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  Psalm 142 Click here to listen to today’s devotional People often ask how they should pray. Jesus told his disciples, "When you pray, say..." and then he gave them actual words to repeat. Likewise, many of us are looking for the "right" words to fill in what's in our hearts. The worry is that without the proper language, prayers aren't spiritual enough. Well, I think there are many, many more ways to pray faithfully than there might be wrong ways to pray. Psalm 142 reminds us that prayer doesn't have to be impressive. Sometimes, prayer is simply telling God your trouble. Tell God what's weighing on you. Explain what happened today. Name your disappointment and admit what you're fearful of. Talk about the frustrations. Say out loud what you're hoping for and what you're afraid might never happen. And just know that God doesn't need the information; God knows. But actually learning to tell God everything is an expression of your relat...

  1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 Click here to listen to today’s devotional The apostle Paul wanted the Thessalonian Christians to learn to please God "more and more." To appreciate what Paul might have had in mind, it's important to recall when he first preached in Thessalonica. The people there accused the believers of turning the world upside down because they said, "There is another king named Jesus" (Acts 17). Caesar was the other king. Living under a king like Caesar, "more" usually meant giving more. More taxes, more allegiance, more of yourself to an empire that always demanded something else. King Jesus is different. Paul's urging the church to please God "more and more" wasn't a call to appease a God who is never satisfied. No, he understood that the more we follow Jesus, the more we become the people God created us to be. We become more human, recognizing more and more the image of God within us. This growth is what we know as holin...

  Romans 15:1-6 Click here to listen to today’s devotional One of the marks of spiritual maturity isn't that nothing bothers you anymore. You just learn to decide what is worth being bothered about. Personally, I took the "pick your battles" advice to heart and have found less interest in fewer and fewer battles. I see this kind of spiritual maturity as a gift of the Spirit. The apostle Paul says it this way, "We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves" (Romans 15:1). That raises an uncomfortable question to wrestle with. Am I spiritually strong enough to let other people inconvenience me? Sometimes, I think our "standing for truth" is really just defending our preferences. Have you noticed the uproar that can happen when people get frustrated because someone is late, sings differently than they like, asks too many questions, or just doesn't see things the same way? Paul points us to a strength that...

  Psalm 119:105-112 Click here to listen to today’s devotional Many of us go to God’s Word for answers. We want God to show us the whole picture so we can know what is coming next, how everything will work out, and what decisions we should make. Now, I will never discourage you from seeking the Bible's wisdom. But I might suggest you not see the Bible as a spotlight. Psalm 119:105 gives us a different image. The psalm famously says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Consider that a lamp is not a spotlight that illuminates miles down the road. It gives just enough light for the next step. Perhaps God’s Word was never meant to satisfy our desire to know everything. Instead, it was given to shape our willingness to obey what God has already shown us. Think about how often we ask God for more clarity when what we really need is more courage or confidence in what God has already told us. We might want God to show us what's next, but what if God is saying, ...

  John 13:12-17 Click here to listen to today’s devotional Jesus didn't just wash his disciples' feet. There's too much happening around the story for it to just be a lesson on humility. Before Jesus picked up a towel, John tells us something important that Jesus knew. He knew and understood that God "had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God" (John 13:3). Secure in who he was and confident in what God had entrusted to him, Jesus took what had been placed in his hands and used those hands to wash dirty feet. The room must've been full of tension. Judas had begun to feel his betrayal. Peter was about to object. None of the disciples knew or understood what was unfolding. The Lord didn't explain what he was about to do. There was no leadership briefing. He simply stood up from the table, wrapped a towel around himself, poured water into a basin, and knelt before the first disciple. One by one, he washed every pair...

  Psalm 131 Click here to listen to today’s devotional Every once in a while, people ask me if I get nervous before I preach. I have to be honest and answer that I don't. When I first started preaching, I didn't know enough to be nervous. I was young. I had a sermon, a Bible, and more confidence than wisdom. I had no idea what it meant to stand before people and speak on behalf of God's Word. If I had known then what I know now! If I understood the weight of the calling, the responsibility, and even the privilege, I probably would have been terrified. Funny how that works. The more we grow, the more we realize how much we don't know. Psalm 131 expresses that kind of humility. The psalmist says, "my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me." Instead, he says, "I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother." That isn't a word against educa...