Tag Archives: Discipleship

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 16: Toward What Lies Ahead

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Read Philippians 3:12–14

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains.” (Acts 9:1–2 NLT)

An imprisoned Paul gestures as he dictates a letter to a scribe seated across from him at a rough wooden table. Scrolls, parchment, an oil lamp, and visible chains surround them inside the stone room, while sunrise pours through a barred window overlooking an ancient city. The image suggests Paul faithfully working in the present despite confinement, even as his words reach toward what lies ahead.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Toward What Lies Ahead” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I have always had an affinity for Paul.

Not the Paul polished by centuries of Christianity into a nearly untouchable saint. Nor the Paul some would rather reduce to a sinner, remembered primarily for the violence and persecution of his past. I am drawn to Paul the man—the complicated human being who somehow embodied both.

Because before Paul became one of Christianity’s most profound voices for the radical love and grace of Jesus Christ, he was Saul of Tarsus.

And Saul could be terrifying.

He was a Diaspora Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a Pharisee, educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, and fiercely committed to what he believed faithfulness to God required. He also moved within the wider Greco-Roman world and possessed Roman citizenship. Paul belonged to overlapping worlds, and those worlds would later profoundly shape his ministry.

But Saul wasn’t wandering around searching for meaning or wondering what he should do with his life. He believed he already knew. He was so certain of his righteousness that he participated in the persecution of people he believed were dangerously wrong.

Acts introduces him approving of Stephen’s execution. Soon afterward, Saul is entering homes and dragging followers of Jesus away to prison. Eventually, he heads toward Damascus carrying authority to arrest followers of the Way and bring them back to Jerusalem.

Then Christ meets him on the road, and everything changes.

But Saul does not simply disappear and some pristine Saint Paul take his place.

The man who becomes one of Christianity’s most profound voices for grace remains the same man who once participated in violent religious persecution. Paul carries that history with him. He remembers it. He writes about it. He knows both the terrifying damage religious certainty can cause and the astonishing grace of discovering that even the person who caused that damage is not beyond redemption.

That is the Paul who fascinates me. Not sinner or saint, but sinner and saint—a human being capable of terrible harm and extraordinary faithfulness. A violent persecutor transformed into a passionate proponent of the very Christ—and the very people—he once persecuted.

And Paul keeps moving.

The man who once traveled from place to place trying to stop the Jesus movement eventually travels throughout the Roman world proclaiming Christ, forming communities of faith, enduring opposition, suffering beatings and imprisonment, and continuing forward anyway.

By the time Paul writes to the Philippians, there is quite a lot behind him. He is writing from prison, although scholars continue to debate exactly which imprisonment. Rome has traditionally been the leading possibility, while Caesarea and Ephesus have also been proposed. What matters for Philippians is that Paul is confined, his future uncertain, and the possibility of death very real.

If ever there were a moment to look backward and declare the journey complete, this was it.

Paul could remember Damascus, churches planted, lives changed, miles traveled, friendships formed, some other friendships ended, suffering endured, and a life radically transformed by Christ. Yet Paul says he hasn’t arrived.

Instead, he writes: “I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…”

Paul is not telling us to erase our histories. He spends plenty of time remembering his own. In this very chapter, he recounts who he was, what he once valued, and how encountering Christ changed his understanding of it all.

Paul remembers the past. He simply refuses to live there.

The past can teach us, shape us, wound us, humble us, and remind us of God’s faithfulness. It can show us how far we have come and warn us against becoming who we once were. But yesterday cannot be the place where faithfulness happens today.

Neither can tomorrow.

That can be easy to miss when Paul speaks so passionately about pressing toward what lies ahead. We can become so fixated on the future that we treat the present as little more than a waiting room. Someday I will serve. Someday I will forgive. Someday I will speak. Someday the church will change. Someday I will finally become who God wants me to be.

But Paul is not sitting in prison waiting for someday. He is writing, encouraging, teaching, praying, witnessing, and loving people now.

That may be the paradox at the heart of moving forward with God: we reach toward what lies ahead by living faithfully in the present.

Yesterday is beyond our reach. Tomorrow has not arrived. God has given us today.

That has been the movement beneath every God beginning we have explored in this series. God calls, accompanies, opens doors, closes others, creates something new, gathers unlikely people into one Body, and asks us to leave some things on the shore. But none of those beginnings was ever meant to become a place where we could settle permanently and announce that the work was finished.

Paul refuses to make that claim even after everything he has experienced. He has not arrived.

Neither have we.

That is not failure. It is discipleship.

A God beginning is not a finish line disguised as a starting point. It is an invitation into a life continually being transformed by Christ, and that transformation happens in the present. It happens in the conversation we choose to have, the person we decide to notice, the injustice we refuse to ignore, the forgiveness we offer, the truth we finally speak, the tradition we are willing to reconsider, the neighbor we welcome, and the work immediately before us.

We can honor yesterday without living there. We can hope for tomorrow without escaping into it. And we can live faithfully today while trusting that God is already preparing what lies ahead.

Sixteen devotions ago, we began talking about God beginnings. Now we have reached the end.

Except, of course, we haven’t.

Every ending eventually becomes part of what lies behind us, and every new beginning eventually becomes the present in which we are called to live.

Remember what God has done. Look toward what God may yet do. But live faithfully where God has placed you today, and from here, keep following Christ toward what lies ahead.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Faith remembers yesterday, hopes for tomorrow, and follows Christ today.

PRAYER
God of every beginning, keep me from becoming trapped in yesterday or lost in tomorrow. Teach me to live faithfully today, trusting you with whatever lies ahead. Amen.

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

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 15: What We Leave on the Shore

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Read Luke 5:1–11

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.” (Matthew 10:37–39 NLT)

A weathered wooden fishing boat rests along a sandy shoreline at sunrise. Nets overflow with a large catch of silver fish in the foreground while three disciples walk away along the water behind Jesus. The abundant catch remains on the shore as the figures move toward the bright horizon.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “What We Leave on the Shore” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

It is funny how easily a single chapter of someone’s life can come to define the whole story.

We meet someone after they have already become who we know them to be, and it can be difficult to imagine them as anything else. The teacher was once a student. The grandparent was once somebody’s child. Even the people closest to us had whole lives unfolding before we ever entered the picture.

Scripture can have the same effect on us.

We know Peter as Peter, the disciple and apostle. James and John become the Sons of Thunder. Matthew becomes the Gospel writer. Thomas becomes the doubter.

But none of them began there.

Before there were disciples, there were fishermen and tax collectors, brothers and sons, husbands and friends. There were families, livelihoods, obligations, loyalties, disappointments, expectations, and histories.

Every disciple had a before. And then Jesus called.

Peter did not meet Jesus while waiting for his real life to begin. He already had one. He had a wife, a mother-in-law Jesus had recently healed, a brother named Andrew, fishing partners, boats, nets, responsibilities, successes, and failures. James and John had their father Zebedee and a family business.

And Peter wasn’t unusual.

Matthew had his tax booth and everything that came with being a tax collector. Simon carried the designation “the Zealot.” Thomas and Bartholomew had stories mostly lost to us. Even Judas Iscariot had a life before his name became forever associated with betrayal.

Every one of them came to Jesus carrying a history.

That is what makes Luke’s final sentence so striking. After the miraculous catch, after the nets begin tearing and the boats nearly sink beneath more fish than these fishermen could have imagined, Luke tells us that they brought the boats to shore, left everything, and followed Jesus.

Everything. Not simply the fish.

Peter leaves the nets and boat, but those belonged to a whole life: a wife, family, livelihood, partners, and responsibilities. James and John were not merely walking away from equipment. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Zebedee is right there when they leave the family business behind.

The call of Jesus reaches into whole lives.

That does not mean Peter suddenly ceases to be a husband. In fact, Paul later refers to Peter’s right to take his wife along with him in ministry. James and John do not stop being Zebedee’s sons. Andrew does not stop being Peter’s brother. Following Jesus does not erase the people we love or make our histories meaningless.

But it does reorder them.

Jesus makes that painfully clear when he tells his followers that anyone who loves father or mother, son or daughter more than him is not worthy of him. Jesus reaches toward some of our deepest and most legitimate attachments and says that even these cannot have the final claim upon where Christ may lead us.

That is what the disciples leave on the shore: the assumption that the life they already understand gets to determine the boundaries of the life Christ is calling them into.

And sometimes that means leaving something painful. But sometimes it means leaving something good.

Peter has just experienced the greatest professional success of his life. By every ordinary measure, this is the moment to stay, expand the business, and build a future around what just happened.

Instead, Peter walks away from the fish.

The miracle is not the destination. It is the threshold.

The miracle revealed something about Jesus and called Peter somewhere he had never been.

Yet Peter does not leave everything about fishing behind. Jesus tells him that from now on he will be fishing for people.

The fisherman comes with him.

Peter’s history is not erased. It is transformed.

That may be one of the hardest parts of following Christ. We understand leaving behind habits, prejudices, fears, sins, and ways of living that destroy us.

But what about the things that were good?

A career that mattered. A relationship that shaped us. A role we once filled. A place where we belonged. A tradition that carried us. A ministry through which God genuinely worked.

Good things can still become anchors when we insist they must remain forever.

Churches struggle with this too. Something worked once, so we assume faithfulness means preserving it. God met us through a particular ministry, building, tradition, structure, or season, so we begin protecting the place where God moved rather than watching for where God is moving.

Peter could have built a shrine around those fish. Instead, he followed Jesus.

Following Christ does not require having no past. It requires refusing to let the past determine where Christ may lead us next.

So perhaps the deeper question is this: What still has such a claim on me that I would refuse to follow Christ without it?

The shore will look different for each of us. But eventually, every disciple has to decide what gets the final word: the life we already know, or the Christ who says, Follow me.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Following Christ does not erase our past, but it does reorder what gets the final claim on our future.

PRAYER
Jesus, thank you for all that has shaped my life. Give me wisdom to know what to carry, courage to release what I cannot keep, and trust to follow wherever you lead. 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

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 6: The Church that Played Dead

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Read Revelation 3:1–6

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13 NLT)

The Book of Revelation opens not 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.

Image: AI-generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Church That Played Dead” at Life-Giving Water Devotion

Part 6: The Church That Played Dead. They had a name for being alive. People looked at them and saw success. Momentum. Activity. A solid reputation. And yet, Jesus—who sees beyond appearances—spoke a truth that silenced the room: “You are dead.”

Sardis wasn’t being persecuted. They weren’t being tested. They weren’t in crisis. That might have been the problem. They were comfortable, confident, and coasting on yesterday’s faith. The form remained. But the fire had gone out.

This wasn’t a church that failed to perform—it was a church that learned how to perform too well. And that’s what makes Sardis feel so familiar today.

We see it in churches built like brands—polished, televised, franchised. Places where celebrity pastors replace shepherds, and worship feels more like spectacle than surrender. We see it in the rise of prosperity preaching, partisan pulpits, and marketing strategies baptized as mission. These churches are full. Loud. Impressive. But Jesus isn’t impressed. He never was.

But it’s not just in megachurches.

We see it in denominational dashboards, where vitality gets reduced to numbers: attendance, professions of faith, giving units, mission hours logged. Boxes get checked. Goals get met. Reports get filed. But hearts remain unchanged.

Jesus was never about numbers. He was about relationships.

His movement went from one, to three, to twelve, to thousands, and back again to twelve, then three at the cross. His mission wasn’t built on crowd retention—it was built on deep, costly, unshakable love.

Not image. Not metrics. But faithfulness.

When Jesus says to Sardis, “Wake up. Strengthen what remains and is about to die,” it’s not a rejection—it’s a rescue.

He doesn’t say it’s too late. He says there’s still something left. But it won’t survive on autopilot. It won’t be saved by better branding or busier programming. It has to return to the source. To Him.

“These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13 NLT)

And then there’s this, from Jesus himself:

“You are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside, but filled with dead bones and all sorts of impurity.” (Matthew 23:27 NLT)

This is the danger of playing dead: you forget you’re supposed to be alive.

But resurrection is still on offer.

Jesus says, “If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief.” The language is sharp because the stakes are real. A church can do all the “right” things, and still lose the thread. Still fall asleep at the altar. Still drift into a coma of respectability.

But not everyone in Sardis gave up.

“Yet you have a few people… who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.” (Revelation 3:4 NLT)

To those few, Jesus doesn’t say, “Start a rebellion.” He says, “Hold on.”

Stay awake. Stay faithful. Stay close.

This isn’t about recapturing success. It’s about reclaiming life. The Church doesn’t need to prove it’s alive. It needs to return to the One who is.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
You can’t build resurrection on reputation. Only Jesus gives life that lasts.

PRAYER
Wake us up, Lord. Strip away the illusions we’ve built. Forgive us for confusing noise with life, numbers with faithfulness, and performance with presence. Strengthen what remains. Help us return to you—not for appearances, but for love. Amen.

Devotional, Holy Week Series, Lent, Series

ALTAR AUDIT, Part 17: The Altar of Power

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Read John 13:1–17

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant.” (Luke 22:26 NLT)

Altars reveal what we worship. Some are obvious—raised platforms of stone and flame. Others are quieter, constructed in systems, reputations, loyalties, and assumptions. Lent is a season of holy examination. It calls us to look closely at what we have built, what we defend, and what we trust. In this series, we conduct an audit—not of budgets or buildings, but of allegiances. Lent strips away every false altar until only Christ remains.

A dimly lit upper room scene shows a central figure kneeling low on the floor, washing another’s feet while others sit elevated around the room, the warm lamplight emphasizing the stark reversal of expected roles and authority.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Altar of Power” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 17: The Altar of Power. Power, as the world understands it, is not complicated. It is structured, ordered, and visible. There are those above and those below, those who lead and those who follow, those who command and those who obey. In the world of Jesus and the disciples, that structure was not questioned—it was assumed. A teacher stood above disciples. A master stood above servants. Everyone knew their place. No one beneath washed the feet of those above.

Foot washing belonged to the lowest position in the room. It was the task reserved for the one with the least status, the least authority, the least dignity in the eyes of the world. It was not symbolic or ceremonial. It was menial, embodied, and unmistakably clear. And then Jesus stands up.

The Gospel tells us that Jesus removes the outer garment. That detail matters. In that moment, Jesus lays aside the visible markers of authority and assumes the posture of someone beneath everyone else in the room. This is not simply an act of humility. It is a movement into the lowest position available. Jesus does not just serve. Jesus takes the place of a slave.

When Jesus comes to Peter, the tension surfaces immediately. Peter refuses. Not quietly or politely, but definitively: “You will never wash my feet.” This is not humility. It is protest. Peter is not lowering himself; he is trying to keep Jesus elevated. He is defending a world where teachers remain above students and masters remain above servants. He is protecting the structure.

Jesus refuses.

“Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

There is no softening in that statement. No compromise, no adjustment, no attempt to ease Peter’s discomfort. Jesus draws a boundary. If Peter cannot receive this—if Peter cannot accept a Christ who kneels, who descends, who refuses to remain above—then Peter does not yet understand what it means to belong to him. Peter is not rejecting service. He is rejecting a Savior who will not stay in the place the world says a Savior should occupy.

This is where the meaning of the moment sharpens. Jesus is not modeling a better version of leadership within the existing system. Jesus is not demonstrating kindness as an added virtue. Jesus is exposing the system itself and refusing to participate in it. The world builds power by climbing higher, securing position, and maintaining distance. Jesus reveals power by going lower, by removing what marks status, and by closing the distance entirely.

Jesus removes everything the world uses to measure power… and kneels.

That movement is not symbolic. It is revelatory. It shows that what we call power may not be power at all, and what we dismiss as weakness may be the very place where the truth of God is made known. This is why the moment unsettles us. We are far more comfortable with a Jesus who serves than a Jesus who dismantles. We can admire humility while still preserving hierarchy. We can speak about servant leadership while continuing to protect position, status, and control.

That is where this turns toward us. We still live within systems that depend on knowing our place. We still measure influence, authority, and worth in ways that mirror the world more than the God’s Kingdom. We still resist the idea that power could look like descent instead of ascent. And, like Peter, we often call that resistance reverence. We say we are honoring Christ, when what we are really doing is asking Christ to remain above us in ways that feel safer, clearer, and easier to manage.

Jesus does not accept that version of faith.

“Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

The invitation is not to admire what Jesus does. It is to receive it. It is to allow the collapse of everything we thought power was supposed to be, and to follow Christ into a way of being that no longer depends on staying above anyone else. In the kingdom of God, power is not proven by who stands above. It is revealed by who is willing to kneel.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
If we need Christ to remain above us, we may not yet understand the power Christ reveals.

PRAYER
God, unsettle our assumptions about power. Reveal where we have confused position with faithfulness and authority with truth. Teach us to receive the humility of Christ not as an idea but as a way of life. Give us the courage to follow, even when it dismantles what we thought power was supposed to be. Amen.

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

Devotional, Lent, Series

ALTAR AUDIT, Part 10: The Altar of Preference

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Read Luke 6:20-26

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the Kingdom he promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5 NLT)

Altars reveal what we worship. Some are obvious—raised platforms of stone and flame. Others are quieter, constructed in systems, reputations, loyalties, and assumptions. Lent is a season of holy examination. It calls us to look closely at what we have built, what we defend, and what we trust. In this series, we conduct an audit—not of budgets or buildings, but of allegiances. Lent strips away every false altar until only Christ remains.

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “ALTAR AUDIT, part 10: The Altar of Preference” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 10: The Altar of Preference. It’s easy to hear “blessed are the poor” and quietly translate it into something more comfortable—something spiritual, something distant, something we can agree with without changing much. But Luke doesn’t give us that distance. He places Jesus on level ground, among the people, where these words land differently.

What we often call the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel appears differently in Luke. Here, it is known as the Sermon on the Plain. And that difference is not incidental. In Matthew, Jesus goes up the mountain, sits, and teaches his disciples. In Luke, Jesus comes down, stands on level ground, and speaks among a large crowd—disciples, the sick, the poor, the desperate, all gathered together. What is said here is not abstract or removed—it is social, embodied, and immediate.

And even the words themselves shift. In Matthew, the blessing is for the “poor in spirit.” In Luke, it is simply the poor. Not a category that could be internalized or spiritualized, but a reality standing right in front of them. A reality standing in front of us all.

“Blessed are you who are poor… Woe to you who are rich.”

There is no softening here. No easy reframing that lets us keep everything exactly as it is. This is not an abstract principle. It is a reordering, and it cuts directly against the way we operate. Why? Because we do not build around the poor.

We serve them. We support them. We minister to them. We create programs, organize drives, and mobilize volunteers. Much of this is necessary. Much of it is good. People rely on it. It matters.

But it is also worth asking what kind of world our systems are actually forming.

We don’t reject the poor…we just build systems around them. We tell them who they are and what they need.

They are not the center. They are the recipients.

And over time, that distinction begins to matter more than we realize.

Because what we call ministry can slowly become preference. Not maliciously. Not intentionally. But structurally. We build in ways that are sustainable for us, manageable for us, comfortable for us. We decide what is possible, what is realistic, what is wise. Who fits the mold enough to be helped, and just what help we can give.

And in doing so, we may never notice that the system itself remains untouched.

Or worse—what we build around the “least of these” can quietly become part of the prison.

Not liberation. Not the release proclaimed in Luke 4. But a managed, contained version of care that keeps everything functioning just well enough to continue as it is.

Jesus does something different.

Jesus heals who is in front of him. Jesus feeds who is hungry. Jesus restores who is broken. But Jesus also announces a Kingdom that does not simply patch the existing system—it overturns it. The poor are not recipients in that Kingdom. They are centered. Blessed, not because poverty is good, but because God’s reign is breaking in among those the world has pushed aside.

That is the inversion.

And it exposes something deeper in us.

Preference is not always about what we like. It is about what we are willing to reorganize our lives around. It is about who we place at the center—and who we keep at the edges, even while serving them.

Even in the Church.

Especially in the Church.

This is not a call to abandon the work we are doing. It is a call to examine the structure in which we are doing it. To ask whether our ministry reflects the Kingdom Jesus proclaims—or simply makes the current world more bearable.

Because one sustains.

The other transforms.

And those are not the same thing.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The Kingdom of God does not ask us to serve the poor from a distance—it calls us to rebuild the world with them at the center.

PRAYER
God, open our eyes to the ways we have mistaken preference for faithfulness. Give us courage to see clearly, humility to listen deeply, and wisdom to build differently. Reorder our lives, our churches, and our systems so that they reflect your Kingdom—not our comfort. Lead us from maintenance into transformation. Amen.

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

Devotional, Series

ALTAR AUDIT, Part 9: The Altar of Strength

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Read Isaiah 42:1–4

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed,

Altars reveal what we worship. Some are obvious—raised platforms of stone and flame. Others are quieter, constructed in systems, reputations, loyalties, and assumptions. Lent is a season of holy examination. It calls us to look closely at what we have built, what we defend, and what we trust. In this series, we conduct an audit—not of budgets or buildings, but of allegiances. Lent strips away every false altar until only Christ remains.

A large cracked stone altar sits in an open modern courtyard framed by tall pillars. The altar is split down the middle by a deep fracture. In the background a hazy city skyline rises under a gray sky. The scene feels quiet and solemn, suggesting broken foundations and the examination of what we place our trust in. The words, "The Altar of Strength" appear near the
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Altar of Strength” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 9: The Altar of Strength. Strength is one of the most celebrated virtues we know. It is praised in leadership, rewarded in culture, and quietly expected in everyday life. We are taught to admire those who endure, who push through, who hold it together no matter the cost. Strength, on its own, is not the problem. It is real. It matters. It can protect, sustain, and even heal.

But what happens when strength becomes something more than a virtue—when it becomes an altar?

The altar of strength is built not just on what we admire, but on what we are willing to overlook. Because the moment strength becomes the standard by which we measure worth, those who cannot meet it begin to disappear. Not all at once. Not violently, at least not always. But quietly. Systemically. Acceptably.

We tell ourselves a lie: that strength is simply what is good. And in doing so, we justify who we ignore.

Isaiah offers a different vision. The Servant of God does not raise a voice to dominate. The Servant does not crush the bruised reed or extinguish the faintest flame. This is not weakness. This is not passivity. This is strength—restrained, intentional, and directed toward justice. It is power that refuses to prove itself through destruction.

That is a direct contradiction to the strength we are used to seeing.

Because empire has always defined strength by who survives and who does not. Strength, in that system, is measured by dominance, endurance, and control. Those who cannot keep pace—the bruised, the exhausted, the barely holding on—are not centered. They are managed, minimized, or moved aside.

And here is the harder truth: the Church is not immune to this.

We say we follow Christ, but we often mirror empire. We celebrate resilience while ignoring burnout. We platform voices that project stability while sidelining those who struggle to be heard. We call it wisdom. We call it order. We call it strength.

But beneath it is a quieter confession: we do not know what to do with weakness—especially our own.

So we construct an altar.

We convince ourselves that we are strong, even when we are not, because admitting otherwise feels like losing value. And in maintaining that illusion, we distance ourselves from those who cannot hide their fragility. What we refuse to face within ourselves, we often reject in others.

This is how the altar holds.

Jesus dismantles it—not by denying strength, but by redefining it. In Luke’s Gospel, the good news is not announced to the powerful but to the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed. Not as an afterthought, but as the center.

That is the inversion.

Strength, in the kingdom of God, is not proven by who stands above others. It is revealed in who refuses to step over them. It is not the ability to endure at all costs—it is the willingness to remain with those who cannot. It is not dominance—it is presence. Not force—but faithfulness.

And that kind of strength cannot coexist with the altar we have built.

Because one sustains systems that discard. The other restores those systems have already crushed.

So the question is not whether we value strength.

It is which definition we are willing to lay down.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Strength, in the way of Christ, is not proven by power over others, but by refusing to abandon them.

PRAYER
God, strip away the false strength we cling to and the illusions we use to measure worth. Teach us the strength of Christ—the kind that does not crush, does not discard, and does not turn away. Give us courage to face our own fragility, and compassion to stand with those the world overlooks. Re-form us in your way of justice and mercy. Amen.

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

Devotional, Series

ALTAR AUDIT, Part 8: The Altar of Approval

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Read Galatians 1:1-10

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Fear of people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the Lord means safety.” (Proverbs 29:25 NLT)

Altars reveal what we worship. Some are obvious—raised platforms of stone and flame. Others are quieter, constructed in systems, reputations, loyalties, and assumptions. Lent is a season of holy examination. It calls us to look closely at what we have built, what we defend, and what we trust. In this series, we conduct an audit—not of budgets or buildings, but of allegiances. Lent strips away every false altar until only Christ remains.

Part 8: The Altar of Approval. Approval is one of the quietest altars we build.

It rarely looks like idolatry. It looks like professionalism. It looks like respectability. It looks like wisdom, diplomacy, or knowing how to read a room. But beneath all of that can sit a quieter question: Who are we really trying to please?

Paul names the tension directly in Galatians. “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s?” It is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a diagnostic question. Because the moment approval becomes the measure of faithfulness, the gospel itself begins to bend.

The Church has never been immune to this. Congregations want stability. Leaders want credibility. Communities want reassurance that the people guiding them will not embarrass them or disrupt the fragile peace that holds institutions together. None of that is inherently wrong. But when approval becomes the altar, faithfulness becomes the sacrifice.

The danger is subtle. No one wakes up one morning and decides to worship approval. Instead, it grows slowly through a thousand small calculations. A leader softens a truth because it might upset someone. A congregation rewards the voices that affirm what it already believes. A system quietly teaches that survival depends not on conviction, but on acceptability.

Over time, approval begins to shape identity.

Years ago, when I was serving as a youth pastor, I learned something about this the hard way. I had written and recorded a song and paired it with a dark, gothic-style video—creative work that reflected the artistic voice I had carried with me my entire life as a poet, musician, and artist. At some point, that video found its way into the hands of church leadership after someone burned it onto a CD and mailed it anonymously.

I never learned who sent it. In the end, it did not matter.

What mattered was the note written across the top of the disc:

“Youth Pastor Todd Lattig serving his lord Satan.”

Moments like that clarify something quickly. When approval is the altar, anything unfamiliar becomes a threat. Anything that does not fit the brand must be corrected, contained, or quietly removed.

But Paul’s words refuse that logic.

“If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

The apostle is not celebrating antagonism or encouraging leaders to provoke conflict. Faithfulness is not measured by how many people we offend. But Paul is naming something deeper: the gospel cannot survive if approval becomes its guiding compass.

Because the gospel itself is disruptive.

It proclaims grace where systems prefer merit. It lifts the overlooked where hierarchies prefer order. It exposes idols we have grown comfortable with. And when that happens, approval often evaporates quickly.

This is where Proverbs offers its quiet warning: “Fear of people is a dangerous trap.”

Fear is the hidden engine behind the altar of approval. Fear of rejection. Fear of losing influence. Fear of disappointing those who hold power in our lives or communities. And fear has a remarkable ability to reshape conviction into compliance.

But the gospel begins somewhere else entirely.

It begins with belovedness.

Before reputation, before usefulness, before success or failure, the gospel announces that we belong to God. Not because we performed well enough to earn approval, but because grace has already claimed us. Belovedness is not branding. It cannot be curated, managed, or polished into something marketable.

It is given.

And that changes everything.

When identity rests in belovedness rather than approval, we are finally free to speak truthfully, lead faithfully, and love courageously—even when doing so costs us the approval we once believed we needed.

That freedom does not make life easier. But it does make faithfulness possible.

Because the question Paul asks still echoes through every generation of the Church:

Who are we really trying to please?

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
When approval becomes the altar, faithfulness becomes the sacrifice.

PRAYER
Holy One, free us from the quiet fear that binds our hearts to the approval of others. Teach us to rest in the belovedness you have already given. When truth is costly and courage feels uncertain, steady us in your grace so that our lives seek faithfulness more than applause. Amen.

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