Proverbs 3:5-6

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So you’re trying to figure out what comes next. What path to take, how your life should go. And you’re stressed and you’re asking God for guidance.

I often have conversations with young people trying to figure out their lives, and sometimes they are just paralyzed because what does God want me to do? And we’ll talk about Proverbs 3:5-6.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

And what I’ve found is that often when people talk about Proverbs 3:5-6, that trust in the Lord with all of your heart, we tend to think about that verse like I’m trusting God to help me figure out exactly the right path. I’m trusting God to help me make the perfect choice. And sometimes that sense of being paralyzed comes when we’re waiting and thinking, I don’t know. God hasn’t made it clear to me yet. I’m not sure exactly what I am supposed to do.

So then what ends up happening in our conversation is we start talking more about, okay, let’s look exactly at what this says. When it says trust in the Lord, the idea of trust is that it’s of something or someone you go to as a refuge, as a protection. And so trust in the Lord here, go to him as your protection, not your understanding. You’re not going to trust in or find your security in whether or not you get how this is all going to work out. You’re not going to find security in okay, now I know exactly the right choice. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge him and in the original language it says to know him and he will make your path straight.

It’s not about asking God to help you know the perfect path. It’s about knowing him who makes your paths straight. And if you think about it, that’s how our relationship with God really works. It’s not that God gives you the ability to figure out how to be good enough for him. You and I can’t. It’s about him being good enough for us. It’s about God the Son who became human to live the life you and I were meant to live. It’s about his death for your sins and mine and his resurrection to give us new life. And now, through the faith of the Holy Spirit has given us we do get the partner with God. But God never says, okay, now I need you. I’m going to help you figure out how to fix it all. We just simply get to be part of his plan. We get to receive life from him. Live life with him. Walk with him and know him. It’s not about you or I figuring out or asking God, okay, help me to know all the things. Rather, we get to know the one who does. He will make your path straight.

John 14:3-6

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When you hear the disciple’s name Thomas, your mind might immediately add the prefix doubting. Certainly, this disciple of unknown origin finds his most prominent moment after Jesus resurrection. Jesus appears to the disciples the evening of Easter and shows them all that he’s risen from the dead. Thomas wasn’t there, and later, when Thomas hears about it, he says, unless I can put my fingers into the holes in Jesus hand and my hand into his side where the spear pierced, I will not believe. Well, a week later, Jesus appears to all the disciples. Thomas is there, and Jesus invites Thomas to touch his living, risen body and believe. And at that, Thomas gives us one of the clearest outright statements of Jesus divinity in the Gospels, “my Lord and my God,” Thomas said.

From this account we can say a couple of things. First, Thomas did follow the evidence. His doubt was not stubborn. It was just skeptical.

Speculating a little bit, but maybe he did understand that his role as a disciple was to witness all that Jesus did, including ostensibly this greatest miracle of the resurrection. He had to be able to see this so he could give his eyewitness testimony later on in a way that could be verified and trustworthy.

Second, from another account, we get the sense that Thomas’s doubt or his questioning was not only because of doubt, but because of his candor. He was willing to say things that the other disciples were maybe thinking, questions they had, or questions they would have had if they were in his shoes. So this other example comes from Maundy Thursday. And here’s the exchange we have. Jesus says,

if I go and prepare a place for you

And he’s talking about going to the cross and death, but also then ascending to heaven and leaving,

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:3-6)

In many ways good on Thomas for asking. There’s also one other instance that isn’t brought up in connection with Thomas and should be more often. That is several times before Jesus went to Jerusalem to suffer and die, he predicted that he would. And on one of those occasions, it’s Simon Peter, this great leader and bold, faithful confessor among the disciples tries to dissuade Jesus from going. No, Jesus, don’t let that plan unfold. It’s Thomas who at that moment steps forward and says, let us go to so that we may die with him. So Thomas may have required verification at various instances, answers to his questions, but he was not soft in his commitment to Christ.

So Christianity is a religion that invites questions not in unbelief, but in faith. So you repent of any times when you’ve maybe demanded of God an airtight explanation for something in Scripture, or something going on in your life. God doesn’t owe us an explanation for everything, but take comfort in the things he has revealed to you so clearly. Take comfort in the forgiveness and life that Christ won for you when he paid for all of your sins on the cross. Take comfort from the fact that Jesus resurrection gives you innocence before God now, and also a place prepared for you with Thomas in heaven.

Genesis 1:20-22, John 14:3-6

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Genesis chapter one, verses 20 through 22

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Genesis 1:20-22)

Hi there, I’m Pastor Tony Pittenger. I’m a pastor out at Bethany Lutheran Church in Port Orchard, Washington. One of the neat things living out in the Pacific Northwest is the salmon run. It’s the time of the year, usually summer, starts in Alaska in the summer, but for us, it’s really fall when the salmon returned to their streams to spawn. That is, to either lay eggs or fertilized eggs for the next generation. It is an amazing thing.

Nowadays we’ve got phones in our pockets, or we’ve got something on our wrist that tracks our steps. How many steps do you do in a day? Set goals like maybe 10,000 steps. So I started doing some digging. Salmon travel, swim, an average of 18 miles a day, and during the spawning season they can double that 34 miles a day. What’s amazing about them, though, is that they return from swimming miles and miles, thousands of miles in their lifetime. They return to the very same stream where they hatched as an egg. Even they find the very same spot within about a foot or two. They go back right there to lay a new generation of eggs, or to fertilize that new generation.

Absolutely amazing. Do you know where you were born? Do you know what hospital you were born in? Do you know what room of the hospital you were born in? How do the salmon do it? Some of them travel all the way to Montana. I mean, they travel past Washington and Oregon, through Idaho, all the way into Montana to spawn. How do they do it? Well, God’s created them to do just that. For some reason, in his divine wisdom, he has them returning those thousands of miles to the place where they were born.

Jesus was talking to his disciples once in John chapter 14. He says,

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:3-6)

So if you can’t imagine finding your way back up a stream to the very same spot, or if you don’t even know exactly which hospital or which hospital room you were born in, how could we possibly know how to get to heaven? We’ve never even been there. Well, Jesus assures Thomas, he assures the rest of us that he knows the way, that he is, the way through him, through what he’s done for us, his life, his death, his resurrection. That’s the way. That’s how we will one day find ourselves at home, at that place prepared for us, prepared for you. We’ll find ourselves there because of our Savior and what he’s done for us. And for that, we not only marvel like we marvel at the salmon and their spawning and their return to their home. But for that promise of our home in heaven, we give thanks to God through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

John 14:2,6, John 1:29, John 20:30-31

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The disciple John intersects with the three covered so far and rounds out the big four: Peter and Andrew, James and John. From these two fishing families on the Sea of Galilee, thoroughly Jewish but interfacing with the Greco-Roman world beyond. In the Gospels, John plays a relatively minor role. He doesn’t have many lines, although in his own gospel he refers to himself five times as the disciple Jesus loved. (John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:20)

He does figure prominently in the crucifixion, where it seems he alone appears at the cross of Jesus, and Jesus commends Mary, Jesus mother, into John’s care. John is best known for his writings. He wrote The Gospel according to John. He wrote the epistles that bear his name first, second and third John, as well as the Book of Revelation. Not bad. He was one of the pillars of the early church, one of Jesus’ inner circle. They got to witness some of the most pivotal moments in Jesus’ ministry, that others weren’t able to see, revelations of his glory and his power.

Later in his life, he moved to Ephesus, which is in western modern day Turkey, and then, because of his faith, was exiled by the Romans to the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. It’s perhaps that he is the only one of Jesus’ disciples, living disciples after his ministry, that was not killed for his faith. And yet, throughout time, Christian communities have seen his exile to that island of Patmos as a sort of martyrdom. It’s a good reminder to us that it’s never worth it to sacrifice our faith for the sense of a familiar home. Instead, our faith may require us to sacrifice that home for the one we have in heaven.

It’s through John in his gospel that we have Jesus’ words recorded.

“I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” (John 14:6)

And

“In my Father’s house are many rooms… I go there to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2)

As one reads John’s Gospel in the original Greek, but also in many English translations, the language can seem simple, but the concepts are profound. John seems to have been a thinker, someone who dwelled on these deep things about God and spiritual life. Maybe it was that John was also tempted, like we are, to use his intellect in a bad way. Doesn’t matter how smart you think you are. We all love to be able to use our reason to prove others wrong, or to show how we are so much smarter than they are. Well, instead, John’s writings show a submission of that skill a recognition of Jesus as the one who bears all wisdom and knowledge and doesn’t use it in those sinful ways, but instead righteously calls out those who oppose God’s grace and God’s Word, but also bearing patiently with those who need understanding.

In a way John is used by God to provide this simple patient guidance toward the truth that we often need. And also to those who come broken and with many sins. Jesus is described by John as embodying grace and truth, bringing the conviction of sin and its reality in the truth, but also applying the lavish grace he himself would win and create through his own body. It’s John who records John the Baptist’s words,

“Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)

And then in the book of Revelation, after this great act of Jesus’ life, his crucifixion, which is also seen as his glorification, the saving act of God for people by which we can know him and praise him. The Lamb in Revelation is the one who sits on the throne, to whom his ascribed salvation and praise and honor and glory forever.

So there is a through line in John’s writings come to a true repentance of any sufficiency of ourselves. Recognize our sinful use of God’s gifts, whether it’s your reason or something else. See how Christ’s perfectly used it in your place, atoned for all of your sins, and now promises you a life beyond this one, where you can finally enjoy all of God’s gifts in full.

John summarizes not only the purpose of his writing, but really of all of Scripture in a basic way. When he writes toward the end of his gospel,

Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, did many other miraculous signs that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

[This devotion is the final part of a 3 Devotion series on The Venite.]

Psalm 95:7

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As we continue meditating on The Venite. That song from the office of Matins, which is Psalm 95. I want to read one more verse to you. Verse seven of Psalm 95

For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. (Psalm 95:7)

As we consider this song as the perfect morning hymn, as we’re preparing to use our hands to go out and accomplish the work God has for us, we look at our God’s hands. And here the third time in this Psalm, we see God’s hands described for us, now as a shepherd’s hands. Holding his sheep. We are the sheep of his hand. We often think of the shepherd holding the staff aloft, the shepherd’s crook by which he guides the sheep. But of course, that staff is in the shepherd’s hand, and the shepherd’s hand is of so much more importance than just the staff by itself. The staff is there to point to the hand of the shepherd, so that the shepherd can bestow his love on the sheep as he pets them, lovingly moves them along, uses those hands in working to shear the sheep, to feed the sheep, to water the sheep, to birth the lambs. Those hands are intimately at work among the sheep.

Now, as we, these sheep, go about accomplishing the work that God has for us. Ultimately, we’re receiving all the work that he is giving to us. We’re receiving the blessings. This good Shepherd is guiding us in good pastures everywhere we go. It might not always be apparent, but everywhere we go he has blessings in store for us. He is guiding us along every step, whether it’s along the greenest pastures or in the deepest, darkest valleys. We belong to that shepherd. He not only guides us by those hands, he holds us in those hands, those very hands that once again were pierced for our transgressions. Those hands that formed us out of the dust. Those hands that open to feed us every day. And those hands that embrace us with his love, his undeserved love and holy grace that he gives us especially and most significantly in His Son, Jesus Christ.

His hands open now also to you in His Word. He reads this word to you through the mouths of pastors and fellow Christians, or through your own eyes, perusing this word. This is the green pasture on which you can feed throughout your daily work, and you can know as you go about that work that your father is pleased with you. Your God loves you, sanctifies all that work. He is working through you. Rest in him and enjoy the blessings that he has for you.

Luke 9:56

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James, the son of Zebedee, is the first James. There was another James as a disciple of Jesus, but this one is far more prominent. He and his brother John were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, and their business associates were none other than Simon Peter and Andrew, two other brothers who were disciples of Jesus. James and John were known as the sons of Zebedee, referring to Zebedee, their father. Jesus named them the Sons of Thunder, likely referring to their fiery ambition and zeal. When James and John are approaching a Samaritan village with Jesus and see that the village doesn’t immediately receive Jesus with hospitality. They ask if they can call down fire from heaven to consume them. Jesus, who could rightly call down fire from heaven, responds,

“The Son of Man did not come to destroy people’s souls, but to save them.” (Luke 9:56 EHV)

At another time, James and John have their mother asked Jesus if James and John can sit at Jesus right and left hand in heaven, positions of great power and importance. James even promises to follow Jesus into martyrdom if necessary. Little did he know all the things that James and his great fiery ambition claimed and desired would, in a sense, come true. Fire would fall from heaven to consume sin. Not on James or on the Samaritans, but on Jesus. Jesus would bear the brunt of God’s wrath for all of our unbridled selfishness and pride and arrogance. But Jesus also came to save people’s souls. In there is an atonement for James, for the Samaritans and for you.

Now James by faith will occupy a prominent position in heaven, maybe even more prominent than others because of his contributions to the faith and to the early church. But James did follow Jesus into martyrdom, his as the one death of a disciple we have recorded for us in Scripture. Acts chapter 12. We hear that Herod Agrippa the first, that’s a grandson of Herod the Great, who pursued the young Jesus life, had James killed for his faith by the sword, that means he was probably beheaded.

I don’t mean to be casual about James’s death, but he who could get a big head lost his. But thanks be to God, who decapitates our selfish ambition and gives us a new head, the head of Christ, the church whose blood runs through our veins, who claims us as God’s people, who directs us away from our own purposes and toward the purposes of God’s kingdom, the salvation of souls.

Psalm 95:5

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We’re continuing to talk about the Venite, that Psalm 95 song that’s often sung in the mornings, that perfect morning hymn as we get ready to go about our work day. I want to read the next verse in Psalm 95. This is verse five.

The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. (Psalm 95:5)

This is again emphasizing the work of the Father’s hands. As we prepare for our work going about our day, we look at our God’s hands that formed the earth. When we think of how God created Adam, we think of the sculptor who’s so intimately and delicately forming the clay to build a human being in his own image, in order to accomplish the work that he has for him, and to receive the blessings that he wants to bestow upon him. But God is not just a sculptor, he’s a landscape painter. He built the whole earth. All the dry ground was formed by him. You can picture him lifting it up out of the sea. Of course he accomplished all of this by his word. So the hands are a metaphor here, but his hands hold the earth. Form it, shape it. When you see a beautiful landscape that was designed by the painter, God, and not just the dry land, but the sea also is his.

There’s an old school of thought about the sea and the land. The land is stable. The land is where you can rest secure. You know you’re safe when you’re on dry land. The sea, however, is chaotic, especially if you’ve ever been caught in a wave in the ocean and totally subsumed by it. There’s a moment while you’re tumbling through the water where you don’t know which way is up. Direction makes no sense. Space makes no sense. Time makes no sense. The sea is chaos. That’s a picture that we have in Genesis two that when God created the world, it was formless and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters and then created a perfect, beautiful order out of it. So we can start to think of the sea as something evil. But it’s not. It also belongs to God. It is the good thing out of which he has brought his creation.

Think of a painter using the pools of paint and splattering them around, mixing them around. It looks like a mess, but what a good thing that is to create beauty out of and the sea that our God owns. He commands as well. And we can see when Jesus was on the boat with his disciples numerous times how he calmed the stormy seas, it obeyed him. The disciples asked, who is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? This is none other than God. God owns the sea. He owns the sea of troubles that come against you, also. He owns your entire environment so that when you feel lost and alone, so that you don’t know which direction is up or where you’re headed, God has this in control. He formed the dry land, and the sea also is his, and you are his. And he has redeemed you through the waters of baptism and adopted you as his child to give you peace and life everlasting.

John 1:40-41

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In the last 20 years the name Chad, perfectly normal name for men, has come to have the connotation of an alpha male, competent, confident, athletic, socially successful. Of course, it can be used ironically to illustrate some of the excesses of men.

Do you want to see the example of a biblical Chad? Take Andrew. Andrew’s name literally means in Greek manly, bold, brave. He was a fisherman with his brother Simon Peter, and even though they were engaged in physical work, that doesn’t mean that they were backwater folk. They grew up in Galilee, which was connected even more than southern Judea to the outside Greco-Roman world. His name in Greek reflects this contact with the broader society. Andrew is known as being one of the two disciples who first followed John the Baptist, and then turned to follow Christ. He had heard the call, “look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” and in reverent repentance and holy joy he followed Christ. The one to whom John the Baptist was pointing.

Significantly also is that he directed his brother Peter to follow Jesus. He is the one who introduced Peter, who would become the leader among the disciples and early Christians, to the Savior in the first place. We know Simon Peter for his great confession about Jesus. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. But it actually may be that he was parroting his brother Andrew. John records in the first chapter of his gospel that when Andrew met Jesus, the first thing Andrew did was to find his own brother Simon and say to him,

“We have found the Messiah!” (which is translated “the Christ”). (John 1:41)

Andrew is sometimes found in the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. This inner circle of three Peter, James, and John. Andrew is sometimes included as a fourth. He’s also participating in the conversation with Jesus and Philip when they’re trying to feed the 5000. Andrew is actually the one who finds the boy with the five loaves and the two fish, which Jesus miraculously multiplies.

Andrew did not write any scripture, but it’s believed that he, like his brother Simon Peter, was crucified for his faith and also didn’t believe he should be crucified as Jesus, that that was too dignified for him. So they crucified him on beams set in an X. Not only does this in a way represent Christ, this letter X is the first letter of Christ in the Greek language. It said that Andrew preached from the cross for three days while he was hanging there before he died. Of course, this is tradition, but is very much in keeping with his life of faithfulness, of doing the practical things that the kingdom needed while he was a disciple, as we find him in the Gospels.

So let’s review. Andrew, no stranger to physical work was a successful fisherman in his previous life. Yet he has a spiritual sense about him, follows John the Baptist, and then follows John’s pointing to follow Jesus. He introduces Peter to Jesus, supplying the church with one of its first great leaders. Oh, and it’s also said that Andrew went on to do mission work among Slavic peoples in modern day Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan before being crucified for his faith.

You know that X-shaped cross is known as Andrew’s Cross and has become a symbol of the country of Scotland. So in addition to doing mission work, following his Lord, trusting in that Savior for salvation as the one who had come to redeem Israel and redeem all people. And now a rugged nation of Celts known for their fine spirits and golf, reveres his memory and his faithful service. Chad moves indeed, man or woman, be like Andrew. Believe like Andrew.

Psalm 95:1-4

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There’s a song that we often sing in our church services, especially in the Office of Matins, and you find it there under its Latin name, The Venite. And that’s the first word in the Latin version of Psalm 95. And I want you to consider Psalm 95, or the Venite, as the perfect morning hymn. The perfect way to start your day. I want to read the first few verses here, but then I want to focus, especially on this picture of the hands of our God. And we’ll talk about that over a couple more devotions here. But the first few verses of Psalm 95,

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.For the Lord is the great God,
And the great King above all gods.
In His hand are the deep places of the earth;
The heights of the hills are His also.

Psalm 95, verses one through four. Now picture the hands and the picture the start of your day. You’re getting ready to use those hands. The day has been prepared for you to go and take your hands and do the work that God has prepared for you. Whether you’re working outside the home, inside the home, at your studies, work is objectified in the hands.

Think of the work that Adam had to do in the Garden of Eden, digging those hands in the dirt in order to plant and cause things to grow. All that work went out into a more difficult sphere after the fall into sin, and now that work is filled with pain and trouble and sorrow. But we’re to be reminded as we go to our work, which is going to be a day filled with our own sins and sins committed against us too, that we shouldn’t look just at our hands, but at the hands that are holding us and all things. Look at these hands. The hands of God hold the deep places of the earth and the heights of the hills. Not only does this emphasize the power of our great creator, but he’s the one who formed us out of the dust of the earth and who holds us still. And in a prophet, it also says that he has engraved us on the palms of his hands.

Where you see the hands of God most vividly are in those hands that are pierced by the nails on the cross. In Jesus hands your name was engraved. He holds the deep place of your sin, your death, your suffering. He holds that in his hands to bring you up onto the mighty hills of salvation, the hill on which he was crucified, the hill from which he ascended into heaven. The hill on which God comes to meet you with His Word and Sacraments, and ultimately will bring you again to be caught up with your Lord in the air. To be embraced by those hands once again. The hands of God hold you.

Matthew 16:16, 21-23 14:28-30, 26:69-74, Acts 2:14-41, 10:9-23, Galatians 2:11-15

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Simon, originally a fisherman from Galilee, was not the first to follow Jesus, but he quickly became a leader among the disciples and is labeled a pillar of the early church by Paul. It may not have been lost on the early Christians either, that his name Simon was also sometimes spelled Simeon, which was the name of Jacob’s second son. In the new leaders of God’s People, the new 12, there is also continuity with the old. But Jesus also gave Simon a different name. That name was Cephas (כֵּיפָא) in Aramaic, Petrus (Πέτρος) in Greek, both of which mean the rock.

You couldn’t always depend on Peter to get it right, but you could depend on him to show up and take action. Peter is the one who gives us, at a poignant moment, the rousing confession about Jesus. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. (Matthew 16:16) Peter walks on water, (Matthew 14:28-30) speaks at Pentecost. (Acts 2:14-41) He sees a vision for a church that includes Gentiles as Gentiles in the book of Acts. (Acts 10:9-23) And yet it’s Peter who denied knowing Jesus during Jesus trial. (Matthew 26:69-74) Who before had shirked back and wanted Jesus to turn away from this plan of crucifixion as the way God’s mission would be fulfilled. (Matthew 16:21-23) Peter doubted on the water and began to sink. Peter, who could see this future, who was given so much instruction by God about how Gentiles could be incorporated into the church, failed to perfectly put it into practice. (Galatians 2:11-15) Peter was not infallible. He had to be rebuked by Jesus and Paul.

But Peter, especially in the epistles he wrote by inspiration first and second Peter that we have in the New Testament expresses a deep sense of humility that over time, through his instruction and as he grew in his faith, that assertive boldness in his personality was refined, was sanctified. He knew that not only were his excesses forgiven alone through this plan of crucifixion, which Jesus went through for him, but also that his personality was now at the disposal of God.

From a book outside of Scripture, we hear that Peter was crucified at the end of his life for his faith. But by that point, he who had repudiated the vision of crucifixion as the path of God now didn’t even consider himself worthy to be crucified the same way Jesus was, and he asked to be crucified upside down. You who come with your bold sins like Peter, take heart. Jesus boldly went to the cross to forgive all of those sins, to lay his life on the line and take the wrath of God for all the ways that our assertiveness can turn into violent aggression, into arrogance, into boasting, into recklessness.

But also you who share the personality traits of Peter take heart as God shaped him to be used powerfully for his kingdom, so he can also use you. And we all should be a bit more assertive like Peter, because in the many situations we find ourselves, when there is an opportunity for truth, a word fitly and maybe even boldly spoken in that moment off the cuff is worth far more than our perfectly worded response long after the opportunity has passed. The time is short dear friends, take hold of the opportunity, whichever is before you, to serve the Lord. And, like Simon, take hold of Christ.

Matthew 6:7-8, Romans 5:6-8, John 16:13, Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 4:13, 19

So you’ve been praying to God. You’ve talked to him about what’s on your mind, what’s on your heart. You ask him. You ask him again. You pray in the morning. You pray in the middle of the day. You pray in the evening. But you’re still just so stressed. You’re still so worried and you’re still just so anxious.

I’ve been there. And it can happen partly because you’ve prayed and nothing has changed. Or maybe you don’t see how it’s all going to work out, but the sense of still being so stressed and anxious. Actually, there are roots to this that have to do with the way we now naturally relate to God as sinful people in a sinful, broken world.

When you go back to the beginning, to the scene in the garden when you have Adam and Eve and they have the opportunity to trust God to be their source of life, what’s at the core of what breaks everything is this thought that maybe we can’t trust God. Maybe he isn’t actually going to do the good thing for us. Maybe we need to do it our own way. And so, as people born sinful in a broken world, we have this natural sense that maybe God isn’t going to do the good thing. Maybe we can’t trust him. We have to try to do it our own way, which means we got to figure out how this is all going to play out. If we can’t figure it out, then maybe it’s not going to turn out good.

But Jesus says this in Matthew six, verses 7 to 8.

“And when you pray, do not babble like the heathen, since they think that they will be heard because of their many words. However do not be like them, because your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7-8)

So God already knows what you need. And in the sense then, as Jesus brings it up, is that he knows what you need and as a good father, he’s going to provide. And he knows this, and he has this provision in mind before you even ask him, before you even say that prayer. So what does God know that you need? What is God looking to provide? And where can we find this out?

Actually, if you look throughout the scriptures, God tells us again and again what we need and what he has done and will do to provide. For instance, look at Romans chapter five, verses 6 to 8.

For at the appointed time, while we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly. It is rare indeed that someone will die for a righteous person. Perhaps someone might actually go so far as to die for a person who has been good to him. But God shows his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

See, before you and I were born, God knew that we would need a Savior. And even when we were his enemies, born into this world, naturally not believing him, walking with him, the reality is, long before we were born, Christ, God himself, became human. The Son of God became human, was born. The man Jesus lived the life you and I were meant to live. Lay down that life and died for your sins and mine to take that justice. He rose again to set us right with God, to give us life forever with God. God knows that that’s what we need. And he provided.

What else has God known that we need? How else has God provided? In John 16:13 Jesus said,

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own, but whatever he hears he will speak. He will also declare to you what is to come. (John 16:13)

He speaks these words to his disciples, but it lets us know that God would provide the Spirit to not only give us faith, but to teach us and help us grow. He knows that we need the Spirit today, and he has promised that Spirit. Ephesians chapter two in verse ten, he says,

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

He knew that we would need things to do. A calling, a purpose, a significance. He had plans for how he would use us in this world, and he has provided those works, those things for us to do. Or think about Philippians 4:13. This is a verse that often gets quoted kind of in the wrong way. This is the verse that says,

I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)

And this usually gets used by people or often I should say to say, well, I can do anything I set my mind to. That’s not really what it’s about. This verse is in the context of how do I be content? God knows what you and I need to be content, to have enough. And later in that same chapter of Philippians, he says,

And my God will fully supply your every need, according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

Again and again we see Scripture tell us that God knows what we need, and God continually provides.

And so today, bring your needs before him. Ask him for these different things, but don’t stop there. Think about what has God already said he knows that you need. How has God already promised to provide? It may not change things right this moment. You may not see the way he’s going to provide. But how might things change if you shift from just your asking for things to thinking about how has God already answered?

12 men, 12 men with personalities, passions, ambitions, flaws. Too often we see them cast in black and white, stilted figures, stoic faces. We are going to cast them in color, as the scriptures do, sense the fire in their bellies, squirm at their competition, relate to their outbursts, ask their questions as they’re caught up in the most momentous events in human history the ministry of Jesus from Nazareth, the Son of God.

First, why 12? We all use numbers in ways that signify more than the numerical value. 5:00 isn’t just a time. It’s signals the end of the workday. 13 stripes on the American flag signal the 13 original colonies. 50 stars, the 50 states. The biblical importance of the number 12 starts with the 12 sons of Jacob in the Book of Genesis. It actually connects to the earliest chapters of Genesis. Genesis in many ways a structured as a search for the people of God through which God will save the world.

In Genesis three, Adam and Eve fall into sin, fall to the deception of Satan, the tempter. You were in Adam and Eve, born into this death grip of the serpent. When God addresses Satan in his curse to him, however, he gives a promise to humanity, to you. God said,

I will put hostility between you, [Satan] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head and you will crush his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

This seed to come from Eve is Christ. After the flood, God identifies Abraham as the one through whom the Savior would be born, and he systematically eliminates branches of Abraham’s family, going son after son down the line as the bearer of the promise. Not that other branches wouldn’t be saved, but that through this line the Savior would come into the flesh, and this promise of God would be preserved for all nations. But reaching Jacob’s 12 sons, it’s not one of them chosen, but all 12. They lay the foundation of this people of God. They become the 12 tribes of Israel.

Importantly, it’s not because of their faithfulness or deserving nature. It’s because of God’s gracious choosing. Now, in the time of Caesar Augustus and King Herod, the Savior has still not come. But lo and behold, in the city of David, Bethlehem, from the line of David, from the line of Judah, one of Jacob’s sons is born Jesus, who is Christ the Lord.

Jesus had many people follow him during his ministry, but he gathers 12 close disciples. This is not insignificant. Jesus is saying, here is the continuation of Israel, those with faith in me. Here is the true people of God, you who descend in your faith from these 12 spiritual brothers. These men would go on to lead the church to such a great extent in this symbolism, that when Judas would betray Jesus and bring about his passion and death for our sins, the 11 would gather after Judas committed suicide and choose another to round out the grouping of the 12.

You are part of the 12, you who hold on to Jesus in faith, trusting in him. You who are undeserving on your own but made through Christ, true children of God, and true people who can bear his name.

Finally, in the book of Revelation, there is a group whose symbolic number is based on 12. Who is the great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language who are crying out. Salvation comes from our God and from the lamb. Salvation does come from this lamb, indeed slain for our sins and raised to rule over us forever by grace now and in heaven. And you who follow him by faith are heirs of the inheritance of the faithful 12.