May 7, 2026

Ezekiel 33: 11 (NIV)

“Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’”

He chose to be with sinners because he wanted them to have hope.*

Don’t we love it when the bad guy gets what’s coming to him? It’s only a movie but we cheer when the villain bites the dust, don’t we? In real life, it seems that the good guys are always the losers and that doesn’t seem right, does it?

God told Ezekiel to inform the Israelites that he did not find pleasure in the death of the wicked. Their death ends their chances to repent. John tells us in chapter 3, verse 17, that God sent his Son to save the world, not to condemn it. As unnatural as it might seem, we should be cheering for the bad guys to get what we got – not what we deserve but what Jesus freely gives us.

So it’s only a movie and we know the difference between fantasy and reality but let’s not become desensitized to the horror of dying without the hope of heaven. Pray for those bad guys in your life. Share the gospel with those villains. Let’s face it: without the cross, we’re all bad guys.

He came “to seek and to save the lost” – not to “search out and destroy” them*

May 6, 2026

I Peter 4: 13 (NIV)

But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

My faith is founded on a sufferer.*

Remember when Jesus “began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things” (Matthew 16: 21)? Remember what Peter said? “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” Could this possibly be the same Peter who tells us now to rejoice in the sufferings of Christ?

What happened to change Peter’s outlook? 

Have you ever taken a bite of something you were sure you wouldn’t like – only to find out you did? When my daughter-in-law tried a new dessert recipe, I was certain I wouldn’t like it but I tried it because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.  Since then, I have asked her never to prepare that dish again when I am around because I couldn’t stop eating it. No willpower whatsoever!

I think something similar happened to Peter. The “sufferings of Christ” sounded like something distasteful – even dreadful – until he tried it. Like Peter, if you participate in Christ’s suffering, you will discover that there is joy to be experienced when his glory is revealed.

So go ahead. Take a little taste. Step out in faith and rejoice in how delicious it is to suffer with Christ.

The way in which suffering is faced, namely as something to be rejoiced in, determines whether Christians will rejoice at the last day and share in the glory of Christ.*

May 5, 2026

Luke 2: 28-30 (NIV)

Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.”

We’re ready for death, but we don’t mind waiting.*

Simeon is described as a righteous and devout man who had been waiting for the Messiah – or as Luke expresses it, “the consolation of Israel.” The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die before he had seen the “Lord’s Christ.” Can you not feel his joy when he held the baby Jesus in his arms and realized who he was? Now I can die in peace.

What things are you waiting for before you can die in peace? Do you need to reconcile with a family member? Is there a loved one who needs to return to the Lord? Do you hope to live long enough to see your grandchildren grow up? Or are you hoping to find a spouse or the perfect career before you go?

There are plenty of things on this earth to keep us interested in living longer, but the truth is, once we have met the Savior, we can die in peace at any time. The longer we live for him and the better we get to know him, the less our longings center on the temporal and the more we long for the eternal. Every day, I look forward to heaven just a little more. Every day, I feel more sorrow for those who don’t have that hope.

But we can’t die in peace just because we are tired of living. We still have work to do. We still have those family members to reconcile with; the loved one to lead to the Lord; those grandchildren who will need our faithful example to follow. Prepare to die in peace only after you have fulfilled the Lord’s purpose for your life.

We don’t get to wait to offer our lives until we have our act together.*

May 4, 2026

Matthew 22: 37 (NIV)

Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

The test of our love for Christ isn’t the intensity of our feelings, but the consistency of our obedience.*

For all our talk of feeling things in our hearts, the actual organ is just a muscle that pumps blood. All those feelings that we think of as originating in our hearts actually come from our minds – our brains – the same as our thoughts. Loving God with our minds involves choosing to love him. It is a deliberate decision. Intentional. On purpose. I believe that loving him with our souls requires us to cross over into surrender, submission, loss of self. 

Jesus knew everything that I just mentioned about the heart: it is just an organ - but we associate it with feelings. And I think Jesus did, too.

We humans put a lot of emphasis on feelings - and not always in a good way!

• Emotions tend to have more influence over our decisions than our minds. 
• Negative feelings can lead us into sinful behavior. 
• Looking to recapture a good feeling can be just as powerful in motivating us to impropriety. 
• We allow our feelings to come between us and the Lord. 

Anything that separates us from God becomes idolatry. If we are to love the Lord with our hearts, we must allow him to master our feelings. We can love him with our minds and our souls even when we don’t feel like it, but we haven’t fulfilled his command until he is Lord of the bad feelings - anger, lust, resentment – and Lord of what makes us happy. 

Sounds a little overwhelming, doesn’t it? Someone has described this as the number one command for how we should spend our breaths,* so take a deep breath and start loving God with your heart. And soul. And mind.

Every carnal lust in a man's heart is an idol; and whatsoever engrosses the affections, or has more of them than God himself has, or is preferred to him.*

May 3, 2026

Matthew 9: 28-30 (NIV)

He asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you”; and their sight was restored.

God has a fixed time and an ordained purpose, and He who controls the limits of our lives also determines the time of our deliverance.*

Faith. We walk by it. We are saved by it. Without it, it is impossible to please God. I have faith – I believe that my faith is very strong, in fact – but I still have questions about faith. If I had been one of these blind men and Jesus asked me if I believed he was able to heal me, I would have confidently said, “Yes, I do.” But Jesus would have known that there was more to my answer than that. I would have had faith in his ability to heal me but not so much in whether he would actually do it. Is that wrong? Is that a sign that my faith is weak?

Follow Jesus’ ministry and you will see that he “restored sight to many blind people but not to every blind person he encountered. He healed many lepers but not every leper in Israel. He did his Father’s will.”* That pretty much sums up my philosophy on faith. My faith is not made stronger by believing that Jesus can heal, but by trusting that his failure to heal is his Father’s will and that it serves his purpose; and that his failure to heal does not mean that he has left the building. In Hebrews 13: 5, we are reminded of God’s promise to the Israelites, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” I believe that we can claim that promise, too.

Perhaps your desire to receive what you want is stronger than your desire for the will of God to be fulfilled.*

May 2, 2026

Daniel 4: 8 (NIV)

“Finally, Daniel came into my presence and I told him the dream. (He is called Belteshazzar, after the name of my god, and the spirit of the holy gods is in him.)”

As Christians in the Middle East and Africa face hideous violence, American Christians shouldn’t feel overwhelmed in the face of relatively minimal persecution.*

I think I speak for all Christians in the USA when I say that I feel like a stranger in my homeland. I don’t think the world is any worse than it ever has been but this country has never been so far from God. What is our battle plan? Perhaps we could learn a few things from Daniel.

Daniel was among a group of young Israelite men of noble or royal birth who were selected to be immersed in Babylonian culture, and trained for three years before entering service to the king. In this verse, we learn that King Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylon and conqueror of Judah, has renamed Daniel in honor of one of the king’s gods. Read Daniel’s story though and you will find a man who stood firm under the tempting influences of a pagan culture. He was separated from his own religious heritage but he did his best to worship God in accordance with the Law. 

Our current circumstances are not so different from Daniel’s - surrounded by an alien culture and unable to avoid every aspect of it.* In many ways, Daniel’s pursuit of religious purity was just a matter of inconvenience and making an extra effort . . . until the law of the land didn’t just make it hard to worship God - under a new administration, it became illegal to worship anyone or anything other than the king. Now Daniel must defy the law in order to honor God. No matter what the penalty. 

Jesus predicted that we would be hated because of him and it is a fact that we are. Will we be prepared to hold on to our faith when inconvenience turns to persecution? As Paul reminds us in Philippians 3: 20, our citizenship is in heaven, and that is where our Savior comes from. We should get used to being aliens in the world.

The current American political climate tempts Christians to be more interested in being right than in being righteous.*

May 1, 2026

Psalm 102: 25, 26 (NIV)

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded.

Responsible consumption is integral to the very design of creation itself.*

When I was in college, I took special care of my favorite jeans – washed them in cold water, allowed them to air dry (never put them in the dryer!), ironed them to get the crease in nice and straight – but they still eventually wore out. (And went out of style!)

Environmentalists worry that we are going to use up the earth’s resources – and maybe they’re right. According to this psalm, the foundations of the earth and the heavens, too, are going to wear out like your favorite pair of jeans. Should we then just trash the earth since decay is inevitable?

I believe the precedent for responsible stewardship of our environment can be found in Genesis 2: 15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” But nothing is more important than fulfilling our duty to something that will not decay – human souls. We should never get so caught up in a “good cause” that we fail to obey our Lord’s final orders: Go, disciple, baptize, teach. Seeking and saving the lost is our number one priority. Everything else is going to wear out and be discarded.

Social action is not to be equated with evangelism, nor is it a constituent part of evangelism, nor is it primarily a means to evangelism.*