The Sermon That Started It All

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14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: 36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” 37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” 40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. (Acts 2: 14a, 36-41 NIV)

Every pastor at one time or another has secretly or not so secretly wished that one of his/her sermons would reach 3,000 who would be "added to their number that day." Maybe some even wish they could preach to a crowd of that size. But keep in mind this is not a competition. We compete not against other preachers but against the enemy of preachers. But among my friends whenever they call to check on me after I preach at some new place, "Did you convert 3,000 with your sermon?" Or I ask them.

Not many weeks earlier, this same Peter had stood in a courtyard by a charcoal fire and denied three times that he even knew Jesus. He had cursed and sworn and slipped away into the shadows. But now, on the morning of Pentecost, something has happened to him. He stands up. He raises his voice. He addresses a crowd of thousands in the very city where his Lord was executed.

This is what resurrection does to a person. The same power that rolled away the stone, that transformed a borrowed tomb into the most important empty room in history, has transformed Peter. He is not managing his shame. He is not offering a carefully hedged theological position. He is making a declaration: the Jesus you crucified is Lord and Messiah. Full stop.

The Easter season invites us to ask the same question the resurrection asked of Peter: Has the risen Christ changed me? Not just what I believe, but who I am — my courage, my willingness to stand up, my readiness to speak? The resurrection is not merely a doctrine to affirm. It is a power to receive.

Peter’s message is startling in its directness. He does not soften the central claim or bury it in qualifications. He says: God has made the Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah. The word “you” lands like a stone in still water. Many in the crowd had been in Jerusalem during Passover. Some had perhaps cried out for Barabbas. Others had simply stood by in silence. None of them could claim to be entirely uninvolved in what had happened to Jesus.

But here is the grace hidden in that accusation: Peter is not addressing enemies. He calls them “brothers.” He is speaking to people who are, in that moment, reachable. The same hands that were raised against Jesus can be opened to receive Him. This is the scandal of Easter grace — that the gospel is preached first to those who crucified the Christ, and three thousand of them say yes.

We are all, in one way or another, in that crowd. We have all turned away, denied, been complicit in the small crucifixions of everyday life — the lies we told, the kindness we withheld, the idol we chose over the living God. And yet the sermon is preached to us, too. The question “what shall we do?” is ours to ask.

The crowd’s response is one of the most remarkable phrases in the New Testament: “they were cut to the heart.” The Greek word carries the image of something sharp and sudden — a piercing, a puncturing. The truth of the resurrection, proclaimed with clarity and boldness, did something to them that no amount of philosophical argument or emotional manipulation could do. It broke through.

This is always how genuine conviction works. It is not manufactured by clever technique or worked up by atmospheric pressure. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, using the proclaimed Word to reach places in the human heart that nothing else can access. Peter did not cut them to the heart. The truth about the risen Christ did. Peter simply had the courage to say it out loud.

Have you ever been cut to the heart by the gospel? Can you remember the moment when the resurrection stopped being a theological proposition and became a personal confrontation — when the question “what shall we do?” became your own? If you have, let this season renew the memory. If you haven’t, let this be your Pentecost.

Peter’s answer to the crowd’s urgent question is wonderfully simple: repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Three movements, each flowing into the next. Repentance is the turning — away from the old life, the futile ways, the self-constructed kingdoms. Baptism is the public declaration — I belong to the crucified and risen Jesus, and I am not ashamed. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is what makes all of this sustainable: not our own willpower or religious effort, but the very presence and power of God living within us.

And then Peter widens the lens to an astonishing breadth: “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Far off. That phrase would have echoed in the ears of every Gentile who heard it later, every person who felt themselves on the outside of God’s story. The resurrection has no borders. The Spirit has no favorites. The call goes out to the near and the far, the young and the old, those who feel worthy and those who are quite sure they are not.

Three thousand people said yes that day. Not because Peter was a brilliant orator. Not because the conditions were perfect. But because the risen Christ was real, the Spirit was moving, and the Word went forth with power. That same risen Christ is real today. That same Spirit is moving. The Word has not lost its edge.

PRAYER: Loving God, thank you for those first sermons that touch people for the first time or convict for the first time. Thank you for the men and women who have responded to preaching and reaching us. Help us to know we have a "pulpit" from which we too, can "preach" the love fo Jesus to all; in His name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one person in your life who is “far off” — far from faith, far from hope, or simply far from community — and take one deliberate step toward them. It doesn’t have to be a sermon. It might be a conversation, an invitation, a meal, or simply the courage to tell them what the risen Christ has meant to you.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Strangers From Another Land

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17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. 18 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. 20 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. 21 Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. 22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. 23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. (1 Peter 1: 17-23 NRSV)

In 1975 I left the safety of home and hearth to move to Denver, Colorado to resume my seminary education. I had dropped out of SMU's Perkins School of Theology, worked for Ma Bell, and took advantage of the United Methodist Church's Crusade Scholarship and Iliff's School of Theology's invitation to keep studying to become a minister. I have to stress that 1975 Denver was not the Denver of today. I have to confess I had never lived outside of Texas and Colorado being a state park of Texas (so so Texans used to say to taunt and torment the two native Coloradans that lived there, I felt there might be enough Texans up there to help make me feel at home. I was wrong. Let's start with God's gift to humanity, Mexican food. The old chain El Chico's was the only restaurant that said it sold Mexican food. My having been exposed to it I tried my chances at another "Mexican" place and when I was seated, the server brought me a bowl of Fritos and a tiny bowl of ketchup. I kid you not. And it got worse. I don't have to say there were no HEB Grocery Stores, and there were no Spanish language UM churches. In many ways I was truly a stronger in a strange land. In some ways I truly was an exile from Texas.

Peter wrote this letter to the exiles of his time. The believers in Jesus had been scattered across the ancient world and so Peter writes to them. They are strangers, pilgrims, people who don’t quite fit. And in the middle of the Easter season — that stretch of glorious days between resurrection and Pentecost — Peter reminds us that this sense of not-quite-belonging is not a problem to be solved. It is the shape of the Christian life.

Because of the resurrection, our citizenship has shifted. We now belong to a kingdom that is not yet fully visible. We live, as the ancient phrase goes, in the world but not of it. Peter’s instruction to “live in reverent fear during the time of your exile” is not a call to anxiety. It is a call to awareness — to remember who you are, who you belong to, and how costly that belonging was.

Peter could have stopped at gratitude. He could have simply said, “You have been set free — rejoice!” But he is more precise than that. He names what we were ransomed from: “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.” The word futile here is heavy. It is the same emptiness that the Preacher names in Ecclesiastes — vanity, vapor, a chasing after wind. Without the resurrection, all our striving, all our building, all our grasping amounts to exactly that.

And the price paid for our release? Not silver or gold — the currencies that drive so much of human life — but “the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.” Peter reaches back to the Passover imagery every Jewish reader would instantly recognize: the unblemished lamb, the blood on the doorpost, the night of deliverance. Jesus is that Lamb. The cross is that doorpost. And Easter morning is God’s declaration that the ransom has been accepted.

This is why Peter can say that Christ “was destined before the foundation of the world.” The resurrection did not catch heaven by surprise. The empty tomb was not Plan B. From before creation, the Lamb was appointed, the price was purposed, and your freedom was planned.

Easter reorients everything, including where we place our hope. Peter says that through Christ, God “raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” Notice the direction of this sentence. The resurrection is not primarily about our feelings of comfort or our theological categories. It is about the reorientation of the whole self — faith and hope, grounded not in circumstances, not in human systems, but in the God who raises the dead.

To set your hope on God is to live with a kind of stubborn confidence that refuses to be finally undone by grief, failure, or death. The disciples on Easter morning had to learn this. So did Peter himself — a man who had denied Christ three times and still found himself writing letters about the glorious hope of the resurrection. If the risen Lord could restore Peter’s hope, He can restore yours.

Peter’s letter arrives at its most pastoral moment in verses 22 and 23. All the theology of ransom and resurrection, of exile and hope, flows toward a single imperative: “love one another deeply from the heart.” The Greek word translated “deeply” carries the sense of something strained to its full capacity, stretched out, extended beyond comfort. Not polite affection. Not surface-level cordiality. Earnest, effortful, costly love.

This is possible, Peter says, because we have been “born anew” — not from perishable seed but from the living and enduring word of God. The same resurrection power that emptied the tomb has planted something imperishable in us. We are new creatures. And new creatures, shaped by Easter, love differently than the world does.

The world loves transactionally — giving in order to receive, relating in order to gain. But the ransomed people of God love because they have been loved at infinite cost. We love from the overflow of a grace we did not earn and could not purchase. Easter gives us both the reason and the power to love one another as the risen Christ has loved us.

PRAYER: Risen Lord, You ransomed us at a price beyond reckoning. Turn our eyes from futile things to the imperishable hope of the resurrection. Remind us today that we are exiles with a destination — and give us grace to love one another deeply while we walk the road home. In Your strong name we pray, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, identify one person in your life who needs the kind of deep, earnest love Peter describes. Reach out to them in a concrete way — a note, a visit, a meal, a phone call — not because they have earned it, but because you have been ransomed to love.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! You have been born anew. Now go and love like it.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Walking with Jesus With Eyes Wide Open

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13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him. 17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.” 25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. 28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” 33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” 35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. (Luke 24:13-35 NIV)

Some years ago, I received a call from the conference office that they needed Nellie and me to go to Nashville for a clergy couple meeting at the General Board of Discipleship. We were blessed to sit through a series of teachings by The Rev. Dr. Maxie Dunnam, whom, at the time unbeknownst to us, was working on the finishing touches on a four-day leadership retreat called The Walk to Emmaus. Maxie had brokered a deal with The Catholic Church to pay the rights to a Methodist version of the Catholic Cursillo, a wonderful retreat started by Catholics who wanted to know more about the love and work of God. The word cursillo from Spanish, for the retreat had its origins in España, means little course or short course. We also heard from others who were part of that foundational team, included Dr. Robert Wood, and I hope I'm remembering his name correctly, but we heard some of the wonderful words we would one day hear as actual participants in the retreat called The Walk to Emmaus.

This is the passage on which the retreat is based. Two disciples walking away from where their dreams had been shattered and back to their home where they could regroup and maybe regather themselves for continued ministry. Some have speculated that one or both of these disciples were crying, no, sobbing and with tear-filled eyes their vision was limited. Their minds were perhaps cluttered with so many questions about all they had seen, heard and experienced. As they are walking along, here comes the risen Jesus, who joins them and walks with them. The incredible thing was they did not recognize Him. He asks them what they were talking about. This makes them stop and their faces give them away. Their faces are downcast. What a word! They saw Jesus crucified. The agony of Jesus was theirs too. The pain and grief in Jerusalem on that afternoon was theirs as well. They thought the whole world must have heard and must have known the pain they had felt, so they ask Jesus, "Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" Jesus answered in the unexpected way, "What things?" And they being to share about Him all they had heard and believed. They share how their hopes had been shattered because of the death.

Jesus did not announce Himself. He asked questions. He listened. He let them pour out their confusion and loss. Then, patiently and lovingly, He opened the Scriptures to them, beginning with Moses and moving through all the prophets. He gave them the whole story — a story they had heard before, but which suddenly took on new meaning.

This is what God’s Word does when the risen Christ opens it to us: it takes familiar territory and reveals something we have never fully seen. The Scriptures are not merely historical documents; they are the living voice of a Savior who walks with us and speaks to our burning hearts.

It was not until these two invited Jesus to their home and broke bread together that they finally realized who Jesus was! Jesus had taken the bread, broke it and gave thanks and gave it to them. This opened their eyes and right in tront of their eyes, Jesus disappeared.

After Jesus vanished from their sight, the two disciples looked at each other and realized something remarkable had been happening all along — they just hadn’t named it. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (v. 32). They had felt it. They simply hadn’t understood it.

This Easter season, pay attention to your burning heart. Pay attention to the moments in worship, in Scripture reading, in prayer, in conversation, when something stirs within you that you cannot quite explain. That stirring may be the risen Christ walking beside you, speaking to you — even when your eyes have not yet been fully opened to recognize Him.

And notice what they did next: they got up “that very hour” and returned to Jerusalem — the very place they had been fleeing. A genuine encounter with the risen Christ always turns us around. It sends us back into community, back into mission, back into life. Resurrection hope is never meant to be kept to ourselves.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, risen and present, We confess that we, too, have walked roads of disappointment with downcast faces, so consumed by our grief and confusion that we did not recognize You walking beside us. Forgive us for the moments we have been so fixed on what we lost that we missed what You were doing. Open our eyes, Lord — the way You opened the eyes of those two disciples. Open them at the table, in the Word, in the quiet place of prayer. Kindle a fire in our hearts that burns even when we don’t fully understand what You are doing. Remind us that You are not absent from our suffering; You are present in it, walking with us, speaking to us, leading us. And when our eyes are opened and we see You clearly, give us the courage to get up — to return to the places of community and witness, to tell others what You have done. May the testimony of the empty tomb and the burning heart be ever on our lips. You are alive. You are here. And that changes everything. In Your glorious name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Slow down on a walk. Take a deliberate walk — even just around the block — and invite Jesus to join you. As you walk, ask Him: “Where have You been walking with me that I have not yet recognized?”

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

We Serve a Living Savior

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1 Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” 3 I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.” 4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips. 5 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. 6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. 7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. 8 I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, 10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. 11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16 NIV)

A blessed and rich Friday be yours, dear Friend. Our brother, Mr. Kevin Pirkle, underwent a successful surgery and is in the hospital for a few days to recover before entering a rehab center. His wife, Haley, is home recovering and son Addison is in Respite Care Center this morning for 2 weeks to allow Mom and Dad to recover fully. A late notice I received is from Bishop Joel Martinez of San Antonio, that his wife, Dr. Raquel Mora Martinez, has been receiving cancer treatments but today entered Hospice care at home. Please be in prayer for Dr. Martinez and Bishop Martinez as well as for his family during this difficult time. May God bless you with your prayers being answered as well. I am pleased to report that I feel much better today and pray that I will be preaching Sunday at Pilgrim Presbyterian Church.

I have somewhere in our possession, a red sports bag that is filled with maps, atlases, and travel journals. Yes, I am that old. And I have been a member of the American Automobile Association (AAA). Membership entitled me, back in the good ole days, to access in their offices, all the above mentioned. To plan our vacations we would acquire the maps and sometimes a journal that AAA would make for up, which were like several pages of maps highlighted with yellow detailing the route from our home to our destination. This was more accessible than a huge open map spread across the front seat of our car. Yes, the old days when the front seat was a huge bench allowing for two-headed monster to do-drive it. (Kids, ask your grandparents about the "two-headed monsters). I would drive and Nellie would co-pilot. "You're going to have to turn in three miles to the right on Highway 61." Ah, the memories. Now, your vehicles tells in the voice you select, the directions leading you to your destination.

This is a psalm that serves as a guide map that affirms several things. Psalm 16 is David’s song of confidence—an unshakable trust that God will not abandon him, even in death. During the Easter season, this psalm takes on deeper color. What David could only see in shadows, Christ fulfilled in full daylight.

David rejoices that God is his refuge, his portion, his inheritance. He knows that life with God is secure. But then he says something astonishing: God “will not abandon me to the realm of the dead.” For David, this was a hope. For Jesus, it became history.

The early church read Psalm 16 as a prophecy pointing straight to the resurrection. Jesus is the Holy One who did not see decay. Because He rose, the promise of Psalm 16 becomes ours too:

In this Psalm God has provided a map that shows us the path of life, not a dead end. Easter is about taking the road of faith that leads us to life, not death.

The psalmist also shows us that in Christ we can find a joy that suffering cannot erase. A living joy that rises above the pain that death brings, a pain of deadly suffering.

We have in this Psalm a future that death cannot steal. For too long death meant a dead end with no hope beyond the grief that it brought with it. Jesus shows us a new road filled with a living hope and nothing death brings with it can defeat it. Jesus spoke of this in John 10:10, He had come to bring life and life in abundance (all the "trimming") with it; unlike what Satan sought; steal, kill, and destroy.

Easter means the grave is no longer a destination—it’s a doorway. The God who kept His promise to Jesus will keep His promise to you. The risen Christ stands as proof that God’s goodness is not fragile, temporary, or uncertain. It is eternal, abundant, and unstoppable.

Psalm 16 invites us to rest in that truth. To say with David: “Lord, you are my portion.” To trust that the One who conquered death can carry us through anything.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, risen Savior, thank You for the victory of Easter. Thank You that in You we have a path of life, a refuge in every storm, and a joy that death cannot touch. Teach us to trust You the way David trusted You—to rest in Your goodness, to walk in Your presence, and to live with resurrection hope. Fill our hearts with the confidence that You are with us now and forever. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take one moment today to thank God for one specific way His resurrection hope is shaping your life right now. Let that gratitude guide your next step forward.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

BUILDING12: Go and Make Disciples! (The Great Commission)

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19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."(Matthew 28:19-20 NRSV)

Happy Wednesday, dear Friend! May this be a day of new beginnings and blessings. May we pray for the blessing of health for those who have asked prayers from us. The Rev Stacey Evans, Valleyspring UMC has cancer and has been very sick. Please pray for her healing and wellbeing. Please also be in prayer for those pastors who have been notified of upcoming moves. May God bless them as they prepare to leave churches and homes to new settings. Prayers especaiily for spouses and children, as moves are never easy for them.

Well dear ones, this is the final and twelfth teaching of our Lord to His Disciples. They have been in chronological order and this final one is the deployment orders, or marching orders, to these men to go into the world and to transform it. It happens on a mountain spoken by the resurrected Jesus and He is very explicit in what it will take to win the world. Two verses. A command, a method, and a promise. This is the Great Commission — not an aspirational motto for the especially courageous, but an assignment given to ordinary, doubting, still-figuring-it-out followers of Jesus. It was theirs. And it is ours.

Before Jesus says go, He says something that reframes every word that follows. He says: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. This is not a warm-up line. It is the entire foundation on which the commission stands.

A commission is only as weighty as the one who issues it. A general's orders carry the force of the army behind them. A sovereign's word carries the weight of the throne. When Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Him — not some authority, not authority in certain jurisdictions, but all of it — He is establishing that there is no place His disciples will ever go where He is not already Lord.

This changes everything about how we approach the mission. We do not go into the world hoping Jesus might have some influence there. We go into a world that already belongs to Him — a world for which He died and over which He reigns. The harvest field is not enemy-occupied territory from which we are trying to steal a few souls. It is the Father's field, and the risen Son is Lord of every square inch of it. We have His orders and for some, more importantly, we have His permission. For many of us, having permission is key to all things. I grew up in a home where we had to have permission to do this or that. So much so that on the very first night in college, a new friend asked me to go to the movies with him. I hesitated and said, "Let me go inside and get...." I stopped and laughed, I was going to say I needed to get permission.

So many followers of Jesus hesitate at the edge of the commission because they feel inadequate. They do not know enough theology. They have not resolved all their own questions. Their lives are messy enough that they wonder who they are to speak to anyone else about God. And so the commission stays at arm's length — admired, agreed with, and quietly ignored.

But Jesus does not say go because you are ready. He says go because I am Lord. The authority behind this mission is not yours to generate. It is His to grant — and He has granted it fully. The most uncertain disciple in that hillside crowd went forward on the same authority as the most confident one. What separated those who changed the world from those who faded into obscurity was not their qualifications. It was their willingness to lean on His. And please remember we are not sent because we have all the answers. We are sent because He has all authority.

In the original Greek, the Great Commission has one main verb and three supporting ones. The grammatical anchor of the entire sentence — the thing Jesus is most fundamentally commanding — is make disciples. Go, baptizing, and teaching all describe how disciplemaking happens. But the irreducible heart of the commission is this: make disciples.

Not make converts. Not make church attenders. Not make people who agree with a set of doctrinal propositions. Make disciples. The Greek word is matheteuein — to make learners, to apprentice someone into a way of life. A disciple in the ancient world was not simply someone who held certain beliefs. A disciple was someone whose entire manner of living was being shaped by a master's teaching and example.

To make a disciple is therefore a far richer, slower, more demanding undertaking than we often acknowledge. It is not a single conversation or a prayer prayed at an altar, though those moments can be sacred doorways. It is the sustained, relational investment of walking alongside someone as they learn to follow Jesus — answering their questions, modeling what obedience looks like, welcoming them into community, and staying with them through the long, uneven arc of growth.

Going. The word go carries within it an assumption that the people of God are a sent people — always moving outward, not waiting for the world to wander in. The church is not primarily a destination. It is a sending community, a people perpetually oriented toward those who have not yet heard. For some, that going crosses an ocean. For most, it crosses a street, a hallway, a lunch table, or a backyard fence, or cross the aisle in church on a Sunday morning.

The nations Jesus speaks of — panta ta ethne in Greek, all the people groups of the earth — are not only far away. They are often right next to us: the family from another country that moved in down the block, the coworker from a background entirely unlike ours, the neighbor whose language we do not share but whose loneliness we can see. The going begins wherever we already are.

Baptism in the name of the Trinity is the rite of welcome into the community of faith. It is the embodied, public declaration that a life now belongs to God and to God's people. Jesus includes it here as a reminder that discipleship is never a merely private matter between an individual and Jesus. To follow Christ is to be joined to His body. We are baptized into community — called, marked, and held together as the family of God.

Notice the precise language: teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Not teaching them to memorize everything. Not teaching them to be able to debate everything. Teaching them to obey. The goal of all Christian formation — every sermon, every small group, every one-on-one conversation over coffee — is ultimately a life increasingly shaped by the character and commands of Jesus.

This is patient work that does not end. There is no graduation from discipleship this side of eternity. We are always learners, always being formed, always being conformed more deeply to the image of the One who called us. And so the teaching church is also always a learning church — humble enough to keep growing even as it reaches outward. Disciplemaking is not a program to launch. It is a life to give away.

All nations — panta ta ethne. Every people group, every language, every culture, every corner of human experience on the face of the earth. The scope of Jesus's vision is breathtaking, and in its original context it was nothing short of revolutionary.

The disciples who heard these words had been raised within a tradition that understood God's covenant as centered in Israel. The idea that the good news of Jesus was for all nations — not as an afterthought, not as an extension program, but as the very heartbeat of God's redemptive purpose — was staggering. The circle of welcome was wider than anyone had dared imagine.

For us today, the vision of all nations carries a built-in challenge to our comfort. A church that reaches only the people who already look, think, and live like its current members is not yet living fully into the commission. The picture of the kingdom that Jesus points toward is a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language — and the work of the church is to pursue that vision, even when it requires crossing distances we would rather not cross.

Acts describes the spread of the gospel in expanding circles — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The disciples did not begin by booking passage to Rome. They began in the city where they already stood, with the people already around them. The all-nations vision never excuses us from the immediate neighbor. The Great Commission always begins with the person right in front of you.

Who is in your Jerusalem today? The coworker who has been quietly asking questions that sound a lot like spiritual thirst. The family member who has wandered far from faith and might not know how to find their way back. The new neighbor who does not yet know anyone in this city. The all-nations mission starts at your front door and moves outward from there.

Jesus closes the Great Commission not with another command but with a promise — and it is the promise that makes all the commands livable.

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” — Matthew 28:20

Remember. As if He knew we would forget. As if He understood that the weight of the mission, the vastness of the need, and the reality of our own smallness would cause us, sooner or later, to lose sight of the most critical fact of all: He has not sent us alone.

I am with you always. Not when your faith is strong. Not when the conversation goes well. Not when the results are visible and the work feels rewarding. Always — including in the long seasons of sowing when nothing seems to be growing, in the awkward exchange about faith that ends in silence, in the grief of watching someone you love walk away from God, in the weariness of showing up again and again for people who may not yet see what you see.

To the end of the age. This promise has no expiration date. Every generation of disciples who has taken this commission seriously has gone forward on the strength of these words. The early church went into a hostile empire with this promise. The martyrs faced their deaths with this promise. The missionaries who crossed unknown oceans held this promise. And we carry it still — the same risen Lord, the same unbroken word, the same presence that has never once failed.

The commission and the comfort are bound together in a single breath. Go — and I am with you. Make disciples — and I will never leave you. Baptize and teach — and I am there in every moment of it, with all authority in heaven and on earth sustaining every faithful step you take.

Go back to that mountain one more time. Eleven people. Some worshiping, some doubting. Fishermen and a former tax collector. People who had failed Him, fled from Him, and needed to be forgiven by Him. And the risen Lord gives them a commission that will, within a single generation, carry the gospel from Galilee to Rome.

They did not accomplish this because they were exceptional. They accomplished it because they were obedient to an exceptional Lord, and because they went in the power of His presence rather than the meager power of their own ability.

You are standing on that mountain today. The same commission. The same presence. The same promise stretching out before you to the end of the age. You do not need to have it all figured out before you step into this calling. You need only to go — and trust that the One who sends you has never stopped going with you. The Great Commission is not the calling of the exceptional few. It is the privilege of every baptized believer.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank You for sending us not in our own strength but in Yours. Forgive us for holding the commission at a safe distance. Give us the courage to go, the patience to make disciples, and the faith to trust that You are always with us. We have major work to do, and we can only do it with Your presence and power with us; in Christ Jesus we pray, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Write down the name of one person in your life who does not yet know Jesus. Pray for them by name every day this week. Then take one simple step toward them — a conversation, a meal, or a note that lets them know you care. The Great Commission always begins with one name.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

BUILDING12: Live by Faith - Not Appearance

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29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." (John 20:29) 20 He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20 NRS)

Happy Easter, Friend! He is risen! He is risen indeed! This is the most powerful season of the Church. Jesus defeated sin and death and came to show us a better way to live.

As we continue our study of Jesus' teachings for His disciples we reach one that is key; how to live. Jesus is quoted in two passage where he speaks of faith and how key it is for our lives. Two different contexts, but still powerful in what Jesus say about our lives. In the first instance, Jesus is speaking to Thomas after Jesus' resurrection, Jesus speaks of the specialness of us today when we come to faith without having seen anything. In the second Jesus speaks of the power of faith regardless of size comparing a mustard seed to being key to a victorious life moving mountains and finding nothing impossible.

As humans, we are usually the type that we must see something first befoe we believe it. When it comes to making a purchase we must see what it is we are buying before we move forward making payment on whatever we seek to buy. There is something deeply human about needing to see it before we believe it. We want proof. We want evidence. We want the result in our hands before we commit to the process. And in many areas of life, that instinct makes sense.

But the life of faith asks something radically different of us. It asks us to trust before we see, to move before the path is fully visible, to believe the promise before we hold the fulfillment. That is the great tension every follower of Jesus must learn to navigate: the tension between what our eyes report and what God has declared.

Today, we are going to sit with two passages that speak directly into that tension. One comes from a moment of doubt in an upper room. The other comes from a hillside conversation about mountains and mustard seeds. Together, they form a picture of what it truly means to live by faith and not by appearances.

Eight days after the resurrection, the disciples were gathered again behind locked doors. Thomas, who had missed the first appearance of the risen Jesus, had been firm in his position: unless he could see the nail marks and touch the wounds himself, he would not believe.

And then Jesus appeared. He did not rebuke Thomas from a distance. He walked straight to him and said, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side." Jesus met Thomas exactly where he was. Thomas, overcome, responded with one of the most profound confessions in all of Scripture: "My Lord and my God!"

But what Jesus said next is the word that reaches across two thousand years and lands directly in our lives today:

“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” — John 20:29

Jesus was not scolding Thomas for his doubt. He was opening a door. He was declaring that a different kind of faith exists — a faith that does not require physical sight in order to be real, in order to be valid, in order to be blessed.

That word "blessed" in the original Greek is the same word used throughout the Beatitudes. It carries the sense of deep, settled well-being, of flourishing. Jesus is saying: the person who trusts Me without needing to physically see Me first is living in a place of profound spiritual richness.

We are those people. We are the ones Jesus was speaking to when He said those words. We have not walked the roads of Galilee. We have not heard His voice carry across the water. We have not seen the empty tomb with our own eyes. And yet we believe. And Jesus calls that blessed.

But here is the honest question this raises: if we say we believe, why do we so often live as if we must see it first? Why do we panic at the diagnosis, despair at the closed door, lose hope when the answer doesn't come on our timeline? Could it be that our faith in Jesus is genuine, but our faith in His active involvement in our daily circumstances is still developing?

Seeing is not the beginning of faith. For the follower of Jesus, faith is the beginning of seeing.

Thomas saw and then believed. Jesus calls us to believe so that we might see — see His faithfulness, His provision, His sovereign hand working in the details of our lives, often in ways we only recognize in hindsight.

In Matthew 17, the disciples have just failed to cast out a demon from a suffering boy. They come to Jesus privately, frustrated and confused, and ask the question we have all asked in moments of spiritual powerlessness: "Why couldn't we do it?"

Jesus does not give them a complicated theological explanation. He gives them an image so small it seems almost impossible that it could carry the weight of the answer. He points to a mustard seed.

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” — Matthew 17:20

A mustard seed. In the ancient world, the mustard seed was proverbially the smallest seed a person could hold between their fingers. Jesus is not saying you need great faith. He is saying you need genuine faith — even if it is small.

There is such mercy in this. We often disqualify ourselves from God's power because we feel our faith is not big enough, not strong enough, not consistent enough. We look at our doubts and assume they have cancelled out whatever faith remains. But Jesus says no — even faith the size of something you can barely see is enough to move a mountain.

The issue is not the size of your faith. The issue is the object of your faith. A tiny seed of genuine trust in the living God carries more weight than a mountain of self-confidence. It is not the intensity of your belief that moves the mountain. It is the God in whom you believe.

What is your mountain?

Every one of us is standing at the base of something that looks immovable. Maybe it is a relationship that seems beyond repair. A habit that has had its grip on you for years. A financial situation that looks permanent. A grief that seems like it will never lift. A calling you have felt in your spirit but cannot see any path to fulfilling.

Jesus is not asking you to pretend the mountain is not there. He saw the mountain. He acknowledged the problem. What He is asking is: will you speak to it in faith, or will you be silenced by its size?

Appearances say: the mountain is too big. Faith says: my God is bigger than the mountain. Appearances say: nothing is going to change. Faith says: I serve the God who specializes in the impossible.

The mountain does not move because of how loudly you speak to it. It moves because of who you are speaking in the name of.

These two passages illuminate each other beautifully. John 20:29 tells us who we are called to be — people who believe without needing to see first. Matthew 17:20 tells us what that kind of believing actually does — it moves mountains.

Living by faith and not by appearances is not passive. It is not sitting back and waiting for circumstances to change while you hope for the best. It is an active, intentional, daily choice to orient your inner life around what God has said rather than what your situation seems to be saying.

The disciples in Matthew 17 had seen Jesus. They had walked with Him, heard His teaching, witnessed miracles firsthand. And still their faith faltered when the moment of crisis came. Why? Because proximity to Jesus is not the same as dependence on Jesus. You can know the right words, attend the right services, be surrounded by the right people — and still, in the critical moment, walk by sight instead of faith.

Faith is a practice. It is a muscle that must be exercised consistently in the small things so that it is strong enough to hold you in the large things. Every time you choose gratitude over anxiety, you are exercising faith. Every time you speak a promise over a problem instead of rehearsing the problem, you are exercising faith. Every time you take the next obedient step even though you cannot see the outcome, you are exercising faith.

How faith grows

Faith grows through the Word. Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of God. You cannot sustain a life of faith if you are not regularly saturating yourself in the promises of God. The Word recalibrates your vision. It reminds you of what is actually true when appearances are shouting something different.

Faith grows through remembrance. The Psalms are full of this pattern — the writer in distress crying out, then deliberately calling himself back to what God has already done. Your history with God is evidence for your future with God. When you cannot see the way forward, look back at every Red Sea He has already parted in your life.

Faith grows through community. Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. He did not design the life of faith to be lived in isolation. When your faith is wavering, someone else's faith can carry you. When you are standing firm, your faith becomes an anchor for someone who is struggling. We were not meant to walk this road alone.

Jesus said you are blessed — not because your circumstances are easy, not because the mountain has already moved, not because you have all the answers. You are blessed because you believe in One you have not physically seen, and that belief is not weakness. It is the most courageous posture a human being can take in a world that demands proof before commitment.

You have a mountain in front of you today. And you have a faith — even if it feels as small as a mustard seed right now — that is connected to the God who spoke galaxies into existence. That is enough. That has always been enough.

Do not let appearances write the final word over your life. Let faith speak instead.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. That is you. Walk like it.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank You that You call us blessed, not because our faith is perfect, but because it is real and it is Yours. Forgive us for the times we have lived by appearances and forgotten Your promises. Strengthen our faith today — even if it is only the size of a mustard seed. Speak to the mountains in our lives that we have been too afraid to address. Help us to walk by faith, not by sight — one step, one day, one trust at a time. In Your name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name one mountain you have been staring at in silence. Write it down, then write a specific promise from God’s Word directly beside it. Speak that promise aloud over your situation every morning this week — not as a magic formula, but as an act of faith in the God who moves mountains.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me. I ask prayers for me as I now under the weather and thus no audio or video of this devotional. Also, next Sunday I will be preaching in Pilgrim Church; pray the Lord give me a word and the health to deliver it! Blessings to you all!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

BUILDING12: Do Not Worry - Trust God's Provision

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25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?' or "What will we drink?' or "What will we wear?' 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:25-34 NRS)

May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you, dear Friend. As you read this, it is Good Friday, a solemn day, tragic in all respects, but claimed by the Church to be a Good Friday for what Jesus did on our behalf. Never forget it was love that put Jesus on the cross, though driven there by our sins.

Are you an over-thinker? Which is a good name for people who worry too much. Yes, it's good to analyze most things and to design plans or goals to address your goals or even your daily chores; but if you do it without prayer, listening and reflection, it will lead you to a place of anxiousness and worry. Fret is a four-letter word and it means Forgetting Reliance Erases Trust. Our reliance is on the Lord Jesus but many times we place that on a second tier. Yesterday we spoke about putting God's Kingdom first which means asking God's presence and peace in our lives; fretting tends to place God behind us and not in front of us. Here we find Jesus teaching His disciples and we, His followers some Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth; DO NOT WORRY. TRUST GOD'S PROVISION.

Most commands Jesus gives feel difficult but achievable — love your neighbor, forgive others, serve the least. This one feels different. Do not worry lands on the anxious heart less like an invitation and more like an accusation. As if the person in the grip of genuine fear simply hasn't tried hard enough to stop. Gulp! Is that me He's talking about? (Put your hands down, you in the back!)

But Jesus is not scolding. He is diagnosing — and then offering a cure. The passage that follows is not a lecture on the weakness of anxious people. It is a careful, tender, almost pastoral argument designed to shift the center of gravity in a human life from fear to trust. He is not demanding that we manufacture a feeling we do not have. He is pointing us toward a reality larger than our fear, and asking us to look at it long enough for it to change us.

The word translated worry in the ancient form means to be pulled in different directions, to be divided, to have the mind fractured by competing concerns. Anxiety, in this sense, is not simply a feeling. It is a divided self — a person being pulled apart by the gap between what they need and what they can secure on their own. Jesus addresses it not with a pep talk but with a reorientation toward the Father.

Jesus does something unexpected here. He sends His listeners outside, a field trip as it were, though they were more than likely outside to begin with.

Look at the birds of the air — really look at them. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns. They have no savings account, no retirement plan, no stockpile against an uncertain winter. And yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Then He turns to the wildflowers — the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, dressed in a glory that outshines Solomon's finest court robes, here today and gone tomorrow. Had Jesus been in Texas He would have pointed to our bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes!

The argument is not that birds and flowers are carefree and therefore we should be. It is the argument of how much more. If the Father tends to the birds — creatures of negligible eternal significance — how much more does He tend to you, whom He has made in His image, for whom He gave His Son? If He clothes the grass of the field, which is here and gone, how much more will He clothe you?

Jesus is pointing us to creation as a sermon — a living, daily demonstration of the Father's provision for what He has made. Every bird that finds a worm, every wildflower that opens in the morning, is a small piece of evidence in the case against anxiety. Creation is telling us something about God, if we will stop long enough to look.

We rarely stop. Which is precisely why Jesus says look and consider — active verbs, deliberate attention. He is prescribing the practice of noticing what God is already doing as a remedy for the fear that He will stop.

"And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?"

It is almost gently comic — the image of a person hunched over their anxiety, working furiously at it as if the effort itself will produce the security they are seeking. And gaining nothing. Not an hour, not a cubit, not a single increment of the safety they are laboring toward.

Worry is the great pretender. It mimics control. It feels like doing something — like responsible, serious engagement with the real threats of life. But it produces nothing except the exhaustion of a mind running on a wheel that goes nowhere. Jesus is not telling us that the threats aren't real. He is pointing out that worry, as a response to them, is functionally useless. It does not add. It only subtracts — from our peace, from our presence, from our capacity to actually live the day we have been given.

If worry cannot add a single hour to your life, then every hour spent in worry is an hour taken from the life you actually have. The anxious person, in a very real sense, is not fully living in the present at all — they are living in an imagined future where the worst has happened and they are trying to manage it in advance.

Jesus is calling us back. Back to this day, this hour, this moment — where the Father is already present and already providing.

"But Strive First for the Kingdom"

The pivot of the passage comes in verse 33 — and it reveals what Jesus understands to be the root of anxiety. Since this was our topic yesterday, I remind us that anxiety is a symptom of a misplaced priority; when our priority should be the loving, real presence of our powerful God.

The passage closes with one of the most practical sentences in all of Scripture.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is sufficient for the day.

There is almost a dry humor in this — an acknowledgment that today already has enough difficulty without borrowing tomorrow's in advance. Jesus is not promising a trouble-free future. He is not saying the hard things we fear will never arrive. He is saying: they are not here yet. And when they arrive, the Father who is providing for today will be the Father providing for that day too.

The discipline of living in the present — of refusing to let the imagination run ahead to the worst version of tomorrow and live there instead of here — is one of the most quietly radical things a follower of Jesus can practice. It is the daily, concrete application of trust. The Father has given me today. He will give me tomorrow when it comes. I do not need to carry both at once.

This is what the birds know instinctively, and what we must learn by grace: to live in the day we have been given, sustained by a Father whose provision does not run out. PRA

YER: Loving Heavenly Father, I confess that I have been carrying tomorrow before it has arrived. Forgive my anxiety and the small faith beneath it. Teach me to look at what You are already doing — in the birds, in the flowers, in the daily gifts I have stopped noticing — and to trust that the God who provides for these will not abandon me. Quiet my divided mind and bring me back to this day, where You already are. This I pray in faith, in Christ Jesus' strong name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name the worry that woke you up this morning. Write it down, hand it to God in prayer, and then — just for today — refuse to carry it. When it returns, hand it back again. Practice trusting the Father one day at a time.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Bless someone with calm today!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.