Street Corner Invitation

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22 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.” *(Matthew 22:1-14 NIV)

A most blessed of all Mondays be yours today, dear Friend! I pray this finds you well and blessed and ready for being a blessing to all people this week, especially those who have no one from whom to find a blessing. Ask God and God will show you just who you need to bless! Are you ready?

Nellie and I were bittersweetly blessed this past Saturday. I awoke a little after 4 am to shower, dress, pray, and drive to Corpus Christi to take part in The Rev. Dr. Harold Onwiler's memorial service at St. John's UMC. Nellie, though under the weather, accompanied me. We arrived I thought with plenty of time to enjoy a hearty breakfast and then time to fill up our car so we could return home in time to see our grandson perform in a high school marching band competition at Seguin High School. We enjoyed a too hearty a breakfast and me so proud that I didn't spill a single drop of menudo on my suit, though I would be robed up and my menudo-stained garments would not be visible! The car took me in the direction the church, but I turned around to head to the gas station. My phone rang and I saw it was Rev. Pamela Dykehouse, the DS of the South District, who was also participating at the service to ask where I was. Me, thinking the funeral would start at 10:30 said, "I'm in town and should be there shortly." She politely said the service was at ten and she and Rev. John Cochran were robed and in the Narthex of the church! Gulp! Thankfully it was 9:47 and so I said, "I'm close by and I'll be there in time!" And thank God I was! The service was very thoughtful and moving and all who shared in it blessed my heart. I was also blessed to see sweet and dear friends and collegues from years past. And God was thanked for having shared Harold with us for a season.

Jesus is still in the temple courts, still talking to the chief priests and Pharisees who are still trying to figure out how to arrest Him without causing a riot, and He tells them yet another parable. At this point the religious leaders must be deeply regretting the Tuesday morning decision to challenge His authority, because every conversation since then has produced another parable that is uncomfortably accurate about exactly what they are doing. The parables are piling up and none of them are flattering to the people being addressed. But Jesus, characteristically, keeps going.

The kingdom of heaven, He says, is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. A wedding banquet in the ancient world was not a three hour event with a buffet and a DJ. It was a multi-day celebration, prepared for months in advance, the social event of the generation for anyone lucky enough to be invited. The king in this parable has gone to extraordinary lengths — the oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, the feast is prepared, the tables are set, the wine is ready — and he sends his servants to call the people who have been invited. And they refuse to come. He sends more servants. They ignore them, go off to their farms and businesses, and some of them seize the servants and kill them. Over a wedding invitation. Which is both a significant escalation and an accurate portrait of what the religious leaders of Jesus's day were doing with the invitation He was extending to them.

The king, understandably, is not pleased. But what he does next is the part of the parable that should make every person in this room sit up a little straighter with either enormous relief or considerable self-examination, depending on where they find themselves in the story. He tells his servants: those who were invited didn't deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite everyone you can find. And the servants go out and gather everyone they can find — bad and good, Matthew says, and that detail is worth sitting with for a moment. Bad and good. The invitation goes out without a preliminary screening process. The king is not sending his servants to find people who have earned a seat at the table. He's sending them to fill the table, and whoever says yes gets to come.

This is the Pentecost parable told in wedding imagery. When the Spirit was poured out in Jerusalem — on sons and daughters, on old men and young men, on slaves and free people, on everyone who called on the name of the Lord — it was the ultimate street-corner invitation, the moment when the wedding banquet that had been prepared from before the foundation of the world was thrown open to everyone the servants could find. The first guests, the ones who had been invited longest, the ones for whom the feast had originally been planned — many of them were too busy with their farms and their businesses to come. And so the invitation went out wider, to the corners and the margins and the places where people who thought they weren't on anyone's guest list were going about their ordinary days. Come. The feast is ready. There is room at the table.

And then the parable adds a detail that has been the subject of considerable theological debate for twenty centuries — the man without a wedding garment. The king comes in to see the guests and finds a man who is not wearing wedding clothes, and asks him, friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes? The man is speechless, and the king has him bound and thrown out. This seems, at first glance, almost cruel — the man was invited from the street corner, presumably without time to prepare proper attire, and now he's being ejected for not wearing the right thing? But the ancient context helps here: wedding garments were typically provided by the host. The king gave everyone who came a garment to wear. This man is not wearing his because he chose not to, which means he accepted the invitation while rejecting the provision that came with it. He wanted to be at the feast on his own terms, in his own clothing, by his own merit. And that, it turns out, is not how this particular feast works.

The wedding garment is the righteousness of Christ — the provision that God makes for everyone who comes, the covering that Paul describes when he says we are clothed with Christ. The invitation is free. The garment is free. The feast is free. But you cannot come in your own clothing and expect it to be sufficient, because your own clothing is what you were wearing when the servants found you in the street corner, and it was never designed for this occasion. The grace that opens the door also provides what you need to walk through it.

Many are invited, Jesus says, but few are chosen. This is not a statement about a God who invites generously and then chooses stingily. It is an observation about the human tendency to accept invitations casually, to show up without really showing up, to take a seat at the feast while holding onto our own arrangements. The invitation is as wide as the street corners. The garment is ready for everyone who comes. The only question is whether we will receive both.

PRAYER: Lord, thank You for the invitation that found us in the street corner and the garment that makes us fit for the feast — give us the grace to receive both fully and to come to Your table with our whole selves. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Ask yourself honestly today whether you've been accepting the invitation while holding onto your own clothing — your own merit, your own terms, your own arrangements — and choose to put on the garment the King provides instead.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God, and you matter to me! Share the invitation shared with you with someone who was not aware they were invited!!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Pressing On!

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4 even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:4b-14 NRS)

Once I was ordained into the United Methodist Church I was tenured. Unless I messed up, I always was guaranteed an appointment. Through my ministerial career I did apply for certain assignments for which I had to learn to put together a résumé. Kids,, a résumé is a one or two page recollection of things you've learned and done. And it should be truthful. One doesn't list a degree one did not obtain, unless one is running for political office; then the sky's the limit. Helpfui hint: You shouldn't list Pope as one of your past jobs as that's a pretty visible position and God, after He stops laughing at you for having shared that, might smite you. I'm not sure of the true meaning of smite. But if you're smart, you will avoid being smitten by God. By God's love yes, but from God's anger, that's a no-no. In my ministerial life I also had to read résumés from candidates interested in positions within the ministries I led, and that made for some interesting reading. One candidate shared they had been a Temple Guard. Another listed Prophet as a career accomplishment. (My daughter highly recommended we interview that candidate). The temple guard listed their having herded people into the temple when bombs started dropping on them. Sigh. Today we study a man's résumé as he shares it with his readers in an effort to convince his readers that following and serving Jesus is one's highest potential goal. Let's examine that in today's passage.

If anyone had reason to be confident in their own religious credentials, Paul says, it was him. And then he produces the résumé, which is genuinely impressive by any first-century Jewish standard: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, so zealous that he persecuted the church, and as for righteousness under the law — blameless. This is not false modesty in reverse. This is a man who had legitimately done the work, kept the rules, climbed the ladder, and arrived at the top of the religious achievement structure of his world. If spiritual credentials were a competitive sport, Paul would have had the trophy case to prove it.

And then he says the thing that should stop every one of us cold: whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. Not a minor recalibration. Not a modest reordering of priorities. Loss. The whole résumé, the entire achievement structure, everything he had spent his life building and maintaining and defending — when he actually encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, the comparison was so stark that the only honest word for everything before it was loss. He uses an even stronger word a few lines later — the original Greek is a word for garbage, or dung, or something considerably less polite that your translation may or may not reflect depending on how adventurous your Bible committee was feeling.

What Paul found in Christ was so far beyond what the résumé had produced that the résumé simply couldn't compete. Not the righteousness that comes from the law, he says — his own righteousness, earned by performance — but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. The difference is the difference between a paycheck and a gift. You can earn a paycheck, but you own it in a different way than you own a gift. A paycheck says something about your performance. A gift says something about the giver. And the righteousness Paul found in Christ said everything about the giver and nothing at all about Paul's Pharisaical track record.

But here is where the passage opens into something that should fill every one of us with genuine, unqualified hope: Paul, writing this from prison, with the résumé long discarded and the Damascus road experience well behind him — says he has not yet obtained it. Has not yet been made perfect. Is not yet there. He who persecuted the church, who received the revelation of Christ, who planted churches across the known world, who wrote half the New Testament — not yet. And what is his response to the not-yetness? He presses on. Forgetting what is behind, straining toward what is ahead, he presses on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called him heavenward in Christ Jesus.

The forgetting what is behind is doing enormous work in that sentence. For some of us, what is behind is the old résumé — the achievements and credentials and religious performances we keep quietly polishing and returning to as our actual source of confidence. Let those go, Paul is saying. They were never the point. But for others of us, what is behind is something different — the failures, the seasons of walking away, the things we're still dragging around as evidence that we're probably not the kind of people God uses for much. Let those go too, Paul is saying. They were never supposed to be carried this far. The prize is ahead. The upward call is forward. The one who is already holding you is already there.

The pressing on is not a joyless grind. Paul frames it as a prize, as an upward call, as something worth straining toward the way a runner strains at the finish line — not because the finish line threatens them but because they are so close and the winning is so real and the one who is waiting at the end is so worth arriving at. This is the spirit of Pentecost in the life of the individual believer — the Spirit who was given not to make us comfortable in our current condition but to keep moving us forward, deeper into the knowledge of Christ, further into the power of His resurrection, pressing always toward the person we are being made into by a God who started a good work and has absolutely no intention of leaving it unfinished.

Put down the résumé. Forget the failures. Strain toward what's ahead. The prize is real and the one calling you upward is the one who already ran this race and won it for you.

PRAYER: Lord, free us from both the pride of our achievements and the weight of our failures, and fill us with the Spirited pressing-on that keeps our eyes fixed on Christ and our feet moving toward the upward call. 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 from behind — either an old achievement you're leaning on or an old failure you're dragging — and consciously lay it down today, choosing instead to strain toward the one thing ahead that actually matters.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Let's press on towards the goal set for us by our Lord!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Two Ways That God Speaks

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1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. 5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth. 7 The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. 8 The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. 9 The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. 10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. 11 By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. 12 But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. 13 Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. 14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19 NIV)

I am not old, I'm a classic sort of guy! A few minutes ago, my bride handed me her cell phone on which to read an article. I was reading comfortably when she asked, "Where is my phone?!" I did not panic, I simply told Siri to call Nellie Valverde, and I have to say it a certain way so that Siri understands. And the phone started ringing! Bear in mind I'm holding my phone on my left hand and in my right hand, Nellie's phone started to ring! "Uh, I have your phone!" We both laughed. We were not embarrassed, we were reminded of our human frailties.

We are people who learn early how to communicate, which usually means we speak and we listen. Sometimes all at the same time, but to better understand we know there is a time to speak and there is a time to listen. And it applies to our interactions with God that we will examine with today's passage.

Step outside on a clear night and look up. Go ahead — the psalm is basically asking you to do exactly that, and it has been asking people to do it for three thousand years, which suggests it's good advice. The heavens are declaring the glory of God, David says, and the skies are proclaiming the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. And then the line that is both scientifically interesting and theologically provocative: they have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them. The heavens are communicating constantly and doing it entirely in silence, which is either a profound mystery or the universe's most successful marketing campaign, depending on how you look at it.

The point David is making is one that the New Testament will pick up and run with — that God has been communicating with humanity through two channels, not one. There is the voice of creation, which speaks without words in every direction simultaneously, to every culture and language and person who has ever tilted their head back and looked at the sky and felt something they couldn't quite name. And there is the voice of the law — the specific, verbal, written-down revelation that God gave to Israel and that we hold in our hands when we open Scripture. Both are genuine. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient alone. The sky tells you there is a God. The law tells you what He is like and what He wants. You need both, and Psalm 19 gives you both in sequence.

The move David makes from the heavens to the law is surprisingly smooth, because he treats them as two expressions of the same generous communicating God rather than as competitors for the title of primary revelation. The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. He stacks them up with an almost musical repetition — the Lord's this, doing that; the Lord's that, doing this — and the cumulative effect is the portrait of a God who has not left His people to figure things out in the dark. He has spoken. Clearly. Persistently. Through everything He made and everything He said.

The phrase that always stops me is "making wise the simple." Not making wise the already-sophisticated, not giving insight to the theologically trained, but making wise the simple. The word for simple in Hebrew suggests the person who is open, impressionable, easily led — and God's word, rather than taking advantage of that openness, fills it with wisdom. This is one of the most democratizing things in the entire psalm. The wisdom that the law produces is not reserved for the people who already have significant intellectual equipment. It is available to the person who comes simply, openly, without pretense, and receives what God has been saying all along. Which is, not coincidentally, exactly the posture Jesus will commend when He says the kingdom belongs to those who come as children.

Then David says something that is remarkably self-aware for a poet in a good mood: they warn your servant also; in keeping them there is great reward. The warnings of Scripture, he is saying, are not a wet blanket on the joy the law produces — they are part of the gift. They keep you from the hidden faults, the presumptuous sins, the errors of the person who is so confident in their own judgment that they stop checking it against anything outside themselves. David knows himself well enough to know that he needs both the delight and the warning. He needs the honey sweetness of the law and the protective edge of its boundaries. He has probably already experienced what happens when he ignores one or the other, and he knows which version of himself he prefers.

The psalm ends with a prayer that has been prayed by preachers and writers and ordinary people every time they try to put something true into words: may the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. It's a prayer that connects everything the psalm has said — the wordless speech of the heavens, the life-giving precision of the law, the humble awareness of our own capacity for error — and brings it all into a single act of offering. Take what I say and what I think and make it something You would actually want to receive. Which is, when you think about it, one of the better prayers any of us could offer on any given morning before we say anything at all.

The same Spirit who breathed the law into being and who hovered over creation when the heavens were made is the Spirit who now dwells in us, helping us read the law with new eyes and look at the heavens with renewed wonder. He connects the two revelations in the person of Jesus — the Word who was with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made, who became flesh and declared the Father as clearly as the heavens declare His glory.

PRAYER: Lord, open our eyes to Your glory in everything You made and everything You said, and make the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts pleasing to You today. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Go outside today — even for two minutes — and look up, deliberately and without your phone, and let the heavens say what they have been saying since the beginning, and let that be the beginning of your worship.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me. Make your life matter more by listening to others and teach them to listen to God!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

After the Law, Grace!

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20:1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” 18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” (Exodus 20:1-20 NIV)

Happy and Blessed Tuesday to you, dear Friend. May our time together be a powerful and spiritual time of great rejoicing and praise to He Who blesses us all! May we continue to lift our prayers for the Gabbert family and the Hisey family during their time of grief. As I shared with you in a prayer update, last night at 10:30 pm (Monday), Gerald was received home to the arms of our Lord Jesus after his fall and subsequent time in hospice care. May God grant all who mourn peace. Prayers for this old man as I travel Saturday to Corpus Christi to share a word at the memorial service of The Rev. Dr. Harold Onwiler, a dear friend, colleague and servant of the Lord, who passed away some time ago. Due to a medical need in the life of his son, the service was delayed until Saturday. May the Lord grant me a word of comfort and peace.

When our firstborn baby was learning to crawl, we placed a large blanket on the living room floor. She was just beginning to master her movements and what she needed was the room on which to explore what she could and could not do. As she lay on her stomach she lifted herself up on all fours and turned to see if we were still in the room. We were. She smiled and then made her move towards the end of the blanket. Every inch she covered meant her turning back to see us; she'd smile again with that beautiful smile of hers, and then back to her determined destination. When she reaced the end of the blanket, she wondered, "Is it safe to leave the blanket? What lies beyond this protective covering of the floor? Will the floor be safe? Or will I fall down whatever void it really is?" Again, a look back towards Mom and then Dad. Another smile and then with her hands touched the floor and giggling she made the move off the carpet and onto the floor. That speaks of God introducing the Law to His people. He had lef them form into a nation while wandering in the desert; away from slavery and towards freedom, and helping them shape their behavior. What does it mean to sin? What acts are allowed? Which are forbidden? What does it all mean? And as we study the 10 Commandments may we be reminded of the responsiblity we have to look always toward God and receive His look of approval or warning. There's no telling what our daily "floor" may hold or not hold for us!

Before we talk about the Ten Commandments — and we are going to talk about them — let's notice the very first thing God says, because it's easy to skip past it in the rush to get to the thou-shalt-nots. He doesn't open with a rule. He opens with a relationship: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." Before He says do this or don't do that, He says who He is and what He's already done. The commandments are not the terms of a transaction designed to earn His favor. They are the shape of a life that reflects the character of a God who has already shown up, already rescued, already carried His people through the sea on eagles' wings. The law comes after the grace. It has always come after the grace. Anyone who tells you that the Old Testament God was about rules and the New Testament God was about relationship has not read the beginning of Exodus 20 carefully enough.

Now, the commandments themselves. There are ten of them, which is a manageable number, and Jesus will eventually summarize them into two, which is even more manageable, but for now let's appreciate that God gave us ten rather than, say, six hundred and thirteen — which is the number the rabbinic tradition eventually counted in the full Torah, so ten is already a significant act of mercy in terms of memorization alone. The first four deal with the vertical relationship — with God, and how we relate to Him. No other gods. No idols. Don't misuse His name. Keep the Sabbath. The last six deal with the horizontal — with each other. Honor your parents. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't covet. Together they form a picture of what a community looks like when it's oriented toward God and toward each other in the right way.

The no-other-gods commandment is first, and it is first because everything else depends on it. The question of who or what holds the highest place in your life is not a religious question reserved for Sunday mornings — it is the organizing question of every hour of every day, because whatever is actually first shapes everything else. Money in the first position produces a certain kind of life. Reputation in the first position produces another kind. Security. Status. The approval of the people around you. Each of these, when elevated to the throne that only God belongs on, becomes an idol — not necessarily a statue, but a functional god, a thing that controls your decisions the way only the Lord is supposed to. The commandment is not a restriction designed to make life smaller. It is a liberation designed to make life coherent — to free you from the exhausting and ultimately futile project of serving masters who will eventually let you down.

The Sabbath commandment is perhaps the most countercultural thing God says in the whole list, and it was radical when He said it and it is somehow even more radical now. One day in seven — stop. Not because there isn't more to do. There is always more to do. But because you are not a productivity machine, and the God who rested on the seventh day was not tired. He was modeling for the people He made that rest is not a reward you earn when the work is done. It is a rhythm built into the fabric of creation, a weekly declaration that your value does not come from what you produce, and a reminder that the world will continue to turn on the day you take off from managing it. We have largely decided as a culture that we know better than the Sabbath commandment. The evidence suggests we were wrong.

The last commandment — do not covet — is fascinating because it's the only one that deals entirely with the interior life, with what's happening in the mind and heart before it ever shows up in behavior. You can avoid murdering someone while coveting everything they have. You can avoid stealing while spending significant mental energy wishing you had what belongs to your neighbor. The commandment against coveting is God saying: the inside matters. What you rehearse in your imagination shapes what you eventually do with your hands. The war against sin begins not at the action but at the appetite, which is exactly what Jesus will say on the Sermon on the Mount when He takes each of these commandments and drives them deeper into the interior.

When the thunder and lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the smoke on the mountain send the Israelites backing away in fear, Moses says something that is both reassuring and clarifying: do not be afraid — God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning. The fear God is after is not the terror of a slave before an unpredictable master. It is the reverence of a people who have seen who He is and take Him seriously enough to live accordingly. There is a difference between being afraid of God and fearing God, and Moses is pointing at the second one. The first produces distance. The second produces alignment.

Jesus will take all of this — every commandment, every regulation, every layer of the law — and fulfill it. Not abolish it. Fulfill it. And the Spirit He sends at Pentecost is the Spirit who writes the law not on stone tablets but on human hearts — who makes the alignment that the commandments describe something that flows from the inside rather than being imposed from the outside. The ten words carved in stone at Sinai become, through Christ, the character being formed by the Spirit in the life of the believer. Same direction. Different power source.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, write Your law on our hearts by Your Spirit, so that what You command becomes what we desire and what we desire begins to look more and more like You. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take one commandment today — just one — and spend five minutes asking God honestly whether it is fully and freely honored in your life right now, and what one step toward deeper alignment might look like.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Keep on keeping on in loving all people to win them over to abundant life!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The Vineyard Isn't Abandoned!

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33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. 35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. 38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” 42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? 43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet. (Matthew 21:33-46 NIV)

A most marvelous of Mondays be with you is my prayer. May it be the start of a great week in all respects. Love one another; seek to outdo others in service! The winner will be God and you! Please continue to pray for Mr. Gerald Gabbert as he continues in hospice care. His condition is worsening. Prayers for him to be comfortable and this walk into the arms of Jesus be peaceful; for his wife as she is taken to the hospital every day to be with him; and for all who are tending and caring for him. Nellie and I worshiped in our home church and our pastor delivered one of his most powerful and touching sermons that I've heard him preach and we were blessed! So blessed we drove to Austin for lunch like two senior citizens at Luby's! It was sure good! And this after a great evening in Fredericksburg, watching our grandson's marching band, the Canyon High School Cougar Band competing in the Hill Country Marching Festival! They did a wonderful job! But don't get a grandpa going in his ratings versus the judges! Judges lose all the time! We're proud of Liam!

We come to a powerful parable, very personal one in fact, that Jesus delivers as the "religious folks" of His day continue to plot His demise. Let that sink in. Yet, we know the realites of "church" life; some of the most wonderful things and experiences one hopes to have come from church life; yet, we also know that in the church some hear the worst possible things and some even have terrible things done to them as well.

Jesus is still in the temple courts, still in the middle of what has become an increasingly pointed conversation with the chief priests and elders, and He tells them another parable. At this point in Matthew's Gospel, the parables are getting sharper and the audience is getting less comfortable, which is roughly the opposite of what the chief priests had hoped for when they came to challenge His authority on Tuesday morning. They had a bad week planned for Jesus. It is not going the way they planned.

The parable He tells is not subtle. A landowner plants a vineyard — digs it, walls it, builds a watchtower, leases it to tenants, and goes away. This is a picture every person in that courtyard would have recognized immediately as Israel's story, because Isaiah had used exactly the same imagery centuries earlier. The vineyard is Israel. The landowner is God. The tenants are the religious leaders entrusted with the vineyard's care. Everyone listening knows this. Which makes what follows both a story and a mirror. It reads like an episode from The Sopranos!

When harvest time comes, the landowner sends servants to collect the fruit. The tenants beat one, kill another, and stone a third. He sends more servants — same result. And then, in the move that defies every human calculation of self-interest, he sends his son. "They will respect my son," he says. And here is where the parable turns from uncomfortable to devastating, because the tenants see the son coming and say to each other — and you can almost hear the conspiratorial whisper — "This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance." So they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him. The son is killed outside the vineyard, outside the city walls, on a hill called Golgotha, and the people who were supposed to be tending the Father's vineyard are the ones who do it.

Jesus asks the question that He has been building toward: when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? And the chief priests and elders, still not realizing they are pronouncing their own sentence, answer correctly: he will bring those wretches to a wretched end (more Sopranos!) and will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time. Yes, Jesus says. Exactly. And then He quotes the psalm that has been sitting under this whole conversation: the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The one they threw out of the vineyard is the one on whom everything else will be built.

And then He says the sentence that makes the chief priests and Pharisees realize what He's been doing the whole time: "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit." Ouch! They look at each other. They look at Him. And Matthew tells us they wanted to arrest Him right then, but they were afraid of the crowd, who regarded Jesus as a prophet. So they leave. Which, in retrospect, is both the politically prudent choice and also proof that they have learned absolutely nothing from the parable they just heard about what happens when you refuse to receive what the owner sends.

But here is where the passage opens into something genuinely hopeful, because the stone that the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone is not primarily a statement about judgment. It is a statement about what God does with what people throw away. The son who was killed outside the city walls is the one on whom the whole new structure is built. The rejected stone becomes the foundation. The death that the tenants intended as the end of the story is the very thing God uses as the beginning of the new one. This is the resurrection logic that runs through everything — the thing that looks like defeat is the hinge on which everything turns.

The vineyard is not abandoned. The harvest is not cancelled. The owner does not walk away from the project because the first tenants mismanaged it. He finds new tenants — he opens the invitation wider, extends the vineyard to a people who were not originally in the picture, pours out His Spirit at Pentecost on sons and daughters and slaves and free people and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord — and the harvest happens. It was always going to happen. The only question was who would be the tenants when it did.

We are those tenants. We have been handed something extraordinary — the gospel, the community of faith, the vineyard that the owner has entrusted to us for this particular season of history. And the question the parable presses on us is not whether the harvest is coming — it is — but whether we will be tenants who tend it faithfully and give the owner His share, or tenants who get so comfortable in the vineyard that we forget whose it is.

The cornerstone is in place. The vineyard is open. `.

PRAYER: Lord, make us faithful tenants of the vineyard You have entrusted to us, tending it with the care of people who know whose it is and who are grateful beyond measure to be working in it. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Ask yourself honestly this week what fruit the owner would find if He came to check on the part of the vineyard entrusted specifically to you — and take one step toward producing more of it.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

We Will Not Hide It

Hear the devo: https://bit.ly/4y5Rjbg

View the devo: https://bit.ly/4ArsWGJ

My people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old— 3 things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. 4 We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done. 12 He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan. 13 He divided the sea and led them through; he made the water stand up like a wall. 14 He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night. 15 He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them water as abundant as the seas; 16 he brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers. (Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 NIV)

Are you good at keeping secrets? You shouldn't be when it comes to sharing how God has blessed you! People are hungry to hear how God has been at work in your life! If you don't share it, it stays a secret right when the world needs truth!

Happy Thursday to you, Friend! I pray you are well, and holding up when others may be giving up. Taking in what others may be painfully sharing when others don't care nor want to hear what they have to say!

Nellie and I took a long drive today and we drove through my birthplace of Kingsville and I remembered when I was a child at certain times of the year, my mother and grandmother would load all of us kids into the big black Chevy they owned and Mom would roat to life the engine in that land yacht and we would drive out in the country looking for fresh nopalitos. Nopalitos are the newly grown pads of the cactus that when cooked just right, usually with eggs, becomes a hearty and tasty meal. It was neat to be out in the country and to see these two dear ladies use their knives to cut the pads (nopales) and put them in the large pan they brought with them. Once home they would further the cutting and cooking. It was too bad that I never acquired a taste for them, but others in the household did. More for them! Looking back it was not so much the cactus as it was the conversations that Mom and my Momo would have. How I wish I had been older to remember and cherish what they had to say then; but I also realize they may have been sharing opinions and comments best left to God's memory, not mine!

There's a particular kind of conversation that only happens in certain families — the kind where someone sits the younger generation down and says, let me tell you where we came from. Let me tell you what happened before you were old enough to remember it. Let me tell you about the things that were done for us that made it possible for us to be here today. Psalm 78 is that conversation, written in verse form and set to music, which tells you that the people who wrote it understood that stories stick better when they're sung. They weren't wrong. We remember what we sing long after we've forgotten what we were told.

The psalmist opens with an intention that is both humble and urgent: I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter hidden things from of old — things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from our children. We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, His power, and the wonders He has done. There's something almost fierce about the "we will not hide them" — as if the psalmist has seen what happens to a generation that doesn't receive the story and is determined not to let it happen again. The story is not just interesting history. It is the thing that shapes how you understand who you are, whose you are, and what kind of God you're dealing with. Lose the story and you lose the orientation.

And then the psalmist gets specific, which is always where good storytelling lives. Not "God did wonderful things in Egypt" — though that's true and could be said. But: He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan. He divided the sea and led them through. He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night. He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas. He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers. Every one of those details is a specific, dateable, locatable event that real people witnessed with their own eyes and described to their children, who described it to their children, who eventually arrived at the psalmist sitting down to write it all in a song so the chain wouldn't be broken.

The specificity matters because vague stories produce vague faith. When you know that God split the rock at a particular place and the water came down like rivers — not a trickle, like rivers — you have something to hold onto when your own rock looks solid and dry. You have a track record. You have evidence. You have the accumulated testimony of people who were there and who saw it and who made sure someone else knew about it. Faith in the biblical world is almost never a solo exercise in private spiritual experience. It is the inheritance passed down through the practice of telling, which means that every generation has a responsibility both to receive the story and to pass it on.

This is where the passage carries a challenge that is quietly uncomfortable for those of us who live in an age of religious privacy. We have developed, somewhere along the way, a cultural instinct to keep our faith quiet — to treat it as a personal matter, to avoid the social awkwardness of talking about God in mixed company, to let the story stop at us rather than risk the reaction of passing it on. And Psalm 78 looks at that instinct and says, gently but firmly: we will not hide them from our children. The wonders are not yours to keep. The praiseworthy deeds are not a private archive. They are the inheritance of the generation coming behind you, and they need you to tell them.

The rock that split in the desert and produced rivers of water is the same rock that Paul identifies as Christ — the provision that God positioned before the crisis, the source that looks dry from the outside but holds abundant life within. And the Living Water that flowed from that rock in the wilderness flows from Christ Himself, who promised that everyone who believes in Him will have rivers of living water flowing from within them. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost is the river that the psalmist was pointing toward without fully knowing it — the water that doesn't just sustain a generation but flows through them into the next one and the one after that.

Tell the story. Sing the song. Sit someone down and say: let me tell you what happened before you were old enough to remember. Let me tell you what God did. The generation coming behind you needs to know that the rock split and the water came out like rivers, and that the God who did it then is the God who is doing it now.

PRAYER: Lord, make us faithful tellers of Your story, so that the generation coming behind us inherits a living faith and not just a faded memory of one. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Tell one specific story of God's faithfulness in your life to one person this week — a child, a friend, a neighbor — and let your testimony be the link in the chain that keeps the story going.

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

Winning the world for Jesus means losses for you-know-who's kingdom! We want that kingdom erased!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr./

Water From The Rock

Hear the devo: https://bit.ly/4roAUw2

View the devo: https://bit.ly/4hcwlQE

17 From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do for this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. 6 I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” 8 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. 9 Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some men for us and go out; fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” 10 So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. 11 Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses’s hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on either side, so his hands were steady until the sun set. 13 And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the sword. 14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a remembrance in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” 15 And Moses built an altar and called it, The Lord is my banner. 16 He said, “A hand upon the banner of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:1-17 NRSV)

Who holds your arms up when you're praying and growing weak and weary? Be like Moses and find your own Aaron and Hur!

Welcome to ConCafe for Wednesday, 23rd of September. If you're reading this early enough, why not drive over to See You at the Pole at your nearest school? This is a global event asking God for global blessings and changes! Also, great news! All of ConCafe materials are on our new website, concafe.tv. So, if you're referring someone to our ministry use that as the place to go. If you miss a day and think you can't find it ever again, no such luck! You'll find it here! My thanks to Mr. Douglas Copeland for his help in getting this set up for us! Let's win the world for Jesus by our prayers and our love! Update on Mr. Gerald Gabbart; he's on hospice care now and Lord only knows how long it will take, but doctors are sure it can't be too long. May we pray for God's will to be done and that the family receive their strength from the Lord!

There is something almost comforting about the fact that the Israelites are complaining again. Not because complaining is admirable — it isn't, and the text doesn't treat it as such — but because the consistency of it tells us something true about human nature that we might as well acknowledge right up front. These are the people who watched the ten plagues, walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, saw Pharaoh's army swallowed by the water behind them, ate manna from heaven, and watched God guide them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. The evidence of God's faithfulness is, at this point, genuinely extraordinary. And they are thirsty, and so they quarrel with Moses and say, in essence, did you bring us out here to die?

We should be careful about feeling too superior to them. Most of us have a similar track record. We can look back at the places where God came through — the provision that arrived at the last possible moment, the relationship that was healed when we'd given up on it, the situation that turned around in ways we still can't fully explain — and then three days later, when the new problem arrives and the water runs out, we quarrel with whoever is nearest and wonder if God has lost interest in us. The Israelites are not a cautionary tale from a primitive era. They are a mirror.

Moses, to his credit, does not take this personally — or rather, he does take it personally for about thirty seconds and then takes it to God. "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." Which is, honestly, a very pastoral prayer. It's not a theological reflection or a carefully composed petition. It's a man at the end of his rope telling God exactly where he is. And God, who is never surprised by where His people are, responds immediately — not with a rebuke of Moses for the inelegance of the prayer, not with a lecture about the Israelites' ingratitude, but with a practical, specific, do-this-and-it-will-work answer. Take the staff. Take some elders. Go to the rock at Horeb. Strike it. Water will come out.

The rock. This detail is so ordinary that we might walk right past it, which would be a significant mistake. There is a rock, and inside the rock there is water, and the water has been there all along, waiting for Moses to strike it. God didn't create the water in the moment of the crisis. He positioned it before the crisis arrived, in a rock that looked like nothing, in a desert place that offered no visible promise of relief. The provision was already there. What was needed was not a miracle from nothing but the obedience to strike the rock that God was pointing at.

Paul, writing to the Corinthians centuries later, identifies the rock explicitly — the rock was Christ. The provision that sustained Israel in the wilderness, the water that came from the struck rock, is a picture of the one who would be struck on the cross so that living water could flow from His side to a thirsty world. Jesus Himself tells the woman at the well that whoever drinks the water He gives will never be thirsty again — that the water He gives will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The rock in the wilderness is the earliest chapter of a story that runs all the way through the Gospels and erupts in the wind and fire of Pentecost, when the Spirit — described by Jesus as rivers of living water flowing from within — is poured out on all flesh. The thirsty people of Israel got water from a rock. We get the Spirit from the Risen Christ, and the Spirit is the water that does not run dry.

There's a name Moses gives to the place that is worth sitting with: Massah and Meribah, which mean testing and quarreling. The place is named not for the miracle but for the question the Israelites asked in the middle of it: "Is the Lord among us or not?" It's a haunting question, and a deeply honest one. In the middle of the thirst, in the middle of the waiting, in the middle of the wilderness between the last miracle and the next one — is the Lord among us or not? Moses strikes the rock. Water pours out. And the answer to the question is written in the desert sand: He was here the whole time.

He is here the whole time. The rock was already positioned. The water was already inside it. The staff was already in Moses's hand. The elders were already there to witness it. And the Lord was standing on the rock before Moses ever arrived — which is the most important detail of all. He goes ahead. He positions the provision before the crisis arrives. He stands at the place of the need before we know there is a need. And when we finally get there, thirsty and quarreling and wondering if He's even paying attention, the water comes out and we realize He has been here all along.

Is the Lord among us or not? Strike the rock. Find out.

PRAYER: Lord, when we quarrel in our thirst and forget Your track record, remind us that You have already gone ahead to the rock and the water is already waiting for us. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name the specific thirst you're carrying today — the need that's making you quarrel or doubt — and strike the rock by bringing it to God in honest, direct, Moses-style prayer right now.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God, and you matter to me! Show love to all people today in ways that show Jesus in you!

Blessings,

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The Mind of Christ

View the devo: https://bit.ly/46DDWmA

Hear the devo: https://bit.ly/4rm9t60

2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:1-13 ESV)

What power do you feel as you hear the name of Jesus? For Paul, it was to hear everything! May it be so for us as well!

I'm having to be very careful with what I say in front of our two year old grandson! He's at the stage where he repeats everything including things I should not be saying. Don't be alarmed I am not cussing. But I do say descriptive things about people I need not say. We went through the whole thing with his older brother who is now six. He did hear a mild (?) curse word about his dog having accidents and so every accident she had, our grandson say the descriptive word and her name. Paul knew that encouragement is key among believers of all ages, especially the newer or younger of believers among us. And he's talking about being positive and loving towards all things. Let's spend some time with his passage for today.

Paul opens this passage with four rapid-fire "if" statements, and the way he strings them together is worth a moment of attention. If there is any encouragement in Christ — if there is any comfort from love — if there is any participation in the Spirit — if there is any affection and sympathy. He's stacking up things that everyone in the room knows are true, building a case with premises nobody can argue with, so that by the time he gets to the conclusion — complete my joy by being of the same mind — the congregation has already agreed to everything that leads there. It's gentle, it's relational, it's Paul at his most pastoral, and it's also a little bit like someone saying "well, since we all agree that gravity exists and the sky is blue and the sun rose this morning — clearly you should stop arguing with each other." The logic is airtight and the tone is warm, which is a combination that is genuinely rare and genuinely effective.

The unity Paul is describing is not the unity of people who never disagree about anything — that would be less a church and more a particularly well-organized echo chamber. It's the unity of people who have the same mind, the same love, the same spirit, the same purpose — who are, at the deepest level, oriented toward the same thing, even when they approach it from different angles. And the obstacle he identifies to that unity is not theological disagreement or personality conflict or the worship wars that have been going on in one form or another since approximately the second century. It's two things: selfish ambition and conceit. The desire to be seen. The need to win. The habit of counting your own interests as the most interesting interests in the room.

The antidote Paul offers is not a management technique or a conflict resolution strategy. It's a Person. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." And then he launches into what scholars believe is an early Christian hymn, one of the most breathtaking passages in the entire New Testament — the great condescension of Christ, who was in the form of God and did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness, humbling Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Let that land for a moment. The one who had every reason to grasp, every right to insist, every legitimate claim to the best seat in every room — chose not to. He looked at the divine prerogatives He could have held onto and said, essentially, I will set these down for now because love requires it. He did not come as the Roman emperor arrived, preceded by heralds and accompanied by soldiers and received with compulsory adoration. He came as a baby in a manger in a backwater town to a teenage girl and a carpenter, and He spent the next thirty-three years giving Himself away so thoroughly that the cross was not an interruption of His life's pattern but its fullest expression.

This is the mind Paul is asking us to have. Not a performance of humility — the kind where you say "oh, it was nothing" while clearly hoping everyone disagrees — but the genuine, downward-moving, other-centered orientation of a life that has been reshaped by what Christ did. Count others more significant than yourselves, Paul says. Look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others. Which is, in the context of a community that has selfish ambition and conceit circulating in it, either an impossible ask or the most practical thing Paul could have said — depending entirely on whether the Spirit is actually at work in the people being asked.

And here is where the passage ends with one of the most energizing and clarifying sentences in all of Paul's letters: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." This is not a contradiction. It is a collaboration. Work it out — live it, practice it, let it take shape in your actual daily choices — because God is already at work in you, producing the desire and the capacity to do exactly what He's asking. The wanting and the doing both come from Him. Your role is to cooperate with what He is already moving in you, to say yes to the impulse toward generosity and humility and other-centeredness when it arises, because that impulse is not random — it is the Spirit working in you toward the good pleasure of a God who looks very much like Jesus.

The mind of Christ is not a destination you arrive at after years of self-improvement. It is a gift you receive and then live out of, imperfectly, gratefully, one ordinary choice at a time — choosing the lower seat, choosing to count the other person's interests as significant, choosing to set down what you're grasping and open your hands instead. And the God who worked through the humility of the manger and the cross and the empty tomb is still working — in you, through you, for His good pleasure and your genuine joy.

PRAYER: Lord, form in us the mind of Christ — the kind that empties itself, serves freely, and finds in the downward movement the joy that grasping could never 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 relationship or situation today where you've been counting your own interests first, and choose one concrete act of genuinely counting the other person's interests as more significant than your own.

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

Let's be positive about Jesus today in all things, enough to win some new souls over!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

First Yes or First No?

Hear, View devo: https://bit.ly/4xy9Zzd

23 Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 25 John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?” They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ 29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. 30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. (Matthew 21:23-32 NIV)

If you have ever said NO, or WAIT to God. It's okay. Even if you said YES and followed it up with NO action. It's okay, too.

My healing continues and it's been a different sort of journey. My first cataract was on my weak eye, so removig the cataract on that eye left me with a fully working eye. This surgery was on my strong eye, so the weak eye is doing what it can and the right eye needs to continue healing and I will need glasses to get everything in focus.

At my last appointment I found mysef behind a sweet lady that was patient but clearly frustrated. Finally, the clerk told her she was there a week early. The dear lady not knowing to show embarrassment or anger, left and the kind clerk said it happened all the time. I said, "I have a friend, who packed and flew from Texas to Nashville for a long-awaited convention. Upon arrival at the host hotel he waited patiently while many on staff looked for his room reservation. Finally, a manager came an told him that he was a year early for his convention. And I still think of a morning in a previous chiurch where my secretary said an irate church member wanted to see me. I opend my door and a usually very sweet elderly member asked, "Brother, what did you do?" Great question. I did a lot of things and had to answer for most, but I did not register the question. She continued, "There's nobody here! Sunday school rooms are empty, there are no cars in the parking lot! Are we going to have church today or not?" I felt sad immediately. I said very calmly, "Sister, today is Monday. Church was yesterday." I'm headed there as may be many of us, but we smile and love.

Jesus has just ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey to the sound of hosannas, turned over the tables in the temple, cursed a fig tree, and healed the blind and the lame in the temple courts — and it's only Tuesday. The chief priests and elders are, to put it mildly, not having a great week. So they come to Him with what they clearly believe is an unanswerable question: "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" It's the kind of question designed less to get information and more to put someone on the defensive — the ancient equivalent of "who do you think you are?" And Jesus, because He is Jesus, answers their question with a question of His own, which is both brilliant and must have been enormously satisfying to watch.

"John's baptism — where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?" And the chief priests and elders huddle. We can almost picture them — the most powerful religious figures in Jerusalem, whispering among themselves, doing the political calculation in real time. If we say from heaven, He'll ask why we didn't believe him. If we say of human origin, the crowd will turn on us because they all thought John was a prophet. And so they land on what is simultaneously the most politically safe and the most intellectually embarrassing answer available to them: "We don't know." The men who have just challenged Jesus's authority on the grounds that they are the authorized interpreters of God's will have just publicly admitted that they cannot discern whether John the Baptist was sent by God or not. Jesus, with what must have been considerable restraint, simply says: then neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Checkmate, and they walked into it themselves.

But Jesus doesn't leave it there, because He never just wins an argument and moves on. He tells them a parable, and this one is pointed enough that by the end of it they will realize they've just rendered a verdict against themselves — which is becoming something of a pattern in Matthew's Gospel. A man has two sons. He goes to the first and says, go work in the vineyard today. The first son says no — flat out, directly, without apology. And then later he changes his mind and goes. The father goes to the second son with the same request. The second son says yes, absolutely, consider it done, I'm on my way — and then doesn't go. Jesus asks the obvious question: which one did what the father wanted? And they answer correctly: the first one. Yes, Jesus says. And the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

That would have landed like a thunderclap. The tax collectors and the prostitutes — the people who had said no to God with their entire lives, who had visibly, publicly, professionally walked away from everything the religious establishment stood for — are ahead of you. Not instead of you. Ahead of you. The door is still open. But the people who said no with their lives and then turned around when John came preaching repentance are further through it than the people who said yes with their lips and then stood in the temple courts demanding to see Jesus's credentials.

The parable is not really about two sons. It's about two kinds of religious life — the life that performs the right answers and produces no fruit, and the life that starts from the wrong place but genuinely turns when it hears the invitation. John came in the way of righteousness, Jesus says, and the tax collectors and prostitutes believed him. The chief priests and elders saw it happen and still didn't turn. There is a sobering word in that for anyone who has been around religion long enough to be very comfortable saying the right things — because the comfort of the correct answer can become, over time, a substitute for the actual turning that the correct answer is supposed to produce.

But here is the joy in this passage, and there is real joy in it: the first son changed his mind and went. He said no and then went anyway. Which means that the no you said at some earlier point in your life — the period of walking away, the season of doing things you're not proud of, the years when the vineyard was the last place you wanted to be — none of that disqualifies you from the going. The father in the parable does not receive the first son with a lengthy lecture about his earlier refusal. He receives him because he went. The Spirit who was poured out at Pentecost on tax collectors and fishermen and people with complicated histories is still being poured out on people with complicated histories. The vineyard is still open. The invitation is still going out. And changed minds are exactly what the Father has been hoping for all along.

PRAYER: Loving Lord, turn our yes from a word we say into a life we live, and give us the humility to keep turning toward You whenever we find ourselves walking in the wrong direction. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one area of your life where you've been saying yes with your words but no with your actions, and take one concrete step today toward actually going into the vineyard.

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

Let's win the world with full, unconditional love for all people.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Blood on the Doorframe

View devo: https://bit.ly/4zTniwI;

12:1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. 12 I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 14 “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance. (Exodus 12:1-14 NRS)

Happy Wednesday! Friend, make it your best day ever by being the best person you can be! Love all people. Smile more. Give more! Prayers for this old man as he prepares to preach in the home office of First Gonzales this Sunday at 8:30 and 10:45! May God give me a word to share with all people.

It's that time of year for the Procrastinators of America to get their taxes done! And yes, dear Sainted Reverend Thom Elliott, my friend and brother in Christ Jesus, I think of you often, but more so as I get my information in order to file in time for the last possible day to send Uncle Sam what I render unto him. And that involves me printing the 2025 calendar month by month so I can look over how many medical-related trips I made to Gonzales, and Mission, Texas for health and dental trips. Oh, and I can't forget San Antonio for vision-related jaunts. And tis funny how the online calendar shows every detail but the printed version does not, so I have bring the printed calendar here so I can write in the details I need. And speaking of calendars, this passage has the God of the Universe resetting the calendar!

There's a moment in this passage where God does something that feels almost strange for the God of the universe to bother with: he stops to reset the calendar. "This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you." Before a single plague finishes, before a single Israelite takes a step toward freedom, God says, essentially, "mark this on your calendars — everything starts counting from here now." When God is about to do something enormous, he doesn't just act — he makes sure you remember when it happened. This wasn't going to be a footnote. It was going to be the new starting line for how an entire people measured time.

Then come the instructions, and they are wonderfully, almost comically specific. Every family is to take a lamb — one per household, unless your household's too small to finish it, in which case you team up with your nearest neighbor and figure out the math together based on how many people can actually eat it. The lamb has to be without defect, a year-old male, and you don't just grab it and slaughter it right away — you keep it, watch it, live with it for four days before the appointed time. There's something almost tender in that detail. This isn't an anonymous animal grabbed at the last minute; it's something the family has had underfoot, part of the household, before it becomes part of their salvation.

On the fourteenth day, at twilight, the whole assembled community slaughters their lambs. And then comes the part that changes everything: they're to take some of the blood and put it on the two doorframes and the top of the frame of the houses where they eat the lamb. Not sprinkle it inside for good luck. Not paint it somewhere private and decorative. Put it right on the doorframe — the most visible, unmissable part of the house, the thing everyone walking by would see.

I love imagining this scene a little: an entire nation, in one single night, painting blood over their front doors, roasting lamb with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, dressed and ready to move with their sandals on and staff in hand, eating in a hurry like people who might have to run at any moment. It's not a quiet, contemplative meal. It's Passover eaten standing up, coats on, bags practically packed — dinner and an escape plan rolled into one.

And then God tells them exactly why the blood matters: "The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." The blood isn't a magic charm that wards off evil on its own merits. It's a sign — something visible, something that testifies to whose household this is, something God himself promises to look for and honor. The destroyer doesn't pass over because the family behind that door was more righteous than the family next door. He passes over because of the blood. Full stop. Nothing else about that night saves anyone.

If that sounds familiar, it should — because this is the exact shape of the gospel showing up more than a thousand years before Jesus ever walked into Jerusalem for his last Passover meal with his disciples. Blood applied to a doorframe, marking a household as covered, sparing it from judgment that fell everywhere else. It's not hard to see why Paul would later call Jesus "our Passover lamb" without much explanation needed — the story had already been telling us what to look for.

And then God adds one more instruction that I find strangely moving: this day shall be a day of remembrance for you, you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, throughout your generations, as a perpetual ordinance. God isn't just rescuing this generation of Israelites. He's building a memory into the DNA of a whole nation, so that centuries later, families would still be gathering around tables, still asking "why is this night different from all other nights," still telling their children about the blood on the doorframe that meant death passed over their house.

There's something worth sitting with here about how God saves. It's specific. It's visible. It requires trust — because imagine being the one family on the block wondering if maybe this time the blood thing was overkill, maybe we don't really need it. It's applied, not assumed. And it points, unmistakably, all the way forward to a cross.

PRAYER: Lord, thank you for the blood that covers us and the judgment that passes over because of Jesus, our true Passover Lamb, in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take a few minutes today to thank Jesus specifically for being the Lamb whose blood covers you, rather than assuming your safety is automatic.

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

Win the world for Jesus with your love!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Wake Up and Owe Nothing But Love

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4xD4q3u

8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. 11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:8-14 NRS)

Happy Tuesday, dear Friend! Be a surprise blessing to many today by doing unexpected outrageous (for you) things! Blessings will be yours all day long! This is an adventure after all! Make it a fun one! Prayers for this old man as I prepare to preach at First Methodist Church in Gonzales this coming Sunday at 8:30 and 10:45! I may be a bit rusty!! Crusty too! lol.

I remember very vividly the day I paid off my credit card. Yes, I had fallen into the illusion of credit cards. I applied for a Foley's credit card and was elated that I was approved! I remember having supper with an old friend, and one of his old friends, who was bragging about having an American Express card. "They give them to anyone who applies!" he said, and dummy here applied and again, APPROVED! I also applied for a MasterCard and guess what, again, approved. I didn't rack up a lot of debt; Amex had to be paid monthly, so anything I charged during a month had to be paid at the end of that same month, and Foley's, well, I didn't buy expensive clothes, so I never really used it. But the MC was something else; and I charged gas and food on it; and of course, I was working with Ma Bell and making very good money for a single man; then I went away to seminary and I went on faith knowing I had to pay off my new car and other charges; and the day came I owed MasterCard nothing! And to celebrate I went and bought a new pair of boots to use in the snow there in Denver. And that was the beginning of what seemed lifetime debt to MC nation. Debt is no fun.

And here comes the Apostle Paul acting like Dave Ramsey in this passage with his "Owe no one anything..." Yeah, right! If you've ever had a loan you couldn't quite shake — the kind that shows up in your mind at 2 a.m. reminding you it still exists — you know exactly the itch Paul is describing. Debt lingers. It follows you around. It's the one bill that never seems to close out.

And Paul says there's exactly one debt he's comfortable with you carrying forever, never paying off, always owing a little more: love. Every other debt gets settled eventually. This one doesn't, and that's the point — you're never going to wake up one day and think, "well, I've loved my neighbor enough now, I can stop."

Then Paul does something that would've been almost scandalous to a first-century Jewish audience: he says the entire law can be summed up in a single sentence. Whoever loves another has fulfilled the law, because the commandments — don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet, and whatever other commandments there are — are all summed up in this: love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, so love is the fulfilling of the law.

Think about how radically simplifying that is. The Pharisees had built an entire industry out of parsing 613 commandments into finer and finer categories — which ones apply on which days, under which conditions, with which loopholes. Paul walks in and essentially says: you can stop counting. If you actually love your neighbor — really love them, not just tolerate them from a safe distance — you've already kept the whole list, because love doesn't do the things the list is trying to prevent. It's like discovering that instead of memorizing six hundred rules for a card game, someone just tells you: don't be a jerk, and you'll never break a rule again.

Then Paul shifts gears into something with real urgency: besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. He's telling the Roman church, and by extension us, to check the clock — salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. The night is far gone, the day is near. So let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

It's such a vivid image — waking up, throwing off the covers, putting on daylight like it's something you can wear. And then Paul gets almost startlingly specific about what needs to be laid aside: not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. It reads like a list someone wrote after attending one too many parties that went sideways. Paul's not being prudish here — he's naming the stuff that keeps people stuck in a fog, groggy and half-alive, sleepwalking through their own lives instead of actually living them.

And then the final instruction, which I think is the real heartbeat of the whole passage: instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

That phrase — "make no provision" — is such practical wisdom dressed up in old language. It's not just "resist temptation when it shows up." It's "stop leaving the door unlocked for it in the first place." Don't stock the fridge with what you're trying to avoid. Don't keep the relationship active that you know is pulling you toward darkness. Don't set your alarm for the version of yourself you're trying to wake up from. Paul knows that most of our failures aren't sudden ambushes — they're the predictable result of provisions we made for them days earlier, half-consciously, hoping we wouldn't actually have to follow through.

Put on Christ instead. Not as a costume you wear to church on Sunday and take off Monday morning, but as your actual wardrobe — the thing that determines how you show up in every ordinary interaction, every debt you never quite finish paying off, every neighbor you're called to love instead of merely endure.

PRAYER: Lord, wake us from our sleepiness, clothe us in Christ, and let love be the only debt we never stop paying, in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one "provision for the flesh" you've been quietly leaving in place, and remove it today.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Live in a way that says you love all people and want them in the Kingdom of God.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.