Waiting Well While Trusting God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

When We Don't Know What to Pray

Hear and view devo: https://bit.ly/4yrIQ2V

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes[a] with groanings too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:26-39 NRS)

It was after church. The receiving line of "Good job, pastor," and "You've certainly given us a lot to think about." And a lady waited to be the last to come greet me and she just cried. Her only daughter was dying of a vicious cancer and she said, "Pastor, I just don't know what to pray anymore!" I hugged her and shared how I understood and shared with her the powerful words of verses 26-27 of this passage. She took comfort in them and we prayed together.

Have you ever sat down to pray and just... come up empty? Not because you don't care, not because you don't have anything going on in your life — but because what you're carrying is so heavy, or so confusing, that you genuinely don't know what words to use. You open your mouth, or you sit in silence, and nothing comes. Just a groan, maybe. A sigh. Tears, if you're honest.

If that's ever been you, Paul has good news for you right at the start of this passage: "the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words." Let that sink in for a second. Paul isn't scolding believers for not having polished, articulate prayers. He's saying the opposite — when your prayers fall apart, when all you've got is a groan, the Holy Spirit takes that groan and translates it. He carries what you can't even put into language. You are never praying alone, and you're never expected to have it all figured out before you come to God.

That's a relief, isn't it? Because so much of our spiritual life gets tangled up in the idea that we have to say the right things, feel the right things, perform faith correctly. But this passage says something much more tender: God meets you in your weakness, not in spite of it.

From there, Paul zooms out to one of the most quoted — and most misunderstood — verses in the whole Bible: "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose." This verse isn't a promise that everything that happens to you is good. Loss is still loss. Pain is still pain. What Paul is saying is something sturdier than that — that God is actively at work, weaving purpose and redemption even through the hard, confusing, painful chapters of your story. Nothing you walk through is wasted on Him. That's very different from "everything happens for a reason" as a throwaway line. It's a promise that God is present and working, even when you can't see it yet.

Then Paul asks a series of questions that build like a drumbeat: "If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold His own Son, but gave Him up for all of us, will He not with Him also give us everything else?" There's a logic here worth sitting with. If God already gave you the most costly thing imaginable — His own Son, on a cross, for you — why would you doubt His willingness to walk with you through whatever smaller thing you're facing today? The cross is the proof. It answers the question before you even finish asking it.

And then comes the crescendo — maybe one of the most comforting passages in all of Scripture. Paul lists off everything that might try to separate us from the love of Christ: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. He's not being poetic for effect — he's naming real, brutal things people were actually facing. And his answer, after all that? "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Not because life gets easy. Not because the hardship disappears. But because none of it — nothing in death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, height or depth, or anything else in all creation — can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sit with that phrase for a second: "more than conquerors." That's not the language of someone barely surviving. It's the language of someone standing on solid ground in the middle of the storm — not because the storm isn't real, but because it doesn't get the final word.

So here's what I want you to carry out of this passage today: whatever you're facing, whatever you don't have words to pray about, whatever loss or fear or uncertainty has you feeling disconnected from God — you are not separated from His love. Not by circumstance, not by failure, not by anything. The Spirit is groaning with you right now. God is working, even in the mess. And nothing — nothing — can put you outside the reach of His love.

You don't have to have it together to come to God today. You just have to come.

PRAYER: Lord, thank You that nothing in life or death can separate me from Your love — meet me in my weakness today, and remind me that I am held, even when I don't have the words to say so. And Father, we lift up those who don't know what to pray because they feel helpless and defeated; help them know You are listening and are responding. Above all things we pray Your will be done, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Today, instead of trying to find the "right" words to pray, simply sit quietly for a few minutes and let the Holy Spirit intercede for what you can't put into words.

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

Win the world for Jesus!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The Treasure

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

31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” 33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. 47 “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied. 52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.” (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 NIV).

I moved to Denver the year the Aurora Mall opened in the city by the same name. It was a big deal for that community at that time to have a mall open. My friends from Texas who had moved to Denver earlier, had a connection for one of them, Kay Morton, worked at a jewelry store. Her husband Jerry called me to tell me about the mall's special promotion. The mall had built a "mine" filled with real diamonds and the not so real cubic zirconias. For a small fee one could try their luck in trying to find the real diamond and if you found it you could keep it. The day I made it to the mall there was only one diamond left. Kay arranged for me to meet with the jeweler who told me simply, "the diamond is smaller and a bit more dull than the cubic zirconia." Given the size of the clay made mine, it was a tough task. "Take your time" the jeweler and my friends told me. And I did, and I finally found the diamond! It was placed in a small envelope and it was mine!

Jesus is doing something deliberate with all these short parables placed side by side, and it's worth noticing before we open any one of them individually. He is not giving us a single angle on the kingdom of heaven and expecting it to be sufficient. He is turning the diamond slowly, showing us one facet, then another, then another, because the kingdom is too large and too various to be captured from a single vantage point. A seed. Yeast. A hidden treasure. A pearl. A net. Five images in quick succession, and not one of them duplicates what the others have already said. The kingdom of heaven is like this — and this — and also this. Stay with Me. There is more.

The mustard seed and the yeast belong together because they are making the same point from two directions. The mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, Jesus says, and yet it grows into a tree large enough for birds to nest in. The yeast is a small amount — a woman takes and hides it in a large quantity of flour — and yet it works through the whole batch. Both images carry the same breathtaking claim: do not be deceived by what something looks like at the beginning. What appears negligible, almost invisible, almost not worth taking seriously, contains within it a life and an energy and a capacity for growth that the initial appearance gives no hint of.

The disciples who first heard this had watched Jesus heal the sick and raise the dead and still command audiences of thousands, so in one sense the kingdom didn't look small to them at all. But they had also watched the religious establishment resist Him, watched crowds turn away when the teaching got hard, watched the seed fall on all kinds of soil with wildly different results. The kingdom, from inside the story, could look very much like a minority report — a small, countercultural, surprisingly fragile thing in a world that had other arrangements and was not particularly interested in changing them. And Jesus is saying: look at the mustard seed. Look at the yeast. Don't measure by what you can see at the beginning. Measure by what the life inside the thing is capable of becoming.

This is, of course, the Pentecost story before Pentecost happened. One hundred and twenty people in an upper room, praying in a city that had just crucified their Lord. By any human calculation, that should have been the end — a small, frightened remnant, soon to be dispersed. And then the Spirit came, and within a single morning three thousand people were added to the number, and within a generation the gospel had traveled from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria and was pressing at the edges of the known world. The mustard seed became a tree. The yeast worked through the whole batch. Not because the disciples were particularly impressive, but because the life inside the thing was not their life — it was His.

Then come the two treasure parables, and these are not about the kingdom growing outward but about the response the kingdom provokes in those who encounter it. A man stumbles across a treasure hidden in a field and in his joy goes and sells everything he owns to buy that field. A merchant who has spent his career searching for fine pearls finally finds one of such extraordinary quality that he immediately liquidates his entire inventory to acquire it. In both cases there is no hesitation recorded, no weighing of pros and cons, no reluctant sacrifice. There is joy — "in his joy" the man sells everything — because he has found something so obviously worth more than everything he is giving up that the transaction doesn't feel like loss. It feels like the best business decision he has ever made.

The parable of the net gathers everything together with a sober honesty that Jesus seems to insist on including even in passages that lean toward celebration. The net sweeps in fish of every kind — the kingdom call goes out indiscriminately, widely, to everyone — and at the end of the age the sorting will happen. The angels will separate the righteous from the wicked with the same finality that the closing parables of chapter 13 keep returning to. Not to produce fear in the person who is genuinely following, but to remind us that the kingdom is not without consequence, and that the treasure we are being offered carries with it a seriousness that deserves the whole of our response.

Jesus ends the chapter by describing the teacher who has been instructed about the kingdom as someone who brings out of their storeroom treasures both new and old. This is the image He leaves His disciples with — the well-equipped person of God as someone who holds both, who doesn't discard the old in favor of the new or ignore the new out of loyalty to the old, but who carries them together as a double inheritance, each illuminating the other. The Spirit at Pentecost did exactly that — He took what the Old Testament had been saying in seed form and brought it into full flower, connecting the old treasure of Israel's story to the new treasure of the risen Christ, showing how all of it belonged to the same storeroom all along.

PRAYER: Lord, give us eyes to see the treasure hidden in the field of Your kingdom and hearts willing to sell everything to possess it. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Ask the Holy Spirit today to show you one thing you are still holding onto that is worth less than the treasure He is offering, and take one step toward releasing it.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Fully Known, Fully Loved

Hear and View Devo: https://bit.ly/455rEm9

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. 7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and night wraps itself around me,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24 NRSV)

Just this morning my bride and I were talking about the difficulty of ministry especially on the pastor. She asked, "How did you endure so many years with all that you experienced?" I smiled and said, "Had God not sent you to me, I wouldn't have made it. I trusted God and prayed to God, but I was blessed to come home to you at night. You knew me and yet you still loved me." Have you ever wondered if anyone truly knows you—the real you, not just the version you show the world? The good news tucked inside this psalm is that YOU already are known. Completely. And not just known, but loved anyway.

The psalm opens with a bold declaration: "O LORD, YOU have searched me and known me". HE knows when we sit down and when we rise up. HE perceives our thoughts from far away. HE is acquainted with all our ways (vv. 2-3).

Let that settle for a moment. Before we even speak a word, HE knows what we're going to say (v. 4). There's nowhere to hide, nothing to perform, no version of ourselves we need to manage. Isn't that both a little unsettling and deeply comforting at the same time?

We spend so much energy trying to be known and understood by others, and so much more energy hiding the parts we're afraid won't be accepted. But here, the psalmist reminds us: HE already sees it all—and HE hems us in, behind and before, laying HIS hand upon us (v. 5). Not to trap us. To hold us.

Then the psalmist asks a question worth sitting with: "Where can I go from YOUR spirit? Or where can I flee from YOUR presence?" (v. 7).

Consider the places we sometimes try to run—into busyness, into isolation, into shame, into the "far side of the sea." And yet the psalmist declares that even there, HIS hand will lead us; HIS right hand will hold us fast (v. 10). There is no distance great enough, no darkness deep enough, to put us outside HIS reach.

Even the darkness is not dark to HIM; the night is as bright as the day (v. 12). Whatever season of darkness you might be walking through right now—grief, doubt, exhaustion, fear—HE sees it clearly. You are not lost to HIM, even when you feel lost to yourself.

This is the same GOD who, in JESUS, stepped into our darkness personally. JESUS didn't just observe our struggles from a distance—HE entered them, so that we would never wonder whether we walk alone (Matthew 1:23).

The psalm doesn't end with comfort alone—it ends with an invitation. In verses 23-24, the psalmist prays, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

This is a brave prayer. It's an invitation for GOD to search not just what we already know about ourselves, but what we might be hiding even from ourselves. Would you be willing to pray that today? Not out of fear, but out of trust—because the ONE who searches you is the same ONE who already loves what HE finds.

Wherever you are today, whatever you've been trying to hide or outrun, consider this an invitation to rest in being fully known. You don't have to explain yourself to HIM. You don't have to earn HIS attention. HE has already searched you out, and HE is already holding you.

PRAYER: Loving Lord Jesus, search us and know us, and lead us gently in YOUR everlasting way; in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Spend five quiet minutes today praying verses 23-24 as your own, asking GOD to search your heart and lead you in HIS way.

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

Win the world with love for Jesus,

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The God Who Meets Us Everywhere

Hear and View Devo: https://bit.ly/4hdCDRM

10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” 17 He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” 18 Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. (Genesis 28:10-19 NIV)

Have you ever felt like you were in the middle of nowhere—physically, emotionally, or spiritually? Maybe you're there right now. If so, this passage is for you.

Jacob is fleeing. He's man on the run. He's just deceived his father and stolen his brother's blessing, and now Esau wants him dead. So Jacob runs—alone, exhausted, with nothing but a rock for a pillow. He stops in a place the text simply calls "a certain place". It's nowhere special. No temple. No altar. Just open ground under an open sky.

Isn't it interesting that this is exactly where GOD chooses to show up?

We often think we have to get our lives in order before HE will meet us. We think HE waits for us in the good places—the church pew, the mountaintop, the moment we finally have it together. But Jacob's story invites us to consider something different: maybe HIS presence isn't limited to the places we expect.

As Jacob sleeps, he dreams of a stairway reaching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it. And there, standing above it, is the LORD HIMSELF.

Take a moment and picture that image with me—heaven touching earth, right in the middle of Jacob's mess. This is no coincidence. It's a promise: GOD is not distant. HE is not far removed from our failures, our fears, or our flight. HE bridges the gap.

Then GOD speaks. HE identifies HIMSELF as the GOD of Abraham and Isaac, and HE makes Jacob an astonishing promise—land, descendants, blessing, and this: "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go... I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" .

Let that sink in. Jacob hasn't earned this. He hasn't proven himself faithful. And yet HE promises HIS presence anyway. This is grace before performance—a theme that runs all the way through Scripture and finds its fullest expression centuries later, when JESUS HIMSELF becomes the ladder, the one who bridges heaven and earth once and for all (John 1:51).

When Jacob wakes, he says something remarkable: "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it".

How often is that true for us? GOD is present, working, watching—and we simply aren't aware. Jacob's response isn't guilt or fear; it's awe. He calls the place Bethel, meaning "house of God," and sets up a marker to remember what happened there.

What would it look like for you to pause today and ask, "Where has GOD been present in my life that I haven't noticed?" Maybe it's in a hard conversation. Maybe it's in a quiet morning. Maybe it's in this very moment, as you read these words.

Wherever you are today—running from something, unsure of your next step, or simply going through the motions—consider this an invitation to pause and look around. HE may be closer than you think. You don't need the perfect setting or the polished life to encounter HIM. You just need to be willing to notice.

PRAYER: Lord, open our eyes to see YOU in the places we least expect, and give us hearts that are aware of YOUR presence and grateful for YOUR promises; in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take five quiet minutes today to ask GOD to open your eyes to HIS presence in whatever "ordinary place" you find yourself.

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

Winning the world for Jesus,

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Abba, Father

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/3SOMrI1

12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba![a] Father!” 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness[b] with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. 18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in[c] hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:12-25 NRSV)

If you ever travel to the Holy Land, be prepared to cry. A lot. And to be amazed, marveled, and blessed. It truly is the Bible come to life. Nellie and I were so blessed to have made this journey some years ago with a group of young and seasoned pastors. On the flight over at a certain early hour a group of Jewish men moved to the front part of the aircraft and set up all they needed to to spend time in prayer. It was an animated time of verbal prayer to God. The most pleasant surprise was while in Jerusalem a group of kids with their fathers were on the street near us and at one point a little guy got separated from his dad and he cried out, "Abba!" Wow. There it was, still being spoken as Jesus had shared and as is being shared in this passage by Paul.

Paul opens this passage with a word that sounds like someone finally setting down a heavy load: "So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh" We owe the flesh nothing. After everything the flesh has cost us — the failed promises, the cycles of sin, the mornings after the nights we wish we could take back — we owe it nothing. The debt has been cancelled, not because we cancelled it, but because the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead has taken up residence in us, and you cannot be fully inhabited by that kind of life and remain fully in the grip of the old death.

And then Paul says something that should make every tired, struggling, self-condemning believer sit up a little straighter: "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God". Not the perfect. Not the ones who have conquered every weakness. All who are led. The leading itself is the evidence of belonging. If the Spirit is moving in you, prompting you, convicting you, drawing you back when you wander, making the things of God matter to you in ways they didn't before — that movement is the proof. You don't need to have arrived. You need to be following, and the following itself is the Spirit's gift.

The Spirit you have received, Paul says, is not a spirit of slavery leading back into fear — it is a Spirit of adoption, by which we cry out "Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15). Abba is the intimate Aramaic word for father, the word a child uses when they run in from the yard and reach up for their parent without any hesitation or formality. It is not the language of a servant making a careful request to a master. It is the language of a child who already knows they are wanted, who has no doubt about whether they will be received, who calls out with full confidence that the arms will open. The Spirit teaches us to pray like that. He takes the stiff, formal, distance-keeping prayer of someone who isn't sure they're welcome and transforms it, over time, into the Abba prayer — the prayer that springs from the assurance of belonging rather than the anxiety of trying to earn it.

Then Paul draws out the full inheritance: "And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him". Joint heirs with Christ. Whatever belongs to the Son belongs also to those who are in the Son — not as a secondary share, not as a smaller portion given to lesser recipients, but as co-inheritors of the same glory that waits for the King of kings. This is almost too large to hold in a single thought. But Paul immediately places it alongside the suffering that is part of the present age, not to diminish the glory but to put the suffering in proper perspective: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18). The word consider is the same accounting word we encountered in Romans 6 — it's a deliberate, settled reckoning. Paul has done the math. The present suffering doesn't cancel the future glory. It doesn't even come close.

And then the passage opens into one of the most breathtaking visions in all of Paul's letters — the whole of creation, groaning. Not just believers, not just the church, but the mountains and the seas and the soil and the stars, all of it leaning forward with an almost unbearable longing for the day when the children of God are fully revealed and the whole created order is set free from its bondage to decay. Creation has been caught up in the consequences of what happened to humanity, and it will be caught up in the liberation that comes to humanity through Christ. The groaning of creation is not despair — it is the groan of labor, of something being born, of a world in the agonizing and hopeful middle of becoming what it was always meant to be.

We groan too, Paul says, and we should not be embarrassed by that. We have the firstfruits of the Spirit — we have already tasted enough of the coming glory to know what we are waiting for — and that taste makes the waiting harder, not easier, because now we know what we're missing. But the Spirit groans alongside us, interceding for us in ways that go beyond what language can carry, and the God who searches our hearts knows what the Spirit is saying even when we don't have words for what we need.

The whole passage ends with the most quietly confident word in Romans: hope. "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Romans 8:24–25). We are a people of the not-yet-seen. We carry, by the Spirit, the firstfruits of something so large that creation itself cannot contain it. And we wait — not in resignation, not in passive endurance, but in the active, forward-leaning, Spirit-sustained patience of people who know that the one who promised is faithful, and that the glory coming toward us is worth every groan between here and there.

PRAYER: Lord, let Your Spirit cry Abba in us today, reminding us that we are Your children, joint heirs with Christ, waiting in hope for a glory that will make every present suffering look small. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Today, speak the word "Abba" aloud in your prayer, and let that single word be the declaration that you belong to God not as a servant uncertain of welcome but as a child who already knows the arms will open.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Onward and upward in our mission to win the world for Jesus Christ!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Let Both Grow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Don't Trade Your Birthright

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's win the world for Jesus!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

No Condemnation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winning the world for Jesus,

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

What Kind of Soil Are You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The King Will Desire Your Beauty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Yoked to Christ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

How Long, God?

Hear/View devo: https://bit.ly/4bbekjx

1-2 Long enough, God— you’ve ignored me long enough. I’ve looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough I’ve carried this ton of trouble, lived with a stomach full of pain. Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at me.

3-4 Take a good look at me, God, my God; I want to look life in the eye, So no enemy can get the best of me or laugh when I fall on my face.

5-6 I’ve thrown myself headlong into your arms— I’m celebrating your rescue. I’m singing at the top of my lungs, I’m so full of answered prayers. (Psalm 13, The Message Bible)

Psalm 13 opens with four questions in a row, and The Message doesn't soften a single one of them: "Long enough, God — you've ignored me long enough. I've looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough I've carried this ache in my heart, long enough endured this anguish in my heart. Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down at me" (Psalm 13:1–2, MSG). There's no theological throat-clearing here, no careful qualifying of his complaint. David just says it. He feels forgotten. He feels like God has turned His back and walked away, and the waiting has gone on so long it's become its own kind of suffering. If you've ever sat with a prayer that seemed to bounce off the ceiling, or watched the silence stretch into weeks or months, this psalm already knows your address.

What's striking is that David doesn't talk himself out of the complaint before he brings it. He doesn't perform faith he doesn't feel. He says, essentially, I've had enough of this — and he says it directly to God, not about God to someone else. That's an important distinction. The complaint itself is an act of relationship. He's not walking away from God in his despair; he's walking straight toward Him with it, demanding an answer the way you only demand answers from someone you still believe is listening.

And then, in the space of just a few lines, something shifts. The Message renders it like this: "But I trust in your love. I'm dancing my salvation. I'm singing to God Most High. He has poured richest love on me" (Psalm 13:5–6, paraphrased from the full text). The turn doesn't come because his circumstances changed. Nothing in the psalm tells us the enemies backed off or the silence broke. The turn comes because David reaches for what he knows to be true about God's character even while the evidence in front of him hasn't caught up yet. That's not denial. That's the deepest kind of faith — choosing to trust the steadfast love of God when the present moment offers no proof of it.

This is exactly where Pentecost meets us. David didn't have the indwelling Spirit the way we do now; he had to reach for hope across a distance, almost willing himself toward trust by sheer force of memory and conviction. But after the Spirit was poured out, that reaching became something else entirely — an actual presence inside us, helping us when we don't even have words for what we're asking. Paul says the Spirit groans within us in our weakness, when we don't know how to pray as we ought. The same God David accused of ignoring him is the God who, through the Spirit, now takes up residence in exactly the kind of heart that's praying Psalm 13 — the discouraged, the waiting, the worn down. Pentecost doesn't erase the long enough; it means we're never groaning through it alone.

This psalm gives permission for something the church doesn't always make room for: honest lament that ends in real trust, not because the pain disappeared, but because the character of God is more durable than the darkness of the moment. You're allowed to ask God how long. You're allowed to feel forgotten. And you're invited, in the same breath, to remember that His Spirit is already groaning alongside you toward the answer you can't yet see.

PRAYER: Lord, when our waiting feels like forgetting, remind us that Your Spirit groans within us and Your love has not moved. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Voice your own honest "how long, God" today, and then deliberately follow it with one true thing you know about His steadfast love, trusting the Spirit to carry the rest.

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

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.