Featured Devotionals

Check out all of YMI’s content pieces tagged under Featured Devotionals. We hope you’d benefit from the written and visual content we have under this topic: Featured Devotionals.

ODJ: turning to friends

Redwood trees can grow to incredible heights—some reaching more than 375 feet! Yet most redwoods have a shallow root system that typically burrows less than 10 feet into the ground.
So how do the massive redwoods stay upright? What keeps them from crashing to the ground, especially when strong winds blow? Their secret is that they depend on each other. Although redwood roots aren

ODJ: no regrets

Take a guess: what do you think are the top five regrets of the dying? A palliative nurse listed her findings in a book. Here they are: 1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life

ODJ: father of lies

Paulo Coelho’s book The Pilgrimage recounts the story of Coelho walking the famous Camino pilgrimage route between France and Spain with a guide. I bought the book, but I wasn’t prepared for what I read.
“There are basically two spiritual forces on our side,” the guide tells Paulo early in his journey, “an angel and a devil. The angel always protects us and is a divine gift

ODJ: paying pain forward

Pay it forward entails the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it by doing something kind for another person—not the original benefactor. In our fallen world, however, we sometimes ‘pay forward’ pain by hurting someone in response to offences committed against us—perhaps in the past—by a different person.
But Jonathan in 1 Samuel shows us that a person can choose to treat p

ODJ: bridging the chasm

When a supervolcano erupts—and thankfully that’s extremely rare—it leaves behind a massive basin known as a caldera. But they are so huge we tend to overlook them completely. As geophysicist Bob Smith described the 45 mile wide Yellowstone caldera in America, “The size is so immense that people don’t appreciate it.”
Simply put, from our earth-bound perspective we can’t

ODJ: unfathomable—yet intimate

I fell at work recently and hurt my leg. Since I make my living largely in the outdoors, I need to be healthy in order to provide for my family. So when the setback occurred, I realised the serious potential financial consequences we were facing.
Later, feeling sorry for myself, I limped painfully out into the woodland by my home—taking my dog for a walk. Suddenly, I took in a whole host of

ODJ: a shameful example

Although Dubai has some of the most lenient social codes in the Persian Gulf, authorities occasionally make examples of those who blatantly flout the law. During our 2 year stay in the metropolis, there were reports of Westerners who’d been sentenced to jail for kissing in public or exchanging steamy text messages.
King Xerxes, who ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to the upper

ODJ: not idle words

With an estimated 6 billion copies sold, the Bible is the world’s best-selling book. The average American owns three or four copies of the Bible. In a 2012 survey, however, 18 percent of churchgoers revealed that they rarely or never read the Bible, and 22 percent said they did so just once a month. Only 19 percent said they read the Bible every day. Lamar Vest, President of the American Bible S

ODJ: why?

Lord, he was so young . . . married less than a year. My heart broke for the wife and extended family of the young man—grieving his loss as fellow mourners met with them. A familiar question came to mind: God, why him and not me? I had the same disease, and went through the same bone marrow transplant treatment. Why did he die and why is my cancer in remission? In that moment, God