January is Faith: Women's Daily Devotional, #1

By Sparrow Brooks

A new Bible verse and devotional about faith through God's love for each day of the month!

Start your day off right each morning by studying God's word. Grab your Bible and this new devotional, get cozy, and take a few quiet moments with the Lord to get your day off on the right foot. Or end your day snuggled in bed while you let God speak to your heart.

Each day of the month begins with a Bible verse about how faith in God can bring peace to our lives, followed by a personal story from author Sparrow Brooks and how she interprets this verse in her real life. She ends each devotion with questions to ask yourself and a focus for the day.

January is the perfect time of the year to focus on having faith. Use this time to let God speak to your heart about how having faith in Him can renew your spirit on a daily basis. Let God's Word speak to your heart and grow your faith beyond measure!

With 31 days dedicated to experiencing faith in God, this devotional is perfect any time of the year!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sparrow Brooks
• Release date: Nov 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215329849

Book preview

JANUARY 1

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’

2 Timothy 4:7

It’s New Year’s Day--a day for new beginnings, which means old things come to an end. It’s easy to get wrapped up in what has just ended, to dwell on the difficulties we’ve overcome, the race we’ve just finished, the fight we just came out of, possibly bloodied and bruised. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, but we also have a lot to look forward to.

I’ve never been in a fight before, but I did have to finish a race once--a real one, not the proverbial kind. When I was in eighth grade, we were required to run a mile in our physical education class. It wasn’t a race against one another. Rather, it was a race against the clock. We had to finish the mile in less than twelve minutes, or else we’d have to keep running it again and again until we were able to finish it. That might not sound like much of a time to beat, but my problem was (besides the fact that I hated to run and wasn’t very good at it!) the day we were running the race I’d just returned to school after missing two weeks. I’d been at home with the chicken pox.

I will never forget running that race. A mile was the equivalent of four laps around our track. My PE coach, a wonderful woman, one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, came over to me before we even started and asked, Are you going to be able to do this? I remember telling her I would do my best. She patted me on the back and said that was all she could ask for.

The first lap was awful. The second lap was worse. The third one, I was pretty sure I was going to die, and by the fourth, I was no longer aware of anything but the burning in my lungs. I finished the mile, ran the whole way, and ended with a time of 10:50. I wasn’t even the last to finish. Still, that was a pretty pathetic time, and I’m pretty sure I could’ve done better if I hadn’t been lying in bed for two weeks.

The important part was… I finished. I dragged myself across the finish line, not bruised and battered on the outside but certainly limping and hurting on the inside. My coach was there to commend me, as were several of my friends. Finishing that race was one of the most physically difficult things I’ve ever done, but I did it.

That’s sort of how I feel about this last year. Maybe you do, too. There’s not any guarantee that a change in the calendar year is going to make things any better politically, socially, or in any other area. But it does give you and I a chance to reset, to put the past behind us, to move on.

Let’s do that right now. Let’s declare the race over, ourselves the victor, and claim triumph over diversity for the upcoming year. Let’s put our faith in God right now and thank Him for the blessings He is about to pour out on us and the miracles He will work in our lives.

Won’t you pray with me right now? I thank God for blessing me with another year and for helping me overcome the adversity of the race I’ve just finished. I ask Him to guide me and help me to be a light to others in the upcoming year, and I ask Him to restore my faith on a daily basis so that I am a constant reminder to myself and others that through our faith, He will do great things.

dove

JANUARY 2

And Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’

Mark 11:22-24

Have you ever had a chance to stand and stare at the mountains? Where I live, we don’t even have too many hills, but I have been to the mountains before, and I love to sit and reflect on their beauty, whether they are covered with gorgeous trees or large slabs of rock protruding from the desert. I especially remember seeing the fog around the mountain tops in Kerry, Ireland, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I don’t believe you can see the majestic mountains and have any doubt that our God is a wondrous Creator.

Mountains are huge. They’re hard to get over! They don’t move easily either. Sometimes, we have mountains in our lives, and they aren’t the kind we sit and stare at with a smile on our face. No, the mountains that protrude into our lives are the kind that make