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  Listen to today’s devotional Recess is Almost Over September 28, 2026 Matthew 11:16-19 I used to be a substitute teacher, and, from time to time, I would fill in for one of the coaches. One Friday, I saw a group of kids trying to figure out what to do on their free day. Football, soccer, basketball, tag, or dodgeball were the main choices. To me, that all sounds like a fun day in elementary school. Their problem was that they couldn't decide. They argued so long about what to play that nobody really got a chance to play anything before time ran out. Jesus describes something like that in the marketplace. One group of kids says, "Let's play wedding!" The other group doesn't want to dance. "Fine, let's play funeral." They refuse to mourn. So, nobody joins in, and the game never even begins. Of course, Jesus isn't really talking about children. John the Baptist came with a hard message and a unique way of living. People said he had a demon. Jesus ...

  Click here to listen to today’s devotional What God Sounds Like September 16, 20266 Exodus 15:22-27 The Israelites are three days into the wilderness when trouble starts. They find water, but it is too bitter to drink. So they complain. Moses cries out to God, and the Lord shows him a piece of wood to throw in the water. The water becomes drinkable, and then God says to the people, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God…” I read that this morning and thought, "That sounds easy enough if God actually speaks out loud." If a voice from heaven said, “John, here is what you need to do,” I like to think that I would listen carefully. I might even take notes. But most of us don't hear God that way. There is no thunder or burning bush. No divine voice interrupting the devotional. So, how do we listen carefully when God does not seem to be talking? Think of listening to God as less like receiving a phone call and more like learning a language. Over time,...

  Click here to listen to today’s devotional 2 Kings 2:15-22 The prophets recognize Elisha as the new prophet and bow before him. They can see that the spirit that once rested on Elijah now rests on him. But they still want Elijah. They recognize what God is doing now, but still want what God did in the past. Does that sound familiar? So, the prophets ask Elisha to let them search for Elijah. He tells them not to go, but they keep pressing him until he is embarrassed. Maybe he is embarrassed for them. Maybe he is embarrassed because they refuse to listen. Or maybe he's just tired of arguing about it. Finally, he says, “Send them.” Fifty people search for three days. That is a lot of energy spent looking for something that is no longer there. Churches can do that, too, right? We can invest enormous amounts of time, money, and energy trying to recover what used to work. Then we wonder why we keep returning empty-handed. When the search party comes back, Elisha says, “Didn’t I tell yo...

  Click here to listen to today’s devotional Genesis 42:1-5 Jacob’s family is running out of food. The famine is severe, and everyone knows something needs to be done. But Jacob finds his sons looking at one another. So, he asks them, “Why do you keep looking at one another?” It sounds like a question Jesus could ask some churches today. Attendance is declining. Volunteers are exhausted. Younger generations are missing. The community outside our doors has changed. We see it. We discuss it. We may even form committees to study it. But sometimes we keep looking at one another, waiting for someone else to move. Social psychologists call this the “diffusion of responsibility.” When several people see the same problem, each person feels less responsible to address it. Everybody is concerned, but nobody moves. In the Genesis story, we don't know the reason for the brothers’ hesitation. Are they overwhelmed or just waiting for Jacob to decide what to do? Maybe each one assumes the other w...

  Click here to listen to today’s devotional Exodus 13:17-22 There are several things I’ve noticed about young people today. One that still surprises me is how early we train them to think about the future. High school students once chose educational tracks to prepare for careers. Then middle schoolers began making similar decisions. Recently, I heard of an elementary student confidently announce his intention to attend MIT. When I was his age, I wanted to be a bartender or a professional wrestler. I love encouraging young people to dream. There is wisdom in setting goals and planning ahead. But I wonder whether we have also taught them, and ourselves, that there is one perfect path through life. You know the path: school, career, marriage, children, home, retirement. Now, there is nothing wrong with that route. But I didn’t follow it exactly, and neither have many others. And when life takes an unexpected turn away from this route, people often feel like they have failed. They que...

  Click here to listen to today’s devotional Check Your Inbox September 4, 2026 Romans 10:15-21 I have an old backup email account that’s mostly subscriptions. There are newsletters, promotions, updates, and who knows what else I signed up for twenty years ago--it's a Hotmail account, after all. Thousands of emails can pile up. For the longest time, I would scan through them before deleting anything. Because what if I missed something? Only recently did I decide it wasn’t worth it. Now, I select them all and hit delete. Every one of those emails was delivered. But delivered doesn’t mean read. I wonder how often that’s true of what God is trying to tell me. In Romans 10, Paul asks, “have they not heard?” His answer is yes, God's good news had gone out. But hearing isn’t the same as listening. You can hear something and not really hear it. Not really receive it. You know that. You can sit through a sermon, sing a hymn, hear the same nudging from God again and again, and still men...

  Click here to listen to today’s devotional Revelation 3:1-6 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to remind myself, “It’s not rocket science." Have you ever made a mountain out of a molehill? John Foxe used the “mountains out of molehills” language in 1570 when he warned about our tendency to make small things too big. Interestingly, he also warned that we can do the opposite: make big things too small. Apparently, we’ve been getting the size of our problems wrong for a while. And maybe that’s part of the problem in Revelation 3. Jesus sends a simple message to the church in Sardis: “Wake up, and strengthen what remains.” Then he says something even simpler: “obey it and repent.” Sardis had a reputation for being alive. Apparently, you could look at the church from the outside and think things were going great. But Jesus saw something different. “You are dead.” I wonder if they were surprised to hear that. Churches can get pretty good at looking alive. We can have programs, c...