Today's Verse

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

Psalm 139:7-8

Historical Context

Psalm 139 is attributed to David and addressed to the choirmaster, meaning it was written for corporate worship at the sanctuary — sung by the covenant people, not merely whispered in private. David is Israel's king, but here he sets aside the crown and stands before a King greater than himself.

The psalm assumes a worldview that would have felt bracing even in the ancient Near East. Israel's pagan neighbors believed their gods had territory. Cross a river, climb a mountain, sail past the horizon, and you left one god's jurisdiction and entered another's. Baal ruled the storm; Yam ruled the sea; the underworld had its own dark lord. David dismantles all of it in a few lines. Heaven, Sheol, the wings of the dawn (a poetic image for the far east), the uttermost parts of the sea (the far west) — the LORD is already there. There is no border He does not cross, no darkness that dims His sight.

David's own life gives the psalm weight. He had hidden in caves from Saul. He had hidden his sin with Bathsheba. He knew what it was to want to disappear, and what it was to be found. So when he says God has searched him and known him, this is not abstract theology; it is testimony.

The psalm's final two verses — verses 23 and 24, tacked onto today's reading — are the point of the whole thing. After affirming that God already knows him completely, David asks God to search him anyway. He wants the exposure. He wants the light. That posture is what the psalm is teaching Israel, and us, to pray.

Reflection

Most of us live with a low-grade wish to be partly hidden. Hidden from spouses who might see the resentment, from friends who might see the envy, from ourselves when the motives get too ugly to name. We manage what people see. We curate. And we quietly hope God works the same way — that if we don't bring certain rooms into the conversation, He'll be polite enough to leave them alone.

Psalm 139 will not let us live there. God already knows. He knew before the word was on your tongue. He was in the room when you did the thing you swore you'd never do again. He sees the thoughts you have not confessed to anyone, including yourself. There is no darkness dark enough to hide in. This is terrifying — until you realize who is doing the seeing.

The God who searches you is the God who sent His Son to die for you. He did not go looking for a version of you that had cleaned itself up first. Christ went to the cross for the you He already saw completely. Substitution means He took the weight of what He found. The blood covers what the light exposes.

That is why David can end the psalm by asking to be searched more, not less: "Search me, O God, and know my heart... and lead me in the way everlasting." Being fully known by a holy God would crush us if we were not fully loved by Him in Christ. But we are. So stop curating. Let Him into the room you keep locked. He is already there. He is waiting to lead you out.

For Reflection

What is the room in your life you have been trying to keep God out of, and what would it look like to invite Him in today?

Prayer

Father, You have searched me and known me, and I cannot hide from You even if I try. Forgive me for the small performances, the curated life, the rooms I keep locked. Thank You that in Christ I am fully known and fully loved — that the blood of Your Son covers everything Your eyes see. Search me now. Show me what needs to come into the light. Lead me in the way everlasting. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

When No One Cares for Your Soul — July 14, 2026

A Prayer From the Back of the Cave — July 13, 2026

The Word That Will Judge You on the Last Day — July 11, 2026

Image: Nicolas Poussin, Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun, c. 1658, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Fletcher Fund, 1924 via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Look to the right and see:

there is none who takes notice of me;

no refuge remains to me;

no one cares for my soul.

— Psalm 142:4 (ESV)

Historical Context

The superscription places this psalm in a cave. There are two candidates in David's life: Adullam (1 Samuel 22) and En-gedi (1 Samuel 24). Either way, David is a hunted man. Saul, the anointed king, has turned murderous, and David — already anointed by Samuel as Saul's successor — is on the run through the wilderness of Judah, sleeping rough, dodging patrols, waiting on a promise God made years earlier that has not yet come to pass.

A maskil is a psalm intended to instruct. David isn't just venting; he's teaching Israel — and us — how to pray when life collapses. Ancient Hebrew culture was thickly communal. To be cut off from family, tribe, and the worshiping assembly was to be socially dead. That is exactly David's situation. The men who have joined him at Adullam are debtors and outcasts (1 Sam 22:2), not the kind of network that can protect a fugitive from a king.

The phrase "look to the right" refers to the place where a defender or legal advocate would stand in court. David looks to that spot and finds it empty. No one will speak for him. No one will vouch for him. The petition to be brought "out of prison" is likely metaphorical — the cave itself has become his cell, and his circumstances a set of iron bars he cannot pick.

This is the psalm the early church associated with Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross, and the psalm believers have prayed from prison cells and sickbeds for three thousand years. It is a script for the darkest room you will ever sit in.

Reflection

There is a particular loneliness that comes when you realize no human being can rescue you. Not your spouse. Not your pastor. Not your closest friend. They may love you, but they cannot reach where you are. David looks to his right — the place of the advocate — and the seat is empty.

Most of us will sit in that cave at some point. A diagnosis. A betrayal. A sin we cannot seem to kill. A grief that has outlasted everyone else's patience with it. And in that place we discover something the comfortable never learn: that human refuge was always thinner than we thought, and that God has been the real refuge all along.

Notice what David does. He does not pretend to be fine. He does not perform piety. He pours out his complaint — the Hebrew word means to empty a jar completely. Faith is not the absence of anguish; faith is bringing the anguish to the right Person. The cave is not the enemy of prayer. The cave is often the making of it.

And then verse 5: "You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living." That is a confession made through gritted teeth in the dark, and it is the hinge of the whole psalm. Everything changes when a suffering saint says, You are enough.

Christ Himself prayed this way in Gethsemane, and He was heard. Because He was abandoned on the cross — no one at His right hand, no one caring for His soul — you never will be. The empty seat beside David was filled at Calvary. The Advocate you need has already spoken for you, and He will not lose His case.

For Reflection

When you last felt that no one truly cared for your soul, what did you do with that ache — and what would it look like to bring it to God the way David does here?

Prayer

Father, when the walls close in and the seat at our right hand is empty, teach us to pour out our complaint before You and not to anyone else. You are our refuge. You are our portion in the land of the living. Thank You that Jesus was forsaken so that we would never be. Bring us out of every prison — of circumstance, of sin, of despair — that we may give thanks to Your name among the righteous. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

A Prayer From the Back of the Cave — July 13, 2026

The Word That Will Judge You on the Last Day — July 11, 2026

Take the Sandals Off Your Feet — July 9, 2026

Image: David at the Cave of Adullam (Metropolitan Museum of Art — period print), c. 17th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art — Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

I cry to you, O LORD;

I say, "You are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living."

Psalm 142:5

Historical Context

The superscription tells us this is a maskil — a teaching psalm — composed by David "when he was in the cave." Most likely this is the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22) or the cave at En-gedi (1 Samuel 24), where David hid from Saul. He had already been anointed king by Samuel. He had already killed Goliath. He had already been Saul's celebrated captain. And now he is a fugitive, sleeping in rock crevices in the Judean wilderness, hunted by the very king he had served.

Caves in that country are not romantic hiding places. They are damp, dark, cramped, often shared with wild animals. Saul had four thousand men. David had a growing band of the discontented and desperate (1 Samuel 22:2) — hardly an army. To the outside eye, God's promise through Samuel looked like a cruel joke.

A maskil was written to instruct the congregation. That matters. David is not simply venting into the dark; he is deliberately teaching Israel — and us — how a righteous man prays when he is cornered. The Hebrew word translated "complaint" in verse 2 (siach) does not mean grumbling; it means the pouring out of anxious meditation. This is not a rebellious fist shaken at heaven. It is a son emptying his heart before his Father.

The psalm assumes what Israel's whole worship assumed: that the LORD hears, that He is near, and that covenant loyalty flows both ways. David can be this honest because he knows to whom he is speaking.

Reflection

There is a particular loneliness David names in verse 4 that many believers know but few will admit: "no one cares for my soul." Not that no one likes you — that no one is watching the deepest, truest part of you and taking responsibility for it. Friends drift. Family misunderstands. Coworkers see the surface. And you sit with the strange ache of being surrounded and unknown.

David does two things in that ache, and both are worth learning.

First, he uses his voice. Twice in verse 1: "With my voice… with my voice." He does not merely think his prayer. He speaks it. There is something about vocalizing our trouble to God that gathers the scattered pieces of a fainting spirit and hands them over. If you have been praying in your head for months and drying up, try opening your mouth, even alone in your car, and telling God plainly what is wrong.

Second, he names God's identity before he names his need. "You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living." Notice: refuge, not rescue. David asks for rescue in the next breath, but he grounds himself first in who God is regardless of what God does next. If the cave is where you die, God is still your portion. If deliverance comes, God is still your portion. Circumstances cannot promote or demote Him.

And here is the gospel edge of this psalm: there is One who prayed a deeper version of it. Christ, in a darker cave — a tomb — was brought out that He might give thanks to His Father's name. Because He was raised, your cave is not the end of your story either. The righteous will surround you. He deals bountifully still.

For Reflection

What would change in your prayer life this week if you spoke your complaint aloud to God instead of only turning it over silently in your mind?

Prayer

Father, You know my way when my spirit faints within me. You see the traps I cannot see and the loneliness I cannot name. Teach me to lift my voice to You before I lift it to anyone else. You are my refuge and my portion — not only when You rescue me, but in the waiting, in the cave, in the dark. Bring me out that I may give thanks to Your name. And until You do, hold me fast in Christ, in whom every promise is Yes. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

The Word That Will Judge You on the Last Day — July 11, 2026

Take the Sandals Off Your Feet — July 9, 2026

He Leaps Over the Mountains to Find You — July 8, 2026

Image: Claude Lorrain, Landscape with David at the Cave of Adullam (Claude Lorrain) — the setting of Psalm 142, c. 1658, National Gallery, London — Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.

John 12:46-48

Historical Context

John 12 sits at a hinge. Jesus has raised Lazarus, entered Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna, and predicted his own death. Verse 36 tells us he then "departed and hid himself" from the crowds. The public ministry is over. From chapter 13 on, Jesus speaks only to his disciples, in the upper room and on the way to Gethsemane.

So verses 44-50 read like a closing statement to Israel — a final courtroom appeal before the Passion. John does not tell us where or when Jesus cried these words out; he presents them as a summary verdict on everything Jesus has said publicly. "Cried out" (ekraxen) is a herald's word, the same verb John used for John the Baptist's proclamation in 1:15. This is Jesus' last public sermon in the Fourth Gospel.

The audience matters. John has just quoted Isaiah on hardened hearts (12:37-41) and noted that many rulers believed but would not confess Jesus for fear of the synagogue (12:42-43). To a first-century Jewish hearer, the claim that seeing Jesus is seeing the Father, and that Jesus speaks only what the Father commands, was not a modest religious sentiment. It was a claim to be the true Shekinah, the true voice from Sinai. The commandment Moses received was written on stone; the commandment Jesus brings, he says, is eternal life itself. Reject the Son, and you have rejected the One who sent him. That is the frame in which John wants us to read every word that follows.

Reflection

Two truths sit side by side here, and we must not soften either one.

First: Jesus came to save. "I did not come to judge the world but to save the world." If you are afraid of God today, hear that plainly. The Son was not sent as a prosecutor. He was sent as light into darkness, as rescue for people who cannot rescue themselves. Every word from his mouth is aimed at your salvation.

Second: his words are not optional, and they do not go away. "The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day." We tend to imagine judgment as God dredging up our sins from some cosmic file. Jesus says something more searching: the sermons you half-heard, the commands you shrugged off, the invitations you postponed — those very words will be present at the last day. They will still be true. They will still be his. And they will speak.

This is a mercy, actually. It means there is no secret standard, no hidden trapdoor. What Jesus said is what he meant, and what he meant is what will stand. You already know most of what you need to know. Love God. Repent. Believe in the Son. Take up your cross. Forgive. Do not fear those who kill the body. His commandment, he tells us, is eternal life.

So the question this passage puts to us is not, "Am I religious enough?" It is: what have I done with the words of Jesus I have actually heard? Not the ones I wish he had said, or the ones I imagine he might say if he were nicer. The ones he said. Those are the words that will meet us on the last day — and better to meet them now, on our knees, than then.

For Reflection

Which of Jesus' actual words have you been quietly setting aside — and what would it look like to receive them today instead of on the last day?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you came as light into our darkness, not to condemn us but to save us. Forgive us for the words of yours we have heard and shrugged off, softened, or explained away. Give us ears that receive your commandments as what they truly are — eternal life. Let us not wait for the last day to reckon with what you have said. Speak, Lord; your servants are listening. In your holy name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Take the Sandals Off Your Feet — July 9, 2026

He Leaps Over the Mountains to Find You — July 8, 2026

The Voice That Calls You Out of Winter — July 7, 2026

Image: Luca Giordano, Luca Giordano — The Young Christ Teaching in the Temple (Cleveland Museum of Art), c. 1653, Cleveland Museum of Art — Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Then he said, "Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

Exodus 3:5

Historical Context

Moses is forty years into obscurity. Once a prince of Egypt, he had killed a man, fled Pharaoh's wrath, and settled in Midian, marrying into the family of Jethro, a local priest. The heir apparent of the world's greatest empire is now a hired shepherd in the desert, tending someone else's animals. His people, meanwhile, are still groaning under Egyptian slavery — the cries that opened chapter 2 have gone up to God, and God has "remembered" his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 2:24).

Horeb — another name for Sinai — is called "the mountain of God" here almost by anticipation. It will become the mountain of the covenant, the mountain of the Law, the mountain where Israel meets the LORD as a nation. But on this day it is just a rock in the wilderness, and Moses is just a man looking for pasture.

The "angel of the LORD" in verse 2 is no ordinary messenger. Verse 4 identifies the speaker as the LORD himself — YHWH — and God speaks in the first person throughout. Ancient readers understood: this is a genuine appearance of God, a theophany, communicated through fire that burns without consuming. Fire in the Old Testament is God's signature: consuming, purifying, dangerous, holy.

The command to remove sandals reflects ancient Near Eastern reverence — you did not track the dirt of the common road onto sacred space. But here the meaning runs deeper. The ground is not holy because of the mountain. The ground is holy because God is there. Moses is being taught, before he is sent, what kind of God is sending him.

Reflection

God meets Moses in the middle of a workday. Not in a temple, not in a vision quest, not after weeks of fasting — while he is watching sheep. The God of Abraham interrupts the ordinary, and the ordinary becomes the doorway to the extraordinary.

But notice what God does not do. He does not embrace Moses. He does not begin with warm assurances. His first word is a boundary: "Do not come near." Before Moses can be commissioned, he must learn that the God who calls him is holy — set apart, other, dangerous in his purity. The bush that burns without being consumed is a parable of God himself: self-sustaining, self-existing, needing nothing, giving everything. This is the God who a few verses later will name himself "I AM."

We have lost much of this. Modern religion tends to reach for the friendly God, the God who is a supportive companion, the God who exists to affirm us. That God does not exist. The God who does exist is the God of the burning bush — the God before whom Moses hid his face, afraid to look. And yet — this is the wonder — this holy God knows Moses by name, and calls him twice, tenderly: "Moses, Moses."

Holiness and nearness are not opposites in the God of the Bible. They meet supremely at the cross, where the fire that would consume us fell on Christ instead, so that we could be brought near without being destroyed. The ground beneath your feet today, wherever you stand, is holy ground if the Lord is there. Take off your sandals. Come with reverence. He is calling your name.

For Reflection

Where in your ordinary week — your workplace, your kitchen, your commute — might God be waiting to meet you, if only you would turn aside to see?

Prayer

Holy Father, you are the God who dwells in unapproachable light, and yet you call us by name. Forgive us for the smallness of our thoughts about you, for approaching you casually when we should tremble, and for forgetting you when we should worship. Give us eyes to see the fire in the bush — to notice you at work in the ordinary places of our lives. Draw us near through the blood of your Son, that we may stand on holy ground unafraid. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

He Leaps Over the Mountains to Find You — July 8, 2026

The Voice That Calls You Out of Winter — July 7, 2026

Arise, My Love, and Come Away — July 5, 2026

Image: Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), Landscape with Moses and the Burning Bush, c. 1610–16, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1976 via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice.

Song of Solomon 2:8-9

Historical Context

The Song of Solomon is a wedding song, associated with Solomon and set among the vineyards and hill country of ancient Israel. On its plainest level it celebrates the love between a bride and her bridegroom — physical, tender, unashamed, and covenantal. In a culture that often treated marriage as property arrangement, the Song insists that faithful marital love is holy, beautiful, and worth singing about at length. That literal meaning matters, and it undergirds a Christian sexual ethic that locates desire within the covenant God designed.

But the Song has always been read by the Church as more than that. From the earliest rabbis through the Church Fathers — Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux — believers have heard in these verses the voice of the LORD to His people, and of Christ to His Church. This is not fanciful spiritualizing. The prophets themselves cast the covenant between God and Israel as a marriage (Hosea, Isaiah 54, Ezekiel 16), and the New Testament crowns the story with Christ the Bridegroom and the Church His Bride (Ephesians 5, Revelation 19).

In today's passage, the bride hears her beloved's voice from a distance and then sees him — bounding across the hills like a young stag, arriving at the wall of her house, peering through the lattice. Winter is over; spring has broken open. He calls her out. To an original hearer this was a picture of eager, unstoppable love. To ears trained by the whole of Scripture, it is also a picture of how the God of Israel comes for His own.

Reflection

Notice who moves first. The bride is inside; the beloved comes leaping. He crosses the mountains. He stands at the wall. He looks through the lattice. He speaks. Every verb belongs to him until, at last, he calls her to arise.

This is how the gospel works. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). While we were still sinners, Christ came bounding over every obstacle sin had piled up — over the mountain of the Law we could not keep, over the hill of Calvary, over the sealed stone of the tomb — to stand at the wall of our hearts and speak. He is not a distant deity waiting to see if we will climb up to Him. He is the Bridegroom in pursuit.

And what does He say? "Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away." He does not say, "Clean yourself up first." He does not say, "Prove you are worthy." He calls the beloved beautiful and then calls her out. The winter is past. The rain is over and gone. What was dead is budding. What was silent is singing.

Many of us are still crouched inside the house of our old winter — old sins, old shame, old habits of hiding from God behind the lattice, half-hoping He will not really see us. He sees. He has always seen. And His word to the repentant sinner clothed in Christ's righteousness is not condemnation but summons: come away with Me.

To arise is to obey. It is to leave the room where winter still rules and walk out into the resurrection morning where the Bridegroom is waiting. He has already done the leaping. Ours is to rise.

For Reflection

What "winter" in your life are you still hiding inside, even though the Bridegroom is standing at the lattice calling you out?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, Bridegroom of our souls, we thank You that You did not wait for us to climb to You but came leaping over every mountain our sin had raised. You stood at the wall. You spoke our name. You call us beautiful because You have made us so by Your blood. Give us grace to rise at Your voice, to leave the winter behind, and to walk with You into the springtime of Your kingdom. We are Yours. In Your holy name we pray, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

The Voice That Calls You Out of Winter — July 7, 2026

Arise, My Love, and Come Away — July 5, 2026

Married to the Risen One — July 2, 2026

Image: Aharon April, Aharon April — Song of Songs series, c. 20th century — Wikimedia Commons via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills… My beloved speaks and says to me: 'Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone.'

Song of Solomon 2:8, 10-11

Historical Context

The Song of Solomon is a Hebrew love poem, traditionally ascribed to Solomon and preserved in Israel's Scriptures as a celebration of covenant love between husband and wife. On its plain level, it is an unembarrassed poem about the goodness of marital desire — a gift from God written into the canon precisely because human love, rightly ordered, reflects something true about God himself.

But Jewish and Christian readers have always heard a second voice in this song. The rabbis read it as a picture of the Lord's love for Israel; the Church Fathers, following the pattern already set in Hosea, Ezekiel 16, Isaiah 54, and Ephesians 5, read it as Christ's love for his Bride, the Church, and for each soul within her. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux — some of the deepest devotional writing in Christian history flows from this book.

In our passage, the beloved arrives at the woman's house in spring. Palestinian winters are wet and gray; the rains stop in late March, and suddenly the land explodes — anemones and cyclamen bloom, migrating turtledoves return, the early figs form, the vines flower with a fragrance that fills the hillsides. Into that setting the beloved comes bounding like a stag, stands at the lattice, and calls her out of the shuttered house into the new world.

The original hearers would have known this scene bodily: the smell of blossom after months of mud, the first birdsong, the relief of light. The Spirit gave us this poem so we would know that love — divine and human — arrives like that.

Reflection

Notice who moves first. The beloved is not summoned; he comes. He crosses the mountains. He stands at the wall. He speaks through the lattice. And what he says is not a rebuke but an invitation: Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.

This is the shape of the gospel. While we were still sinners — shuttered indoors, wintered over, unable to make ourselves lovely — Christ came bounding across every barrier that stood between heaven and us. He did not wait at a polite distance. He took on our flesh, climbed the hill of Calvary, broke the last wall by rising from the grave, and now stands at the window of every human heart and calls.

And he calls his people beautiful. Not because we have made ourselves so, but because he has washed us in his own blood and clothed us in his righteousness. The bride of Christ is beautiful because her Bridegroom has said so, and his word makes the thing it says.

What winter has kept you indoors? Some winters are the frost of sin — habits you have hidden in the dark so long you no longer believe you can leave them. Some are the gray of grief, or shame, or a faith that has gone cold and dutiful. Christ does not shout through the lattice, 'Fix yourself and then come out.' He says, 'The winter is past. Arise. Come away with me.'

The rain is over. He has borne the storm in your place. The flowers are appearing. What he asks is that you rise and follow the voice — into confession, into worship, into obedience, into the life he has already made ready.

For Reflection

What is the wintered, shuttered place in your life where Christ is standing at the lattice right now, calling you out?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, Bridegroom of our souls, we hear your voice. You came leaping over every mountain that stood between us and the Father, and you stand at the window of our hearts even now. Forgive us for the winters we have preferred to your springtime. Break the shutters we have closed against you. Give us grace to arise, to leave what must be left, and to come away with you into the life you have won by your blood. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Arise, My Love, and Come Away — July 5, 2026

Married to the Risen One — July 2, 2026

The Terrible Weight of Seeing Miracles — July 1, 2026

Image: Venetian-Cretan school, Ecce Homo / Christ the Bridegroom (Nymphios) — Venetian-Cretan school, c. 16th–17th century — Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills... My beloved speaks and says to me: 'Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.'

Song of Solomon 2:8-10

Historical Context

The Song of Solomon — also called the Song of Songs, meaning the greatest of songs — is a Hebrew love poem traditionally attributed to Solomon, though its final form may have been shaped later. On its surface it is exactly what it appears to be: a passionate exchange between a bride and her bridegroom, celebrating covenant love in vivid, unembarrassed terms. Ancient Israel did not consider marital love too earthy for sacred Scripture; they considered it a signpost.

From the earliest days, both Jewish and Christian readers understood the Song to speak on two levels at once. The rabbis heard in it the love between the Lord and Israel. The Church Fathers — Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux — heard the voice of Christ calling His Bride, the Church, and each soul within her. This is not a later imposition on the text. The prophets had already used marriage as the controlling image of God's covenant (Hosea, Isaiah 62, Ezekiel 16), and the New Testament crowns the picture: Christ is the Bridegroom, the Church His Bride (Ephesians 5, Revelation 19).

In our passage the bride hears her beloved coming — leaping over mountains, refusing to be delayed. He stands at the lattice and calls her out. The setting is springtime in the land: the winter rains have ended, fig trees are budding, turtledoves have returned from migration. For an agrarian people who knew hunger through the wet months, spring was resurrection made visible. And into that world the bridegroom's voice calls: Arise. Come away.

Reflection

Christ is not a distant deity waiting to be coaxed down. He is the Bridegroom who leaps over mountains to reach you. That is the picture Scripture insists on — the God who runs, who bounds, who will not be kept out by walls or lattices, who stands at the window of your life and calls your name.

And notice what He calls you to. Not to a task first, not to a program, not even first to moral improvement. He calls you to Himself. "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." The Christian life is not primarily about performance for a stern Master. It is about a Bridegroom who has already given Himself for His Bride on the Cross, who has risen, and who now calls her out of the long winter into His presence.

Many of us have lived through a real winter — of grief, of failure, of dryness, of habitual sin that felt frozen solid. Hear the Song again: the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. In Christ, resurrection is not just a doctrine; it is a season He brings into the soul. The flowers appear. The singing begins.

But the call requires a response: Arise. Come away. You cannot follow the Bridegroom while clinging to the old bed of the flesh. Repentance is how the Bride gets up. Faith is how she walks toward Him. And the fragrance of the vines, the fig tree's early fruit — these are the ordinary works of love that begin to appear in a life that has heard His voice and answered.

He is at the lattice today. He is still calling.

For Reflection

Where in your life is Christ standing at the window and calling you to arise — and what has kept you in the winter?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, Bridegroom of our souls, we hear Your voice at the lattice and we thank You that You did not wait to be sought but came leaping over every mountain to find us. Forgive us for lingering in winters of our own making. Give us grace to arise, to come away with You, and to walk in the springtime of Your resurrection. Let the fruit of Your Spirit blossom in us, and let our lives give forth the fragrance of Your love. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Married to the Risen One — July 2, 2026

The Terrible Weight of Seeing Miracles — July 1, 2026

Fire on Mount Carmel — June 30, 2026

Image: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti — The Beloved (1866, inspired by the Song of Songs), c. 1866, Tate Britain, London — Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Romans 7:4

Historical Context

Paul writes to the church at Rome around A.D. 57, likely from Corinth, near the end of his third missionary journey. He has not yet visited Rome, and the letter is his most careful, extended presentation of the gospel — sent ahead of him to a congregation he hopes will support his mission to Spain.

The Roman church was mixed: Jewish believers who knew the Law of Moses from childhood, and Gentile converts who did not. This tension runs underneath the whole letter. In chapter 6 Paul has just insisted that grace does not license sin. Now in chapter 7 he turns to a related question that would trouble any thoughtful Jewish Christian: if we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, what is our relationship to the Torah — the Law that God himself gave at Sinai?

Paul answers with a legal analogy his readers would immediately grasp. In both Jewish and Roman law, marriage bound a wife to her husband until death. Only death dissolved the bond. To take another husband while the first still lived was adultery; after his death, remarriage was honorable and free.

Paul's point is not primarily about marriage — he is using it as a picture. The Law is not evil (he will defend it vigorously later in the chapter). But the believer's relationship to it has been fundamentally changed by union with the crucified and risen Christ. Something has died. Something new has begun. To Jewish believers wondering whether they had abandoned Moses, and to Gentile believers wondering whether they should take Moses on, Paul explains what has actually happened to them in Christ.

Reflection

Paul's analogy is startling: you were married to the Law, and that marriage held you fast. Not because the Law was a cruel husband — it wasn't — but because the Law could only command, never enable. It exposed your sin and demanded righteousness you could not produce. The harder you tried, the more your sinful passions were stirred up, bearing fruit for death.

Then something happened. You died. In the body of Christ, on the cross, you died to that old marriage. And now — Paul's language is tender and staggering — you belong to another. You are married to the risen Christ.

Think about what that means. Your standing before God no longer depends on your performance of a written code. It depends on your union with a living Person who cannot die again. The bond cannot be broken because the Bridegroom cannot perish. He was raised from the dead, and you are his.

This is not license. Paul is not saying we may now sin freely. He is saying the opposite: the old arrangement produced fruit for death; this new union produces fruit for God. A wife who loves her husband does not need a legal code to make her faithful. She serves in the new way of the Spirit, from the inside out.

If you have been living the Christian life as endless striving — trying to earn what has already been given, terrified that one failure will end the marriage — hear Paul again. You died. You were raised with Christ. You belong to him. Live like it. Bear fruit not to secure his love, but because his love has already secured you.

For Reflection

Where in your walk with Christ are you still living as though married to the Law rather than to the risen Lord?

Prayer

Risen Lord Jesus, we thank you that we belong to you — not by our striving, but by your death and resurrection. Forgive us for the times we live as though we must earn what you have already given. Fill us with your Spirit, that our obedience would flow from love, not fear, and that our lives would bear fruit for our Father's glory. Keep us faithful to you, our true and eternal Bridegroom. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

The Terrible Weight of Seeing Miracles — July 1, 2026

Fire on Mount Carmel — June 30, 2026

By Myself I Have Sworn — June 29, 2026

Image: Follower of Hans Memling, File:Follower of Hans Memling - Birth, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ triptych - 1510-20.jpg, c. 1510 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

Matthew 11:21

Historical Context

Matthew is writing to a largely Jewish-Christian audience in the decades after Jesus' resurrection, and here he records one of the harshest speeches from Jesus' Galilean ministry. Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum were three towns clustered around the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, within a few miles of each other. Capernaum was Jesus' adopted hometown after he left Nazareth — Peter's house was there, and it served as the base for much of his public work. Bethsaida was the hometown of Peter, Andrew, and Philip. If you plotted Jesus' healings and sermons on a map, this small triangle of villages would light up.

Tyre and Sidon, by contrast, were Phoenician port cities on the Mediterranean coast — Gentile, pagan, and famous in the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 23, Ezekiel 26-28) as symbols of proud, idolatrous commerce that God had judged. Sodom, of course, was the byword for wickedness so complete that fire fell from heaven.

Jesus' listeners would have expected him to contrast faithful Israel with these notorious pagan places to Israel's credit. He does the opposite. The Galilean towns had seen the Messiah with their own eyes — the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, demons cast out — and had responded with a shrug. Sackcloth and ashes, the ancient posture of grief-stricken repentance, was nowhere to be found.

The language of being "brought down to Hades" echoes Isaiah 14's taunt against the king of Babylon. Jesus is putting Capernaum, the town that hosted him, in the category of proud kingdoms marked for judgment.

Reflection

There is a particular danger in being close to the things of God. Chorazin and Bethsaida were not wicked in the lurid way Sodom was wicked. They were ordinary towns full of ordinary people who saw extraordinary things and simply carried on with their lives. That is what earned Jesus' woe.

We should feel the sting of this. Many of us have been in church since we could walk. We have heard the gospel preached hundreds of times. We have seen prayers answered, marriages restored, addictions broken, deathbeds made peaceful by the presence of Christ. We have held the Scriptures in our hands in a dozen translations. If Jesus judges cities by the light they received, what will he say to us?

The passage crushes two lies at once. The first is that God grades on a curve and being a decent, churchgoing person will surely be enough. Jesus says it will be more bearable for Sodom than for Capernaum. Proximity to grace is not the same as receiving grace. The second lie is that judgment is somehow beneath Jesus — that the real Jesus is only gentle, only affirming. The real Jesus wept over these towns and pronounced woe on them in the same breath. Love and warning are not opposites in his mouth.

The remedy Jesus names is not more religious activity. It is sackcloth and ashes — the honest grief of a soul that knows it has treated the King casually. Repentance is not a one-time transaction we completed years ago. It is the daily posture of people who have seen too much of Christ's mercy to keep living as though he were optional.

For Reflection

Where in your life have you grown so familiar with the works of Christ that you have stopped responding to them?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, forgive us for the miracles we have taken for granted and the mercies we have shrugged at. We have heard your voice and gone on with our own plans. Break the numbness in us. Give us the honest grief of sackcloth and ashes, and the honest joy of those who know they have been spared. Let familiarity never dull our love for you, and let your warnings drive us deeper into your grace. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Fire on Mount Carmel — June 30, 2026

By Myself I Have Sworn — June 29, 2026

Four How Longs and One But — June 27, 2026

Image: David Teniers III, File:David Teniers III - The Destruction of Sodom - 1987.26 - Dallas Museum of Art.jpg, c. 1658 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, 'O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.' Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, 'The LORD, he is God; the LORD, he is God.'

1 Kings 18:36-39

Historical Context

First Kings was compiled during or after the Babylonian exile, looking back on the long, sad story of Israel's kings to explain how the covenant people ended up uprooted from the land. The compiler wants exiles to see plainly that Israel's collapse was not because the LORD failed, but because the people abandoned Him.

The contest on Mount Carmel sits in the ninth century B.C., under King Ahab of the northern kingdom. Ahab had married Jezebel, a princess of Sidon, and through her imported the worship of Baal — the Canaanite storm-god who supposedly sent rain and fertility. For a farming people in a land that lives or dies by the rains, Baal was a powerful temptation. Ahab built a temple for him in Samaria; Jezebel hunted down the prophets of the LORD.

Elijah had announced a drought three years earlier (1 Kings 17:1) — a direct challenge to Baal's supposed jurisdiction. Now he summons all Israel to Carmel, a ridge near the Mediterranean coast, and proposes a test: two bulls, two altars, no fire. The god who answers by fire is God. The 450 prophets of Baal cry, dance, and gash themselves from morning until afternoon. Nothing.

Then Elijah rebuilds the LORD's broken-down altar with twelve stones — one for each tribe, a quiet reminder that Israel is still one people under one God — drenches the sacrifice with water three times, and prays. The 'time of the oblation' is the hour of the evening sacrifice in Jerusalem, tying this northern showdown back to true temple worship.

Reflection

Notice how short Elijah's prayer is. The prophets of Baal had been screaming and cutting themselves for hours. Elijah says roughly thirty-five words in English, and fire falls from heaven.

God is not moved by volume, by frenzy, or by religious theatrics. He is moved by a servant who prays according to His word and for His glory. Read the prayer again: every petition is about God's name. Let it be known that you are God. Let this people know that you, O LORD, are God. Elijah is not asking to be vindicated. He is asking that the LORD be known.

We live among altars to other gods. They are subtler than Baal — comfort, career, sex, self, the approval of the room — but they make the same promise: serve us and we will give you life. And like Baal, they are silent when you need them most. The drought always comes. The fire never falls.

Elijah's confidence is worth pausing on. He soaks the sacrifice with water until the trench overflows, because he knows the LORD does not need easier conditions to work with. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is not embarrassed by impossible situations; He prefers them. They make it unmistakable whose power is at work.

And when fire falls, the people fall. They do not nod thoughtfully or add the LORD to their list. They land on their faces and confess twice: The LORD, He is God; the LORD, He is God. That is what true revival looks like — not enthusiasm, but surrender. Ask Him to do that work in you. Ask Him to burn away the altars you have been hedging your bets with.

For Reflection

What rival altar in your life have you been quietly maintaining alongside your worship of the LORD, and what would it look like to tear it down today?

Prayer

O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, You alone are God. Forgive us for the small altars we have built to comfort, to self, to the approval of others. Send the fire of Your Spirit to consume what cannot stand in Your presence, and turn our hearts back to You. Make us servants who pray short prayers with deep trust, who care more for Your name than our own. We fall on our faces and confess: the LORD, He is God. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

By Myself I Have Sworn — June 29, 2026

Four How Longs and One But — June 27, 2026

We Do Not Know What To Do — June 26, 2026

Image: Elijah challenging the prophets of Baal (period engraving) — Public Domain (period engraving) via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, 'By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.'

Genesis 22:15-18

Historical Context

Genesis was given to Israel through Moses, and chapter 22 sits at the climax of the Abraham cycle. Roughly twenty-five years earlier, God had called a childless man out of Ur with a sevenfold promise (Genesis 12:1-3): land, offspring, blessing for all nations. Isaac was the long-awaited son of that promise, born when Abraham was a hundred. Then God commanded Abraham to take Isaac to Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering.

The ancient Near East knew child sacrifice — the Canaanites and Phoenicians practiced it. But the God of Abraham had never demanded such a thing, and the entire narrative turns on the fact that He stops Abraham's hand and provides a ram caught in the thicket. Verses 15-18 are God's response after the test. The 'angel of the LORD' speaks as the LORD Himself, in the first person.

What is striking — and what the writer of Hebrews later seizes on (Hebrews 6:13-18) — is that God swears 'by myself.' In the ancient world, a covenant oath was sworn by a greater power. There being no one greater, God swears by His own being. The original promise of Genesis 12 is now sealed with an unbreakable divine oath, and the location (Moriah, later identified with the temple mount) and the substitutionary ram both point forward. Israel, hearing this in the wilderness, learned that their existence rested not on their own faithfulness but on a sworn word older than Sinai — a word that already had the nations in view.

Reflection

Notice what God does here. He has already promised Abraham descendants, land, and blessing for the nations. He did not need to add anything. But after Abraham walks up that mountain with his son and the wood and the knife, God adds an oath — and He swears by Himself, because there is nothing greater to swear by.

That detail is for you. The author of Hebrews says God did this so that we 'might have strong encouragement to hold fast' (Heb. 6:18). Two unchangeable things — His promise and His oath — stand under your feet when everything else gives way.

And see what the oath secures: 'in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.' Paul tells us that offspring is Christ (Gal. 3:16). The mountain where a father did not withhold his only son becomes the pattern of another mountain, where the Father did not withhold His. The ram caught in the thicket is the shadow; the Lamb of God is the substance. Abraham received Isaac back alive; we receive a Savior risen from the dead.

So when your faith is thin and your obedience is shaky and you wonder whether the promises will hold — go back to Moriah. God has sworn. The blessing of the nations does not depend on your performance this week; it depends on the obedience of the Son who did not turn back. Your job is to take Him at His word and walk, like Abraham, one step at a time up whatever hill He has set in front of you. The One who swore by Himself cannot lie, and He will not fail you.

For Reflection

Where in your life right now do you most need to rest on God's sworn word rather than on your own strength or clarity?

Prayer

Father, You have sworn by Your own name, and there is no higher security in heaven or on earth. When our hearts are unsteady and our obedience falters, anchor us in the oath You made and the Son You did not withhold. Teach us to walk up every Moriah You set before us, trusting that You will provide. Bless the nations through Christ our Lord, and number us among those who hear Your voice and obey. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Four How Longs and One But — June 27, 2026

We Do Not Know What To Do — June 26, 2026

Our Sins Cast Into the Depths of the Sea — June 25, 2026

Image: Gustave Doré, File:Abraham,God and two angels.png, c. 1852 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

Psalm 13:1

Historical Context

Psalm 13 is a short personal lament by David, handed to the choirmaster for use in Israel's public worship. That detail matters: David's private anguish was not kept private. It was set to music and sung by the gathered people of God, which tells us Israel expected its worship to make room for raw honesty before the Lord.

We don't know the specific crisis behind the psalm. David faced many — Saul hunting him through the wilderness, Absalom's rebellion, illness, betrayal by trusted friends. The language is deliberately open enough that any believer in any trouble can pray it. What we do know is the shape of David's world: an enemy is gaining ground, David feels forgotten by God, and the silence has gone on long enough that he is starting to fear it is permanent.

The phrase "hide your face" is covenant language. In the Aaronic blessing, the Lord makes his face shine upon his people (Numbers 6:25). To have that face hidden is to feel cut off from the warmth of God's favor — not necessarily because you are cut off, but because you cannot feel it. David is not doubting God exists. He is wrestling with a God he knows is real and seems, at the moment, distant.

The psalm is built in three movements of two verses each: complaint (1–2), petition (3–4), and trust (5–6). Four times David asks "How long?" Then everything pivots on a single word in verse 5: "But." Hebrew poetry often turns on such hinges, and Israel sang this turn together — learning, in their bones, how faith moves through darkness toward hope.

Reflection

Notice what David does not do. He does not pretend he is fine. He does not lecture himself about how he shouldn't feel this way. He does not paste a verse over the wound and move on. He tells God exactly how it feels: forgotten, hidden from, sorrowful all day long, losing ground to the enemy. Four times: how long, how long, how long, how long.

This is prayer. Real prayer. If you have been taught that mature faith means never complaining to God, Psalm 13 is your permission slip torn up and replaced with a commission. The Lord put this prayer in the hymnbook. He wants you to bring him the ache.

But lament is not the destination. Watch the hinge in verse 5: "But I have trusted in your steadfast love." David doesn't say he feels better. He doesn't say the enemy has retreated or the sorrow has lifted. He says he has trusted — past tense, settled, already done. His feelings are still in verse 2. His faith has moved to verse 5. Both are true at once.

This is the Christian life in miniature. We groan, and we hope. We weep at the grave, and we know the One who stood outside Lazarus's tomb. We feel the hiddenness of God's face, and we cling to the Cross where that face was turned away from the Son so it would never be turned away from us. The steadfast love David trusted has a name now, and a body, and scars in his hands.

Sing verse 6 even when you can only feel verse 1. The bountiful dealing is already yours in Christ.

For Reflection

Where in your life are you stuck in the "how long" — and what would it look like this week to speak the "but" of verse 5 out loud, even before your feelings catch up?

Prayer

Father, you are not far from us, even when your face feels hidden. Teach us to bring our "how longs" to you honestly, without shame, and to trust your steadfast love when our hearts cannot yet feel it. Light up our eyes. Steady our trembling faith on the finished work of your Son, who was forsaken so we never will be. Give us songs to sing in the dark, until the morning comes. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

We Do Not Know What To Do — June 26, 2026

Our Sins Cast Into the Depths of the Sea — June 25, 2026

Sheep Sent Among Wolves — June 24, 2026

Image: Jean Le Noir, The Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, Duchess of Normandy, c. before 1349, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — The Cloisters Collection, 1969 via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

We are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

2 Chronicles 20:12

Historical Context

The Chronicler is writing after the exile, looking back on the kings of Judah and asking what made some reigns flourish and others collapse. His audience is a chastened people rebuilding their life around the temple, and he wants them to see that the throne of David stood or fell on whether the king trusted the LORD.

Jehoshaphat reigned in the ninth century B.C., a generation after the kingdom split. He had inherited a small, vulnerable southern kingdom hemmed in by stronger neighbors. In chapter 20, three of those neighbors — Moab, Ammon, and the men of Mount Seir (Edomite territory) — formed a coalition and marched on Judah from the south. They were already at En-gedi by the time word reached the king. There was no time to muster allies. Judah's army was outmatched.

Notice where Jehoshaphat goes. Not first to his generals, not to Egypt for chariots, not to a fortified city. He goes to the house of the LORD and calls a national fast. His prayer is built on the covenant: God's sovereignty over the nations (v.6), the promise to Abraham (v.7), and Solomon's dedication of the temple, where the king had said that in disaster Israel would cry out toward this house and be heard (v.9; see 2 Chronicles 6).

The sting in verse 10 is real: the very peoples Israel had spared in obedience to God under Moses were now repaying that mercy with invasion. Jehoshaphat lays it all before God and ends with the line that has carried God's people ever since: we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

Reflection

There is a particular kind of fear that strips you of options. The diagnosis is read aloud. The marriage is unraveling faster than you can patch it. The job is gone. The child has walked away from the faith and will not take your calls. You have prayed, planned, fasted, tried — and the army is still at En-gedi.

Jehoshaphat does not pretend to be braver than he is. He does not work himself up into a confidence he doesn't feel. He says it plainly in front of the whole assembly: we are powerless. We do not know what to do. This is not weakness; this is sanity. The first step of faith is often the admission that you have run out of yourself.

But he does not stop at despair. He finishes the sentence: our eyes are on you. He prays the promises back to God — what God has said, what God has done, what God has covenanted. He stands on the sanctuary, and we stand on something greater. The temple Jehoshaphat faced has been fulfilled in Christ, whose body was torn down and raised, and who now sits at the Father's right hand interceding for us. When you do not know what to do, you have a High Priest who does.

Lift your eyes. Not to your strength, which is gone. Not to your strategy, which has failed. Not even to your faith, which feels thin. Lift them to the Lord who rules over all the kingdoms of the nations, who heard Jehoshaphat and gave the victory the next day without Judah lifting a sword. He has not changed. Your powerlessness is not your problem; your gaze is.

For Reflection

Where in your life right now are you being asked to say honestly, "I do not know what to do" — and what would it look like this week to fix your eyes on the Lord instead of on the horde?

Prayer

Almighty God, our God of heaven, who rules over every kingdom and every power, we confess that we are not as strong as we have pretended to be. The troubles before us are real, and we do not know what to do. But our eyes are on you. Remind us of your promises. Steady us by your Spirit. Teach us to stand still and see your salvation, won for us by your Son who conquered every enemy at the cross and the empty tomb. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Our Sins Cast Into the Depths of the Sea — June 25, 2026

Sheep Sent Among Wolves — June 24, 2026

Be Faithful Unto Death — June 23, 2026

Image: Rogier van der Weyden, Man in Prayer, c. ca. 1440, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Bequest of Mary Stillman Harkness, 1950 via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

Micah 7:18-19

Historical Context

Micah prophesied in Judah in the late eighth century B.C., during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. The northern kingdom of Israel was about to fall to Assyria (722 B.C.), and Judah herself was wobbling — corrupt judges, dishonest merchants, idolatrous priests, and prophets who told rich men what they wanted to hear. Micah, a country prophet from Moresheth in the Judean foothills, did not flinch. The book is mostly hard words: courtrooms, sieges, exile, the leveling of Jerusalem.

But the book does not end there. Chapter seven moves from lament to confession to hope. The final three verses are sometimes called the climax of Micah's theology — a stunned question and a stack of promises. The question — "Who is a God like you?" — is almost certainly a play on Micah's own name, which means "Who is like Yahweh?" The prophet signs his book with his name turned into worship.

His original hearers would have caught the echoes. "Pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression" is lifted from Exodus 34, God's self-revelation to Moses after the golden calf. "Faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham" reaches back to Genesis. Micah is saying: the God who kept covenant then will keep covenant now, even with a people who deserve exile. The promise to tread iniquities underfoot and cast sins into the sea would have sounded extravagant to people who knew exactly what they had done. That is the point. Mercy is not measured by what we deserve but by who God is.

Reflection

There is a kind of Christian who knows the doctrine of forgiveness and still walks around carrying his sins in a sack. He confesses them, then picks them back up on the way out of church. He believes God forgives in theory and inspects himself in practice. Micah is written for him. Micah is written for you.

Look at the verbs. God pardons. He passes over. He does not retain. He has compassion. He treads underfoot. He casts into the sea. These are not polite gestures. This is a God actively, deliberately, gladly putting your sin where it cannot be retrieved. Corrie ten Boom famously added, "and posts a sign: No Fishing." That is exactly right. The sin you keep dredging up, God has drowned.

But notice what makes this possible. Micah says God "delights in steadfast love." He does not forgive grudgingly, as if mercy cost Him nothing. In fact mercy cost Him everything. The sea into which our sins were cast is, in the end, the wounded side of Christ on the cross. Sin was not waved away; it was tread underfoot when Jesus crushed the serpent's head. The pardon Micah glimpsed from a distance, we receive by name in the blood of the Lamb.

So repent honestly — Micah does not let us skip that step. Name the sin. Bring it into the light. Then believe what God says He has done with it. Do not insult the cross by clinging to what Christ has already drowned. Walk out forgiven. Live like a person whose debts have been paid, because they have.

For Reflection

What sin do you keep fishing back out of the sea that God has already drowned in the blood of Christ?

Prayer

Father, who is a God like You? You delight in steadfast love. You do not retain Your anger. You have cast our sins into the depths of the sea through the blood of Your Son. Forgive us for doubting what You have done. Forgive us for carrying what You have buried. Teach us to repent honestly and to believe boldly, walking as those whose debts are paid in full. Keep us faithful until we see You face to face. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Sheep Sent Among Wolves — June 24, 2026

Be Faithful Unto Death — June 23, 2026

Orthodox, Tireless, and Missing the One Thing — June 22, 2026

Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, File:Wenceslas Hollar - God's covenant with Abraham (State 1).jpg, c. 1607 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Matthew 10:16

Historical Context

Matthew writes this Gospel for a Jewish-Christian audience in the decades after the resurrection, likely before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Chapter 10 records what is often called the Missionary Discourse — Jesus sending out the Twelve on a limited mission to Israel before the cross.

The restriction in verses 5-6 (no Gentiles, no Samaritans) is not an ethnic exclusion but a matter of order. Israel was the covenant people, the vine to whom the Messiah was first promised. The Gentile mission comes later, after the resurrection (Matthew 28:19). For now, the lost sheep of Israel must hear that their King has come.

The instructions about no money, no extra tunic, no bag would have struck a first-century traveler as reckless. Roads were dangerous and inns expensive. Jesus is teaching dependence on God and on the hospitality of those who receive the message. The detail about shaking dust from the feet was something pious Jews did when leaving Gentile territory — Jesus startlingly applies it to Israelite towns that reject the gospel.

Then the discourse expands. Verses 16-23 look beyond the immediate journey to the long mission of the Church. Synagogue floggings, trials before governors and kings, betrayal within families — none of this happened during the Twelve's short tour through Galilee. Jesus is preparing them for what comes after Pentecost, what Acts records in vivid detail, and what every generation of Christians has faced somewhere in the world.

The coming of the Son of Man in verse 23 most likely refers to His vindication in judgment, fulfilled in stages from the resurrection to the fall of Jerusalem to His final return.

Reflection

Jesus does not flatter His messengers. He tells them plainly: I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Not as wolves among sheep. Not as a wolf pack of our own. Sheep — vulnerable, dependent, easily harmed. And He sends us anyway.

This cuts against two temptations in the Christian life. The first is to refuse to go at all, to hunker down in the safety of a Christian subculture and let the wolves have the field. The second is to go out armed like wolves ourselves — sharp-tongued, scheming, returning blow for blow, indistinguishable from the world we are trying to reach. Jesus rejects both. Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. Shrewd without being sly. Pure without being naive.

Notice what He promises and what He does not. He does not promise that we will be liked. He says, you will be hated by all for my name's sake. He does not promise a smooth path. He warns of courts, floggings, family betrayal. What He promises is that the Spirit of the Father will speak through us when we stand before kings, and that the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Endurance is the test. Not a moment of zeal, not a season of bold witness, but faithfulness through the long pressure of a world that does not want what Christ offers. We endure not because we are strong but because He has gone before us, suffered for us, and risen to reign. The wolves do not have the last word. The Shepherd does.

Go. Speak the kingdom. Trust Him for the words. Endure.

For Reflection

Where in your life right now are you tempted either to retreat from witness altogether or to fight back like a wolf rather than stand like a sheep?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, You send us out as sheep among wolves, and we are afraid. Give us the wisdom of serpents and the innocence of doves. When we are pressed, speak through us by Your Spirit. When we are hated for Your name, hold our hearts steady in Your love. Teach us to endure to the end, not in our own strength but in Yours. We are weak; You are King. Send us, and go with us. In Your name we pray, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Be Faithful Unto Death — June 23, 2026

Orthodox, Tireless, and Missing the One Thing — June 22, 2026

We Do Not Yet See, But We See Jesus — June 18, 2026

Image: Miguel Alcañiz the Elder, File:Saint Giles with Christ Triumphant over Satan and the Mission of the Apostles MET DP102155.jpg, c. 1408 — CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Revelation 2:10

Historical Context

Smyrna sat about forty miles north of Ephesus on the Aegean coast — a wealthy, beautiful Roman city famous for its loyalty to Rome and its temples to the emperor. To live in Smyrna was to live under constant pressure to participate in the imperial cult. Once a year, citizens were expected to burn a pinch of incense and confess, 'Caesar is Lord.' Christians could not, and would not, say it. Jesus is Lord.

That refusal cost them. The little church in Smyrna was poor — likely because believers lost jobs, contracts, and inheritances. They were also targeted by hostile elements in the local Jewish community, who appear to have denounced Christians to the Roman authorities. Jesus, with shocking force, calls this denunciation 'the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan' — not a comment on ethnicity, but a judgment on those who used their religious standing to hand Christ's people over to suffering.

The letter is written by John, exiled on Patmos around A.D. 95, during the reign of Domitian. Of the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2–3, only two receive no rebuke from Christ: Smyrna and Philadelphia. Both are suffering churches.

The warning of 'ten days' of tribulation likely signals a limited, defined season of persecution — real but bounded. History bears this out: within decades, Smyrna's beloved bishop Polycarp would be burned at the stake there, refusing to curse Christ with the words, 'Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong.' Smyrna heard this letter. Smyrna obeyed it.

Reflection

Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not promise to spare them. He does not tell them their suffering is a misunderstanding, or that if they have enough faith, the prison doors will not close. He tells them plainly: some of you are going to prison. Some of you are going to die.

And then He says, 'Do not fear.'

How? On what grounds can a poor, hated, soon-to-be-imprisoned Christian not be afraid? On the grounds of who is speaking. 'The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.' The One giving the command has already walked through the worst the devil could do. The grave could not hold Him. He is not a distant deity offering thoughts and prayers — He is the risen Lord who knows their tribulation, sees their poverty, and calls it riches.

The crown of life is not a participation trophy. It is the victor's wreath given to those who finished the race without renouncing Christ. And the promise behind it is staggering: 'The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.' The first death — the death of the body — may come. It came for Polycarp. It has come for countless faithful since. But the second death, the death that truly destroys, has no claim on those who belong to Jesus.

Most of us are not facing prison this week. But we face smaller pressures to soften our confession, to stop saying the hard true things, to blend in. Smyrna's letter is for us too. Be faithful. Not clever. Not strategic. Faithful. The One who died and came to life is keeping the crown.

For Reflection

Where in your life right now is Jesus asking for plain faithfulness rather than a clever way out?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, First and Last, who died and came to life — we confess that we are quick to fear and slow to trust. Strengthen us where we are tempted to soften our witness or trade Your name for a quieter life. Teach us that what looks like poverty in Your service is true riches, and that the crown You give cannot be taken away. Make us faithful, even unto death, for You have already conquered death for us. In Your holy name we pray, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Orthodox, Tireless, and Missing the One Thing — June 22, 2026

We Do Not Yet See, But We See Jesus — June 18, 2026

All Night on the Mountain Before Choosing Twelve — June 17, 2026

Image: Hendrick ter Brugghen, The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John, c. ca. 1624–25, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Funds from various donors, 1956 via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.

Revelation 2:4-5

Historical Context

Revelation was written by the Apostle John near the end of the first century, most likely from exile on Patmos under the emperor Domitian. The seven letters in chapters 2 and 3 are addressed to real congregations in the Roman province of Asia (modern western Turkey), and they were meant to be read aloud and circulated.

Ephesus was the jewel of these cities — a wealthy port, home to the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Paul had labored there for nearly three years (Acts 19). Timothy pastored there. John himself, by tradition, had ministered there in his old age. Of all the churches in the New Testament, Ephesus had received the most apostolic teaching.

And it shows. By the time of this letter, the Ephesians had become discerning to a fault. They had tested traveling teachers who claimed apostolic authority and exposed them as frauds. They had rejected the Nicolaitans, a sect that apparently encouraged compromise with pagan idolatry and sexual license — a real temptation in a city where guild membership, social life, and worship of the goddess were tangled together. They had endured persecution without growing weary.

This is a church that, by every visible measure, was doing well. Sound. Tireless. Suffering faithfully. The kind of church we would want to join.

Which is exactly what makes the Lord's diagnosis so arresting. The risen Christ — the one who walks among the lampstands, holding their very life in his hand — sees something underneath the activity that the Ephesians themselves had apparently stopped noticing. The fire had gone cool. The marriage had become a contract.

Reflection

It is possible to be right about everything and still be losing the thing that matters most.

The Ephesians had not drifted into heresy. They had not gone soft on sin. They had not stopped working. If anything, they were the model of a discerning, faithful, hard-edged church. And the Lord Jesus says: I have this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first.

First love is not sentimentality. It is the warmth that gave the labor its meaning — love for Christ himself, and from that, love for his people. Strip that out, and what remains is machinery. Correct, perhaps. Tireless, even. But cold. A lampstand that no longer gives light is not a lampstand, and Christ warns that he will remove it.

Notice the medicine he prescribes: remember, repent, and do the works you did at first. Remember — go back and look honestly at where you used to walk with him. Repent — call the cooling what it is, not a maturing but a falling. And then do the first works again. Not new feelings summoned out of thin air, but the old, familiar acts of love: prayer, Scripture, confession, the table, the neighbor. Love often returns through the door of obedience.

This letter is a mercy. The risen Christ does not abandon the cooling church; he writes to her. He still holds her star in his right hand. And to the one who conquers — who hears, repents, and returns — he promises the tree of life, the Eden we lost restored in the paradise of God.

Orthodoxy without love is a lamp with no oil. Christ wants both. He always has.

For Reflection

Where in your walk with Christ have you kept the works but lost the warmth — and what would it look like this week to return to the love you had at first?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you walk among the lampstands and you see what we cannot hide. We confess that we have kept the routines and let the love grow cold. Forgive us. Remind us where we have fallen. Stir again in us the warmth of our first love for you, and let our works flow from that fire and not from duty alone. Hold our lampstand in your right hand, and bring us at last to the tree of life in the paradise of God. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

We Do Not Yet See, But We See Jesus — June 18, 2026

All Night on the Mountain Before Choosing Twelve — June 17, 2026

Streams in the Desert of Our Waiting — June 16, 2026

Image: Hans Baldung Grien, File:Hans Baldung - St John at Patmos - WGA01203.jpg, c. 1511 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Hebrews 2:9

Historical Context

Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians, likely before the Temple's destruction in A.D. 70, who were tempted to drift back into the safer waters of synagogue Judaism. Confessing Jesus as Messiah had cost them homes, livelihoods, and standing. The author, whose identity the early church never settled on, writes a long sermon arguing that Christ is greater than every glory of the old covenant — greater than angels, Moses, Aaron, the sacrifices, the Temple itself.

In chapter 1 he has just established that the Son is higher than the angels. So why, in chapter 2, does he quote Psalm 8 about man being made lower than the angels? Because his readers needed to understand the strange shape of Christ's victory. Psalm 8 is a meditation on Genesis 1 — humanity crowned to rule creation under God. But anyone with eyes can see we do not rule creation. We are ruled by death, by sickness, by sin, by Caesar. The promise looks broken.

The original readers knew this acutely. Their friends had been imprisoned (Heb. 10:34). Some had been killed. The world was not in subjection to them; they were being crushed by it. The author does not deny this. He says plainly: "At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him." Then he pivots. We do not yet see the kingdom in full — but we see Jesus. One Man has already walked through death and come out crowned. The dominion Adam lost, the Last Adam has won, and He has won it precisely through suffering.

Reflection

There is an honesty in this passage that we need. The writer does not pretend the world looks redeemed. He does not tell suffering Christians to squint harder until everything appears fine. He concedes the obvious: we do not yet see all things subject to Christ. Cancer still kills. Tyrants still reign. Our own sins still surprise us with their stubbornness. The crown promised to humanity in Psalm 8 is not on our heads.

But then comes the pivot that holds the Christian life together: "But we see Jesus." Not yet the consummation. Not yet every tear wiped away. Not yet the lion lying down with the lamb. But we see the Man — true God and true man — who has already gone ahead of us through the worst the world could do, and who now wears the crown on our behalf. His glory is not a consolation prize for our defeat. It is the firstfruits of our victory. Where He has gone, His people will follow.

Notice how He was crowned: "because of the suffering of death." Not around it. Not in spite of it. Because of it. He tasted death for everyone — not as a tragic accident but as the very means of His exaltation and our salvation. The cross is not a detour from glory; it is the road to it, for Him and for us.

So when your faith feels thin because the world looks unredeemed — look where Hebrews tells you to look. Not at the chaos. At Jesus. Crowned. Alive. Reigning. Holding your name.

For Reflection

Where in your life are you tempted to lose hope because you do not yet see Christ's victory — and what would change if you looked at Him instead of at the chaos?

Prayer

Father, we confess that our eyes grow tired. We look at the world, at our families, at our own hearts, and we do not see all things subject to Your Son. Lift our gaze. Let us see Jesus — wounded, risen, crowned, reigning. Teach us to trust that the road of suffering He walked is the road that leads to glory, and that He walks it with us still. Hold us until faith becomes sight. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

All Night on the Mountain Before Choosing Twelve — June 17, 2026

Streams in the Desert of Our Waiting — June 16, 2026

Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy — June 15, 2026

Image: Gerard David, Christ Carrying the Cross, with the Crucifixion; The Resurrection, with the Pilgrims of Emmaus, c. ca. 1510, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Today's Verse

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles.

Luke 6:12-13

Historical Context

Luke writes his Gospel sometime in the 60s AD, addressing a Gentile believer named Theophilus and, through him, a wider Greco-Roman audience. Luke is a careful researcher — a physician and traveling companion of Paul — and he is deliberate about showing Jesus at prayer at every hinge moment of the story.

This scene falls early in Jesus' Galilean ministry. Opposition has been rising. The previous chapter ends with the Pharisees and scribes "filled with fury" after Jesus healed on the Sabbath, plotting what they might do to him. The stakes are climbing. Against that pressure, Jesus withdraws to a mountain — Luke's readers would hear echoes of Moses ascending Sinai — and prays through the entire night.

The number twelve is not arbitrary. Israel had twelve tribes, founded on twelve patriarchs. By naming twelve "apostles" (literally, "sent ones"), Jesus is signaling that he is reconstituting the people of God around himself. These men will be the foundation stones of the new covenant community.

The roster Luke gives is striking. Simon the Zealot would have wanted Rome overthrown by the sword; Matthew the tax collector had collaborated with Rome. Fishermen stand next to a future betrayer. Luke names Judas Iscariot plainly: "who became a traitor." There is no airbrushing.

Then Jesus descends to a "level place" — what Matthew gathers into the Sermon on the Mount, Luke locates here, with crowds streaming in from Judea, Jerusalem, and even the pagan coastlands of Tyre and Sidon. Power goes out from him. The Kingdom is breaking in.

Reflection

Jesus prayed all night before choosing the Twelve. Let that sit with you.

The sinless Son of God, perfectly united to the Father, did not consider this decision something he could make on the fly. He climbed a mountain in the dark and stayed there until morning. If Jesus needed to pray like that, what business do we have making our weightiest decisions over coffee and a quick Google search?

Notice also whom he chose. Not the polished, not the credentialed, not a focus-grouped leadership team. He chose fishermen and a tax collector. He chose a Zealot who hated Rome and would now have to break bread with a man who had worked for Rome. He chose Judas Iscariot, knowing exactly what Judas would do. Christ builds his Church not with the impressive but with the ordinary — and even with those who will wound him.

This should both humble and steady you. Humble, because you are not in the Kingdom because of your résumé. Steady, because the same Lord who knew Judas from the beginning knows you from the beginning. He is not surprised by your weakness. He chose Peter knowing about the denial. He chose you knowing about last Tuesday.

And then he came down. He did not stay on the mountain. He descended to the level place — to the diseased, the demonized, the desperate — and power went out from him and healed them all. The Christ who prays through the night is the Christ who steps into the crowd. He is not distant. He is not too holy to be touched by your trouble.

What decision are you carrying today that you have not yet brought to him in serious prayer?

For Reflection

If Jesus prayed all night before choosing the Twelve, what decision in your life are you trying to make without him?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you climbed the mountain and prayed through the night, and then you came down to heal. Teach us to pray like that — not in snatches, but with our whole selves laid before the Father. Forgive us for the decisions we have made in our own wisdom. Thank you that you chose us knowing all our weakness. Draw near to us in the level places of ordinary life, and let your power go out to heal what we cannot mend. In your name we pray, Amen.

Recent Devotionals

Streams in the Desert of Our Waiting — June 16, 2026

Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy — June 15, 2026

He Bent Down to Listen — June 12, 2026

Image: James Tissot, File:Brooklyn Museum - Jesus Goes Up Alone onto a Mountain to Pray (Jésus monte seul sur une montagne pour prier) - James Tissot - overall.jpg, c. 1886 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.