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Genesis 28:10-17 Sorry! My allergies didn’t let me record an audio version today. As part of a recent class, I was instructed to take a prayer walk at a local park. I'm used to doing that at my local church. So, I decided my prayer walk that day would be at the church just one block from where I was. This happened to be one of the largest congregations in my denomination. That means the walk took a while. As I made my way around the huge area, I noticed the usual things you might encounter on a prayer walk. I heard the birds, saw the trees beginning to bloom, heard children playing in a church playground, and noticed how even the wind seemed to be walking with me. At several points, I looked up at the massive building that houses this congregation. When I did, a question came to mind: Why here? At some point, the land where I walked was nothing like it was that day. Someone decided that this place would be where this church would worship and serve. Was it the potential for communit...

  Matthew 6:25-34 Click here to listen to today's devotional To follow Christ is to abandon the need you have to control life. That’s not just harder than it sounds. It's something a lot of us don't want to acknowledge Now, most of us don’t want to control everything, just enough control to feel safe. We want to know how tomorrow will go before tomorrow gets here. We want guarantees and few surprises. But faith doesn't promise that kind of life. Jesus invites us into something deeper, and, strangely, something lighter. “Do not worry about tomorrow,” he says. Not because tomorrow doesn’t matter or because there's nothing worrisome in the world. But because your life is held in God's love, which is, thankfully, stronger than your managing abilities. Worry is often control dressed up as wisdom or conc ern. We carry fear about what is out of our control. In the worry process, we mull over conversations that haven’t happened. We try to solve problems God has not aske...

  Jeremiah 33:1-3 Click here to listen to today's devotional We don't say it aloud, but there is a strange temptation many of us have. We quietly assume that we have finished learning God’s word. We scan through familiar passages. Maybe we memorize verses that carried us through harder seasons. But our comfy approach to scripture only allows us to imagine truths that feel useful, comforting, or even manageable. And, whether we realize it or not, we start believing that we have heard all God has to say. The Bible, though, is a living invitation to life. Not a closed-book discussion. Listen again to what the prophet Jeremiah heard: “Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” The promise was not that everything would become so obvious all of a sudden to God's people in that moment. The promise is that God is still speaking, still revealing, still unfolding mercy and wisdom in ways you have not imagined yet. There is ...

  Ephesians 4:25-32 Click here to listen to today's devotional Whether it's right or wrong, it’s too easy to lose someone’s trust and too hard to regain it, so be careful with your words. Your words are not just sounds that come from air pushed through your teeth and tongue. Often, the emotions attached to them carry entire worlds. That's why a careless sentence or single word can live much longer than the moment you spoke it. How many times have you replayed over and over something someone said? Paul’s instruction in Ephesians is supposed to lead us to holiness. “Let no evil, or corrupting, talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up.” Now, some of us take that to mean we need to be loud and pressing in the way we tell the truth. But I see it as a call for spiritual responsibility. In a sense, grace is not only something we speak, but it's also the grammar of our living. You and I live in a world that profits from corrupt talk. Social media rward...

  Isaiah 50:7-9 Click here to listen to today's devotional Shame is a heavy thing that doesn’t just simply lie over your life. Shame settles deep in your spirit. It will make you rethink every choice you have ever made, even convince you that you are too far away from God. Let me assure you. If you ever hear that, it's not God's voice. Shame doesn't say you did something wrong. It says you  are  something wrong. Thankfully, that is not what God tells us in scripture. The prophet Isaiah once affirmed to God's people that the Lord would not let them be put to shame because God was their help. Now, notice the prophet didn't say their wouldn't be appropriate criticisms or even difficulties that come from living in a broken world. Faith promises us that our deepest identity is not found within our weakest or worst moments. Your greatest failures do not define you. God won’t shame you because God has already redeemed you and has no desire to humiliate you. To be r...

  James 4:1-3 Click here to listen to today's devotional Your prayer life is an expression of what’s in your heart. That’s something I see in the book of James. Prayer is not supposed to be performative spiritual language for God or your trying to impress heaven with carefully-stitched sentences. Prayer is the honest breathing of a soul that knows it belongs to God. You don’t have to hide what is inside you when you pray. If your heart is tired, say so. If your anger is righteous but restless, bring it. If your joy feels weak, like it might break if someone looks at it too long, offer it anyway. God is not surprised by who you are or what you're facing. We often treat prayer like it is primarily about getting something from God. But prayer is more about becoming someone with God. When you speak to God, you are training your heart to want what God wants, to see what God sees, and to love what God loves. That is holy work. Slow work, but holy just the same. Prayer is a form of sa...