Eight years ago, I began writing a book. It was not my first, but my eighth. As I started, I figured it would be like the books that preceded it.

Anytime you take something precious in your heart and endeavor to share it with the world, it is an emotional journey, to say the least.

It involves hours upon hours of...

Praying, studying, writing.

Erasing, wrestling, re-writing.

Loving it, hating it, but most of all feeling held to stay with it until you’ve said the thing that gripped your heart and won’t let go.

Writing is hard work. Editing is far harder.

Edit after edit. Cut after cut, to get to a final product worth someone’s most precious commodity: their open-hearted attention.

(All of this speaks nothing of the many details surrounding publication and promotion.)

That said, every book up till now has been a deep-dive commitment of nine months to a year of my life, give or take.

But when my heart was ignited to write a book about the goodness of God as Father, and how the Godhead, the Bible, all of theology, and indeed our very existences are only clearly seen through the lens of Jesus, I had no idea what I had bargained for.

It called me to the very core of my deepest wrestlings, longings, fears, and dreams. Like a Pandora’s box, it ripped back the rug on many of the places I’d held onto some schizophrenic version of God, angry one moment and loving the next, and brought every question lovingly and slowly out of the woodwork.

There are many days I wondered if this book would ever reach you.

This week, it officially received a release date.

Reconstructing Dad: Discovering the God Who Looks Just Like Jesus releases July 17, 2026, through CrossRiver Media. Pre-orders open on Father’s Day, June 21.

Over the coming days, I’ll be reaching out to seek a select group of people to serve as the Launch Team for this book. If you’ve been part of this community for any length of time, I’d love to have you in the room.

But before any of that, I want to take a minute to talk to the artist in you about what this process has been teaching me.

Mostly, it’s this:

There is no creativity without vulnerability.

The very act of creation requires nakedness, proximity, and union between parties. It’s the only way we ever produce anything remotely real.

Everything we try to create apart from vulnerability will feel artificial, veiled, and ultimately self-seeking.

A sterile imitation attempting to bypass incubation.

In a world of mass production, we’re starving for artists who will remain driven by pure-hearted passion and devotion, not profit or duplication.

True creativity requires baring one’s soul and risking rejection.

It is not found in the crowd, or the chasing of algorithms or popularity polls, but in secret and sacred spaces of intimate affection and tender care.

True creativity is conceived away from the eyes of the watching world, only to be shared and held by others after many stages of gestation, as something viable is ready to be presented.

And here’s the key. If it is true art, true beauty, it is presented as a gift for the blessing of others. Everything else is just an orphan song of trying to prove one’s worth through applause.

The greatest advice I would offer any would-be artist is to honor and refuse to rush the delicate process of vulnerability.

Neither cast your pearls before swine nor present an offering that has not yet been carried with you through the refiner’s fire.

Shield it from cynics, staying ever aware that some of the greatest critics of true art are those who’ve never braved the intimately honest spaces to create something themselves. A tree will be known by its fruit.

Mostly, if you have received a spark of inspiration that has even the smallest seed of life within it, don’t despise it, but nurture it. Don’t rush. Be patient, allowing the Spirit of God, the ultimate Creator, to make all things beautiful in their time.

Remember that art is sufficiently worthy all on its own, never needing to “become” something. It already is.

Offer it as a gift to God.

Let it matter to you.

And when God opens the door to share it, refuse to be obsessed with those who don’t wish to receive it. Offer it instead to fellow sojourners as a cup of water or a piece of bread to strengthen them for the journey.

Most of all, rejoice that, though you may not see it, somewhere a rising artist is beginning to believe and picking up their brush…all because you first dared to paint.

God is our Creator.

You are His poetry.

He made you wildly creative.

Stay vulnerable and create.

We need what you see.

More on the Reconstructing Dad Launch Team is coming this week. Stay close.

My friends, new and old!

I have been LOVING beginning to break down what it looks like to faithfully follow Jesus in the entries we’ve encountered here over the last few months… and we are just getting started.

I have heard many encouragements of where the words are hitting in a way that is bringing life. What a joy! I have also been learning on the fly how best to obey what I’m sensing and be truly helpful:

In pace of life (yours and mine)…

In length of posts…

In topics that matter and lead to transformation…

and everything in between.

Still adjusting a lot here, but this is what I’ve gleaned in my time with the Father thus far:

1. I have a lot that I see and a lot I long to say.

I don’t seem to have the gear to “just write an encouraging note and keep it brief.” 😂 I am a teacher through and through, and my deepest desire is to help people encounter the unbelievable Goodness of God as Father and the Greatness of the unique voice He’s given each of us to pour out His love.

Intimacy and Identity guide from every word, and there are simply so many broken mindsets, postures, and theologies that fall so short of the God revealed in the face of Jesus that I feel compelled to slow down, parse it out, take our time…and that probably means a lot of time moving beyond the surface to go deeper to heal, repair and lay true foundations that are critical to the self-emptying, non-enemy-making, Spirit-filled, intimacy-saturated, justice-oriented, and holiness-postured invitation Jesus invites us to. (See…lots of words!)

I am not interested in sounding trendy, chasing algorithms, building a platform by any means necessary, or creating greater division or separation by throwing stones at people who sin differently than me. This will be slow, courageous, intentional, peace-making, Kingdom-building stuff here, always starting by looking in the mirror.

2. I am “over” the over-committed, over-calendared, program-heavy but relationally thin pace I see all over contemporary Christianity…and way too much in my own life.

I am tired of living scattered and don’t want my writing to add to the noise, but to help lead us to still waters and green pastures — with God and each other. As I’ve been posting, I have loved breaking big thoughts down into smaller segments. In fact, I’m pretty sure what you’ve been reading in “Armor of Love” will become an 8-week devotional after its time here.

But, it takes a commitment: from you to set aside time to read, reflect, and apply (as I understand my writing invites places to slow down, get vulnerable, and let God lovingly challenge and refine us).

It also takes a deep commitment from me. I can’t bring a half-baked offering or something generic, untested, or novel, just to keep the machine churning.

Here’s what I’m seeing: the level of writing I’m bringing is often moving beyond the artificial timelines I’ve set up. (Gotta love me!) Over the past few months with this and a number of other gospel-oriented projects, I have worked myself far beyond my limits, sacrificing sleep and missing some key moments with the very people God called me to be present with. How ironic that I’d find myself writing about intimacy and the gospel life and miss key parts of both due to a heavy foot on the gas pedal.

The reason is simple: zeal for His house really does consume me, and I’m still just a kid, well-meaning, but often seeing just how deep a glorious and needed rabbit hole I’ve led us into after I’ve committed to 40 daily devotionals.

What that means in the coming days is that I am going to keep going to the secret place and keep writing with the same depth, tone, and patient pace we’ve been building.

BUT…I am laying down my algorithms and timelines. For the upcoming posts, you will still see them posted by day and week in the series (Ex. Week 2, DAY 4), but I will not be posting daily. I will share them instead as soon as the fresh bread is out of the oven, in the pace of life God provides. Perhaps that could be an encouragement to someone else here who wrestles with running too fast and balancing plates, but needs more time sitting at the table.

If you are subscribed here, you will receive every new entry in your email as soon as it is up. Thank you for understanding.

3. There is SO much to talk about and I would love a deeper forum to get your questions: about God, theology, and just life.

I would love to hear what’s working in these devotionals and what may still be lacking. (I just shared with a friend today that Substack has a feature where you can listen to the audio of all of these articles instead of reading them. It turned him into an instant subscriber!) I’m trying to find the best way to meet you on the journey. But for starters, if you have anything stirring, would you throw it in the comments below?

I am so incredibly grateful for you, friend. Thank you for reading. Thank you for hungering and thirsting for true righteousness. Jesus has promised to always meet us in this place.

Please pray for me: to order my days, to open spaces for courageous and needed conversations, and for us to continue to build a beautiful community here that can play some small part in following Jesus in the finished gospel and the self-emptying love that is making all things new.

See you soon!

Chuck

“Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth.” Ephesians 6:14

On Day 2, we met the first version of the Accessory of Acceptability. It was a beauty sash: glittery, social, endlessly adjustable. It told us that if we could just find the right image, say the right things, and be attractive enough to the right people, we would finally feel secure.

Today’s counterfeit wears no sequins.

This one is rugged. Disciplined. Serious. It does not care what people think. Or at least, it tells itself it does not care. It is not trying to be popular. It is trying to be righteous.

And that makes it more dangerous, not less.

Jesus told a story about two lost sons.

Most of us know the younger one well. He barged in on his father, demanding his inheritance while his father was still living. The message was clear: “You’re dead to me.”

The son left without a second glance, his newfound riches burning a hole in his pocket almost as quickly as he’d received them. He chased every pleasure money could buy, but came up empty. He blew the last of his cash, only to watch his so-called friends blow out of town like a tumbleweed in an old western. Destitute, he ended up in a field as a servant to pigs, no dignity left to his name.

And then he came to his senses.

He rehearsed his speech on the walk home. He would return, not as a son (he had forfeited that right, he believed) but as a servant. He would follow the rules. He would keep his head down. He would work hard and earn his keep.

“But while he was still a far way off,” the story says, his dad saw him and sprinted, closing the gap of every wayward second.

No speech was necessary. No penance. No probationary period. The father threw his best robe around his son’s shoulders, put a ring on his finger, and threw a party. Before the boy could finish his apology, the band was already playing.

That is where most of us think the story ends. The credits roll on the younger son and grace wins.

But Jesus kept talking.

The older son heard the music from a field where he had been working. A servant told him what was happening. His thoughts swirled as he refused to step any closer.

He had not wasted his life. He had not embarrassed the family. He had stayed. Obeyed. Done every single thing that was asked of him. Kept every rule. Met every standard. Fulfilled every obligation. He was the “good” son.

And now he was furious.

Not at his brother, exactly. At the math. The math did not add up.

He railed into his dad, refusing to even address his brother by name, calling him only “this son of yours.” (Don’t miss the passive-aggression: he’s no longer my brother. He’s merely your son.)

From the older son’s vantage point, a traitor’s return was no reason to celebrate, especially when his own obedience had gone unrewarded for years. He wasn’t just rejecting his brother’s hand. He was questioning his father’s heart.

“All these years, I have been slaving for you,” he said. Not serving. Not sharing. Not belonging. Slaving. He had treated the relationship as a contract, and the contract, as he understood it, had just been violated.

The father answered him tenderly: “Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”

Always. Everything. Yours.

He had been living in the house with full access to everything the father possessed and had never once sat down at the table as a son. He had been sweating for something already his. Striving toward an inheritance already secured. His diligence had not produced delight. It had produced the comparison and contempt of an orphan spirit.

The story ends with the twist of an unexpected reversal and a cliffhanger.

The younger son walked through the wreckage of every place his sin left him empty, only to discover mercy that made him full. The older son filled up on the rigors he imagined religion required of him, only to sulk under a pride that left him empty.

This is the second version of the Accessory of Acceptability. Not a beauty sash. A bullwhip.

The sash asks: How can I make myself acceptable to others? The bullwhip asks: How can I make myself and others acceptable to God?

Both are driven by the same need: to finally be enough. Both wrongly trust a distortion of truth and a checklist of behaviors to deliver the security only a Father can give. And both are, at their root, the fruit of an orphan spirit reaching for what can only be received as a gift.

A spiritual game of Two Truths and a Lie.

Truth: We desperately want to be loved, seen, and secure.

Truth: We know something is wrong, something unhealed and unwhole within us.

Lie: If we can only fill-in-the-blank, we can bridge the gap, become enough, and finally rest.

With the beauty sash, we reach for applause. With the bullwhip, we reach for God himself, but through the wrong door entirely.

The bullwhip is far harder to recognize from within because it disguises its true nature as something pure and holy. It looks to sacred sources: the Bible, prayer, church attendance, moral discipline. But in a dual error, it gravely underestimates the depth of our shared brokenness and greatly overestimates the ability of rigid checklists and pressurized behavior modification to heal the human heart.

This is what the bullwhip produces:

In the areas where we feel we are succeeding, pride fills the space. We take the role of teacher, looking down on those who don’t measure up, three-step plan in hand, certain that if they would only try harder, they could become just like us.

In the areas we struggle, shame fills the space. We curse ourselves, double down on spiritual self-help, and reach for shallow comforts when the pressure finally becomes too much.

Those filled with pride shame others. Those filled with shame eventually turn to the pride of trying to fix themselves. And the cycle of spiritual starvation and scapegoating repeats, wrapped in proof texts and religious language, becoming a nearly impenetrable fortress.

But where both the sash and the bullwhip miss the story entirely is this: they remain blind to a Savior who stood slain at the very foundation of the world on our behalf. They make much of our brokenness but cannot see the beauty of our God and the lengths His mercy has traveled to bring us home.

The belt of truth Paul describes in Ephesians 6 is not a notch on a belt earned through better behavior. And it is not a weapon to make us or anyone else slave after holiness.

It is aletheia, the Greek word meaning reality, substance, free from all pretense and deceit. And what is actually true, in Christ, is that we have been given a righteousness we did not earn and cannot lose. We do not live toward it. We live from it. We do not put on the armor to become acceptable. We access it because we already are.

The bullwhip cannot secure us. It can only exhaust us, harden us, and turn us into the very thing we were trying to avoid: people far from the Father’s heart while technically living inside his house.

But here is what the older son did not know while he stood outside with his arms folded.

The father was not tallying the record. He never was. Every year the older son labored in the field, the father had been waiting for him at the table. The robe was already his. The ring was already his. The inheritance was already his. His labor had not been paying a debt. It had been building a self-imposed prison with an unlocked door.

The father did not come to the field to correct his son’s hunger. He came to beg him to put down the tools of laboring in the dirt for what was already prepared and waiting on the table. To stop working to be loved and simply receive it. He already was.

This is the heart of the Father for every younger son and every older one. All of us.

He is not a bullwhip demanding perfection. He is a belt, wrapping around the core of our being like an embrace that holds us completely. Truth is a Person. And He is full of mercy.

Here’s to all the older sons out there. Those who have labored hard because you simply want to be like your Father. Lay down the whip. He has already run outside the wall to where you stand. He is closing the gap of every wayward second for you, too.

Come home. There is more than enough room for both sons at the table.

Reflection Questions

1. The older son had been in the house the whole time but was not home. Is there an area of your life where you have been performing for God rather than resting in Him? What does your obedience in that area produce: intimacy, or exhaustion?

1. The bullwhip always has two ends: shame at ourselves when we fail, judgment toward others when we succeed. Which direction does yours tend to swing most often, and what does that reveal about what you believe the Father actually requires?

This is Day 3 of the Armor of Love series, walking through Ephesians 6:10-20. If you missed Day 1 (The Belt of Truth) or Day 2 (The Magic 8 Ball), you can find them in the archive.

“Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth.” Ephesians 6:14

One of my favorite coming of age movies is called Sing Street. Set in 1980s Ireland, this modern musical follows Conor, a fifteen-year-old caught between a troubled home life and a cruel religious school, who uses songwriting as an escape. Wanting to impress an older girl, Conor tells her he is in a band. (He is not.) He mentions they are preparing to film a music video and need a model. (Go big or go home, I guess.) When she agrees, he rushes home to form a band…from scratch.

What follows is a poignant story with an incredible soundtrack and an unexpectedly emotional ending that never fails to bring tears to my eyes. But along the road to Conor finding his voice is a running gag that hits far too close to home. Desperate to become something, Conor and the boys keep wildly changing their look and sound on a whim, mimicking every successful band his older brother shows him. Duran Duran. Depeche Mode. The Cure.

And yet. Somewhere in all of this wandering (and pandering), Conor begins to uncover a melody that is his own. His lyrics mature beyond a gimmick to be seen into a passionate call for people to stand against injustice, step out from the shadows, and take responsibility for their lives. Conor’s life begins to match his lips, instead of the other way around.

I see a lot of me in Conor. I have found more places than I care to name where I have allowed what I look or sound like to bend and sway with the masses. There was the summer I tried to convince my piano-pop loving, khakis-and-polo-wearing heart that I was now a die hard fan of Nirvana as grunge became cool. And there have been countless times I have allowed my soul to be clothed with an accessory to secure acceptability where a belt of truth was needed. I have softened or silenced a conviction, sheepishly laughed at a joke that grieved my heart, or allowed gossip to continue because I didn’t want to seem judgmental toward my friend’s judgment. How ironic.

None of this was because I suddenly stopped believing truth. It was because underneath my belief was a rival question I had never admitted aloud: what am I actually trusting in to make me enough? The belt of truth is rarely found in the applause of the masses. It is only found in the intimate embrace of the One who alone deserves all of the applause.

Magic 8 Ball Spirituality

There are two ways we attempt to turn the belt of truth into an accessory of acceptability. The first is treating truth like a Magic 8 Ball.

We attempt to shake God until He says what we want Him to say. After all, we want to be seen, noticed, celebrated, or applauded by the people we have deemed worthy. They have “it,” (whatever “it” is), so we make them gatekeepers to our access.

Paul traces this pattern in Romans 1. He is not cataloging sins to shame his readers. He is diagnosing a trajectory, showing where the slow drift from truth leads when left unchecked. The movement has three phases. I call them CPR, because each is an increasing sign we are losing the breath of intimacy with the Spirit of God. (Cute, huh?)

Phase 1: Compromise (Restraining the Truth)

It begins with a tension. We desire something beyond God to give us worth and meaning, and we begin to suppress what we know deep down is true (Romans 1:18-21). Paul says this is not ignorance. What can be known about God has been clearly seen. This is a conviction in our souls we are working against.

I have lived in this tension. The struggle between what God says and what I think will deliver the satisfaction I think I need is really a struggle with my own unbelief. This tension can be a beautiful and honest place, but it will never stay neutral. It can only hold so long before it moves one way or the other.

Either toward the Holy Spirit, into the refiner’s fire, where I draw near to the Father in my areas of unbelief, immaturity, wounding, or disobedience, and yield before Him in vulnerability as He lovingly heals and matures me.

Or I work harder to suppress that voice, looking for people, excuses, or theologies that suit the castle I want to build. It feels like liberation. But the voice I am silencing is my very Foundation.

Phase 2: Pride (Redefining the Truth)

From compromise, the drift moves to redefinition. We begin to scrutinize truth by what seems rational, what is popular, and what we believe will give us what we seek (Romans 1:22). We exalt people, achievements, and platforms as the true measure of worth, handing them authority over what truth means (Romans 1:23).

We begin to listen to the question of an ancient serpent in an ancient garden:

Did God really say?

The key difference between genuine theological maturity and prideful redefinition is the direction of the movement. Maturity transforms us to look and love more like Jesus. Pride attempts to conform God to us. Maturity allows its beliefs to refine when they fail to look like the cross. Pride redefines its beliefs when the cross fails to look like the security it seeks. And in this phase, we shake our theology into proof-texts, selective sight, and echo chambers until we have assured ourselves we are the ones on God’s side.

The all-important question in the necessary places God deconstructs and reconstructs our faith is this: “Does the “truth” I am considering reflect the restorative love of my Redeemer, or the destructive voice of the Accuser? Where do I see Jesus standing?” That question, held faithfully, makes all the difference.

Phase 3: Rebellion (Celebrating What Is Untrue)

“Therefore God gave them up…because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.” Romans 1:24-25

This is where the trajectory lands. What began as suppressed tension, what moved through quiet redefinition, arrives here: a community that not only practices unrighteousness but celebrates it in one another.

The behaviors Paul names cover the full range of human brokenness. Sexual immorality. Greed. Violence. Contempt for any authority that will not serve the self. And underlying all of it, pride. Not the kind that announces itself, but the kind so settled into the soul it no longer feels like pride. It feels like identity. It feels like freedom. That is the tell.

When we have shaken the Magic 8 Ball long enough, we do not just believe different things. We lose the ability to see clearly at all. The voice we spent years suppressing grows quieter. The conscience we spent years negotiating with grows duller. What once required effort to justify now requires no justification. We simply call it good.

Romans 1:32 is where Paul lands: they not only do these things, but give approval to those who practice them. Unrighteousness is applauded as liberation, and anyone who will not applaud is cast as the enemy of love.

This is where the first harmless-looking accessory of acceptability leads. What began as wanting to be enough, wanting to be seen, wanting to find in the crowd what only the Father can give, ends in the full inversion of worship. We are not free. We have simply exchanged one master for another. A pride-centered certainty that will never lead us to the truth.

The Voice You Were Made to Carry

Conor spent a lot of days trying to blend in, and it only hindered the song that had been placed in him. The belt of truth was never meant to be a sash we change with the season to appease the masses. It was not designed to make us acceptable. It was given to us already fastened, already secured, by the One who looked at the full weight of what we are and said: you are my beloved. The One I am coming for.

Security will never come from a person, accomplishment, or crowd finding you worthy. It does not come from trying to manipulate God to say what you want truth to be. It comes from surrendering to the One who is Truth himself.

We have all postured. We have all pandered. The question is simply if we are ready to be done with it. Not because God is angry. But because the song we were made to sing is better than any imitation, and the only way to find it is to stop borrowing everyone else’s.

Conor found his. So can we.

Reflection Questions

1. Is there anywhere you have had conviction about something God says or stands for, but you draw away into silence, complicity, or compromise? Who do you tend to compromise around, and what do you believe they hold that you are looking to them to provide — worth, belonging, approval? What would it look like to bring that need to the Father instead?

2. Think of one area of your life where you sense ongoing tension between what you know to be true and what you are currently doing or believing. Walk it through the CPR framework honestly. Where are you in the progression — Compromise, Pride, or Rebellion? What would it look like to move toward the Spirit?

This is Day 2 of Belt of Truth, Week 2 of the Armor of Love series. If you are just finding us, every post in this series is available right here. Go back, let it build, and let it do its work. If something in this resonated, subscribe and share it with someone still trying to borrow someone else's song. The best days of this series are still ahead.

Chuck

“Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth…” Ephesians 6:14

Do you remember Glamour Shots?

Back in the 1980s and 90s, long before Photoshop, Instagram, or AI, Glamour Shots took the world by storm. Their mission was simple: take ordinary people in ordinary clothes and give them a mini-makeover that would inspire the confidence of a supermodel walking the runway, all in about an hour, right next to the food court at the mall.

In an era when every department store had its own photo studio, Glamour Shots was next-level. Big hair. Carefully contoured makeup. A seemingly endless wardrobe of shiny, luxurious outfits. Add carefully placed lighting and a full cache of props, and Glamour Shots performed a kind of miracle that rivals anything modern airbrushing or photo filters can produce today. And we loved it, bringing our business to the tune of $100 million a year.

Today, those photos look dated and over-the-top, usually producing a giggle or a full facepalm and the question, “What were we thinking?” But the truth is, we never actually retired Glamour Shots. We just upgraded the technology. Nearly every photo we share today has been enhanced, touched up, and filtered to smooth wrinkles, brighten skin, and mask whatever we decided was not presentable.

We doctor our candids, our vacations, even the food we eat, and post it all as a window into our real lives. A window that conveniently omits the messy room just out of frame, our actual weaknesses, and the countless ordinary, unglamorous moments that do most of the work of shaping who we actually are. The image of vulnerability without the substance.

As it turns out, our fascination with image management is just a symptom of a much larger problem: our relationship with truth.

Paul opens the Armor of God calling us to fasten on the belt of truth. In the Roman soldier’s kit, the belt was not a decorative afterthought. It gathered the tunic, secured the breastplate, and anchored the sword. Without it, nothing else held. For a soldier, the belt was all about security.

It is no wonder Paul places this one first. The belt of truth gets underneath every garment we put on and exposes the questions we are actually asking underneath all of it.

“Am I enough?”

“Am I safe?”

“And what do I need to figure out, control, or pull off to make sure everything holds together?”

These are not ethereal questions. This is Tuesday morning. It is the impulse to defend yourself in conversations where you don’t hold all of the pieces, to manage how you are perceived before anyone gets close, to keep curating what they see because the moment you stop, you are not sure what is left.

The belt is about security. And the only real issue is what we will choose to fasten around ourselves.

For many of us, we fall back into something that looks close enough to truth to pass, fitting comfortably around our fragile ego, and able to adjust itself quickly to the room we are standing in. Ouch.

There are two very different versions of this counterfeit, and they do not look anything like one another. But in the end, both trade the belt of truth for what I can only call the Accessory of Acceptability. Over the next few days, we are going to look through the scriptures at both of these counterfeits, as well as the glorious invitation of what real security looks like. Before we do, though, it is important to stop and note where Paul placed the first piece of armor and why this is central to how the battle before us will go.

“Gird Your Loins with Truth”

In a number of Bible translations, today’s verse calls the reader to “gird your loins with truth.” And for good reason. There are three key Greek words here that will help us understand the beauty and depth of what the Spirit of God is saying.

“Fasten/Gird” perizōnnymi (G4024): to fasten with a girdle or belt, to secure.

“Loins” osphys (G3751): the hip, loins; the space between one’s waist and their knees, where procreative, reproductive power resides.

“Truth” aletheia (G225): truth, reality, substance, the opposite of illusion; free from insincerity, imitation, distortion, or deceit; from a compound word meaning “not concealed” or “unable to escape notice.”

Paul anchors the entire command about the armor of God around a belt which carries the dual function of securing one’s “loins” and, by so doing, enabling a soldier to quickly follow the lead of their commander without getting tripped up.

The Roman belt fastened around the midsection, the core of the body. This is significant for three reasons.

First, every physical trainer will tell you what soldiers already knew: a weak core means nothing else functions the way it should. Strength, stability, and capacity all flow from what is secured at the center. You can have strong arms and strong legs and still fold under pressure if the core is not held. Truth is foundational and must anchor the core of who we are.

Second, for thousands of years, the Hebrew people considered the midsection the seat of the deepest human emotion, compassion, and power. What we translate as “heart” in many Old and New Testament passages renders the Greek splanchna or the Hebrew meah, meaning the inner organs, the gut, or the bowels. I’m guessing “I love you with all of my bowels” didn’t make for good love songs, so we changed it to a modern image we could better relate to.

Why does this matter?

It is because God is starting here by saying that our relationship with truth is a matter of the devotion of our very hearts. Truth determines the trajectory of our affections and ultimately our actions.

Third, Paul began with the belt of truth in large part because of the region the belt directly covered and protected: the most private, intimate, guarded part of a person. The area of our lives we are most prone to clothe and least prone to share. What was made to be sacred. Special. Intimate. This is not accidental. Just one chapter before, Paul charged us to allow “not even a hint” of sexual immorality (Ephesians 5:3). Paul begins here because truth represents a foundational place of identity, which determines how we orient ourselves around integrity and intimacy.

When Paul says “gird your loins with truth,” he is saying: at the most core part of who you are, at the truest place of your emotions and compassion, at the most vulnerable and private place of your life, find your security in what is real. Not in how you are perceived. Not in what you have performed. In what is actually true.

The armor begins where everything else in the Bible does.

It is a call to find security through intimacy with the Person who is Truth himself.

That intimacy will unveil our true identity and lead us to a life ever maturing in integrity. Not as a checklist. Not as a rulebook. But as the natural overflow of belonging completely to Jesus.

We will unpack what that looks like, and what gets in the way, in the days ahead.

Glamour Shots promised something we all wanted: a version of ourselves worth seeing. And we lined up for it, because the question underneath it has never gone away. Am I enough? Am I safe? Will it all hold together? But no filter, no performance, and no carefully managed image has ever led us to an answer worth holding. Only truth can do that. And as we are about to discover, truth is not a standard to achieve.

It is a Person to belong to.

Reflection Questions:

1. Where are you currently looking for security? Think about the areas the belt covers: your sense of stability and strength, what moves you most deeply, and the parts of your life you guard most carefully. What are you fastening around those places right now? Approval from others? A record of good behavior? A carefully managed image? Some external standard of beauty or status? Or what your Father says in truth? Give Him space to speak to you here.

2. Is there an area of your life you have been keeping carefully out of frame? A private struggle, a habit, or a version of yourself that has not been brought into the light? What would it look like to stop curating that and bring it to Jesus and part of a core trusted community instead?

This is Day 1 of Belt of Truth, Week 2 of the Armor of Love series. If you are just joining us, every post in this series is available on the blog. Take your time, go back, and let it build. If this is landing for you, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s ahead, and share it with someone who needs it. The best days of this series are still to come.

See you tomorrow!

Chuck

It is the celebration of the moment God’s Spirit came from heaven to earth to fill his sons and daughters with his Presence. It was the undoing of Babel, the reversal of every wall that had divided us, and the beginning of a people made one again. Not by effort. By a refiner’s fire that could never leave and would never forsake us.

Today is Memorial Day.

A day we pause in humble gratitude for the bravery, service, and sacrifice of so many.

Neither day is meant to simply be something historical we remember. Both are invitations to love more courageously, to be present more attentively, to worship God in greater intimacy and surrender, and to serve with greater humility and joy.

I hope you sense God stirring in and around you this week. And I hope you get to spend time with the people you love today. Rest well. Eat something good.

When we pick back up on Tuesday, we are moving into the Belt of Truth, the first piece of armor we are examining together in the Armor of Love series. It’s going to be SO good!

Devotionals run Tuesday through Saturday this week. We will resume the normal M-F schedule next week.

See you tomorrow!

Chuck

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” Ephesians 6:13

My freshman year of high school, I was in the drumline.

I had not yet hit the growth spurt that would arrive within the calendar year, which left me at just over five feet and somewhere around a hundred pounds soaking wet. I was also carrying a bass drum roughly the size of my body. To my credit, I had done the work. I knew my parts. I knew how to march. I was ready for our first parade.

What I did not account for was the nature of parades. You march for a stretch, then you stop and hold your position while everything ahead of you slowly advances. Long, open stretches of standing still. In the middle of one of those stretches, in an unforgiving polyester head-to-toe uniform, in the Florida heat, I forgot the cardinal rule of extended standing.

Never lock your knees.

A few minutes later, I was being pulled from the parade, mere seconds from going down. The bass drum was spared. My dignity was not.

Paul ends his charge to the church in Ephesus with a word about standing. Two words, actually. Two postures. Both are required. And both are different ways to plant our feet, depending on what we are looking at.

Standing Faithfully: Withstanding the Evil Day

Paul begins with a word describing how we stand against our enemy and his schemes to deceive, dilute, or distract God’s Church from being who we were called to be. This is our defensive posture.

“Withstand,” Anthisteimi (Strong’s G436) — To set yourself against. To resist. To plant your feet and firmly oppose what is pressing in, refusing to be moved.

This is what withstanding actually looks like. The evil day does not always announce itself. More often, it arrives as a slow and reasonable-sounding pressure to soften what should be said, accommodate what should be refused, and drift from what we know is true. The enemy’s most precise work happens at the margins. And the armor holds us in place when our own strength would have compromised.

We withstand.

Here is a helpful way to look at it. We “withstand” the world in every space we choose to “stand with” Jesus in the world.

Withstanding evil is not about taking sides in cultural wars aimed to vilify, alienate, or scapegoat people made in the image of God. Paul is crystal clear in this passage: our enemy is never flesh and blood. The battle is not against people. It is for people. It is never us or them. It is only ever always us for them.

That said, withstanding also means we carry a committed resolve to the marriage of courage, character, and compassion, and we do not move. We refuse selective obedience. We refuse selfish ambition. We will not pick and choose from the gospel like an à la carte menu, taking what suits us and quietly setting aside what costs us. We stand on one Name and one Name alone.

In an age when tolerance has often come to mean being quiet about your own convictions and equally affirming everyone else’s, we need to remember who we are and whose we are. We are the light of the world in an age of darkness. We walk with the God who brings dead things to life. This does not happen through tolerance, but only through transformation. We must recover what it means to be unapologetically committed to the character and compassion of Christ, seeking truly to follow and be like Him in the world.

Standing Firmly: Advancing the True Gospel

From here, Paul moves to a second kind of standing. We are not primarily a people defined by what we are against, but by who we are for. We never stop at a defensive posture in the world, because in the truest sense, the Kingdom of God is advancing. We have the ball.

“Stand,” Histeimi (Strong’s G2476) — “To cause to stand. To be established and made immovable.” To be so completely rooted in what is true that the ground beneath you does not shift, regardless of what the circumstances say.

Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18). Here’s the deal. Gates do not move. People do. And the hope we carry is simple: the darkness has to flee everywhere the light moves in. We are not trying to behave ourselves while we wait for an Uber ride from heaven to come and whisk us away. We are already citizens of heaven, sent as ambassadors on earth, to move on behalf of our King to see the sick healed, the lost saved, the broken restored, and the orphan come home. We are on offense.

That said, we are not prideful or abrasive. We refuse to share any complicity with coercion. We carry the quiet, unshakeable presence of a people who refuse to stop loving, stop hoping, and stop advancing what God is building in the earth.

Every generation has been tempted by the lure of power and influence. It usually begins with a noble desire for some good end. But like Frodo’s ring, desire corrupts us to confuse passion for God with playing god, and religion has sacrificed more than its fair share of victims on that altar. Constantine. The Crusades. Manifest Destiny in the name of God. Every one of these movements was uncompromising in some facet of righteousness…and completely blinded by pride that contorted the self-emptying love of our Savior into a sword to pierce the hearts of so-called enemies deemed beyond the reaches of His grace. It has worn Catholic clothes and Protestant clothes, Muslim clothes, and even Buddhist and Hindu clothes. But in the end, it all looks like every empire that came before it.

We have been here before, friends.

We do not advance the Kingdom through violence or conquest, but only through the self-emptying love found in the Savior whose name we bear. The final book of the Bible gives us the picture of the overcomers:

“They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” Revelation 12:11

A love willing to lay down its comfort, reputation, and even its life in order to multiply the boundless love it has received to the most undeserving.

It looks like churches that will not stop speaking truth, feeding the hungry, serving the least of these, visiting the prisoner, holding faith for the prodigal, forgiving when wronged, going into the dark places as light, preaching with compassionate clarity, and pleading for all people to come to a knowledge of the truth.

We stand with Him, for them, together.

Paul wrote these words from a prison cell, an ambassador in chains, stripped of nearly everything except the armor that was never his to lose. He had learned how to stand.

In the end, the armor of God is really the armor of love. Every piece of it defends against every false gospel that distorts life. And every piece of it becomes a vessel through which the Father pours out His love onto the earth.

But we must remember that we can never stand for the truth of God in ways that betray the tone of God. And we can never establish righteousness by pushing people away from the grace that longs to restore us all.

One honest and practical word before we close. We live in a moment when social media and cancel culture have produced an almost reflexive reaction in all of us. We have lost, collectively, the art of listening before speaking, of disagreeing while still honoring, of praying before judging, of having a courageous one-on-one conversation rather than a public verdict. We have forgotten how to ask clarifying questions and how to surrender the need to be certain in favor of the hunger to understand.

There is another failure just as common, and far less talked about: the slow drift into silence. The blending in. The swallowing of conviction to avoid conflict. The version of us that has decided that keeping the peace is worth losing our voice. Both are a failure to stand. One locks its knees in aggression. The other locks its knees in fear. Neither is our armor.

The question is not what we learned this week. It is which clothes are we presently wearing? And where is grace drawing near to a more beautiful gospel?

Let’s go there together, friends.

For Reflection

1. Which tendency is more familiar to you: standing in ways that are prideful or abrasive, or going quiet to avoid conflict and keep the peace? What would it look like this week to lay that pattern down and pick up the real thing?

2. Think of a relationship or situation where you have either overreacted or gone silent. What would it look like to listen before speaking, to ask before assuming, and to pray before you decide?

Father, teach me how to stand. Not locked at the knees, straining under the weight, hoping I do not go down. Rooted in what You have already done. Held by what cannot be moved. Where I have been prideful or abrasive, where I have treated truth as a weapon against people You died to save, forgive me. And where I have gone quiet, blending in, swallowing conviction to keep a peace that was never mine to manufacture, forgive me for that too. I want to move the way Jesus moved. Not by force, not by fear, but by a love that is both courageous and kind, both clear and compassionate. With You, for them, together. Amen.

Postscript

Five days. One passage. One armor. One Body.

We started this week with a question that is harder than it sounds: what are you actually wearing?

Not as an accusation. As an honest look in the mirror. Because most of us have not been running around in counterfeit armor out of rebellion. We put it on because we were afraid, or hurt, or tired, or simply had not yet been told that the real thing was already ours. It was issued at the cross. It has been waiting ever since.

Next week we begin going piece by piece through what that armor actually is. But before we do, I want to leave you with the one thing that changes how you receive every piece of it: the armor of God is not a battle strategy. It is love made wearable.

Stay with what stirred this week. Let it do its work.

The next seven weeks go deeper. Bring someone with you.

If this series is resonating, share it with someone who needs it. Subscribe below — new devotionals drop every Monday—Friday.

See you next week.

Chuck

“Take up the whole armor of God.” Ephesians 6:13

My wife Jill tells a story from her childhood that never gets old.

She is a little girl. Sunday morning. The family is arriving a few minutes late to church when her mom spots a line of kids Jill’s age forming outside the sanctuary doors. Believing it is Jill’s class, she nudges Jill into the line and quietly slips inside with the rest of the family to find seats.

They settle in, all smiles.

That is, until the children begin filing onto the stage, one by one, each being handed an identical musical instrument. One job: keep the rhythm. One guarantee: every misplaced note would echo across that room like it had something to prove.

The woodblock.

Each child walked to a clearly assigned spot and confidently smiled. Jill did her best to blend in. Imagine the deer-in-the-headlights look on young Jill’s face meeting her stunned and mortified mother, just as the advanced children’s music class launched into two fully choreographed numbers they had spent weeks preparing.

One glance across the stage and two things became immediately clear.

Number one? The kids all know the song. They know their parts. They know when to come in and they know when to be silent. And number two?

Jill knows none of this.

Yet there she stands, smiling awkwardly as she blazes ahead in a song that may as well have been called “The Peaceful Children and the Pesky Woodpecker,” because try as she may, there was no way to avoid making herself the unexpected soloist of a very spirited worship offering!

Here is what I want you to know about Jill. She grew up as a dancer and has impeccable rhythm. She loves music, always picking out and singing the most obscure background parts of songs that everyone else misses. The problem wasn’t Jill. And the problem wasn’t the instrument she had been handed. It wasn’t the stage, or the kids, or the song. The problem was that an individual had stepped into the middle of a well-rehearsed, moving-together group, asked to join in a song she had never even heard.

Some of us know exactly how that feels. And I think it is where a lot of us are living right now.

We have been handed something real. The armor. The Spirit. The gifts. The calling. All ours in the gospel. But most of us were only ever taught to use these things alone, in private, as a personal pursuit between us and Jesus.

Nobody invited us to the rehearsal. We didn’t know there was a song the whole body was supposed to be singing together.

So we show up sincere, willing, giving everything we have, and wondering why something always feels slightly off.

It is not a lack of personal desire for Jesus. It is a lack of formation, together.

Most of us have read the armor of God passage as a personal checklist. Belt of truth buckled? Check. Breastplate on? Check. Feet ready? Working on it. We treat it like a gym routine, something we do privately to make ourselves spiritually prepared.

There is something to be said for personal discipline. Formation is a slow road over time that requires healthy habits and rhythms. But there is something else going on in this passage, hiding right in front of us. And once you see it, it changes everything.

Paul writes to a plural audience about a singular armor.

When Paul says “put on the whole armor of God” in Ephesians 6:11, he is not writing a self-help plan for individuals managing their own spiritual inventories. He is writing to a community. The “you” in the Greek is plural. This is a shared command they can only properly complete together.

And the armor itself is singular. There are not multiple armors of God, one for each believer, personalized and private. There is one armor. One set. Because it was never given to clothe isolated body parts. It was given to clothe the one Body of Christ upon the earth. Paul said it plainly two chapters earlier:

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” Ephesians 4:4-6, NIV

One Lord. One body. One faith. One baptism. One armor.

The armor was designed for a body, and a body left in pieces is not one ready for battle. The Body of Christ must learn to put on the armor of God as all, together, or we will not truly put on the armor at all.

We cannot be fully armed in isolation. Not because God withholds from individuals, but because the armor itself was built for a family on a shared mission. Each of us is a vital thread of a global tapestry, revealing a facet of who Jesus is that the world needs to see. We can never be fully us together without what you carry. But the inverse is equally true. You are a part, not the whole. You see in part, not completely. And none of us can walk in autonomy and expect to be sufficiently clothed in armor that was built for a body.

This is where it gets honest.

Remaining in community means staying connected to imperfect, in-process, sometimes out-of-rhythm people. You and I included. And all too often, it seems we leave the battlefield for souls to battle each other. We divide over politics, race, gender, and secondary issues. Or we gather in fractured communities of isolated body parts, holding fashion shows to critique whose uniforms look better, while a world waits for us to share with them just a fraction of the love we have experienced.

I say this as a pastor of almost thirty years, not as a clueless idealist. I know the guttural pain of being hurt, talked about, and canceled by people I love deeply. And I weep over those I have hurt, in both the places I have met with repentance and the blind spots I don’t yet have the maturity to name clearly. You have similar stories, I’m sure. It’s easy to understand the disciples in John 6, who found the disorienting weight of following Jesus too heavy to carry and simply walked away. But I am left standing with Peter: “Lord, where else would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68, NIV)

There is a radical difference between unity and uniformity, and we need to name it clearly. As people, we naturally gravitate into communities of uniformity unless we intentionally and continually resist the pull, for something better. Uniformity grows like weeds, all on its own, the moment we stop tending the field. It is a collection of the same body part, convinced their perspective is the right one, everyone thinking alike, looking alike, sounding alike. Unity is something far more difficult and far more beautiful: a diverse family growing up under the same Father, different in gifting, background, tradition, perspective, and calling, held together not by agreement on everything but by adoration for the same Jesus. Unity requires continual tending. It requires courage. And it requires that we stay in the room, especially when staying is hard.

It means laying down the unrealistic expectations we hold over one another that only God can fulfill. It means trading the anger of the world for the healing found in Christ. It means stopping the gossip, releasing the offense, and choosing patient, humble relationship, understanding that honor does not require agreement. It means we stop leaving the family every time it gets hard, or swapping communities like streaming services we cancel the moment we feel like we are not getting what we wanted out of them.

Way harder than any of that sounds. Often broken. But beautiful.

Here is what I keep coming back to. Jill did not fail that morning because she lacked talent or desire or heart. She was out of rhythm because she wasn’t part of the community where the song was learned. She had never been in the room where the rehearsal happened. She showed up willing, but willing alone was not enough, because the performance was never meant to be a solo.

The armor of God is a gift given to all of us. And it was given so that, together, we would look like the One who wore it first, the One who absorbed every blow on our behalf, the One who is still interceding for the unity of his bride.

We actually are one. In Christ, that is already true. It is not a future vision or idealistic aspiration. It is a reality we are being invited to grow up into, together.

The armor only fits on a body that is genuinely united. It is time to learn the song.

Reflection Questions:

Where has your individual spiritual life become a substitute for formation within the body of Christ? What would it look like this week to step back into the rehearsal, not perfectly, but genuinely, with the in-process people God has placed around you?

For those who have pulled back, whether in presence or in your soul, what is one courageous step back toward the body? Is there forgiveness to offer, cynicism to lay down, a hard conversation to have with humility, or someone who sees the world differently than you that you could choose to move toward rather than away from? The song is still being played. And we need what you carry.

Tomorrow we wrap up Week 1 of eight. I pray this has been life-giving for you!

If something this week has resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. The whole point of this series is that none of us were meant to carry this alone.

See you tomorrow.

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” Ephesians 6:11

In 1903, a penniless Italian immigrant stepped off a boat in Boston with two dollars and fifty cents in his pocket, a gambling problem, and a driving ambition to become a millionaire. His name was Charles Ponzi.

By 1919, he had discovered what appeared to be a brilliant investment opportunity. International postal coupons could be purchased in countries with weak currencies and redeemed at a substantially higher value in the United States. Promising to double his clients’ money, Ponzi watched as investors jumped in to the tune of ten million dollars in less than seven months.

There was just one problem. Ponzi never purchased the coupons. He paid initial clients with money collected from later investors, and those early returns were convincing enough that most people simply rolled their profits over and invested even more. When the money ran out and he was discovered to be a fraud, the results were devastating. His nearly 40,000 victims were left destitute, many losing their entire life savings. The total loss was equivalent to somewhere around $300 million in today’s currency, triggering the failure and closure of six Boston banks.

Charles Ponzi was arrested on 86 counts of mail fraud, spent over a decade in prison, and died penniless in Rio de Janeiro in 1949, not before becoming the unfortunate namesake of an entire category of financial fraud.

In the near century since, Ponzi schemes have continued to deceive and to devastate. Bernie Madoff ran the largest in recorded history, collapsing in 2008 with estimated losses of $65 billion. In total, identified Ponzi schemes globally from 2000 to 2022 account for more than $128 billion in losses, with the true number believed to be far higher since most go undiscovered.

Every one of them works the same way. Promise something real enough to be believable. Deliver just enough early to earn trust. Quietly drain everything while the investor believes they are gaining.

Paul had a word for this kind of operation. And it is the very word he uses to describe the activity of our enemy.

Paul urges us to put on the whole armor of God, warning that we live in a world driven by the “schemes” of the devil. That word deserves a closer look.

Methodeia (Strong’s G3180): scheming and trickery that follows an organized pattern; to lie in wait in order to trick, trap, or gain an advantage.

It is where we get our English word method, referring to a well-established path or road, engineered for a predetermined outcome. The enemy is not haphazard. He is not reactive. Every move is calculated, deliberate, and aimed at a specific outcome long before we ever see it coming.

Note also who is running it. The devil. Contrary to popular depiction, this is not a cartoonish red figure with horns and a pitchfork. Like Charles Ponzi, true evil shows up far more subtly.

Diabolos (Strong’s G1228): one who deliberately spreads misinformation intended to slander and falsely accuse.

Satan doesn’t come offering what is clearly wrong. He is the master of the almost-right.

It helps to remember something critical about our enemy: he is not at all like our Father. He is entirely un-creative, literally incapable of making anything new. He is not a Creator, but a caricaturer. He can only take what God created as “good” and distort it into an application that makes it poisonous to creation.

His schemes have proven devastatingly effective for exactly this reason, playing on the pride and fears of an orphan spirit to get humanity to trade intimacy with God for a kingdom called independence.

His primary weapon is distortion. And it moves through one of three avenues:

In every case, the offer looks almost right. It is a distortion of something God intended as good, run through an orphan lens in one of two directions, usually both:

Here is the kicker with both of these: we do not realize we are doing it. Just as Ponzi’s investors did not know they were inside a well-laid scheme.

The result is what I call cultural Christianity, and it is just as prevalent in conservative and liberal circles, in mainline and charismatic churches, across every social demographic we can measure. It quotes Bible verses, lifts hands in worship, surrounds itself with like-minded community, and convinces itself it is the faithful remnant pursuing righteousness. As such, it almost always comes with a preoccupation of blame and shame toward another group, someone to scapegoat, someone who makes us feel more right about how we walk and talk in God’s name.

It wears a lot of different disguises. But underneath, it is all the same clothing.

And here is what makes it so dangerous: the clothes look almost right to those being offered them. They employ religious language and don holy labels, but they function in ways precisely opposite to the armor the gospel has already clothed us in.

In the coming weeks we are going to walk through each piece of the armor of God, what it actually is, where it comes from, and how to receive it. But before we get there, it is worth pausing to look at what cultural Christianity tends to reach for instead.

Instead of the belt of truth, the accessory of acceptability. Not worn for function, but to be seen. Presenting whatever version of truth earns the most likes, follows, and approval.

Instead of the breastplate of righteousness, the Kevlar of self-righteousness. Security found not in holiness, but in comparison. Quick to find someone else to blame for the world’s problems.

Instead of the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shoes of a life of ease. The message: follow Jesus and live #blessed. Fall in love, get the dream job, enjoy the creature comforts. The enemy’s scheme here is subtle: sideline us by obsessing us with ourselves.

Instead of the shield of faith, the cone of control. We trade mystery for certainty and end up with a sanitized faith that has an answer for everything and stands for nothing outside our own little world.

Instead of the helmet of salvation, the hat of sensibility. Driven entirely by what we feel, think, and understand. God is welcome, as long as He plays by the rules of the club we’ve set up in His name.

Instead of the sword of the Spirit, the missile launcher of selective obedience. Powerful enough to instantly secure what we want and eliminate what we do not, based on the cultural morality we have constructed rather than the Christlikeness we are actually being formed into.

Two brands of Christianity. Both clothed in spiritual language. Living two very different paths.

That said, the coming weeks will not be about throwing stones at anyone. They are about something far more compelling, clothing ourselves in the beauty of Christ that actually heals the world. We will lay down every propensity to launch missiles, as we choose instead to pick up a mirror.

Because Ponzi’s investors could not see the scheme they were inside until it was too late. Praise God, we do not have to make the same mistake. The question today isn’t whether or not we are clothing ourselves in a gospel. The question is whether what we’re wearing is actually what we think it is.

For Reflection:

The enemy moves through deception, dilution, and distraction, and rarely announces which one he is using. Which of these three has had the most access to your life lately? Where have you noticed fear, slow drift, or the pull of something easier quietly reshaping what you believe or how you live?

Self-reliance says no one looks out for me better than me. Selective obedience says I’ll take the parts of following Jesus that fit my life. Be honest: which of these shows up most in how you actually make decisions, not the decisions you talk about, but the ones you make when no one is watching?

In both cases, remember there is no condemnation in the gospel, only invitation. Be honest with God and receive the healing power of His grace as you follow Him into a gospel that is far more beautiful.

This series goes deep, and it is better when we go together. If today’s devotional brought you hope, share it with someone who needs it. Subscribe below if you are not already with us, every devotional drops Monday through Friday. Come back tomorrow. It’s going to be good!

— Chuck

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” Ephesians 6:11

Today, I drove across town with the A/C on full blast.

Allow me to explain why that was such a big deal.

Several weeks ago, I cranked the engine to my car only to be met by an odd smell I couldn’t quite identify. It began faint and continued to intensify until about a mile from my home, when my eyes widened as I recognized the smell as the burning of plastic. Just then, the temperature of the air coming from my dash shifted radically in the wrong direction.

I quickly shut off the A/C and did what any responsible person who doesn’t understand automobile mechanics does.

I googled it.

My search identified a number of potential culprits, but all agreed on one thing. Keep the air conditioning off.

There were just a few problems with this diagnosis.

Number one. As previously mentioned, I have zero proficiency in auto repair. I found myself facing a problem I lacked the ability to fix.

Number two. The anticipated cost of the repair was steep, falling outside of our present savings. I found myself with a problem I lacked the resources to fix.

Add to this a brutal heat streak and a highly inconvenient detour rerouting the main road to my house, and I settled in for one very long summer.

That is, until a dear friend of mine learned about my situation. Possessing both the ability and the resources I lacked, he moved with ease to fix my unfixable problem. And he did it all simply because he wanted to.

Today it was 94 degrees outside, and I drove across town with frigid air on full blast, laughing out loud. What else can you do when you have been lavished with a gift you did nothing to deserve?

Before we step any further in examining the pieces of the armor of God and all they mean, we need to allow this image to anchor our thoughts. Because the life Paul describes in Ephesians 6 arrives the exact same way as the restoration of my car’s A/C.

We do not possess the character, competency, or capacity to attain the armor of God on our own. There are none righteous, no not one. We have an ability problem.

Further, there is no spiritual self-help plan sufficient to close the gap between where we presently are and where we need to be. We have a resources problem.

But praise God, we have a Friend who stepped in and changed our situation, simply because He wanted to. And what He offers us now is not a program to complete or a standard to reach. It is a gift to receive.

The armor of God is the finished gospel, made wearable.

This is where we have to look carefully at something most readings of Ephesians 6 miss entirely.

Notice whose armor it actually is.

It is the belt of His truth. The breastplate of His righteousness. The shoes of the gospel of His peace. The shield of His faithfulness. The helmet of His salvation. The sword of His Spirit.

Not ours. His. Every piece of it originates in Him, belongs to Him, and is sustained by Him. As Colossians says, “In Him, all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

We are not being asked to assemble spiritual equipment we have manufactured through discipline and effort. We are being clothed in something that was forged at the cross and placed on us the moment we said yes to Jesus.

The Greek word Paul uses for the whole armor is panoplia (Strong’s G3833), a compound word meaning “complete arms, every tool, all resources, instruments, and weapons.” It means to have nothing missing and everything provided for one’s mission to be a success. “His divine power has given us all we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3).

The charge for the “whole armor” carries the weight of totality. Paul is not describing a partial provision we supplement over time through our own effort. He is describing a complete gift, already given, so we can be assured we are lacking nothing.

And here is where the grammar of the passage does something extraordinary.

Throughout Ephesians 6, Paul weaves together two distinct verb tenses. The aorist tense describes a completed action, something already fully accomplished, with the results carrying forward to the present day. The present tense describes an ongoing posture, something we actively choose to step into each day. A renewing of what is already ours. Both are present in this passage, and together they tell the whole story of what the gospel means for how we live.

In the truest sense, if we are in Christ, we are already clothed in this armor. The aorist tense is the declaration: it is done, it has been given to you, it is fully yours. This means that regardless of how clearly we are presently seeing truth or how impressively we are navigating our faith, if we could see with eyes of the Spirit, we would find permanent, unchanging armor more real to us than our own skin.

That said, the present tense brings the invitation. We have been clothed, and now God is inviting us to renew our hearts in a surrendered posture of obedience, to live like it is actually true. Here we find a beautiful mystery. The armor is already on, and we are invited to put it on. It is God’s gift that is already firmly ours, and it is God’s invitation that finds its power as we activate it, choosing to follow Him moment by moment.

This mirrors the whole message of the New Testament. We do not strive toward a righteousness we hope to one day achieve. We receive a righteousness already given and learn to live from what the gospel has freely provided. We do not build our way toward peace with God. We stand in the peace that was declared over us at the cross. The armor is no different.

We did not produce it. We did not earn it. We did not negotiate our way into receiving it. It is a gift, freely and completely given, standing continually ready for us to stop trying to deserve it and simply put it on.

Here is where most of us quietly get stuck.

We read Ephesians 6 as an assignment. A checklist of spiritual disciplines to assess. Are we in the Word enough? Is our faith strong enough? Is our prayer life consistent enough? Have we really fastened the belt, or has it been slipping?

And every piece of armor becomes another reminder of where we are falling short.

That is not what Paul is writing.

Paul is writing to people who have already been clothed in something extraordinary, and he is urging them to live like it is true. The daily choice to receive is real. The act of standing is real. But the source of all of it is entirely His. The only thing standing between most of us and the life Paul describes is an unnecessary war of striving to attain what has already been given. It is the quiet lie that we need to get ourselves together enough to be worthy of what we have already received. That the armor is holding out for a version of us that is more consistent, more faithful, more spiritually mature.

But God’s armor was not issued at the point of our sufficient maturity. It was not entrusted to us only after we proved we would use it well.

It was declared and settled at the cross, where we were at our most undeserving. And that is precisely where God gave His most complete gift. Simply because He wanted to.

As a result, we now have the Spirit-endued ability to do what we could not otherwise do, and the full resources of heaven to meet us at every point of need.

We do not earn a gift. We receive one. And we will spend the rest of our lives learning just how good that actually is. Maybe it’s time for somebody to join me in a drive across town as we blast the A/C and laugh out loud. After all, what else can we do when we’ve been lavished with a gift this good?

For Reflection:

Where have you been treating the armor as something to achieve rather than something to receive? Take an honest look at your current spiritual life. Where are you weary? Striving? Is there a quiet sense that you are not quite measuring up? Exhaustion is often the clearest sign that we have picked up a checklist instead of a gift.

Sit with this today: the armor is not waiting for you to be ready. It is already on you, and God has been waiting for you to stop trying to earn it and simply live from it. Bring that honestly to the Father, and let Him remind you of what was settled at the cross, simply because He wanted to.

If this is landing somewhere real for you today, share it with someone who needs it. And if you are not yet subscribed, we would love to have you with us for the journey. Day 3 drops tomorrow, and we are just getting started.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” Ephesians 6:10

Most of us come to the faith with an unspoken expectation we’ve adopted somewhere beneath the surface.

We never said it out loud. Most of us never even consciously admitted it to ourselves. But the idea is there, firmly embedded through the culture of our churches and our conversations. It anchored the tone of the sermons we heard and the language of the worship songs we sang.

“Follow Jesus faithfully and you will live the life of your dreams.”

Pray the right prayers, practice the right morality, believe the right things, and God will reward you with a path that travels largely in the direction of everything you’d hoped for. And better.

You’ll fall in love with the right person. Get the job doing what brings you joy. Be financially secure, physically healthy, and live in your dream house surrounded by creature comforts and a good reputation.

We do not call this the prosperity gospel. That label belongs to someone else, we reassure ourselves. Some preacher on television. But if we are honest, many of us are carrying around a quieter version of the same assumption:

That the Christian life, done correctly, should be increasingly comfortable.

That peace means the absence of difficulty.

That blessing looks like things working out according to our understanding and our timelines.

That if we are truly walking with God, our circumstances will reflect it.

And then circumstances refuse to cooperate.

The diagnosis arrives. The marriage fractures. The dream quietly dies. The door closes and no other door seems to open. The friend we’ve championed and wept with walks away. The injustice around us is real and relief is nowhere in sight. What now?

Did I do something wrong? Is God holding out on me? Is any of this actually true?

Paul’s answer to our questions is not a theological argument. It is a letter written from a prison cell.

Picture the scene. It is first century Rome. Paul is writing what will become one of the most quoted and most misunderstood passages in the entire New Testament. He is not seated at a comfortable desk surrounded by his books. He is not at a coffee shop typing on a laptop in the cool A/C while sipping on a latte. He is not preparing to take a stage under perfectly curated lighting before thousands of eager students who will hang on his every word.

He is hidden from the world, chained to a Roman soldier in a dank, dark prison with no guarantee of what tomorrow holds.

Every day, Paul is met with the same view. A man in full imposing armor, inches away. The belt. The breastplate. The boots. The shield. The helmet. The sword. His only companions are his captors. His only crime was being transformed by the grace of God and having the audacity to invite the world to experience the same. His kindness had been met with cruelty. His courageous obedience had not resulted in comfort, but in chains.

If we are willing to be honest, most of us struggle to find our footing in Paul’s shoes. When I consider the hours I spend in quiet protest and lament over far less dramatic circumstances, the idea of maintaining the peace of mind to write a letter equipping others to walk in joyous victory feels almost absurd. It would be far easier to spend that energy trying to find some way out of the prison cell back to a life that is #blessed.

Yet Paul does not write from desperation. He does not sound like a man struggling to hold things together or striving to outrun his circumstances. He is instead so saturated with the love of God that he cannot even look at his chains without seeing a far truer reality.

Though he is in prison, God’s love has set him free. Though he appeared weak, God’s joy has become his strength. And though he was dressed in rags, Paul sees the reality that he has already been clothed in an armor far more secure, for a battle far more hopeful than anything his captors wear.

Paul does not see injustice. He sees an invitation.

And as an “ambassador in chains,” he pens the most liberating hope to whatever feels like it might be trying to imprison you today.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”

Paul’s word “finally” closes out his entire letter to the Ephesians. He is not simply moving to a new topic. He is summing everything up. In essence, he is saying: you want to know how to actually live out everything I have written? Here it is. This is where it all lands.

And what he has written is no small thing.

In Ephesians 1, Paul lays out the staggering reality of who we are in Christ: walking with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, our hearts enlightened to the hope of our calling, the riches of our inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power already at work in those who believe.

In Ephesians 2, he describes us as God’s own workmanship, created for specific works of beauty prepared for us before we ever took our first breath.

In Ephesians 3 and 4, he calls us into the Body, a diverse community held together in deep unity, where every unique gift is discovered, developed, and deployed so that together we grow into the full stature and security of Christ.

In Ephesians 5 and 6, he shows us what this looks like in our most intimate spaces: our marriages, families, workplaces, and communities, built around honor, integrity, and self-emptying love.

And then Paul says: finally.

You want to walk in all of this? You need to know what you are wearing.

Paul then gives us three Greek words that stack on top of each other, preparing our souls to see the beauty of what Christ has already clothed us in, dependent on neither our strength nor our circumstances.

“Be strong” (endynamoo, Strong’s G1743): to be endued with strength, empowered from within.

The root is the same word as dunamis, where we get dynamite. Paul is saying, “Don’t be deceived by appearances. Within your soul right now is the very presence of God, ready to ignite and illuminate the world with His love.” And note, just like every piece of armor we will study in the coming days, the strength here belongs to God. It is not based on our feelings, our performance, or our understanding. We are strong “in the Lord.”

“In the strength” (kratos, Strong’s G2904): vigor, dominion, a strength that holds and does not fade.

This is not a surge of adrenaline for a hard moment. It is an enduring force, steady under pressure. Paul invites us to see an abiding strength waiting to anchor our souls in the ever-changing tides of daily life. That is good news.

“And his might” (ischys, Strong’s G2479): ability, force, might.

This final word points to the actual anointing and capacity to do what is being asked of us. These are not the words of a hopeful idealist. They are the words of a man in a prison cell, carrying the same Holy Spirit we carry, reminding us: we can actually live in this kind of hope and strength.

All three. In one verse. None of them ours to produce.

The armor of God is strong because God is strong. We do not earn it and we are not expected to create it. It is a gift we are simply invited to put on.

So we begin here, with the most important question of the series: What gospel are we holding? What clothes are we trusting in?

This world is not our home. We are not building a kingdom here. We are passing through one. And as we pass through, there are sons and daughters all around us who have not yet found their way home. They need people who know the way, and who are not so consumed by the discomfort of the journey that they have forgotten where they are headed.

The truly blessed life is not a life where everything works out according to our plans and timelines in the here and now. It is a life so anchored in the eternal love of our Father that nothing the world offers or withholds can hold power over us. A day is coming that will exceed everything we have ever desired or imagined. Our hope is not in our circumstances improving. It is in a Savior who will not disappoint, who is presently using the very circumstances we most resist to refine and form something in us that will outlast all of it.

Wherever you are reading this today, whatever has you feeling constrained or overlooked or just plain tired, the promise holds. The armor was built for this life. Not the life you are waiting for. This one.

For Reflection:

What circumstances are trying to control the narrative of this season? Name them honestly before God. Not to complain, but because He already knows and He is not afraid of what you are carrying.

Then go back and read those three words slowly. Endynamoo. Kratos. Ischys. Receive them as what they are: a gift, not a demand. He is with you. He is pleased. And it is more than enough to follow Him from right where you are.

If this landed somewhere real for you today, share it with someone who needs it. And if you are not yet subscribed, we would love to have you with us for the journey. Day 2 drops tomorrow, and we are just getting started.

There is a version of the Christian life that looks almost right from a distance.

It speaks in spiritual language, frequently using words like “holy,” “worship,” “truth.” Even “love.” It postures itself toward a moral code of right living and an earnest desire to keep oneself unstained by the world. It organizes into communities, opens the Word of God, offers prayers, and sings songs with hands lifted heavenward. It frequently calls upon God and speaks for God.

And yet, it is founded entirely upon the preservation and promotion of ourselves.

I call it Cultural Christianity. A false gospel that wears the name of Christ while pursuing some other treasure entirely.

This distorted gospel wears many varied disguises, both highly conservative and deeply liberal. Sometimes it is loud and political, brash and militant. Other times, it prefers to stay neutral, smiling and keeping the peace in the hope everyone can just get along.

One speaks urgently of the need for “righteousness,” while suffering from a hubris that can no longer recognize its own complicity or its hardened indifference to those most in need of grace. The other calls for “love” while preaching a toxic form of tolerance that sounds compassionate but abandons wandering souls to drown in idolatry and immorality.

The clothing may differ in expression, but not in its core composition. At the root, it is all the same thing. A kingdom of self.

Over the coming weeks, we are going to dig deeply into Ephesians 6, a passage that has been greatly misapplied through both abuse and neglect, and look honestly at the armor of God.

My tone won’t be to throw stones or draw lines between who is “right” and who is “wrong.” It will be instead to hold up a mirror so we can take a patient and courageous look at what we’re presently wearing.

We will examine the popular substitutes we’ve donned in place of the pure gospel, and we will ask hard questions about the labels, parties, and power structures we’ve given our allegiance to, and why it remains impossible to serve two masters.

We will get clarity on the real nature of the battle before us and all of the heartbreaking ways we keep fighting the wrong enemies in the wrong spirit.

We will learn how to contend for the unity of the Spirit, and how to honor and advance the gospel alongside people we sometimes radically disagree with. (It’s possible.)

We will look at how to stand IN truth, WITH Jesus, FOR the whole world to experience the beauty of the Lord and the hope of redemption.

Above all, we will stand astounded before a Father whose adoration for us knows no limits, who despite our shortcomings delights to clothe us in a righteousness and peace too big to keep to ourselves.

Every Monday through Friday for the next eight weeks, we will go deep into Ephesians 6, looking at each piece of the armor of God. Not as a checklist. Not as a performance review. As a gift from a Father to His beloved children, given so we can stand faithfully in the face of false gospels and stand firmly as we advance the true one.

Midway through, we will pause for a full week of Lectio Divina in the Gospels, a breath in the journey and an opportunity for the Author of our faith to meet us where we are.

Subscribe to receive these devotionals every day in your inbox. Come at whatever pace works for you. Read ahead, catch up, or sit with a single day for the whole week. The door is always open.

This is not a program to add to an already full life. It is an invitation for us to be refined deeper and deeper into the image of our Maker and to be clothed in a gospel worthy of the Name we claim.

See you Monday.

Chuck

If you know someone who could use this journey, I’d love for you to send it their way. And if you are not yet part of this community yet, we would love to have you. Subscribe below and come along with us!

A few months ago, I started building something.

Not a project. A table.

A place where the things I carry most — the goodness of God as Father, and the greatness of the voice He has placed within you — could be laid out slowly, one week at a time, for anyone who wanted to sit down and stay a while.

I’m in the middle of preparing a new round of content this week, and I would love for you to pray with me as I do. A brand new A Living Liturgy episode, Practicing Lectio Divina in the Gospels, drops on YouTube tomorrow! More new writing is on the way too.

For my regular Monday-Friday devotional readers, I would like to encourage you this week to go back and check out anything you may have missed.

What’s waiting for you:

Two Become One — Five days at the cross. Not retelling the story, but standing inside it and seeing what was settled there, forever. If you’ve ever felt like your relationship with God rises and falls with how well you’re performing, this is where I’d send you first. Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

The God Within — Five days on the Holy Spirit as a person, not a category. For anyone who has sensed there is more to the life of the Spirit than they’ve yet experienced. Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Saturated — Five days on the fruit of the Spirit — what it looks like to stop striving for the fruit and start abiding in the vine. If you’ve tried harder to be more loving, more patient, more joyful, and come up exhausted, this one is for you. Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Come and Eat — Five days on Lectio Divina — the ancient, slow, prayerful practice of encountering God through His Word. The most recent series, and the most immediately practical if you want something you can use in your time with God this week. Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

All of this connects to A Living Liturgy on YouTube — a series where we slow all the way down and walk through the practices and theology of a life with God, together. Four episodes are already there, and tomorrow’s Practicing Lectio Divina in the Gospels will be the fifth.

If you haven’t been over yet, this week is a good time to start: youtube.com/@pastorchuckammons

I’m so glad you’re here. Don’t rush. Take your time with what’s already waiting.

And pray with me this week. New things are coming, and I am so glad to be on the journey with you!

— Chuck

Welcome to the last day of Come and Eat. All week we have been pulling up chairs, setting the table, learning the shape of the meal. Today we eat. If you are just joining us, I would encourage you to start at Day 1 — the foundation matters. But if you are here and ready, so is the table. Let’s begin.

This week, we have laid the foundation: the finished work of the gospel, the three ingredients of a sustainable spiritual life, the ancient history of Sacred Reading, and the six movements that shape it.

Today, we don’t talk about Lectio Divina anymore. Today we practice it.

Grab your Bible. If you have a journal or a notepad, have it open beside you. If you downloaded the Lectio Divina Companion Guide — get it here — bring that along. Give yourself fifteen to twenty minutes. This is not a speed exercise.

Our passage today is Romans 8:15-16.

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Romans 8:15-16

MOVEMENT 1 — PREPARE

Before you read, arrive.

Wherever you are right now — whatever momentum you carried into this moment — take a breath and set it down. Let your shoulders drop. Let your pace slow. God is already present in this moment. He was here before you opened this devotional. The same Spirit who breathed life into Romans 8 lives inside of you.

Simply acknowledge that. You might pray something like this, in your own words or mine:

“God, here I am. I give you my burdens. I make myself available. I receive your peace and trust that you are here with me. Meet with me in the coming moments.”

Pause for thirty seconds. Just breathe in and out slowly a few times. Then continue.

MOVEMENT 2 — READ

Read Romans 8:15-16. Slowly. Aloud if possible.

Don’t analyze it yet. Don’t take notes. Just receive it as you would receive a letter from someone who loves you.

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

Read it a second time. Even slower.

As you do, notice: is there a word, a phrase, an image that draws your attention — even slightly? Don’t chase it. Just notice it. Write it down without explanation.

[Pause here. Read. Write. Then continue.]

MOVEMENT 3 — NOTICE

Read the passage a third time. Then return to the word or phrase you marked.

Stay with it. Don’t rush past it toward a lesson. Let it breathe.

Ask yourself these questions, and write down your honest answers:

• Why might this word or phrase have drawn my attention today? What does it touch in me — a longing, a fear, a memory, a question?

• What does this passage reveal about who God is? What does it say about who I am in relation to him?

• Is there anything in me — a belief, a posture, a habit — that this passage gently challenges or confirms?

[Pause here. Sit with the passage and the questions. Write what comes. Take your time.]

One word to offer from my own reading of this passage, in case it opens something for you:

The word slavery catches me. Paul does not say we received a spirit of difficulty, or a spirit of effort, or even a spirit of discipline. He says slavery — an entrapment back into fear. That is a very specific phrase. It suggests that fear-driven religion is not neutral. It is a regression. It is going back to something we were freed from. And the contrast Paul draws is not merely between fear and confidence. It is between slavery and adoption. Between a servant who must perform and a child who already belongs.

Abba. The word is Aramaic — the language Jesus spoke at home. It is intimate. It is the warm and comfortable title a child uses for their father when they are not being formal, not making a request, not trying to impress. Translated in modern language, it lands most closely to “Daddy” or “Dad.” The Spirit within us calls to God with that kind of affection. As someone whose earthly father passed before my first memory, I will tell you honestly — this word awakens deep longing and hope in my heart.

This is who I am. This is how near He is. This is where I belong, forever.

MOVEMENT 4 — RESPOND

In light of what you noticed, what do you want to say to God?

This is not a performance. It does not need to be polished. It can be gratitude, confession, a question, a longing, a simple quiet yes.

Write a brief, honest response to God. Let it be unpolished and true.

Is there something you need to receive from him right now? Or something you need to lay down?

[Pause here. Write your prayer. Say it out loud if you can.]

MOVEMENT 5 — REST

You have arrived. You have read. You have noticed. You have responded.

Now receive.

Simply pray: “God, what would you say to me?”

Then be still for two to five minutes. This is not passive emptiness. It is active, loving attentiveness.

If something surfaces — an impression, an image, a sense of peace or invitation — write it without judging whether it was “right.”

Always weigh what you sense in contemplation against the clear teaching of Scripture and the witness of the wider Body of Christ. The Spirit will never contradict the Word he inspired.

[Set a timer if it helps. Two minutes minimum. Return when you’re ready.]

MOVEMENT 6 — ACTIVATE

The Word must become flesh in us.

What is one concrete, specific thing you can do today, or this week, in response to what you received? Not a vague intention. A real action, with a real person or a real moment.

Write it.

What would it look like to carry this passage with you through the rest of today — a phrase to return to, a posture to hold?

[Write your one step. Then pray this, or your own version of it:]

“Holy Spirit, I receive that you have given me your presence and the anointing to walk in love and obedience today. Fill me anew as I follow you.”

You just practiced Lectio Divina.

Not perfectly. None of us do. But you showed up. You slowed down. You listened. You arrived at this week with questions, and you are leaving with something the rushing never gives: an actual encounter with a God who speaks, through a Word that is alive, to a spirit that already belongs to him.

This practice — this slow, ancient, ordinary, extraordinary act of returning — is available to us every day. Not as a ladder to climb. As a table to come back to.

And he will always meet us there. Every time. Even when we bring just our smallest yes. Especially then.

To watch the full Lectio Divina practice in real time — with an additional time of study in Psalm 23 — plan to watch Episode 4 of A Living Liturgy on YouTube sometime in the coming days. If you want a printable companion guide to use in your own practice, download it free here.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Which of the six movements felt most alive to you today? Which felt most difficult?

2. What word or phrase from Romans 8:15-16 stayed with you? What did it stir?

3. What is the one step you wrote in the Activate movement? Would you be willing to share it in the comments — and let this community be an encouragement to you in it?

PRAYER

Father, thank you for a week of slowing down. Thank you that you are not a God who hides — you are a God who speaks, who pursues, who runs toward us while we are still a long way off. Thank you that the Spirit inside me cries Abba — not as a formal petition, but as the natural language of a child who knows they are home. Let what I received this week take root. Let the practice become a rhythm. And let the rhythm become a life — a long, slow, faithful walk in the same direction, with you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Thank you for being here this week. If these devotionals have been an encouragement to you, would you share this series with one person who wants more from their time in Scripture? And subscribe to this Substack so you don’t miss what’s coming next.

All four episodes of A Living Liturgy are on YouTube now. See you at the table!

— Chuck

@pastorchuckammons

Welcome to Day 4 of Come and Eat. We have spent three days laying the foundation — the finished gospel that makes all of this possible, the three ingredients of a sustainable life with God, and the ancient, beautiful history of a practice the Church has never stopped returning to. Today, we get practical. Tomorrow, we practice together. But before we do, there is one final — and very necessary — act of preparation: learning the shape of what we are about to enter.

“Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” Joshua 1:8

One of the gifts Lectio Divina offers is that it doesn’t leave us guessing about where or how to begin. There is a shape to it — a series of movements that walk us gently from wherever we find ourselves into an encounter with the living God through His written Word. These movements are not a rigid script. They are more like a path through familiar terrain. Each step leads somewhere, and together they take you somewhere you could not have arrived at by rushing.

To help us along the way, I have prepared a Lectio Divina Companion Guide — you can get it here. I would also recommend bringing a paper Bible, a pen, and a journal to get the most out of your time. With that, here are the six movements of Lectio Divina.*

1. PREPARE — Slow your body and soul to meet with God

“God, I am here. I receive your presence.”

Most of us come to Scripture still carrying the momentum of everything else — the inbox, the to-do list, the conversation from yesterday that isn’t resolved yet. Lectio Divina begins with a simple act: we lay it down. We still our souls. We take a slow breath and acknowledge that God is already here. Already present. Already pleased. Already speaking — even before we open the text.

This is not a white-knuckled spiritual performance where we try to be pure enough or passionate enough to make God show up. He desires intimacy with us far more than we could ever imagine. We simply take a moment to let the Holy Spirit remind us of His presence, His pleasure, and His sufficiency for all we could ever need.

It is good to be here.

2. READ (Lectio) — Observe the passage slowly and attentively

“What does the text say in itself?”

We read a short passage of Scripture slowly, aloud if possible. We are not yet trying to analyze it or extract principles from it. We read simply to receive it, the way we would receive a letter from someone who dearly loves us. After the first reading, pause — then read it a second time. Somewhere in those two readings, allow the Holy Spirit to draw your attention to what comes off the page for you today: a word, a phrase, an image. Don’t chase it. Simply notice it. Write it in your Companion Guide or journal.

Here is the key. Try to hear the text on its own terms before you interpret or apply it. All of us read the Bible through a lens shaped by our experiences, our wounds, our assumptions, and our history with God. Lectio Divina invites us to slow down before we impose that lens — to let the text say what it says before we decide what it means.

3. REFLECT (Meditatio) — “Chew” on the passage, letting it soften and go deep

“What does the text say to me in this season?”

We read the passage a third time. Then we return to the word or phrase that drew our attention. The ancient Church called this meditatio, the Latin word for chewing. Not skimming. Not analyzing. Chewing. Turning it over. Letting it soften as we make space for it in our souls.

We ask: Why might this word have drawn me today? What does it touch in me — a longing, a fear, a memory, a question? What does it reveal about who God is, and who I am in relation to Him?

This is filling our minds with the voice of God, not emptying them. It is the renewal of the mind Paul describes in Romans 12. And from this place, everything else follows.

4. RESPOND (Oratio) — Offer honest, personal prayer in response

“God, what will I say in response to what I’ve read?”

Now the Word moves from our minds to our mouths — not in performance, but in simple, honest, personal response. We say what we actually mean. Gratitude. Confession. Vulnerability. The question that began to stir in our spirit. The place where we are wrestling. Our simple, quiet yes.

Our prayer does not need to be polished. God is not offended by our unresolved emotions. A quick reading of the Psalms makes it clear that God is actually quite moved by our willingness to be raw and real. One further encouragement: you may find real life in writing your prayer. When our cries and requests move beyond our heads onto the page, they often become more honest — and more tangible — than they ever were in our minds alone.

5. REST (Contemplatio) — Be still and listen with loving attentiveness

“God, what do you want to say to me?”

We have prepared. We have read. We have reflected. We have responded. Now we receive.

We simply pray: “God, what would you say to me?” And then — and this is the key — we choose to be still. Sit for two to five minutes of quiet before the Lord, giving Him space to speak. You don’t need to manufacture thoughts or push away the ones that come. Simply desire to be with God. Be still. This is where you will begin to discern the unique ways He speaks to you. Don’t overthink it, and refuse to rush past it.

Whatever surfaces in the silence — an impression, an image, a sense of peace or invitation — write it down without immediately evaluating or dismissing it. At the end of this time, we will weigh what we sense against the clear teaching of Scripture and the witness of the wider Body of Christ. When I am in doubt, I bring what I’ve received to the spiritual fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters God has placed in my life — those who display evidence of real integrity and real intimacy with the Lord.

One more thing, and I want to say it clearly. Sometimes you will simply experience peace. Stillness with no tangible directive, no “word,” no impression. This is not failure. It doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong. Sitting quietly with the God who adores you is more than sufficient — and sometimes, it is precisely what He desires. Most of us are over-saturated with noise. Sometimes stillness is not the path to some greater point. Sometimes stillness is the point.

Silence is not rejection. It is often refreshing.

And if you regularly feel like you don’t hear anything from God, take heart. You are most likely learning to recognize a voice you have always been hearing. Jesus’ name is the Word — He is always speaking. Looking back on my earliest days, I realize I dismissed a great deal of what God was saying simply because it didn’t look or sound the way I expected. He has never made a “you” before, and He is speaking to you in a language uniquely yours. Give yourself grace and time to learn it. And find someone a little further down the road to walk alongside you.

6. ACTIVATE (Actio) — Decide and obey, letting the Word become flesh in your life

“How will I practically live this out today?”

Sacred reading was never meant to stay on the page. The final movement asks: What is one concrete, specific thing I can do today — or this week — in response to what I received? Not a vague intention. A real action. A real person. A real moment. This is where Lectio Divina becomes what the early Church always intended it to be — not a private spiritual exercise, but a way of being formed by the Word into someone who actually lives it.

“Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” Joshua 1:8

Joshua 1:8 holds all six movements together beautifully:

Lips — the reading.

Meditate — the reflecting.

Do everything written — the activation.

This is not a modern technique layered onto an ancient text. It is the ancient text teaching us how to receive it.

And Jesus’ invitation in John 15 gives us the posture underneath all of it: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). Lectio Divina is one of the primary ways we learn to abide — to stay, to remain, to keep returning to the source of everything we need.

Tomorrow, we will walk through this together. Bring your Bible. Have a journal nearby. We will experience all six movements slowly, with space to pause and receive along the way.

Episodes 3 and 4 of A Living Liturgy on YouTube walk through both the history and the full practice of Lectio Divina. And if you want a companion for tomorrow’s practice, download the free Lectio Divina Companion Guide here. Link to the video is below.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. As you read through the six movements, which surprised you most? Which felt most natural, and which felt most foreign?

2. Which of these six movements is furthest from how you have typically read Scripture? What do you think has kept it at a distance?

3. What would it mean for you, practically, to make this kind of reading a regular rhythm — not an occasional event?

PRAYER

Holy Spirit, you inspired these words. You know every passage better than I ever will. And you live in me — which means when I open this text tomorrow, I am not reading alone. Prepare me tonight. Soften any defensiveness, any hurry, any performance. I want to come to your Word tomorrow not as a student trying to ace the test, but as a child sitting down at a table. I receive your presence. I receive your patience. I trust you to speak. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Tomorrow is the meal. We are going to slow all the way down and walk through every movement of Lectio Divina together, in real time, with space to pause and receive. Bring your Bible, your journal, and even five extra minutes if you can find them. We will not want to rush Day 5.

If this series has been an encouragement to you this week, share it with someone who wants more from their time in God’s Word. The table has more than enough room!

— Chuck

*A note on the history of Lectio Divina: the ancient practice originally included four movements — Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio. More recent practitioners have added Prepare and Activate as bookends, making space for intentional arrival and lived-out response. This series follows that expanded six-movement practice.

Welcome to Day 3 of Come and Eat. We have spent two days laying the foundation: the finished work of the gospel, and the three ingredients that make a sustainable life with God actually work. Today, we step back in time. Further back than you might expect. Because what we are about to learn is not a modern spiritual trend. It is a recovery of something the Church has practiced since the very beginning.

“Blessed is the man... whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Psalm 1:1-2

Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught to read the Bible quickly.

We measure success by chapters finished, notes taken, plans completed. And there is nothing wrong with reading widely or studying deeply — those are good things. But for most of Christian history, the primary question was not how much of God’s Word can I get through? It was how much of God’s Word will truly get into me?

That shift in question changes everything.

Today, I want to introduce us to a practice called Lectio Divina, a Latin phrase that simply means Sacred Reading. It is a slow, prayerful way of encountering Scripture where we make space to commune with God, listen for His voice, and respond to His love with simple obedience. It is not complicated. It is not reserved for scholars or monks or people with particularly quiet lives. It is simply learning to approach the text with attentiveness, expectancy, and surrender.

And it is very, very old.

The roots of Lectio Divina reach back before it even had a name. In Israel, Scripture was not primarily a private reading exercise. It was heard aloud, read slowly, repeated in community. The goal was never just to understand the text. It was to stand under it. To be shaped by it. To let the Word of God take root in the heart and produce, over time, the fruit of obedience.

The Psalms are full of this posture. Psalm 1 describes the blessed person as one whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” The word translated “meditates” in Hebrew, hagah, means to ponder, to muse, to speak quietly under one’s breath. It is the image of someone turning a phrase over and over, letting it soften, letting it go deep.

Joshua 1:8 carries the same instruction: “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.” The movement is mouth to mind to action. Word received, Word meditated, Word lived.

This is not the attempt to empty the mind, as some Eastern meditation practices call for. It is the opposite: filling the mind with the voice of God until it crowds everything else out.

When the early Church began to face persecution, they gathered around Scripture with this kind of attentive desperation. And then something interesting happened. As persecution faded and Christianity became culturally accepted, faith became comfortable…and comfortable faith rarely goes deep. Many followers of Jesus, dissatisfied with a faith that had lost its formational power, withdrew into the wilderness to recover it.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers (4th and 5th Century, A.D.)

We call them the Desert Fathers and Mothers. They were not running from the world. They were running toward God. In those quiet places, they practiced something simple: choose a short passage, read it slowly, repeat it, sit in silence, respond to what the Spirit stirs. This became the seed of what we now call Lectio Divina.

St. Benedict (480–547 A.D.)

Centuries later, a monk named St. Benedict brought structure and accessibility to the practice — insisting that sacred reading was not the property of scholars but daily bread for ordinary believers.

Guigo II (12th Century, A.D.)

Six hundred years after that, a monk named Guigo II formulated the core movements we still use: reading, reflecting, praying, and resting. And the tradition continues to clarify and expand, right to the present day.

Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022 A.D.)

In our own generation, it was Pope Benedict XVI who expressed the benefit of one final movement of Lectio Divina for a fast-paced, consumption-oriented world. In this, the sixth movement of actio was included, the Word becoming flesh in how we live it out each day.

Here is what moves me about this history.

No single generation built the whole structure. The Desert Fathers longed for depth. St. Benedict built upon it. Guigo II clarified the next step. And then, centuries later, a Pope who bore the name of that same faithful monk — as if history itself were winking — offered his own life-giving contribution to the practice for the generation he was given to serve.

Generation after generation, the Spirit has been forming His Church through this one practice of returning, slowly, to the written Word. And now it belongs to us.

Hebrews calls this the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). We are not trying out the latest spiritual fad this week. We are joining something ancient, something the Body of Christ has been doing across languages, cultures, centuries, and continents — refined for the last two thousand years.

We practice better when we know we are not practicing alone.

Tomorrow, we will walk through the six movements of Lectio Divina one by one. Friday, we will practice together. But today, simply sit with this: the same Spirit who breathed life into the text lives inside of you. We already have what we need to hear God speak through His Word. This practice simply slows our souls enough to receive what our spirit is already sitting under.

Watch Episode 3 of A Living Liturgy — “Sacred Reading: Recovering the Ancient Practice of Lectio Divina” — on YouTube for the full historical journey. Link below.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. How would you describe the posture you typically bring to Scripture: quick and transactional, reading to extract something useful, or slow and receptive, reading to be formed? What shaped that posture in you?

1. What does it do to you to know that followers of Jesus have been practicing this kind of slow, attentive reading for over a thousand years, that you are joining something ancient, not starting something new?

1. The Desert Fathers and Mothers withdrew from a culture of comfortable, shallow faith to recover something deeper. Where in your own life do you sense that invitation to step back from the noise and return to something more real?

PRAYER

Father, thank you that your Word is alive. Not was alive — is alive. That the same Spirit who inspired it lives in me, ready to speak fresh truth from ancient words every time I open the text. Forgive me for the times I have rushed past you in the pages. Teach me what it means to stand under your Word rather than simply seek to understand it. I want to receive, not just acquire. I want to be formed, not just informed. Meet me in the text. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Tomorrow we get practical. We are going to walk through all six movements of Lectio Divina one by one so that on Friday, when we practice together, you know exactly where we are going. Don’t miss it. And if this series has been helpful, share it with someone who wants more from their time in God’s Word. Proud of you!

— Chuck

My name is Chuck Ammons. I’m a husband, a father, a pastor, an author, and — like you — a follower of Jesus still learning what it means to live from everything He’s already done.

I write to help people discover two things:

The goodness of God as Father. And the greatness of their unique voice in Him.

Everything on this Substack is built around those two convictions. The finished work of the gospel — not as a doctrine to master, but as a reality to live from. And the specific, irreplaceable way God made you to receive and release His Kingdom in the world.

What You’ll Find Here

Five-day devotional series — Each one is built around a single theme and designed to be read Monday through Friday, one day at a time. They’re free. They’re rooted in Scripture. And they’re written to be received, not just consumed.

Standalone posts and reflections — Pastoral writing on faith, formation, and what it looks like to actually live the gospel in the ordinary places.

Everything here connects to A Living Liturgy, my series on YouTube where we slow all the way down and walk through the practices, the theology, and the life of intimacy with God together. I’ll link to those episodes throughout.

The Four Devotional Series — Start Anywhere, But Start

Each of these series stands alone. You don’t need to read them in order. But if you’re brand new and want a place to begin, I’ve suggested a starting point below.

Series 1 — How Two Become One: What the Cross Accomplished

Five days on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and what it means for who we already are.

Most of us know the gospel intellectually long before we live from it emotionally and practically. This series slows down at the cross, not to retell the story, but to stand inside it and see what actually happened there. What was accomplished. What was given. What was settled, forever.

If you have ever felt like your relationship with God depends on how well you’re performing, start here.

• Day 1

• Day 2

• Day 3

• Day 4

• Day 5

Series 2 — The God Within: Experiencing the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit

Five days on intimacy with God through the person of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not a theological category. He is a person, and He lives inside every believer. This series is for anyone who has sensed there is more to the life of the Spirit than they’ve yet experienced, and who wants a path toward it. Not a formula. A relationship.

If you have ever felt like God is distant or difficult to access, this series is for you.

• Day 1

• Day 2

• Day 3

• Day 4

• Day 5

Series 3 — Saturated: Fruit Takes Time

Five days on cultivating the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5 gives us a list we’ve all seen before: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. But the fruit of the Spirit is not a checklist to perform. It is the natural overflow of a life rooted in Christ. This series explores what it means to stop striving for the fruit and start abiding in the vine — and why that difference changes everything.

If you have ever tried harder to be more loving, more patient, or more joyful, and come up exhausted, this one is for you.

• Day 1

• Day 2

• Day 3

• Day 4

• Day 5

Series 4 — Come and Eat: Five Days on Sacred Reading of the Bible

Five days on Lectio Divina — the ancient, slow, prayerful practice of encountering God through His Word.

Most of us were never taught how to read the Bible and actually hear from God. We were taught to read quickly, take notes, complete plans. This series offers something different: a return to the way the Church has always read Scripture at its most formative — slowly, prayerfully, with space for the living Word to speak to a listening soul.

This is the most recent series and the best place to start if you want something practical and immediately usable in your time with God this week.

• Day 1

• Day 2

• Days 3–5: In the archive at chuckammons.substack.com

More series are being added weekly. Check it out!

A Living Liturgy on YouTube

Everything on this Substack has a companion on YouTube. A Living Liturgy is a series where we slow way down and walk through the practices and theology of a life with God — together, in real time.

The first four episodes lay out the gospel foundation for spiritual formation, why our spiritual life feels inconsistent (Heart, Plan, Rhythm), the ancient history of Sacred Reading, and a full guided practice of Lectio Divina in Psalm 23. New episodes are added twice every month on Tuesdays!

Find it at youtube.com/@pastorchuckammons.

Subscribe — It’s Free

New devotional series and posts come regularly. Subscribe below, and they’ll arrive in your inbox. No noise. Just the table, set fully for us in Christ.

I’m glad you’re here.

— Chuck @pastorchuckammons

Welcome back to our five-day journey into Sacred Reading. If you missed yesterday, we laid the gospel foundation for everything this week is built on. You can find Day 1 right here in the archive. Today, we get honest about why consistency in our time with God is so hard to come by and what to do about it.

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” — Psalm 16:11

Here is something I have observed over years of pastoring people. As shocking as it sounds, the problem in our growing closer to God is almost never a lack of desire.

Long ago, Augustine said it plainly: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.”

We were created in the image of God with a longing that only God can fulfill. All of us, right now, are hungering full-tilt for the love, peace, and joy found only in our Father. We may fill that hunger with a million substitutes that could never satisfy, but don’t miss this. We are starving, and God alone is true food. We are homesick, and God alone is home.

The problem, whether we realize it or not, isn’t that we don’t desire God enough. The problem is that most of us have never learned what, where, or how to eat.

So why do so many of us struggle to meet with God consistently in His Word? There are a few culprits worth naming.

Deception

Around many of us there is a subtle lie that God is distant, disappointed, or demanding — that we must somehow prove the seriousness of our love through sheer effort. These are the cries of an orphan spirit in an arena where it has not yet discovered, or has somewhere forgotten, the adoration of the Father. Praise God, the Holy Spirit draws near to teach us and to remind us of anything we’ve forgotten (John 14:26). We are drenched in grace.

Distraction

Like the shell game where a magician unleashes a flurry of activity designed to move your eyes away from the prize, there are seemingly endless empty shells beckoning for our attention. Every day, a thousand voices compete for our gaze, and the loudest voice wins. In an age where average daily screen time rivals a full-time job, we possess a deep need to reclaim rhythms of slow, present devotion.

Dilution

This is the slow drift toward watering down conviction into practical daily decisions that are very popular, and completely unsatisfying. Dilution is subtle because it welcomes all the right activity. It will happily endorse your daily quiet time, your prayer list, your small group. It loves the way those things pacify your soul with just enough reassurance that you’re on the right path, while you continue to build a life that chases the status quo — just like everyone else.

All of this said, perhaps the most common adversary to intimacy isn’t any of these external forces but one within. Many of us wrestle with a lack of discipline. By this, I do not mean discipline as punishment, self-effort, or religious rigidity, but discipline in its truest sense. The word the author of Hebrews uses describes everything a loving father brings to the raising of a child: the nurturing of all that is needed for wholeness and maturity, raising them until they can stand fully on their own. In this sense, discipline is the establishing and protecting of a steady rhythm that trains and matures what is already within us.

Because here is the truth. If you are in Christ, you already have everything needed for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). Jesus has torn down every veil of separation and every illusion of distance. The question is never whether God will show up. The question is whether we will allow the Holy Spirit to dismantle the false architecture we’ve built that keeps us from living out of what is already ours.

I know. I lived there for a long time. And then God opened my eyes to experience Him differently — not through some new revelation, but through a return to well-trodden paths walked by a great cloud of witnesses before us. This is why I started A Living Liturgy on YouTube: to slow way down, assume nothing, and serve as a guide on the journey toward a life of intimacy with God, rooted in who we are in Him and the specific path He has given each of us to receive and release His Kingdom on earth.

In Episode 2 of A Living Liturgy, I lay out a simple framework that has changed how I think about formation. Three things have to be in place for a spiritual life that is steady, strong, and sustainable:

Heart. Plan. Rhythm.

Heart is the passion piece, engaging God in ways that actually awaken our hunger for Him. And here is the permission you may need: there is no one right way to connect with God. He has never made a you before. In a world of copies and competition, God only makes originals. There is a unique way you find life in Him, and you have permission to not lead a devotional life you hate. You were meant to love and greatly enjoy your life with God. Psalm 16:11 says “in your presence there is fullness of joy.” Not duty. Joy.

Some people come alive in silence. Others on long walks. Some in deep study, others in worship. Find what makes your heart come alive. And when the way you feel close to God shifts, and it will, go on the adventure and move with the Spirit.

Plan is intentionality, orienting your life around specific times, places, and practices where you actually meet with God on purpose. Passion without a plan is a pipe dream. If you want physical health, you have to plan workouts, not just admire the idea of them. We cannot wait to feel like it. Our feelings are tremendous gifts and terrible gods — unpredictable, unstable, and often the last to arrive when we are on the right path and the first to leave when the going gets hard.

So while you need permission to seek a devotional life that genuinely inspires you, this does not mean placing your emotions in the driver’s seat. On the contrary, we lead our feelings onto paths of life, rather than follow them into the path of least resistance. A consistent time, a specific place, a regular practice — this is not legalism. It is love made tangible.

Finally, Rhythm is the long game. Showing up again and again, trusting that formation comes through consistency, not intensity. One extraordinary quiet time does not form a soul. One missed day does not ruin one, either. What forms us is the steady, unglamorous repetition. The reps. Because spiritual disciplines, as we said yesterday, are not a ladder to climb. They are a table to return to, every day, even when the meal feels simple.

This week, we are building toward a specific practice called Lectio Divina, a slow, prayerful approach to Scripture that followers of Jesus have used for centuries. We are spending time on foundation first because the practice is only as good as the posture we bring to it. If we come to it with striving, it becomes another ladder. But if we come rested and expectant, it becomes exactly what it was designed to be: a table to encounter the living God through His living Word.

Today, the invitation is simple.

It’s time to audit our architecture. Where does your life actually make space — unrushed, undistracted — for God? Not where you wish it did. Where it actually does.

And if the honest answer is nowhere right now, do not hang your head. In the gospel, it is only, ever, always shame off you, in Jesus’ name. There is no condemnation here. Only an invitation to square your shoulders and take one living step toward the life with God you were created to know.

Episode 2 of A Living Liturgy — “Why Your Spiritual Life Feels Inconsistent” — walks through Heart, Plan, and Rhythm in full, and will bless you. Watch it on YouTube. Link below.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Of the three — Heart, Plan, Rhythm — which is strongest in your life right now? Which is weakest?

2. What has historically gotten in the way of consistency in your time with God? Is it deception, distraction, dilution, or an invitation to grow in Spirit-led discipline? It may be several. Take some time and share honestly with God.

3. What is one small, concrete adjustment you could make this week — not an overhaul, just the obedient next step — to create more intentional space with God?

PRAYER

Lord, I hunger for you. I really do. And I want to experience more of you than I am currently experiencing. I want to hear your voice, to be led by your Spirit, to walk deeper into healing and wholeness. I believe that in your presence there is fullness of joy. Would you show me how you created me to experience you, and where you’re inviting me to draw near in this season?

Help me be honest about where my life is actually making space for you, and where it isn’t. Give me wisdom to build rhythms that are sustainable, not impressive. Teach me to lead my feelings rather than follow them into inconsistency. I don’t want a better spiritual routine. I want a deeper life with you. Show me the next step. I receive the anointing to follow where you lead. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

That’s Day 2. Tomorrow we step into the ancient history of Sacred Reading. You may be surprised by how far back this practice goes, and how many followers of Jesus across the centuries have walked this same path before us. Day 3 drops tomorrow. If someone in your life needs this right now, share it with them. Thank you for joining me on the journey!

— Chuck

Welcome to Come and Eat — a five-day devotional journey into one of the most ancient and life-giving ways the Church has ever encountered God through His Word. This week we are going to learn, walk through, and actually practice together a sacred reading discipline called Lectio Divina. But before we get to the practice, we need to get the foundation right. Because how we come to Scripture matters just as much as that we come. Let’s start there.

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.” 2 Peter 1:3

For most of my early life as a follower of Jesus, I treated the Bible like a test I wasn’t prepared to pass.

I carried a seven-panel daily prayer list folded in my wallet. I adopted rigid reading plans and followed them to the letter. I added extra studies, extra books, extra moral checklists — and on the outside, it all looked like spiritual passion. But inside, something else was happening. I was using the disciplines of faith as if they were a ladder. Every quiet time was a rung to climb. Every chapter finished was proof. Proof that I was serious. Proof that I was worthy. Proof that I could reach a place where God would finally be pleased with me.

What I didn’t know then — and what I want to name for us at the start of this week — is that I had the whole thing backward.

The work of the gospel is not something we climb toward. It is a reality we have already been placed inside of.

When Jesus came to the cross, He cried out, “It is finished” — not “I started it, but the rest is up to you.” The Greek word tetelestai, translated as "it is finished, literally means paid in full. He did it. Not me. He did all of it, not just a down payment. Accomplished. Complete. Done.

And it gets even better.

“For we who have believed enter that rest... His works have been finished since the creation of the world.” Hebrews 4:3

Let this sink in. The rest we are invited into wasn’t invented at Calvary. It was woven into the fabric of creation itself. The God who exists outside of space and time was already moving toward the cross before the first act of creation, for the Lamb was “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8), and only revealed in these last days for our sake (1 Peter 1:19-20).

The cross was not Plan B. It was always the plan. And you were always in it.

Here is what that means for how we come to Scripture this week.

We do not read the Bible to earn proximity to God. We read because we are already near. We do not practice sacred disciplines to become someone God can love. We practice them to learn, slowly and over a lifetime, how to live from the belovedness that is already ours. What we call discipleship is really our souls — our minds, will, and emotions — catching up with the reality that is already true in our spirits. How great is the love He lavishes on us. Right now.

Ephesians 2:4-6 uses a remarkable cluster of compound Greek words to describe what happened to us in Christ. We have been co-birthed, co-raised, and co-seated with Him in heavenly places. The same breath that filled Jesus’ lungs in a sealed tomb near Golgotha breathed into you the moment you said yes to Him. The same victorious power that conquered death and swallowed sin — the Bible says that power is alive in you, right now. And though you are reading this on a screen in an identifiable city on a findable map, in an even truer sense, you are already seated with Jesus in heavenly places — a citizen of heaven living as His ambassador on earth.

This is the foundation everything this week is built on. Which means this:

Spiritual disciplines, including the way we read Scripture, are not a ladder we climb to get closer to God. They are a table where we learn to eat what has already been prepared and set before us.

The difference matters. A ladder exhausts you, but a table nourishes you. A ladder only makes you sweat. A table invites you to sit. A ladder points to everywhere you haven’t arrived. A table says you are already here — come and eat.

This week, we are going to explore one of the most ancient and beautiful practices the Church has ever used to receive God through His Word: Lectio Divina — Sacred Reading. We are going to learn it, walk through it, and on Friday, actually practice it together.

But none of it will mean anything if we begin from the wrong place. So before we go any further, let’s settle the foundation:

You are not becoming God’s child. You already are. You are not working toward acceptance. You are learning to live from it.

Everything this week flows from that.

If you want to go deeper on the gospel foundation for spiritual formation, I encourage you to watch Episode 1 of A Living Liturgy on YouTube — “Formed and Forming.” Link below.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. When you think about your history with Bible reading or prayer, has it felt more like a ladder or a table? What shaped that?

2. What would it look like — practically, emotionally — to approach Scripture this week not as something to accomplish, but as something to receive?

3. Is there a lie about what God requires of you that you may have unknowingly carried into your time with Him? What would it look like to set it down before you open the text?

PRAYER

Father, I come to you today not as someone who has earned their way into your presence, but as someone who — because of your love for me — already belongs here. Thank you that the work is finished. Not almost finished, not conditionally finished, but truly done. I confess that I have often treated my time with you as a performance rather than a gift. Teach me to receive. Teach me to slow down. Teach me what it means to sit at a table that was set for me before I was born. I am here. And I trust that you are too. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Tomorrow we get honest about why consistency in our time with God is so hard to come by, and what is actually getting in the way. It is probably not what you think. Day 2 drops tomorrow. If someone in your life needs a fresh start with God’s Word, this would be a good week to share it with them.

— Chuck

This is Day 5 of this week’s devotional series on abiding in Jesus and bearing real fruit. If you are just joining us, start at the beginning — each day builds on the last. The sermon that launched this week is linked at the bottom. Glad you are here.

There was once a farmer who worked from the first light of morning until he could no longer stand, driven by one desire: to see his fields bear fruit. He had done everything right. He had studied the soil, selected the finest seed, and planted his crop in a valley that seemed made for growing things. The sun found his field perfectly. The conditions were exactly what they should have been.

There was only one problem. He had no plan to get water to the soil.

His water source was a waterfall at the top of the hill behind his home — full, consistent, never running dry. But the farmer, knowing no other way, rose before dawn each morning with the largest bucket he could carry and made trip after exhausting trip up and down that hill, hauling water one bucket at a time. He did this every day. He never stopped long enough to consider that he could dig a channel from the top of the hill to the field below…that with one brief season of intentional work, the water could flow freely on its own. That the water was designed to move downhill. That it would do the work, if he would only make a way.

Many of us are this farmer.

Our lives have been planted at exactly the right time. The conditions for a harvest are present. But we have spent our days exhausted, longing for the nourishment we cannot seem to produce because we have never stopped carrying buckets long enough to dig the channel. It is all too easy to become so consumed by the urgent that we fail to make room for the essential. We keep moving. We stay busy. We mean to connect. And yet the water source stands full on the hill above us, waiting.

The channel is not a program. It is not one more thing to add to an already full schedule. The channel is the decision, made once and returned to daily, to stop being the managers of our water source and to simply make room for the flow.

The Simplest Possible Landing

We have spent this week looking at fruit — what it is, what it is not, what season we are in, what we have been chasing, and what the path forward might look like. After all of that, Jesus gives us the simplest possible image to close on.

A branch and a vine.

A branch does not produce fruit. It does not manage fruit or strategize about fruit. It does one thing: it stays connected. Everything it will ever bear comes through the vine. Its entire job description is to remain.

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:4–5

The Greek word translated “abide” is meno, and its range of meaning is richer than the English lets on. It carries the idea of remaining, staying, dwelling, making one’s home in a place. It is not a visit. It is not a check-in. It is the settled, sustained choice to stay put — to make this the place where you actually live. It is not passive. Not striving. It is simply, stubbornly present. Resisting the pull toward distraction, performance, and counterfeit fruit — and choosing, again and again, to “stubbornly sit.”

And if we needed one more invitation to this posture, the Father gives it freely in Psalm 46:10. The Passion Translation renders it this way:

“Surrender your anxiety! Be silent and stop your striving and you will see that I am God. I am God above all the nations, and I am exalted throughout the whole earth.” Psalm 46:10 TPT

Stop carrying the bucket. Be still. He is already God. He does not need our striving to remain on the throne. And we do not need to earn what He has already positioned us to receive.

That is the whole thing. After everything this week has surfaced, this is where it all lands.

What Abiding Looks Like in an Ordinary Day

We become what we behold.

This is far more than a metaphor. It is a spiritual reality with an observable outcome. We begin to look like whatever holds our attention most. If our inner lives are more shaped by anxiety, comparison, and noise than by time with the Father, our fruit will show it, not because we are failing, but because we are drawing from the wrong source.

The resources built around this series are not programs to pile onto an already full life. A Living Liturgy is a bi-weekly series you can find on the same YouTube channel where the sermon below is posted. It is a practical, unhurried guide to the ancient spiritual disciplines — what they are, why they matter, and how ordinary people can begin practicing them in ordinary life. My desire in building it was never to hand you another program. I simply want to be a friend on the journey, walking with you one practical step and one honest question at a time, as we learn together what it looks like to build regular rhythms of intimacy with God, together. I am not an expert pointing from a distance. I am a guide helping you discover the channel God has already provided in your schedule and your soul.

But the space has to be made. No one can make it for us.

We begin to echo what we listen to.

When someone is truly abiding, we notice it. They begin to sound like Jesus, because that is what happens when we spend time listening to someone. We absorb their cadence, their priorities, their way of seeing. And what we begin to hear in people who are genuinely connected to the Vine is the language of heaven.

Blessing is the language of heaven. It is the first thing the Father did when He created us, and it is what He is still speaking in the final moments of Revelation. The Hebrew word for “bless” is a layered, stunning word — it means “to lift the head, look in the eyes, gaze upon in delight, and to furnish with absolutely everything needed to flourish.” That is what God is doing, every moment.

1 John 3:1 tells us He is the waterfall planted right at the place we reside, constantly lavishing His love upon us. This is the voice we are invited to listen to. This is the language we are invited to learn. And the longer we stay connected, the more naturally it begins to come out of us: in how we treat the overlooked, the hurting, the last, and the lost. Not as a program. As fruit.

LAW becomes a daily rhythm, not a rigid system.

Remember the framework we introduced on Day 3 — three questions designed not to perform but to posture our souls, to help us keep in step with where the Holy Spirit desires to take us.

L — Will I surrender my need to control and yield to the Holy Spirit’s Leadership?

A — Will I cease striving in my own power and yield to the Holy Spirit’s Anointing in my life?

W — Will I stop demanding to predict, understand, and figure out every turn, and create regular daily space to hear the Holy Spirit’s Wisdom?

These are not boxes to check. They are postures to return to, morning by morning, moment by moment. Miss it? Simply return. It really is that simple. The channel is always open.

A Closing Invitation

We end this week where the whole thing has been pointing. It is time to set aside real, tangible time — regular time — to spend in prayer and in God’s Word. Not a perfect system. A channel. Something workable, something you can make a priority, starting today.

Next week, I will share a special five-day devotional on making God’s Word come alive: practical tools for reading Scripture in a way that actually forms you. But it starts here. It starts with putting down the buckets and making space for the Living Water to flow right to every place you need it.

Let’s close this week where all fruit begins:

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” 1 John 3:1

God loved us while we were still His enemies. Every fruit, every season, every surrender flows from this. He was already moving toward you before you made any move toward Him. We are not working to earn connection. We are staying in a connection He initiated, and sustains.

He is the vine. We are the branches. We need only to stubbornly sit.

Questions for Reflection:

What does a regular rhythm of time with God actually look like for you in this season? Get specific: When in your schedule? Where will you be? What will it look like? This is not about perfection. It is about making a plan you can actually keep, and starting now.

Who in your life sounds like Jesus — not because of what they have accomplished, but because of their fruit? How can you be more intentional about spending time with them regularly? What would it take to make that happen?

After this week, what is the one area the Spirit has surfaced in you that you want to stay surrendered in? Walk through LAW one more time before you close.

Prayer:

Father, I do not want to spend another season carrying buckets when You have placed a waterfall at the top of my hill. Forgive me for the exhausting substitutes I have reached for — the striving, the performing, the managing. I want to be connected to You deeply enough that what grows out of my life is real, something that can actually feed someone else.

I surrender the need to lead myself. I receive Your anointing in place of my own effort. I choose to make space today, and every day, to hear Your wisdom and walk in it. When I miss it, I will return.

Teach me to stay. Teach me to abide. Teach me to make my home in You.

I am Yours. Amen.

If this devotional has been meaningful to you this week, consider sharing it with someone who needs it. You can find the full sermon that launched this series at the bottom of this post — I would love for you to watch it and pass it along.

Next week: a special five-day devotional on making God’s Word come alive. It is going to be a good one. Don’t miss it!

— Chuck