We’ve all felt the pull to add one more pious act—fast a little longer, pray a little harder—convinced the right combination will finally make us right before God. In Matthew 9, John’s disciples bring that same assumption directly to Jesus, and his answer reframes not just the practice of fasting but the question of what season we’re actually living in.
Even good things we pursue can drift from their real meaning into empty gestures that change nothing. Sin whispers the same trade—“focus on me and I’ll give you what you want”—yet Paul answers it in Romans 6: do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, but present yourselves to God as those brought from death to life.
We begin a new series in the Psalms tonight, looking at David’s lament in Psalm 12. What happens when we feel like evil has triumphed and whatever good we do is fruitless?
When a worthy cause demands everything, compromise feels reasonable—even necessary. As Paul delivers a charge to Timothy to continue the job, he gives an important qualification: fight the good fight while holding firmly to faith and a good conscience, because the good fight is lost not through open defeat but through the quiet erosion of integrity.
We too often forget that the source is joyful and accept the far more mundane or depressing secondhand source.
Two half-brothers leave for the same war; only one comes home. When rescue divides one person from another, “Why me?” can feel unanswerable—and salvation can raise the same uneasy question. In 1 Timothy 1:15–16, Paul refuses to ground his rescue in merit, calling himself the worst of sinners and pointing instead to Christ’s purpose and patience.
We tend to measure our worth by what we bring to the table, but Paul’s testimony in 1 Timothy 1:12 turns that calculus upside down. He could speak of his calling despite his failures because God’s strength doesn’t depend on ours.
We need to know what things are for and use them in the right way in life. That’s true of God’s law just like anything else.
As we continue in Ephesians 2, Paul helps us to think about the difference between being called to do “good works” and earning God’s favor through our works.
The wonder of what God does for us is so much greater when we don’t forget the story behind it.