Devotional – Welcome

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?

Easy? – Ephesians 5:22-33

That’s the picture. And it is a genuinely beautiful one when it works the way it’s supposed to. The problem is that we are humans, and our sin nature has a way of mucking up even the most beautiful design.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.” — Ephesians 5:25-26 (NKJV)

Paul spends eleven verses talking very specifically about husbands and wives. There is a tendency in some circles to grab the small phrase in verse 32, where he says he is talking about Christ and the church, and use it to reframe the entire passage as a metaphor as if Paul wasn’t really talking about marriage at all. That doesn’t hold up. If the whole thing were just a metaphor for Christ and the church, why would he spend that much space giving very specific instructions to husbands and wives? Paul uses that phrase to point out that the grand relationship is actually Christ and the church, and that human marriage is meant to be a reflection of that, not the other way around.

What he describes is a specific design. Wives are called to submit to their husbands’ leadership the way the church submits to Christ. Husbands are called to love and sacrifice for their wives the way Christ loved and gave himself for the church. That’s the picture. And it is a genuinely beautiful one when it works the way it’s supposed to. The problem is that we are humans, and our sin nature has a way of mucking up even the most beautiful design.

Here is where it gets complicated, and where I think a lot of honest conversation tends to stop. When the system breaks down, both sides tend to make their obedience contingent on the other person going first. The husband says he’ll sacrifice once she submits. The wife says she’ll submit once he leads and puts her first. And so both sides wait, and nothing moves. But Christ didn’t make going to the cross contingent on the Church doing the right thing. He sacrificed for people who were actively working against him. That’s the standard Paul is holding up for husbands. And wives aren’t called to submit only to husbands who are leading perfectly. If that were the condition, it wouldn’t be much of a calling at all.

I’ll be straight with you, I don’t have this figured out and I’m not going to pretend I do. I think that this is one of the hardest teachings in the New Testament to actually live out, for both sides. In my observation, it’s easy for a wife to follow a husband’s leadership when he’s heading exactly where she wanted to go anyway. That’s not really submission, that’s just walking in the same direction. It gets real when he points somewhere she doesn’t want to go. And on the other side, it’s easy for a man to lead and sacrifice when he’s being respected. The harder question is what he does when he isn’t.

I don’t have a tidy answer to what happens when one side consistently refuses to hold up their end. Paul doesn’t address the breakdown here. Other passages handle that. What I do know is that the calling on each side isn’t contingent. We are human, and we’re much more focused on how we are treated than how we treat others.

Parents – Ephesians 6:1-4

So with this one, I’m sitting with the questions more than the answers. What does honoring my parents look like in this season of my life? What does God’s design for men look like, and how do I walk that out faithfully? I don’t have those all figured out. But I know who does, and that’s where I’m taking them.

“Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” — Ephesians 6:4 (HCSB)

Paul is wrapping up a section where he addresses household relationships for wives and husbands, children and parents, and later even for slaves and their masters. When he gets to verse 2, he points back to the Ten Commandments and notes that honoring your father and mother is the first commandment with a promise attached to it. He doesn’t mean first in the sense of number one on a list. He means primacy. This one carries particular weight. Then he turns to fathers specifically and gives them instruction specifically. It’s a short passage with a lot packed into it.

The cultural backdrop matters here too. In Paul’s day, the role of a father in a child’s life was not optional or peripheral. It was central. The idea that a father might be largely absent from his children’s spiritual formation would have been almost unthinkable. That’s not the world we live in now. Somewhere along the way, spiritual training in the home became seen as the domain of women, and a lot of men either handed it off or walked away from it entirely. I’m not criticizing women for stepping into that gap. That took real faithfulness. But the gap shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

This passage leaves me personally with more questions than answers, and I think that’s okay. As a grown adult, I still wrestle with what it means to honor my parents. That commandment doesn’t come with an expiration date, but what it looks like changes as life changes. And what does honoring a parent look like when that parent is making choices that clearly aren’t leading toward God? I don’t have a great answer to that. The text doesn’t spell it out here. But those are real questions that a lot of people are sitting with, and thinking they have easy answers which don’t actually help anyone.

Sometimes the Bible does that. It raises the question in us more clearly. It leads us to ask God how we actually walk that out. God intended it that way. God isn’t trying to give us a rulebook that covers every situation. He’s trying to guide us into a relationship with him where we bring those hard questions and actually wait for his answer. The Word of God should be guiding our prayer life, not just informing our opinions. A lot of times in life, when a person thinks they know everything and are quick to tell you, maybe they don’t at all.

Step Bar Christianity – Colossians 3:1-11

Paul says that in Christ, the old tribal identities are gone too. The things that used to define us, like where we came from, what group we belonged to, what we looked like, where we were born those aren’t the primary things anymore.

Colossians 3:1-11

“Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” — Colossians 3:1 (HCSB)

It’s Not a Step Bar

I’ve been thinking about adding a step bar to my truck. One of those running boards that makes it easier for people to climb in. It could be a useful addition. But it doesn’t change what my truck is. It doesn’t turn it into a different vehicle. My truck would still be a truck. It would be something bolted on to what was already there. You’d still have the same truck underneath.

Paul is describing something that is the complete opposite of that. He’s not talking about adding Christianity onto your existing life like an accessory. He’s talking about a fundamental change in identity. If you are a follower of Jesus, you died. The old you is gone. What is alive now is something entirely new, raised with Christ, oriented toward completely different things. The list of behaviors he tells us to put away (anger, lies, filthy talk, greed, all of it) aren’t just bad habits to work on. They belong to an identity that no longer exists. We don’t do those things because that’s not who we are anymore.

The last part of the passage is where it gets really interesting. Paul says that in Christ, the old tribal identities are gone too. The things that used to define us, like where we came from, what group we belonged to, what we looked like, where we were born those aren’t the primary things anymore.

I love being an American. I’m genuinely proud of that. But Paul is pretty clear that my identity as a member of Christ’s family overrides that completely. That’s not a comfortable thing to sit with, but it’s what he says. Now, I’m thankful that God has done some really cool things through America, and being an American has some great advantages. I’d sacrifice my life for the freedom that we have here, but that is not where my citizenship actually is. My passport may say America, but my name is in a more important registry, and that should change everything about who I am in every moment.

The big questions in life are actually easier to wrestle with for me. Where should I live? What should I do for work? Those feel weighty, and they are. But Paul isn’t primarily talking about the big decisions. He’s talking about the minute by minute stuff. The way I think. The way I talk. The way I treat the person in front of me right now. That’s where identity actually shows up, not only in the grand gestures but in the thousand small moments that make up a normal day, on whatever continent I happen to be on, in whatever job I happen to be working.

So this week I want to be faithful in the little things. Not just the big calling questions, but the everyday moments where my identity in Christ either shows up or it doesn’t. It’s easy to bolt something on and call it good. What God is after is a new identity that changes everything. Well, everything except the truck. I’m keeping that.

His – 1 Chronicles 29:10-20

That reframes the whole idea of generosity in a pretty significant way. We tend to feel good about what we give to God, to others, to causes we care about, and there is something right about that.

“Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the splendor and the majesty, for everything in the heavens and on earth belongs to You. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” — 1 Chronicles 29:11 (HCSB)

The context here matters a lot. David is standing before God and his people right after an extraordinary moment. The Israelites had just given a massive, generous offering of treasure to be used in building the Temple. Gold, silver, precious stones, the works. It was a genuinely impressive display of generosity. King David’s response is fascinating. Instead of celebrating how much his people had given, he essentially turns to God and says none of this was ours to begin with.

That’s a remarkable thing for a king to say. David was the most powerful man in Israel. He ruled everything and everyone. If anyone had the right to stand up and take some credit for what his kingdom had accumulated, it was him. And yet his prayer goes in exactly the opposite direction. Who am I and who are we, he asks, that we could give you anything? You own it all. We only have what you allowed us to have. Everything we just handed over was already yours.

That reframes the whole idea of generosity in a pretty significant way. We tend to feel good about what we give to God, to others, to causes we care about, and there is something right about that. David was genuinely proud of his people in this moment. But the deeper reality is that we are not donors. We are stewards returning what was entrusted to us. It’s like finding someone’s lost bag and handing it back to them. You haven’t given them your bag. You’ve just returned what was theirs all along. That’s a humbling way to think about it.

I want to do great things for God. I want to give generously in every way I can my time, my money, my talents, whatever I have. But this passage is a good reality check on the pride that can sneak into that. God doesn’t need any of it. He’s not impressed by the size of the offering the way we might be. What he desires is the heart behind it, a genuine dedication to him and his purposes, lived out honestly day after day.

So, the takeaway is a posture adjustment more than a action item. When I start feeling good about something I’ve done for God, or frustrated about what I’m lacking, I want to come back to David’s prayer. Anything I have is a gift from him. Anything I give back is just an honest return of what he owns. That keeps things in the right perspective and honestly, it makes the whole thing feel a lot more like worship and a lot less like a transaction.

Real – Hebrews 9:24-28

But none of it is the point. The point is Christ himself, and the hope of his return. He’s not coming back to deal with sin again. That work is finished.

“So also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.” — Hebrews 9:28 (HCSB)

The Real Thing

The writer of Hebrews is making a careful and deliberate argument to people who grew up surrounded by the Jewish temple system with it priests, sacrifices, and rituals. His point is not that those things were meaningless. It’s that they were always just a shadow. A human-made version of something far greater happening in heaven. The tabernacle, the altar, the annual sacrifices, all of it was pointing toward something else, something that was not incomplete. It was like going through a ride at Disneyland. It might feel like you are in an Indiana Jones archaeological dig, but you aren’t. Not really.

Then Jesus showed up and did the real thing.

The contrast he draws is pretty striking. A priest goes into the temple year after year, offering the same sacrifices over and over, because the job is never quite finished. The sin keeps coming and the covering keeps needing to be renewed. Jesus walked into the true holy place, not a building made by human hands, and offered himself once. That’s it. One time. Done.

That lands differently when you sit with it. Everything we build here, whether it’s our institutions, our religious systems, our ceremonies and traditions, are at best a pale reflection of the eternal reality. That’s not a criticism of those things. Structure and practice have their place.

But none of it is the point. The point is Christ himself, and the hope of his return. He’s not coming back to deal with sin again. That work is finished. He’s coming back to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. That changes the posture of the whole thing.

For me personally, this is a helpful recalibration. It’s easy to get caught up in the world immediately around me. I have a list of things that I have to do today. Even religious activity can become its own kind of distraction if it replaces a genuine focus on Christ rather than pointing toward him. I’m not called to check out of the world like some kind of hermit, and I’m not saying the things around me don’t matter. But I need to keep them in their right place.

The practical takeaway is pretty simple. Stay connected to the ultimate reality of Christ rather than getting lost in the lesser things. The shadow is not the substance. The ceremonies and structures and busy activity of life are not the point. He is. And he is coming back.

Finished – Revelation 21:1-8

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away. Then the One seated on the throne said, ‘Look! I am making everything new.'” — Revelation 21:3-4 (HCSB)

John is writing down a vision. People have debated for centuries exactly what kind of vision it is. Some say metaphor, some history, still other’s present reality, and most say it’s a future promise. The early church read it as a picture of what is coming, and honestly that seems like the most natural reading. John’s original audience would have recognized echoes throughout this passage of things Jesus said and promised throughout his ministry. This wasn’t new information to them. It was confirmation that the story wasn’t over.

What is most meaningful to me in this passage is the connection to the cross. When Jesus said “It is finished” as he died, he was talking about the work of salvation, the debt paid and the gap closed. But here in Revelation 21, those words show up again in a completely different context. This time it isn’t about the cross. It’s about the completion of everything Jesus promised when he told his followers he was going away to prepare a place for them. The making new that began at the resurrection is finally, fully done. Every tear wiped away. Death itself gone. Grief and pain and the other things that define so much of our experience here are simply no more.

That promise is worth clinging to, especially on the hard days. God is faithful to reward those who have been holding on to what he said. That’s not a small thing. But I also can’t read this passage without feeling the weight of verse 8, the list of those whose end is very different. Not because I’m worried about my own standing, but because I think about the people around me who are carrying the crushing weight of unrepentant sin, or worse, who have come to faith but are still being haunted by decisions they made before.

I’ve talked to Christians recently who can’t seem to shake the guilt of their past. And that’s not God doing that to them. God doesn’t see that sin anymore. It is gone. It is the enemy who keeps dragging it back out and holding it up. Instead, the promises that Jesus offers are completely opposite.

The freedom that Jesus offers isn’t just freedom from the penalty of sin. It’s freedom from the shame of it. The same voice that says “It is finished” on the cross is the voice that says “I am making everything new” in this passage. That includes you. That includes your past. That includes the thing you can’t seem to forgive yourself for.

I feel a real pull to help people land in the hope of this passage rather than fear of the last verse. There are people all around me who need to hear that the story ends with every tear wiped away and that Jesus meant that for them personally.

Sleep – 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

The way Christians talk about death says something about what we actually believe. I’ve been to enough funerals to know that a Christian funeral is a genuinely different experience.

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NLT)

Paul is writing to a people who might have a question about death. They might be thinking “will we see them again?” “Did their death mean they missed something?” Paul answers that with an exhortation that they should not grieve like those who are without hope. Not only will they not miss anything, they will actually be first. The dead in Christ rise before those who are still alive. And then everyone together meets Jesus in the air. This is not a metaphor. Paul means it literally, and doing anything less than taking him at his word does a lot of damage to what he’s actually saying.

One thing worth noting is the language Paul uses for death ,”fallen asleep.” That phrase carries a lot in it. It assumes a waking up. It treats death not as a final ending but as a temporary state. Early Christians seemed to use that language deliberately, and honestly it’s worth considering whether we should bring it back.

The way Christians talk about death says something about what we actually believe. I’ve been to enough funerals to know that a Christian funeral is a genuinely different experience. There is grief, of course, loss is real and painful. But underneath it there is something else. A hope that doesn’t make logical sense to someone on the outside. Because this is not the end, and we will see that person again.

That hope has a way of reordering everything else too. Paul isn’t saying that when Jesus returns, the wealthiest people get a better spot, or that the most educated or successful have some kind of advantage. None of that travels. What travels is people, relationships, influence, and the investment you made in someone else’s life and faith. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. There are things I could spend my time and energy chasing that will not amount to anything on that day. And there are things, people, conversations, showing up for someone who needs it, that will.

That’s where my head is right now. I want to pursue things that have eternal value. I want there to be people who are standing in that group with Jesus someday because of something I said or did or modeled in my own life. That’s a high calling, and I don’t take it lightly. But it starts with something pretty simple, paying attention to what God is already doing around me and joining him in it.

So, right now my prayer is the same one I keep coming back to, “Show me where you’re working, God.” “Make me receptive when you nudge me in a direction. I don’t want to miss it because I was too busy with things that won’t matter in the end.”

Faith on Monday Morning – James 1:19-27

James reminds us that faith is more than just showing up on Sundays; it’s about living it out daily. He stresses listening, controlling anger, and acting on what we learn. Hypocrisy exists, but we need to use Christ’s grace as motivation to grow, not an excuse to stay the same.

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” — James 1:19 (NIV)

James doesn’t waste a lot of time being gentle. His whole letter has one overarching point that makes a lot of Christians uncomfortable, faith isn’t just belief. It’s belief that leads to action. He would probably tell you that it doesn’t matter how faithfully you show up on Sunday morning if it doesn’t make any difference in how you live Monday through Saturday. That’s a hard word, but it’s a fair one.

Verse 21 is worth slowing down on. When James talks about “the implanted word” that saves, the Greek word he uses is “logos.” It’s the same word John uses at the very beginning of his gospel to describe Jesus himself. John 1 tells us that the Word became flesh. So James isn’t just talking about a book. He’s talking about Jesus, who is planted in our lives, bearing fruit. And the fruit he’s describing is pretty specific: slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen, and actually doing something with what you read instead of just nodding along and walking away.

The mirror illustration James uses starting in verse 23 is one of the most memorable in the whole Bible for me. A fool might look at himself, see exactly what’s there, walk away, and immediately forget what he looked like. That would be ridiculous. That’s the person who hears the Word and does nothing about it. It’s almost funny until you realize how accurately it describes most of us on most days. I know it describes me more often than I’d like to admit. My tongue gets away from me. Anger flashes faster than it should. The gap between what I believe and how I actually behave is real.

The thing about the hypocrisy criticism that gets directed at Christians is that it’s not entirely wrong. We do preach a standard and then fall short of it, constantly. But that’s actually the whole point. We’re Christians because we can’t meet that standard on our own. The grace of Christ covers the gap. What we can’t do is use that grace as a reason to stop trying. Paul makes the same argument in Romans, forgiveness shouldn’t make us comfortable with staying the same. It should launch us into something different.

So, I want to be more intentional about the gap between Sunday and Monday. Not in a way that puts a checklist on my faith, but in a way that asks the honest question, “is what I believe actually showing up in how I treat people, how I use my words, and what I spend my time chasing?” James would say that’s one of the only questions that really matters.