraham, and Israel, and Moses could only dream of. In God’s story, Jesus is the only hero.

A cheeky artist is among us.

A cheeky artist is among us.

Twitter Instagram

© 2020 - Amber Mann Riggs. All Rights Reserved.