Devotional – Welcome

Everything – Colossians 3:12-17

“And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” — Colossians 3:17 (HCSB)

Paul has already laid out in the earlier part of this chapter what Christians are supposed to put off, the old identity, the old patterns, the old way of living. Now he gets to the other side of that. If you’ve taken off the old stuff, here’s what you put on instead: Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and over all of it, love. Love is the thing that holds everything else together and gives it direction, as Paul also makes clear in 1 Corinthians 13.

The opening phrase, “God’s chosen ones,” is one that theologians have argued about for centuries, and honestly it’s easy for me to get stuck in that loop. Calvinist predestination on one side, Arminian free will on the other, and a lot of very smart people who land in very different places. But I think that debate, as interesting as it is, misses the actual point of what Paul is saying here. However these people ended up belonging to God, they do. They are his. They are ingrafted into his family and heirs of the Kingdom. That’s the starting point, and then from that identity, the list of qualities Paul describes should flow naturally.

Which brings everything to verse 17. “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do it in the name of the Lord, Jesus…” It’s not just the obviously spiritual stuff. Not just Sunday morning or the moments when I’m consciously trying to be a good person. Everything, which includes the conversation at work, the way I drive, how I treat the person who is taking too long in line, or the email I’m a little tempted to send with an edge to it. All of it is supposed to be filtered through the same question, “Is this in the name of Jesus? Would I do this the same way if I was doing it as his representative?”

I’ll fail at this constantly. That’s just honest. But the goal isn’t perfection, it’s direction. Keep pointing toward Christ in every single encounter, ask the Holy Spirit to do what I can’t do on my own, and when I fall short, get back up and keep going. Everything in the name of Jesus. Not just the big moments. Everything.

Reconciled – Colossians 1:15-23

That word, reconciliation, keeps showing up. It’s the same word Paul uses in 2 Corinthians when he talks about being committed to the ministry of reconciliation.

“But now He has reconciled you by His physical body through His death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before Him.” — Colossians 1:22 (HCSB)

Paul opens this passage with one of the most theologically loaded descriptions of Jesus in the entire New Testament. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. The firstborn over all creation. The one through whom everything was created visible and invisible, thrones and powers, things in heaven and things on earth. Everything was created through him and for him. And then this line that stops me cold every time…”in him all things hold together.” He didn’t say just spiritual things, or even just religious things. Everything. The whole created order coheres in Christ.

It’s worth sitting and ruminating on that for a minute rather than rushing past it. He’s pointing directly at who Jesus is in the grand sweep of all reality. He is fully God. He is before all things. He is the head of the Church and the firstborn from the dead. This is the kind of passage that probably should be memorized by anyone who takes their faith seriously, because it pretty well encapsulates everything about who Jesus is and what that means for the rest of existence. But, even that all things hold together, not just fly apart into space, because of Jesus.

Then Paul makes it personal. Starting in verse 21, he turns toward us. We were alienated. Enemies of God in our minds. Our behavior reflected that alienation. And then…because of who Jesus is, because of what he did through his physical death on the cross, we have been reconciled. Not improved. Not partially forgiven. Reconciled. Presented before God holy, faultless, and blameless. That’s the thesis of the whole passage sitting right there in verse 22. The gap that existed between us and God has been closed, completely, by Jesus.

That word, reconciliation, keeps showing up. It’s the same word Paul uses in 2 Corinthians when he talks about being committed to the ministry of reconciliation. We have been reconciled to God, and then immediately commissioned to carry that same reconciliation outward in helping bring people back into right relationship with God and with each other. That’s not a secondary calling or an optional add-on to the Christian life. It’s central to everything.

So I need to keep my eyes and ears open to where that is happening around me and join it. People are alienated from God and from each other everywhere we look. The same Jesus through whom all things hold together is also the one who tears down the walls that divide. That’s the work I’m called to participate in. When I actually stop and think about what Christ has done, holding the entire created order together, that God chose to reconcile me to himself through his own death, the only honest response I know is to say “Wow.”

Rock – Matthew 16:13-20

So here’s the question I keep coming back to, if we actually believe that, then what are we doing with that? What would you do if you knew that nothing could ultimately stop you?

“But you,” He asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” — Matthew 16:15-16 (HCSB)

Jesus has been spending significant time with his disciples at this point. They knew him well. They’d watched him work. So he starts with a broader question ‘what are people saying about me out there?’ The answer is interesting. People are paying attention. They’re comparing him to the great prophets and to John the Baptist. They recognize that something significant is happening. They just haven’t quite landed on what it is.

Then Jesus narrows it down. Not what everyone else thinks, ‘and what about you?’ Peter, always the first one to jump in, says it plainly. “You are the Messiah. The Son of the living God.” Jesus immediately points out that Peter didn’t arrive at that on his own. Human nature alone can’t discern who Jesus really is. That recognition only comes from somewhere else entirely.

Then comes the part that has been debated and misunderstood for a long time, largely because we’re reading it in English rather than Greek. Peter’s name Petros, referred to a small rock, something like a chip that has broken off from a larger stone. In America, we actually refer to this in English. If someone is very similar in looks and actions to his father, we might say “he’s a chip of the old block.”

When Jesus says “on this rock I will build my church,” he switches to a different word Petra, which refers to a massive, foundational bedrock. He’s making a point, and a bit of a wordplay at the same time. The Church isn’t being built on Peter the person. It’s being built on the declaration Peter just made, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. That is the foundation. And against that foundation, Jesus says, not even the gates of hell can stand.

That’s not a small statement. It means that the most powerful force of darkness in all of human history is less than the Church built on the identity of Jesus Christ. Not a denomination or an institution. Not a famous leader or a mantra. Not a political paradigm, but the declaration that Jesus is who he said he is. That’s what really matters.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to, if we actually believe that, then what are we doing with that? What would you do if you knew that nothing could ultimately stop you? What would happen if you knew that you could walk on water, or move mountains? What if the stories that you read in the Bible weren’t fables of an ancient history, and that God could part the sea through you. It doesn’t matter how uneducated, or poor, or not famous you are. It only matters what you do with the question, “who do you say that Jesus is?”

Mourning – Job 2:11-13

We Christians don’t always do this as well. It is common for people to quote one verse or another about how God has a purpose, even in a great tragedy. You likely can even think of one of those verses in your head.

“So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.” — Job 2:13 (HCSB)

Before you look at what Job’s friends got wrong (and they got a lot wrong) this passage catches them at their best. They heard what happened to their friend. When they arrived and saw him, they barely recognized him. The man they knew had been so completely undone by suffering that he looked like a different person. Their response was to tear their clothes and put dust on their heads, dramatic gestures by our standards, but in that culture they were the most powerful way a person could say “this is beyond anything I know how to handle.” Then they sat down on the ground next to him. For seven days, nobody said a word.

That’s actually extraordinary. Seven days of silence. No advice of theological explanation. No trying to fix it, but just showing up and staying. It’s worth noting that this is exactly the picture that the Jewish practice of sitting shiva is modeled after, community gathered around someone in grief, not rushing them through it, not filling the silence with noise. Just being there. There’s a reason that tradition has lasted thousands of years. It works because it’s human, and it’s honest.

But the person dealing with that loss, probably just needs someone to sit down next to them. There is a time for celebrating what awaits believers on the other side of death. There is also a time for mourning, and the Bible is pretty clear that both are legitimate. The Bible is also clear about the tenderness of God when we need that, too.

I have a hard time doing that sometimes, myself. I am naturally a “get up, dust yourself off, and get back to work” kind of person. That has served me well in a lot of situations. But it also means I sometimes move past pain (my own and other people’s) faster than I probably should. I don’t always give myself or others permission to just sit in the hard thing for a while. Job’s friends, whatever their many failures later in this story, got this part right. Sometimes, the words from our mouths are less important that our presence. Job’s friends got that.

My own needs, my own hurt, my own losses are not insignificant to God either. I am a small figure in the grand scale of human history. Thousands of years of people have lived and died before me and thousands will after. But that doesn’t mean what I carry doesn’t matter to him. It does. and the Church, at its best, reflects that same care. Sometimes the most important thing I can do for someone is to not say anything at all, and just sit with them in it.

Center – Psalm 138

What stands out in this particular Psalm is something David says almost in passing. He’s a king, with power and authority that most people in his world could not imagine. Yet he talks about the humbling of kings before God as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Though the Lord is exalted, He takes note of the humble; but He knows the haughty from a distance.” — Psalm 138:6 (HCSB)

David writes this Psalm from a familiar place. If you’ve spent any time in the Psalms, you know the rhythm – danger on one side, gratitude on the other. Enemies surrounding him, yet an unshakeable confidence that God sees him and will come through. It’s this constant back and forth between what his eyes are telling him and what his spirit knows to be true. That tension runs through almost everything David wrote, and it’s part of what makes his writing feel so honest and so human.

What stands out in this particular Psalm is something David says almost in passing. He’s a king. He has power, status, and authority that most people in his world could not truly imagine. And yet he talks about the humbling of kings before God as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. A lot of powerful people throughout history have spent their energy thinking about their own greatness. David spends his thinking about God’s.

I had a conversation recently with someone I care about, where I shared something very personal. It was all leading to a significant and positive decision in my life. The first response out of that person’s mouth was about how it might affect them. It felt like the things I was sharing were only really about that other person, and not me. But as I thought about it, I do a version of that same thing more than I’d like to admit. Not always in such an obvious way, at least I hope that I never respond to someone in that way. But I naturally tend to filter everything through the lens of how it relates to me. I put myself at the center without even trying. It just happens.

That’s exactly what verse 6 is pushing back against. Following God means placing proper perspective on things, not thinking of myself more highly than I ought to, and not making myself the main character of every situation. It means shifting the focus to where it actually belongs, which is on God and what he is doing in the middle of all of it.

The antidote is gratitude, and not just the surface level kind where I count my blessings and feel good about my circumstances. The deepest gratitude I can have is actually about something much bigger than any of that. The God who created the universe, the one who breathed life into humanity and specifically into me, the same God who sits above all of human history and knows all billions of people on this planet, from kings to slaves, that same God actually loves me. That is not a small thing. His glory is incomprehensible, and yet he takes note of me. When I actually sit with that, everything else finds its right place pretty quickly. My needs feel smaller. My pride feels sillier. And the humility that David is describing in this Psalm starts to feel less like some religious discipline and more like the only reasonable response.

Lend – Luke 6:32-36

Predatory lending (particularly toward the poor) was a significant problem in that time and place, despite the Old Testament’s repeated prohibitions against it. People found creative workarounds.

“But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is gracious to the ungrateful and evil.” — Luke 6:35 (HCSB)

Jesus is still on the same thread he started in verse 27. He’s been laying out this radical alternative way of living, and now he’s even expanding on what he said previously. If you only love people who love you back, he says, what’s the big deal? Even people with no interest in God do that. There’s nothing distinctly different about that. Jesus is after something much harder than basic reciprocity.

The lending piece is worth slowing down on because the cultural background matters here. Predatory lending (particularly toward the poor) was a significant problem in that time and place, despite the Old Testament’s repeated prohibitions against it. People found creative workarounds. They charged interest anyway. They took farms, homes, and even children as collateral. Sometimes they simply refused to lend at all if they doubted the person’s ability to repay. It was a system designed to protect the lender at the expense of the borrower. And Jesus addresses it head on. He says to lend anyway, even when you’re not sure you’ll see it back.

This one hits me personally. When someone asks to borrow money and uses the word “borrow” in a very loose sense of the word, I feel it. There’s a frustration that builds when generosity gets taken for granted, when someone seems more interested in what they can get than in any genuine relationship. It feels like being used. And honestly, sometimes it is. But Jesus doesn’t seem to carve out an exception for those situations. He addresses them directly and says to give anyway.

The thing that helps me with this is remembering where the money came from in the first place, or the coat, or even the love and patience I’m being asked to extend. None of it originated with me. It all came from God. So when I give it back out, even to someone ungrateful, even to someone who won’t repay it, even to someone who doesn’t deserve it, I’m really just returning to God what was his to begin with and letting him use it how he sees fit. That reframes the whole thing.

And then there’s the character issue. Jesus ends this passage by pointing to the character of God himself. He’s gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Sometimes, I’m ungrateful and evil. If I’m trying to pattern my life after him, that’s the standard I’m working toward. Not gracious only when it’s easy or when it’s appreciated. Gracious because that’s who he is, and who I’m supposed to be becoming. That’s harder to do than it is to say. But nobody promised that following Jesus was going to be easy.

Golden – Luke 6:27-31

Sit with it for a minute and it gets uncomfortable fast. It’s easy to be kind to people who are kind to you. That’s not really following the rule, that’s just basic reciprocity.

“Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.” — Luke 6:31 (HCSB)

Jesus lays out a string of instructions in this passage that go against pretty much every natural instinct we have. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. Give to everyone who asks, and don’t expect anything back. Jesus is describing a way of life that runs completely opposite to how the world operates, and he’s not being subtle about it.

It all ends in what is called the Golden Rule, treat others the way you want to be treated. That phrase has been repeated so many times it almost loses its weight. It sounds simple. It might be something you’d expect to see cross-stitched on a pillow.

Sit with it for a minute and it gets uncomfortable fast. It’s easy to be kind to people who are kind to you. That’s not really following the rule, that’s just basic reciprocity. I want my enemies to treat me well even if I’m treating them poorly. I want grace extended to me even when I haven’t earned it. The hard part is extending that same grace outward, especially to people who have actually wronged me.

This passage exposes something in me that I’d rather not look at directly. I want to be the kind of person who loves radically, who gives without keeping score, who prays genuinely for people who have hurt me. But everything in my natural instinct fights against that. I am selfish. I default to protecting myself and my own interests, even when I’m trying to look like I’m not. That gap between who I want to be and how I actually operate day to day is real, and this passage puts a spotlight directly on it.

Here’s something I noticed about myself recently. When I talk to someone who clearly only cares about their own opinions and can’t seem to consider anyone else’s perspective, it bothers me. It feels immature, almost childish. But then I do the exact same thing, just in a quieter way. I listen, I nod, I try to look sympathetic, and the whole time there’s a part of me that’s still circling back to my own thoughts and my own concerns. That’s not the radical love Jesus is describing. That’s a performance of it.

So, the prayer is for transformation, not effort. I can’t manufacture this kind of love through sheer willpower. It has to come from actually putting on the mind of Christ, asking him to change what I want, not just what I do. I want to genuinely get inside other people’s heads, to care about what they’re carrying, and to love people the way God has loved me without keeping score and without expecting it back.

Upside-Down – Matthew 18:1-6

That would’ve had very different implications in that culture than it does today. We tend to center everything around children now. But in the ancient world, children were not the focus.

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 18:3 (HCSB)

The disciples come to Jesus with what is honestly a pretty revealing question, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? They’re thinking about rank, about status, about who gets the best seat at the table. And Jesus’ response is to pull a small child into the middle of the group and say, ‘well, this. This is what greatness looks like in my kingdom.’

That would’ve had very different implications in that culture than it does today. We tend to center everything around children now. But in the ancient world, children were not the focus. They were dependent, they were small, they had no status, no trade, and no ability to provide for themselves. They knew they needed their parents for everything. Their very identities were shaped entirely by the adults around them. Jesus wasn’t pointing to a child because children are cute or innocent in some romanticized way. He was pointing to their total dependence. That’s the quality he’s after.

What Jesus is describing is a kingdom that runs completely opposite to the way the world measures greatness. The world rewards confidence, self-sufficiency, achievement, and status. God rewards humility and dependence on him. Those two value systems are not compatible, and the gap between them is something every Christian has to navigate every single day. It is a constant battle to not just absorb the values of the culture around us without even noticing it happening.

Then Jesus breaks the analogy and says something very direct about children themselves. The way we treat the vulnerable, be itchildren, the hungry, the imprisoned, or the hurting, it is a direct reflection of how we value God. This isn’t the only place Jesus makes that connection. He comes back to it over and over throughout the gospels. It seems pretty clear that God has a particular concern for the people the world tends to overlook or push to the margins, and he expects his people to share that concern.

So my takeaway here isn’t complicated, even if it isn’t always easy. I need to make a genuine effort to help “the least of these,” not as an occasional charitable impulse, but as a non-negotiable part of what it means to follow Jesus. The kingdom he’s describing is upside down from everything the world values. Greatness looks like a child. The important people are the ones nobody else is paying attention to. For me right now, that is making me re-look at almost everything I do.

Mountains – Psalm 121:1-8

“The Lord will protect you from all harm; He will protect your life. The Lord will protect your coming and going both now and forever.” — Psalm 121:7-8 (HCSB)

In one of the Lord of the Rings movies there is a siege of the castle where the good guys are sheltered. They are completely surrounded. Outnumbered. The evil forces are increasingly forcing their way inside. All hope seems gone. And then, from the mountains above, a blinding light appears with an army that sweeps down and turns the whole battle around. It’s one of the most visually striking moments in the whole trilogy. And for some reason, that’s exactly the picture that comes to mind when I read the opening verse of Psalm 121, especially knowing the kind of situations David found himself in throughout his life.

But the thing David says next. It isn’t something from the mountains themselves that save him. There might be an army up there. But the help comes from God. The maker of heaven and earth. Not a general, or some great military strategy, or even a fortunate turn of events. It’s God himself. And then the Psalm goes on to pile up this extraordinary list of assurances. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t wander off, he is watching over you constantly, right now, and forever. You are not alone. I am not alone.

I’ll be honest though, this Psalm also raises a hard question that I can’t just skip over. Throughout history, there have been Christians who looked to the mountains and the army didn’t come. They were persecuted. They died. They suffered in ways that may seem completely at odds with the promises in these verses. I don’t have a great answer to that. It’s one of those things I hold with open hands and a lot of questions. I just know that I have to keep clinging to God even when the answers aren’t there, and trust that his protection operates on a scale that I can’t always see from where I’m standing.

I want to live like someone who can’t lose. Not in a naive or reckless way, but in the way that this Psalm describes. Putting myself in situations where I genuinely need God to come through, and then trusting that he will. It’s not thrill-seeking, but a different way to make decisions from how most people operate. It means leaning into the calling even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed from a human perspective, because the ultimate outcome already is.

God will protect our coming and going, the Psalm says. Both now and forever. That’s a big promise to stand on. I’m choosing to stand on it. How about you?

Winning – Mark 8:34-38

Throughout history, revolutionary leaders have rallied their followers with promises of glory, triumph, and victory. Jesus does the exact opposite. No rousing speech. No promise of earthly reward. Just a call to pick up the most shameful instrument of death in the Roman world and follow him.

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” — Mark 8:36 (HCSB)

When we read the word “cross” today, we don’t flinch. We even wear them around our necks as jewelry. But when Jesus told the crowd standing in front of him to take up their cross, the people listening to him would have reacted very differently to that word. In their world, crucifixion wasn’t a religious symbol. It was one of the most brutal and humiliating forms of execution ever devised. It was public, it was agonizing, and actually where the word “excruciating” comes from. It was reserved for people Rome wanted to make an example of. Wearing a cross as jewelry in that culture would have been like wearing a miniature gallows around your neck today. It would have been absurd and offensive.

This makes what Jesus says here all the more powerful. Throughout history, revolutionary leaders have rallied their followers with promises of glory, triumph, and victory. Jesus does the exact opposite. No rousing speech. No promise of earthly reward. Just a call to pick up the most shameful instrument of death in the Roman world and follow him.

He uses a rhetorical device common in classical literature called a chiasm, named after the Greek letter chi, which looks like an X. If you try to save your life, you’ll lose it. If you lose your life, you’ll save it. The ideas cross each other and form that X shape. The next thing he says is a gut punch. What does it profit a man to gain everything the world has to offer, if he forfeits his soul in the process?

I was reading about John Chau lately. He was the young American missionary who died a few years ago trying to bring the Gospel to an isolated, uncontacted tribe on an island near India. The world has mocked him. People called him reckless, naive, even foolish or crazy. And maybe there are legitimate questions about his methodology. But his passion for the Gospel can’t be questioned. And according to this passage, Jesus would not have called him a failure. We don’t know yet what fruit, if any, came from his sacrifice. But that might not be the point.

When Jesus mentions eternal life, he’s talking about a quality of life available to us today, right now where you sit, not after death at all. Now, don’t think he’s negating a life that continues in heaven after we shuffle off the mortal coil. But, it’s something deeper and more real than anything this physical world can offer or take away.

I had a poster on my wall when I was a kid, a BMX biker mid-jump, totally airborne. I was never into that sport, but the words on it never left me. “God, grant that I am a winner first in your eyes, then in my own.” That’s really what Jesus is getting at here. If you are living for an audience of One, and that One has already secured the outcome, then you genuinely cannot lose. In that sense, John Chau couldn’t actually lose. He wasn’t playing a game where he could be a winner in the world’s eyes. The question is, what would you do differently if you knew you couldn’t lose?