Faith Builders Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 17 - May 23 2026

May17

Messed Up, Don’t Hide It

Proverbs 28:13
13	He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. NKJV Whatever people do in the darkness is going to come to the light. You can’t hide, especially from God. However, for people, even if you cover up what you did or are doing for a while, eventually you will get found out. When I was young and changed jobs from my Japanese supplier to the American telephone company, my boss made three promises regarding my employment there. I made my decision to change jobs based on those commitments. I was there to replace an American who was going back to the US. It was so exciting for me as it would be a chance to work with Americans in the US while I was in Japan. The person I replaced had arranged everything and I was ready to start on a certain date. The day I arrived I remember walking in and that new boss asking me, “Why are you here?” Talk about humiliating! I must have gone red with embarrassment and wondering what was going on. The person I was replacing was not surprised, as she had worked with him for some time. Of course, my job was fine and I began working at this new company. In the first year, this boss successfully reneged on every promise he made to me. I am from a family of promise keepers so I was very shocked that someone could so easily lie and not feel guilty about it. He was at the company for two more years and I was praying that the bosses in the US would figure out how inept and dishonest this boss was. But eventually his time came, the boss in Hong Kong hired a person to put over him. It was a good step but by that time, I had had my fill of large companies and much of the political games that went on within them. I was out of there doing another project at another firm. The former boss eventually was made redundant (replaced by someone else). His lying and cheating caught up to him and he left the company in disgrace. He could have changed the whole outcome of his situation if he would have just been honest instead of trying to protect himself and his “territory” at the company all the time. If he would have only kept the commitments he had made to both his employees and the local product distributors, then they would have had respect for him. There are many religions in the world offering “tickets to heaven”. However, being a believer is not a ticket to heaven. It is an opportunity to have a personal relationship with the Creator of the world. IF you want to compare us followers of The Way of Jesus to religion, you will find one huge difference between ourselves and ‘religion’. We believers have total and complete forgiveness for our screw-ups and mistakes that no one else has. That is marvelous! Proverbs 28:13 says that if you mess up and make a mistake, that you should confess it. If you wrong someone, especially a fellow believer, then you should make every effort to fix that, apologize, and don’t do it again. For unbelievers, I have met so many people who don’t know God who had seen someone hypocritical who says they’re a Christian and be totally turned off to Yahweh because of these people. It is really sad. If we deal with these unbelievers in love and honesty, that will take away the excuses that some have for denying God or not making an effort to know him. However, sometimes people are just blinded by the enemy and don’t want to change their ways. The awesome thing about the Almighty God is that we can get 100% forgiveness for whatever foul thing we have done. The key is to turn from it and get back on His path, and to not fall back in that hole or even try to hide it. Make 1 John 1:9 a part of your life,
1 John 1:8-10
8	If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. NKJV

May18

Godly Children

Isa 54:13
13	All your children shall be taught by the Lord, And great shall be the peace of your children. NKJV Working at the American telephone company, I met a lot of people. It was a huge company and was divided into business units. Some units were service providers of telephone services, others were making equipment, cabling, or even consumer products. For each business unit (BU) there was a president back in the New Jersey offices of the US. I remember our BU president coming to visit us. It was a woman (and still is!). She had clearly been groomed for the job and was very intelligent. I was amazed how she was able to remember the first names of 10 Japanese men and women in one sitting and use them in a dinner meeting later that evening. Very impressive woman. It was interesting that this woman was married. Her husband actually worked in the BU far under her. They had decided not to have children due to her career. It came to me that there was something missing there. There was a sense of incompleteness as I talked with this executive. After her visit, I was talking to the Lord about it. The Holy Spirit showed me what it was. Part of being married, part of the completeness to marriage is having children. Children are a blessing or as Psalms 127:2 says, they are a reward.
2	Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. NKJV What I had learned is that no matter successful a career this couple had, when aged and retired they would have no family around them. Their latter days would be pretty lonely. They would have left no legacy behind them. It is no problem if married couples decide not to have children. But I have noticed that a lot of childless couples end up getting dogs or some other kind of pet. (If you want children, and can’t have children; get prayer at a Word-believing, Spirit-filled church. Believe Him and He will answer your prayers). Children are a blessing from Yahweh. They are only entrusted to us for a time. Having children is a wonderful opportunity for us to develop as adults. If we put the time and effort into them when they are young, we will see our lives continue on through them when we are old. The key to that is we need to teach them in the ways of the Lord. What does that mean? We need to take them to a good church every week. We need to show them God working in our lives. We need to show them that we honor God when we succeed and reconcile quickly with Him when we foul up. We need to spend time with them. We need to demonstrate the passion we have for our spouse in front of them with kind words and hugs and kisses. We must not punish them, but we must discipline them. (If we don’t discipline them, they will end up as a weight on society). We need to be an example for them as adults, as parents, and especially as God-chasing believers and followers of Jesus. If we do these things we can confess Isaiah 54:13 over our children and know that there will be great peace over our children. I do it every week. Halle lu YAH!

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. NKJV

You can say all you want. You can pray whatever you want, but if you aren’t praying according to the Word of God, then you’re wasting your breath. That’s right! Wasting your breath!

You can pray for rain, you can pray for sun, you can pray for wisdom for your government, you can pray for all sorts of things.. However, you’ve got to realize the Word of God is the will of God. If you want to know His will , you have to know His Word for your life.

If you pray the Word of God over your life, you will see amazing results. How do I know? Isaiah 55:11 tells me that when God’s Word goes our from my mouth, it will bring to pass what I am praying for. You’ve got the promise that God’s Word will not come back to you empty and that it is going to accomplish what you have prayed for.

In Japan, there are about 5,000 cults. They are mostly offshoots based on Buddhism. The general thing that happens is that the person who founded the cult acts like some great spiritual leader and dupes the followers out of everything they’ve got. The followers are taught to bring everything and give it to their guru. It becomes very communal. It is really sad because we know the enemy wants to kill, steal, and destroy. Almost always it is the enemy working through these people not only trying to cheat people, but also distract them from ever knowing Jesus. They are taught to do a lot of chanting trying to get peace, wisdom, or something else. Unfortunately, chanting something ungodly is not going to bring you peace. You are going to leave that place spiritually empty.

If you want wisdom, peace or something else, you need to pray the Word of God. There is a response, guaranteed. God’s Words come back full and accomplish what they were sent to do.

When we first started meeting in the neighborhood, we had a children’s ministry on Saturdays. It quickly grew, but we were concerned as it was 40 girls only who came and the parents just came to drop off their children. The target of our church and ministry are business professionals and their families. We started in our living room but swiftly moved to a city-owned public hall. With time and prayer, God directed us to get our own place as the city hall we were using was restrictive, not allowing food, the same time every week, and a bit hard to get to.

We found a place that was a dental clinic. When I walked in to that gutted facility with no walls or ceiling, I could see it was our place. I knew it in my spirit just from going in. We put in our application to the real estate agent for the building owner (even though we didn’t have the budget for the rent) and were believing by faith for the new church facility. Unfortunately, the owner said no. Although we looked for other places, we didn’t feel the peace that we felt about that facility anywhere else.

We continued gathering in the City Hall-owned facility for about 10 more months. It was not ideal, but we knew God had something better for us.

After those 10 months, we reapplied, but this time we were able to get the place that we selected and at a lower rate! Why did the building owners go from no to yes? The reason is because we had 10 months to pray for favor with the owners. We had 10 months to claim the facility for God’s house. We had 10 months to speak God’s Word over our situation and establish His house in our city. Hallelujah!

Remember God’s Word always accomplishes what it is meant to do. If you are speaking His Word in your life, you will see things happen. Halle lu YAH! Yah for Yahweh! He is so good.

May20

Two Windows & The Seeker

Isaiah 55:6
6	Seek the Lord while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near. NKJV For the first 20 years of my life, I rarely heard God’s voice. However at University I started to hunger for more of Him. It was not that I didn’t want to know God, but I never really connected with Him. I lived in the daylight basement of my house in Washington. It was beautiful as it was situated on a hill surrounded by beautiful fir trees. My room was in the corner of the house with trees and forest on each corner. I had two windows with lovely green grass and forest on each side. My parents had purchased a larger tract of property with our own little forest. The back of the property had train tracks as the border. It was so exciting seeing the trains go by, walking down the train tracks and picking up rocks, loose railroad spikes and other items along the tracks. My brother and I would talk about the various adventures in the forest and places down the tracks. In that room with the two windows showing the forest, I remember getting up to read the Study Bible my parents had given me as a teenager. Even as a young boy, I knew I had to read God’s Word to know Him. I would get up at 5:30 each morning to read the Word. I knew it was important, but I had never heard His voice. When I got to University, I decided I knew a lot about God, had some great experiences at church camps and outings and loved God, but I wanted to really know Him personally and in a very real way. I was just hungry for more of Him. When I told Him that He responded to me. Isaiah tells us, to seek the Lord while He may be sought. Call Him while He is around. That is what I did, and He responded to me! The Almighty God responded to me. If He responded to me, He will respond to you. Recently, when I talk to people and see people are prejudice against believers or skeptical about God I challenge them. I tell them, “Ask God to make himself real to you”. “Ask Him to speak to you and show you His love”. There will come a time when those who have not chosen God will no longer have a chance. You will either to be a God child (repenting from your wrong ways and proclaiming the work of Jesus makes you perfect) or you will be eternally separated from Him. At the judgment, when we will all stand before God, if you have not acknowledged Jesus as your King, you will be separated forever from God and His Kingdom. That is why Romans 14:11 says
11	for it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." Therefore, I can bow to the Creator now, willingly, or will bow later before I am eternally separated from Him and everyone I love. I choose to serve Him. He is so good to me. If you have not heard God’s voice, or maybe you feel like you are floating around aimlessly like a blade of grass in the ocean, call on Yahweh. Seek Him! Go after Him with everything in you. He will answer. Just don’t wait until it is too late.

May21

Think Like Yahweh

Isaiah 55:8

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. NKJV

In the fallen state, we are so far from God we can’t understand His grace (loving us and taking care of us even though we don’t deserve it). However, when we become right with God through repenting of our old ways and claiming the works of King Jesus, things change. We are no longer in that fallen state, so far from God.

We serve an infinite God, however we are finite. He is uncountable, but we are countable. He is deep, but we are very shallow. Does that mean we should just throw up our hands and say, “I’m an old sinner, saved by grace” or “You know we’re just not perfect”? Absolutely not, those are loser’s words. Jesus encouraged us to be perfect as our Father God is perfect (Matt 5:48). We are to bathe in His grace, but we are to put our faith to action. Faith without works is very dead.

Yahweh is so deep that we will never know everything about Him. We we can certainly know Him and tap into His wisdom. When we get into a bind (difficult situation), we need to remind ourselves that God knows the best thing to do in any situation. He knows how to deal with every thing and come to a successful completion. With God, when you get to the “The End” part of the movie of life, you can be assured it was a happy story.

As a business entrepreneur, life can be very stressful. When you are working for someone else (a company or business of some sort), you don’t have to worry about too much. You just go in and do your job as a sales person, receptionist, engineer, customer support person, or whatever role you have, and go home. If you don’t like pressure, then you want to work for someone. However, when you are an entrepreneur, you have to be thinking about everything. You have to think about getting a product to sell, getting out and selling it, servicing the product when the customer calls, and getting out there with more products and ideas to stay ahead of the competition all at the same time that you’re doing everything else.

There are some great people that are good at this type of thing, but the more and more I am around famous personalities I see their weaknesses. When I started a business, it was really a challenge. It was a huge challenge to start an enterprise and know if you were in the right business, if you were talking to the right people, and if you were doing the right things to get started. Once you get going, hiring the right people, leading people, and growing the business, it takes a lot of your time. In Tokyo, I have gotten to know a very famous entrepreneur from New Zealand. He gets a lot of glory for being a “great” businessman. But if you talk to his people, you will find out he never pays them on time, he plays games with his suppliers, and is not someone they like working for. That is really sad. If He would turn to God, he could be so much better.

I know God’s ways are higher than my ways, His way of thinking is so much better than my way of thinking. In my business adventures, I have relied on Him a lot. I have found when I go to Him, my prayers get answered. But when I go away from Him, I make mistakes. For any business, the biggest challenge is human resources or HR as they call it. Hiring the wrong person can cost you a lot of money. But hiring the right person, especially in sales, can go the other direction. A great marketing or sales person can help transform your company into a major player in the market. Through the wisdom of God, I discovered that and started praying for His wisdom on hiring the right sales guys. I asked the Lord what traits would be good and wrote them down. I started praying and thanking God that these types of people would cross my path. When we got a resume from a candidate we liked, and I would take it to prayer meeting with me on Saturday. I have laid many resumes before the Lord and asked Him whether this is the right person or not.

He knows better than I do. With the wisdom of God, I can hire the right people and have been able to build a great team at the company. Working with a bunch of good people makes the enterprise even more fun. I have done business without God, and I have done business with Him. Going with God is SO much better!

Get God’s thoughts on the matter. Learn how He thinks and life will be even fuller for you.

May22

Who Blinked First?

John 9:2
2	And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" NKJV Jesus healed many who were sick, raised the dead, helped all those who wanted freedom from the oppression of the enemy, and was the world’s best teacher. He challenges us to do even greater works than what He did while He was on the earth. Not only did he challenge us, He told us we could do it. He said it Himself in John 14:12 where He said,
12	"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”NKJV King Jesus endowed us with that same power and authority that He operated in while He was here. That means you can pray over the sick and watch them recover, free people from the demonic in Jesus’ Name, pray and see miraculous signs and wonders, and even raise the dead. I know believers who have done all of this by faith and the Name of Jesus. As humans away from God, many people are always looking for someone to blame. They are always looking to get ‘one more’ than their neighbor. Some people are so competitive that they forget to love people. I know runners that are so busy running that they form their whole family’s life around their running. I know shoppers that are so in to shopping that they drag their spouse with them all over the place, just to get the latest deal. It is great to be competitive and motivated, but we need to make sure we are loving people and not just trying to fulfill our desires or our so-called reputation. It seems politics in any country has people always trying to find a weakness in their political opponent. I often joke, “Yes, we have a major international problem, our politicians.” Search the world over and you see it is like children playing the game of “who blinked first”, where they see how long they can stare at the other kid without blinking their eyes. Here in John 9:2, we see people haven’t really changed since we were first created. (Remember, Adam blamed Eve for his sin?). A blind man came to Jesus for healing to receive his sight. The close friends of our Lord (disciples) asked King Jesus why he was blind. Was he blind because of something He did or something his parents did. Why must someone be blamed for this infirmity? Jesus answered that it was neither. You see, we live on a fallen earth. It is no longer the perfect place that started as a tropic paradise. The garden was destroyed and the flood came and wiped the earth clean of both human life, and some believe it eliminated a protective layer of clouds that protected the earth and enabled humans to live much longer. Now, we have famine, wars, pestilence, disease, robbery, children born with birth defects, and all sorts of other bad (and very sad) things going on. Why do we have all these horrible things going on? Horrible things happen because we lost what God had originally created for Adam and Eve. Furthermore, we are not managing what God had entrusted to us. In the meantime, the enemy is trying to control everyone and steal, kill, and destroy, so that we will be eternally separated from the Father God. Jesus explained that this man was not born blind because of the sins of his parents (although we must eat right to birth healthy babies), nor was he born blind because of something he did. Jesus turned it around and said that he was born blind so that God could be glorified (he was going to be healed). Jesus turned the negative into a positive. He turned the disability into an opportunity. Notice that healing glorifies God. I have heard people say healing is a thing of the New Testament and of the past. My response to them is, “We are living in the New Testament right now, who said it was finished? King Jesus told us we would be doing greater works than he did, what are you doing?” Stay out of the blame game. Focus on glorifying Him, step out in faith according to the Word, and watch the signs and wonders flow.

May23

Your Light To The World

Isaiah 58:10

If you extend your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted soul,
Then your light shall dawn in the darkness,
And your darkness shall be as the noonday. NKJV

It feels so good to be a blessing to others. At church, we have broken this Dark Ages deception that poverty is next to godliness. It’s not. Poverty is a lie of the enemy because the demons just want to oppress you. They want to get you tied up in some sin and their ultimate goal is to kill you. If you are stuck in poverty you are limited. It is not God’s way. He wants to bless you. He wants you to have the very best that you can handle. He wants you to have the best so that you can be a blessing to those around you.

In 1992, I started to discover God’s financial plan for me. I discovered that He wanted me overflowing with His goodness so that I could overflow on others. As I began to understand what God’s Word said about His people, I began to have a revelation of His goodness. My relationship deepened with Him and I began to see how He sees people. Whether it be the bum in the gutter, or the atheist in the executive office.

We are all here for a short amount of time. We are here only for 120 years maximum (if we take good care of our bodies by eating natural foods (not processed), and exercising our complete self mentally and physically). In that time we have, we can leave a legacy, we can leave nothing (soon be forgotten), and we can leave a mess. I want to leave a legacy. I want people to see what I did and say, “Did you see Jesus in that guy?” One way to leave a legacy is shared by Isaiah.

In Isaiah 58:10, it says if we share our soul. Do you remember the Bible teaches us that we are a spirit-being with three distinct parts? We are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body (1 Thess 5:23). Furthermore, our soul area is our mind, our will, and our emotions. Therefore, when you read Isaiah 58 and it says when we extend our “soul” to the hungry. With this insight, I see that when we extend our mind (thoughts), our will, and our emotions; that means we put our “heart” into it helping others (in this case the poor and emotionally disturbed), then we are glorifying God. We are leaving that legacy of light for the coming generations.

When they see the Holy Spirit on you and the love in your heart, they will know you are sharing God’s goodness. Glorify His Name by being a blessings to others! You are a light to the world.

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