Let Both Grow

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

24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ 28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ 29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” 36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. 40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 NIV)

A wonderful Monday to you, dear Friend! May the joy of the Lord be your strength today and all days. May this time spent in prayer, thought, reflection and planning serve to make us stronger in our walk with Jesus.

Many of us have lived near ranches and farms, or driven by them. This has always fascinated me as a regular commute by a field always shows the hard work a farmer puts in to the awesome transformation that occurs in that field. And this parable of Jesus shows how too Jesus was aware and blessed by the work of farmers, actually sowers that did the planting.

Jesus tells this parable with an economy of detail that makes it land harder, not softer. A man sows good seed in his field. While everyone sleeps, an enemy comes and sows weeds among the wheat, then disappears into the night. When the grain comes up and begins to head out, the weeds appear alongside it, and the workers come to the farmer with the obvious question: didn't you sow good seed? Where did all this come from? "An enemy did this," the farmer says. Simple. Direct. No hand-wringing, no theological crisis. The enemy is real, the damage is real, and the farmer knows exactly what he's looking at.

What's striking is what he doesn't do. The workers are ready to pull the weeds out immediately — which is the instinctive human response to anything that looks wrong and out of place. Root it out. Deal with it now. Clean the field up and get back to the business of growing wheat. But the farmer says no. Not yet. "Let both grow together until the harvest". His reason is practical and profound: the roots of the wheat and the weeds are so entangled at this stage that pulling the weeds would damage the wheat. The removal will come, but it will happen at the right time, by the right hands, with the right tools. Not before.

When the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable privately, He draws back the curtain further than any of them probably expected. The field is the world. The good seed are the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil himself. And the harvest is the end of the age, when the angels will be the reapers. Jesus is not describing a tidily sorted world in which the righteous and the wicked occupy separate fields with a clear fence between them. He is describing the world as it actually is — mixed, entangled, not yet separated, not yet fully revealed for what it is — and He is telling His disciples that this is the condition they will be living and working in for the entirety of the present age.

This should do something to the way we hold our frustration with the state of the world. We live in a time when the question the workers ask seems to rise from every direction: didn't God sow good seed here? Where did all this evil come from? Why does it seem to grow so abundantly alongside everything that is good and true? The parable doesn't tell us to stop asking the question. It tells us that the farmer already knows the answer, has already identified the enemy, and is already working toward a harvest that will settle everything with a precision and a thoroughness that no human hands could achieve in the meantime. The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father, Jesus says — not a dim glow, not a moderate improvement over their present condition, but like the sun. The harvest will be worth the waiting.

The Pentecost connection runs quietly through the whole of this parable. The disciples who first heard it were living in exactly the entangled, not-yet-separated world Jesus described, and they would spend their lives as wheat growing alongside weeds, sometimes indistinguishable from the outside, sometimes under pressure that made it hard to hold their form. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost did not separate the field prematurely. He didn't pull the weeds for the disciples. What He did was equip the wheat to be unmistakably wheat — to grow with a vitality and a fruitfulness that the weeds could never produce, to hold their shape under pressure, to bear fruit in the kind of soil that the enemy had done his best to compromise. The Spirit is still doing that work. In a world that looks exactly as complicated and entangled as the field Jesus describes, the Spirit's work in the believer is to make them so thoroughly themselves — so shaped by the life of Christ — that the harvest, when it comes, will find something worth gathering.

There is also a mercy in the farmer's restraint that we should not miss. The waiting is not indifference. It is the patience of a God who, as Peter would later write, does not want anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. The harvest is certain. The angels are ready. The separation will be total and final and irreversible. But in the meantime, the field remains open, which means the call of the gospel is still going out, which means there are people who are right now weeds who will become wheat before the harvest if the patience of the farmer holds — and it will hold, because this is a farmer who sent His own Son to make that transformation possible.

PRAYER: Lord, grow us into unmistakable wheat by Your Spirit, make us fruitful in the field where You have placed us, and give us the patience to trust Your timing for the harvest. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Ask the Holy Spirit today to show you one way He wants to make you more unmistakably wheat in the particular field — neighborhood, workplace, family — where He has planted you.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Don't Trade Your Birthright

View and Hear devo: https://bit.ly/3T9tO1k

19 This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20 and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram[a] and sister of Laban the Aramean. 21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 22 The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23 The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” 24 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25 The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau.[b] 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob.[c] Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. 27 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. 28 Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.[d]) 31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me? 33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:19-34 NIV)

What dish are you known for? I've been cooking since I was about 9 years old when a cousin showed me how to make arroz con pollo (Chicken with rice). I'm not known for that, I'd have to say barbecued ribs, but as I age, I realize that my family has been kind and loving to me. I would say I make a mean sopa de conchas (seashell pasta a la Mexicana). This passage is about birthrights and bean. And bread. And how two of those were traded for the first.

There is something honest and almost startling about the way this passage begins. Isaac prays for his wife because she is barren, and the Lord answers — and then the pregnancy that follows is so turbulent, so marked by internal struggle, that Rebekah goes to God with a question that sounds like it's at the end of its rope: "Why is this happening to me?". She doesn't soften it. She doesn't dress it in theological language. She asks the raw question that every person who has prayed for something and then found the answer complicated has asked. And God answers her, not with a rebuke for the directness of the question but with a word that reframes everything she is experiencing: two nations are in your womb, and the older will serve the younger.

The story that unfolds from that oracle is one of the most layered and morally complex in all of Genesis. Jacob and Esau arrive in the world already in conflict — Jacob grasping his brother's heel as they are born, as though the struggle that began in the womb simply continued without pause on the other side of it. They grow into men as different as two brothers can be. Esau is the outdoorsman, the hunter, the man of the field who comes home one evening smelling of open country and completely emptied by hunger. Jacob is the quieter man, the one who stays near the tents, the one who has been thinking ahead while his brother has been running through the wilderness. And the scene that follows — Jacob with his pot of beans, Esau with his desperate hunger, the birthright exchanged for a bowl of something red — is one of the most uncomfortable transactions in Scripture. I've known some red beans and rice to be something worhty of adoration; but that's a story for another time!

It's uncomfortable because both brothers are implicated. Esau's failure is obvious: "He despised his birthright". That's not our characterization — that's the narrator's verdict, and it's a hard one. The birthright represented the covenant blessing, the connection to Abraham's promise, the line through which God's purposes would flow. To trade it for a meal, however hungry you are, is to reveal what you actually value when it's just you and your hunger and no one is watching. It's the Rocky ground of Genesis — receiving something precious and then, when the heat comes, discovering it didn't go deep enough to hold.

But Jacob is not let off easily either. He sees his brother's weakness and uses it. He doesn't simply offer the stew as a gift; he sets a price. "First sell me your birthright," he says, when his brother is at his most vulnerable. The covenant purposes of God will indeed flow through Jacob — the oracle said as much before either of them was born — but the way Jacob pursues what God has already promised him tells us something about the long work God still has to do in him. Grace does not choose us because we are already the people we need to be. It chooses us in order to make us those people, through a process that in Jacob's case will involve decades of being worked on by a God who never abandons what He has started.

This is the thread that connects this ancient account to everything Jesus would later say about the kingdom. The birthright Esau despised is not unlike the pearl of great price that the merchant in Matthew 13 sells everything to obtain, or the treasure hidden in the field that a man gives all he has to buy. The birthright was worth everything. Esau did not lose it because God stopped caring about him — God's love for Esau endured. He lost it because in the moment of decision, when the heat was on and the stomach was speaking louder than the spirit, he could not find in himself the capacity to value it rightly. And that incapacity, Paul will later argue in Romans, is precisely the thing that Christ came to address — not by making us try harder in the moment of temptation, but by sending His Spirit to dwell in us so that the birthright we have been given in Him becomes not a distant inheritance we might trade away when hungry, but a living, breathing, daily reality we cannot imagine surrendering.

The birthright of the believer — sonship, the Spirit, eternal life, access to the Father, the full inheritance of the kingdom — came at a price that was not ours to pay. He paid it. And the Spirit He sent at Pentecost is the seal and the guarantee of that inheritance, the down payment that means it cannot simply be exchanged for whatever our hunger is loudest about on a given afternoon.

PRAYER: Lord, keep us from trading for a bowl of beans what You purchased for us at infinite cost, and let Your Spirit make the birthright we have in You more real to us than any hunger that tempts us to let it go. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one thing your hunger has been valuing more than your birthright in Christ this week, and consciously surrender it today in exchange for the inheritance that cannot be taken from you.

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.

No Condemnation

Hear and View: https://bit.ly/3QYIpw0

8 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus[j] from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Romans 8:1-11 NRS)

There is a word at the very beginning of Romans 8 that carries more weight than it appears to: "therefore." Paul doesn't just launch into this magnificent chapter cold — he connects it to everything that came before, including the exhausting admission of chapter 7, where he confessed that he kept doing what he hated and couldn't do what he loved. The "therefore" is the hinge. After all of that — after the honest reckoning with the war inside him, after the cry of "who will rescue me from this body of death?" — here is the answer landing with full force: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1, NRSV). Not less condemnation. Not reduced condemnation. None.

I know what condemnation felt like from an early age, and not always for the right reasons. Growing up the eldest of five children, having been an only child for four years before my brothers and sisters arrived, I was not always a model of saintly behavior. I knew the consequences. I knew what a spanking meant and what earned it. But I discovered early that there was something far worse than a single consequence: double jeopardy. Not the television program — the real thing. It meant a spanking from Mom, and then later, when Dad's car turned onto the driveway, my younger sister — who had developed what I can only describe as an Academy Award-winning ability to produce real tears entirely on demand — would hear those tires on the gravel and transform instantly from my perfectly happy playmate into a wailing, devastated victim, running toward Dad screaming "Junior hit me!" No trial. No presentation of facts. No character witnesses. Guilty before the car door closed, and drawn and quartered all over again.

The remarkable thing, looking back, is that by the time Dad came home my sister and I had already made our peace. We'd played together the rest of the afternoon as if nothing had happened. But the accusation was renewed even though the matter had already been settled. I was being condemned a second time for something that was, in every practical sense, already resolved.

Paul is writing about a condemnation infinitely more serious than anything my sister's tears could produce — the condemnation that stands against every human being who has ever looked honestly at their own heart and known that they have fallen short of what God requires. But the extraordinary word he uses is not "reduced" or "managed" or "set aside for now." He says none. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not because the sin wasn't real. Not because God lowered the standard. But because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has done what the law alone could never do — it has settled the matter, permanently, through the one who met every requirement in our place.

The voice that tries to renew the accusation after the matter has already been settled — that is not the voice of the Spirit. That is the voice Paul spent all of chapter 7 describing, the law of sin and death trying to exercise dominion it has already lost. God has done what the law could not do: "by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, He condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). The verdict has been handed down — not against you, but against sin itself, in the flesh of Christ. The tires on the driveway will not produce a second condemnation. The Father already knows the whole story, and His verdict stands.

The conclusion Paul draws is breathtaking in its personal directness: "If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you" (Romans 8:11). The same power that moved in the grave on Easter morning — the power that rolled back death itself — dwells in you. The Greek word is oikei — it means to make a home, to take up residence, to inhabit. The resurrection power of God has made its home in the very body that keeps failing you, in the very flesh where the battle rages. The Spirit is not visiting. He is living there. And where He lives, there is no room left for condemnation to take up residence alongside Him.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank You that Your Spirit has made His home in us and that the power that raised You from the dead is the same power now at work in our mortal bodies. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Replace one thought of self-condemnation today with the deliberate declaration of Romans 8:1 — say it out loud, by name, to yourself: "There is therefore now no condemnation for me, because I am in Christ Jesus."

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

Winning the world for Jesus,

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

What Kind of Soil Are You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The King Will Desire Your Beauty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Yoked to Christ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.