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.

BUILDING12: Seek First the Kingdom of God

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33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33 NRSV) Dear Friend, as we pray, please pray for the family of Carrol and Kathleen Erwin, who died close to each other, Kathleen dying on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 at 3:30 am. Carrol and Kathleen are uncle and aunt to our sister, Donna Hisey. Pray God's comfort be with all the family and all who loved them. God bless you for all the prayers you lift up for others!

I was called into ministry when I was in the eleventh grade. I resisted and did not commit to it right away. Long story short; here I am! But it's been wonderful how God has provided for me every step of the way. I remember seeing couples gathering at a singles event and one of the guys who had a fiancée, came to me and asked me if I needed a wife. I know needed ia a tough word, but I said that yes I would like to one day be married and this friend said, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:13). That moment stayed with me and more so because years later this same guy is in the insurance business, and of course I thanked him again for having given me hope and he asked, "Did I say that?" But in 1977 I was an intern minister in Mission, Texas. The church provided a converted garage as my apartment and I got a stipend of $120 a month. All for 80 hours of work per week. Believe it or not, I did not care about the money. I was more worried about whether I was in the right place or not; if ministry would be what God truly wanted from me as I explored the many exits out of Mission. But God provided out of His riches a young lady who caught my attention right away. I wanted to date her immediately and she said no. She was on the Staff Parish Relations Committee and said it would not be ethical. "Who's worried about ethics," asked I? Hey, I was young and lonely! Had I truly been thinking about this situation, $120 then in 1977 would provide for maybe two dates a month, but I knew God would provide a way. I knew that if Nellie was the one whom God was providing I would have more than half of the battle won in having her by my side. I knew her heart to be right, for when I asked about her, my pastor who suggested I call her (I didn't need that suggestion - I was on the case!) said, "She's a teacher. She's a woman of prayer, and she's a tither! She's the kind of woman who will be praying for you all the time, especially as you travel for the Lord." Gulp! I replied, "Sign me up!"

As Jesus prepares the Twelve for ministry, He shares this verse at the end of His discourse on many important things that had people of HIs day, and even today, worried and stressed. Jesus has been watching people. He has watched them exhaust themselves in the pursuit of security — storing up treasure, serving money with the devotion that belongs to God alone, scanning the horizon of the future with the panicked calculation of those who are not sure anyone is in charge. And He names it directly: you cannot serve God and wealth. Not — you should not, or it would be better if you didn't. You cannot. The two masters make mutually exclusive demands, and every life will ultimately reveal which one it has actually been serving.

Then He pivots to anxiety — the internal experience of a life organized around the wrong center. Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. He points to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field — creatures and flowers that do not produce or spin or stockpile, and yet are fed and clothed by the Father's provision. The argument is not that work is wrong or that planning is faithless. It is that the frantic, stomach-tightening anxiety of those who believe everything depends on their own management is a failure to reckon with who the Father actually is.

And then, having named the wrong orientation — wealth, worry, the anxious striving after things — He names the right one. Strive first for the kingdom of God.

Jesus does not say strive only for the kingdom — as though the practical concerns of daily life are irrelevant or unspiritual. He does not say strive eventually for the kingdom — as though it belongs at the end of the agenda, after everything else has been settled. He says first. Before the other things. Prior to them. As the orienting priority from which everything else takes its proper place.

Jesus diagnoses this arrangement as the source of the very anxiety He has been addressing. Anxiety is what happens when the wrong things are first. When security, comfort, and the management of outcomes sit at the center of our lives, every threat to those things becomes a threat to everything. The soul that has organized itself around God's kingdom, by contrast, has a center that cannot be shaken by market fluctuations, health crises, or an uncertain future — because the kingdom of God is not subject to any of those things. I have a friend whose father-in-law used to tell debt collectors, "If you guys don't back off I'm taking your name out of the hat!" They would ask, "What hat?" "The hat where I put all of the names of my debtors; I draw one or two names a month depending on who I can pay; and if your name is not in the hat you won't get paid!" This from a generation that used to see men in suits knocking on doors trying to collect debts. And little ones were taught to fib about mom or dad being home! First is not just an instruction about priorities. It is the prescription for the anxious heart.

The kingdom of God is not primarily a place. It is not a future destination we are waiting to enter after death, though it has a future dimension. It is the active, present reign of God — the reality that comes into being wherever God's will is done, wherever His purposes are accomplished, wherever His character is reflected in human life and community.

Jesus announced that the kingdom had come near in His own person — that wherever He was, the reign of God was breaking in. Where He healed, the kingdom was present. Where He forgave, the kingdom was present. Where the hungry were fed, the excluded were welcomed, and the captive were freed — there the kingdom was happening. To seek the kingdom first, then, is to align our lives with what God is doing in the world.

Righteousness here is not merely personal moral rectitude — the avoidance of individual sin. To seek God's righteousness is to care about what God cares about: the poor, the marginalized, the truthful ordering of human community, the dignity of every person who bears the divine image.

You cannot genuinely seek the kingdom while remaining indifferent to the things the kingdom is concerned with. The one who seeks the kingdom first will find themselves increasingly shaped by kingdom concerns: mercy, justice, peacemaking, purity of heart, the love of neighbor that costs something. The righteousness we seek is not our own — we do not generate it by effort. We seek His righteousness, which means asking God to form His character in us and to align our lives with His justice in the world.

All these things refers back to the practical concerns Jesus has been addressing — food, clothing, the daily necessities of physical life. The promise is not that those who seek the kingdom first will become wealthy, or that faithful Christians are exempt from hardship and want. The history of the saints will not support that reading, and Jesus Himself walked to a cross. The promise is that the Father who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds is the same Father who knows what His children need — and that the one who trusts Him enough to put the kingdom first will find that the Father's provision, in one form or another, does not fail. But the one who has genuinely released the anxious grip on self-provision, who has handed the management of their life to the Father, will discover that the Father manages it — often in ways that could not have been engineered from below. There is also a deeper promise embedded here. The one who seeks the kingdom first discovers, over time, that the kingdom itself becomes the thing they most deeply wanted.

The traditional Lenten practices — fasting, prayer, almsgiving — are not ends in themselves. They are instruments of reordering, tools designed to loosen the grip of the wrong things and strengthen the grip of the right one. When we fast, we practice the truth that life does not consist in bread alone. When we pray, we practice the truth that our deepest need is God Himself. When we give, we practice the truth that we are not the owners of what we have been entrusted with.

All three practices are, in their different ways, acts of seeking first the kingdom. They are the deliberate, repeated choice to put God at the center and to let everything else arrange itself around that center.

The question Lent presses us to ask is not merely theoretical. It is practical and personal: what is actually first in my life? Not what I say is first. Not what I intend to make first eventually. What is actually, functionally, operationally first — revealed in how I spend my time, my money, my attention, my energy at its best? And then: am I willing to let it be the kingdom?

PRAYER: Father, forgive me for the things I have placed before Your kingdom — the securities I have chased, the anxieties that reveal where I have actually put my trust. Reorder me. Make Your kingdom genuinely first — not in name but in the actual shape of my days. I trust that You know what I need, and I release the management of those things to You. In Christ Jesus' strong name I pray, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Look honestly at where your best energy went yesterday. Then ask: what would it look like, in one concrete way, to redirect that energy toward the kingdom today? Do that one thing.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Bless everyone with the peace you have from Jesus!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

BUILDING12: Pray with Faith and Persistence

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9 "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:9-13) 1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." 2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." 5 And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' 7 And he answers from within, "Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 9 "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:1-13 NRSV)

The main purpose of prayer is to love God since God first loved us. I was blessed to have a mother, father, and grandmother who prayed. And thanks to them I learned to pray and to rely on prayer my entire life. All the prayers lifted up served to change me for the better.

Of all the things the disciples could have asked Jesus to teach them — how to preach, how to heal, how to lead — they ask Him to teach them to pray.

They have watched Him. They have seen Him slip away before dawn to be alone with the Father. They have witnessed the way He moves from those solitary hours with a settledness, a clarity, a groundedness that nothing seems to shake. Something is happening in those moments that they want access to. And so they ask — Lord, teach us to pray.

It is one of the most honest requests in all of Scripture. It is the request of people who recognize that they do not yet know how to do the most important thing. And Jesus, characteristically, does not lecture them about prayer. He shows them. He hands them a pattern, a shape, a way of orienting themselves toward God — and then He tells them a story about what kind of God they are orienting themselves toward.

Both matter enormously. The prayer without the story leaves us with a formula. The story without the prayer leaves us with a theology we do not know how to inhabit. Together, they give us everything we need.

The Lord's Prayer in Luke 11 is slightly shorter than Matthew's version, but the structure is the same — and that structure is itself a teaching about the proper ordering of prayer.

It begins not with our needs but with God. Father — the intimacy of the address is startling. Jesus is inviting His disciples into the same relationship with God that He Himself enjoys. Not a distant deity to be approached with elaborate protocol, but a Father — present, personal, disposed toward His children with the warmth that the word implies.

Hallowed be your name — before we bring a single request, we are oriented toward who God is. We are reminded, gently but firmly, that prayer is not primarily a delivery mechanism for our wishes. It is an encounter with a Person — holy, sovereign, worthy of reverence — and that encounter reorders everything else.

Your kingdom come — we pray ourselves into alignment with God's purposes rather than asking God to align Himself with ours. This petition is the surrender of the prayer, the moment where we acknowledge that the agenda we are bringing to God is subordinate to the agenda He is already working out in the world.

Only then — after God has been honored, after the kingdom has been invoked — do we bring our needs. Give us each day our daily bread. Not a year's supply. Not a guaranteed future. Just today. The prayer cultivates a daily dependence that keeps us returning to the Father rather than stockpiling enough provision to become self-sufficient.

Forgive us our sins, as we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. The relational clause returns — as it does in Matthew — linking what we receive from God to what we extend to others. Forgiveness is not a private transaction between the soul and God alone. It is a posture that shapes the whole of our life together.

Do not bring us to the time of trial. An honest acknowledgment of our vulnerability. We are not strong enough on our own. We need the Father's protection, His guidance, His hand between us and what would destroy us.

The prayer is brief. It is complete. And it ends where it begins — with dependence on God rather than confidence in ourselves.

Immediately after giving the prayer, Jesus tells a story — and the story is designed to answer the question that the prayer naturally raises in every honest heart: but does it actually work? Does God actually respond?

A man comes to his neighbor at midnight needing bread for an unexpected guest. The neighbor is already in bed, the door is locked, the children are asleep. He does not want to get up. Do not bother me — the Greek carries a tone of genuine irritation. This is an inconvenient request at an inconvenient hour.

But the man outside keeps asking. And Jesus says — and here the translation matters — the neighbor rises and gives him what he needs not because of friendship but because of the man's persistence. The Greek word is anaideia, which is better translated as shamelessness or audacity. The man outside has no embarrassment about the hour, no hesitation about the imposition, no polite willingness to go away empty-handed. He keeps knocking because he needs bread and he knows his neighbor has it.

Jesus then draws the comparison — carefully, and in a direction that is easy to miss. He is not saying God is like the reluctant neighbor who must be worn down into helping. He is arguing from the lesser to the greater. If even an inconvenienced, irritated, reluctant neighbor will eventually get up and give what is needed simply because of shameless persistence — how much more will your Father, who is neither reluctant nor irritated, who is awake and attentive and already disposed toward you with love, give what you need when you ask?

The parable is not a portrait of God as difficult to reach. It is a portrait of God as infinitely more generous than the best human neighbor — and an invitation to approach Him with exactly the shameless, audacious persistence of the man at midnight.

The three imperatives that follow are among the most well-known words Jesus ever spoke — and among the most misread.

Ask, and it will be given you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened.

They have sometimes been lifted out of context and made into a blank check — a guarantee that whatever we request in prayer will be delivered. That reading cannot survive contact with the actual experience of prayer, nor with the rest of what Scripture says about how God answers. But the opposite misreading — dismissing these words as merely figurative, not really promising anything — does equal violence to the text.

The Greek verbs here are present imperatives — they carry the sense of continuous, ongoing action. Not ask once and wait. Ask. Keep asking. Search. Keep searching. Knock. Keep knocking. The persistence of the man at midnight is not an embarrassing extreme — it is the model. Prayer is not a single transaction but a sustained relationship, a continued turning toward God with our needs and our trust.

And the promise — it will be given, you will find, the door will be opened — is grounded not in the quantity of our asking but in the character of the one we are asking. Which Jesus makes explicit in what follows.

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?

The images are almost darkly comic — a parent handing a child a snake when they asked for dinner, a scorpion when they asked for breakfast. No parent does this. Even the most imperfect human parent, operating with all the limitations and selfishness of fallen human nature, does not weaponize their child's hunger against them.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

Two things deserve attention here.

First, the phrase who are evil is not a harsh condemnation. It is a sober, realistic acknowledgment that every human parent — however loving — operates from a nature that is compromised, limited, and self-interested in ways we cannot fully see or control. And yet even so, we give good gifts to our children. The comparison establishes a floor: if we, with all our limitations, manage to give good things — how much more the Father, whose nature is entirely good, whose knowledge is perfect, whose love is without limit or shadow?

Second, notice what Luke says the Father gives: not whatever you ask for in a general sense, but the Holy Spirit. Matthew's version says good gifts. Luke narrows it to the best gift. The ultimate answer to persistent, faithful prayer is not a list of granted requests. It is God Himself — His presence, His Spirit, His life inhabiting ours. This is what prayer is finally reaching toward, even when it does not know it. Every legitimate request is, at its deepest level, a request for more of God — more of His provision, His healing, His justice, His nearness.

The Father gives the Spirit to those who ask. Which means the one who prays persistently, faithfully, shamelessly — day after day, returning to the Father with need and trust — is not merely waiting for answers. They are being formed. Being filled. Being drawn deeper into the very life of God.

These two passages, read together, give us the two pillars of a prayer life that holds.

Faith — the settled confidence, rooted in the character of God revealed in Jesus, that the one we are praying to is good, is present, is attentive, and is more disposed toward our wellbeing than any human parent has ever been toward a child. Faith does not require certainty about outcomes. It requires trust in a Person. It is what allows us to pray your kingdom come and mean it — to genuinely release our preferences into God's purposes without despair.

Persistence — the shameless, audacious, returning-again refusal to give up on prayer even when answers are slow, even when the silence feels long, even when the door seems closed. Persistence is not a failure of faith. It is the expression of faith over time. The one who keeps knocking is the one who still believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that someone is home and that the door will open.

Neither pillar alone is sufficient. Faith without persistence drifts into passivity — a vague trust in God that never actually brings anything to Him. Persistence without faith degrades into anxious repetition — the frantic knocking of someone who is not sure anyone is listening. Together, they describe the prayer life Jesus is inviting His disciples into: bold enough to ask shamelessly, grounded enough to trust the Father with the answer.

Lent is an invitation to examine both. To ask honestly: have I been praying at all? And if so: am I praying with genuine faith in the Father's goodness, and with the persistence that refuses to give up?

The door is not locked. The Father is not asleep. And He gives good gifts — the best gift — to those who ask.

PRAYER: Father, teach us to pray — not as a religious exercise but as a genuine turning toward You with everything we are and everything we need. Where our faith has grown thin, renew it in the knowledge of Your goodness. Where we have given up asking, restore in us the holy audacity of those who know You hear. Give us not only what we ask, but Yourself — the one gift that is better than all others. Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Return to the Lord's Prayer today — slowly, one phrase at a time — and let each petition be genuinely meant rather than merely recited. Let it be the beginning, or the renewal, of a persistent and faithful conversation with your Father.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Bless your world with prayer!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.