“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” – 2 Peter 1:3-4
We do not, and cannot, depend on our own merit to convince God to love us, therefore: “This consolation I would wish all Christians in their prayers: the testimony of a good conscience to assure them of God’s promises. But to obtain what they ask must only depend upon him, all opinion and thought of our own justice being laid aside.” – John Knox
Today in prayer, seek His power in His promises. He wants us to have “all things that pertain to life and godliness” and He is faithful.
Post inspired by McKim, Donald K. Everyday Prayer with the Reformers (2020). P. 115.
We often make decisions without really knowing our own motives. Without really thinking about why we are doing what we do. However, if we estimate how many of our decisions are based on money from how often the New Testament talks about money, people probably follow financial motives more than they think they do. Jesus spoke a lot about money, and so does the rest of the New Testament. Too often our main concern is: will this make us money, or will this lose us money? This post will briefly look at 3 stories from the book of Acts about money as a motivation.
The first comes from Acts chapter 16. Verse 16 says, “As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling.” The Old Testament law clearly forbids fortune-telling (Deuteronomy 18:10), but the owners of this slave seemed to only care that the fortune-telling made them a fortune. Unfortunately for them, Paul cast the spirit out of the girl, leaving her owners frustrated. Verse 19 says, “But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.” Paul and Silas ended up in prison, eventually to be miraculously freed, and the slave girl’s owners ended up poorer.
The next story comes from Acts chapter 19. When Paul was in Ephesus and bringing many to Christ in the power of the Spirit, the new disciples gave up their other idols. In response, a silversmith named Demetrius stirred up some opposition to Paul:
“Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.” – Acts 19:25b-27
Did the silversmith care that many were finding salvation in Jesus? No, he (and his fellow tradesmen) only cared that this new religion was hurting their business profits. This led to a riot that lasted several hours and had to be quieted by the authorities to keep the Romans from violently intervening.
The last story shows a massive contrast from the first two, and is recorded in Acts 19:18-19, right before the riot in Ephesus occurred.
“Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.”
Warren Wiersbe estimated that “The total value of the magical books and spells that they burned was equivalent to the total salaries of 150 men working for a whole year!” While the money was already spent, these new believers could have sold the items for some amount of money and recovered some of their cost, but they probably thought that if these items were evil, nobody should have them. The financial cost wasn’t a concern for them. They just wanted to get rid of things that separated them from God.
What a different perspective! While the new believers willingly burned expensive objects related to magic arts, the owners of the fortune-telling slave girl and the idolatrous silversmiths were too concerned about money to consider Jesus.
Which perspective do we have? Do we ever disobey God because we think it will help financially? Do we ever hold on to things that are spiritually harmful because they cost us money? Or are we willing to follow Jesus no matter the cost?
Today let’s pray that God will reveal where our loyalties are misplaced and help us to take a step in a better direction! Let’s pray for the strength needed to follow through and not turn back.
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” – Jesus, in Matthew 6:24
I recently had a very strange dream, which occurred (kind of) in the church I went to as a kid. This church, in Washington, D.C., has been around for over 130 years and meets in a stone building and has an amazing pipe organ in the main sanctuary. The appearance and structure of the church communicates permanence and tradition.
In this dream, I was roughly a teenager on one end of the church building but had to meet up with my family at the other end of the building. I started out in a place that seemed like the church I knew, but as I travelled to the other end, things got really bizarre. First, the size of the building seemed to keep expanding and the number of people in it kept multiplying. Soon I noticed that there was a gift shop selling all sorts of kitsch that had nothing to do with religion. I kept going in the same direction, trying to find my family, but the building just kept growing as I went, eventually having many levels, with huge moving walkways and escalators. The dream ended with me still in the church, but this end of it had become a very upscale, very massive, shopping mall. I remember wondering “how did the church turn into this?”
What to make of this? Consider what a shopping mall is. Yes, it’s a large collection of stores in one place, but not a random collection. Those stores were chosen to be as diverse as possible. The more of our desires and wants the mall can meet by having different types of stores, the more economically successful the mall will be, and that’s what matters to the mall operator. People want fancy clothes, jewelry, entertainment, snacks and candy, toys, and many other things. So, a mall can represent our “do whatever you want” culture.
I wonder if the seed of the dream was something I saw on Twitter a few days before: “There are infinite ways to be non-binary.” What they were saying is that not only are there not just two genders, but that we can endlessly create new ones with no limit at all. It’s like a sexual version of the shopping mall, and also a denial that there’s any real right or wrong or that there’s any such thing as an inappropriate desire. But can we really make ourselves into anything we want to be without consequences?
Consider this: no competent computer engineer would tell us that we can just arrange a diverse group of components any way we want and end up with a working computer. The engineer isn’t being intolerant or mean, they just know what it takes to make a computer do what it’s supposed to.
Likewise, when Jesus says “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few,”[1] He is not being intolerant or mean by saying we can’t do whatever we want to, He just knows that we were designed, what we were designed to do, and also what will ultimately satisfy us.
Christian churches are supposed to teach us how to follow Christ, not tell us to do whatever we want to, but now many churches, just like in my dream, have turned into proverbial shopping malls. In many cases, we’ve forgotten that people are not accidents of random circumstances in nature, and we’ve forgotten that our Creator knows what’s best for us. We’ve decided to pursue “the way that is easy” forgetting that it “leads to destruction.” Too many churches, now including the one I went to in DC, say that Jesus will meet whatever needs we think we have, rather than saying that Jesus knows what we need better than we do; that it’s our idea of need that must be changed.
It’s our idea of need that must be changed
When Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” the “world” He loves is the one where we’ve come up with infinite ways to reject Him. Where we’ve come up with infinite ways to deny that He made us and knows better than us what’s right and wrong, what “leads to life” and what “leads to destruction.”
When God gave His Son, His sacrifice was sufficient for all sin and can cover all the infinite ways we decide to ignore what’s good for us. Because God loved this world, it’s also true that His people should communicate His love and grace at all times to all people, by word and action. Yet it’s also true that church is not a shopping mall regardless of what people can imagine in their dreams that it should be. The church is called to a higher standard of living, a holy standard informed by our Creator’s knowledge of what works.
So, in these troubling times, pray that people will continue to find Jesus, both within and outside the church and what much of it has become. That God’s people will love holiness, but also love sinners. Pray that we find the way that is hard but leads to life and that God’s church is a beacon calling people to it.
For those looking for a Bible reading plan, each week I post 2 chapters to read per day as a main reading plan, and for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible in 2026, I’ll post the extra chapters to read that week. The main readings will include nearly all of the New Testament, plus Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, and a few other Old Testament books.
Reading 3 chapters a day on weekdays and 4 on weekends almost exactly covers the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, so the “extra” readings will be about 9 chapters per week. These readings will cover the Pentateuch, the OT histories, a few other OT books, plus Jude and Revelation from the NT.
Regardless, I hope this schedule encourages others to read and study their Bible more, whatever parts they decide to read. Follow along (or not) any way you choose!
2 chapter a day plan: Monday, July 6: Amos 6 – 7 Tuesday, July 7: Amos 8 – 9 Wednesday, July 8: Romans 1 – 2 Thursday, July 9: Romans 3 – 4 Friday, July 10: Romans 5 – 6 Saturday, July 11: Romans 7 – 8 Sunday, July 12: Romans 9 – 10
Extra chapters for those reading the whole Bible in 2026: 1 Samuel 9 – 17
Anyone who knows the story of the Exodus knows who the bad guy is: Pharaoh. As the leader of Egypt, he is primarily to blame for the enslavement of Israel. Eventually, through Moses and Aaron, God tells Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery, and time and again Pharaoh refuses. Clearly, Pharaoh is God’s enemy. However, in his resistance to God, I think Pharaoh fell into some habits any of us could fall into.
First, Pharaoh admitted his need for God only when things were going wrong but shut God out when things were going well. In Exodus 8:8, Pharaoh asked Moses to “Plead with the LORD to take away the frogs from me and from my people” but once the frogs were gone, Exodus 8:15 tells us that “when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart” and refused to do God’s will. The same thing happens in chapter 9, during the plague of the hail. Seeing the destruction caused by the hail, Pharaoh says “Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail” in verse 28, but in verse 34, “when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart.”
Next, Pharaoh repeatedly negotiated with God to define the scope of His influence. Faced with the plague of flies, Pharoah said to Moses and Aaron “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.”[1] But staying “in the land” was not what God wanted His people to do. In response to the plague of locusts, Pharoah said “the men among you” could leave and worship God, but he wouldn’t let the “little ones”[2] go. Also, after the plague of darkness, Pharoah said “Go, serve the LORD; your little ones also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind.”[3] In these 3 responses, Pharaoh insisted on limits to where the people should worship, which people should worship, and what they could (and couldn’t) use in worship.
Third, Pharaoh also tried to limit the scope of his own sin, and which sins he would be accountable to God for. In Exodus 9:27, Pharaoh said, “this time I have sinned” and in 10:17 said “forgive my sin, please, only this once.” In reality Pharaoh was sinning every time he refused to listen to God, but he wasn’t willing to admit that. He only admitted a minority of the times he disobeyed.
If you’re like me, this all might sound familiar. Often our prayers are more fervent and sincere when we need help than they are when we have something to praise God for, or when times are good. Often, we allow God to govern some parts of our life, but we keep other parts for ourselves, to do what we want with. Also, we often only admit some of our sins and choose which ones to care about. We’re all a bit like Pharaoh, the bad guy in the Exodus story.
Fortunately for us, we have something else in common with Pharaoh: the true, Almighty God will defeat all of the “gods” we follow. Every single one. Behind the battle between Moses and Pharaoh was a contest between our God and Pharaoh’s gods. As the Life Application Study Bible notes: “As each gloomy plague descended upon the land, the Egyptian people realized how powerless their own gods were to stop it. Hapi, the god of the Nile River, could not prevent the waters from turning to blood. Hathor, the crafty cow-goddess, was helpless as Egyptian livestock died in droves. Amon-Re, the sun-god and chief of the Egyptian gods, could not stop an eerie darkness from covering the land for three full days.”
When we choose not to obey God, we harden our hearts against Him and follow the “gods” we choose for ourselves, but God will ultimately defeat them all. God’s purpose in saving us is to deliver us from all other gods, as He delivered Israel from Egypt. He will deliver us from our slavery to every sin that binds us and make us not follow Him wholeheartedly.
We may be more like Pharaoh than we’d like to admit, but the Pharaoh in us has been killed, nailed to the cross with Jesus. When we reach heaven, all of our other “gods” will be gone and we will be perfected in our obedience to the one, true God, for our good and for His glory!
That’s a deliverance worth looking forward to and praising God for!
