Tag Archives: Rev. Todd R. Lattig

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GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 13: The Door God Closes

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Read Acts 16:6–10

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“We can make our plans,but the Lord determines our steps.” (Proverbs 16:9 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Door God Closes” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Some phrases sound incredibly wise when we first hear them. Some even sound biblical—so biblical, in fact, that we may repeat them for years without ever stopping to ask whether the Bible actually says them. “God helps those who help themselves.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “God will never give you more than you can handle.” That last one, for instance, is often attributed to 1 Corinthians 10:13, though Paul is speaking there specifically about temptation, not promising that faithful people will never encounter circumstances beyond their ability to bear. Each saying contains enough familiarity, common sense, or religious language to sound like something Scripture must surely teach. But, if we’d actually weigh any saying against Scripture, we’d discover that things are usually more complicated.

One such phrase is, “When God closes a door, God opens a window.”

I understand what it is trying to say. God is not limited by the path we expected to take. An ending does not necessarily mean there is nothing ahead. But, honestly, life—and Scripture—are rarely quite as tidy as the saying makes them sound.

Sometimes a door closes and, for a while, there is no window. There is simply a closed door. A relationship ends. An opportunity disappears. A plan falls apart. A ministry changes. Something we were certain would happen does not happen. We stand there wondering whether we failed, misunderstood God, or somehow missed the path we were supposed to take.

Paul knew something about closed doors. In Acts 16, Paul and his companions are traveling through Asia Minor doing exactly what we would expect missionaries to do: preaching the gospel. Yet Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit prevented them from preaching in the province of Asia. They then tried to enter Bithynia, and again the Spirit did not allow them to go.

That is worth noticing because Paul was not trying to do something obviously selfish, foolish, or sinful. He was trying to do something good, faithful, and entirely consistent with his calling. And still, the door closed.

Only later, after arriving in Troas, does Paul receive the vision calling him toward Macedonia. The routes that had closed eventually redirected the journey. We can therefore say, at least in this story, that God really did close doors.

But we need to be careful here, because this passage can become spiritually dangerous if we turn it into a formula. Acts specifically tells us that the Spirit prevented Paul from taking those routes. Scripture identifies these particular closed doors as divine redirection.

Not every closed door comes with that explanation.

People close doors. Institutions close doors. Fear closes doors. Prejudice closes doors. Injustice closes doors. Sometimes we close doors ourselves through choices we have made. And sometimes we simply do not know why a door closed.

Friends, that distinction matters. If someone is rejected because of racism, sexism, ableism, poverty, identity, prejudice, or another person’s misuse of power, we should be very cautious about telling them, “God closed that door.”

Sometimes human beings slam doors God never asked them to touch.

Calling every painful outcome “God’s will” can become a convenient way of baptizing injustice and relieving people or institutions of responsibility for the harm they cause. Something happened, therefore God wanted it to happen, is not a theology Scripture requires us to believe. In fact, Jesus directly challenges that kind of thinking. When the disciples encounter a man who had been blind from birth, they immediately search for a spiritual cause: Who sinned, this man or his parents? Jesus rejects the premise that the man’s condition can simply be explained as punishment for somebody’s sin (John 9:1–3). Likewise, when people tell Jesus about Galileans killed by Pilate, and Jesus recalls eighteen people killed when the tower of Siloam fell, he refuses the assumption that those who suffered must somehow have deserved their fate more than others (Luke 13:1–5).

So perhaps the spiritual question is not simply, “Why did God close this door?” Perhaps we need to ask, “What kind of closure am I facing, and what does faithfulness require of me now?”

The answer will not always be the same. Sometimes faithfulness means releasing the door. Sometimes it means waiting. Sometimes it means admitting that our own choices helped close it and seeking repentance or repair. Sometimes it means respecting a boundary another person has every right to establish. And sometimes faithfulness means refusing to accept that a door closed by prejudice, fear, or injustice somehow carries God’s approval.

Discernment matters.

There is another uncomfortable possibility too. Sometimes we keep pushing against a closed door because we have already decided what faithfulness is supposed to look like. We knock harder, explain ourselves again, work harder, and try another angle. Perseverance can be holy. Scripture certainly teaches persistence (Luke 18:1–8; Galatians 6:9). But persistence and faithfulness are not always the same thing.

At some point we may have to ask whether we are persevering because God is calling us forward, or forcing a door because we cannot imagine God leading us somewhere else.

Paul keeps moving. Asia does not open, so the journey continues. Bithynia does not open, so the journey continues. Eventually Paul reaches Troas, and then comes Macedonia. Paul is not given an explanation for every route that failed. He is given enough direction for the next step.

Perhaps that is often how God works. We would prefer a map explaining every closure, every detour, every disappointment, and every ending. Sometimes we receive only another step.

Churches face this too. Congregations can spend enormous energy trying to reopen doors belonging to another season: ministries that no longer serve the community, structures that cannot be sustained, traditions that have become ends in themselves, or assumptions about what church is supposed to look like because that is what it looked like before. Ecclesiastes reminds us that there are seasons for both keeping and letting go (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8). There are times when faithfulness means grieving what was and allowing something to end.

But churches and other institutions should carry equal humility about the doors they themselves close. No committee, leader, institution, denomination, or majority should confuse its own decision automatically with God’s decision.

We are not God simply because we possess the keys.

Acts 16 gives us no easy formula for determining which doors to push against and which to release. It gives us something harder: discernment. Paul did not spend the rest of his journey standing outside Bithynia demanding that the door reopen. He kept listening. He kept moving. Eventually another direction appeared.

A closed door does not always mean we failed. It may not even tell us who closed it. But when the way ahead changes, faithfulness asks us to listen carefully before forcing the handle—and to trust that God’s ability to begin something new is not limited to the path we expected to take.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
A closed door calls for discernment before we decide what—or who—closed it.

PRAYER
God of wisdom, give us discernment when the way ahead closes. Keep us from calling injustice your will, from forcing doors you are asking us to release, and from confusing our own authority with yours. Give us courage to resist what must be resisted, humility to release what must be released, and faith to follow wherever you lead next. Amen.

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

Devotional, Series

God Beginnings, Part 8: Known by Name

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Read Isaiah 43:1–7

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“’Mary!’ Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, ‘Rabboni!’ (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).” (John 20:16 NLT)

Mary Magdalene turns toward the risen Christ outside the empty tomb at dawn. Behind her, dark faces representing imposed identities and accusations shatter and dissolve, while Christ reaches toward her in warm resurrection light and calls her by name.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Known by Name” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Mary Magdalene had likely heard many things said about her. Troubled. Unclean. Possessed. Crazy. That woman. The one with the demons. Scripture tells us that Jesus had freed her from seven demons, and even after her healing, people may still have defined her by what had once afflicted her. Communities are often slow to release someone from an old reputation. A person can be restored to life while others continue calling them by the name of their former suffering.

Then, outside the empty tomb, Mary hears one word:

“Mary!”

Jesus does not call her by her history, her affliction, or her social category. Jesus calls her by name.

That moment changes everything. The tomb is still there. Mary’s grief has been real. The violence that killed Jesus has not been erased. Yet when the risen Christ speaks her name, Mary recognizes that death has not ended the story. She is personally known by the One who calls life out of death.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God spoke with that same intimacy to a people whose circumstances had made them feel forgotten. They had experienced judgment, displacement, and uncertainty. Their life together had been wounded, and the future before them remained unclear. Yet God began not with their failures or their captivity, but with a reminder of who formed them:

“I have called you by name; you are mine.”

God’s knowledge of Israel was not merely informational. God did not simply know facts about the people. God created, formed, redeemed, named, accompanied, and gathered them. They were known through relationship. They belonged to God, not because they had successfully earned recognition, but because God’s faithfulness reached them even within exile.

Friends, God knows us by name and calls us into new life.

Being known by God does not mean that deep waters, raging rivers, or consuming fires will never come. Isaiah promises no such exemption. God’s people will pass through dangerous places. What God promises is presence: the waters will not overwhelm them, the rivers will not sweep them away, and the fire will not consume them.

Those forces may affect their lives, but they do not get to define their identities. Exile does not erase their belonging. Suffering does not cancel their worth. Captivity does not become their name.

When God says, “You are mine,” this is not the possessive claim of someone trying to control another person. Human beings often use belonging as an excuse to dominate: You are mine, so I decide who you must be. You belong here, so you must conform. We accepted you, so you owe us the version of yourself we prefer.

God’s claim moves in the opposite direction. God refuses to surrender a person’s identity to captivity, shame, danger, or the judgments of others. God’s naming restores belonging; it does not remove personhood.

The world often names people in order to control them. God calls people by name in order to restore them.

Our world is skilled at assigning labels. People are called respectable or embarrassing, normal or deviant, faithful or troublesome, useful or disposable. A person may be reduced to what happened to them, something they once did, a condition with which they live, the body they inhabit, the person they love, or the ways they fail to meet someone else’s expectations.

Institutions assign names too. Sometimes they decide who is welcome, who may speak, who possesses authority, and whose testimony can be trusted. They may insist that people hide pieces of themselves, perform an approved identity, or answer to labels that make everyone else more comfortable.

Even the Church can become more invested in naming people than in knowing them. We may attach a category to someone and imagine that we have understood the whole person. We may speak about people without listening to them. We may demand that they answer to identities formed by our fear, prejudice, theology, or need for control—and then call that demand faithfulness.

The unsettling question is unavoidable:

Does the Church help people hear God calling their names, or demand that they answer to names God never gave them?

Mary stands before the risen Christ carrying grief, confusion, and a history others may have used against her. Jesus does not reduce her to any of it. Jesus calls her, “Mary.”

In hearing her name, Mary recognizes Christ. She also receives a new beginning. Jesus does not merely comfort her and send her back into silence. Mary is called into witness. The woman whose society might have questioned or dismissed her testimony becomes the one entrusted to announce resurrection to the disciples. What’s more, Jesus then sends her, “that woman”, to be the first preacher of the Gospel!

Christ’s recognition does not wait for institutional permission.

That does not mean God’s call invents an entirely different person or removes everything that came before. Mary remained Mary. Her history remained part of her story. But neither her suffering nor the labels attached to it could contain what she was becoming. The risen Christ called the person who had always been there into a life that death, shame, and social judgment could not prevent.

God knows who we are, friends—even when the world does not.

God knows us beneath the labels others have imposed, beneath the roles we have learned to perform, and beneath the false selves we have constructed to remain acceptable. God does not call us away from the person God created. God calls us out of whatever has prevented that person from living fully.

A God beginning may start with hearing our name spoken beyond all the noise that tried to rename us. It may begin when we discover that God has never confused us with our wounds, our failures, or the categories others used to contain us. It may begin when we finally trust that being fully known by God does not erase us—it restores us.

The risen Christ still stands near places we have mistaken for endings. Christ still calls people whom the world has mislabeled, underestimated, or dismissed. Christ still speaks our names—not to control who we may become, but to call us into resurrection life.

Listen.

God knows your name.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God knows us by name and calls us into new life.

PRAYER
God who creates, forms, and restores us, help us hear your voice beyond every label that has diminished or confined us. Teach us to recognize others as people you know by name, and give us courage to answer when you call us into new life. 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 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).