Daily Devotions · March 15
Reading for March 15
Read the whole Bible in a year, a few chapters a day.
Deuteronomy 28–29 · Galatians 6
Deuteronomy 28–29 · Galatians 6, Berean Standard Bible
Deuteronomy 28
“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God: 3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. 4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. 5 Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. 6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. 7 The LORD will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will march out against you in one direction but flee from you in seven. 8 The LORD will decree a blessing on your barns and on everything to which you put your hand; the LORD your God will bless you in the land He is giving you. 9 The LORD will establish you as His holy people, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. 10 Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will stand in awe of you. 11 The LORD will make you prosper abundantly—in the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your land—in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The LORD will open the heavens, His abundant storehouse, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none. 13 The LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you will only move upward and never downward, if you hear and carefully follow the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am giving you today. 14 Do not turn aside to the right or to the left from any of the words I command you today, and do not go after other gods to serve them. 15 If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: 16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. 17 Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed. 18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, as well as the produce of your land, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. 20 The LORD will send curses upon you, confusion and reproof in all to which you put your hand, until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the wickedness you have committed in forsaking Him. 21 The LORD will make the plague cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land that you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your land into dust and powder; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed. 25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them in one direction but flee from them in seven. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your corpses will be food for all the birds of the air and beasts of the earth, with no one to scare them away. 27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and scabs and itch from which you cannot be cured. 28 The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind, 29 and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you. 30 You will be pledged in marriage to a woman, but another man will violate her. You will build a house but will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but will not enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away and not returned to you. Your flock will be given to your enemies, and no one will save you. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, while your eyes grow weary looking for them day after day, with no power in your hand. 33 A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed. 34 You will be driven mad by the sights you see. 35 The LORD will afflict you with painful, incurable boils on your knees and thighs, from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. 36 The LORD will bring you and the king you appoint to a nation neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the LORD will drive you. 38 You will sow much seed in the field but harvest little, because the locusts will consume it. 39 You will plant and cultivate vineyards, but will neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but will never anoint yourself with oil, because the olives will drop off. 41 You will father sons and daughters, but they will not remain yours, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of locusts will consume all your trees and the produce of your land. 43 The foreigner living among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink down lower and lower. 44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail. 45 All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, since you did not obey the LORD your God and keep the commandments and statutes He gave you. 46 These curses will be a sign and a wonder upon you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in all your abundance, 48 you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation from afar, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down upon you like an eagle—a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a ruthless nation with no respect for the old and no pity for the young. 51 They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish. 52 They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you. 53 Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you. 54 The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who have survived, 55 refusing to share with any of them the flesh of his children he will eat because he has nothing left in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within all your gates. 56 The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter 57 the afterbirth that comes from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within your gates. 58 If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God— 59 He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses. 60 He will afflict you again with all the diseases you dreaded in Egypt, and they will cling to you. 61 The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left few in number, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. 63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. 64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul. 66 So your life will hang in doubt before you, and you will be afraid night and day, never certain of survival. 67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see. 68 The LORD will return you to Egypt in ships by a route that I said you should never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
Deuteronomy 29
These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant He had made with them at Horeb. 2 Moses summoned all Israel and proclaimed to them, “You have seen with your own eyes everything the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land. 3 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, and those miraculous signs and wonders. 4 Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear. 5 For forty years I led you in the wilderness, yet your clothes and sandals did not wear out. 6 You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am the LORD your God. 7 When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out against us in battle, but we defeated them. 8 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. 9 So keep and follow the words of this covenant, that you may prosper in all you do. 10 All of you are standing today before the LORD your God—you leaders of tribes, elders, officials, and all the men of Israel, 11 your children and wives, and the foreigners in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water— 12 so that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, which He is making with you today, and into His oath, 13 and so that He may establish you today as His people, and He may be your God as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 14 I am making this covenant and this oath not only with you, 15 but also with those who are standing here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God, as well as with those who are not here today. 16 For you yourselves know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we passed through the nations on the way here. 17 You saw the abominations and idols among them made of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. 20 The LORD will never be willing to forgive him. Instead, His anger and jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse written in this book will fall upon him. The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven 21 and single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. 22 Then the generation to come—your sons who follow you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land—will see the plagues of the land and the sicknesses the LORD has inflicted on it. 23 All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger. 24 So all the nations will ask, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’ 25 And the people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. 26 They went and served other gods, and they worshiped gods they had not known—gods that the LORD had not given to them. 27 Therefore the anger of the LORD burned against this land, and He brought upon it every curse written in this book. 28 The LORD uprooted them from their land in His anger, rage, and great wrath, and He cast them into another land, where they are today.’ 29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.
Galatians 6
Brothers, if someone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 Each one should test his own work. Then he will have reason to boast in himself alone, and not in someone else. 5 For each one should carry his own load. 6 Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word must share in all good things with his instructor. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. 8 The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to the family of faith. 11 See what large letters I am using to write to you with my own hand! 12 Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. They only do this to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ. 13 For the circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. 14 But as for me, may I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is a new creation. 16 Peace and mercy to all who walk by this rule, even to the Israel of God. 17 From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
Scripture from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), dedicated to the public domain.
How to SOAP
Grab a journal and a pen. Read the chapters above and watch for the verse that stops you. Then take it through four steps.
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Scripture
Write out the verse that stood out to you.
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Observation
What is it saying? Who is speaking, and to whom?
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Application
What does it mean for your life today? Be specific.
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Prayer
Talk to God about it. Ask Him to help you live it.
Your SOAP journal
Write your SOAP here. Tap any verse in the reading to add it to Scripture. Your journal saves on this device only, so no one else sees it.
Added to your journal. Go to journal
Why daily devotions?
Devotions are time set aside each day to read God's Word and let Him speak. The point isn't checking off chapters. It's meeting with Him.
Ten or fifteen minutes is enough to start. Pick a time and a place and keep the appointment. Mornings work well for a lot of us, before the phone and the day start talking.
Missed a day? Don't start over. Read today's chapters and keep going.