The Bush That Doesn't Stop Burning

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/45OXe88

3:1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” 5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. 7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” 13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation. (Exodus 3:1-15 NIV)

Dear Friend, today at this writing it is a sad day for many, many people at the news of the death of one of the greatest entertainers and humanitarians in the world; Ms. Dolly Parton. I remember her from way, way back when we would watch The Grand Ole Opry and the Porter Waggoner Show with Dolly as co-host and co-star. Later in her movies she became more and more real, in my opinion, and then stories leaked out of the many ways she helped the underprivileged; for she never forgot from whence she came and many were the blessings she shared and showered with so many. Her distinctive voice and countless stories she told in her songs, and many of them made larger by other stars, helped many become true believers in who she was and what she stood for. One of her family members said she was resting in the arms of Jesus. May it be so and may He help all who mourn her death while thanking God for her life.

It matters not what or who you were before you met God; it's what you allow God to make of you when God needs you. This has been true in my life and possibly yours as well. You may have worn torn shorts, walked barefoot through most of your early life and maybe a shirt that you didn't wash as often as it needed; but that was just a part of the transformation that can take place in your life before your interview with God when God reveals who you are to be. Please keep in mind it matters not your age now nor when finally this interview takes place; just that you're ready because you know it's coming! And when it does, you may look at both of your hands and wonder why these hands get to do the bidding of God in matters so sacred you keep looking over your shoulder waiting for the "real one" to show up; but it is you. Moses, like so many of the heroes of the Bible were just like you at one time; but when their time came, God showed up, and so did they. Eventually. So will you!

Moses is having, by any reasonable measure, a quiet life. He's tending his father-in-law Jethro's sheep out in the wilderness, which — let's be honest — is not exactly the résumé line you'd expect for the guy about to lead a nation out of slavery. Forty years earlier he was a prince of Egypt with a bright, complicated future. Now he's out past the desert, on the far side of nowhere, at a mountain called Horeb, doing the same job every day: watch the sheep, don't lose the sheep, go home. If Moses had a LinkedIn profile at this point, it would just say "shepherd" and nobody would be impressed.

And then he sees something odd. A bush is on fire, but it isn't burning up. Not smoldering, not collapsing into ash — just steadily, strangely on fire, indefinitely. Moses' reaction is wonderfully human: "I will go over and see this strange sight." Not "I will fall to my knees in holy terror" — just simple curiosity, the same instinct that makes you slow down for a car wreck or peek into a stranger's yard when something looks off. Moses goes to check it out because it's weird, and honestly, if a bush were doing that in my backyard, I'd go look too.

But the moment God sees that Moses has turned aside to look, everything shifts. God calls his name — twice, "Moses, Moses" — and tells him to take off his sandals, because the ground he's standing on is holy. Then comes the introduction: I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hides his face, because he's afraid to look at God.

It's worth sitting with that moment before rushing ahead, because so much is happening underneath the surface. God doesn't show up with fireworks over the palace where Moses used to live. He shows up in the most unremarkable setting imaginable — a random shrub, in a random pasture, in the middle of an ordinary workday — and turns it into the holiest ground Moses has ever stood on. God has this habit, doesn't he, of showing up in exactly the places we'd least expect to find him, and then informing us, after the fact, that we should have taken our shoes off.

God tells Moses he's seen the misery of his people in Egypt, heard their cry, and is concerned about their suffering. He's come down to rescue them and bring them to a good and spacious land flowing with milk and honey. And now — here's the turn — "I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

You can almost hear Moses' internal record scratch. Me?

Moses' response is the response of basically every person God has ever called to something enormous: "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" It's a fair question. Moses is a fugitive from Egyptian justice, a shepherd with a stutter he'll mention a few verses later, and his most recent encounter with Pharaoh's court ended with him fleeing for his life. On paper, he is possibly the single worst-qualified person in the ancient Near East for this job.

And God's answer isn't a résumé boost. He doesn't say "you're more capable than you think" or "you've got this." He says, simply: "I will be with you." That's the whole qualification. Not Moses' skill, not Moses' confidence, not Moses' past success — just the presence of God going with him.

Moses pushes further. Suppose I go to the Israelites and they ask me, "What is his name?" What should I tell them? And here we get one of the most theologically loaded verses in all of Scripture. God says, "I AM WHO I AM. Tell them 'I AM has sent me to you.'" It's not a name in the way we think of names — it's closer to an assertion of pure, self-existing being. God isn't one god among many with a name to distinguish him from the competition. He simply is, was, and will be — the eternal ground of existence itself, and yet somehow willing to crouch down into a burning bush and have a conversation with a nervous shepherd about sheep and stutters and Pharaoh.

That's the God who calls Moses. Not a tribal deity who needs Moses' talent to get the job done, but the great I AM, who invites ordinary, unqualified, reluctant people into extraordinary purposes — and then backs it up not with a pep talk, but with his own presence.

Maybe you've got your own version of Horeb — some ordinary field you've been tending for years, waiting for nothing in particular to happen. It's worth remembering that God's callings rarely arrive with a fanfare that matches their weight. Sometimes they arrive as a small, strange thing that simply won't stop burning, quietly insisting you come take a closer look.

PRAYER: Lord, give us the courage to turn aside and look, and the trust to go wherever you send us, believing your presence is enough, in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Notice one place today where God might be trying to get your attention in something small and unremarkable, and pause long enough to actually look.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God, and you matter to me. Together we can make a difference in this world by winning it for Jesus with our loving acts of kindness and compassion!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Love Without Pretending

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4zCO9wU

9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:9-21 NRS)

Friend, did you go to school with one or more "politicians"? By that I mean a fellow student who always asked how you were doing and walked away before you could answer? The kind where it gets so bad other students would say, "Let's change the expected "I'm fine" answer and say something is terribly wrong with us and see if that impacts them in any way. And of course, it never did. "Glad to hear it!" would be the response to "I'm having a terrible day and there seems to be no remedy!" Now, don't get me wrong, there are some, albeit a few, true policiians who truly do care about us. Okay, maybe two or three. Paul would have disliked going to school with the psuedo policiians because he uses this passage to encourage all believers in Jesus Christ to truly love one another in genuine ways. This passage will help us have a checklist of what that truly means.

Paul opens this section with a phrase that could double as a life motto if you stitched it on a pillow: let love be genuine. Or, as some translations put it, let love be without hypocrisy. Which tells you something important right up front — apparently fake love was common enough in the early church that Paul felt the need to specify. Some things never change. We've all met people who love you like a used car salesman loves you right up until the papers are signed.

But then Paul does something interesting. He doesn't just say "love genuinely" and leave it floating up in the clouds as a nice sentiment. He gets startlingly practical, almost like he's handing you a checklist. Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Don't lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers.

It reads almost breathless, like Paul is firing off wisdom faster than he can slow down to explain it — which, honestly, feels true to how real love actually operates. It's not one grand gesture. It's a hundred small, unglamorous choices strung together: showing up, sharing what you have, opening your door to people who might be strangers today and family by dinner.

Then Paul pivots to something that gets significantly harder: how we treat people who've wronged us. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Live in harmony with one another. Don't be haughty, associate with the lowly. Don't repay evil for evil. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

That little qualifier — "so far as it depends on you" — is one of the most quietly gracious phrases in all of Paul's writing. He's not naive. He knows peace takes two, and sometimes the other person isn't interested. He's not asking you to control what you can't control. He's asking you to make sure that if the peace fails, it isn't because you were the one who slammed the door.

And then comes the verse that tends to make everyone shift a little in their seat: never avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.

I love the honesty buried in that image, because it admits something we don't often say out loud in church: even our kindness to enemies can carry a little edge to it. There's something almost satisfying about the coals metaphor — like Paul is saying, "yes, fine, if you want your enemy to feel something, try relentless generosity. It'll do more damage to their conscience than your anger ever could." Kindness as a strategy, not just a virtue. Paul's not asking you to pretend you don't notice the wrong done to you. He's asking you to respond to it with a weapon evil doesn't know how to defend against.

The chapter closes with the line that ties the whole thing together: do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

That's really the argument of this whole passage, isn't it. Evil is contagious — it wants to multiply itself, turn your anger into their excuse, turn one wrong into two. Paul's entire strategy here is refusing to let that chain reaction happen through you. Somebody has to break the cycle, and Paul says: let it be you, let it be love, let it be genuine enough that it doesn't run out when it gets inconvenient.None of this is easy. Paul isn't describing a personality type some people are lucky enough to have. He's describing a way of living that has to be chosen, often daily, sometimes through gritted teeth, especially with the people who make it least convenient. But that's exactly why it matters — a love that only shows up when it's easy was never really the love Paul was describing in the first place.

PRAYER: Lord, teach us to love without pretending, to bless instead of curse, and to overcome evil with good even when it costs us something, in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Pick one person today who's difficult to love, and do one concrete, practical kindness for them before the day ends.

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 by showing genuine love to all people in real ways.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The Cross Before the Crown

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

21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. 28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:21-28 NIV)

Happy Monday, Friend! I pray the joy of the Lord is your strength! A joyful strength is what the world needs! With that strength we can face all things and make life better for many. Use joy in your prayers as we pray for one another, even those we don't know. God knows all people and so when we lift up a name, God knows exactly who that is! Love all people and seek to bless other with loving acts of kindness.

I've said it many times before and I still believe that Peter is the man. He reminds me of me that many times he and I rushed into things and many times spoke before reflecting, and this passage reinforces that. Let's look deeply at this passage and what it may say to you and me.

Here's the thing about Peter — you have to love him, even when he's getting it spectacularly wrong, because he gets it wrong in the most relatable way possible. Just a few verses earlier he had the finest moment of his life: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus praised him, gave him the keys of the kingdom, told him that flesh and blood hadn't revealed this but the Father Himself. Peter was on top of the world. The ink was barely dry on his greatest theological achievement when Jesus begins to explain what being the Messiah actually means — suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection — and Peter pulls Jesus aside and begins to rebuke Him. The same Peter. The same conversation. The same afternoon.

"Never, Lord! This shall never happen to You!" It's said with complete sincerity and obvious love and total confidence, which makes what Jesus says next both necessary and a little startling: "Get behind me, Satan!" Now, before we feel too sorry for Peter, it's worth noting that this is the second time in the Gospels that Jesus has said those words — the first was to the actual devil in the wilderness. Peter has managed to land himself in some very uncomfortable company through the simple act of trying to protect Jesus from the cross. His heart was in the right place. His theology was not. He was so focused on a Messiah who would win without suffering that he couldn't hear the one standing in front of him explaining that the winning would come through the suffering.

And isn't that one of the most human things in all of Scripture? We all have a version of Peter's speech somewhere inside us — the part that wants the crown without the cross, the resurrection without the dying, the transformation without the process that produces it. We want the outcome but we'd like to negotiate the path, please, and perhaps remove the parts that are uncomfortable and time-consuming and don't fit our preferred timeline. Jesus looks at that tendency in all of us with the same gentle, firm directness He aimed at Peter: you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of humans.

But then — and this is where the passage opens into something genuinely beautiful — Jesus doesn't stop at the correction. He turns to the disciples and issues an invitation that is both a warning and one of the most liberating things He ever said: "Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me." Not "you must" in the sense of reluctant obligation. "Whoever wants" — it's an open door, a willing choice, an invitation extended to anyone who is actually interested in what following Jesus produces. The cross is not something He sneaks up on you with after you've already committed. He puts it right in the front of the brochure.

And then He says the thing that sounds paradoxical until you actually try it, and then it sounds like the truest sentence you've ever heard: "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it." This is the great inversion at the heart of the gospel — the life that is clutched and managed and protected and optimized for maximum self-preservation turns out to be the life that empties itself of everything worth having. And the life that is released, offered, poured out in the following of Jesus turns out to be the only life that actually fills up. This is not a threat. It is the most practical piece of life advice in the New Testament, confirmed by every person who has ever genuinely tried it.

Jesus closes with a question that deserves to be written somewhere you'll see it regularly: "What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" The whole world. Every achievement, every accumulation, every successful grab at security and status and comfort — if it comes at the cost of the thing that makes you actually you, the deepest and most essential you that God made and loves and is calling home, what exactly have you won? And the good news tucked right inside that searching question is this: your soul is worth more than the whole world to the One who made it. You are not being asked to deny yourself because you don't matter. You are being asked to deny yourself because you matter so much that God wants more for you than the world can offer.

Take up the cross. Lose the life that was never really working anyway. Follow the one who is going somewhere worth going — and who has already paid, in full, the price that makes the journey possible.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, give us the courage to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow You into the life that only surrender can produce. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one specific thing you have been holding onto for self-protection that Jesus might be inviting you to release today, and take one step toward opening your hand and following Him.

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!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

paypal.me/eradiovalverde

If God Had Not Been On Our Side

Hear and view the devo:https://bit.ly/4xc8tUj

1 If the Lord had not been on our side— let Israel say— 2 if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, 3 they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us; 4 the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, 5 the raging waters would have swept us away.

6 Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. 7 We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. 8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 124 NIV)

Dear FRIEND, Happy Thursday! Sorry about the multiple emails I sent yesterday. I thought I had added the audio and video component to the devotional and I hadn't. I sent the email without realizing that I hadn't attached it. It may have been that all of yesterday I spent in completing the major exam to continue selling Medicare Advantage plans; the AHIP, an exam that requires a 90 or higher in order to continue to pass. There are modules to explain each of the 5 components and then an exam on each; then the actual major exam. The process is mentally exhausting and thank God I passed and I am almost ready for the Annual Enrollment Period (Oct 15-Dec 7) if I get re-certified in each of the insurance carriers that I represent. And this morning (Wednesday) I did a required Anti-Money Laundering course required by most life insurance companies. I also took an exam for one (1) hour of Continuing Education credit required for my license as an agent in Texas. My good friend Ricardo Gonzalez has shared this Prayer Request: "Dear Church Family, please pray for me and my wife Maridol as we travel to San Antonio tomorrow. I am scheduled for a spinal injection on Friday morning. Please pray for safety on the road, wisdom for the physicians, and a smooth, successful procedure that brings healing and long lasting strength. Thank you for your continued support and prayers. God Bless." May the Lord bless the Gonzalez' with all they need for this trip to be a success and a blessing to Ricardo and Maridol. In Jesus' name, amen!

Remember in the olden days when for fun you would find yourself waiting to be chosen to play a particular sport and once you were on a side the coach would decide which team would be shirts and which side would be skins. Skins means no shirt. The pain was the doubt that some teams might not want you or the humiliation that we might be picked last; but all that aside, once you were on a side, that was your side and you played and fought hard to win. This psalm is about sides and the side God takes.

David opens this psalm with a thought experiment that is equal parts sobering and clarifying — "If the Lord had not been on our side" — and then immediately repeats it, as if once isn't enough to really let the weight of it land. If the Lord had not been on our side. Say it slowly. Think about whatever it is you've come through — the thing that could have swallowed you, the thing that nearly did — and then ask yourself honestly: how did that actually turn out the way it did? Because David is suggesting that if you trace it back carefully enough, you'll find a presence at work that has nothing to do with your own sufficiency.

The imagery he reaches for is vivid and almost cinematic. If God had not been there, he says, the flood would have engulfed them, the torrent would have swept over them, the raging waters would have swallowed them whole. He's not being poetic for the sake of it — the people of Israel had faced genuine existential threats, the kind that should have ended them by any reasonable calculation. The Egyptians at the Red Sea. The wilderness that should have been a graveyard. The enemies on every side who were bigger, better armed, and considerably less anxious about the outcome than Israel was. And David looks back at the whole catalogue of should-have-ended-us moments and draws the only conclusion that fits the evidence: we are here because God was there.

Then the image shifts from water to a trap — a snare that has been broken, and the bird that was caught in it is now free. This is a different kind of threat than the flood. The flood is overwhelming and obvious; you can see it coming. The snare is subtle, concealed, designed to catch you before you know it's there. And yet both of them have the same result when God is on your side — the flood doesn't swallow you, and the snare doesn't hold you. The bird has escaped, and the point is not how clever the bird was or how carefully it navigated the trap. The point is that the trap is broken. Something outside the bird's own capabilities did the breaking.

There's something wonderfully democratic about this psalm. David doesn't say only the especially faithful will be saved from the flood, or only the particularly discerning will escape the snare. He speaks in the first person plural — we, us, our — because the help he's describing is not a reward for the best performers but the character of a God who has consistently, persistently, sometimes inexplicably been on the side of a people who had done nothing to deserve it. The snare was broken not because the bird was exceptional but because the Lord is who He is. Our help, the psalm concludes, is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Not in our strategies. Not in our resources. Not even in our faith, though faith matters. In His name. In who He is.

This is the testimony that runs through the entire biblical story, and it reaches its fullest expression in a garden tomb that couldn't hold what was placed in it. The ultimate flood — death itself — should have been the end of everything. The ultimate snare — the cross — should have held its captive. And the ultimate testimony of the Christian faith is that the flood was turned back and the snare was broken and the bird flew free on Easter morning, because the Maker of heaven and earth was on our side in a way that not even death could contain. The help that Israel needed from their enemies is the same help that every human being needs from the enemy of death, and it came in the person of Jesus, who walked into the worst the flood and the snare could do and walked out the other side carrying the keys.

So when we say "our help is in the name of the Lord," we're not being vaguely optimistic or reciting a religious phrase that sounds good on a Sunday morning. We're making a claim about something that actually happened, in history, in a body, with empty grave clothes left behind as evidence. The snare is broken. The bird has flown. And the same God who was on Israel's side in the wilderness is on your side in whatever flood you're navigating and whatever snare you're trying not to step in right now.

If the Lord had not been on our side. Finish the sentence with your own story. And then let the second half of the psalm be your response — the exhale of a bird that just realized the trap isn't holding anymore.

PRAYER: Lord, make us a people who remember clearly enough that You have been on our side to praise You loudly enough that the world around us hears it. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! Make it such for those around you, too! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Tell one person today about a specific time when the Lord was on your side in a way that should not have worked out — and let your testimony be the psalm you sing this week.

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.

Living Sacrifice

Hear and view devo: https://bit.ly/4xh72Uk 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:1-8 ESV)

As a child I loved to read comic books. And I also loved the ads! My favorite was the one by Charles Atlas whose body-building course appealed to me. Being a child that enjoyed too much flour and sugar, well, you understand. The ad's price was never shown and I was smart enough even then to know I probably could not afford the course. I later found out that his name was not even Charles Atlas! It was Angelo Siciliano born in Italy in 1892 and immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, as a child. As a young man, he was determined to transform himself from what he described as a skinny, weak youth into a muscular and confident adult. He developed a system of exercises that later became known as "Dynamic Tension." The ads featured a skinny boy having sand kicked in his face which motivated Angelo to become Charles Atlas. I was in junior high when I made a good friend who owned the courses and he gave them to me! I really believed that at 14 I was the strongest I had ever been in my life. I still do. But with no telephone books around I can't prove that any longer. Heck, I have trouble opening a Frito's bag!

Paul has spent eleven chapters of Romans building the most comprehensive theological argument in the New Testament — justification, grace, the sovereignty of God, the mystery of Israel, the mercy that swallows everything (Just why this epistle is called The Gospel According to Paul!) — and now, in chapter 12, he arrives at the practical implications, and he starts with the body. Not the soul. Not the spirit. The body. Could we call Paul the "Charles Atlas of the Faith?" He writes, "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." If you were expecting Paul to spiritualize everything he's just said into a series of interior attitudes, he's about to disappoint you in the best possible way. The gospel has an address, and that address is your actual physical life — the one with the schedule and the habits and the Monday morning and the recurring temptations and the things you do when nobody's watching.

A living sacrifice is, when you think about it, a genuinely unusual concept. In the ancient world, the whole point of a sacrifice was that it stopped living. The animals was offered to God to take the burden of sin in the human. The animal didn't get to wander off the altar. But Paul is describing something different — a sacrifice that stays on the altar not because it can't get off, but because it chooses to remain there. Which means the challenge isn't getting on the altar once; it's staying on it when everything in you wants to climb back down and run the show yourself. Every morning is essentially a new opportunity to either present your body again as a living sacrifice or slide quietly off the altar before breakfast and resume the management of your own life. Most of us know which one tends to win before the coffee is ready. Be honest!

Then Paul says the line that has probably been quoted more times than almost any other in Romans: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Conformed is a passive word — it describes something that happens to you when you stop paying attention, when you simply absorb the shape of whatever surrounds you long enough. Water takes the shape of its container. Christians who stop actively resisting conformity will take the shape of the culture around them — not dramatically, not all at once, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, the way a river slowly changes the landscape. The transformation Paul calls for is the active alternative — the daily, Spirit-enabled renewal of the mind that changes not just what you do but how you think, what you value, what you notice, what you desire.

And here is where the gifts come in, and Paul's tone shifts to something almost playful in its matter-of-factness. He says we are all one body in Christ, each of us members of one another — and then he just starts listing gifts. In Ephesus, on our tour of the Holy Land, we saw an ancient museum from Paul's time, that featured different model of the parts of the body; hands, feet, head, etc. And it is believed that as Paul toured it, he got the inspiration for this belief. Prophecy. Ministry. Teaching. Exhortation. Giving. Leading. Compassion. He lists them without ranking them, without suggesting that some are more important or more spiritual than others, without building any kind of hierarchy. The person who gives generously and the person who leads and the person who shows compassion with cheerfulness are all in the same list, treated with the same weight. There is no hint that any of these gifts is the point — the body is the point, and the gifts are what make the body function the way it's supposed to.

This is where the renewed mind becomes visible. When you stop being conformed to the world's way of measuring worth — by status, by visibility, by how many people are watching when you do the thing — and start thinking with a renewed mind, you discover that showing compassion cheerfully and giving generously and teaching faithfully are not lesser gifts being offered on a lesser altar. They are the body doing exactly what the head, who is Christ, designed it to do. The gift you have is not accidental and it is not optional. It was given by the Spirit, for the body, for the moment you are living in.

The Pentecost connection runs right through the middle of this passage. The Spirit poured out in that Upper Room came not to give everyone the same gift but to give each person what was needed for the whole body to function — which is exactly what Paul is describing here. The diversity of gifts is not a design flaw in the church; it is the design. A body that was all eyes or all ears would be, as Paul says elsewhere, a very odd body. What you bring to the community of faith is not redundant. It is necessary. And the renewed mind that the Spirit cultivates is what allows you to offer it without comparing it to someone else's gift, without wishing you were the eye when you're the ear, without sliding off the altar because nobody seems to be noticing what the ear does.

Stay on the altar. Keep showing up with the gift you've been given. The body needs what you carry more than you probably know. That will mean praying for those you don't even know; sharing with the needy when you used to say no way and "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!" Give because it was given to you.

PRAYER: Lord, renew our minds by Your Spirit so that we offer our bodies and our gifts as living sacrifices — cheerfully, faithfully, and free from the conformity that would make us something less than You designed us to be. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! And make it the same for those around you! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify the specific gift Paul would put on his list that best describes how God has wired you, and find one concrete way to use it in the body of Christ this week — without comparing it to anyone else's.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me, as all should matter to you.

Let's win the world for Jesus!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Hear and View this devo: https://bit.ly/4xNvRY8

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20 NIV)

Friend, can you visit a doctor's office or make a telephone call asking for help or stay at a hotel without getting a text or email with a survey attached? Try calling the federal Medicare help line and guess what? "You've been selected to participate in a short survey about our service! Press 1 for the worst service you've ever had in the world to 5 which is the greatest service the world has ever seen." Okay, I stretch it a bit, but you get what I am saying. Today's passage has a question that some may say is a survey question that Jesus asks about Himself.

Jesus asks the disciples a question that sounds almost like He's conducting a public opinion survey, which is a little amusing when you think about it — the Son of God, checking His approval ratings. "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" The disciples, apparently having kept up with the local gossip, have a ready answer: some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. The crowd, in other words, has Jesus in the category of "significant religious figure, possibly with a connection to someone who came before." High praise by any ordinary standard. Not even close to sufficient.

And then Jesus pivots. The survey is over. He's not actually interested in the crowd's opinion — He's interested in theirs. "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" That little word "you" lands differently than the first question. The first question was about what's out there, what people are saying, what the general consensus is. This question is personal. Intimate. It's the difference between asking someone what the critics think of a movie and asking them what they thought of it. Jesus is not asking for a theological position paper. He's asking for a personal declaration.

Peter, being Peter, doesn't hesitate. While the others are presumably still formulating their responses, weighing their words, making sure they get this right, Peter is already talking. "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." It's complete. It's correct. And it comes with an immediacy that tells you something about Peter — he's not always right, but he's rarely slow. This happens to be one of his finest moments, and Jesus receives it as exactly what it is: not the conclusion of a careful theological argument but a revelation. "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." Nobody told Peter to say that. Nobody taught him to arrive at that conclusion through a series of logical steps. The Father opened something in him, and what came out was the truth.

And then Jesus says something that has shaped the church's understanding of itself for two thousand years: "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." There has been a great deal of debate over the centuries about exactly what the rock is — is it Peter personally, is it the confession Peter just made, is it Christ Himself as the foundation? Theologians have been cheerfully arguing about this since approximately the second century, and we will not resolve it here this morning. What is less debated, and what matters enormously for how we live, is what Jesus says the church will be able to do once it is built: not even the gates of Hades will overcome it.

Now, gates are defensive structures. Gates don't go anywhere — they stand and hold a position. Which means that the image Jesus is painting is not the church huddled behind its own gates hoping the enemy doesn't break through. It's the church advancing, moving forward, pressing against the gates of death and darkness and finding that those gates — however solid they appear — cannot hold against the authority that Jesus is about to hand to His people. "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Keys open things. Keys give access. Keys are given to people who are trusted with the household.

The church Jesus describes here is not a museum for people who have already figured everything out. It is a movement of people who have said — with Peter, with whatever degree of confidence and whatever remaining uncertainty we each carry — You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. That declaration is the foundation. Not a perfect life. Not a spotless record. Not a performance that earned the keys. A confession. And on that confession, the Spirit who was poured out at Pentecost came to inhabit and empower a community that would carry those keys into every place where the gates of darkness were still holding.

The gates are still standing in a lot of places. The darkness is still real in a lot of lives. But the church — the community of people who have answered the personal question with Peter's personal answer — has been given the keys. Not to keep them polished and hanging on the wall, but to use them. To open things. To loose what has been bound. To press against gates that look solid and discover that the one who promised has not overstated the case.

PRAYER: Lord, give us the courage of Peter's confession and the boldness to use the keys You have placed in our hands for the sake of a world where so many gates still need opening. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Answer Jesus's personal question for yourself today — not the crowd's answer, not the theologian's answer, but yours — and let that declaration be the foundation from which you press against one closed gate in your world this week.

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

Let's win the world for Jesus by our love,

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Irrevocable

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4qh8J1J

11:1 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. (Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 NIV)

Welcome to ConCafe (again) Friend! I pray this finds you well and enjoying this day! May the Lord show you the path you should take in all situations is my prayer for you. I spoke with Rev. Onweiler's daughter this morning and he is weaker today than yesterday but holding on. May we continue to pray for Harold and Roma and family. Prayers for Mr. Clay Pace's Kairos friend "Tim Acklin who is in the hospital where they are trying to find the source of his internal bleeding." May it be soon and complete. Pray for one another! Pray for our world and the need for peace in each heart especially those who lead.

I am convinced that the more I request to be unsubscribed from spam mail the moment I type in my email address so they know who's requesting it, they must enter it into 500 more spam email servers! God have mercy on us! I know these spammer feel no sense of rejection for they must know of their sins! In the early days of ConCafe I had the option on that alerted me to the people who unsubscribed from ConCafe, and being only human I feel pain in knowing that not only was I not reaching them they no longer wanted to be bothered with my emails. But we come a passage that addresses the question about God rejecting His people.

Paul opens this passage with a question that sounds almost defensive, and knowing Paul, that's probably intentional: "Did God reject His people?" You can almost hear the sharp intake of breath from his Jewish readers. This is the question that everything he's said in the previous chapters seems to be building toward, the uncomfortable logical conclusion that some of his readers were quietly drawing: if Israel largely missed Jesus, if the covenant people stumbled over their own Messiah, does that mean God gave up on them? Does it mean the promises are cancelled, the relationship terminated, the whole covenant history of Abraham and Moses and David filed away under "didn't work out"?

Paul answers with the Greek equivalent of absolutely not, no way, perish the thought — and then, with what you have to imagine is at least a small smile, offers himself as exhibit A. "I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin." In other words: you want proof that God hasn't rejected Israel? You're reading a letter from the proof. The man who once held the coats of the people stoning Stephen and then spent years dragging Christians to prison is now the primary theologian of the movement he tried to destroy. If God's mercy can find Saul of Tarsus on a road to Damascus and turn him into Paul the Apostle, the argument that God has given up on anybody becomes considerably harder to sustain.

And then Paul moves to something that should slow every one of us down long enough to actually think about it: "for God's gifts and His call are irrevocable." Irrevocable. That's not a soft word. It means it cannot be called back, cannot be undone, cannot be revised in light of subsequent behavior. What God gives, He gives. What God calls, He calls. Not on a trial basis. Not subject to renewal pending performance review. The gifts and the call of God don't have an expiration date printed on the bottom, and they don't come with a return policy that God activates when we disappoint Him. This is, when you sit with it, one of the most stabilizing sentences in all of Scripture — not because it means behavior doesn't matter, but because it means the foundation of our relationship with God is not our grip on Him but His grip on us, and His grip doesn't slip.

What follows is one of the most gloriously counterintuitive statements in the whole letter: "For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on all." Read that again slowly, because it sounds almost backwards. God allowed the disobedience — in Israel, in the Gentiles, in all of us — not as a punishment but as the setup for the mercy. The whole human story of going our own way, of missing the mark, of the stubborn self-direction that characterizes every person who has ever lived — all of it was allowed within the sovereign purposes of a God who intended, from before any of it started, to meet it with mercy. Not because He approves of disobedience. Not because sin doesn't matter. But because the mercy He wanted to show was always bigger than the problem it was answering, and the problem needed to be fully acknowledged before the mercy could be fully displayed.

This is, honestly, a little humbling if you think about it too hard. We would have preferred a story in which we were never disobedient and God was simply pleased with us. But that's not the story. The story is that we were all, in our various ways, bound over to our own stubbornness, and the mercy that met us there is the mercy that now defines us — not our disobedience but the grace that answered it. Paul is saying that the very thing that looks like the problem — the human capacity for going wrong — turned out to be the occasion for the most magnificent display of mercy in the history of the universe. The cross was not plan B. It was always the point.

This connects directly to Joseph's story that our series has been following. The brothers who sold Joseph intended disobedience. The Egyptians who imprisoned him were instruments of injustice. And God took all of it — every act of human wrongness in that long chain of events — and bent it toward mercy, toward the moment when Joseph could say to the very brothers who had betrayed him: you intended this for harm, but God intended it for good. The mercy was always larger than the wrong. It just needed the whole story to play out before you could see it clearly.

And that is where we live — in the middle of the story, where the disobedience is still very visible and the mercy is sometimes harder to see. But the promise of this passage is that the mercy is not losing. The gifts are irrevocable. The call stands. And the God who took human disobedience and turned it into the occasion for the cross is the God who is still taking our mess and working it toward something only He could have designed.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, thank You that Your gifts are irrevocable and Your mercy is always larger than our disobedience — hold us in that mercy today and let it make us people of generous grace toward others. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one person in your life you've mentally written off as beyond God's reach, and let the irrevocable mercy of this passage change how you pray for them this week.

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

Love your neighbor as yourself!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

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