Introduction

You can believe grace is free and still live like there’s an invoice coming.

It usually sounds reasonable in your head. Yes, saved by grace — but obviously that doesn’t mean you just sit there. So you start adding. A little more discipline, a little more service, a little more of whatever the last sermon suggested. And somewhere in the adding, the free thing quietly turns into a thing you’re maintaining.

Paul saw that coming. In three verses he says it’s a gift, says it isn’t from works, says nobody gets to boast about it — and then, without pausing, tells you that you were made for good works.

Two things most of us have spent years trying to hold apart. He puts them in the same breath.

Scripture

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. — Ephesians 2:8–10

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Paul closes every door: Not from yourselves. The gift of God. Not by works. Three denials stacked up, and then the reason for all of them: so that no one can boast. The point isn’t that your effort is worthless. It’s that this particular thing was never available for purchase or earning.

Then verse 10 turns, and the word Paul reaches for is handiwork — in Greek, poiēma. A made thing. Something crafted by someone. You are not the artist here. You are the piece.

And notice what he says the piece was made for: good works. The same words he just told you couldn’t save you. He isn’t nervous about that, and he doesn’t explain it. He just moves the works from one side of the sentence to the other. Before grace they were a price nobody could pay. After grace they’re the reason you were made new.

One more detail, easy to skim: those works were “prepared in advance for us to do.” They were laid out ahead of time, the way a parent sets out the tools before the child comes to help. Even your part was arranged before you got there.

What This Means for You

Here’s the mistake almost everyone makes with these two verses, and it’s an honest one. You hear “not by works” and relax. Then you hear “for good works” and tense right back up, because it sounds like the requirement snuck in through a side door.

It didn’t. Look at the order.

Works were never the price of getting in — Paul just spent a verse making that impossible. They’re what you were made new for. A potter doesn’t shape a pitcher and then wait to see whether it earns the right to pour. Pouring is what it was made to do — and the potter settled that before the clay was ever on the wheel.

So what are the works actually doing, if they’re not buying anything?

They’re forming you. That’s the part most of us miss. Obedience isn’t a condition God is waiting on before he’ll act — he already acted, while you were dead. It’s the means by which you become someone. You don’t earn anything by it. You learn by it. The doing is where the identity spoken over you works its way into who you actually become.

And even that isn’t left to you to invent. God prepared the works in advance. You’re not scanning the horizon trying to find something impressive to attempt. You’ve been made new with purpose. You’re walking into what’s already been set out — most of it unremarkable, most of it every day, most of it involving someone whose name you already know, and now and then someone whose name you’re about to learn.

You are not working toward becoming God’s handiwork. You already are — and the works were never the payment. They’re the shape the life takes, prepared in advance, and doing them is how what’s already true of you becomes true in you.

Grace Note

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. — 2 Corinthians 4:7

The pitcher was never the point. What it carries is. He fills ordinary clay — cracked, mended, nothing much to look at — and then he pours. The power is his the whole time. You just get to be standing there when it happens.

Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I keep waiting for the invoice. I say the word gift and then I go looking for the terms, because in my experience free things usually aren’t.

I think I’ve been treating obedience like a payment plan. Something to keep current so you don’t reconsider. And it’s made everything I do for you feel a little anxious, like I’m always slightly behind.

I want to do the things you set out for me because they’re what I’m for. Not to hold my place. Not to prove anything to you or to me.

You already made me. Let me stop trying to earn what you’ve already put in my hands, and just go do the next thing you left out for me today.

Amen.

Response

1. Written Reflection: Write down one thing you’ve been doing for God that has felt like keeping an account current. Then write next to it what it would look like to do the same thing as a person who owes nothing.

2. Observational: Watch today for the works “prepared in advance” — the ones already sitting in your path. A conversation you didn’t schedule, a need in front of you, a person who’s clearly in your way for a reason. At the end of the day, tell God which one you walked into.

3. Kinesthetic: Hold something in your hands that someone made — a tool, a piece of furniture, a bowl, anything shaped by a person. Feel the marks of the making. Then say, out loud or under your breath: My Maker made me with purpose.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Most of us keep a private grade for how we were doing before God got involved. Not great, we’d admit. But not the worst. We were trying. There was raw material to work with.

It’s a comfortable way to think about it, and it survives right up until you read how Paul describes the same stretch of your life. He doesn’t say struggling. He doesn’t say lost, or off track, or doing your best under the circumstances.

He says dead.

That’s a harder word than most of us would have chosen. Stay with it anyway, because of what it makes possible two verses later. A person who was doing badly needs help. A person who was dead needs something else entirely — and Paul is about to name it in two words.

Scripture

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. — Ephesians 2:1–7

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Paul spends three verses on the diagnosis and doesn’t soften any of it. Dead. Following the course of this world. By nature deserving of wrath. Notice he includes himself — “all of us also lived among them at one time.” This isn’t a pastor describing other people’s problem.

Then verse 4 begins, and the sentence turns on two words: But God.

Everything before them describes a condition with no way out from the inside. Everything after them is God acting. Look at who does what. He made us alive. He raised us up. He seated us with Christ. Three verbs, one subject, and it isn’t you. The dead do not participate in their own resurrection.

And notice where the seating happens. Yesterday you read that Christ is seated far above every rule and authority. Today Paul says you are seated with him — same verb, same place. Not someday. Stated as something already done.

He even tells you why: so that in the ages to come, God could point at you as evidence of what his kindness is like.

What This Means for You

Here’s what “dead” actually does for you, and it isn’t what you’d expect from a word that harsh.

It takes you out of the self-improvement business.

If you were merely struggling, then your rescue is partly a story about your cooperation — and every hard week afterward becomes an evaluation on whether you’re holding up your end. But dead people don’t hold up an end. They don’t cooperate, contribute, or meet anyone halfway. If that’s the honest word for where you were, then nothing you did lost you this new life, and nothing you do keeps it. The whole transaction happened while you had nothing to bring.

This is also why “dead” isn’t a verdict on your value. It’s a diagnosis. God didn’t look at a corpse and see potential worth reviving. He looked and loved, which the text says plainly — because of his great love, being rich in mercy. The love came first, aimed at people with nothing to recommend them.

Which means the worst thing about you was already on the table before he moved. You have spent years bracing for the moment he finds something out. There is nothing to find. He started at dead.

And what he did with dead wasn’t repair. He made you alive, raised you, and sat you down beside his Son — while you were still in the condition he found you in. This is what being born again actually means.

You weren’t underperforming. You were dead — and dead people don’t get improved, they get raised. Nothing you did lost this, and nothing you do keeps it, because the only move available was his, and he made it while you had nothing to offer.

Grace Note

“For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate. — Luke 15:24

The same two words, said by a father about his own child. Notice what the son didn’t have to do first: not explain himself, not clean up, not arrive with anything. He just had to return to his father. And look at what met him — forgiven, accepted, loved, celebrated. The Father meets you the same way.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I’ve been quietly grading myself for years. Not great, but not the worst. Trying. Somewhere in there I decided you saved someone who had a little something going for him.

I don’t think that’s what happened.

I think you loved me when there was nothing there to love back with. And that’s harder to sit with than I expected, because it takes away the part I was hoping I played.

I’m tired of bracing for the day you look closer and change your mind. There’s nothing left for you to find. You started with me at my worst and you moved anyway.

So let me stop working to keep something I never earned in the first place. Let me just be alive, and be your child, and let that be enough for today.

Amen.

Response

1. Verbal/Read Aloud: Read verses 4 and 5 out loud, and put the weight on the two words at the start: But God. Say them slowly. Everything true about you now begins there.

2. Contemplative: Sit for five minutes with the private grade you’ve been giving yourself — the “not great, but not the worst” version of your own story. Don’t defend it or argue with it. Just hold it next to the word Paul used, and stay quiet.

3. Relational: Think of someone you’ve quietly written off as too far gone. Pray for them by name, once, and remember what condition you were in when God moved toward you.

If You’ve Never Actually Trusted Him

I want to stop and say something directly, because today’s passage makes it necessary.

It’s possible to have been around this your whole life — church, Bible, prayers before dinner — and still be quietly resting on your own grade. Trying to be good enough. Hoping it comes out ahead in the end. If that’s where you are, you’re not a fraud and you’re not late. You’re exactly the person Paul is writing to, and you’ve just read the thing that changes it.

Dead people don’t improve their way into life. They get raised. The only question in front of you is whether you’ll stop trusting your own record and start trusting his.

If you want to, you can tell him so right now. There are no magic words — God isn’t listening for a formula, he’s listening for you — but if it helps to have some, these are honest ones:

Jesus, I’ve been trusting myself to be good enough, and I’m done pretending it’s working. I believe you died for me and that God raised you. I’m not bringing anything but myself. Take me as I am, make me alive in you, and I’ll follow you from here. Amen.

If you prayed that and meant it, nothing about you is on probation. You didn’t start a trial period. You are a new creation — and everything this series has been describing, chosen and redeemed and sealed, is now describing you.

Then do one more thing today: tell somebody. Your spouse, a pastor, a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, a friend who follows Jesus, anyone who’ll walk with you. The Christian life was never meant to be walked alone. And if there isn’t anyone, tell me. Reply to this post, or send me a message on Facebook. I’d be honored to be the first to hear it, and then I’ll do my best to help you connect to a vibrant body of Christ near you.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Some things in your life have authority over you, and you never voted on any of them. The diagnosis that reorganized your calendar. The number in the account that decides what you’re allowed to say yes to. The name on your phone that changes your posture before you’ve even opened the message.

You don’t have to believe those things are in charge. Your body already treats them like they are.

Paul is about to make a claim about who outranks what. It’s worth knowing he makes it from a prison cell, under an empire that had the legal authority to kill him. Whatever else he is here, he isn’t naive.

Scripture

That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. — Ephesians 1:19–23

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Yesterday Paul prayed they’d see God’s incomparably great power. Here he tells them how to measure it — not by imagining something infinite, but by looking at one historical event. The power in question is the power that raised Jesus from the grave and seated him at God’s right hand.

Notice there are two motions. Raised: up and out of the grave. Seated: the work finished, the position taken. Nobody sits down till the job’s done.

Then Paul stacks up every word his world had for spiritual power — rule, authority, power, dominion, every name that is invoked — and puts Christ far above all of it. Not narrowly above. Far. Then he closes the last exit: not only in this age, but in the one still coming. Nothing already here outranks him, and nothing on its way will either.

And then the clause that makes it personal. God appointed Him head over everything for the church. And His authority is not only all-encompassing but also a gift to the church, His body — which includes you.

What This Means for You

Paul is not telling you those powers in your life aren’t real. He’s writing this under guard. He knows exactly what it is to be under something that can decide where your body goes today.

He’s telling you they’re outranked, diminutive in comparison.

That distinction is worth holding onto, because the two get confused constantly. The things ruling your week have reach. They can touch your sleep, your calendar, your body, your bank balance, your mood before breakfast. What they don’t have is rank. Reach is real. You can feel it. It hurts. But rank is the question of who is finally in charge, and that one is settled.

And look at which direction the authority points. Head over everything for the church. Not sovereign over the universe and, on the side, fond of his people. Over all of it, for them. The government of everything under Christ’s rule is oriented toward your good.

Now the honest part, because a promise this large can sour if it’s oversold. Most of us have heard this promise inflated — told that if we’d just believe enough, faith would fix it, and then watched it not get fixed. Paul wrote these words and then stayed in chains. Christ’s supremacy did not unlock his cell. What it settled was the question of who actually governed his life, and that turned out to be the more important question — because a man who knows the answer to it can be in prison and still not be ruled.

The things ruling your week are real, and some of them will still be there tomorrow. They have reach. They do not have rank — and the one who does has defeated the power of sin, death, and the grave.

Grace Note

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:38–39

Same list. Different question. Not what Jesus outranks — what all the others can’t touch. That’s the supremacy of God’s love for you.

Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I say you’re Lord, and then I spend the whole day negotiating with things that act like they are. The message I haven’t opened. The bill. The thing the doctor said. They don’t ask my permission to run my afternoon. They just do it.

I’m not going to pretend I need them all gone. I’ve asked for that before and lived through the answer being no. That’s not really what I’m after anymore.

What I keep forgetting is that you’re seated. Not straining, not fighting for ground, not waiting to see how this turns out. Seated. And the authority you hold, you’re holding it for people like me.

I don’t need you to clear my day. I need to stop handing it over to things that were never in charge. I know I still need to take care of this stuff. Please give me the wisdom, insight, and creativity to dispatch them and honor you and your rule in my life.

Amen.

Response

1. Written Reflection: Name what’s actually been ruling your week. Be specific and unspiritual about it — the person, the number, the appointment, the habit. Vague lists are easy to dismiss.

2. Kinesthetic: Write one of those names on a slip of paper and set it under something solid on your desk or table — under, not on top. Let a little bit of it stick out from under. Leave it there all day. Every time you notice it, notice where it’s sitting. Then name the one above out loud.

3. Connective: Yesterday you asked for eyes. Ask again today, but point the request at your list, your schedule — that you’d see each thing on it in its actual rank, not the one it’s been claiming. Make priority adjustments, additions, and deletions where necessary.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

You’ve crossed your own living room in the dark. You know roughly where the couch is. You know the doorway is somewhere ahead. You make it through — slowly, hands out, shins braced — and if anyone asked, you’d say yes, of course you know that room.

Then someone flips the light on. Nothing was added. No furniture arrived. It’s the same room you were already standing in, except now you can see it all at once, without having to feel for any of it.

Paul has spent fourteen verses telling these people what they have. Chosen. Redeemed. Sealed. And the very first thing he asks God for, once he finally starts asking, isn’t more.

It’s light.

Scripture

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. — Ephesians 1:17–19

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Yesterday Paul gave thanks. Here he starts asking, and he says he keeps asking — this is the standing request, the one he brings back. What he wants for them is a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, and he names the purpose plainly: so that you may know him better. Not so they’d know more. So they’d know him.

Then the phrase that carries the day: “the eyes of your heart.” In Paul’s world the heart wasn’t the feeling department. It was the whole inner person — mind, will, affections, the place you actually see from and decide from. And he asks that those eyes be enlightened. Flooded with light.

Now look at what he wants them to see. The hope of their calling. The riches of their inheritance. God’s incomparably great power. Three things — and every one of them is already true for these readers. Paul isn’t asking God to send hope, or supply riches, or generate power. All of it is in the room already. He’s asking that they’d be able to see it.

What This Means for You

You can recite it and still not feel it. Last week you read about being chosen before the world began, bought back at full price, sealed with God’s own Spirit. And there’s a decent chance you closed the page and went right back to feeling like someone barely holding things together.

That isn’t hypocrisy, and it isn’t weak faith. It’s the dark living room. You know where the furniture is. You just can’t see any of it, so you move through your day braced, hands out, taking the whole thing slowly.

Make no mistake, Paul knew that would happen. And his response wasn’t believe harder. He didn’t tell them to concentrate, or work up more feeling, or squint until the truth came into focus. He asked God to turn the light on. Seeing takes two things, eyes and light, and Paul doesn’t assume you can supply either one. Which means seeing is not one more thing you have to produce. It’s the next thing you receive.

You do have a part. You show up, you ask, you keep the request standing the way Paul kept his standing. But you are not the source of your own light, and the reason you can’t see is not a verdict on you. It’s just dark, but there’s light for the asking.

And notice where this seeing is going. Not toward better self-understanding, not toward finally feeling secure. Toward Him. The point of the light was never the furniture.

What you’re missing isn’t supply. It’s sight. And Paul doesn’t tell you to squint harder — he asks God to turn the light on.

Grace Note

And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. — 2 Kings 6:17

Nothing was added to that hillside. The army were already there. The only thing that changed was the servant’s ability to see.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I can say the words. I’ve been saying them all week. Chosen, bought back, sealed, kept. And then I put it down and go be a person who feels like he’s barely holding on.

I don’t think what I’m missing is more from you. I think I’ve been handed things I can’t see yet, and I’ve been calling that a failure of mine.

I’m tired of moving through my life with my hands out, bracing for furniture. I don’t want to work up a feeling about you. I want to actually see what’s here.

So do what I can’t. Shine your light on your Word. Open my eyes. Not so I’ll finally feel better about myself — so I’ll know you better than I did yesterday.

Amen.

Response

1. Contemplative: Sit for five minutes with one request and nothing else: Open my eyes. Don’t fill the silence with anything more. It’s a complete prayer.

2. Observational: Go looking today for one thing that was already there and you hadn’t seen — in a person, in your ordinary day, in something you’ve walked past for years. At the end of the day, tell God what you found.

3. Verbal/Read Aloud: Read verses 18 and 19 out loud, but as a request instead of a description — let me know the hope, let me see the riches, let me feel the power. Same words. Asked for, not just read.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Someone tells you, offhand, that they’ve been praying for you. Not vaguely. They name the month it started. And something quietly reorders itself, because that stretch you thought you went through alone, you didn’t. Someone was holding your name up before the Lord the whole time and never mentioned it.

Most of us are more comfortable on the other side of that. We’re the ones who keep the list, remember the surgery date, say “I’ll be praying” and then actually do it. It’s harder to picture yourself on somebody else’s list — to imagine your name coming up in prayer in a room you’re not in.

Paul is writing to believers he knows mostly by report. And the first thing he tells them is that he hasn’t stopped praying for them.

Scripture

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. — Ephesians 1:15–16

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

“For this reason” points backward. Everything Paul just finished saying — their being chosen, redeemed, sealed — is the reason he prays. The prayer isn’t an attempt to get God started on something. It’s a response to work God’s already done — and a prayer that they’d respond to it too.

Then notice how he knows these people: “ever since I heard.” He’s working from a report. He is also, at this moment, a prisoner. He can’t travel to them, can’t sit in their homes, can’t do most of what he’d want to do. What he can do is pray, and he does it without stopping.

And notice the order. Before Paul asks God for a single thing on their behalf (that starts in the very next verse), he gives thanks. He names what God is already doing in them before he names what he wants God to do next. Thanks first. Requests after.

What This Means for You

You’re probably more used to being the one who prays. You keep the list. You remember the date. You’re the one who says “I’ll be praying for you” and then actually does. That’s good work, and it quietly conditions you to see yourself as the one holding everybody else up — which makes it very hard to picture anyone holding you up before the Lord.

So here’s something you likely can’t verify: somebody has prayed for you and never told you. A grandmother. A teacher. Someone who sat two rows behind you for a year in church. You may never find out, and that’s the point — being prayed for was never something you had to know about for it to be happening or effective.

But if that one is likely, there’s another you can be certain of. Right now, while you’re reading this, Jesus is praying for you. Not as a figure of speech. Scripture says he lives to do it — intercession isn’t something he did once and finished, it’s something he is doing, continuously, at the Father’s right hand. The prayer being prayed for you didn’t end when Paul did. It has never stopped at all.

And that reshapes how you pray for everyone else. Paul starts with thanks, not with the deficit and not with the fix. He names what God is already doing in a person before he asks for anything more. You can pray for your mate, your kid, your friend, the person you can barely stand, that same way. Start where God already is.

You’ve spent most of your life on the praying end. But you’ve been on the other end the whole time — named in rooms you weren’t in, and named right now by Christ himself, who has never once stopped.

Grace Note

Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. — Hebrews 7:25

Not interceded. Intercedes. The tense is doing the work — not just once but continuously. Whatever else is true of today, that is happening while you read this.

Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I’m usually the one praying for folks. I’ve lost track of the fact that you’ve never stopped interceding, and I imagine my name has been in your prayers often.

I don’t know how to hold that. Most of my life I’ve assumed I’m at the back of the line, or not in the line at all — that if my name comes up in prayer anywhere, it’s because I’m the one who put it there.

And if I’m honest, being prayed for is harder for me than praying. I’d rather be the one carrying than the one being carried. There’s less to feel about it that way.

I’m not going to pretend I’ll stop keeping track of everyone else today. But let me also be someone who is prayed for. You’ve been saying my name a long time. Help me stop talking long enough to hear my name.

Amen.

Response

1. Relational: Tell one person today that you’re praying for them — and tell them what you’re thankful for in them before you ask them what they need. Paul’s order, in a text message.

2. Written Reflection: List everyone you can think of who has prayed for you. Include the ones you only found out about by accident. Then sit with how much longer that list probably is than the part you can see.

3. Kinesthetic: Write one name on something you’ll carry today — a card in your pocket, an index card on the dash. Every time you touch it, pray for them. Carrying one person for a day is a small taste of what Paul did from a prison cell for people he’d never met.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Scripture

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. — Ephesians 1:3

Reflection

Five days ago you didn’t have a word for where you live. Now you have four: in Christ, chosen, redeemed, sealed. Sit with them a moment, and notice the one thing they share — not one of them was yours to orchestrate.

The Father chose you before the world had a day on its calendar. The Son redeemed you at a price paid in full, past all counting. The Spirit sealed you with himself, a first installment on everything still coming. Three movements, and you were the recipient of every one. By the time you had a say, it was already done.

Most of what you carry through a week is what you have to keep up. This was the opposite — all done to you and for you, holding steady whether the day is good or bad. It was all given.

And Paul can’t get through describing it without stopping to praise. The same note sounds three times in his sentence, once at the close of each movement: to the praise of his glorious grace, then for the praise of his glory, then to the praise of his glory. He names what the Father did, and praises. What the Son did, and praises. What the Spirit did, and praises. The gift and the praise arrive in the same breath.

So today, don’t work at this. There’s nothing to build, nothing to keep up, nothing to prove—only a gift already given, and a Giver worth praising and thanking.

Practices

There’s no assignment today. Take one of these, or none.

• Be still. Five minutes, no agenda. Not to feel anything in particular — just stop keeping the plates spinning, and let it be true that you are not responsible for any of it.

• Read it whole. Ephesians 1:3–14 is one unbroken sentence in the original; Paul never stops for breath. Read it out loud that way, start to finish, and let it run.

• Worship. Put on something that moves you and don’t analyze it. Let someone else’s song carry the praise when you don’t have words for it yourself.

• Say thank you. Three short lines — one to the Father, one to the Son, one to the Spirit. Not eloquent. Just named.

Prayer

Father, I spend so much of my life keeping things up that I nearly missed a whole week of gifts I only had to receive.

You chose me before there was anything to choose. Your Son bought me back and left nothing owing. Your Spirit moved in and stayed, the first taste of everything you’ve promised. I did none of it. I couldn’t have.

I don’t have a payment for this, and I’m beginning to understand you never wanted one. So let me do the only thing that fits. Thank you. For all of it — given, and given freely, to the praise of your glory.

Amen.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

There’s a specific kind of tired that comes from holding on. You got the thing — the job, the relationship, the standing you wanted — but some part of you never fully set it down, because you’re not sure it’s really yours to keep. So you grip. You keep proving, keep earning, keep watching for the day someone reconsiders.

A lot of us carry our adoption into God’s family the same way. Grateful to be in, but privately braced, sure that staying in depends on how tightly we can hold on — and quietly afraid our grip isn’t strong enough.

Paul is about to describe the hand doing the holding — it’s not yours.

Scripture

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession — to the praise of his glory. — Ephesians 1:13–14

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

In the ancient world a seal did three things at once. It marked ownership — this belongs to its owner. It proved authenticity — this is genuine, not a forgery. And it meant security — this stays sealed until it reaches the one it’s for. A signet pressed into wax carried all of that.

Here’s the startling part. Paul says the seal isn’t a symbol stamped on you. The seal is the Holy Spirit himself, taking up residence within you. God doesn’t mark you with a certificate suitable for framing. He marks you with his own presence, and it changes you from the inside out.

Then he adds a second image, and it’s a financial one: the Spirit is a “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.” The word means a down payment — the first installment that legally secures the rest. It’s the buyer’s pledge that he is coming back to complete the purchase. God put a deposit down on you. And the deposit he chose to leave was himself.

What This Means for You

You probably hold your place with God the way you hold anything you’re afraid to lose — tightly, with one eye on the exit. Somewhere you’ve decided that staying in depends on the strength of your grip, and you’ve felt that grip slip enough times to be scared of what happens when it finally gives.

But read what Paul actually says. You were marked — not by yourself, and not with a symbol you have to keep polishing. You were marked with the Spirit of God. The security he’s describing was never the strength of your hold on him. It’s the proof he’s holding you.

And that mark comes with a guarantee built into it. Paul calls the Spirit a deposit — a first installment on an inheritance God has promised you. A down payment isn’t the whole sum, but it’s the same in kind as the whole, and it’s the pledge that the rest is on its way. God didn’t promise you an inheritance and leave you to hope it shows up. He paid the first installment in advance, and the installment he chose was his own Spirit. The pledge isn’t something he could write off. It’s himself.

Yesterday the price to make you his was paid in full. Today the first portion of what’s yours is already living inside you, and it will not arrive alone. The rest comes when he does — when God completes the redemption and brings his own all the way home.

The security you keep trying to hold onto was never your grip on God. It’s his seal on you — his own Spirit, the first installment of everything he’s promised. God does not make a down payment on a promise he means to break.

Grace Note

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. — John 10:28

The seal isn’t something you hold. It’s the hand you’re already held in. Nothing reaches you that wouldn’t have to get through him first.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I hold on so tightly. I’ve made it my job to keep myself in — to grip hard enough, believe hard enough, prove myself enough that you won’t find a reason to let go. And I’m tired. My grip was never going to be strong enough, and some part of me has always known it.

I don’t really know how to trust a hold that isn’t mine. Loosening my own grip feels like falling, even when you’re telling me the falling isn’t possible — that I’m marked, that you put yourself down as the promise.

Help me believe I’m actually kept. Not because I finally got a good enough hold on you, but because you took hold of me, and you don’t let go of what you’ve already paid for.

I want to stop bracing for the day you change your mind. Help me loosen my grip, just a little, so I can feel your hand.

Amen.

Response

1. Contemplative: Sit for five minutes and do nothing to hold your place. No proving, no shoring anything up. Just be someone who’s already marked, and let the not-holding be the whole practice.

2. Observational: Through the day, catch the moments you brace — checking whether you’re still okay with God, tightening your hold. Don’t judge them. Just notice, and at the end of the day, tell God about the one that gripped hardest.

3. Connective: Yesterday you marked something Paid in full. Carry it one step today: the purchase is settled, and you’re already his. The first installment of your inheritance is living in you right now. Let the day run on that — not “will I hold on,” but “he finishes what he starts.”

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

You know the difference between being forgiven and being forgiven with strings. There’s a version where the words get said, but the receipt stays in a drawer. You’re technically off the hook, but the thing gets brought up again the next time it’s useful. Forgiveness on a short leash. Most of us have been on both ends of it.

So it’s easy to assume God forgives the same way. Really, but carefully. On a budget, with a ledger somewhere in the back, quietly tracking whether your balance is positive or negative.

Paul is about to describe forgiveness. But the word he reaches for isn’t careful. It’s the word you’d use for someone emptying the account on purpose — and he means it about you.

Scripture

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. — Ephesians 1:7–12

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

“Redemption” isn’t a soft word. In Paul’s world, it named the price paid to buy a person out of slavery. A real transaction, with a real cost. Paul names the cost in the same breath: “through his blood.” This isn’t a general amnesty announced from a safe distance. Someone paid for it.

Then watch the verb attached to grace. Paul doesn’t say God gave grace, or offered it. He says God lavished it — a word that means to overflow, to have more than enough and pour it out anyway. And he sets that lavishing inside something enormous: the “mystery of his will,” a secret God kept and has now let out. The secret turns out to be a plan — to bring everything in heaven and on earth together under Christ. Paul moves from your forgiveness to the whole of creation in a single sentence, as though they were the same project. They are.

What This Means for You

You carry a private sense of your account balance. Most of us do. Somewhere you’ve got a running estimate — how much grace you’ve used up, how much is left, whether you’re getting close to the limit. And you probably imagine God forgiving the way the most careful person you know forgives: real, but rationed. Pardon with a ledger behind it.

Paul hands you a different word. Lavished. Not measured, not doled out against a balance, not held back in case you need more of it later. Poured out past the point where counting is possible, and drawn from “riches” — not from a limited reserve God has to protect from overspending. There is no allotment. There was never a limit to run up against.

And here’s the part that’s easy to miss when you’re bent over your own account: your redemption isn’t a small private mercy God handles off to the side. He sets it down inside the largest thing he’s doing — gathering all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ. You are not a rounding error in that plan. Your being bought back is a thread running straight through the middle of it.

You were never forgiven on a budget. Grace wasn’t measured out to you. It was lavished, spent past all counting, because extravagance is the only way God knows how to give.

Grace Note

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:32

The logic runs one direction only. If the costliest thing was already spent on you, nothing cheaper is being held back now. Lavished was never going to stop at the cross.

Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I keep a ledger. I don’t mean to, but I do — some running count of how much I’ve cost you lately, how close I am to the limit, whether this is the time you finally decide I’m not worth it.

I don’t really know how to receive something poured out. It makes me nervous. Most days I’d almost rather be forgiven on a budget I could understand than lavished on in a way I can’t control or earn back down.

You didn’t hold anything back from me. Not even yourself. And I keep answering that by trying to make myself cheaper — easier to forgive, less of a cost to carry. Help me stop.

I don’t want to think of your grace as an account requiring reconciliation. Help me sit in awe and thankfulness and focus on your lavish gift, not me.

Amen.

Response

1. Kinesthetic: Write two words somewhere you’ll see them today — a sticky note, a card in your wallet, the back of your hand: Paid in full. Not by you. That’s the point. Every time you catch yourself starting to tally, look at the words instead of the math.

2. Written Reflection: Think of the most lavish gift you’ve ever given to someone else. What did it cost you? How did you feel giving it? How were you hoping they would respond?

3. Relational: Think of one person you’ve been forgiving on a short leash — pardoned, but with the receipt still in the drawer. Let it go the rest of the way today. Forgive them the way you were forgiven: without the ledger.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

There was a stretch of years when I was applying for Senior Pastor positions. I had the packet: magna cum laude from seminary, ordained minister of the Gospel, years of real ministry behind me. On paper, a good candidate.

But underneath the hoping was something else. I wanted them to choose me, and I was afraid of what would happen if they did — because they’d be choosing the packet, and the packet wasn’t the whole of me. Sooner or later they’d meet the rest.

Here’s what I didn’t expect: the better the credentials got, the worse that feeling got. A thinner packet would have had less to hide behind.

You’ve had your own version of that room. Maybe not a search committee. But somewhere you handed over your best material, hoped they’d pick you, and quietly wondered whether they’d like their choice once they got to know you.

Paul is about to tell you when God’s choosing happened. Not what he saw when he made it. When. It’s the one detail that takes the question apart.

Scripture

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. — Ephesians 1:3–6

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

In Greek, everything from verse 3 through verse 14 is one sentence. Paul starts blessing God and doesn’t stop for a period for twelve verses. Whatever this is, it isn’t a carefully built argument. It’s coming faster than he can get it down.

The first thing he tells you about the choosing is when. Before the creation of the world. There was no track record to consult, because there was no world yet to have one in. And notice where: he chose us in him. Not chose us and then placed us in Christ. Chose us in him, the same place he put you in the greeting.

Then comes the phrase most of us read straight past. He predestined us for adoption “in accordance with his pleasure and will,” and gave us grace “in the One he loves.” Both of those come from the same scene. A river, a voice out of heaven, and a Father saying over his Son: this is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. The pleasure is the same word. The love is the same word. Paul has taken the sentence the Father spoke over Jesus at his baptism and built your adoption out of it.

What This Means for You

Here’s what the timing does. If he chose you before the creation of the world, he wasn’t working from information. No résumé. No track record. No best day and no worst one. Nothing had happened yet, including you.

So the fear has nowhere to stand. He cannot find something out about you that changes the choice, because the choice was never made on the basis of what he’d find. You can’t be un-chosen by being discovered. There was nothing yet to discover.

And “holy and blameless” isn’t the entrance requirement. Read it again slowly: he chose you to be holy and blameless. That’s where the choosing is going. It isn’t what the choosing was waiting for.

Yesterday Paul told you where you live. Today he tells you the page was there before the first line was ever written. Before there was a hand to write it.

And the delight underneath all of it isn’t new either. It’s the same delight that rested on Jesus at the river — before he had preached a sermon, healed anyone, or done a single thing the Gospels thought worth recording. The Father wasn’t pleased with him for his track record. He didn’t have one yet.

You were not chosen for the person you are still trying to become. You were chosen before there was a person to look at — which means there is nothing left for him to find out.

Grace Note

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” — Romans 8:15

A slave works to keep his place. A child already has one. And the word Paul reaches for here isn’t a title or a formal address. It’s what a child says without thinking about it.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I’ve spent a lot of my life waiting to be found out. Not about anything in particular. Just the low, steady sense that if you looked closer, something would change.

I don’t know what to do with the idea that you decided about me before there was anything to look at. Part of me wants to argue with it. It would honestly be easier if I’d earned it — then at least I’d know what I was supposed to keep doing to hold onto it.

But you’re not asking me to hold onto anything. You’re telling me I’m your child. I did nothing to arrange that, and there’s nothing left for me to arrange now.

Most days I don’t feel chosen. I feel like someone who’s managing. Help me stop bracing for the day you change your mind.

I don’t know how to live like someone who was already wanted. But I’d like to find out.

Amen.

Response

1. Connective: Yesterday you noticed which line of your profile you reach for first. Today, when you catch yourself reaching for it again, say four words under your breath: chosen before all this. Not to replace the line. To remember what it’s written on.

2. Contemplative: Sit for five minutes with the phrase “before the creation of the world.” Don’t try to picture it. You can’t. Just let the sentence be older than everything you’re carrying into today.

3. Kinesthetic: Go outside if you can, and pick up a small stone — something ordinary you can close your hand around. Then walk, and talk to God in your own words. No script. While you talk, feel the stone shift in your hand, and remember it was already here long before you were. And the choosing Paul is describing is older still — older than the ground you’re walking on, older than the world that made the stone. Let its weight stay in your hand the whole way. (Can’t get outside? Hold anything solid that’s older than you and do the same.)

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

When I was serving as a children’s pastor, a young man from our Royal Rangers group caught me between activities at summer camp. “What do I call you?” I must have looked puzzled, because he tried again: “Do I call you Pastor Steve, Commander Steve, or Counselor Steve?”

I laughed and cleared it up for him. But the question stayed with me longer than the moment did. I have a dozen bios, depending on who’s asking. Pastor to some. Commander to others. Coach, dad, friend. Each one true, each one partial. None of them complete.

You have your own list. The job. The relationship status. The city you moved to, or the one you left. The thing you’re proud of, and the thing you hope nobody ever finds. It’s a real profile — accurate, updatable, and never quite enough.

Paul opens this letter by telling his readers something that isn’t on anybody’s profile. Not a new line to add. Something underneath every line.

Scripture

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. — Ephesians 1:1–2

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

This is a first-century letter opening, and Paul follows the form: sender, recipients, greeting. But look at what he does inside that form. He doesn’t call himself Paul, formerly of Tarsus, formerly a Pharisee, formerly a man who held coats while Stephen was stoned. He calls himself an apostle “by the will of God.” His identity isn’t built from what he did. It’s built from what was decided about him.

Then he turns to the readers, and does the same thing to them. He doesn’t call them Ephesians. He doesn’t call them the church, or the believers, or the faithful — full stop. He calls them “the faithful in Christ Jesus.” Two words tucked into a greeting most people skim past. In Christ. It’s the first time the phrase appears in the letter. It will not be the last. Paul uses some version of it more than two dozen times before he’s finished. He is telling you, before he tells you anything else, where you actually live.

What This Means for You

Your profile keeps growing. Every year adds a line — a new job, a new address, a new relationship, a new mistake you’re still living down. You’ve probably never introduced yourself as “in Christ.” You’ve introduced yourself as your title, your diagnosis, your divorce, your degree, your worst year — real lines, all of them, and none of them the whole page.

Here’s why that distinction matters more than it sounds like it should: profiles get edited. The job ends. The marriage doesn’t survive. The achievement stops being the thing people remember about you. If any single line of your bio is where you actually live, you are one revision away from not knowing where you live. Because that’s what bios do. They get revised. But Paul isn’t writing to people who have finally curated a profile impressive enough to earn a greeting like this. He’s writing to ordinary believers in a port city, mid-story, unresolved, and he tells them what they’re standing on before he tells them anything else. Not one more line. The page underneath every line.

You are not your profile. You are located in Christ — the one line that was never yours to edit, because it was never really a line at all.

Grace Note

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! — 2 Corinthians 5:17

Not renovated. Not repaired. New. The old profile doesn’t get updated — it’s gone, and the page underneath it was new all along.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I don’t always know where I’m standing. Most days I locate myself in whatever went wrong, or whatever I haven’t gotten right yet — and I forget that isn’t where you put me.

I want to believe “in Christ” is more than a phrase Paul used in a greeting two thousand years ago. I want it to be the page I actually stand on, not just one more line I hope looks good. But if I’m honest, it’s easier to trust the lines I can see — the job, the track record, the thing I’m still trying to prove.

Move me. Not to a better résumé. To the place you already put me before I had one worth mentioning.

I don’t fully understand what it means to live from this instead of toward it. But I’m willing to start standing where you say I already am.

Amen.

Response

1. Written Reflection: List the lines that would appear in your profile right now — job, role, status, whatever’s true today. Then write “in Christ” beneath the list, not as one more line, but as the page it’s written on.

2. Verbal/Read Aloud: Stand in front of a mirror and say out loud, using your own name: “[Your name], the faithful in Christ Jesus.” Say it again. The first time you’ll hear your own voice. The second time you might hear the sentence. The mirror can only show you your profile — say the line anyway.

3. Observational: Today, notice the moment you introduce or describe yourself — out loud or in your head. Just notice which line of your profile you reached for first. Then at the end of your day, tell God what you noticed. Not to explain it or fix it. Just to say it out loud to him.

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you tomorrow’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Somewhere in the next six weeks, as we journey through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, you’re going to catch yourself asking the same question at least twice — once while reading about who you already are in Christ, and again while reading about how you’re supposed to live because of it. The question sounds something like this: Am I trying to earn this, or am I responding to something already given?

This series won’t answer that question once and be done with it. It’s going to keep showing up, in different disguises, on almost every page. Here’s the good news: Paul doesn’t resolve it either. In one of his letters, he writes a single sentence that holds both sides at once, doesn’t explain how they fit together, and moves on like that’s perfectly normal. We’re going to start there — not to settle the mystery, but to learn how to stand inside it.

Scripture

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. — Philippians 2:12–13

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Paul has just finished describing Jesus emptying himself, taking the form of a servant, and being obedient all the way to death on a cross, and exalted because of it (2:5–11). Right on the heels of that, he tells the Philippians to “work out” their salvation. The phrase in the original language doesn’t mean produce or earn. It’s closer to the language you’d use for working out a problem whose solution already exists, or working a mine for ore that’s already there. Paul isn’t asking them to generate something from nothing. He’s asking them to carry through, in practice, something already true.

Notice, too, that the “you” here is plural. This is a community instruction, not just a private one, sitting right after Paul’s appeal for unity and humility toward one another. And “fear and trembling” isn’t anxiety; it’s the weight you’d naturally feel handling something valuable that isn’t yours. Then verse 13 arrives and does something remarkable. It doesn’t explain how human effort and divine work fit together. It just says both, back to back, unapologetically. God works in you — the wanting and the doing, both — “to fulfill his good purpose.” That last phrase shares its root with the voice at Jesus’ baptism: this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased. The same pleasure. The same delight.

What This Means for You

You already know the tension this verse holds, even if you’ve never had a verse to put under it. It’s the difference between obeying because you’re afraid of losing your place, and obeying because you already have one and want to honor it. Between striving to be enough, and responding to a love that already called you enough. Most days, if you’re honest, you can’t always tell which one you’re doing. Neither could the Philippians, probably, and Paul doesn’t seem worried about it. He just tells them to keep working it out, and reminds them in the very next breath that God is the one at work in them the whole time.

That’s the posture this whole series will ask of you. Not a formula that settles, once and for all, how much is God and how much is you. Just a willingness to keep showing up inside a tension Scripture itself never fully resolves. Because a faith you could solve wouldn’t need trust anymore — and trust is the whole of it.

You will not finish this series with the mystery solved. That’s not a failure of the material — it’s the shape of a faith that’s still alive.

Grace Note

And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” — Matthew 3:17

Before Jesus did anything the Gospels record, the Father was already pleased. Whatever “working it out” means for you, it starts from the same place.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I don’t always know which one I’m doing — earning or responding, performing or loving you back. Some days it feels like both at once, and I don’t know how to untangle them.

I don’t want a formula that settles this once and lets me stop paying attention. I want to actually live inside the tension honestly, the way Paul seems to, without pretending I’ve solved something Scripture never fully solves.

Work in me — the wanting, not just the doing. Let even my desire to get this right come from you, not from fear of losing my place with you.

I don’t need the mystery resolved today. I just want to keep showing up inside it, with you.

Amen.

Response

1. Written Reflection: Write down, honestly, which pulls stronger in you most days — trying to earn, or responding to love already given. You don’t have to resolve it. Just name it.

2. Verbal/Read Aloud: Read Philippians 2:13 aloud slowly, emphasizing the phrase “God who works in you.” Let it land as a description of what’s already happening, not a task still ahead of you.

3. Contemplative: Sit for a few quiet minutes and simply ask God to work in both your wanting and your doing today. No goal for the sitting except to let that be true.

Note From Steve

You are invited to join me as we grapple with the book of Ephesians. Five devotionals each week for six weeks, Monday through Friday. Each day complete with Scripture, reflection, encouragement, prayer prompt, and actionable responses to God’s Word. In the same format as this post. We’ll be starting Monday, 7/20.

Please click the Subscribe button below and I’ll send you each day’s devotional directly to your email inbox.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/ephesians

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

You started this journey asking why is this so hard? You may still be asking it. That’s not a failure of the last twenty days — it’s an honest account of where most of us still live. The winds haven’t stopped. The headwinds haven’t become tailwinds. The destination is still out there, somewhere past the horizon, and the sea between here and there is still rough.

But something has changed.

Three weeks ago you didn’t have a name for what you were carrying. Now you have nine. You know the difference between a wind that disorients and a wind that wounds and a wind that forms — and you’ve learned, slowly, that God is present and purposeful in all three. You’ve stood at the broom tree and been fed before you were asked to move. You’ve sat in the belly of a fish and discovered that prayer works from the dark. You’ve felt the charcoal fire and heard a question that restored rather than indicted. You’ve learned that the stillness God asks for in a storm is not weakness — it is the courage of a crew that trusts the Captain to hold what they cannot.

You are not where you were. That is progress.

Not arrival. Progress. The anchor word for today is not finished — it is further. The bow has been moving. The tacks have been forward motion even when they felt like retreat. The wind you dreaded has been filling the sail whether you felt it or not. And the God who set the heading before the voyage began has not for a single moment taken His hands from the helm.

Today is not a day for more content. It is a day to stop and mark what God has done — not because the journey is over, but because progress deserves to be named before the next leg begins.

A Practice for Today

Choose what fits. These are offerings, not obligations.

Be still. Find twenty minutes of genuine quiet — not productive silence, not prayer with an agenda, just stillness. Let the journey settle. You’ve covered a lot of water. Give yourself time to feel how far you’ve come.

Take a slow walk. Go outside and move slowly. Pay attention to what’s around you — the ordinary, unhurried world. Let the motion of your body be the only motion you’re managing today. Notice what surfaces when you stop trying to make something happen.

Write a letter. Write to God — not a prayer, a letter. Tell Him what the last twenty-one days have done in you. What shifted. What you’re still carrying. What you’re beginning to believe that you didn’t when you started. Don’t edit it. Just write.

Tell someone. Find one person today and tell them one true thing about what this journey has done in you. Not a summary of the series. Something personal. What the wind has taught you. What you’re holding differently. Speaking it out loud to another person makes it more real than keeping it between you and the page.

A Closing Prayer

Father, I’m grateful. Not because the storm has passed — it hasn’t, entirely — but because I’m not the same sailor I was when it arrived. You’ve been doing something in the weather that I couldn’t have asked for on a calm day. I don’t fully understand it yet. But I can feel the difference in how I’m standing on the deck.

Thank You for the winds that named what I was carrying. Thank You for the presence that met me in the places I felt most alone. Thank You for the second word that came after the failure, the bread that came before the journey, the whisper that asked more of me than the fire ever did. Thank You for being at the helm when I let go of it — and for never having left it even when I was fighting You for it.

The journey isn’t over. I know that. But the heading is good, the Captain is trustworthy, and the wind — even this wind — is in Your hands.

Keep me sailing. Amen.

A word from the author before you go.

I didn’t write this series from a place of having arrived. I wrote it from the deck — in the middle of my own weather, with my own unresolved questions, my own winds that haven’t entirely stopped. I told you that at the beginning, and I want to say it again now because I think it matters: the things I’ve written about here are things I’m still learning. The tack is still hard. The long middle is still long. The whisper is still sometimes almost too quiet to hear.

But here’s what I know, after years of being in the weather: God wastes nothing. Not the disappointment, not the failure, not the silence, not the weariness, not the resistance that pressed hardest against the thing I was most sure He’d called me to. Every wind I’ve named in these pages has been a wind I’ve sailed in. And in every one of them — sometimes only in retrospect, sometimes only barely — I’ve seen the bow moving forward.

That’s what I want for you. Not resolution. Not calm seas. Just the settled knowledge that the wind is not the enemy. In the skilled hands of the Captain, the wind can be harnessed to propel your journey. The Captain has the helm, and the heading He has set for you is good.

The series is finished. The journey isn’t. Keep sailing.

— Steve

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Yesterday you wrote the word on one side of the page and the resistance on the other. You looked at both together and asked which one came first.

Today we stay with that question — but we go deeper into it.

Because the principle is one thing. Paul on a ship in a Mediterranean storm, holding a word from an angel, standing up to deliver it to a terrified crew — that’s a remarkable story, and it carries real truth. But the truth only becomes formation when it moves from the page into the specific shape of your life. Not resistance can be a compass in the abstract. But this resistance, in this direction, may be telling you something about where you are and what you’re getting close to.

That’s the work of today. And it requires a kind of honest attention that most of us haven’t been taught to practice.

Scripture

“So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.” — Acts 27:25 (NIV)

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:31-32 (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Paul’s confidence in Acts 27 is not bravado and it is not denial. He has already acknowledged the damage — you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete. He knows the ship will be lost. He is not pretending the storm isn’t real or that the cost hasn’t been significant. What he has is something more durable than optimism: a word that was spoken before the storm arrived, and a God whose character doesn’t change with the weather.

I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Not just faith in God in general — faith that the specific word is still operative. That the destination is still the destination. That the storm’s violence has not revised the commission.

Romans 8 reaches underneath that confidence and names its foundation. If God did not withhold His own Son, there is nothing He would withhold that you actually need to get where He’s sending you. The resistance has a ceiling. The opposition has limits. The adversary can make the voyage costly — but he cannot change the coordinates.

What This Means for the Reader

Here is what you need to know about the resistance you are facing: it is not random.

Opposition clusters around things that matter. The enemy does not waste his efforts on inconsequential trajectories — he is too strategic for that. Which means that the places in your life where the headwind is most severe, most sustained, most personal are worth examining carefully. Not with fear. With the specific attention of a navigator reading the weather.

Where is the resistance loudest right now? What direction is it pushing against? What is it trying to stop, discourage, disqualify, or delay? And here is the question underneath all of those: is that the thing God called you to?

Because if the answer is yes — if the resistance is concentrated precisely at the intersection of your calling and your current season — then what feels like opposition may be the most directional information you have. You are not lost. You are not off course. You may be closer than you think to the thing that matters most, and the storm’s intensity is the confirmation rather than the contradiction.

This is not an excuse to ignore wisdom, plow through every closed door, or mistake stubbornness for faith. The test is not the intensity of the resistance. The test is the word. Does the word hold? Was it spoken? Has it been confirmed? Is it still alive in you, even under the weight of what’s pressing against it?

If it is — hold the heading. The Captain has been to the other side of this storm. He has already calculated what you need to arrive. And what He did not withhold at the cross, He will not withhold now.

You don’t attack something that isn’t a threat. The resistance that’s wearing you down may be the most honest confirmation that you’re getting close.

Grace Note

“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” — Psalm 138:8 (ESV)

The psalmist doesn’t ask God to remove the opposition. He asks God to fulfill the purpose — and rests the request on something that doesn’t change: the steadfast love that endures. The work of God’s hands does not get abandoned mid-voyage. What He started in you, He intends to finish.

Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I’ve been sitting with this question — what is the resistance telling me? And I’ll be honest: I’m not entirely sure I want the answer. Because if the resistance is concentrated where I think it is, that means the thing I’ve been most tempted to walk away from may be the very thing I’m supposed to hold.

I don’t know if I have Paul’s courage. He stood up in front of everyone and said keep up your courage when the ship was coming apart. I’m still working on believing it privately, let alone saying it out loud. But I know You spoke. I know there was a word. And I know that the storm’s opinion of my destination is not the same as Yours.

So I’m asking for the thing Paul had — not his circumstances, not his dramatic angel visitation, but his settled confidence that the word is still good. That what You said before the storm is still true in the middle of it. That the resistance pressing hardest against me is not evidence that I’ve gotten it wrong, but evidence that I’m going somewhere that matters.

Hold me to the heading. Finish what You started. And when I’m tempted to read the storm as a verdict — Remind me who set the course and is at the helm. Amen.

Response

1. Carry It Forward (Connective): Return to what you wrote yesterday — the word on one side, the resistance on the other. Underneath both, write your honest answer to this question: Is the resistance concentrated where God called me? You don’t have to have certainty. Write what you actually think, not what you think you should think.

2. Mark the Heading (Kinesthetic): Find something small and physical to carry with you today — a stone, a coin, a folded piece of paper with the word written on it. Something that fits in your pocket. Every time you touch it today, let it be a reminder that the destination hasn’t changed. The Captain has the heading. You’re still on course.

3. Say It to Someone (Relational): Find one person today — someone who knows what you’ve been carrying — and tell them one true thing about where you believe God is taking you. Not the resistance. The destination. Speak the word out loud to another person. What Paul did for the crew on that ship, you can do for someone in your life today.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

You’ve spent the last two days learning something hard: that the right response to weariness is not to grip harder, but to open your hands. To stand down. To trust the Captain with the heading when you no longer have the strength to fight for control of it.

That posture — surrender, release, trust — is exactly what you’ll need for what comes next.

Because this wind is different from every other one in this series. The earlier winds were things to endure — disappointment, fear, loss, weariness. This one is a navigational principle. It doesn’t just ask what you do with the difficulty. It asks what the difficulty might be telling you about where you are.

Sometimes resistance is a warning. A closed door is a closed door, and wisdom reads it correctly and adjusts. But sometimes — and this is what Paul’s voyage to Rome makes undeniable — the resistance is not a warning at all. It is a confirmation. The storm’s opinion of your destination has nothing to do with whether your destination is right.

Pay attention to where this one points.

Scripture

When it was decided that we would sail for Italy, Paul and some other prisoners were handed over to a centurion named Julius... We boarded a ship from Adramyttium. — Acts 27:1-2a (NIV)

When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved. After they had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said: “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar; and God has given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.” — Acts 27:20-25 (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Paul is a prisoner on a ship in the middle of the Mediterranean in a storm so severe the text says they finally gave up all hope of being saved. The sun has been gone for days. The stars — the ancient navigator’s only fixed reference points — have disappeared. No one on board knows where they are.

And Paul stands up.

Not to panic. Not to demand answers. To deliver a word he received the night before from an angel who came to him in the dark of the storm: You must stand before Caesar. The destination hasn’t changed. The commission hasn’t been revoked. The storm’s opinion of the voyage is irrelevant to the voyage itself.

What’s remarkable is not just that Paul has faith — it’s the specific shape of his faith. He’s not trusting that the storm will stop. He’s trusting that the word is still good. Those are different things. The storm may continue. The ship will be lost. But every person on board will survive, because God has somewhere for Paul to be, and Paul is on this ship.

The resistance doesn’t change the coordinates. It confirms them.

What This Means for the Reader

Most of us have navigated by the stars — by the visible signs that we’re on course, the open doors, the provision that arrives, the confirmation that what we’re doing is right. When those signs disappear and the storm rises, we lose our reference points. And without reference points, resistance starts to look like redirection.

But Paul’s calm in Acts 27 is the calm of a man who has a word that doesn’t depend on the weather. He received a commission before the voyage began — you will stand before Caesar — and the storm’s intensity doesn’t revise that word. If anything, the violence of the resistance is evidence of the significance of the destination. You don’t encounter this kind of opposition going nowhere.

Here is the principle: heavy resistance in a direction you’ve been clearly called toward is not automatically a sign to stop. It may be a sign that you’re close to something that matters. The adversary doesn’t waste his ammunition on inconsequential trajectories. You don’t attack something that isn’t a threat. The storm pushes hardest against the ship that’s actually going somewhere.

This doesn’t mean every hard thing is confirmation that you’re on course. Wisdom still has a role. Counsel still matters. But when you have a word — a clear, tested, confirmed sense of where God has called you — the storm’s arrival is not sufficient reason to abandon the heading. Paul didn’t revise his destination when the weather turned. He held the word, and the word held him.

And notice what holding the word looked like: he stood up. In front of everyone. In the middle of the worst storm of the voyage. Not with bravado — with the steady confidence of a man who knows who sent him and where he’s going. The open hands of surrender from yesterday and the steady stance of today are not in contradiction. You release control to the Captain precisely so He can hold the heading you cannot.

The resistance you’re facing may not be a sign to stop. It may be a sign that you’re getting close.

Grace Note

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 1:6 (NIV)

Paul wrote this from prison. The man who stood on the storm-tossed deck and said keep up your courage wrote about confidence in completion while under house arrest. He wasn’t writing from the other side of the storm. He was writing from inside it — certain not of the weather, but of the One who set the heading. The good work doesn’t stop when the wind rises. It continues — carried by the same hands that began it.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I want to be honest about the resistance. It’s been loud. And somewhere along the way I started letting it speak — letting it tell me things about the direction I’ve been moving, about whether the word I thought I had was real, about whether I’m the kind of person You actually call and keep. The storm has had more of my attention than the commission.

I’m not sure I have Paul’s clarity right now. I don’t know that I can stand up in front of the people around me and say keep up your courage when I’m the one who needs to hear it. But I know You spoke. I know there was a word, a call, a sense of direction that didn’t come from me. And I know the storm’s arrival doesn’t revise what You said.

I practiced opening my hands yesterday. Today I’m asking for something harder — the courage to stay standing in the storm with open hands. Not gripping the outcome. Not fighting for control of the heading. But not sitting down either. Standing. Trusting that the word You gave me is still good, that the destination hasn’t changed, and that the resistance pressing hardest against me may be the clearest sign yet that I’m going somewhere that matters.

You got Paul to Rome. You’ll get me where You’re taking me. Amen.

Response

1. Write the Word (Written Reflection): Take a few minutes and write down the clearest sense of calling or direction you carry — the thing you believe God has spoken over your life or your current season, however you received it. Not what you hope, not what you’ve inferred — the word, as best you can name it. Then underneath it, write the resistance you’re currently facing. Look at both on the page together. Which one came first?

2. Read It as Paul (Verbal): Read Acts 27:22-25 aloud, slowly, as if you are Paul speaking to the crew. Feel the weight of standing up in a storm and delivering a word that depends entirely on the character of God. When you finish, sit with this question: What would it look like to hold my word the way Paul held his?

3. Look for the Pattern (Observational): Today, pay attention to where the resistance in your life is concentrated. Not to catalogue your difficulties — but to notice direction. Heavy opposition tends to cluster around things that matter. Where is it loudest? What is it pushing against? Let that be a question you carry through the day, not one you have to answer by tonight.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Yesterday you let yourself be cared for — maybe in some small physical way, maybe just by naming honestly what the sustained effort has cost you. That mattered. But Elijah’s story doesn’t end at the broom tree. It doesn’t even end at the second meal.

Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.

Forty days. That’s not a quick recovery. That’s a season. And what’s striking about this part of the story is how little happens in it. No miracles. No fire from heaven. Just a man walking, day after day, toward a mountain — strengthened, but still walking through the wilderness he was trying to escape.

This is the part of weariness no one prepares you for: it doesn’t lift in a moment. It lifts over a long middle that asks you to keep walking before you feel ready.

Scripture

The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

...The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. — 1 Kings 19:7-9a, 11-12 (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Elijah walks forty days to reach Horeb — the same mountain where Moses received the Law, the place where God’s presence had appeared before in fire and thunder. It’s a fitting destination for a prophet at the end of his strength. And when he arrives, exhausted, he finds a cave and goes inside.

God’s first question to him isn’t an indictment. What are you doing here, Elijah? It’s an invitation to say the truth out loud — and Elijah does, twice in the chapter, almost word for word: he’s been zealous, he’s alone, they’re trying to kill him. He’s not wrong about any of it. God doesn’t correct his account. He simply asks him to step outside the cave.

What happens next is the part worth sitting with. Wind tears the mountains apart. An earthquake. A fire. The kind of display Elijah had seen before — the kind that called fire down on Mount Carmel. And the text says, three times, deliberately: the Lord was not in it.

Then a gentle whisper. And that’s where God is.

After everything Elijah had witnessed — the spectacular, the dramatic, the unmistakable — God meets him this time in something almost too quiet to notice. Not because the spectacular was wrong. Because Elijah, in this particular exhaustion, needed something different. He needed presence, not performance.

What This Means for the Reader

The forty days matter as much as the broom tree. Recovery from real weariness is rarely a single moment of restoration — it’s a long walk, day after day, where you are strengthened but still in the wilderness, still moving toward something you can’t yet see. If you’ve been waiting for the weariness to lift all at once, you may be misunderstanding what God is doing. He fed Elijah for the journey, not instead of it.

And then there’s the wind, the earthquake, the fire — and the whisper. It’s easy to read this sequence as being about how God communicates. But look at what Elijah was actually waiting for. He came to Horeb — the mountain of God, the place of fire and thunder — because some part of him was looking for the kind of intervention he could see. The dramatic display that would change the situation. The force that would silence Jezebel, vindicate the prophet, settle the outcome. That’s what the wind and earthquake and fire would have felt like. And God wasn’t in any of them.

The whisper doesn’t resolve Elijah’s situation. It gives him a presence and a next step. Receiving it — instead of the visible intervention he was hoping for — required him to release his grip on how he thought God should move. That is not a passive act. In the middle of a storm, stepping back from the wheel and trusting the Captain with the heading takes more courage than fighting for control of it. The stillness God was asking for wasn’t rest. It was surrender disguised as silence.

This is what the long middle teaches if you let it. Not just patience — trust. Not just endurance — release. The whisper comes in a frequency that white-knuckled striving cannot hear. You have to open your hands before you can receive what it carries.

The whisper is not God going quiet. It’s God asking you to trust Him in a register softer than the storm.

Grace Note

“Be still, and know that I am God... The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” — Psalm 46:10-11 (NIV)

Most of us read Psalm 46:10 as an invitation to rest and be restored — which is true, but only on the surface. Psalm 46 is a psalm of warfare. Many commentators connect it to the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem — a moment when Hezekiah’s army was outnumbered and outclassed, and the king’s only move was to go to the prophet and ask what God would have him do. The answer was this verse. Be still. Not the soft, passive kind of stillness. The stillness of a soldier standing down because his Champion has entered the field. Lay down what you’ve been white-knuckling. Stop striving to win what only God can win. And then read the next verse — the Lord of hosts is with us — and let that be enough. The Lord of hosts is already on the field.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I want to say what Elijah said, because it’s true: I have had enough. Not of You — never of You — but of the weight of this. The white-knuckling. The grinding effort to hold things together that may not be mine to hold together. The exhaustion that comes not just from the storm but from fighting it with everything I have, as if the outcome depends entirely on how hard I strain.

I know that’s not faith. It feels like faithfulness, but I think it might be control wearing faithfulness as a disguise.

Psalm 46 says be still — and I used to read that as rest, as permission to stop and recover. But I’m reading it differently now. It’s not the stillness of a hammock. It’s the stillness of a soldier standing down because his Champion has entered the field. It takes more courage to lay down the weapon than to keep swinging it. More trust to step back from the wheel in the middle of the storm than to keep fighting for control of it.

So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m laying down the thing I’ve been white-knuckling. Not because it doesn’t matter — it does — but because the Lord of hosts is already on the field, and my striving is not what wins this.

Hold the heading. I’m trusting You with it. Amen.

Response

1. Carry the Strength Forward (Connective): Yesterday you let yourself be cared for in one small way. Today, do it again — not because the weariness is gone, but because the journey continues. Eat well. Rest where you can. Let yesterday’s small obedience become today’s, and let it become a pattern rather than a single event.

2. Stand Down (Contemplative): Identify the one thing you’ve been straining hardest to fix, resolve, or force into place — the battle you’ve been fighting in your own strength. Set aside ten minutes, and in that time practice what Psalm 46 actually asks: lay it down. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because the Lord of hosts has entered the field and the battle is His. You’re not retreating. You’re standing down so your Champion can move. Let that be the whole exercise.

3. Notice Without Naming (Observational): Throughout your day, watch for the small, quiet things that might be God’s voice in a register you’ve overlooked — a thought that returns, a sentence from a friend, an unexpected sense of peace. Don’t force a conclusion. Just notice. The whisper rarely announces itself as the whisper.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

This wind is different from the others in one important way: it doesn’t arrive when things are going badly. It arrives after.

After the long effort. After the sustained faithfulness. After you have given everything you had to give to the thing God called you to — and found that the giving didn’t end it, the situation didn’t resolve, and the next thing is already waiting. Weariness is not the wind of the faint-hearted. It is the wind of the spent. The people it finds are not the ones who gave up — they are the ones who kept going until they had nothing left.

If you are tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix, you know exactly what this wind feels like from the inside.

Elijah knows it too. And what God does with him in this moment may be the most quietly remarkable thing in the entire Bible.

Scripture

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life... He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. — 1 Kings 19:1-8 (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

The day before this scene, Elijah called fire from heaven. He prayed seven times for rain and it came. He outran Ahab’s chariot to Jezreel. By any measure, 1 Kings 18 is one of the most dramatic days in the prophetic record.

And then Jezebel sends a single message, and Elijah runs. Not strategically — in terror. He goes a day’s journey into the wilderness, sits under a broom tree, and asks God to let him die. I have had enough, Lord.

There is no rebuke in what follows. No correction of his theology. No reminder of what he just witnessed on Carmel. God doesn’t tell Elijah to pull himself together or count his blessings or remember who he is. He sends an angel with bread and water, and the angel touches him — physically, gently — and says get up and eat. Elijah eats and lies down again. The angel comes a second time. Get up and eat, for the journey is too great for you.

That phrase — the journey is too great for you — is not a criticism. It is the most compassionate acknowledgment in Scripture. Of course it’s too great. It has always been too great. That was never the question. The question is whether the One who called you to it will sustain you through it.

He fed Elijah before He addressed anything else. The care was physical before it was spiritual, and that sequence was not accidental.

What This Means for the Reader

The crash after the height is one of the most disorienting experiences in the life of faith. You poured yourself out. You were faithful. You did the thing. And now you are sitting under a broom tree wondering how you are supposed to keep going — wondering, if you’re honest, whether you want to.

I have had enough, Lord. It is one of the most human sentences in the Bible. And God’s response to it is not a lecture. It is lunch.

What this means for the reader who is spent: your weariness is not a spiritual failure. It is not evidence that you lack faith or that you’ve lost your way. It is evidence that you’ve been carrying something real, for a real distance, and the body and soul have limits that God himself designed into you. Elijah’s crash didn’t disqualify him from the next forty days. It was the condition God met him in before the next forty days began.

The angel didn’t say get up and finish. He said get up and eat. The next step was not the destination — it was the next step. Bread. Water. Rest. Then the journey.

God’s first response to your exhaustion is not a assignment. It is an invitation to be cared for.

Grace Note

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” — Isaiah 40:29-31 (NIV)

Not those who try harder. Not those who push through. Those who hope — who wait on, who look toward — the Lord. The strength that carries you through the long middle is not generated. It is received. Elijah received it at the broom tree. You can receive it here.

Prayer Prompt

Lord, I want to say what Elijah said, because it’s true: I have had enough. Not of You — never of You — but of the weight of this. The sustained effort. The faithfulness that doesn’t seem to produce what faithfulness is supposed to produce. The distance between where I started and where I thought I’d be by now.

I’m not sure I’m afraid the way Elijah was afraid. But I am tired the way he was tired. Tired in the place that sleep doesn’t reach. And I’ll be honest — I don’t fully know what I need right now. I just know that I don’t have much left to give.

Would You do what You did at the broom tree? Not the theology first — the bread first. The touch first. Meet me in the place where the body and the soul are both running low, before You ask anything else of me. I’m not asking to be excused from the journey. I know there’s a Horeb ahead. I just need the next step to be eat and rest, not arrive.

I’m lying down. I’m trusting You to come back a second time. Amen.

Response

1. Name the Expenditure (Written Reflection): Take five minutes and write down what you’ve been carrying — not the circumstances, but the cost. What has the sustained faithfulness actually taken from you? Name it honestly, the way Elijah named it. I have had enough, Lord is a complete sentence. You don’t have to explain it or justify it.

2. Receive the Care (Kinesthetic): Do one small physical thing for yourself today that you’ve been postponing because there’s too much to do. Eat a real meal slowly. Take a walk. Sleep an extra hour. Go outside. This is not self-indulgence — it is obedience to the sequence God used with Elijah. The care comes before the commission. Let it.

3. Say It Out Loud (Verbal): Read 1 Kings 19:5b-6 aloud — “Get up and eat.” Then read Isaiah 40:31 aloud. Say both of them as if they are addressed to you. Because they are. Let the invitation land before you think about what comes next.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Yesterday you named the failure. You may have done it in writing, or just in the quiet of your own mind — but something got acknowledged that had been sitting in the dark for a while. That’s not a small thing.

Today we stay with the wind, but the scene changes entirely.

Jonah’s restoration was largely private — a prayer from inside the fish, a second word received in solitude, a man walking into Nineveh still carrying the smell of the sea. What happens to Peter is different. His failure was public. The denial — three times, by a charcoal fire — happened in front of witnesses. And his restoration happens the same way.

Jesus doesn’t pull Peter aside and whisper forgiveness. He builds a fire, cooks breakfast, and asks the question three times. Out loud. In front of the others.

There’s something in that worth sitting with.

Scripture

When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” — John 21:9-11, 15-17 (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

The amazing detail in the text is the charcoal fire. John uses a specific Greek word — anthrakia — for this fire, and he uses it only twice in his entire gospel. Once here. And once in the courtyard where Peter stood warming himself when the servant girl asked if he knew Jesus, and he said no.

John is not being accidental. The fire is a mirror. Jesus has set the scene deliberately — not to humiliate Peter, but to return him to the exact location of the failure and meet him there. Three denials. Three questions. The accounting is being settled, and Jesus is the one doing the settling.

What Peter receives at this fire is not a lecture. It is not a probationary reinstatement. It is his call, restated. Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep. The man who failed most publicly among the twelve is the one Jesus assigns to the whole flock.

What This Means for the Reader

Most of us have been managing the distance between who we were at our worst and who we want to be. We keep the failure at arm’s length — acknowledged enough that we don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen, but not so close that we have to actually let God into it. We’ve developed a kind of functional arrangement with our own history.

What Jesus does with Peter refuses that arrangement. He doesn’t let Peter manage the distance. He closes it — with a fire, with breakfast, with the same question three times — and He does it not to reopen the wound but to heal it from the inside.

The question “Do you love me?” is not an accusation. It is a restoration. Every time Peter answers, something is being rebuilt that the denial had damaged — not just restoring Peter’s confidence in himself, but his understanding of who he still is. The failure doesn’t define the answer. The answer redefines the failure.

And then — the call. Not after Peter has proven himself. Not after a season of demonstrated reliability. Right then, with the smell of the charcoal still in the air. The call comes back before the shame has fully cleared.

This is how God handles the failure of people He has called. Not with a clean slate that pretends the past didn’t happen, but with a fire that returns you to it — and then He speaks over it differently.

He doesn’t wait for you to feel ready. He’s inviting you to the fire.

Grace Note

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” — Romans 8:1 (NIV)

The charcoal fire is real. The failure is real. And this verse stands over both of them. No condemnation — not managed, not deferred, not contingent on performance. The one who asked Peter the question three times is the same one who made this declaration. He is thorough in restoration as He is in everything else.

Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I know what it is to stand at the fire and not want to be seen. To have something in my past that I’ve kept at a careful distance — close enough to acknowledge, far enough that You can’t really get to it. The thing I’ve told myself is handled, when mostly I’ve just learned to manage it.

I don’t want to manage it anymore.

Peter couldn’t clean himself up before You got to him. You got to him first, at the fire You built, with the breakfast You made. You closed the distance he was trying to keep. I think that’s what I need too — not a transaction, not a confession that earns something, but You showing up at the exact location of what I got wrong and asking me the question anyway.

Do I love You? You know I do. I’m saying it now, out loud, in the place where I’m most aware of what I’ve done. And if there’s a call on the other side of this question — something You want to put back in my hands that I thought I’d disqualified myself from — I’m listening.

Feed Your sheep. I’ll go. Amen.

Response

1. Carry It Forward (Connective): Yesterday you named the failure on paper. Today, return to that same page and write one line underneath it: He doesn’t wait for me to feel ready. He’s inviting me to the fire. Don’t add anything else. Let those two things sit on the page together — the failure and the word that speaks over it.

2. The Three Questions (Contemplative): Find five minutes of quiet. Read John 21:15-17 slowly, inserting your own name where Peter’s appears. When Jesus asks “Do you love me?” — answer Him. Out loud or in silence, but actually answer. Don’t rush past it. Let the question be the whole exercise.

3. Tell One Person (Relational): Think of someone in your life who is currently living under the weight of a failure — managing the distance the way this devotional describes. You don’t have to say much. A text, a call, a cup of coffee. Just close the distance a little. What Jesus did for Peter at the fire, you can do for someone today.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

You know what failure feels like from the inside. Not the version other people see — the project that didn’t work, the position you didn’t get, the relationship that came apart — but the interior version. The quiet accounting you do when no one is watching. The way the evidence arranges itself into a verdict. I should have known better. I should have tried harder. I had my chance and I wasted it.

The hardest part of failure isn’t the thing that went wrong. It’s what you start to believe about yourself in the aftermath.

And then there’s the particular kind of failure that happens in the middle of following God — the kind where you weren’t just doing the wrong thing, you were doing the wrong thing in response to the right call. Where you knew what you were supposed to do and chose differently. That one carries a different kind of weight. Not just the sting of a bad outcome, but the shadow of disobedience on top of it.

That’s where we’re starting today.

Because here’s what the story of Jonah — and another story we’ll come back to — makes clear: failure in God’s hands is not a closed door. It may be the very thing that opens one.

Scripture

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. — Jonah 1:1-3a (NIV)

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” — Jonah 2:1-2 (NIV)

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. — Jonah 3:1-3a (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Jonah’s story is almost too honest to be in the Bible. A prophet — someone whose whole vocation is hearing God and speaking for Him — receives a clear, direct word from the Lord, and then runs in the opposite direction. Not accidentally. Not reluctantly. He books passage on a ship headed as far from Nineveh as he can get.

What follows is a cascade: a storm, a confession, a sea, a fish. Three days in the dark and the wet, alone with his failure and the God he ran from. And then — the text is almost quiet about it — the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

Not a verdict. Not a lecture. A second chance.

God doesn’t replace Jonah with a more cooperative prophet. He doesn’t reissue the commission to someone else. He lets Jonah sit in the consequences of his choice, and then He returns to the original invitation. Go. The call is still the call.

Jonah goes. Not perfectly — he’ll have his bitter season in Chapter 4. But he goes. And the city is saved.

What This Means for the Reader

Most of us have a Jonah chapter somewhere. A call for a tack we didn’t answer. A moment we can identify, looking back, where we chose the boat to Tarshish over the road to Nineveh. And maybe we’ve spent a long time since then believing that the detour disqualified us — that the second word never came because we didn’t deserve it.

But that’s not how God tells the story.

Failure, in the economy of a God who wastes nothing, is not a permanent verdict. It is often a position. The belly of the fish is not a punishment chamber — it’s the place where Jonah runs out of alternatives and discovers that prayer works from the dark just as well as from the light. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened. God was in the fish with him.

This does not minimize the cost of the wrong turn. Jonah’s failure cost him three days of his life and the dignity of arriving in Nineveh via the most humiliating route imaginable. The consequences were real. But they were not the conclusion.

Here’s what changes when you understand this: failure stops being a final destination and becomes a navigational event. The tack you didn’t want to make, taken for you by circumstances you didn’t choose, that turned you back toward the thing you were running from. Not the ending of the story. The moment before it’s back on course.

You missed the call to tack. The Captain is already calling for the next one.

Grace Note

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

These two verses are in conversation with each other across centuries: one spoken to people in exile, one written to people in Rome, both saying the same thing to people in the belly of a hard season. The plan didn’t end when you took the wrong turn. It absorbed the wrong turn.

Prayer Prompt

Father, I’m going to be honest with you about the failure I’ve been carrying — the one I haven’t fully named out loud, the one I return to when I’m alone and the accounting starts. I know what I did. Or what I didn’t do. And for a long time I’ve believed that it cost me something permanent. That there’s a version of my life that’s gone now, and that this version is the lesser one.

I don’t know how to stop believing that on my own.

But the Jonah story keeps doing something to me. Not the comfortable version where everything works out — but the dark middle of it. Three days in the fish. Three days of sitting in the exact shape of what he chose. And then: the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Not despite his failure. After it. Through it.

If that’s true — if You are the God who comes a second time — then I’m listening. I’m still in the water in a lot of ways. But I’m listening.

Would You meet me here, in the honest place, before I’ve cleaned it up? I’ve been praying from inside the fish for a long time. Help me trust You this time. Amen.

Response

1. Name It (Written Reflection): Take five minutes and write down the specific failure you’ve been carrying — the one that comes to mind when you hear the word. Not a catalog, just this one. Don’t explain it or justify it. Just name it honestly on paper. You’re not confessing to anyone but God, and He already knows.

2. Read It Aloud (Verbal): Read Jonah 3:1-3 aloud, slowly. When you get to “the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time,” pause there. Let that phrase sit for a moment before you continue. What does it feel like to hear that this was not the end of the story?

3. Notice the Pattern (Observational): Think of one person — in Scripture, in history, or in your own life — whose most significant contribution came after a significant failure. Peter. Moses. Augustine. Someone you know. Let their story be a data point today, not inspiration. Just evidence that the second chapter is possible.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

You have been in heavy weather this week. Not the disorienting kind of Week 1 — the wounding kind. Rejection and betrayal came first, and with them the particular confusion of a wound from the inner circle — the people who should have been safe, and weren’t. Then unanswered prayer, with its quiet, persistent question about whether the silence means something about you, or about Him. Then loss — the wind that doesn’t bring things back, that leaves an empty place where something used to be, and asks you to keep walking anyway. If you have been honest with this week, you are tired. Not just from the reading — from the recognition. These winds have names because they are real, and naming them costs something.

Today you don’t have to go anywhere. Today the invitation is simply to stop — which is harder than it sounds, because the habit of the person in weather is to keep moving, keep managing, keep doing the next thing. Stopping feels like surrender to the storm. It isn’t. It is the practice of becoming aware of who is already in the boat with you.

There is a moment in Mark 4 that this whole week has been building toward. The disciples are in a storm, straining at the oars, and Jesus is asleep in the stern. They wake Him with the cry that is also yours, that has probably been yours at some point this week: Teacher, don’t you care if we drown? It is not a cry of unbelief. It is a cry of unawareness. He was there the whole time — through the rejection, through the silence, through the loss, through every wind this week has named. He did not arrive when they called. He was already there. He had been there when the storm arrived. He was asleep in the stern, unhurried, unbothered, present.

His presence didn’t change the weather. It changed everything else.

That is the WITH YOU of this Sabbath. Not resolution. Not explanation. Not the storm stopping. Just the awareness — slowly, if that’s how it has to come — that you have not been alone in any of it. Not in the betrayal. Not in the silence. Not in the loss. Not once.

Rest in that today. Let it be enough.

A Practice for Today

These are offered as options — not obligations. Choose what fits where you are.

Be still on the water. Find fifteen minutes of genuine quiet — no phone, no noise, no agenda. Sit with the image of Jesus asleep in the stern of your boat. Not distant. Not absent. Present and unhurried. Let that image do its work without analyzing it.

Write a letter. Address it to Jesus. Tell Him which wind this week pressed hardest. Tell Him what it cost. Then write one sentence at the bottom: I believe You were there. You don’t have to feel it fully to write it. Writing it is a step toward knowing it.

Take a slow walk. No destination, no pace, no podcast. Just move through the world slowly and pay attention to what is present — the ordinary evidence of a God who hasn’t gone anywhere. Let the walk be the rest.

Tell someone. Find the person who has been Ruth to you this week — the one who has stayed, who has been Jesus with flesh on without knowing it — and tell them what their presence has meant. Not a long conversation. Just: I want you to know I’ve noticed. It has mattered.

A Closing Prayer

Jesus, I want to be honest about this week. It has been hard in the hardest ways — not the confusion of not knowing what’s ahead, but the wounds that come from people, and from silence, and from loss that doesn’t reverse. I have felt the weight of it. Some days I have felt it more than I have felt You.

And I’m reading today that You were in the stern the whole time. Not watching from a distance. Not waiting for me to get it together before drawing close. Already there — before I called, before I noticed, before the storm arrived.

I don’t need the storm to stop today. I just need to know that. Let it settle somewhere deeper than my understanding — that I have not been alone in any of it. That the silence was not absence. That the loss did not go unwitnessed. That the wounds from the inner circle did not catch You off guard.

You are with me. That doesn’t change the weather. It changes me. And that, I’m beginning to see, changes everything. Amen.

Week 3 begins tomorrow. The winds ahead have a different quality — not the disorientation of Week 1 or the wounds of Week 2, but something that has been building underneath both: the slow, clear-eyed recognition of what God has been doing in all of it. The tack is coming. You are more ready for it than you know.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way

Introduction

Yesterday we named the loss. We sat with Naomi’s accounting — I went out full and came back empty — and we didn’t rush past it. We let the bitterness be what it was. And we noticed, carefully, that God’s presence in the loss was not visible in her circumstances. It was visible in the person walking beside her.

Today we stay in the loss. The restoration is not here yet. Naomi is still empty. The graves in Moab are still there. Nothing has been undone.

But something has shifted — not in what has happened, but in what is happening. Ruth goes out to the fields. She works. She keeps moving. Not because she has answers. Not because the grief is resolved. Not because she knows how the story ends. She moves because the next step is in front of her and she takes it.

There is a theology in that — a quiet, unglamorous, deeply important theology. It is not the theology of the mountaintop or the breakthrough moment. It is the theology of the walking. Of the person who has lost something real and irreplaceable and gets up the next morning anyway and goes to the field.

That is where provision begins. Not in the resolution of the grief, but in the movement through it.

Scripture

Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.

So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with my female servants. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the female servants. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me — a foreigner?” Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband — how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” — Ruth 2:1-3, 8-12 (NIV)

Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Ruth does not wait for a sign. She does not wait for the grief to lift or for clarity about the future or for Naomi to recover enough to lead. She asks permission to go to the fields — let me go — and she goes. The text adds a detail that reads like coincidence and isn’t: as it turned out, she ended up in the field of Boaz, a relative of Elimelek, a man of standing.

As it turned out. That phrase is doing quiet, enormous theological work. Ruth didn’t know whose field it was. She was gleaning — the ancient provision for the poor, following behind harvesters, picking up what they left. It is humble work, unglamorous work, survival work. And it is precisely in that ordinary forward motion that the first thread of restoration appears.

Boaz notices her. Asks about her. Is told what she has done — the loyalty, the leaving of her homeland, the staying with Naomi. And he speaks a blessing over her that names what she has been doing without knowing it: you have come to take refuge under the wings of the God of Israel.

Ruth didn’t know she was taking refuge. She thought she was gleaning. She thought she was just doing what she could. And it turns out those were the same thing.

What This Means for the Reader

Day 2 of loss is not the day the grief resolves. It is not the day the answers arrive. It may simply be the day you get up and go to the field — not because you feel like it, not because you understand what God is doing, but because the next step is there and you are still capable of taking it.

This is where the series has to be most careful not to create false hope. The restoration in Ruth’s story is real — but it takes time, it comes through ordinary means, and it is not available as a promise that your specific loss will end the same way. Naomi’s sons do not come back. Her husband does not come back. What comes back is a different kind of fullness than what she lost.

What the story does offer — honestly, without overclaiming — is this: the movement through grief is not a betrayal of it. Getting up the next morning is not the same as pretending the loss didn’t happen. Going to the field with empty hands and doing the next available thing is not a denial of the emptiness. It is the way the emptiness begins, slowly, to be met.

And here is the thing about the Ruth posture — the Jesus with flesh on posture from yesterday — that cuts both ways today: if you are in loss, the person who has stayed with you is waiting for you to let them into the field. To let them walk beside you while you work, while you grieve, while you do the ordinary, unglamorous next thing. You don’t have to be recovered to be accompanied. You only have to keep moving.

And if you are the Ruth in someone else’s story right now — the one who has stayed, who has chosen not to leave — know that the most important thing you are doing may look like nothing from the outside. Showing up. Staying close. Not fixing. Not explaining. Just being present in the field while they work through what they’ve lost. That is not a small thing. It is the form God’s provision takes when it has flesh on.

Grief does not have to be resolved to be walked through. You only have to take the next step.

Grace Note

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. — Psalm 147:3 (NIV)

Binds up — not erases, not undoes, but tends to. The language is medical and deliberate: a wound that has been bound is still a wound. But it is being cared for. It is in the process of healing. He is already at work in what you are carrying, even when the work is invisible, and the wound is still tender to the touch. Tomorrow we rest. Today: one more step.

Prayer Prompt

Lord, I don’t have a resolution to bring You today. The loss is still what it was yesterday, and the day before that. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But I’m here. I got up. I’m taking the next step, even if I can’t see where it leads or what it’s building toward. I’m choosing to believe — not always feeling it, but choosing it — that the movement through this is not a betrayal of what I lost. That going to the field with empty hands is not the same as saying it didn’t matter.

I want to ask You something specific today: show me the Boaz in my story. The person, the provision, the small evidence that You are already at work in the field I’m walking into — the thing I might walk past because it doesn’t look like what I was hoping for. I don’t want to miss what You’re doing because I’m only looking for the thing I lost.

And if there is someone in my life right now who is in the field of their own grief — let me be Ruth to them today. Present. Staying. Not fixing. Just there. That is enough. You’ve shown me it’s enough. Amen.

Response

1. Take the Next Step (Kinesthetic): Identify one concrete, ordinary thing you have been putting off because the loss has made it hard to move. Not a big thing — a field-sized thing. Something doable today. Do it. Not as a performance of recovery, but as the next step. Let the movement be the act of faith.

2. Be Ruth Today (Relational): Think of one person in your life who is in the middle of their own loss right now. Reach out today — not with answers, not with theology, not with a plan to fix it. Just contact them — a message, a call, showing up. Let your presence say what Ruth’s presence said: I’m not going anywhere.

3. Carry It Forward (Connective): Yesterday you named the empty place. Today, on the same piece of paper or in the same journal entry, write one sentence: The next step in front of me is ____. It doesn’t have to be significant. It doesn’t have to be related to the loss. It just has to be true and it just has to be next. That is enough for today.

To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way