A child at a pond knows the drill: rod, reel, line in the water. Then something tugs. Knowing how to cast is not the same as being ready for the catch. In Matthew 10, Jesus takes his “Fishers of Men” and gives them further preparation for an even more important catch.
We often wait for someone else to step into the work God has placed before us. In Matthew 9:37–38, Jesus calls us to recognize the harvest, pray for laborers, and listen for where the Lord is sending us.
It’s a relief when a warning light disappears—unless the problem under the hood is still there. In Matthew 9:35–36, Jesus heals sickness, preaches the good news of the kingdom, and looks with compassion on people who are helpless and without a shepherd. What does his compassion say about the immediate burdens we bring to him and the deeper need we cannot afford to ignore?
We all know what it’s like to finally commit to following God’s call—and then watch the enemy show right back up. In 2 Samuel 5, David faces that exact moment, and what God tells him to do next is not what a warrior would expect.
What does God want us to rebuild? Pastor Tim turns to Nehemiah next in 52 Verses, 52 Books and 52 Weeks for 2026 as we think about that.
A vaccination can leave you feeling wretched for a week, tempting you to wish you could undo it and try again later. That’s the kind of pressure that hits when the gospel goes out in Acts 14—Paul and Barnabas meet rising opposition in Iconium, and the question becomes how we press ahead without quitting or compromising.
We easily draw safe boundaries around God’s grace, welcoming those who seem familiar while overlooking those who feel foreign or difficult. Yet the distant wise men of Matthew 2 and the rejoicing Gentiles of Acts 13 confront those boundaries: Jesus came to reach the world. Who might God be placing beyond our comfort, yet within the reach of his good news?
We tend to assume God works through the right people, in the right places, with the right credentials. Isaiah 44–45 is genuinely jarring to our assumptions: the Lord names a pagan, idol-worshiping foreign king as the one who will restore His people to their land.
Comfort, institutional preservation, and tribal identity can crowd out obedience to God’s call in our lives. Do we hear His call to reach those in need of His Grace and to live in the “risky repentance” that involves?
We live in an information age, bombarded with worldly wisdom, theological wisdom, biblical wisdom, and endless “pratical” wisdom for Christian living—and much of it may actually be wise. Yet Paul’s words encourage us to ask: “Does all this knowledge lead us to know God, or have we mistaken knowing things about Him for knowing Him?”