Let me soothe any fear you may have just felt while reading that sentence and say I do know that God’s Word is infallible, completely inspired by Him, and useful for teaching and correction (2Timothy 3:16).

But I’m sure you know as well as I do that some of the words in Psalm 37 sound too good to be true. In fact, my community and I have had many a life experience try to tell us that verses like, “They will not be disgraced in times of adversity” (Psalm 37:19), or even “They are kept safe forever” (v.28) are more noble anecdotes than reliable truths.

With that very real tension in mind, here’s how I’m choosing to read Psalm 37 today with authenticity and faith.

I will choose to see God’s heart revealed through Scripture. When I read Psalm 37 with a cynical headspace, I can’t help but see all the ways God has failed to deliver on what He’s promising. But I think we all know by now that’s not the best approach to Scripture! So where do I see more of who God is in Psalm 37? Well, God continually describes Himself as a watchful provider. The Lord watches, He supports, He is always generous. In these verses, I see God looking for ways to bless the faithful and stop the wicked.

I will look to see evidence of God’s design at work around me. Whether it’s the sneaky trick of the enemy or just my own prone-to-wander heart, I can very easily dig up file after file of all the things going wrong. 

But there’s always more than meets the eye. A family member’s confession of sin is painful, and it proves that my prayers for repentance have been answered. A friend’s ongoing job search is getting weary, and there have been many unexpected provisions to help sustain them. So while I have certainly “seen a wicked, violent person well-rooted, like a flourishing native tree…” (v.35), Psalm 37 shows me how to find balance because, “Then I passed by and noticed he was gone; I searched for him, but he could not be found” (v.36).

I will evaluate how I can co-labor with Christ in these truths. When I feel the most disconnected from the hope of Scripture, I try to ask myself how God may be trying to work through me to make these truths a reality in my little corner of the world. I mean, “Do not be agitated by one who prospers in his way” (v.7) is definitely a full-time job for my self-control! But truly, waiting for the Lord and keeping His way (v.34) is the most difficult, unrelenting, and important work of a Christ follower.

Faithful ones, the Lord will not abandon you (v.28). How are you reading these psalms with authenticity and faith today?

Looking back now, what my little kid heart really craved from each Christmas morning wasn’t the pile of presents themselves; it was the moment when, after trudging and stumbling and stepping on toes in the dark, the colorful lights of the Christmas tree blazed in their holly jolly glory. The soul-cleansing breath of relief that, after the longest night of the year for any child, the light blazed on.

I don’t think I doubted Santa’s ability to follow through—even less so now that I know what was really going on, if you know what I mean! I think there was that splinter-sized sliver in my heart still stuck in the dark, guarding me from the potential pain of disappointment. And as an adult, I have to be honest and say I’m still working on digging that sliver of self-protection out.

We’ve walked through some dark days, friends. And no matter how many times I’ve stood at the pulpit of my own heart and preached, “Your light has come!” I can’t help but tuck the tiniest crumb of myself back in the shadows just on the off-chance God won’t come through this time.

But if there’s one thing that’s helped me embrace the light without fear of it fading, it’s this: All of these wonderfully poetic words in Scripture are all past-tense for us. They’ve already come to pass. The true Light, the One John said was coming into the world (John 1:9), has already dawned. Why, dear little heart, are you so afraid of something not happening when it has already come to pass! Jesus has already drowned out the darkness with his radiant, holy, brilliant light. Do I expectantly, impatiently, and achingly wait for the day I get to see what that truly means? You bet. But I’m not waiting to see if the Light will come to shine over those of us living in the land of darkness (Isaiah 9:2).

The Light has come, and I must have the faith to emerge from the shadows and feel its warmth shining on my face.

I imagine Nehemiah having a similar experience on his night ride around the demolished walls of Jerusalem. About seventy years had passed since Jerusalem was destroyed and God’s people were exiled. What had once been the home of God’s people—a place where they interacted with neighbors, shared meals, and simply lived out regular days—was now an unprotected pile of rubble. How was Nehemiah going to take this broken place and make it what it once was?

Thankfully, Nehemiah wasn’t the one who had to answer that question. The book of Nehemiah tells us exactly how God rebuilt both the walls of Jerusalem and the spiritual identity of His people. In the middle of the very real opposition and injustice in this story, there is a God of great patience, comfort, and hope. The Lord strengthened His people for the work they needed to do in order to restore their physical home. When they failed to live up to their spiritual calling as His chosen nation, God did not abandon them, and instead called them back to His law and its wisdom. God upheld His covenant promise to be faithful to them even when they could not do the same in return.

As we read the book of Nehemiah, we will dig deep to see how the struggles and experiences of God’s people resonate in our own lives. We will turn our hearts to the God of Nehemiah, the same God who steadfastly restores us when we repent from sin and return to Him. And we will give thanks to the Lord that, in Christ, He has provided all we need to find our sure, safe, and unshakeable home in Him.

As a young man growing up in a temple run by overtly wicked men, Samuel saw a lot of what not to do. He witnessed the debauchery, disobedience, and blatant disregard of Eli’s sons as they disgraced their profoundly holy positions as priests. Samuel saw how their actions harmed the people they were supposed to be carefully shepherding, and he was given a prophetic message about the outcome of Eli’s sons. How different could their entire family’s legacy have been had Eli’s sons considered what God had done for them?

I see the experiences of Samuel’s adolescence echoed in his passionate pleading during his final public address to God’s people. From Eli’s sons to Saul, Samuel has experiential knowledge of the cost of disdaining God’s way. As Samuel considered the outcomes of this disobedience, he said, “Don’t turn away to follow worthless things that can’t profit or rescue you; they are worthless” (1Samuel 12:21). Samuel had learned that all of these other things that were tested in place of God’s wisdom—the idols, the wayward actions, the insistence on going their own way—were worthless because of how they hurt others and left none of the satisfaction they so emptily promised. 

In comparison, when considering all God had done, Samuel’s response was, “Don’t be afraid. Even though you have committed all this evil, don’t turn away from following the LORD” (v.20). Even after the betrayal God’s people inflicted upon Him, God did not ask for them to be afraid of coming close; in fact, He declared that being near to their God was best for them in their sin. God offered His character as the certainty they could base their lives on, as Samuel said, “The LORD will not abandon his people, because of his great name and because he has determined to make you his own people” (v.22). The outcome of God’s way is the glory of His name and a confident, unshakeable identity as His chosen people. From the time of Moses and Aaron, God’s faithfulness has not wavered and His intentions have not deviated: Humanity will give praise to God alone, and they will belong to Him. 

If you’re reading this to start your morning, think of how your day could be changed by considering what God has placed before you. We can enter each task, each conversation, or each struggle already saying, “God has done great things.”

If you’re reading this in the middle of your afternoon, think of how it’s never too late to recenter your heart on His truth. We can always, always begin again with “God has done great things.”

If you’re reading this to close your day, think of how many breaths filled your lungs and how many mercies guided your feet. As you count each up, how good does it feel to say “God has done great things!”

While Deborah’s post-victory anthem had a lot less to do with parties in the USA or never, ever, ever getting back together, I deeply resonate with this woman who needed to burst into song after an intensely stressful situation. Though there are definitely more profound lessons to be learned from Deborah’s song. 

Though the battle was initially given to Barak to lead, Deborah rose to that rallying cry by choosing to march with her friend when he asked. Deborah described what it felt like to be asked to lead by singing, “Awake! Awake, Deborah! Awake! Awake, sing a song!” (Judges 5:12). From what we can read about her life, I find permission to be a bold, unshakeable, nurturing, and (most importantly) willing voice for God. His justice and goodness move through the world through us—we are people who can look around at all that ails our neighbors and who then respond by finding our own proverbial palm tree where we sit and listen and offer what help we can. 

And when the time comes, we can unashamedly rouse our hearts and our hands when our neighbors or friends ask us to put on our fighting leathers. I love the wording in verse nine—“My heart is with the leaders of Israel, with the volunteers of the people. Blessed be the LORD!”—because in it I see Deborah’s perspective as one of gratitude at being entrusted with the care and keeping of God’s people. Rather than viewing the battle before her as a burden that’s not hers to deal with, she praised God for being trusted to go into gruesome, messy places with suffering people. Deborah saw the greater honor in the opportunity to work alongside God as He brought justice to His people and glory to His name. And she got to witness God’s power and “tell the righteous acts of the Lord” (v.11).

What in your world makes your heart come alive at the sound of, “Awake! Awake!”? What’s the thing for you that you can’t help but feel an ache over, whether in ancient longing or in righteous passion, when you read those words? As you consider what that could be for you, my prayer is that you might speak over yourself—and be surrounded by others who will say it as well—the encouragement that Deborah sang when the battle was thundering around her.

March on, my soul, in strength!
—Judges 5:21

Written by Kayla De La Torre

This is probably why I avoid rereading Genesis 3 at all costs. I don’t want to relive the most painful moment when the trajectory of humanity was forever altered. I ache reading any part of this story, but the words of verse 5 are the most gut-wrenchingly deceptive to me.

In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 
—Genesis 3:5

Adam and Eve had only known pure intimacy, love, and belonging with their Creator. They had wandered this glorious garden with Him, conversing and caretaking and maybe even cracking a joke or two. And that’s something the serpent preyed upon—the desire to be like their perfect, wonderful God and attain His wisdom. 

But the problem is, Adam and Eve fell to the lie that the one-bite method would be the most effective and efficient way to be like God. 

When I try to find an instant holiness formula, or when I think my way through life has some shortcuts God just doesn’t know about, I find my heart wandering in that spiritual east-of-Eden land. I feel cast out of God’s presence, wondering how to get back into paradise. Though I can praise God that those feelings aren’t true in Christ, they do soberly remind me how much I value being with God. Is going against what God has instructed—even if it seems best, logical, fun, desirable, or gratifying to me—truly worth the cost? Do I value intimacy with God so little that I would see my way as a worthy trade for the closeness that comes when I follow what my Creator says is best?

God’s way is the way of the garden—the way where we move at His pace and are molded according to the true potter’s hands. That process takes time, patience, and stillness to allow God to create His wisdom within us. And it requires reorienting my priorities to be about being with Him, rather than doing for Him. As you contemplate what it means to be with Him today and as you ask for what you need from Him to resist sin’s allure, I’m praying you find “the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ,” because it has truly “overflowed to the many” (Romans 5:15).

So like our friend King Nebuchadnezzar, you could say I know a thing or two about bad dreams.

While I’m glad Nebuchadnezzar didn’t have to race a reptile in his dream, his vision is nonetheless a terrifying and foreboding one. Daniel’s interpretation doesn’t exactly help mitigate all the doom and gloom, as he sees earthly kingdoms completely crushing one another, brittle kingdoms that can’t be trusted, and devastating division among the people living in those kingdoms.

It’s actually what we learn about God’s kingdom through Nebuchadnezzar’s dream that stood out to me. Daniel says, “The God of the heavens has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. Wherever people live—or wild animals, or birds of the sky—he has handed them over to you” (Daniel 2:37–38). Standing before the ruler that had conquered and oppressed Daniel’s own people, Daniel reminded Nebuchadnezzar who, ultimately, placed the crown on Nebuchadnezzar’s head. God is the one who gave all of this to Nebuchadnezzar, and even if Nebuchadnezzar never acknowledged or gave glory to God, His authority remains the same. And if God gave those things to an earthly king to steward, how much more true are they of God’s own kingdom—that sovereignty, power, strength, and glory are defining attributes of the kingdom God Himself reigns over. 

In verse 44, we read just how God’s kingdom will come to be: “In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people.” Little did Daniel or Nebuchadnezzar know, that kingdom would come hundreds of years later through the birth of a little baby boy in a humble stable. I love the second half of that verse specifically—“this kingdom will not be left to another people”—because it reminds me of how complete and secure our belonging is in God’s kingdom. I will never swear allegiance to another God or to another kingdom because the One to whom my heart belongs will reign forever (Revelation 11:15). 

This is how I will rejoice in Jesus coming today: I will celebrate and thank Him for the kind of kingdom He brought with His life and ministry. It is a kingdom that is powerful, and it uses that power to lift up the brokenhearted. It is strong, and it leverages its strength for the weak. It provides an open-invitation to whoever wants to belong, and each citizen is relentlessly committed to the praise and glory of the one true God. What a joy to celebrate a Savior such as this!

Do you have any parts of the Bible that just always make you squirm uncomfortably in your seat? The parts that you don’t necessarily want to use as a lock screen or that you pray your pastor doesn’t feel the need to address on a Sunday morning? To be honest, Galatians 4:21–31 is one of those passages for me. I want to understand Paul’s metaphor here, but there’s also a piece of the editor in me that wants to leave a lengthy comment explaining to Paul why he just can’t talk about my girl Hagar that way!

I do take comfort in the fact that Paul must have had a reason for choosing such a specific image to represent the new kind of relationship with God that is available in Christ. The verses preceding this passage address a crisis of faith and present a picture of a church struggling to let go of the security of following the law. And the more I read Paul’s letter, the more I wonder if they wanted the safety of knowing they had done enough to still be God’s chosen people. To only rely on faith in Christ was (and still is) a risk. It sounds like some in the community were stuck in doubtful indecision, trying to work out whether they could have both faith and the safety net of the law.

In light of that fear, I think Paul is going back to what would have been a very familiar story with a similar crossroad in it. When Abraham was given God’s promise for inheritance and descendants, Abraham was also given a choice—he could either trust in God’s plan to fulfill His promise, or he could find the final product of the promise on his own. Rather than solely having faith in God’s ability to work in impossible circumstances, he and Sarah decided the uncertainty was too great to bear and took matters into their own hands to bring about what God had promised.

Here in his letter to the Galatians, I see Paul calling his audience to actively drive out the back-up plan because it is actually only doing them more harm than good (v. 30). This comparison between Sarah and Hagar shows that an enslaved identity simply cannot coexist with the identity to be had in Christ. The back-up plan keeps our identity enslaved, bound to the fear and shame of sin, the pressure to fix it all on our own, and the judgment for not being able to pay off our overwhelming debt. But our belonging in God’s family comes the moment we place our faith in Jesus, and He wipes away all the things that previously enslaved us.

And isn’t it the truth that we are still wrestling with these identity questions! We have to ask our hearts, “Do I wholeheartedly believe and trust in Jesus’s ultimate sacrifice, His resurrection, and His way of living out the abundant life of God’s kingdom?” Or do we turn to whatever back-up plan lets us live life according to our best laid plans and outwits God’s grace with our awesome achievements?

We can’t have it both ways, and God’s heart isn’t that we would view ourselves as intruders on His grace and visitors in His kingdom. He invites us, welcomes us, and even expects us there because we are the children of His promise (Romans 9:8), coheirs with the Son who freed us all.

Written by Kayla De La Torre

Reading places like “the Wilderness of Zin” or “from Azmon to the Brook of Egypt” made me think of those maps. What’s even more impressive is that the names in Numbers 34 aren’t from the mind of a whimsical author—these are actual cities and communities, real forests and deserts, well-known roadways and borders. As Israel wandered through the wilderness, they may have passed by these boundaries and wondered when it would be their turn to step into all God had promised. They may have been filled with impatience as they sat across the river, seeing the good land the Lord was waiting to give to them. And can you imagine being a child born in the wilderness, now grown into adulthood, hearing Moses speak the words your parents had said would come? From this sea to that mountain, from one city to another, this is your home. What sweet relief in seeing God’s promise on the brink of fulfillment!

And yet there’s still an inescapable tension to hold as I read this chapter. I don’t know why this land was chosen specifically or how to unravel what was to happen to the people already inhabiting the places given to Israel. I don’t know what the Canaanites thought when they saw a massive army and nation on the other side of their borders. I don’t know how I would feel if I were a Moabite or an Edomite and it was my home being taken by a foreign invader. 

When I read Numbers 34, I see a lot of my own inner turmoil at living in the now and not yet of God’s promise. In the present day, my home is in Christ and the peace of being in relationship with God because of Jesus. Thanks be to God for that! But I also wonder why non-believing friends I love fiercely are still far from God or why the injustice and pain in our world isn’t just stopped once and for all. 

What I do know is that our God is good and His love extends to all of His creation. Because He is good, He will do the things in His timing that make the most good for His beloved. While there’s so much between the lines and in the untold stories of history that we don’t know, I have faith in God’s goodness. 

And thanks be to God for that, as well.

I see this section of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount similarly. These are not new commands. These are principles and values laid out in the law, principles given long before Jesus even lived on earth. Somewhere along the course of human history, these commands were distorted by pride, human self-centeredness, fear, and power-grabbing. By the time Jesus stepped in to correct the crowd’s understanding of God’s ways, the original purpose of these commands were smudged with our sticky, sin-filled fingerprints. 

This is the situation Jesus entered whenever He taught. He said things the people in the crowd should already be familiar with, particularly the religious leaders and scribes Jesus directly admonished. Matthew 7:28–29 says, “​​the crowds were astonished at his teaching, because he was teaching them like one who had authority, and not like their scribes.” Jesus provided these insights as someone with intimate knowledge and emotional connection to the Father. This is why His words were spoken with authority and why the crowds could see they more accurately reflected the purpose of the law. Whether He’s clarifying true methods of prayer and generosity or reminding them where their ultimate peace and provision was found, Jesus gifted these instructions to the people from His time spent in the presence of God.

I can easily be overwhelmed reading longer passages like the Sermon on the Mount because of the list-like effect they have when read all together. I want to be Christ-like, as all Jesus followers do, but also careful not to turn my good deeds into a megaphone, magnifying my own self-righteousness. Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 6 settles this anxious feeling in more ways than one. He reminds me that there is a heavenly Father who sees that desire and meets every need in order to accomplish that work. Pieces of the sermon, like the instructions on prayer, give me grounding frameworks so that I don’t feel I have to walk into a mysterious spiritual discipline on my own. And Jesus shows me by His example how to seek His kingdom and follow these commands well, without continuing the legacy of the Pharisees. By staying in communion with Him, taking His lead in how to live my own life based on His Word, I receive everything I need as the child He says is worth far more than the birds of the sky and wildflowers of the field.