What Kind of Soil Are You?

Hear and view the devo: https://bit.ly/4bax02V

13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.” 18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20 The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 22 The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. 23 But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13: 1-9, 13-23 NIV)

A blessed and sacred Monday be yours, dear Friend. May this day bring your unexpected blessings of joy and peace and wonderful opportunities for service of love and compassion to all people. May all we learn and share help us grow in service to God.

There is a memory that has stayed with me across many years, and I think it belongs in this passage about soil and seed and the heart that has to decide, finally, what it is going to do with what it has received.

When I was a small boy, my grandmother — Momó, we called her, her full name Petra Martinez Valverde — lived just steps behind our home in Kingsville, Texas. My father had bought an old Missouri Pacific depot house and made it a home for her. She lived alone there, and I was completely devoted to her. She told me wonderful stories. She taught me how to pray. And she had a ritual before bed that I thought was the finest thing in the world: saltine crackers spread with butter, three or four of them, eaten slowly before the lights went out. I would share the crackers with her, listen to her stories, learn her prayers, feel completely at home.

And then, just as I lay down in the bed beside her, I would begin to cry. I wanted my mommy and daddy. I wanted to be home.

Momó, patient beyond anything I deserved, would bundle me up in my blanket, carry me the ten or so steps to our back door, and hand me over to my mother, who would receive me laughing and close the door behind me. And then — almost immediately — I would begin to cry again. I wanted to sleep with Momó.

I was the rocky soil and the thorny soil and the path and every difficult thing Jesus describes in this parable, all at once, in one small boy who could not make up his mind where he belonged.

Jesus says the seed is the word of the kingdom, and what differs is the soil. The rocky ground receives with joy and then falls away when things get hard. The thorny ground receives genuinely but lets other things crowd out what was planted. I think most of us know this pattern not just as a theological category but as an experience — we have sat at the table and eaten the crackers and heard the stories and been genuinely moved, and then the moment came to actually stay, to commit the weight of our whole lives to what we had received, and something in us reached for the blanket and cried for a different door.

But here is what my Momó's patience taught me before I ever had the words for it, and what the Spirit confirms in every honest heart: the one who planted the seed does not abandon the soil just because it is not yet ready. He carries you, patiently, and meets you at whichever door you end up at. The Spirit of Pentecost is not deterred by our inability to make up our minds in a single night. He is the patient cultivator Jesus describes — breaking up the compacted ground, pulling out the thorns, going deeper than the rock layer, waiting for the soil to become what it was always made to be.

Good soil is not soil that was always perfect. It is soil that finally stopped crying at the back door and stayed at the table where the stories were told and the prayers were learned and the crackers were shared in the lamplight. It is soil that let the word go all the way down.

PRAYER: Lord, cultivate in us the good soil that only Your Spirit can create, so that the word sown in us today produces a harvest we could never have arranged for ourselves. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Ask the Holy Spirit today to show you which kind of soil your heart currently resembles, and surrender the specific thing — the rock, the thorn, the hardness — that He identifies

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The King Will Desire Your Beauty

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4vbDTsa

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10 Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father’s house, 11 and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him; 12 Daughter Tyre will seek your favor with gifts, the richest of the people 13 with all kinds of wealth. The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes; 14 in many-colored robes she is led to the king; behind her the virgins, her companions, follow. 15 With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.16 In the place of ancestors you, O king,[b] shall have sons; you will make them princes in all the earth. 17 I will cause your name to be celebrated in all generations; therefore the peoples will praise you forever and ever. (Psalm 45:10-17 NRSV)

Dear Friend, I pray you are well and enjoying life. You matter to God and you matter to me. I pray your prayers are going up on a regular basis to praise God and to ask God's blessings on those who are hurting or ill, and that we pray for our nation as we near our 250th Anniversary. May we seek to truly be a nation of priests truly serving the Lord and not just sharing lip service to our neighbors. We are in need of clear direction and light from the Lord in all that we do as a nation and as individual citizens.

During my college and seminary years I was invited to be in seven weddings. My siblings knew I didn't date much and so I was teased unmercifully for "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," more so because in the seven weddings I was best man five times, and a groomsman for two. I was't worried. My grandmother was! Nellie saved me finally and during 48 years of ministry I saw more than my shared of, to be nice, interesting weddings. Thankfully, only doves were the animals I ever saw and been scared they were alive in one wedding; and years later I was told by the groom that he wanted permission to walk down the aisle with a live tiger but, thank God, the church vetoed it! And speaking of weddings, here we have a special psalm.

Psalm 45 is a wedding song — a royal wedding song, specifically, composed for the marriage of a king. It is lavish and celebratory and full of the imagery of a royal court. But the church has always read it as something more than a court poem for a long-dead monarch, and the New Testament confirms that instinct: the writer of Hebrews quotes it directly and applies it to Christ. So when we hear the psalmist addressing the bride in these verses, we are hearing something that reaches far beyond the wedding it was written for. We are hearing, in the language of marriage and royal belonging, a description of what it means to be claimed by the King of kings and brought into His house.

The opening address to the bride is arresting in its directness: "Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty" (Psalm 45:10–11, NRSV). It sounds almost like what Abraham's servant said to Rebekah — leave what you know, come to the one who has chosen you, and discover that what lies ahead is larger than what you left behind. The call to forget her father's house is not a call to dishonor her past but to let a new belonging define her. She is being invited into an allegiance so total that it reorders everything else around it.

And what does she receive in exchange for that complete reorientation? The king desires her. This is the extraordinary exchange at the heart of the passage — she brings her willingness to leave, and he brings his desire toward her. The people of Tyre will come with gifts. The richest among the people will seek her favor. She will be led into the king's palace, accompanied by her companions, in robes embroidered with gold, "with joy and gladness" (Psalm 45:15). The life she steps into is not smaller than the one she left. It is immeasurably larger, more honored, more beautiful than anything her father's house could have offered her.

The New Testament writers heard in this psalm the story of the church — the bride of Christ, called out of one household and brought into another, leaving behind what once defined her in order to be defined by the one who desires her. Paul uses exactly this kind of language in Ephesians when he describes the relationship between Christ and the church as a marriage, one in which Christ gave Himself up for her entirely, that she might be presented without blemish and in full beauty. The bride of Psalm 45 is brought to the king in embroidered robes and escorted by joy; the church is brought to Christ clothed in His own righteousness, which is the only garment that makes her beautiful in the way that matters.

And this is where Pentecost does something the psalm itself could only anticipate. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost is the presence of the Bridegroom with the bride until He returns — the guarantee, the deposit, the ongoing experience of being desired and held and known by the King whose house she has entered. Every day in which the Spirit prompts us, comforts us, intercedes for us, and draws us deeper into the life of God is a day in which the promise of this psalm is being lived rather than merely hoped for. We are not waiting in the father's house any longer, wondering whether the servant will come. We have said "I will go." We have entered the palace. And the Spirit's presence is the daily confirmation that the King's desire toward us has not diminished since the day we crossed the threshold.

What the psalmist saw dimly across the distance of centuries, we inhabit. The sons who will be made princes, the name that will be celebrated through all generations — these are not ancient poetic flourishes about a forgotten king. They are the inheritance of everyone who has left the father's house and come to the one who was always, from the beginning, writing their name into His story.

PRAYER: Lord, remind us today that we have already been claimed by the King, brought into His house by Your Spirit, and robed in a beauty that is entirely His gift to us. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Today, identify one thing from the "father's house" — an old identity, an old fear, an old allegiance — that you are still carrying into the King's palace, and consciously lay it down at the threshold.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Who Will Rescue Me? (Video says July 1- WRONG!)

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4eV36Rn

15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God[a] through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:15-25 NRS)

Dear Friend, may the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you in an astonishing way. May the darkness in your life fade with the brilliance of Christ's light coming upon you; may hope rise steadily even in the face of approaching challenges. Ours is a life of hope and faith thanks to Jesus.

In 2005 Texas was hit with two big hurricanes; Katrina in August and Rita in September, just weeks apart. We were living in San Marcos, Texas, at the time. Our daughter and husband lived in Galveston, where he was a police officer. We were called to come and help remove some valuable furniture and electronics from their apartment as they were being evacuated from the island. We had a Suburban and so I drove with Nellie and a staff member of our church to Galveston where we promptly loaded up the essentials and though ordered off the island, our daughter didn't want to leave her husband alone and she asked Mom to stay with her promising they would leave a day or so later. They waited until the last possible moment and tried making their way off Galveston into Houston and on to San Marcos. The traffic on Interstate Highway 10 was a nightmare. I got the call to help find them as gas and other necessary items were in scarce supply and so our youth pastor, having a Nissan SUV, offered to drive me to help guide my family home. His SUV had four wheel drive and off we went. Both lanes of I-10 were going the same direction, West, away from the storm. It was really a parking lot moving inch by inch. Our youth pastor made roads where there were none and though we had cell phones they were quickly dying and we did not know where to look. Nellie and Sarai were almost out of gas and they had no cell phone; all the stores in Houston were closed and the few opened had nothing to sell and restrooms were also closed. Kit and I found ourselves in Houston and circling as best we could among stranded cars to find my family. Finally, a call came from our SIL who told us where they were and so we tried making our way to the Love's gas station on the outskirts of Houston. A kind police officer asked Sarai if she needed to use the phone and she said yes and she was the one who called Eric, who in turn called me. Long story short, we found them and made our way back to San Marcos safe and sound. Later as were were sharing our stories, Nellie said the most touching moment as they were in the heat, thirsty and hungry, our daughter asked her, "Daddy will find us, won't he?" Nellie said, "Yes, he will."

Paul writes one of the most relatable sentences in all of Scripture here, and it's almost startling how little it has aged: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Romans 7:15, NRSV). This is not the testimony of someone outside the faith, still wrestling with whether to believe. This is Paul — apostle, missionary, theologian — describing an internal conflict so persistent that he can't fully explain it even to himself. If you've ever resolved not to lose your temper and lost it anyway, ever promised yourself you'd be more patient or more generous or more honest and then watched yourself fail within the hour, you already know exactly what Paul is describing. He pushes the description further, almost forensically: "I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it" (Romans 7:18). Notice he doesn't say he lacks the desire to do good — he says the wanting is there, intact, sincere, but something keeps interrupting the follow-through. He names it sin living in him, almost like a tenant who refuses to leave even after the lease has technically ended. There's something at war inside him: "I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members" (Romans 7:23). This is not abstract theology. This is a man describing the exhausting, repetitive battle of trying to be who he knows he's meant to be and discovering that knowledge alone doesn't get him there.

And then the cry that the whole passage has been building toward: "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24). It's not a rhetorical flourish. It's desperation. Paul has just spent ten verses proving, with airtight logic, that he cannot fix this from the inside. Willpower has hit its ceiling. Self-discipline has hit its ceiling. Knowing the law, loving the law, even delighting in the law in his inmost self — none of it has been enough to break the captivity he's describing. This is the dead end every honest person eventually reaches if they're paying attention to their own heart.

And then, almost without transition, comes the answer: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:25a). The rescue Paul is begging for has already arrived. It didn't come through more effort. It came through a Person. This is precisely why Paul will spend the very next chapter explaining that the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death — that what willpower could never accomplish, the indwelling Spirit accomplishes by actually relocating the battle. The struggle Paul describes here in chapter 7 is real and ongoing for every believer, but it is not the whole story; it's the story before Pentecost finishes its sentence. The same Spirit poured out in that upper room is the One who now wages this war alongside us, from the inside, so that the cry of "who will rescue me" is met not with another law to try harder at, but with a living Person who has already rescued us and continues to walk with us through every relapse and every small victory.

This passage gives permission to stop pretending the battle is over just because we've been forgiven. It also gives the only honest hope for fighting it: not your own resolve, but Christ, present by His Spirit, already at work in exactly the wretchedness you're tempted to hide.

PRAYER: Lord, when I cannot do the good I want to do, thank You that Your Spirit is already doing in me what I cannot do alone. Thank you for rescuring me when I thought I was totally lost; restore me to the right path and lead me on; in Christ Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name one specific area where you keep doing what you hate, and instead of resolving to try harder, ask the Holy Spirit today to do in you what willpower cannot.

I love you and I thank God for you. You matter to God and you matter to me.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Yoked to Christ

View and Hear devo: https://bit.ly/44B7Si6

16 “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: 17 “‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” 25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. 27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 NIV)

Happy Monday to you, Friend! At one church where I served, I served alongside three wonderful and creative preachers. We did a sermon series once called Yoked to Christ, and one of the pastor designed a logo for the series that featured a beautiful sunny side up egg. A play on words, an egg yolk to compare to the yoke of the oxen which spoke of the connectedness of that we can have if we connect to Jesus. It did not create the number of gripes that our series called "The Real F-Word." Okay, folks, like I told the little old ladies, "Get your heads out of the gutter, the real F word is Forgiveness!"

Jesus opens this passage with a complaint that sounds almost weary: "To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to others" He goes on to describe a crowd that simply cannot be satisfied — John the Baptist came fasting and severe, and they said he had a demon; Jesus came eating and drinking with sinners, and they called him a glutton and a drunkard. Whatever approach God took, this generation found a reason to dismiss it. There's something painfully familiar in that. People can talk themselves out of receiving almost anything, if they've already decided not to receive it. One of the saddest and most frustrating moments as a district superintendent was trying to give away almost a half million dollars from the conference to a small church. The church sat, or so it thought, in the very area of a new bridge that was coming to the city. This church owned eight acres in another part of the city and they could have used the money to begin construction of a new church building that would have reached a part of that city that did not yet have many churches in that area; but the church received the news of free money with much suspicion. They wanted a church conference to discuss this. And the night of that conference people I had never before seen in the church were there and they were the most vocal. "I smell a rat," said one stranger, "the conference wants us to vacate this property so they can receive the money we will be paid as the bridge come right through here!" Not true. And they overwhelmingly voted no. The bridge went another way and a church that had just reloated and needed more room already in the early days of their new buidling. Almost $500,000 free came to them and they used it. The skeptical church still sits in an old, slowly decaying building, thanks to their talking themselves out of receiving almost anything.

And then, in the middle of this frustration, Jesus does something remarkable. He prays out loud, right there in front of everyone: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children". This isn't bitterness. It's worship. The very people who should have understood — the religious experts, the credentialed, the ones who prided themselves on discernment — missed it. And the ones who received it were the unimpressive, the overlooked, the ones with nothing to prove. Jesus isn't surprised by this. He's thanking His Father for it, because it reveals something true about how the kingdom actually works: it comes by revelation, not by credentials.

This is exactly the pattern Pentecost would later confirm on a massive scale. When the Spirit was poured out in Jerusalem, it didn't fall on the religious elite first. It fell on fishermen, on women, on the ordinary and overlooked, on "your sons and daughters," on "old men" and "young men," as Peter would quote from Joel — anyone, regardless of standing, who would receive what only the Spirit could reveal. The wise and learned of Jesus's generation needed credentials to take Him seriously. The Spirit doesn't ask for credentials. He reveals the Father to whoever will receive Him with the openness of a child — which is exactly what Jesus is praising God for in this passage, decades before Pentecost made it the normal experience of the whole church.

And then comes one of the most tender invitations in all of Scripture: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light". A yoke was the wooden frame that bound two oxen together to share a load. Jesus isn't offering to remove all burdens from your life — He's offering to walk beside you under the weight, taking the harder share of it Himself. That's not a metaphor that ages out after the resurrection. The Spirit Jesus sent at Pentecost is the ongoing fulfillment of this very promise — Christ's continued presence, yoked to us, carrying what we cannot carry alone, teaching us as we go.

This passage holds together two things we don't usually put in the same breath: the disappointment of being misunderstood and dismissed, and the deep rest available to anyone humble enough to receive it. The same Spirit who revealed the Father to little children instead of the wise and learned is still doing exactly that today — meeting the weary and burdened, not the impressive, with rest that doesn't depend on having it all figured out.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, give us the humility of little children, and yoke us to Yourself so that we carry nothing alone today. Regardless of the challenge or obstacles, You are with us, and we will be more than overcomers. This we know and pray because of Jesus, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one burden you've been carrying by yourself, and consciously hand it over to Christ today, asking His Spirit to share the weight with you as His yoke promises.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

How Long, God?

Hear/View devo: https://bit.ly/4bbekjx

1-2 Long enough, God— you’ve ignored me long enough. I’ve looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough I’ve carried this ton of trouble, lived with a stomach full of pain. Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at me.

3-4 Take a good look at me, God, my God; I want to look life in the eye, So no enemy can get the best of me or laugh when I fall on my face.

5-6 I’ve thrown myself headlong into your arms— I’m celebrating your rescue. I’m singing at the top of my lungs, I’m so full of answered prayers. (Psalm 13, The Message Bible)

Psalm 13 opens with four questions in a row, and The Message doesn't soften a single one of them: "Long enough, God — you've ignored me long enough. I've looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough I've carried this ache in my heart, long enough endured this anguish in my heart. Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down at me" (Psalm 13:1–2, MSG). There's no theological throat-clearing here, no careful qualifying of his complaint. David just says it. He feels forgotten. He feels like God has turned His back and walked away, and the waiting has gone on so long it's become its own kind of suffering. If you've ever sat with a prayer that seemed to bounce off the ceiling, or watched the silence stretch into weeks or months, this psalm already knows your address.

What's striking is that David doesn't talk himself out of the complaint before he brings it. He doesn't perform faith he doesn't feel. He says, essentially, I've had enough of this — and he says it directly to God, not about God to someone else. That's an important distinction. The complaint itself is an act of relationship. He's not walking away from God in his despair; he's walking straight toward Him with it, demanding an answer the way you only demand answers from someone you still believe is listening.

And then, in the space of just a few lines, something shifts. The Message renders it like this: "But I trust in your love. I'm dancing my salvation. I'm singing to God Most High. He has poured richest love on me" (Psalm 13:5–6, paraphrased from the full text). The turn doesn't come because his circumstances changed. Nothing in the psalm tells us the enemies backed off or the silence broke. The turn comes because David reaches for what he knows to be true about God's character even while the evidence in front of him hasn't caught up yet. That's not denial. That's the deepest kind of faith — choosing to trust the steadfast love of God when the present moment offers no proof of it.

This is exactly where Pentecost meets us. David didn't have the indwelling Spirit the way we do now; he had to reach for hope across a distance, almost willing himself toward trust by sheer force of memory and conviction. But after the Spirit was poured out, that reaching became something else entirely — an actual presence inside us, helping us when we don't even have words for what we're asking. Paul says the Spirit groans within us in our weakness, when we don't know how to pray as we ought. The same God David accused of ignoring him is the God who, through the Spirit, now takes up residence in exactly the kind of heart that's praying Psalm 13 — the discouraged, the waiting, the worn down. Pentecost doesn't erase the long enough; it means we're never groaning through it alone.

This psalm gives permission for something the church doesn't always make room for: honest lament that ends in real trust, not because the pain disappeared, but because the character of God is more durable than the darkness of the moment. You're allowed to ask God how long. You're allowed to feel forgotten. And you're invited, in the same breath, to remember that His Spirit is already groaning alongside you toward the answer you can't yet see.

PRAYER: Lord, when our waiting feels like forgetting, remind us that Your Spirit groans within us and Your love has not moved. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Voice your own honest "how long, God" today, and then deliberately follow it with one true thing you know about His steadfast love, trusting the Spirit to carry the rest.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

God Himself Will Provide

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4uRWusO

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.

2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” (Genesis 22:1-14 NIV)

Those who have had children know the frantic reaction most parents have when their newborn child has a fever. I speak from experience! It was the most helpless feeling in the world to check our baby's temperature and see it was 99.1 degrees. And of course, it was after hours and there was a call center that would take messages which they would relay to the pediatrician and when he finally called after fifteen minutes, he of experience knew how to talk us crazy nervous parents down to reality. "The baby is fine and some Tylenol will bring the fever down." And we were young! Imagine a man, who had been promised a son but who watied years and then had his wife suggest a surrogate son through their servant girl, and when finally God sent him Isaac, he's 100 years old. Now add the age that Isaac is at the time of this story, and the Bible does not give an exact age but add that to 100 and you get the age of Father Abraham. Now again, Christian tradition places Isaac in his teens to his 30s, but some traditions place him 25-37 years old. And the debate becomes why? Why in the first place? Why at that age?

Let's start with the first verse that says that God tested Abraham. And to be honest, it is the sort of test we'll see later at the hands and whim of Satan when old man Job goes through his ordeal; but this is God! God Himself initiates this. And the test could not be more severe — take your son, your only son, the one you love, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. This is not a baby's fever; this is the ultimate test! Now, we read this knowing how the story ends, which can make us soften it, rush past the horror of it. But Abraham didn't know how it would end. He rose early the next morning, split the wood, took the fire, and walked for three days with a knife in his hand and his son walking beside him, not knowing whether he would walk back down that mountain alone. How many of us could be doing that? I see no hands raised!

What's almost unbearable is the dialogue along the way. Isaac asks the question that must have lodged like a blade in Abraham's chest: "The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" And Abraham answers with words that are either the bravest or the most agonized in all of Scripture: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son" (At any age, kids would catch on to what's going on?) He doesn't know how that will be true. He says it anyway. That's faith stripped down to its barest form — not certainty about outcomes, but trust in the character of the one who made the promise, even when every visible fact points the other way.

And then, at the last possible moment, with the knife raised, the angel of the Lord calls out and stops him. A ram appears, caught in a thicket. Abraham names that place Yahweh Yireh — the Lord will provide. The substitute appears exactly where Abraham needed it, exactly when he needed it, not a moment before. This is the pattern Scripture never abandons: God provides what we cannot provide for ourselves, and He provides it through substitution, through something given in the place of what was rightly required.

This ancient mountain in Moriah points forward to another hill, where another Father did not spare His own beloved Son, and where this time there was no angel calling out to stop the blade. Abraham's hand was stayed; the Father's was not. The ram in the thicket was a foretaste of the Lamb who would actually bear what we deserved, once and for all, so that the provision Abraham trusted for by faith became, in Christ, an accomplished fact for the whole world. And it's here that Pentecost enters the story, because the same Spirit who later raised that Lamb from the dead is the Spirit poured out on everyone who places their trust in Him — not leaving us to walk our own mountains alone, but living in us, interceding for us, groaning within us when the way ahead is unclear and the outcome is hidden. Abraham walked three days not knowing the ending. We walk forward carrying the Spirit of the One who already knows it, because the resurrection has already happened and the provision has already been made.

What this story asks of us isn't blind sacrifice for its own sake — it's the kind of trust that keeps walking toward the mountain because it believes the character of God more than it believes the darkness of the moment. Abraham held nothing back, and on the other side of that withholding, he received everything back, multiplied beyond what he could have imagined. The Spirit in us is the proof that we are not asked to provide what only God can provide. We are only asked to walk, to trust, and to let Him be Yahweh Yireh in the place where we cannot see the way through.

PRAYER: Loving God of life and love, increase our faith so that our trust can increase as well. Give us Abraham's kind of trust, the kind that keeps walking even before the way is clear, because we carry Your Spirit and trust Your provision. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name the mountain you're currently walking toward without knowing the outcome, and tell God today that you trust Him to be Yahweh Yireh in that exact place.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Remember: The Lord will provide!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr/

The Down Payment of Freedom

View and Hear devo: https://bit.ly/4g2i8Hd

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. 13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments[a] of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments[b] of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations.[c] For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:12-23 NRS)

Dear Friend, may the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you on this glorious day! May the Lord shine His love brightly on your day and whatever challenges you may be having. God is with you! As we pray today, please lift up Mr. Bill Reaves as he has been having some cardiac challenges. Bill underwent a heart cath yesterday and will await his next cardiologist's appointment to see what next steps are best for him. Please pray God bring healing and for Ann, Bill's wife, for her peace during this time as well..

One of the cutest memories Nellie and I have is when our two oldest daughters came in after a Vacation Bible School day and started joyfully singing, "I'm in the Lord's Army," really belting out, "Yes, Sir!" We still chuckle these many years later of that precious scene. I did not serve in the military, nor was I able to win the lottery associated with conscripted service, missing my number by 13. Yet, growing up in the mid-50s, the movies and tv shows about WWII motivated us to daily go out and fight the Nazis and Japanese; my favorite show was the Rat Patrol, jeeps with a single machine gun in the back and the cool Australian style hat with the one fold on the side. Yes, sir!

Paul opens this stretch of Romans 6 with a command that sounds almost military: "Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies" (Romans 6:12, NRSV). The word dominion is deliberate. Sin, in Paul's mind, isn't just a list of bad choices — it's a kingdom, a rule, a regime that demands allegiance. And the whole argument of this passage rests on a claim he's just made a few verses earlier: that claim has already been broken. You have died with Christ and been raised with Him. The old regime lost its grip the moment you went under the water and came back up. So when Paul says don't let sin reign, he isn't asking you to dethrone a king who's still in power. He's telling you to stop living as though a deposed ruler still holds the keys.

This is where the language of the passage turns vivid. "No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness" (Romans 6:13). Instruments — the Greek word can also mean weapons. Your hands, your voice, your time, your attention: all of it can be handed over to one master or the other. Paul's logic is startlingly physical. The same body that once served sin's purposes can be handed over, piece by piece, to serve God's purposes instead. Nothing about you is too ordinary or too compromised to be repurposed.

And here's where Pentecost quietly undergirds everything Paul is saying. He writes, "you are not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14) — but grace isn't merely a legal pardon hovering somewhere above you. Grace arrived with a Person. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost is the down payment and the daily reality of the very freedom Paul describes here. It's one thing to be told you're no longer enslaved to sin; it's another thing to have the actual power to live that out. That power is the Holy Spirit, given to ordinary, weak, often-failing people so that obedience isn't a performance under pressure but the natural overflow of a new master living inside you. Paul will say it plainly two chapters later: the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Romans 6 describes the freedom; Pentecost is where that freedom takes up residence in flesh and blood — the very flesh and blood Christ Himself once wore, and which His Spirit now inhabits in us.

Paul ends with the verse that has anchored more deathbed conversations and quiet personal turning points than almost any other in the New Testament: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). Wages — what you've earned, what you're owed, the cold arithmetic of a life spent serving the wrong master. Gift — what no one earns, what arrives entirely apart from merit, carried on nothing but the open hand of God, the same hand that was pierced for us and now holds out life instead. The whole passage moves from dominion to gift, from slavery to sonship, from the body as a weapon for wickedness to the body as an instrument tuned by the Spirit for righteousness. That movement isn't theoretical. It's the same movement the Spirit has been making in human lives since the rushing wind first filled that room in Jerusalem, sent by the One who promised He would not leave us as orphans.

PRAYER: Holy Spirit, take what Christ has already won and make it real in our bodies today, so that we live as people who actually believe we have changed masters. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one specific way today you can hand over a part of your body or your time to God as an instrument of righteousness, rather than letting it default back to its old master.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

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