devotional

The Quiet Miracle

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Today, I was listening to a podcast from Sally Lloyd-Jones, author of the Jesus Storybook Bible. She was conversing with Sir David Suchet, best known for his portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, about several topics of faith.

One topic of interest to me was when they talked about the miracle at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine. David noted that one particular thing struck him about the miracle in that Jesus appeared to say or do nothing to bring it about. He didn’t offer a blessing. He didn’t wave His arms or lift up a prayer. He told the servants to fill up the large pitchers with water and when the taster got to them, the water had become wine.

It was a quiet miracle. Michael Card calls it the unmiraculous miracle. It’s notable that presumably no one at the wedding ever found out about the miracle except for the servants who poured the water. Not the wedding hosts or the guests. Not the bride or groom. Only the servants.

Jesus was quietly inaugurating His kingdom and only a few servants were in on it. I’m reminded of how the first people to witness the Incarnation were shepherds who had been out in the fields tending their flocks. The first witnesses of the resurrection were the same women whose testimony would not have counted in a court of law back in that day.

Again and again, Jesus chose the nobodies of the world to be the first to hear His good news. The gospel wasn’t given to the famous or the rich or the powerful at first, but to those discounted and outcast and disregarded by everyone else. But they were the ones Jesus chose.

Isn’t that how it works even now. To those who feel forgotten or left out, Jesus sees you. To those that nobody counts as worth anything, Jesus thought you were worth dying for. To those who sometimes feel like they’re taking up space in the world, Jesus has invited you to be a part of His Great Commission and to be His disciples. Even now, the gospel of Jesus is for you. Even you. Even me.

Easter Sunday 2026

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

The empty tomb means everything. It means that Jesus is not dead and buried but alive and reigning. It means that Jesus defeated death, the grave, and hell forever. It means that there’s nothing you and I will ever face that hasn’t already been overcome by the cross and the empty tomb.

The Apostle Paul says that if Jesus isn’t alive and raised from the dead, it’s all meaningless. Our faith is futile and our hope is in vain. We’re the most pitiful people on the planet. He doesn’t make any allowances for a symbolic resurrection. If Jesus is only alive in our hearts and in our memories, then our faith is worthless and we might as well go and do what we like and believe in nothing at all.

But because Jesus is alive, our hope is alive. Our pain and suffering now have a purpose as well as an expiration date. Those we lost in the Lord are not gone forever. All the wrong and evil in the world will one day be made right and good. We can survive anything because we look to Jesus who endured the cross and despised the shame because He was looking at the joy just over the horizon beyond the tomb.

Easter gives meaning to Christmas (and everything else). Jesus is not a good teacher who gave us good morals and examples to follow. He is Messiah who fulfilled all the prophecies ever made about Him. He is Lord of all who demands our ultimate allegiance. He is God incarnate, 100% man and 100% God. He is the only one who can take our place on the cross and our punishment for the sins we’ve committed.

If Jesus is dead, then Easter is nothing but a hollow holiday with no meaning. But if He is alive — and He is — then Easter is the day we celebrate the best good news ever. That means that we who were dead can be made alive again. We who were guilty and deserving of death can be forgiven and pardoned and set free. We who were condemned and estranged from God can now become sons and daughters of God and heirs to the promise. Thank You, Lord, for Easter Sunday!

Invited (Good Friday 2026)

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I got a last minute invite from a friend to see Chris Tomlin’s Good Friday worship concert at Bridgestone Arena. He knew someone who had a suite and couldn’t use the tickets, so he got one and invited me to tag along. We got to sit in comfortable chairs and eat free food. Plus there was a concert.

The concert itself was amazing. Chris sang all of his familiar songs that churches have been worshipping with for years. He had a few special guests, including one Michael W. Smith, to help lead us in worship. The highlight of the evening was hearing David Nassar speak. He mentioned hearing a young Iranian girl named Goinosh singing the song Holy Forever in Farsi at 4 am. Lo and behold, they brought her out on stage to sing it in Farsi while the crowd sang it in English.

The best part was that I didn’t have to pay. I knew someone who knew someone, so when I arrived, all I had to do was walk into the suite and enjoy the show. My ticket had already been paid for.

It struck me how that’s a picture of heaven. One day, I’ll show up at those proverbial pearly gates. I won’t have to fork over a large sum of cash or prove a lifetime of good deeds to get in. When I arrive, I can honestly tell them that my purchase price to get in has already been paid in full.

I love the illustration that Allistair Begg uses about the thief on the cross on his first day in heaven. There’s all these angels asking him all sorts of questions about theological concepts that he doesn’t know the answers to. When they ask how he got in, he said, “The Man on the middle cross said I could come.”

That will be my answer if anyone asks. It won’t be because of my sinless life. It won’t be because my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. It won’t be because God ignored my sin. It will be because once I asked Jesus to save me from my sin and to be my Lord and Savior. I invited Him to live in my heart.

This invitation isn’t just for a future residence in heaven. It gets me into the throne of grace anytime I’m in need. It gets the Holy Spirit inside of me, enabling me to live a life worthy of God. Right now, I have everything I need for life and godliness. Right now, I have 100% of God in me and with me and for me.

My invitation, bought and paid for, is the same that’s offered to anyone who says yes to Jesus. Anyone who repents and believes in Jesus Christ for salvation. It’s not just a ticket to get into heaven, but an invitation into an abundant life in Jesus that starts right now.

Maundy Thursday 2026

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I love a good Maundy Thursday service, or at least the way my church does it. After growing up in old-school Baptist churches, I’ve loved being introduced to some more liturgical aspects of the calendar year, like Advent and Lent. I especially love the idea of commemorating the week leading up to Easter Sunday.

Our Maundy Thursday service is very low-key. We typically have one person playing music in an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation. There’s no sermon, only a rotating set of slides with verses from Isaiah 53 and other verses relating to the crucifixion. Two deacons stand in the front of the sanctuary ready to offer the elements of the Lord’s Supper.

To appreciate Easter Sunday more fully, it’s good to remember what led up to it. We need to walk through the last supper of Christ with His disciples. We need to see Him in the garden, praying that the cup might pass but also praying not my will but Thine. We need to relive the arrest, the trial, and the crucifixion.

It’s easy to read those passages in light of the resurrection, but I think we miss something. Those disciples were genuinely grieving the loss of their Lord. They had no idea that the bloodied body they saw buried in the tomb would rise out of it three days later. Sure, they heard what Jesus had told them, but it didn’t make sense, along with 90% of what Jesus spoke to them.

Easter means something because Jesus really was dead. Not to go into graphic gory detail, but most paintings and other depictions of Jesus on the cross don’t really do it justice. Isaiah 52 says that He wasn’t even recognizable as human. I still think that if you filmed the crucifixion with 100% biblical accuracy, it’d get an NC-17 or get censored because it would be way too gory and graphic for most people.

That’s what was in the tomb. That’s why Easter is a big deal. Easter means that there’s no such thing as a lost cause or a hopeless situation. Easter means that the same death that couldn’t hold Jesus in the grave will not have the last word. Jesus has overcome death, the grave, and hell and the victory is already won.

I don’t want to rush into the celebration this time. I want to take it all in as best as I can. I want to weep with the disciples and remember that Jesus wept over Lazarus as well, knowing full well that He was about to call him out of his own grave. Easter means that just as Jesus endured the cross for the joy that awaited, so we can endure anything when we know that Easter Sunday is on the other side of our suffering.

The Suffering Servant

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him” (Isaiah 53:2-6, The Message).

As the old preacher used to say, that’s my Jesus! He didn’t wink at my sin or tell me not to worry about it. He Himself bore my sin on His body on the cross. He took the punishment that I deserved for my sins. He as an infinite being suffered infinitely and died in my place.

There have been lots of renderings and pictures of what we think Jesus looked like. According to Isaiah 53, He was nothing much to look at. He wasn’t anything that would catch people’s eye and hold their attention. The Bible says that there was “nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance” (Isaiah, 53:2, NLT). Basically, He looked like a lot of other 30something year old Middle Eastern men in the 1st century.

But He’s the only one who lived a sinless life, perfectly keeping the law of God. He’s the only one who willingly took up a cross and laid down His life for others. He’s the only one who took peoples’ sins on His own body and paid their penalty. And He’s the only one who walked out of an empty tomb after three days.

That means He’s the only one worthy of worship. He’s the only one worth singing about, talking about, praying to, and praising. And if I had been the only one, I still believe He would have gone through it all even for me. That’s a kind of love that’s worth singing about and celebrating and living out. That’s my Jesus!

Palm Sunday 2026

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Something I read today has stuck with me all day. Today we celebrate Palm Sunday, when the crowds were yelling and singing as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey in clear fulfillment of an Old Testament Messianic prophecy. Yet those were the same ones who were weeping over His death just a few days later.

I wonder what they were expecting. Were they hoping that Jesus would somehow lead an overthrow of Rome and restore independence to Israel? Were they hoping He would set Himself up as a King over Israel?

He didn’t have an army that they could see. He never once spoke about raising up an army. He never told them they needed to rebel against Roman rule. In fact, He’s the one who told them to pay their raxes because the coins which bore Ceasar’s likeness belonged to Caesar.

I wonder how many understood that the kingdom Jesus kept talking about was not one of this world. It wasn’t defined by boundaries or geography. It was God’s active rule in the hearts of all who would believe in His name and have eternal life and be indwelled by His Holy Spirit. It was the Church that would explode in numbers after He ascended back into heaven.

But most of them didn’t get it. Jesus even said they wouldn’t. Their hardness of heart and spiritual blindness kept them from seeing what was right in front of them. Only a few understood, and even they didn’t fully realize what was happening until after Jesus rose from the dead. Even the twelve were most likely expecting what the crowds were expecting.

No one could have foreseen a suffering Messiah. No one predicted that instead of leading a rebellion against Rome, He would lay down His life for them and His own people and the whole world. No one was prepared for Him to die, especially not on a cross reserved for the worst of criminals in a manner that was the worst kind of torture the human mind could conceive.

But to those who believed, He gave the right to become sons and daughters of the living God.

On the Night Before Palm Sunday

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is Palm Sunday, which means a week from tomorrow is Easter Sunday. That will be when people who would normally not go to church will show up feeling uncomfortable and not knowing when to sit, stand, or kneel. Many of them will know very little about why we’re celebrating Easter again this year because mostly what they know is rabbits and candy and hunting for plastic eggs.

Although Christmas is my favorite, Easter is not far behind. It represents why Christmas has meaning. If Jesus died on the cross and remained buried in that tomb, then His birth has no meaning and His life has no value. Anything He said or did would in turn be worthless.

But because there is an empty tomb and a risen Lord, we celebrate. We come together to remember that Jesus laid down His life for us to make our salvation possible. He then rose again to make that salvation secure. We can trust that nothing can separate us from the love of a Savior whom the grave could not hold and death could not defeat.

I do love everything about Easter. I love how people still get dressed up in their best Sunday outfits. I love that little kids still get excited about Easter baskets filled with candy and other goodness as well as hunting for those plastic eggs filled with more candy and sometimes money. I love seeing the world explode in pastel colors as the earth comes back to life after having lain dormant for so long during the winter months.

Palm Sunday represents the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem when the people lauded Him with hosannas. Most of them were thinking He was about to instigate an overthrow of Roman rule and a return of kingship to Israel. They wanted a king just like all the other nations, just like another Saul who looked good and said all the right things.

But a few knew that Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. They knew that His kingdom wasn’t just for Jews. His kingdom was for anyone who would put their faith in this Messiah. This road that led to a kingdom wasn’t covered with palm branches and hosannas laid down by the multitudes but instead lead to a hill with Him carrying a cross while multitudes jeered at Him and called for His execution. This road would lead to suffering and death, but we know that soon that crown of thorns He bore on the cross would soon be exchanged for a throne that He would never relinquish.

Easter Sunday is a reminder that the worst part isn’t the end. As one writer puts it, your story never ends with ashes. The resurrection means that no one is ever too far gone or too lost to save. It’s never too late to be who God made you to be or to live out His purposes for you.

May our hosannas ring out just as loudly as they did 2000 years ago, but may we also look to the cross and the tomb where Jesus lay for three days and remember that it was for us that He lived and died. But may we never lose sight of that Sunday when He rose again. May our song from now on always be an Easter song because we are an Easter people with a risen Lord!

A New Way to Live

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely” (Galatians 5:19-23, The Message).

Those of you who were saved later in life can probably attest to this. Following Jesus not only saves you from your sin and guarantees you a place in heaven, but it is simply a better way to live. Period. Instead of carrying the burden of being our own gods and saviors, we get to live out of the freedom that Jesus won for us on the cross. We live out of new identities and new hearts and new purposes.

The good news is that it’s never too late for those in the first category to switch to the second. You can know true peace and fulfillment through Jesus at any age. Because of Easter Sunday, death and ashes will not have the last word. There is a hope that even the grave can’t conquer.

Thank You, Jesus, for giving us a new way to live. We’re no longer slaves to sin or to our addictions or our passions. We can choose a better way now that You chose the nails for us. We can now be fully alive since you laid down Your life for us. You became obedient to the point of death on a cross so that we could finally know what it means to live victoriously and abundantly in Your mercy and grace. Amen.

34 Years Later

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I may or may not still have the ticket stub, but 34 years ago, I saw Steven Curtis Chapman live at the Mid-South Coliseum for his The Live Adventure tour. If memory serves, the year was 1992, or as the young kids call it, the late 1900s.

Tonight, I came full circle when I heard ol’ Steven perform his song The Great Adventure, as well as the entire album Speechless from start to finish. Back in 1992, I couldn’t even have imagined this moment so many years later. I suppose I was thinking more about getting through college and what came after.

But God has a way of bringing things around full circle in a way that no one ever could have planned or conceived. God has a way of surprising His people in the best kind of way. The kind that is exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we can ask or imagine.

It was great. The songs might have been in a slightly lower key. Steven might have shed the mullet look he was sporting way back in the early 90s. I might be less energetic tomorrow morning after a late night than I was when I was 20 years old. But it was still amazing and totally worth it.

Maybe there’s something you’re believing God for right now that seems impossible. It seems hopeless and if there ever was an expiration date your hopes and dreams, they have long since passed.

God is still at work. He’s still doing 10,000 things in your life, including the 9,997 things you’re unaware of or can’t see. God still promises to give us everything we need for life and godliness. God will give you your heart’s desire or He will give you something better. Something you would have asked for from the start had you known what He knows.

Maybe the next time won’t take 34 years, but I hope to see Steven again in concert soon. No matter how long it takes, I know the God he’s been singing about all these years will still be good and faithful.

Sinless Grace

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I was watching a Youtube video of a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity. One reason was that she read through the Bible, particularly the parts about Jesus. One thing that struck her forcibly was the passage of Jesus with the woman caught in the act of adultery.

It’s a familiar story. Some religious leaders had caught a woman in the act of adultery, which begs its own set of questions. Who was the man she was with? Was he one of the ones accusing her? Why was he not also brought before Jesus if they were in the very act?

So many questions, but the point wasn’t justice. It was to entrap Jesus. They didn’t care about the woman or the man or even what the Law of Moses said at this point. They wanted to trick Jesus into sinning. They knew the punishment for adultery was stoning. Would Jesus uphold the law and get in trouble with Rome? Or would Jesus give her a pass and condemn Himself before the Law of Moses. They saw it as a lose-lose scenario for Jesus.

But what did Jesus say? Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone. He didn’t argue that adultery wasn’t sinful. He was saying that it was no more sinful than pride or arrogance or hypocrisy.

It occurred to me that the only one qualified to stone the woman was Jesus. He was the only sinless one present. He had every right, according to the Law, to accuse her and condemn her. But the only one with the right to condemn her instead chose to forgive her instead.

That’s my Jesus. He has every right to condemn me every time I sin. He has every right to throw the book at me, legally speaking, and leave me to the punishment for my own sin. But He chose the nails instead. He chose the cross instead. He chose to die so that I might live.

He didn’t save the woman from death to allow her to keep committing adultery. He said that he didn’t condemn her, but He also said to her to go and sin no more. It wasn’t a matter of tolerating her behavior but redeeming her for a better purpose. Her life now served to glorify God instead of gratifying her own desires.

You and I have been redeemed for a purpose. We no longer live for ourselves but we live for the glory and praise of God. The best part is that what brings God the most glory is what brings us the most joy and is for our greatest good. God’s desire is for each of us to be like Jesus and in the process become our truest selves as God designed when He created us as image bearers.

Thank You, God, that though You had every right to cast stones at me, You chose to cast Your grace and mercy my way and to lay down Your own life for mine. You set me free from a life of slavery to my own desires to a life both abundant and eternal. I get to spend forever with You and know Your perfect peace and joy. Amen.