The Dreamer in the Pit

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4wMzs8Q

37 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. 2 This is the account of Jacob’s family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. 4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. 12 Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem, 13 and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.” “Very well,” he replied. 14 So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, 15 a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?” 16 He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?” 17 “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. 18 But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. 19 “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. 20 “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” 21 When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. 22 “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father. 23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— 24 and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it. 25 As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt. 26 Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? 27 Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed. 28 So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 NIV).

I've said it more than once, and you know it to be true; if you're looking for a perfect family in the Bible, there is none. Not even the Holy Family. And more so if you're looking for one in modern life. Humans are humans and some are worse at it than others. And here is a story about another yet imperfect family.

Let's be honest about this story from the start, because it doesn't let us off easy. Joseph's brothers throw him in a pit and then sit down to eat a meal. That detail is almost too raw to read without flinching — the casualness of it, the ordinary hunger that continues right alongside the extraordinary cruelty. They've just stripped their brother of his robe, tossed him into a dry cistern, and listened to him cry out to them, and then they pull out their food and eat. There's something in that detail that tells us everything about how thoroughly they had closed their hearts to him. He had become, in their minds, a problem to be solved rather than a brother to be loved.

And how did they get there? It started with favoritism and a coat and a father who didn't hide it very well. Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other sons — we're told that plainly, without apology — and he made him an ornate robe, the kind that said to everyone watching that this one is different, this one is set apart, this one is going somewhere the rest of you might not go. And then Joseph had the dreams, and made the mistake — whether innocent or not, the text doesn't entirely say — of telling his brothers about them. Dreams in which they bowed down to him. Dreams in which he was elevated and they were beneath him. You can understand why that didn't land well. The brothers couldn't say a kind word to him, Matthew tells us. The hatred had moved in and settled.

So when the opportunity comes — when Joseph walks across the fields to check on them and they see him coming from a distance — the hatred that has been building finds its outlet. They call him "the dreamer" when they see him, which tells you that the dreams are still the wound, still the thing that festers. They plan to kill him. Reuben, the oldest, talks them back from the edge of murder — let's not shed blood, let's just throw him in the pit — and he privately intends to come back and rescue Joseph later. But before Reuben can act on that plan, a caravan of Ishmaelite traders passes by, and Judah has an idea. Why kill him? Why get blood on our hands? Let's sell him. And so for twenty pieces of silver, the dreamer is sold to strangers heading down to Egypt, and the brothers have to live with what they've done.

What strikes me every time I read this is the way the story holds together two things that seem incompatible: genuine human evil and the sovereign purposes of God moving quietly through it. The brothers meant it for harm. They were not instruments of God's plan in any self-aware sense — they were jealous men acting on jealousy, and what they did was genuinely wrong and genuinely damaging and genuinely painful for Joseph in ways we can barely imagine. And yet. The coat that caused so much trouble, the dreams that provoked so much hatred, the pit that seemed like the end of everything — all of it was being threaded, by a God who works in ways we cannot always trace in real time, toward something none of them could see from where they were standing.

Joseph in the pit is one of the clearest Old Testament pictures of Jesus we have. The beloved son, sent by the father to his brothers, rejected and stripped and sold for silver by the very people he was sent to. Thrown into a kind of death, only to emerge on the other side of it as the one through whom salvation would come to the very people who had betrayed him. The parallel is not accidental. God has a long history of working through betrayal and abandonment and the kind of cruelty that makes you wonder where He is — and arriving, on the other side of all of it, with a redemption so large that even the people who caused the suffering end up inside the rescue.

If you're in a pit today — not the dramatic Biblical kind, but the kind that feels just as dark and just as enclosed — this story is speaking directly to you. The pit is not the end of your story any more than it was the end of Joseph's. The coat may have been stripped from you by people who should have loved you better. The dream may feel like mockery now rather than promise. But the God who was with Joseph in the pit, who was working toward Egypt and a throne and a rescue that would save many lives, is the same God who is with you in whatever cistern you're currently sitting in. The caravan hasn't passed by yet. The story is still going.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, remind us when we are in the pit that You are already in Egypt, preparing what we cannot yet see, working through what was meant for harm toward a redemption larger than our current suffering. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Tell God today about the pit you're in, and ask Him specifically to show you one sign that He is already at work ahead of you, turning what was meant for harm toward a purpose only He can see.

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

Let's love each other to the fullest, in fact, to the point people will point at us and wonder what's going on in our hearts!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Beautiful Feet

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

5 Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” 6 But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim), 9 because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart, leading to righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, leading to salvation. 11 The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:5-15)

Dear Friend; how beautiful are your feet? Did you know the average American spends on average $60 per shoes based on the fact that Americans spend $121 Billion dollars on shoes each year? That's based on the 2.1 billion pairs of shoes sold here in the US! I don't know about you, but that is a large amount of shoes sold! If you're like me you buy a pair of shoes and think you're fine, but next thing you know it's been three years since you bought those shoes and you wonder why the soles are worn out? If you're an active runner your running shoes will wear out in 4 months; 12 months if you're an average runner. Work shoes will last between 1 to 2 years, and Sunday go-to-meeting shoes will last about 4 years, more if you get them re-soled and maintained. The song framed it best; "Never been with a woman long enough for my boots to grow old."*

The Bible is an action book with the word "go" in it enough times for us to know that God wants us moving to get His love and kingdom growing! Paul examines a part of that in this passage.

Paul has a way of taking something that feels impossibly complicated and placing it so close to you that you can almost reach out and touch it. That's exactly what he does in this passage. He's been talking about righteousness — about how it comes, what it costs, who can get it — and he's about to make the most important turn in the argument. Forget the idea that the gospel is something you have to climb to, something far away at the top of a mountain that only the most spiritually athletic can reach. Forget the idea that you have to somehow ascend into heaven to bring Christ down, or descend into the deep to bring Him up from the dead. You don't have to do any of that. The word, Paul says, is near you. It's in your mouth and in your heart.

That's one of the most disarming sentences in all of Scripture. Near you. Not up there somewhere, not behind a veil of religious complexity, not requiring credentials you don't have or a spiritual experience you haven't had yet. The word of faith that Paul is proclaiming is as close to you as the next word you're going to speak, as close as the thought that's forming in your mind right now. God has done the impossible distance-crossing already, in Christ, and what remains is not a long journey but a short confession.

And here it is, as plain and as profound as anything in the New Testament: if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Two things. A confession and a belief. Not a performance and a record. Not a résumé and a recommendation. A confession — which means saying out loud, in the hearing of others, that Jesus is Lord, that He is the one to whom all allegiance belongs, that every other claim on your life bends the knee to His — and a belief that the resurrection actually happened, that the tomb is actually empty, that the one who died on the Friday actually walked out of the grave on the Sunday. This is the heartbeat of the whole thing, and Paul says it with a simplicity that should make us stop and breathe for a moment.

Because here's what's easy to miss: the order matters. Belief is in the heart, and it leads to righteousness. Confession is with the mouth, and it leads to salvation. The inner conviction and the outward declaration belong together — you can't have a living faith that never takes verbal form, and you can't make an honest confession that isn't rooted in something genuinely believed on the inside. But Paul is saying that both of these things are available to everyone, without exception, without qualification: "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on Him." The same Lord. Generous to all. Call on Him and see.

Then Paul asks a series of questions that build on each other like steps on a staircase, and each one is worth following all the way down: How will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him of whom they have never heard? How will they hear without someone to proclaim Him? How will anyone proclaim Him unless they are sent? And then the verse that has launched more missionaries and more conversations at kitchen tables and more moments of nervous courage than perhaps any other in the letter: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." Beautiful feet. Not eloquent lips or impressive theological credentials or a platform with a large following. Beautiful feet — the feet of the person who simply goes, who shows up where the word hasn't yet arrived, who is willing to be the link in the chain between someone's hearing and their believing and their calling and their salvation.

This is where the personal becomes missional, and where the good news stops being something we receive and becomes something we carry. Every person in this room who has ever heard the gospel and believed it is standing in the middle of that chain. Someone had beautiful feet that brought the word to you. And somewhere ahead of you, there is someone who is waiting — perhaps without knowing they're waiting — for the word to arrive on feet that turn out to be yours.

The confession that saves is meant to travel. The belief that produces righteousness is meant to be spoken into the silence of someone else's not-yet-knowing. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" — everyone, without distinction, without qualification — but the calling requires hearing, and the hearing requires someone willing to go and speak, and the going requires feet willing to be beautiful in the service of news that is genuinely, astonishingly good.

PRAYER: Lord, give us the courage to open our mouths with the confession that saves and the willingness to go with the feet that carry the beautiful news to everyone who hasn't yet heard it. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Think of one person in your life who hasn't yet heard the good news in a way that made it personal to them, and take one step this week toward being the beautiful feet that bring it.

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

Let's surprise someone with love today!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

*Heard It In A Love Song

Jesus, Save Me!

Hear and view devo: https://bit.ly/3TygOmi

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. 25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. 27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”29 “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” 32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:22-33 NIV)

Happy new week, Friend! I pray the blessings of God blessed you and prepared you to serve humanity in Christ Jesus' love! Seek out those whom no one else sees or wants, and show you can see them and love them in the name of the Lord! What a blessiing that will bring to you!

In the old Walk to Emmaus movie shown to pilgrims as they began their three day walk with Jesus, the disciples are shown in the upper room celebrating Holy Communion. They are seated according to how Jesus wanted, Peter is upset because he did not get the seat he thought he deserved and quietly mumbled, "I'm the only one who walked on water!" As the supper is ended and they have a little time the disciples are talking about what life would be like after their time in ministry with Jesus. The first disciple says what he's going to do when he returns home. The second stops him and tells him he doesn't understand that life will never again be the same; there would be no return home. And that is how the Christian life is for those who give themselves fully to Jesus and His mission. Here's the story about the water-walking.

There's a detail at the beginning of this passage that's easy to miss because the water-walking tends to grab all the attention. After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus "immediately" — Matthew uses that word — makes His disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him while He dismisses the crowd. He doesn't ask them. He makes them go. And then He goes up on the mountainside alone to pray. The Son of God, fresh from a miracle that left twelve baskets of leftovers, goes off by Himself to talk to His Father. If Jesus needed that — the sustained, unhurried, just-the-two-of-us conversation with the Father — we probably shouldn't be so quick to skip past it in our own lives.

The disciples, meanwhile, are in the boat in the middle of the lake, and by evening the wind has picked up and the waves are working against them. Matthew tells us Jesus is on the land, watching. He can see them straining at the oars, struggling in the dark, making hard progress against a headwind that isn't cooperating. And in the fourth watch of the night — somewhere between three and six in the morning, the last and darkest stretch before dawn — He comes to them, walking on the water. They see Him coming and they're terrified, because who expects to see a figure walking across the surface of a lake in the middle of the night? They think it's a ghost. And Jesus, typically, is direct with them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid". It is I. Three words that carry the full weight of the divine name. I AM is here. The one who commands the wind and the water is the one coming toward you across it.

And then Peter does the thing that is so magnificently, characteristically Peter that you almost have to love him for it. He doesn't just accept the reassurance and sit back down. He says, "Lord, if it's You, tell me to come to You on the water". If it's You. He wants to know for certain, and the way he wants to know is by being invited into the impossible. Tell me to come. And Jesus says the one word that always precedes the miraculous: "Come". Not "be careful" or "are you sure about this?" Just — come. And Peter gets out of the boat.

What happens next has been preached ten thousand times and is still worth sitting with, because it doesn't happen the way we sometimes tell it. Peter doesn't sink immediately. He walks on the water. He is actually doing it — actually standing on the surface of the lake in the middle of a storm — until he looks at the wind and the waves and shifts his attention from the one who said come to the circumstances surrounding the invitation. And then he sinks. "Lord, save me!" he cries . Three words — the shortest and most complete prayer in the Gospels. And immediately — that word again — Jesus reaches out His hand and catches him. Not after a lecture. Not after a moment of watching him flounder to make a point. Immediately. The hand is already there, already extended, already reaching, before the prayer is even finished.

The gentle rebuke that follows is worth hearing in its full tone: "You of little faith, why did you doubt?". This is not anger. This is the patient puzzlement of someone who watched Peter take the steps, watched him actually walk on the water, and is quietly asking — you were doing it. Why did you look away? The doubt didn't cause the sinking in itself; the doubt caused the loss of focus on the one who was holding the whole moment together. And when the focus came back — Lord, save me — the hand was instantly there.

When they get back in the boat and the wind dies down, the disciples do something that is actually quite rare in the Gospels — they worship Him, right there in the boat, and they say, "Truly you are the Son of God" (Matthew 14:33). Not a theological conclusion reached in a calm classroom. A worship response born in a storm, in the dark, after watching a man walk on water and a hand reach out faster than fear could finish its work. That's where real faith often gets formed — not in the comfortable hours but in the fourth watch of the night, in the middle of a headwind, when the figure coming toward you across the impossible looks, at first, like it can't be real.

What's your storm right now? What's the headwind that's been working against you in the dark hours when progress feels slow and the morning seems very far away? He was watching the disciples strain at the oars the entire time — He could see them from the land. He sees you too. And the word He spoke to them is the word He speaks into every storm that His people are navigating: it is I, don't be afraid, come. The hand that reached for Peter before the prayer was finished is the same hand that is already extended toward you.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, when the waves are high and the wind is against us and the night feels long, remind us to keep our eyes on You and trust the hand that is always already reaching. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify the specific wave you've been staring at instead of looking at Jesus, and today practice the shortest prayer in the Gospels — "Lord, save me" — trusting that the hand is already on its way.

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

Let's win the world for Jesus!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Let Me See You, God

Hear and View Devo: https://bit.ly/44Yc7Vd 1 Hear me, Lord, my plea is just; listen to my cry. Hear my prayer— it does not rise from deceitful lips. 2 Let my vindication come from you; may your eyes see what is right. 3 Though you probe my heart, though you examine me at night and test me, you will find that I have planned no evil; my mouth has not transgressed. 4 Though people tried to bribe me, I have kept myself from the ways of the violent through what your lips have commanded. 5 My steps have held to your paths; my feet have not stumbled. 6 I call on you, my God, for you will answer me; turn your ear to me and hear my prayer. 7 Show me the wonders of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes. 15 As for me, I will be vindicated and will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness. (Psalm 17:1-17, 15 NIV)

Dear Friend; are you a public pray-er? Or a private pray-er? Or I-never pray-er? Throughout my life I have been blessed to see all kinds of peolel who pray. In fact, years ago, a man stood in church and said that he knew the three major ways of Christian pray-ers. One was the Ancient Eastern pray-er style of kneeling and praying hard and loud. He knew the Western pray-er style of standing with hands wide-open of praying hard and loud. And he also knew the American style of pray-er of both hands in both pockets and playing loudly with ones keys. Okay, it was funny years ago! I was saddened by being in the same Rotary Club with a long-time colleague who made it known loudly that he would only pray in public if told 30 days in advance and he a chance to write out his prayers. I would also feel sad if I called on someone to pray and they said, "I don't pray in public," or worse, "I don't pray at all." Today's passage is about a man who loved to pray and wrote about it and today's passage is about that.

There's a boldness to the way David opens this psalm that's almost breathtaking. He doesn't ease into prayer with a long preamble or a careful theological warm-up. He just says it: "Hear me, Lord, my plea is just; listen to my cry. Hear my prayer — it does not rise from deceitful lips" . He's asking God to pay attention, and he's doing it on the basis of his own integrity. That might sound presumptuous at first — who walks into God's presence and says, essentially, I deserve to be heard because I've been honest? But sit with it for a moment. David isn't claiming to be sinless. He's claiming to be sincere. There's a difference, and it matters. He's saying: I'm not playing games here. I'm not performing prayer for an audience. This is real, and what I'm bringing to You is the truth of where I actually am.

Most of us know the difference between the prayer we pray out loud in public and the prayer we pray at two in the morning when there's no one to impress. David is praying the two-in-the-morning prayer. And he invites God to test it: "Though you probe my heart, though you examine me at night and test me, you will find that I have planned no evil" . He's essentially saying — look all the way in. Look at the parts I don't show anyone. You'll still find someone who is genuinely trying, someone whose mouth hasn't been leading his feet into places his heart never intended to go. This is the prayer of a man who has worked hard to live with integrity not as a performance but as a private discipline, and who is now asking God to weigh that in the balance.

And then, right in the middle of this very personal account of his integrity, David pivots to something that is one of the most beautiful images in all the Psalms: "Show me the wonders of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings". The apple of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings. These are not the words of someone making a legal argument before a judge. These are the words of a child who trusts so completely in the love of the parent that he's not afraid to say what he actually needs. Protect me. Hold me. Look at me the way someone looks at the thing they treasure most. This is the turn the psalm takes — from integrity as the basis of the appeal to love as the ground of the relationship. David isn't ultimately asking to be heard because he's good enough. He's asking to be held because he knows he is loved.

The apple of your eye is a phrase that appears elsewhere in Scripture — Moses uses it in Deuteronomy when he describes how God cared for Israel in the wilderness, carrying them the way an eagle carries its young. The image of the shadow of wings appears in Psalm 91, in Ruth's beautiful request to Boaz, in Jesus's lament over Jerusalem when He says He longed to gather the city's children as a hen gathers her chicks. It is the language of a God who doesn't manage His people from a safe distance but draws them in close, covers them, shields them with His own body between them and what would harm them. This is who God is in this psalm, and it's who Jesus revealed God to be in the flesh — the one who literally placed His own body between us and what we deserved.

And then the psalm closes with a verse that skips over everything in between and lands on what David ultimately wants more than anything else: "As for me, I will be vindicated and will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness". He's not asking for wealth or victory or a long life or even the defeat of his enemies. He's asking to see the face of God. He's saying that the deepest hunger he carries isn't for any of the things that circulate in the visible world — it's for the presence of the one who made him. And the word satisfied here is the same word used elsewhere for a man who has eaten until he's full, for the ground that has finally received rain after a drought. It's complete satisfaction, the ending of a longing that nothing else has been able to reach.

That longing is in all of us, whether we recognize it as the longing for God or not. We were made with a face-shaped hunger — a hunger for the face of the one whose image we bear. And the extraordinary promise of the gospel is that the face David longed for in the pages of Psalm 17 has now been seen, in the face of Jesus Christ, who came to show us exactly what the Father looks like. When you are satisfied with seeing His likeness, you are seeing the Father. When the Spirit opens your eyes to who Jesus is, you are standing where David stood — seeing the face, satisfied at last with the one thing that was always the answer to everything else.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, keep us as the apple of Your eye, draw us close under the shadow of Your wings, and satisfy us with the sight of Your face in the person of Jesus. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Today, make one prayer that is completely honest — no performance, no theological polish — just the real thing you need from the God who already knows it and is already leaning in to hear.

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

Let's win the world for Jesus!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

I Will Not Let You Go

Hear and view devo: https://bit.ly/4yIdpS1

22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24 Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then the manbsaid, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Genesis 32:22-31 NRSV)

Dear Friend, blessings upon blessings be with you on this Wednesday! May graciousness bring you joy and peace in all you expect or expected to do. Be a person of love and compassion to all people.

There's something about this story that gets under your skin the more you sit with it. Jacob is alone at night by the ford of the Jabbok — and "alone" here carries real weight, because Jacob has just sent everyone and everything he owns across the river ahead of him. His wives, his children, his servants, his flocks — all of it is on the other side. He is stripped down to just himself, and that might be exactly the point. Because what's waiting for him on the other side of the river is his brother Esau, whom he hasn't seen in twenty years, not since he cheated him out of his birthright and his blessing and then ran for his life. Jacob has spent two decades building a new life, acquiring wealth, becoming successful by every outward measure. And now the past is catching up with him, and there is nowhere left to run.

And then, in the middle of that night, a man appears and wrestles with him until dawn.

We are given no introduction, no context, no explanation. Just — a man, and a struggle, and the darkness of the night, and it goes on until the breaking of the day. This stranger is clearly no ordinary opponent. When he cannot overpower Jacob, he touches the socket of Jacob's hip and puts it out of joint with a single touch — which tells you immediately that the limitation on the struggle has not been his, but a choice. He could have ended this at any point. He didn't, which means the wrestling itself is something He wants to happen.

Jacob figures this out somewhere in the night, and when the stranger asks to be let go because the dawn is breaking, Jacob says something remarkable: "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:26, NRSV). He doesn't know exactly who he's holding onto. But he knows it's someone worth holding onto. And in that moment, the man who has spent his whole life grabbing — grabbing the heel at birth, grabbing the birthright with a bowl of stew, grabbing the blessing with a disguise and his mother's help — is grabbing for something entirely different. Not an advantage over his brother. Not a material gain. A blessing from the only source that actually matters.

The stranger asks him his name. And when Jacob says it — "Jacob" — he's saying more than just a name. In Hebrew, Jacob means something like "heel grabber" or "supplanter," the one who takes what belongs to someone else. He is, in a single word, confessing his whole history. And the stranger immediately renames him: "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed" (Genesis 32:28). Israel — one who strives with God, or perhaps one whom God strives with. The new name doesn't erase the old story. It reframes it entirely. The grabbing and the striving and the wrestling that seemed like character flaws turn out to have been, in God's hands, the very things He was working with all along.

Jacob asks the stranger His name, and the stranger deflects the question — which is its own kind of answer. The name of God is not something that can be pinned down or possessed. But Jacob, limping now where his hip has been put out of joint, names the place Peniel: the face of God. "For I have seen God face to face," he says, "and yet my life is preserved" (Genesis 32:30). He's not walking away unchanged. He's walking away limping, permanently marked by the encounter, carrying the evidence of it in his body for the rest of his life. And that limp, I think, is not a defeat. It is the most important thing Jacob carries across the Jabbok — the physical reminder that he has been in a place where only God could have met him.

We all have a Jabbok. There's a night, sometimes more than one night, where everything has been sent on ahead and we are alone with what we've been avoiding, and something meets us in the dark that we didn't see coming. It might feel like struggle. It might feel like opposition. It might take until morning before we realize that what we've been fighting with is actually the very grace of God, refusing to let us pass through unchanged, determined to give us a new name before the sun comes up. Jesus Himself wrestled with the weight of the cup in Gethsemane and came out the other side transformed, ready to carry what was coming. The Spirit who raised Him and who dwells in us is the same Spirit who meets us in the night wrestling — not to harm us, but to bless us, not to break us, but to rename us.

Hold on. Don't let go. The blessing is coming with the morning.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, meet us at our own Jabbok and wrestle with us until we stop running and receive the new name and the blessing only You can give. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name the Jabbok you've been avoiding — the struggle, the confrontation, the night you keep putting off — and choose today to stop running and let God meet you there.

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

Let's win the world with love for Jesus Christ!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Remember What God Has Done for You!

Hear and view devo: https://bit.ly/4gSQ21w

1 Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. 2 Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 4 Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. 5 Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, 6 you his servants, the descendants of Abraham, his chosen ones, the children of Jacob. 7 He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth.8 He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations, 9 the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac.10 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant:11 “To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit.” 45 that they might keep his precepts and observe his laws. Praise the Lord. When I was in active ministry one of my main concerns was church growth. I urged, pleaded, begged my churches to open their hearts and minds towards growth; to expanding God's kingdom. What was the main obstacle to growth? As the old joke said, instead of standing on the promises of God, the church was content to sit on the premises of God. "Let someone else do it!" Or, they would remind each other of the glory days (pre-1968 when most churches were full!) and how God had blessed them back then. It's not bad to look back as a church or even as an individual, but we must know that ours is a calling to move ever forward with a desire to move upward as we will discover in today's text. Let the adventure begin!

There's a phrase near the beginning of this psalm that's easy to skim past but worth pausing on: "make known among the nations what He has done." Not what He might do. Not what He promises to do someday. What He has already done. This psalm is built on memory — the deliberate, intentional act of looking back and telling the story of God's faithfulness, out loud, to other people. And it starts not with a request, but with praise: "Give thanks to the Lord, call on His name; make known among the nations what He has done."

Isn't that a striking place to begin? Before asking God for anything, the psalmist starts by giving thanks and by singing — "sing to Him, sing praise to Him; tell of all His wonderful acts." There's a rhythm here worth noticing: gratitude first, then glory in His name, then rejoicing. It's as if the psalmist knows that before we bring our needs to God, we need to remind ourselves who it is we're actually bringing them to. Praise reorients us. It reminds us that the God we're approaching today is the same God who has already proven Himself faithful, over and over, across generations.

Then the psalm turns toward something deeply personal: "He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the promise He made, for a thousand generations, the covenant He made with Abraham, the oath He swore to Isaac." This is a God who doesn't forget His promises. He didn't make a covenant with Abraham and let it fade with time — He reaffirmed it to Isaac, then to Jacob, confirming it "as a decree" and "an everlasting covenant." That word everlasting carries weight. It means the promises God makes aren't fragile or temporary. They don't have an expiration date tied to our circumstances or our faithfulness. They rest on His character, not ours.

And here's what makes this even more remarkable — this covenant was made and confirmed while God's people were still "few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it." They weren't living in security or abundance when God made these promises. They were small, wandering, vulnerable. If you've ever felt like your life is too uncertain, too unsettled, too "not enough" for God to be doing something significant in it — this psalm gently pushes back on that. God's covenant faithfulness was never dependent on His people already having it together. He commits to us in the wandering, not just after we've arrived.

The psalm closes with a purpose clause in verse 45: all of this — the promises, the provision, the faithfulness — was so "that they might keep His precepts and observe His laws." In other words, remembering isn't just a nostalgic exercise. It's meant to shape obedience. When we recall what God has done, it strengthens our resolve to walk in step with Him today. Memory fuels faithfulness.

So here's the quiet challenge tucked into this psalm: don't keep your memories of God's goodness locked away in your own heart. Tell them. Make them known — to your family, your friends, your community. Let your story of His faithfulness become part of how someone else learns to trust Him too.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank You for Your covenant faithfulness that never wavers — help me remember Your wonderful acts, declare them boldly to others, and let that remembrance draw me deeper into obedience today. This we pray in Jesus' strong name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Set aside a few minutes today to recall and share with someone — out loud or in writing — one specific way God has proven faithful in your life.

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

Let's win the world with love for Jesus and His love!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Waiting Well While Trusting God

Hear and view devo: https://bit.ly/3ThzaaW

15 Laban said to him, “Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be.” 16 Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. 17 Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. 18 Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.” 19 Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me.” 20 So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. 21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to make love to her.” 22 So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. 23 But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and Jacob made love to her. 24 And Laban gave his servant Zilpah to his daughter as her attendant. 25 When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?” 26 Laban replied, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. 27 Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.” 28 And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. (Genesis 29:15-28 NIV)

Let's be honest — this is a strange little story. I would venture to guess your story and experiences with love might not quite match this, but then again I don't know! I do know a man who's married to the daughter of a man who told him he could not marry the one he loved because the older daughter had to marry first, so he married her instead. And they're still married, though we wonder how those first years were for the younger sister! We read that Jacob falls for Rachel, works seven years to earn her hand in marriage, and then on the wedding night, Laban pulls a switcheroo and sends in Leah instead. Jacob wakes up the next morning, realizes he's been tricked, and has to work another seven years for the woman he actually loved. Fourteen years of labor, a deception in the dark, and a family situation that's already messy before it even gets started. It's not exactly the stuff of a fairy tale. But underneath the drama, there's something in this passage worth slowing down for — because most of us know what it's like to wait a long time for something we want, and to feel like life pulled a switch on us right when we thought we'd arrived.

Notice something about Jacob first: when he agreed to work seven years for Rachel, Scripture tells us those years "seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her." That's a beautiful line. Real love has a way of reshaping how we experience time and sacrifice. When you love something — or someone — deeply, the cost of pursuing it doesn't feel like pure burden. It feels like devotion. That's worth remembering the next time you're in a long season of waiting for something meaningful: a calling, a relationship, a healing, a dream. The waiting itself can become holy ground if your heart stays anchored in love rather than resentment.

But then comes the twist. Jacob does everything right — he works hard, he keeps his word, he shows up faithfully for seven years — and he still gets deceived. Laban swaps Leah in for Rachel under the cover of darkness, and Jacob doesn't even realize it until morning. Can you imagine that gut-punch? The disorientation, the betrayal, the sense that something he thought was settled wasn't settled at all? We must remember weddings back then were not the same kind of weddings we have today (though some come awfully (emphasis on awful) close!

Here's the thing worth sitting with: Jacob himself was a deceiver. ("serves him right - you deceiver you!). Just a few chapters earlier, he tricked his own father and stole his brother's blessing. And now here he is, on the receiving end of trickery from his uncle. There's a kind of quiet, sobering symmetry in that. Life has a way of bringing us face to face with our own patterns, sometimes through the very people we thought we could trust. It's uncomfortable, but it's also an invitation — a chance to look honestly at our own hearts and ask what God might be shaping in us through the very things that wound us.

And yet — this is not a story where God is absent. Even though His name isn't mentioned much in these verses, His fingerprints are all over the larger story. Leah, the unwanted, overlooked one, becomes deeply significant in the unfolding story of Israel. Her son Judah will become the line through which King David — and ultimately Jesus — will come. The very woman who arrived in a moment of deception and heartbreak turns out to be woven into God's redemptive plan in a way no one could have seen on that wedding night. That's how God so often works. Not by canceling out our messy, painful circumstances, but by weaving purpose through them anyway, often in ways we can't recognize until much later.

If you're in a season of waiting right now — waiting for a relationship, a breakthrough, a promise to be fulfilled — this story doesn't promise you'll skip the hard parts. Jacob still had fourteen years of labor and a complicated family ahead of him. But it does whisper something steady underneath all that mess: God is present in the waiting, and He can bring purpose even out of our disappointments and other people's betrayals. Nothing you're walking through is wasted on Him, even when it doesn't look anything like what you hoped for.

So if today you feel like you did everything right and still got the short end of the deal — take heart. Your story isn't finished. God is still writing something good, even in the parts that feel like a bait-and-switch.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, when life doesn't unfold the way we expected, help us trust that You are present and working even in our disappointment, weaving something good out of what feels broken. Grant us patience, peace, wisdom and understanding! This we pray in Jesus' strong name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Reflect on one area where you feel like you've been "waiting a long time" or facing disappointment, and ask God to show you where He might be quietly working purpose into that very situation.

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

Win the world for Jesus by loving all people. No exceptions!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.