7-Step Quiet Time Devotional

  7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to help you know Him through today’s Word and to reveal anything you are trusting more than Him. 2. 📅 July 25, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: God rules over every human power and makes Himself known by exposing the things we trust in more than Him. 3. ✝️ Ezekiel 30:10-26 The LORD will use Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to end Egypt’s wealth, devastate its cities, destroy its idols and rulers, and scatter its people among the nations. God will break both arms of Pharaoh so that his sword falls, while strengthening Babylon’s king and placing His own sword in his hand. Through this judgment, the Egyptians will know that He is the LORD. 4. 📖 Key Verse “Then they will know that I am the LORD” (vv. 19, 26). 5. 📝 Reflection It has now been a full year since I came to Montreal. During that time, I made several plans to visit cities outside Montreal, but circumstances did not allow them to work out. So far, t...

  7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to show you where you may be trusting in your own strength, achievements, resources, or relationships more than you trust in Him. 2. 📅 July 23, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: No human power lasts forever, but God remains sovereign over every family, workplace, and nation. 3. ✝️ Ezekiel 29:1-16 The LORD opposes Pharaoh, who proudly claims the Nile as his creation. God will make Egypt desolate for forty years and scatter its people because Egypt proved a broken reed to Israel. Afterward, God will gather the Egyptians and return them to Pathros, but they will remain a lowly kingdom and never rule other nations. Israel will no longer rely on Egypt, and all will know that he is the Lord GOD. 4. 📖 Key Verse And it shall never again be the reliance of the house of Israel, recalling their iniquity, when they turn to them for aid. Then they will know that I am the Lord GOD (v. 16). 5. 📝 Reflection Ancien...

  7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to reveal whether you are using his gifts for his glory or allowing them to become sources of pride. 2. 📅 July 21, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: God’s good gifts are corrupted when pride rules our hearts, but his grace restores us to use them for his glory. 3. ✝️ Ezekiel 28:1-19 The ruler of Tyre grew wealthy through wisdom and trade, but his riches made him proud, and he claimed to be a god. The Lord would bring ruthless foreigners to expose him as a mere man and destroy his splendor. Though the king had been created with wisdom, beauty, and privilege, violence and dishonest trade corrupted him. God cast him down, consumed him by fire, and brought him to a dreadful end. 4. 📖 Key Verse Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you (v. 17). 5. 📝 Reflecti...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to help you recognize that his presence is more precious than success, wealth, comfort, or recognition. 2. 📅 July 19, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: A truly blessed life is not defined by how much we possess, but by whether our lives reveal God’s glory and remain close to him. 3. ✝️ Ezekiel 27:1-25 The LORD told Ezekiel to lament over Tyre. At the gateway to the sea, Tyre traded with many coastlands and boasted of perfect beauty. Like a splendid ship, it was built of the finest materials and served by skilled foreigners. Nations exchanged metals, horses, ivory, fabrics, food, spices, jewels, and gold for its wares. Tyre became rich, filled, and heavily laden in the heart of the seas. 4. 📖 Key Verse So you were filled and heavily laden in the heart of the seas (v. 25b). 5. 📝 Reflection Some time ago, I came across a deeply moving scene in a YouTube video reviewing a television drama. A daughter had alw...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to help you trust his steadfast love and faithfulness, even when you cannot see what he is doing. 2. 📅 July 11, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: True faith rests not on what we can see or control, but on the steadfast love and faithfulness of the living God. 3. ✝️ Psalm 115:1-8 The psalmist asks that glory be given not to God’s people but to the LORD’s name because of his steadfast love and faithfulness. Though the nations question where their God is, he reigns in heaven and does whatever he pleases. Their handmade idols cannot speak, see, hear, smell, feel, or walk. Those who make and trust in them become like them. 4. 📖 Key Verse Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” (v. 2) 5. 📝 Reflection While evangelizing, I once met a man who said to me, “If you show me God, I will believe.” Then, as though he deeply pitied me for believing in a God I could not see, he took from his inner pocket an im...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to help you see His daily grace with fresh eyes, so that His miracles do not become ordinary to your heart. 2. 📅 July 10, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: God’s presence is never ordinary, and His daily grace should lead us to renewed awe, remembrance, and obedience. 3. ✝️ Psalm 114:1-8 When Israel came out of Egypt, God made Judah his sanctuary and Israel his dominion. At his presence, the sea fled, the Jordan turned back, and mountains and hills skipped. The God of Jacob makes the earth tremble and turns rock and flint into flowing water. 4. 📖 Key Verse Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob (v. 7). 5. 📝 Reflection If we were to experience an astonishing miracle that we had never expected and could not possibly understand, how would we respond? As the younger generation might say today, wouldn’t we be “left speechless”? That is right. When people encounter s...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to help you receive His correction not as rejection, but as the loving discipline of a Father who refuses to give up on His children. 2. 📅 May 18, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: God’s loving correction is not meant to shame us, but to bring us back to the power of the gospel. 3. ✝️ 1 Corinthians 4:9-21 Paul contrasts the apostles’ suffering and humiliation for Christ with the Corinthians’ prideful sense of wisdom, strength, and honor. Yet he writes not to shame them, but to admonish them as beloved children, urging them to imitate his life in Christ because he became their spiritual father through the gospel. Since the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power, Paul calls them to turn from arrogance and live by the true power of the gospel. 4. 📖 Key Verse I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children (v. 14). 5. 📝 Reflection It is easy to think t...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to show you whether you are building His church with humility—or adding to division through pride, jealousy, or criticism. 2. 📅 May 15, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: The church belongs to God, and only God gives true growth. 3. ✝️ 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 Paul rebukes the Corinthian believers for their jealousy and strife, showing that they are still people of the flesh and infants in Christ. Paul and Apollos are only servants through whom the Corinthians believed, while God alone is the One who gives the growth. Jesus Christ is the only foundation of the church, and each person’s work built upon Him will be tested and revealed on the Day. 4. 📖 Key Verse For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building (v. 9). 5. 📝 Reflection It is not surprising that the division in the Corinthian church (cf. v. 3) is still repeated in churches today, even after two thousand years. Though times and cu...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to teach you to depend on Him and delight in Him today. 2. 📅 April 25, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: Our lives are sustained by God, so our hearts should respond with meditation, joy, and praise. 3. ✝️ Psalm 104:24-35 The LORD has made all creation in wisdom, and every creature depends on Him for food, life, and sustaining care. When God sends forth His Spirit, life is created and the earth is renewed, but when He hides His face or takes away breath, creatures return to dust. In response to this glorious Creator, the psalmist resolves to praise the LORD all his life, delighting in Him and offering meditation that is pleasing to Him. 4. 📖 Key Verse May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD (v. 34). 5. 📝 Reflection A long time ago, when I was working in the corporate world, I served in a department that provided financial consulting for clients. Our role was to offer guidelines on how to e...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to show you where you’re holding on to control—and to teach you what it looks like to build your life on Jesus as the cornerstone. 2. 📅 March 10, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: Jesus is not an “add-on”—He is the cornerstone that must shape everything. 3. ✝️ Matthew 21:33-46 Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who lovingly builds a vineyard and leases it to tenants. When harvest time comes, the owner sends servants to receive fruit, but the tenants beat, kill, and stone them—then even murder the owner’s son to steal the inheritance. Jesus declares that the owner will judge those wicked tenants and give the vineyard to others who will produce fruit. He then quotes Scripture, revealing that the rejected stone has become the cornerstone—God’s surprising, decisive work. The religious leaders realize the parable is about them, but they fear the crowds and do not arrest Him. 4. 📖 Key Verse “ ‘Th...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to open your ears to hear what He has been revealing “since the foundation of the world.” 2. 📅 February 14, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: God’s kingdom often starts small, grows quietly, and ends in perfect justice and radiant hope. 3. ✝️ Matthew 13:31-43 Jesus teaches that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed—small at first yet growing into a tree—and like leaven that permeates all the dough. He explains to his disciples that in the parable of the weeds, the Son of Man sows good seed (the sons of the kingdom) while the devil sows weeds (the sons of the evil one), and the harvest is the end of the age with angels as reapers. At the end, law-breakers are removed for judgment, and the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. 4. 📖 Key Verse “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” (v. 35b) 5. 📝 Refle...

7-Step QT Notes 1. 🙏 Quiet Time Pause. Take a deep breath. Ask God to make your heart good soil —open, rooted, and ready to grow. 2. 📅 February 13, 2026 Today’s passage reminds us: God is not ignoring evil—He is growing His people, and His justice will come at the right time. 3. ✝️ Matthew 13:18-30 Jesus explains the parable of the sower: the evil one snatches the word from those who do not understand, shallow hearers fall away under tribulation, and worldly cares and riches choke the word so it bears no fruit. But the one who hears and understands bears fruit in varying measure—hundredfold, sixty, or thirty. He then teaches that the kingdom is like good seed in a field where an enemy sows weeds; both grow until the harvest, when the weeds are burned and the wheat is gathered into the master’s barn. 4. 📖 Key Verse ”Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, b...