2 Minutes Daily for November 2024

Greetings-This page will be a very short, approximately two minute daily devotional, of various topics. Graphics,  scripture verses, poems, quotes, encouragement, as well as subjects to bring conviction and reflection. Links to music, and more material on the daily subject,
​if I come across something that fits the topic. 

Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Rom 13:10
​Love Worketh No ill to His Neighbor

Love would seek to do him good; of course it would prevent all dishonesty and crime toward others. It would prompt to justice, truth, and benevolence. If this law were engraved on every man’s heart, and practiced in his life, what a change would it immediately produce in society! If all people would at once “abandon” what is suited to “work ill” to others, what an influence would it have on the business and commercial affairs of people. How many plans of fraud and dishonesty would it at once arrest. How many schemes would it crush. It would silence the voice of the slanderer; it would stay the plans of the seducer and the adulterer; it would put an end to cheating, and fraud, and all schemes of dishonest gain. The gambler desires the property of his neighbor without any compensation; and thus works “ill” to him. The dealer in “lotteries” desires property for which he has never toiled, and which must be obtained at the expense and loss of others. And there are many “employments” all whose tendency is to work “ill” to a neighbor. This is pre-eminently true of the traffic in “ardent spirits.” It cannot do him good, and the almost uniform result is to deprive him of his property, health, reputation, peace, and domestic comfort. He that sells his neighbor liquid fire, knowing what must be the result of it, is not pursuing a business which works no ill to him; and love to that neighbor would prompt him to abandon the traffic; see Hab_2:15, “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and makest him drink also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness.” (Albert Barnes)

“love worketh no ill to his neighbor.” This is a broad truth. One’s neighbor is primarily the one near—the near dweller, any one with whom we have to do. Christ has for ever answered the question, “Who is my neighbor?”
The spirit of this statement strikes a blow at all kinds of business which injure one’s neighbor. It meets the servant and the master, the maid and her mistress; it enters the counting-house and the workshop; it confronts the lawyer and his client, the physician and his patient, the pastor and his people. It enters the social circle and hushes the voice of the slanderer. It stands like an incarnate conscience across the track of the vile wretch who would rob youth of purity and glory. It lifts a voice against the man who destroys his neighbor with strong drink. It thunders its condemnation in the ear of the gambler. It lifts before us the great white throne, and enables us to anticipate its final decisions.
This law of love also opposes all forms of bad example. The man who desecrates God’s day, disbelieves God’s book, and disobeys God’s Son, is an enemy to his neighbor. No man has a right to set a bad example before men. The man who misleads the young may blight the lives of coming generations.
This law reaches those who are only negatively good. No man has a right to remain in that position. Your good name, while you remain in that attitude to God, makes your influence the greater and your condemnation the heavier. Have you accepted Christ as your personal Savior? For the sake of your neighbor come into the ranks of believers. Confess Christ; march in line with His people. Thus will you work no ill to your neighbor. (R. S. Macarthur, D.D.)

11/28/2024
​Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting;
​and his truth endureth to all generations. Psa 100:4-5
UNIVERSAL PRAISE

​If we could enter into the spirit of this psalm, every day would be a Thanksgiving Day. The psalmist invites all the earth to enter into the courts of God’s house with joyful songs. In many of the Psalms the minor chords overpower the major ones, and weeping prevails over rejoicing. But this psalm is full of unclouded sunlight. The reason for this gladness is suggested in the words: We are His: His by creation, by providence, and by grace; and His also by the glad consecration of our hearts to His service. We belong to Him by right; it is for us to see to it that we are also His by choice. And His ownership involves His shepherd-care. We are His flock; it is for Him to lead us into green pastures and beside still waters.
To the psalmist’s eye the nations of the world pour into the Temple through the wide-open portals. “Hark!” he cries. “Listen to the burst of thanksgivings which roll forth from the mighty throng!” The great attraction is the goodness of Jehovah, and the everlastingness of His love and troth. This psalm reveals the true genius of religion. We cannot be satisfied till all men share our knowledge of the love of God. There is nothing which will better promote the true happiness and gladness of mankind. (F.B. Meyer)

Blessed Be The Lord God Almighty
https://youtu.be/aFtB2-I3PaM?si=LUYICHV0lhFEbSkO

11/27/2024
​​So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever: we will shew forth thy praise to all generations. Psa 79:13
“HELP US, O GOD OF OUR SALVATION”

The Lord's Prayer (Our Father)
https://youtu.be/kMlpVXqeEes?si=qP4ihsAvDy8m64Px

​“So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever; we will shew forth thy praise to all generations.” The gratitude of the church is lasting as well as deep. On her tablets are memorials of great deliverances, and, as long as she shall exist, her sons will rehearse them with delight. We have a history which will survive all other records, and it is bright in every line with the glory of the Lord. From the direst calamities God's glory springs, and the dark days of his people become the prelude to unusual displays of the Lord's love and power.
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon)
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So we thy people, and sheep of thy pasture,.... Who were the people of God, not by creation and providence only, as all men are, being his creatures, and provided for by him; but by special choice, and by covenant grace: and "the sheep of his pasture"; whom he feeds as a shepherd does his flock, provides good pasture for them, and leads them into it:
will give thee thanks for ever, we will show forth thy praise to all generations: the above petitions being answered and fulfilled; the work of praise is acceptable unto God, what he is well pleased with, being glorified thereby; and is what becomes his people to do, and which they are formed for, and that for evermore, as long as they live in this world, and to all eternity in another; and who will and do take care that the wonders of divine grace and providence be transmitted and told to their posterity in succeeding ages, that so thanks may be given him, and his praise shown forth in one generation after another. (John Gill)

11/26/2024
Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that hath an high look
and a proud heart will not I suffer. Psa 101:5
​​And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. James 3:6
​A World of Iniquity

“He who speaks with the triple tongue against his neighbor.” That is, the tongue by which he slays three persons, viz.,
1. The man whom he slanders;
2. Him to whom he communicates the slander; and,
3. Himself, the slanderer.
Every slanderer has his triple tongue, and by every slander inflicts those three deadly wounds. Such a person deserves to be cut off. On this subject St. Jerome speaks nearly in the same way: Ille qui detrahit, et se, et illum qui audit, demergit; “He who slanders ruins both himself and him who hears him;” he might have added, and him who is slandered, for this is often the case; the innocent are ruined by detraction. (Adam Clarke)
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So is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body - It stains or pollutes the whole body. It occupies a position and relation so important in respect to every part of our moral frame, that there is no portion which is not affected by it. Of the truth of this, no one can have any doubt. There is nothing else pertaining to us as moral and intellectual beings, which exerts such an influence over ourselves as the tongue. A man of pure conversation is understood and felt to be pure in every respect; but who has any confidence in the virtue of the blasphemer, or the man of obscene lips, or the calumniator and slanderer? We always regard such a man as corrupt to the core. (Albert Barnes)
​​1Co 5:9  I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: 
1Co 5:10  Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. ​

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1Co 5:11  But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. 

11/25/2025
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Pa 103:2
THE LORD’S ABUNDANT MERCIES

​Faithful one - Robin Mark--
https://youtu.be/Uxviwvjyg1w?si=3F046uNfYXJbF0_l

​David’s name heads this peerless psalm, which expresses, as none other, the soul of the universal Church and of the individual Christian. Notice the present tenses throughout these verses. God’s tender dealings run parallel with our lives. He is never weary nor exhausted. When once He begins, He keeps on. Let us enumerate the blessings that He gives in such unbroken abundance, and as the fingers tell the successive beads, praise Him: forgiveness; healing, Exo_15:26; redemption from perils and accidents, seen and unseen; the crowns that He places on our unworthy heads; entire satisfaction, Psa_36:8; Isa_58:11; perennial youth.
​Isa 58:11  And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
It was a proverb among Orientals that the eagle literally grows younger. This is the psalmist’s reference in Psa_103:5.
Psa 103:5  Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.
​For us it means that the life which is fed from the eternal springs is eagle-like in royal strength and sunward flight. Ways or plans are revealed to the inner circle; the ordinary congregation knows only acts. The Father does chide, but only till we put sin away. Conceive the infinite spaces of East and West-such is the distance of forgiven sin from us. It is impossible that the blame or curse of it should ever return upon the redeemed soul. (F.B. Meyer)

11/24/2024
​And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. Eph 5:11
Influence of Bad Company

What you learn from bad habits and in bad society you will never forget, and it will be a lasting pang to you. I tell you in all sincerity, not as in the excitement of speech, but as I would confess and have confessed before God, I would give my right hand tonight if I could forget that which I have learned in evil society—if I could tear from my remembrance the scenes which I have witnessed, the transactions which have taken place before me. You cannot, I believe, take away the effect of a single impure thought that has lodged and harbored in the heart. You may pray against it, and by God’s grace you may conquer it, but it will, through life, cause you bitterness and anguish. (J. B. Gough.)

11/23/2024
​And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.  And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? Mat 14:28-31
His Strength is Perfect

His Strength is Perfect-Steven Curtis Chapman
https://youtu.be/QGC9KT918Kk?si=g9Yl3GnG3qmunJL_

​​In these verses-we get a picture of Jesus revealing more than His power to give Peter the ability to walk on water. We get to see what Jesus saw, but didn't speak of out loud. Peter's child like faith and desire to be with Jesus-but also the condition of his character. He was rash, headlong, impetuous. This was an opportunity to allow Peter to see himself, as Jesus saw him. Peter's lessons in this were important, and no doubt followed him the rest of his life. A continual learning of total dependence on Christ and Christ alone for any power to do the works of God, for God alone. 
Other lessons for us in this are numerous. Jesus always comes to us in our storms. He's watching us always, and will be there when the occasion warrants His assistance. He hears and answers the call of His people, in times of need and distress. I've found this to be true over and over again.
God allows dreaded people, and circumstances in our lives to teach us things about faith, commitment, and surrender, that we need to learn. But the learning doesn't come easy. Jesus is refining us, opening ourselves up, and revealing to us, what the condition of our souls are, and what He's trying to accomplish in us, and wanting us to become-to prepare us to be Kingdom people, who will live and reign with Him one day. These are eternal lessons learned here-for eternity there with Him.
​Lorna Couillard

November 22, 2024
Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD,
​thou preservest man and beast. Psa 36:5-6
His Mercies New Every Morning

"Day and night proclaim the mercy and compassion of God. Who could exist throughout the day, if there were not a continual superintending Providence? Who could be preserved in the night, if the Watchman of Israel ever slumbered or slept?" (John Wesley)
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​"This book is remarkable for its variety of touching images. The prophet seems to stand amid the ruins of city and temple, burned with fire, strewn with the ashes of his people. This paragraph, however, is in marked contrast to the rest of the book, containing, as it does, a gleam of hope. If only we would turn from our griefs to the mercies, compassions, and goodness of the Lord, there would be light in our darkest dungeons. It is good to hope and quietly wait; to take Christ’s yoke and learn of Him; to keep silent in submission and faith. God cannot cast off. He does not willingly afflict; He has no sympathy or complicity with the turning of a man aside or subverting his cause. Let us be at least sure of this, that the Lord will neither cast out nor cast off. He may hide His face for a moment, but with everlasting kindness He will have mercy, according to the multitude of His compassions."
(F.B. Meyer)

I Saw The Lord-Dallas Holm
https://youtu.be/EmxcGZZR8CE?si=8psDMzMk46TpvzKe