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How Did He Do It? — Readers’ Choice

Links for today’s readings:

Oct 13  Read: Ezekiel 13 Listen: (4:14)  Read: Romans 16  Listen: (3:30)

Readers’ Choice posts are selected by our readers:

This week of Readers’ Choice looks back at reflections on Jesus and salvation.

Melissa, TX

Peter, Singapore — Amen!  Thank you, for showing us “how Jesus did it. And Jesus shows us how we can do it”

This post was originally published on July 21, 2026, based on readings from XX.

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 50.4-10

4 The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, 
to know the word that sustains the weary. 
He wakens me morning by morning, 
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. 
5 The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears; 
I have not been rebellious, 
I have not turned away. 
6 I offered my back to those who beat me, 
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; 
I did not hide my face 
from mocking and spitting. 
7 Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, 
I will not be disgraced. 
Therefore have I set my face like flint, 
and I know I will not be put to shame. 
8 He who vindicates me is near. 
Who then will bring charges against me? 
Let us face each other! 
Who is my accuser? 
Let him confront me! 
9 It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me. 
Who will condemn me? 
They will all wear out like a garment; 
the moths will eat them up. 
10 Who among you fears the Lord 
and obeys the word of his servant? 
Let the one who walks in the dark, 
who has no light, 
trust in the name of the Lord 
and rely on their God.

Reflection: How Did He Do It? — Readers’ Choice

By John Tillman

How did Jesus do it?

How did he set aside his divine glory to live in flesh and struggle? How did he obey perfectly while experiencing the same temptations every human faces? How did he follow the Father’s will completely while still having a human mind? How did he worship in a corrupted temple and synagogue system? 

But most of all, how did he endure the cross? How did he face the suffering? The torture? The shaming? The taunting? The physical pain and struggle? And death itself? How did he do it?

Isaiah’s servant psalms are ultimately, and most importantly, about Jesus. Isaiah paints many pictures that match up with, and were fulfilled by, Jesus’ life and sufferings. But Isaiah does more than tell us that Jesus would have his beard torn out, or his back beaten, or that he would be mocked and spit upon and pierced for our transgressions. Isaiah shows us not just the physical treatment Jesus would face, but a picture of his inner life that connected him to the Father and made it possible for him to endure.

Isaiah shows us how Jesus did it. And Jesus shows us how we can do it.

Jesus had a rich and satisfying inner life with God through scripture and prayer. He woke “morning by morning” listening. God opened his ears, gave him a “well-instructed tongue,” and taught him words that “sustain the weary.” Jesus felt God near to vindicate and help him.

Jesus’ humanity required him to eat food, drink water, and sleep. It also required him to partake of God’s words, drink in his Spirit, and dream the dreams and purposes of God. Because he did this, Jesus was able to set his face “like flint” toward Jerusalem and his suffering.

Oh, that this would be true of us! That our tongues (and typing fingers) would be well-instructed! That our minds would wake to the Spirit’s whispering! That our ears would be tuned to his melodies! That our faces would be set like flint against trouble, knowing his flint-like face stands beside us!

We have crosses to carry both now and in the future. This is how we do it—imitate Jesus. Pray we never face the physical sufferings Jesus did. But by following his life-giving, scripture-devouring, Spirit-empowering pattern of connecting to God, we can do whatever Jesus calls us to.

Prayer for the week:

We are taking a break from the Divine Hours Prayers this month. Each week, we will pray a prayer from Scripture or Christian history related to the week’s theme. This week’s prayer is related to our theme of Jesus and salvation:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. — Apostle Paul, Eph 3.14-19

Read more: Discipline for the Anxious

The benefits of meditation can help in a crisis but are no quick fix. Meditation is not a fast-acting antidote…but an inoculation to be taken ahead of time.

Discipline for the Anxious
Readers’ Choice is Here!

This month, we reshare your favorite Park Forum posts from this year. There’s still room for more. Tell us about one we should include.
What posts nourished your faith?

https://forms.gle/Kj12Ziy4C9gQg8Xm7

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Ready, Willing, and Able to Save — Readers’ Choice

Links for today’s readings:

Oct 12  Read: Ezekiel 12 Listen: (4:26)  Read: Romans 15 Listen: (4:32)

Readers’ Choice posts are selected by our readers:

This week of Readers’ Choice looks back at reflections on Jesus and salvation.

Barbara, TN — Such a hallelujah comfort! Thank you!

This post was originally published on July 16, 2026, based on readings from Isaiah 45.18-19, 22-23.

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 45.18-19, 22-23

18 For this is what the Lord says— 
he who created the heavens, 
he is God; 
he who fashioned and made the earth, 
he founded it; 
he did not create it to be empty, 
but formed it to be inhabited— 
he says: 
“I am the Lord, 
and there is no other. 
19 I have not spoken in secret, 
from somewhere in a land of darkness; 
I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, 
‘Seek me in vain.’ 
I, the Lord, speak the truth; 
I declare what is right. 
22 “Turn to me and be saved, 
all you ends of the earth; 
for I am God, and there is no other. 
23 By myself I have sworn, 
my mouth has uttered in all integrity 
a word that will not be revoked: 
Before me every knee will bow; 
by me every tongue will swear.

Reflection: Ready, Willing, and Able to Save — Readers’ Choice

By John Tillman

A “well-meant offer” is more than just good intentions. It means being ready, willing, and able to deliver what is offered.

A politician may offer something to all citizens without intending to deliver it, or intending to deliver it only to his political donors. This is deception. A politician may also offer something to all citizens when they don’t have the votes or legal authority to deliver it. This is also deception.

If you say to people in your workplace, “Who wants donuts in the morning? I’ll bring them,” you shouldn’t secretly hope Gary doesn’t want donuts because you hate Gary and don’t want to buy him donuts. You also shouldn’t offer everyone donuts when you only have cash to buy donuts for half of the people.

God is not a lying politician, making deceptive promises to seem like a nice guy. God is not an over-promising and under-delivering politician who doesn’t have the power to enact his promises. God doesn’t offer donuts when he doesn’t want to give them, and he’s never short of cash.

In Isaiah 45, and in many other places, God offers salvation. He offers it to Israel: “I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth.” (Is 45.19) He also offers salvation to the entire world, “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth…my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked.” (Is 45.22-23)

When God makes an offer, he means it. He’s not hedging. God has the power, resources, and willingness to deliver everything he promises.

Salvation is not God’s only well-meant offer.

God offers, and fully intends, to complete in us the work he began to conform us to the image of Jesus. He offers, and fully intends, to bring us through trials and suffering that we could not bear without him, displaying his power in our weakness. He offers, and fully intends, to use our feeble resources, skills, and efforts as means to complete his work in this world.

A totaled car in a ravine needs more than being pulled back up to the road. It needs restoration. Jesus offers and intends to complete that work in us and anyone who accepts his offer.

When you accept his offer, Jesus will make you ready, willing, and able to share it with “all you ends of the earth.”

Prayer for the week:

We are taking a break from the Divine Hours Prayers this month. Each week, we will pray a prayer from Scripture or Christian history related to the week’s theme. This week’s prayer is related to our theme of Jesus and salvation:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. — Apostle Paul, Eph 3.14-19

Read more: He Stoops to Raise

He strips himself.
He lays aside
His Heaven
His throne
His clothes
His life

He Stoops to Raise
Readers’ Choice is Here!

This month, we reshare your favorite Park Forum posts from this year. There’s still room for more. Tell us about one we should include.

What posts helped you explain the gospel?

https://forms.gle/Kj12Ziy4C9gQg8Xm7

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Needing Jesus to Pray — Readers’ Choice

Links for today’s readings:

Oct 9  Read: Ezekiel 9 Listen: (2:05)  Read: Romans 12 Listen: (2:58)

Links for this weekend’s readings:

Oct 10  Read: Ezekiel 10 Listen: (3:16)   Read: Romans 13 Listen: (2:35)
Oct 11  Read: Ezekiel 11 Listen: (3:53)  Read: Romans 14 Listen: (3:28)

Readers’ Choice posts are selected by our readers:

This week of Readers’ Choice looks back at reflections on prayer and devotion.

Barbara, TN — We both read and reread especially the Bonhoeffer quotes! It is challenging to examine the words of our praying! Thank you!

This post was originally published on January 20, 2026, based on readings from Job 21.4.

Scripture Focus: Job 21.4

Is my complaint directed to a human being?

Why should I not be impatient?

Reflection: Needing Jesus to Pray — Readers’ Choice

By John Tillman

We tell our wants to God (and everyone else) easily enough. If this was all prayer was, it could be said to be natural, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologian, disagrees. He said, “This is a dangerous error to imagine that it is natural for the heart to pray.” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer lost his life in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 just two weeks shy of the liberation of the camp by American forces. To say he understood the experience of intense prayer, and unanswered prayer, would be an understatement. He wrote:

“It can become a great torment to want to speak with God and not to be able to do it—having to be speechless before God, sensing that every cry remains enclosed within one’s own self, that heart and mouth speak a perverse language which God does not want to hear.”

Bonhoeffer taught ministry students and congregants that it was not possible to pray rightly without the power of God:

“We confuse wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing—all of which the heart can certainly do on its own—with praying. But in doing so we confuse earth and heaven, human beings and God. Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one’s heart. It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty. No one can do that on one’s own. For that one needs Jesus Christ.”

Bonhoeffer further explained how to pray Scripture, which is the Word of God, through the Holy Spirit, who fills words with the power of God:

“Jesus Christ has brought before God every need, every joy, every thanksgiving, and every hope of humankind. In Jesus’ mouth the human word becomes God’s Word. When we pray along with the prayer of Christ, God’s Word becomes again a human word.

If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible, and especially the Psalms, we must not, therefore, first ask what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. We must ask how we can understand the Psalms as God’s Word, and only then can we pray them with Jesus Christ. Thus it does not matter whether the Psalms express exactly what we feel in our heart at the moment we pray.

Perhaps it is precisely the case that we must pray against our own heart in order to pray rightly. It is not just that for which we ourselves want to pray that is important, but that for which God wants us to pray. If we were dependent on ourselves alone, we would probably often pray only the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. But God wants it otherwise. Not the poverty of our heart, but the richness of God’s word, ought to determine our prayer.”

Prayer for the week:

We are taking a break from the Divine Hours Prayers this month. Each week, we will pray a prayer from Scripture or Christian history related to the week’s theme. This week’s prayer is related to our theme of prayer and devotion:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits Thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Amen. — Richard of Chichester (1197-1253)

Read more: Defining Moment

What adjectives do you carry with you? Doubting? Wounded? Worthless? Unreliable? Delete them and accept the new descriptors that are given to us in Jesus

Defining Moment — Readers’ Choice
Readers’ Choice is Here!

This month, we reshare your favorite Park Forum posts from this year. There’s still room for more. Tell us about one we should include.
What posts nourished your faith?

https://forms.gle/Kj12Ziy4C9gQg8Xm7

Posted on

Inner Light of the Heart — Readers’ Choice

Links for today’s readings:

Oct 7  Read: Ezekiel 7  Listen: (4:32)  Read: Romans 10 Listen: (3:21)

Readers’ Choice posts are selected by our readers:

This week of Readers’ Choice looks back at reflections on prayer and devotion.

Barbara, TN — Praise the Lord!  Powerful, Erin, and passing it on. Thank you.

This post was originally published on September 30, 2026, based on readings from Lamentations 5:20-22.

Scripture Focus: Lamentations 5:20-22

20 Why do you always forget us?

    Why do you forsake us so long?

21 Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return;

    renew our days as of old

22 unless you have utterly rejected us

    and are angry with us beyond measure.

Reflection: A Terrifying, Absent God — Readers’ Choice

By Erin Newton

I have been teaching a study on Job and horror. Initially the combination raises a lot of questions and concerns. How can these two things go together? Are we allowed to talk about the places in the Bible that absolutely terrify us?

As I prepare each week, it becomes increasingly clear that the emotions of being afraid or terrified are quite common in the Old Testament. We like to think that it was the raging seas or the catastrophic floods that encapsulate all that is terrifying in those books. But what I have found, and what has been pointed out by other scholars, is that one of the most terrifying realities, or at least perceptions, is the terror of being alone, forsaken by God himself. 

When you think about the book of Lamentations, we often assume it’s just a long poem of sadness. We see it as a cry from the prophet to God about all that is wrong in the world. While that is not untrue, I want to highlight for a moment the scary aspect of a world where God does not see you.

Job often cries out asking God to look away, give him less attention. But there is also the terrified pleas for God to show up and give him an explanation. Lamentations has that same sense of terror. The book closes with this dreadful thought—what if God is done with us? What if we’ve gone too far? What if we have outrun his love? What if we are alone?

If this was our only book in the Bible, we’d all be a miserable lot. Thank God for the testimony of so many others! We know we are not alone. We know we cannot outrun the love of God. We know that Lamentations is voicing the terrifying doubts and worries we all have and we know that it is not the last word. 

But the cry is familiar: Why do you forsake us for so long? When we are suffering, when the world continues its merciless series of catastrophes and abuse—it feels like time is at a standstill and that God is silent. 

Do we close the book of our faith with these final words of Lamentations? Absolutely not! Immanuel has come. God With Us is here. Despite the dark nights and shrill winds that obscure our ability to hear God, we are not alone.

Prayer for the week:

We are taking a break from the Divine Hours Prayers this month. Each week, we will pray a prayer from Scripture or Christian history related to the week’s theme. This week’s prayer is related to our theme of prayer and devotion:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits Thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Amen. — Richard of Chichester (1197-1253)

Readers’ Choice is Here!

This month, we reshare your favorite Park Forum posts from this year. There’s still room for more. Tell us about one we should include.

What posts helped you heal?

https://forms.gle/Kj12Ziy4C9gQg8Xm7

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Posted on

A Terrifying, Absent God — Readers’ Choice

Links for today’s readings:

Oct 7  Read: Ezekiel 7  Listen: (4:32)  Read: Romans 10 Listen: (3:21)

Readers’ Choice posts are selected by our readers:

This week of Readers’ Choice looks back at reflections on prayer and devotion.

Barbara, TN — Praise the Lord!  Powerful, Erin, and passing it on. Thank you.

This post was originally published on September 30, 2026, based on readings from Lamentations 5:20-22.

Scripture Focus: Lamentations 5:20-22

20 Why do you always forget us?
    Why do you forsake us so long?
21 Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return;
    renew our days as of old
22 unless you have utterly rejected us
    and are angry with us beyond measure.

Reflection: A Terrifying, Absent God — Readers’ Choice

By Erin Newton

I have been teaching a study on Job and horror. Initially the combination raises a lot of questions and concerns. How can these two things go together? Are we allowed to talk about the places in the Bible that absolutely terrify us?

As I prepare each week, it becomes increasingly clear that the emotions of being afraid or terrified are quite common in the Old Testament. We like to think that it was the raging seas or the catastrophic floods that encapsulate all that is terrifying in those books. But what I have found, and what has been pointed out by other scholars, is that one of the most terrifying realities, or at least perceptions, is the terror of being alone, forsaken by God himself. 

When you think about the book of Lamentations, we often assume it’s just a long poem of sadness. We see it as a cry from the prophet to God about all that is wrong in the world. While that is not untrue, I want to highlight for a moment the scary aspect of a world where God does not see you.

Job often cries out asking God to look away, give him less attention. But there is also the terrified pleas for God to show up and give him an explanation. Lamentations has that same sense of terror. The book closes with this dreadful thought—what if God is done with us? What if we’ve gone too far? What if we have outrun his love? What if we are alone?

If this was our only book in the Bible, we’d all be a miserable lot. Thank God for the testimony of so many others! We know we are not alone. We know we cannot outrun the love of God. We know that Lamentations is voicing the terrifying doubts and worries we all have and we know that it is not the last word. 

But the cry is familiar: Why do you forsake us for so long? When we are suffering, when the world continues its merciless series of catastrophes and abuse—it feels like time is at a standstill and that God is silent. 

Do we close the book of our faith with these final words of Lamentations? Absolutely not! Immanuel has come. God With Us is here. Despite the dark nights and shrill winds that obscure our ability to hear God, we are not alone.

Prayer for the week:

We are taking a break from the Divine Hours Prayers this month. Each week, we will pray a prayer from Scripture or Christian history related to the week’s theme. This week’s prayer is related to our theme of prayer and devotion:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits Thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Amen. — Richard of Chichester (1197-1253)

Read more: Prescription for Peace

There are many saying the wounds of sin are not serious and “No harm will come to you.” Promising false peace is…deceptive and dangerous

Prescription for Peace
Readers’ Choice is Here!

This month, we reshare your favorite Park Forum posts from this year. There’s still room for more. Tell us about one we should include.

What posts helped you understand the Bible?

https://forms.gle/Kj12Ziy4C9gQg8Xm7

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