The Wake-Up Call

What a great assurance is ours that however unstable and rebellious the world gets, God is going to intervene and set things right.

Is it possible to not sin? What if we flipped that question on its side and asked it like this: Is it possible to love?

To be made perfect in love means growing in the love of God for other people.

Confession doesn’t begin with naming our sins. It begins with claiming the truth that we are sinners.

I’m beginning to think our biggest problem is the way we deceive ourselves about sin.

Perhaps the biggest misconception we have is that our relationship with God will determine our relationships with other people. It’s just the opposite. If you want to know what kind of fellowship I have with God, examine my relationships with other people.

That Jesus was raised from the dead can never be proved, only believed.

It is the empty tomb which finally fulfills this psalm, granting us joy in his presence and eternal pleasures at his right hand where Jesus Christ is seated in glory.

Fill us with your Spirit that we might be your ambassadors in all places.

Send your Holy Spirit that my life may always be oriented around the beauty of who you are.

Though you were abandoned to suffer the worst humanity conceived of, you offered me your best gift—eternal life.

Beloved Jesus, your resolve through the taunts and torture on Good Friday were a demonstration of your perfect love and divine holiness.

The descent of your Son shows me the true nature of your power—that of humility and self-emptying.

Send your Spirit to remove any idols vying for reign, and to enthrone you, King Jesus, as the rightful ruler of my life.

Just as the creation of Adam and Eve into a one-flesh relationship marked the beginning of the whole history of humanity, so the marriage of Christ and his church will mark the beginning of the New Creation.

Though he was King of the universe, for our sake he was crucified. He experienced the worst reception—that of a criminal—but was received to glory by you.

Help me this day and always to choose light over darkness, good over evil, the way of your kingdom over the ways of this world.

May my every thought, word, and deed honor him as the eternal begotten Son, now and forever.

Help me to move through your kingdom with the heart and character of your holy ambassadors, representing you faithfully to those looking in from the outside.

Fear drives me away from you and deeper into sin until I cannot recognize the difference between the truth and a lie. Thank you, Lord, for your amazing grace and boundless love that casts away all fear.

Help me to walk and talk respectfully, with humility and honesty, just as Jesus did, so that others may recognize me as your follower.

In the end, our faith is not based on what we see or experience, but on God himself.

The evil around me can never diminish the light of your Son, Jesus—the light that I bear. Remind me, Lord, that I am salt and light in the world.

Help me remember that I’m not required to have clever words or elaborate gifts. Help me to offer you and others my presence.

Help me to live out that self-giving love unconditionally, offering it freely even to those who have hurt me, just as you did.

Help me see who you truly are and understand the kingdom you bring to earth through us.

Your life is my life, your blood, the life-giving power that flows through me.

Lord, I long to be connected to something bigger and better than myself. Help me not be so devoted to those connections that I lose sight of the relationship that matters the most . . . the relationship that I have with you.

In the aftermath of Korah’s rebellion, very few would have believed that one day their family would be appointed to lead worship for all of God’s people

Help me be your wholehearted disciple whose life is marked by true righteousness and who pursues the purposes that matter to you, even when I am despised, misunderstood, or judged wrongly for it.

Remind me when I feel alone or face opposition that I do not own the vineyard. I serve at your pleasure and for the glory of his name.

Divine Judge, before whom all my thoughts are laid bare, draw me to you even as I depend on your grace and mercy.

Help me to accept division that originates in faithfulness to you, while honoring and dignifying those who turn against me for your sake.

Displace any vain attempt to set up my own kingdom, and welcome instead my surrender to your Holy Presence and kindly leading.Displace any vain attempt to set up my own kingdom, and welcome instead my surrender to your Holy Presence and kindly leading.

Spiritual blindness can actually lead to madness—even for religious people.

When we affirm the substitutionary atonement (i.e., that Jesus died in our place), we also understand that this was only possible because he had lived in our place.

On the way to the villages around this city, away from the noise of Jerusalem, Jesus turned reflective and posed a question to his disciples: “Who do people say I am?”

Jesus was claiming so much more, that he was of the very nature, the very essence, of God and, therefore, divine.

Jesus, given his divine nature, as affirmed in the first chapter of John’s gospel, is marked by nothing less than eternity.

Precisely because God is one, and no other, devotion to the Most High requires all that we are, whatever faculties, capacities, or talents that we possess.

Jesus came to call those who were mindful of their own sin, who were well aware of falling short of the glory of God, and who were, therefore, painfully conscious of their genuine need for redemption.

The truth is that we are all in God’s debt and that debt is undoubtedly broad and wide—once we begin to understand just who God is.

It is at his baptism that Jesus publicly accepted a mission and a journey which would lead to all the great redemptive acts which we later commemorate.

Heavenly Father, thank you that your Son has both the authority to forgive sins as well as the desire to heal us of sickness.

Help us to celebrate truth wherever we find it, promote goodness in every opportunity, and behold beauty as you designed it.

Jesus’s actions through the Spirit of God brought about the kingdom of God, not as some imagining, but in reality.

God of Israel, in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female—thank you for welcoming me into your family and claiming me as your own.

Holy God, I trade mere familiarity with you for intimacy with you.

Neither power nor riches, neither kingdoms nor splendor, can ever take the place of the enormous good, beyond imagining, that is God.

The voice and expression of the Psalms is so much more varied than what we typically experience during worship in church.