Devotional, Series

God Beginnings, part 7: There’s No “Without” in God

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Read Exodus 33:12–17

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20 NLT)

A modern congregation sits in a warm wooden sanctuary as the center aisle opens into a wilderness road. Worshipers transition into the mixed multitude journeying toward Mount Sinai beneath radiant clouds, joining present-day worship with God’s covenant-forming presence in Exodus.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “There’s No ‘Without’ in God” at Life-Giving Water Devotions

When I sat down for worship on the first Sunday of my new appointment just a few short weeks ago, I did not yet have my bearings straight.

I did not fully know the order of worship or how everything moved. The people, patterns, and particulars were still unfamiliar to me. After spending time away from the regular rhythms of pastoral ministry during my renewal leave, I might have expected the experience to feel strange.

Instead, I felt at home.

The prayers, music, Scripture, sanctuary, and people gathered around me formed a rhythm I already knew. I did not need to understand every detail before I could enter into it. I still do not know exactly how I fit within these particular communities, but I recognize the life we are sharing.

So, in those first worship services that first Sunday, the unfamiliar was being held by something familiar…and it still is.

That experience does not give me a complete map of what lies ahead. It does not instantly answer every question or remove every uncertainty. But it reminds me that I am not beginning from nowhere. God’s presence is already here—in the worship, within the gathered community, throughout the surroundings, and within me.

Moses also knows what it means to face a new beginning without having his bearings straight.

The people of Israel have escaped Egypt, crossed the sea, and entered the wilderness. They have endured hunger, thirst, fear, conflict, and uncertainty. Then, while Moses is on Mount Sinai, they fashion a golden calf and worship it. The covenant has scarcely been established before it is violated.

Yet the journey must continue.

God tells Moses to lead the people forward, but Moses is not willing to settle for a destination. The promise of land is not enough. Survival is not enough. Even success is not enough.

“If you don’t personally go with us,” Moses says, “don’t make us leave this place.”

Moses understands that reaching the promised land without God’s presence would not be the fulfillment of God’s promise. It would only be arriving somewhere else.

A destination can be reached without faithfulness. A goal can be accomplished without love. An institution can survive without serving the purpose for which it was created. Something can succeed by every measurable standard and still bear little resemblance to the character of God.

The promised land without God’s presence would be only land.

So Moses refuses to go without God.

But how do people recognize the presence of a God who cannot be contained within any single place, person, feeling, or experience?

Sometimes God’s presence becomes tangible through another person—someone who stays, listens, carries, feeds, challenges, advocates, or walks beside us. Sometimes it surrounds us through a community whose shared life gives us somewhere to belong. At other times, it meets us through an unexpected opportunity, a timely interruption, a place of refuge, the natural world, music, art, memory, rest, resistance, or the sudden opening of a way we could not see before.

God’s presence takes more forms than we can name and often reaches us through instruments we were never taught to recognize.

That was already true of the people journeying with Moses. Exodus tells us that a “rabble of non-Israelites” also left Egypt with Israel. Other translations call them a “mixed multitude.” They were not merely outsiders traveling beside God’s covenant people. At Sinai, this varied multitude was gathered together and constituted as Israel—the covenant people of God. Israel had been Jacob’s name and the identity of his descendants; now God was forming a wider group of people, claiming them as God’s own, and leading them toward land promised to their ancestors.

That makes what follows even more startling. Before Moses descends from the mountain carrying the tablets of the covenant, the people fashion the golden calf. Almost immediately after being constituted as God’s covenant community, they violate that covenant. Yet even after this profound failure, Moses pleads for God’s presence to remain with the whole people.

And, as can be seen, God’s community was already larger and more complicated than a neatly guarded religious boundary.

That should matter to Christians.

We sometimes behave as though God’s presence can be found only among Christian people, inside Christian buildings, through Christian language, or within experiences carrying an approved Christian label. Yet God has never been limited by the boundaries we construct.

The person through whom grace reaches us may share our faith. That person may not. We may encounter God within a sanctuary, but we may also encounter God in a hospital room, a recovery meeting, a forest, a coffee shop, a concert, a protest, or around a kitchen table. God may speak through Scripture and prayer, but God may also reach us through people whom religious institutions have dismissed, distrusted, or excluded.

Grace does not wait for us to verify the religious credentials of its instruments before reaching us through them.

This does not mean that every voice, impulse, institution, or opportunity represents God. Discernment still matters. Moses gives us a way to begin that discernment: God’s presence cannot be separated from God’s character.

Where people are being driven back into bondage, we should hesitate before calling it God’s will. Where power is protected at the expense of vulnerable people, invoking God’s name does not make the work holy. Where conformity is demanded while compassion is withheld, religious language may be plentiful while the character of God is nowhere to be seen.

This is where Moses’ prayer becomes uncomfortable for the church.

Would we rather remain in the wilderness than reach a seemingly successful future without mercy, truth, justice, hospitality, and love?

Churches can pursue growth without discipleship, stability without faithfulness, unity without justice, tradition without living memory, and mission without love. We can become so determined to preserve an institution, complete a project, protect a reputation, or reach a destination that God’s presence becomes something we invoke only after our plans have been settled.

Moses refuses to use God as a ceremonial endorsement of the people’s journey. God must remain at its center.

For Christians, Jesus offers the same promise of presence at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus sends the disciples toward people, places, and circumstances they cannot yet imagine. They receive a mission, but not a detailed map. They are not promised ease, universal acceptance, institutional security, or visible success.

They are promised, “I am with you always.”

Jesus does not promise that they will never go without anything. They will sometimes go without certainty, comfort, approval, safety, and familiar landmarks. But they will not undertake the journey without Christ.

There may be plenty of “without” along the way, but there is no journey without God.

God’s presence may surround us before we have learned the order, found our bearings, or understood how everything moves. It may meet us through a familiar rhythm in an unfamiliar place. It may become visible in the companion beside us, the multitude surrounding us, the provision sustaining us, the beauty awakening us, the truth unsettling us, the resistance strengthening us, or the path opening before us.

The question is not merely whether God is present.

The question is whether we are paying attention to the many ways God may be present—and whether we are willing to refuse any destination that requires us to leave God’s character behind.

Moses would rather remain in the wilderness with God than reach the promised land without God.

Would we?

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
No destination is truly promised land if reaching it requires us to leave the character of God behind.

PRAYER
Ever-present God, sharpen our vision so that we may recognize your presence in people, places, and forms we might otherwise overlook. Keep us from mistaking success for faithfulness or religious language for holiness. Wherever you lead, help us walk with the varied multitude you gather in mercy, truth, justice, hospitality, and love. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 6: This Is Your Story

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Read Deuteronomy 6:20–25

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19 NLT)

Diverse hands gather historical photographs, handwritten documents, and an open book around an antique New Jersey map highlighting Mount Holly and Trenton, representing the many voices that preserve, inherit, and expand our shared stories.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “This Is Your Story” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I recently moved back to my home state of New Jersey. This time, I landed in Mount Holly, an area that played a significant—though often overlooked—role in the American Revolution. Just days before Washington’s victory at Trenton, fighting around Iron Works Hill drew a substantial Hessian force into Mount Holly. Not Trenton, but close! The events here became part of the larger story that helped turn the tide of the war.

Living here has made the history feel especially close during America’s 250th birthday year. Roads, buildings, markers, and place names quietly remind me that the American story unfolded beneath the feet of people who once stood where I now stand.

Perhaps that is one reason I have found myself thinking again about the musical Hamilton. The show retells the founding of the United States through people whose voices, faces, and musical styles had long been excluded from the way that history was usually presented. Near its conclusion, the musical asks, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

That question reaches far beyond Alexander Hamilton.

What story are we telling?

Whose story are we telling?

Who has been left out of the telling?

In Deuteronomy, Moses imagines a future generation asking why the people live as they do. A child will ask about the commandments, laws, and practices handed down to them. The question beneath the question is simple: Why does any of this matter?

The people are not told to answer, “Because we have always done it this way.”

They are not told to begin with rules, institutions, or traditions. They are told to begin with a story: We were enslaved, and God brought us out.

That answer is remarkable because the children asking the question did not personally experience slavery in Egypt. They did not stand before Pharaoh. They did not walk through the sea. Yet the story is given to them in the first-person plural: We were enslaved. God brought us out.

This is your story.

Not because you personally witnessed every event, but because you belong to a people shaped by what God has done. The story of liberation becomes part of your identity, and its meaning becomes part of your responsibility.

That does not mean we inherit a story passively. Every generation must decide how faithfully it will tell what it has received. We can preserve the words while losing their meaning. We can repeat the traditions while forgetting the freedom they were intended to serve. We can tell the story so selectively that those who suffered disappear while those who held power become its only recognizable characters.

Nations do this. Families do this. Churches do this.

We tell stories about courageous founders while overlooking those whose labor made their accomplishments possible. We remember celebrated leaders while forgetting the quiet faithfulness of those who worked without recognition. We preserve photographs of people who stood at the center while leaving unnamed those who were pushed to the edges—or kept outside the frame entirely.

Sometimes the stories we inherit are not false, but incomplete.

Telling a fuller story does not require us to despise our inheritance. It asks us to love the truth more than the comfort of our preferred version. A community cannot honestly testify to God’s liberating work while silencing those who can tell us where bondage still exists.

This is especially important for the church. We can become so preoccupied with preserving our buildings, worship styles, committees, and customs that we forget the story that gave them meaning. When someone asks why any of it matters, “Because we have always done it this way” is not a testimony.

The testimony is that God liberates.

God heard the cries of an enslaved people. God confronted the power that held them. God led them out and began forming them into a community that was not supposed to reproduce the bondage from which they had been freed.

This is Israel’s story, and it remains Israel’s story. Christians do not replace Israel within it. Jesus was Jewish; his life and ministry were formed by Israel’s Scriptures, worship, and hope. Through Christ, Christians understand ourselves as drawn into God’s continuing work of liberation.

For Christians, Jesus embodies this same liberating movement. Christ announced freedom to captives, restored those whom society had pushed aside, confronted powers that diminished human life, and broke the grip of sin and death through the cross and resurrection. Jesus did not merely invite people to believe in freedom. Jesus invited them to become a community that lives differently because God has set them free.

Our testimony, then, is not simply that God liberated people long ago. It is that the liberating work of God continues in Jesus Christ—and that those who follow Christ must not recreate the bondage from which Christ has set us free.

If our telling of the story protects power more than it proclaims liberation, whose story are we actually telling?

If our traditions demand conformity but produce no freedom, what story are they preserving?

If people cannot recognize themselves among those whom we say God loves, welcomes, and delivers, who have we omitted from the telling?

Isaiah’s announcement that God is doing something new does not erase the old story. It reveals that the God who liberated before is still at work. Remembering what God has done should teach us to recognize liberation when it begins appearing among us again—even when it does not look exactly like the past.

“This is your story” is therefore both a gift and a calling.

You belong to the story of a God who hears the oppressed, leads people out of bondage, and makes pathways where none seemed possible. But you are also responsible for how that story continues through you. Your choices, your witness, your silences, and your courage become part of what the next generation will inherit.

One day, someone may ask why we believed, worshiped, served, resisted, welcomed, or hoped as we did.

May our answer be more than, “This is what we were taught.”

May we be able to say, “We were bound, and God led us toward freedom. Others were left outside the story, and God taught us to listen. We thought the road had ended, and God made a new way.”

This is our story.

This is your story.

Now, what story will your life tell?

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
We inherit the story of God’s liberation not merely to repeat it, but to live it truthfully and ensure that no one is erased from its telling.

PRAYER
Liberating God, teach us to tell our stories truthfully, listen for the voices that have been excluded, and recognize the new ways you are leading people toward freedom. May the story we pass on bear faithful witness to what you have done and what you are still doing. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 5: From Simple Stones to Special Stories

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A worn pair of black Doc Martens with red laces rests beside a cairn of river stones on a sunlit woodland trail. Handwritten poetry pages emerge from the boots as the path continues into the distance, symbolizing memories and stories carried across life’s many crossings.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “From Simple Stones to Special Stories” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Read Joshua 4:1–9

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation  about the glorious deeds of the LORD, about his power and his mighty wonders.” (Psalm 78:4 NLT)

When I was seventeen years old, I got my first pair of Doc Martens. More than three decades later, as I approach fifty, I still have them. They are worn, of course, but I can still put them on and walk in them.

To anyone else, they are simply an old pair of boots. They have little monetary value, and their scuffs and creases are hardly unusual. Yet when I look at them, I do not merely see worn leather. I see where my feet—and I—have been throughout much of my life.

I wrote poetry in those boots when I was seventeen. The young person wearing them carried hopes, fears, dreams, questions, and wounds I was still learning how to name. Poetry became one of the places where I could put what I was carrying when I did not know where else to place it.

I have continued writing through all the years since. The boots bear the physical marks of where my feet traveled. My poems bear the interior marks of where my spirit traveled.

Each poem and the boots themselves are like stones taken from a particular crossing. Some hold my hopes. Others contain my fears. Some preserve dreams, while others give form to nightmares. They carry moments of insight alongside moments of foolishness. Together, they form an altar of remembrance—one upon which my blood, sweat, tears, and entire unfinished self have been poured.

That does not make every poem equally wise. It does not mean every thought I preserved still represents who I am today. Some stones remind me how far I have come precisely because I would no longer say what I once said or see the world exactly as I once saw it.

Still, they belong to the story.

After Israel crossed the Jordan River, God instructed Joshua to choose twelve people, one from each tribe, and have each person carry a stone from the riverbed. Those stones were arranged as a memorial so that future generations would ask what they meant.

The stones themselves were ordinary. They were not carved with sacred words or transformed into precious jewels. What made them special was the story they carried. They came from a place through which the people could not have passed without God making a way.

The stones quietly proclaimed, “The Holy One met us here.”

They also belonged to the whole community. One stone was taken for each tribe. No single tribe possessed the entire testimony. Each carried part of the memorial, and together they told the story of a people whom God had brought across.

That matters because communities are often tempted to preserve only their preferred stones. We remember the victories while softening the failures. We celebrate those who held visible positions while overlooking those whose faithfulness was quieter. We repeat the stories that make us feel proud while leaving wounds, conflicts, exclusions, and uncomfortable truths buried beneath the river.

But an altar of remembrance built only from polished memories cannot bear honest testimony.

Faithful remembrance does not require us to pretend that every part of our history was good. Israel’s stones did not testify that Israel was flawless. They testified that God was faithful to an unfinished people. Our own memorials can do the same. The moments of joy, grief, wisdom, foolishness, courage, failure, healing, and change can all become part of a truthful witness to the grace that carried us.

The church has its stones too: buildings, traditions, hymns, communion tables, baptismal fonts, old photographs, handwritten records, and stories passed from one generation to another. These things can become sacred reminders of where God has met a community.

But the stones are not God.

A memorial becomes an idol when preserving it becomes more important than following the God to whom it points. The stones were meant to tell future generations how God brought the people across the river. They were never meant to keep the people standing forever on its bank.

My Doc Martens remind me where my feet have been. They do not tell my feet where they are allowed to go next. My poems preserve pieces of who I have been. They do not imprison me within an earlier version of myself.

The same is true for all our stones.

We carry them so that we can tell the truth about where we have been, recognize the grace that met us there, and trust God as we continue becoming. Ordinary stones become special stories when they bear witness—not merely to our past, but to the faithful presence of the One who carried us through it.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The stones we carry should help us remember where God met us, not prevent us from following where God leads next.

PRAYER
Faithful God, help us remember our stories truthfully. Teach us to recognize the grace that has carried us through joy, struggle, wisdom, and failure. May the stones we preserve bear witness to your presence without becoming barriers to where you are leading us next. Amen.

[i] Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 4: The God Who Goes With Us

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Read Genesis 12:1–9

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20 NLT)

A lone hiker pauses beside a carefully stacked stone cairn on a forest trail at sunrise. Golden light filters through towering pines as the winding path disappears into the distance, symbolizing the journey of faith and the quiet practice of remembering where God has been encountered along the way.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The God Who Goes With Us” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

A few weeks ago, my family and I packed up our lives and moved to Mount Holly to begin a new chapter in my ministry. As exciting as a new beginning can be, it also means learning an entirely new rhythm of life. New neighbors. New roads. New routines. Right now, my phone rarely leaves its place on the dashboard. Every trip to one of my churches, the grocery store, or just about anywhere else begins the same way: I enter an address and follow the next turn. For now, I’m still learning the roads. I’m trusting the directions one turn at a time.

Abram knew something about new beginnings. Unlike me, however, there was no GPS guiding each turn. There was no detailed map, no carefully planned itinerary, and no assurance of exactly what lay ahead. There was simply an invitation: “Go…to the land I will show you.”

We often read that invitation as if Abram already knew exactly who was speaking. After all, we know how the story unfolds. We know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We know Moses, the Exodus, the prophets, the cross, and the empty tomb. Abram knew none of that.

There was no Bible to open. No covenant people. No history of God’s faithfulness stretching back through generations. Abram came from a world filled with many gods and many voices claiming authority. Before Abram could trust the promise, Abram first had to decide whether to trust the One making it. Faith began, not with certainty, but with relationship.

That relationship unfolded one encounter at a time.

When Abram arrived in Canaan, the journey was far from over. God’s promise had not yet been fulfilled. Yet the Lord appeared to Abram, and Abram built an altar. Then he journeyed on. God met him again, and another altar was built. Then the journey continued.

Those altars were not monuments celebrating that Abram had finally arrived. They were witnesses to an unfolding relationship. Each one quietly declared, “I met the Holy One here.” As the journey continued, another altar testified, “And here as well.”

How often do we miss those moments in our own lives?

We spend so much time looking toward the next destination that we overlook the evidence of God’s presence where we already stand. We ask God to reveal the whole map while ignoring the places where grace has already met us. We keep looking for proof that God is ahead of us, while the journey itself is becoming the evidence that God has been with us all along.

The church can make the same mistake. We become captivated by strategic plans, attendance goals, capital campaigns, and visions of what comes next. Planning is not the problem. But when our plans become more important than paying attention to God’s presence among us, we risk missing the very One we claim to follow. Before asking where God is taking us, perhaps we should first ask, “Where has God already met us?”

Jesus closes Matthew’s Gospel with a promise that echoes God’s invitation to Abram: “I am with you always.” Once again, God does not promise certainty. There is no detailed itinerary, no guarantee of an easy road, and no assurance that every question will be answered before the next step is taken. Instead, Jesus offers the same promise Abram had been discovering all along: presence.

Perhaps that’s why Abram kept building altars. They were acts of worship, but they were also acts of remembrance. Each altar became a testimony that the God who had called him was also the God who had met him—here…and here…and here again. They reminded Abram that the journey itself had become sacred because every step revealed another encounter with the Holy One.

We still build altars today, though they rarely look like piles of stone. They are the Bible worn soft from years of prayer, the journal filled with moments of grace, the waters of baptism, the bread and cup shared at Christ’s table, the photograph that reminds us of how far we’ve come, the hospital room where hope returned, the cemetery where resurrection became more than a doctrine, and the stories we tell of the places where we knew we were not alone. None of these things contain God. They simply remind us where we encountered God.

Perhaps one of the most important spiritual disciplines is learning to remember. In a world consumed with reaching the next destination, faith invites us to pause and build altars of remembrance. Every story of God’s faithfulness becomes another stone. Every remembered act of grace becomes another witness. Over time, our lives themselves become living altars, quietly proclaiming that wherever the journey has taken us, the Holy One has been there all along.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The journey of faith is not measured by how far we have traveled, but by how many places we have learned to recognize the presence of God.

PRAYER
Faithful God, when we long for certainty, teach us to trust your presence. Open our eyes to remember where you have met us, and may our lives become living altars that bear witness to your faithfulness. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 3: The Invitation Before the Instructions

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Read Genesis 12:1–4a

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105 NLT)

A lone person walks down a winding path toward warm morning light while leaving behind weathered coats and garments hanging on a rustic fence. Each discarded garment bears a painful label such as "Not Enough," "Failure," "Shame," "Rejection," "Fear," "Expectations," "I Can't," "Past Mistakes," and "Other People's Opinions." The scene symbolizes leaving false identities behind and trusting God's invitation into a new life.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “God Beginnings, Part 3: The Invitation Before the Instructions” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I am neurodivergent. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m on the autism spectrum. Neurodivergence comes in many forms. I live with the lasting effects of a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a pickup truck while crossing a county road on my bicycle when I was fourteen. I’m also a highly sensitive person and a creative. My mind notices connections, perspectives, and possibilities that many people overlook. I’ve spent much of my life seeing the world a little differently than those around me.

The problem wasn’t that I was different. The problem was that difference made people uncomfortable.

Long before the accident, I had already learned that the world is remarkably quick to hand out labels. In second grade, because I couldn’t answer flash-card math problems fast enough, my teacher humiliated me by calling me “Slowpoke” and “Toad.” Other kids piled on with names of their own: “fatso,” “tub of lard,” “faggot,” “queer,” “pussy,” “wuss.” In sixth grade, another teacher called me “queerbait” in front of the class. High school wasn’t much kinder. I was a goth kid, so I became “freak,” “weirdo,” and, once again, “faggot.”

Those names have something in common. None of them came from God.

And yet, if we’re not careful, we begin to believe the labels other people give us. We carry them into adulthood. We build our lives around them. We let them tell us who we are—and who we can never become.

I suspect I’m not alone. Maybe your labels were different. Maybe they weren’t shouted across a classroom or whispered down a school hallway. Maybe they came from a parent, a spouse, a teacher, a church, a diagnosis, a mistake, or even your own inner critic. Whatever they were, they have a way of sticking. Before long, we stop hearing them as opinions and start believing them as truth.

When we read God’s call to Abram in Genesis 12, it’s easy to focus on the geography. “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family…” We imagine a map, a long journey, and an unknown destination. But perhaps God’s invitation is deeper than a change of address. Every place Abram is told to leave is also a place that helped define who he was. His homeland. His family. His inheritance. His past. Before God changes Abram’s destination, God begins loosening the identities that have shaped his life.

God doesn’t begin with a detailed itinerary. God begins with an invitation.

That matters because many of us spend our lives asking God for directions while still clinging to identities that were never ours to carry. We want to know where we’re going before we’re willing to let go of who we’ve believed ourselves to be. But discipleship rarely works that way. God’s invitation often comes before God’s explanation because transformation begins long before we arrive at our destination.

Perhaps the first thing God is asking you to leave isn’t a place at all.

Perhaps it’s the voice that still tells you you’ll never be enough.

Perhaps it’s the shame you’ve carried for years.

Perhaps it’s the identity built around a failure, a fear, a wound, or someone else’s opinion.

Perhaps it’s the version of yourself you’ve maintained simply because it’s familiar.

God’s invitation is not an invitation to pretend those experiences never happened. Abram’s homeland would always be part of his story. Your story will always be part of yours. But our past is not meant to become our prison.

God does not call Abram because Abram has finally figured everything out. God calls Abram because God sees someone capable of becoming more than the world has told him he is.

The same is true for us.

Faith is not pretending to have all the answers. Faith is trusting the One who knows us more deeply than any label ever could. It is believing that God’s voice speaks a truer word over our lives than every insult, every stereotype, every diagnosis, every expectation, every success, and every failure.

Before God gives us instructions for the journey, God first invites us to trust the One who is calling us by our truest name.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God’s invitation begins where false identities end.

PRAYER
Gracious God, so many voices compete to tell us who we are. Help us release every name that does not come from You and trust the identity You lovingly speak over our lives. Give us the courage to follow Your invitation, even before we see the whole path ahead. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, part 2: The Yoke

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Read Matthew 11:29-30

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1 NLT)

A weathered wooden yoke rests across two rough support posts inside a rustic barn. Warm late-afternoon light reveals the worn grain of the wood as dust hangs in the air and long shadows stretch across the floor. No people or animals are present, emphasizing quiet readiness and invitation.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “God Beginnings, Part 2: The Yoke” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Some of the most honest moments in film aren’t the loud ones. They arrive quietly, almost accidentally, in the middle of something else entirely — and stay with us long after the plot has moved on. The Shawshank Redemption holds one of those. There’s a scene where a prisoner locks himself in a warden’s office just long enough to find a record of two women singing in Italian, and plays it over the loudspeaker for the entire yard to hear. None of the men listening understand the language. Most will never know the names of the voices reaching them. For a few minutes, guards and inmates alike simply stop — caught by something they can’t explain, in a place built to strip away exactly this kind of beauty. Red, reflecting on it afterward, says it felt like something small and free had gotten loose inside those walls, if only for a moment.

What’s striking is that presence didn’t require proximity. The women singing had no idea that prison yard existed. They weren’t there, would never be there, and yet everyone in that yard was, for a few minutes, less alone than they’d been an hour before. That’s worth sitting with, because it says something true about how burden-sharing actually works — it doesn’t always require someone physically beside you. Sometimes presence arrives through a voice you’ll never meet, carried across distance and time, and it’s enough to lighten what you’re carrying without removing an ounce of it.

That’s close to what Jesus means when he says, “Take my yoke upon you… my burden is light.” The word translated “light” or “easy” — chrēstos in the Greek — doesn’t mean effortless. It’s the same word used elsewhere for kindness and goodness, and even for things well-fitted to whoever wears them. A yoke described this way isn’t weightless. It’s shaped to the one carrying it. Jesus isn’t offering an escape from labor. He’s offering labor that fits, carried alongside a presence that doesn’t have to be visible to be real.

That phrase — “take my yoke” — wasn’t new when Jesus said it. Rabbis of his era regularly spoke of “the yoke of Torah,” language for submitting to a teacher’s way of living faithfully before God. Jesus enters a metaphor his hearers already knew and makes a specific claim inside it: not that yokes are the problem, but that a yoke wrongly imposed becomes something the original intention never meant. Practically, a yoke also joins two — often pairing an experienced animal with a younger one, so weight is never carried solo. Jesus isn’t removing the labor of discipleship. He’s ending its isolation.

Paul makes a strikingly similar move in Galatians, though the passage gets misread often. “Do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” is not Paul rejecting Torah, and it is certainly not Paul rejecting Judaism — Paul remained Jewish his entire life and never asked Jewish believers to abandon their observance. What he’s confronting is more specific: Jewish Christians who had already received the yoke of Christ, and who were then requiring Gentile converts to also take on Torah observance — circumcision chief among the signs — as a condition of full belonging. The dispute was never whether the law mattered. It was whether anything could be added to grace as a precondition for acceptance. Paul’s answer is no. Not because the added thing was without value, but because grace, by definition, cannot carry a cover charge.

Set beside each other, Jesus and Paul aren’t in tension. They’re making the same claim a generation apart: burden imposed as a gatekeeper to belonging is not the same thing as burden shared as the shape of a life already given.

This pattern doesn’t only belong to history. The Pharisaic movement didn’t begin as legalism for its own sake — it began as a sincere attempt to make faithfulness accessible to ordinary people, not reserved for priests. Its weight accumulated slowly, through generations of careful, well-meaning interpretation, until the original invitation was nearly buried beneath the apparatus built to protect it. Churches inherit this same tendency. Expectations layer onto grace with good intentions — attendance, precision, service, respectability — until belonging quietly becomes conditional again, indistinguishable from what Paul once contested. No villains are required. Only time, sincerity, and a failure to keep asking what’s been added since the invitation was first spoken.

The yoke Christ offers was never meant to trade one weight for another. It was meant to trade isolation for presence — sometimes near, sometimes as distant and unlikely as a stranger’s voice traveling across a prison yard — and to prove that a burden shared, even at a distance, is no longer carried alone.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Presence doesn’t require proximity to lighten what you carry.

PRAYER
God, thank you for the ways your presence reaches us even when we cannot see or touch it. Forgive us for the weight we’ve added to what you meant as gift. Teach us the difference between a yoke that isolates and a yoke that joins. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, part 1: The Invitation

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An empty hospital mental health evaluation room sits in quiet shadow. A hospital gown is draped over a lone chair, while an open door at the far end floods the sterile space with warm light. The contrast between darkness and light subtly symbolizes Christ's invitation meeting us in our vulnerability before anything has been repaired.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “God Beginnings, Part 1: The Invitation” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Read Matthew 11:28-30

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’” (Matthew 11:28–30 NLT)

An empty hospital mental health evaluation room sits in quiet shadow. A hospital gown is draped over a lone chair, while an open door at the far end floods the sterile space with warm light. The contrast between darkness and light subtly symbolizes Christ's invitation meeting us in our vulnerability before anything has been repaired.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “God Beginnings, Part 1: The Invitation” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I was seventeen. I’d been smoking, and my parents—who never liked it anyway—took the cigarettes away, probably as much for my attitude as for the habit itself. What followed wasn’t rational. A nicotine fit collided with a panic attack, and the panic curdled into anger I couldn’t get a hold of. My parents called the police. Not to punish me—to help me. It was a wellness check, nothing more. No record. No charges. Just people trying to keep a kid from hurting himself or someone else.

I ended up in a hospital room for a mental health evaluation. They took my clothes and my possessions and put me in a gown. The room was dark. I sat there—stripped of everything that was mine, including the version of myself I usually presented to the world—waiting until someone decided it was time to see me.

I tell you this not to relive it, but because that room is where I first understood something about the word “Come.”

The EMS worker who transported me that night knew me. Before she took me in, she let me have one more cigarette and told me, only half-joking, that next time I wanted a ride to the hospital, I could just call her directly. I laughed. It was funny. But underneath the joke was something else—she saw me exactly as I was, mid-crisis, out of control, undignified, and she didn’t wait for me to compose myself before she offered care. Her humor was the care. I felt heard. I felt, strange as it sounds, invited.

That’s the shape of what Jesus says in Matthew 11. “Come” isn’t a summons issued once you’ve gotten yourself together. It isn’t conditional on sobriety of mind, composure of spirit, or a resolved account of how you got here. It’s imperative and immediate—present tense, no clause attached. Jesus doesn’t say “come, once you’ve made sense of things.” He says come, full stop, to people already weary and already burdened, mid-crisis, before any of it is resolved.

That’s worth sitting with, because trust of this kind is not the same as passivity. Coming to Christ weary is itself the first act—the initial movement, distinct from the fixing, explaining, or composing we assume has to happen first. Most of what passes for spiritual formation quietly reverses this order: believe correctly, behave rightly, and then you belong. Jesus inverts it. Belonging comes first. Trust becomes the doorway everything else walks through—not the reward waiting at the far end of it.

Psalm 46 makes the same claim from a different angle. God is called refuge and strength before any crisis is described, and only after that does the psalm picture the earth giving way, mountains collapsing into churning water—total upheaval—and says: even there, no fear. The help was never contingent on the chaos settling down first. It’s there inside the collapse.

This is where the invitation gets uncomfortable in a useful way. Many of us have quietly built our worth around having things together—composure as a kind of currency we assume we need before we’re welcome anywhere, including before God. That myth runs deep, and it doesn’t only live in individuals. Churches build the same architecture. Congregations, like people, often absorb the sense that vitality must be proven before grace is extended—that struggling is disqualifying rather than simply human. That’s a thread this series will pull harder on later. For today, it’s enough to notice: the logic of “prove it, then belong” is not the logic of “Come.”

The room I sat in that night wasn’t fixed by the time I left it. But something had already happened before any fixing began. Someone came toward me exactly as I was, and that was enough to be the beginning of something.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Christ’s invitation was never waiting on you to arrive composed.

PRAYER
God, we come as we are—unfinished, undignified, still in the middle of what we haven’t resolved. Forgive us for believing we must earn a welcome before we receive one. Meet us before the mending starts. Teach us to trust that your invitation was never contingent on our readiness. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic).

Devotional

God Was Already Here

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Read Genesis 28:10–22

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” (Acts 16:14 NRSVue)

A winding yellow brick road stretches through a peaceful countryside at sunrise, leading toward distant hills beneath a glowing sky. A weathered stone rests beside the road, subtly recalling Jacob's pillow, while the warm morning light suggests both new beginnings and the quiet realization that holy ground has been present all along.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “God Was Already Here” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I’ve always had a soft spot for The Wizard of Oz. It remains one of my favorite films, and I’ve watched it many times over the course of my life. As a child, it captured my imagination. The Wicked Witch of the West terrified me, yet I couldn’t look away. Like many children, I saw the story as a simple battle between good and evil.

As I’ve grown older, however, I’ve come to appreciate that the story is far more nuanced than I first realized. The Wicked Witch is certainly the villain, but she isn’t simply wicked for wickedness’s sake. Dorothy’s unexpected arrival sets tragedy in motion. A house falls from the sky, her sister is killed, and the shoes she believes belong to her are suddenly worn by someone else. None of that excuses her choices, but it reminds me that stories—and people—are often more complicated than they first appear.

Still, the moment that has stayed with me most isn’t the Witch or even the Wizard. It’s the ending. Dorothy has finally defeated the Witch. The Wizard’s promises have fallen apart. The journey seems over, yet the one thing she still longs for—home—remains just out of reach. Then Glinda gently reveals what Dorothy never imagined: the means to return home had been with her almost the entire journey. The slippers hadn’t changed. Dorothy had. What she needed was not something new, but new eyes to recognize what had been there all along.

As I write this, I am sitting at my desk on the first day of a new season of ministry. The months leading here were filled with spiritual renewal, prayer, healing, waiting, and rediscovering joy. Looking back, I realize that while I thought I was preparing for whatever came next, God was quietly preparing me to recognize work that had already begun.

That realization brings me to Jacob.

Fleeing uncertainty, Jacob stops for the night with nothing more than a stone for a pillow. While he sleeps, he dreams of a ladder stretching between heaven and earth, with angels ascending and descending upon it. When he awakens, he doesn’t declare that God has suddenly arrived. Instead, he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”

The ground had not become holy overnight.

Jacob had simply awakened to a holiness that had always been there.

The same pattern appears again in the book of Acts. When Paul meets Lydia by the river, Scripture tells us that the Lord had already opened her heart. Paul did not manufacture faith. He did not bring God’s presence into Lydia’s life. He became a witness to the work God had already begun.

How often do we make the same mistake?

We begin a new job and wonder what we will accomplish.

We move into a new neighborhood and wonder how we will make a difference.

We join a new church and ask what ministry we will build.

Yet Scripture gently redirects our attention. Before we ever arrive, God is already there. Before we ever speak, the Holy Spirit is already moving. Before we ever begin serving, grace has already gone ahead of us.

We are not the authors of God’s work. We are witnesses to it.

That truth is both humbling and liberating. It reminds us that the success of God’s Kingdom does not rest on our shoulders. Our calling is not to create God’s presence, but to recognize it. Not to initiate grace, but to participate in it. Not to bring Christ into the world, but to join Christ where the Holy One is already at work.

Wherever you find yourself today—a new season, a new challenge, a new relationship, or simply another ordinary day—perhaps the most faithful prayer is not, “God, come here.”

Perhaps it is:

“Open my eyes.”

You may discover, like Jacob, that the ground beneath your feet is holier than you ever imagined.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Faith begins not by bringing God somewhere new, but by recognizing the Holy One who has been there all along.

PRAYER
Holy One, thank You for always going before us. Open our eyes to recognize Your presence in the people we meet, the places we enter, and the ordinary moments we too easily overlook. Give us humble hearts to join the work You have already begun, trusting that Your grace is always one step ahead of our own. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Previous Post, Series

From the Archives: SEVEN LOADED LETTERS, Part 8: The Church That Held On

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SEVEN LOADED LETTERS, Part 8: The Church That Held On

Read Revelation 3:7-13

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“The Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.” (Zephaniah 3:17 NLT)

The Book of Revelation opens not with beasts or bowls, but with a voice—a call that echoes through time and space to a Church both ancient and present. These seven letters, delivered to communities scattered across Asia Minor, are more than historical artifacts. They are loaded with truth, urgency, and love. They speak to us, challenge us, and strip away illusions. In every age, Christ’s words to the Church still ask us to listen—and respond.

A lone figure stands in a shadowed sanctuary, reaching toward an open door radiating golden light. Seven candlesticks—three on each side and one beside the door—burn steadily, illuminating the path forward. The scene evokes perseverance, faithfulness, and divine invitation.
Image: AI-generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Church That Held On” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 8: The Church That Held On. Jesus’ words to Philadelphia stand apart from the others. This church receives no rebuke. No harsh critique. Just encouragement, affirmation, and a simple plea: keep going. In a world addicted to power and spectacle, Jesus recognizes their quiet faithfulness. “You have little strength,” he says, “yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.”

Philadelphia wasn’t the biggest or flashiest church. They didn’t have the numbers, the budget, or the prestige. But they had integrity. And when everything in the surrounding culture told them to compromise, to conform, to just give up—they held on.

Today, that kind of faith can feel invisible. The churches that grab headlines are often the ones that bow to political idols or chase celebrity pastors and prosperity promises. Meanwhile, smaller congregations that cling to Christ amid declining attendance or cultural irrelevance may feel forgotten. But Jesus hasn’t forgotten. He says: I’ve placed before you an open door no one can shut.

That phrase is powerful. Jesus doesn’t promise ease or success. He promises access—to himself, to the Kingdom, to a future that the world can’t block. No gatekeeping megachurch, no ideology, no empire can close a door he has opened.

There’s something deeply subversive here. Philadelphia may have been looked down on, but Jesus lifts them up. They had little strength, but they had unshakable faith. They were poor in power but rich in perseverance. They didn’t assimilate to the empire. They didn’t chase cultural approval. They just stayed true.

This isn’t about nostalgia or clinging to tradition for tradition’s sake. It’s about holding fast to the truth that Jesus is the Holy One, the True One, the One who holds the key of David. It’s about remembering who we follow—and why.

To those who overcome, Jesus promises a name—a new identity—and a place. Not celebrity. Not a platform. But a pillar in the temple of God. That’s not just metaphor. That’s legacy. That’s home.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Faithfulness rarely looks flashy. But Jesus sees. And the open doors he gives are worth more than any human spotlight.

PRAYER
Jesus, help us hold on. When we feel tired or invisible, remind us that you see. Give us courage to remain faithful—to you, to your call, to your open door. Make us pillars not in reputation, but in love. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Previous Post, Series

From the Archives: SEVEN LOADED LETTERS, Part 7: The Church That Couldn’t Care Less

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Read Revelation 3:14-22

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“They offer superficial treatments for my people’s mortal wound. They give assurances of peace when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14 NLT)

The Book of Revelation opens not with beasts or bowls, but with a voice—a call that echoes through time and space to a Church both ancient and present. These seven letters, delivered to communities scattered across Asia Minor, are more than historical artifacts. They are loaded with truth, urgency, and love. They speak to us, challenge us, and strip away illusions. In every age, Christ’s words to the Church still ask us to listen—and respond.

Part 7: The Church that Couldn’t Care Less.  The city of Laodicea was famous for its wealth, industry, and medical advancements. It had clothing factories, a banking hub, and an eye salve known throughout the region. It had everything—except good water. Nearby hot springs delivered lukewarm, mineral-heavy water that often made people sick. Jesus seizes that image and turns it into a searing metaphor: “You are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold—I will spit you out of my mouth!” (Revelation 3:16, NLT). But the Greek word translated as “spit” is actually much stronger—it means to vomit. Jesus isn’t just disappointed; he’s repulsed by their complacency.

Laodicea looked alive. Their worship may have sounded good. Their buildings were impressive. Their programs ran with precision. But Jesus saw through it. He saw a church so self-satisfied, so sure of its vitality, that it couldn’t recognize its own spiritual poverty. “You say, ‘I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!’” (v.17). But beneath the surface: brokenness, blindness, nakedness.

This is the danger of performative faith—when image replaces intimacy, and appearance outweighs authenticity. It’s what Jesus condemned in the religious elite: “You are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity” (Matthew 23:27, NLT). It’s what happens when we measure vitality by numbers, not relationships. Even today, churches chase metrics: attendance, giving, small groups, professions of faith, budget increases. But Jesus never measured success the way we do. He didn’t ask for tallies; he called people to follow. His impact was relational, not transactional. He didn’t die to make the Church bigger—he died to make it holy.

Laodicea’s altar flame had gone cold, but not out. And Jesus hadn’t walked away. He was knocking. Calling. “I correct and discipline everyone I love” (v.19). He was still offering gold, garments, and healing for the eyes. He was still offering himself. “Look! I stand at the door and knock…” (v.20). To those few, Jesus doesn’t say, “Start a rebellion.” He says, “Hold on.” Stay awake. Stay faithful. Stay close.

Christ calls us to awaken from spiritual apathy. To throw off the masks of performance and return to the One who doesn’t need polish—only presence. The Church doesn’t need better branding; it needs a burning heart.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
You can’t follow Jesus while sleepwalking.

PRAYER
Jesus, wake us up. Pull us out of performative faith and back into authentic relationship with you. We don’t want to look alive—we want to live. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

A biweekly devotional