Devotions

private power

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 7:31-37

³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² They brought a deaf man to him who had a speech impediment; and they pleaded for him to lay his hand on him. ³³ He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” in other words, “Open up.” ³⁵ And just then his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke clearly. ³⁶ Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ They were astounded beyond all measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

private power

The Gospels give us scene after scene like this one—moments when Jesus heals, restores, or delivers someone, and then immediately urges silence. In this story, He even pulls the deaf man aside, away from the crowd, into a private space. It’s easy to read that as part of the “messianic secret,” but there’s something deeper happening. Jesus is quietly modelling how intercession works. When He prayed for others, He often stepped away from the noise, the expectations, and the watching eyes. He sought a hidden place where His attention could rest fully on His Father. And when He taught His disciples to pray, He told them to do the same—to go into the secret place, to shut the door, to let prayer be something real rather than something performed.

This private healing is a living parable. Prayer is not a stage. It is not a performance. It is not a way to impress others with our spirituality. It is a retreat into the presence of God, where the heart can settle, the mind can focus, and the soul can listen. When we pray for others, especially, we need that quiet space. Not because God can’t hear us in public, but because we can’t hear Him as clearly when we’re distracted by everything around us. Jesus shows us that the power of God flows most freely through a heart that has stepped away from the crowd long enough to be fully present with Him.

Lord, teach us how to slip away into Your presence. Draw us into the quiet places where Your power becomes real, where our hearts align with Yours, and where we learn to pray for others with the same love and focus that Jesus showed.

Posted in deliverance, dependence upon God, ministry, prayer | Tagged Mark 7 | Leave a comment

faith motivated by love

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 7:24-30

²⁴ From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not hide from being noticed, ²⁵ and a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ He said to her, “Let the children be satisfied first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸ But she replied to him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ And he said to her, “Because you said that, you may go– the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

faith motivated by love

This story shows just how many barriers stood between this foreign mother and the deliverance she sought for her daughter. Jesus was still focused on reaching His own people with the announcement of the kingdom. He was trying to stay out of the public eye for a time, and a miracle in Gentile territory would only draw more attention. From every angle, it seemed unreasonable—almost unfair—to ask Him to intervene here. Yet she asked anyway. Her request wasn’t rooted in entitlement or covenant privilege. It was rooted in love, and expressed with humility. She wasn’t demanding a right; she was pleading for grace.

There’s a kind of teaching today that treats prayer as a way of claiming what we are owed, as if faith were a legal mechanism for forcing God’s hand. I’ve tried that path too, and it collapses under its own weight. It turns prayer into a transaction and God into a dispenser of benefits. But this mother shows us a better way. She didn’t come with arguments or leverage. She came with need. She came with trust. She came with a heart that loved her child enough to risk rejection, and a heart that believed Jesus’ mercy was big enough to reach beyond every boundary.

Grace—not entitlement—is the soil where true prayer grows. And love—not self-assertion—is what keeps us coming back to Jesus even when the odds seem impossible.

Lord, we know we have no claim on Your grace. No one does. Yet You delight to give it. So we come humbly, asking You to intervene for Your glory, to meet our needs, and to show mercy to those we love.

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defective inside

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 7:14-23

¹⁴ Then he summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ there is nothing outside a person that can make it ordinary by going in, but the things that come out are what make something ordinary.” ¹⁶ ¹⁷ When he had left the crowd and came into the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸ He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot make him ordinary, ¹⁹ since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (By this he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰ And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that makes someone ordinary. ²¹ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil thoughts come: sexual sin, theft, murder, ²² adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, immorality, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they make a person ordinary.”

defective inside

When I sent my laptop in for repair, I expected restoration. It came back polished, gleaming, almost like new. But the moment I turned it on, the truth surfaced. Nothing essential had been fixed. The problem was internal, and no amount of external shine could make it function as it was designed to. It looked right, but it wasn’t right. It was still broken where it mattered.

That disappointment mirrors the issue Jesus confronted with the Pharisees and scribes. They were deeply concerned about spiritual defilement, but their theology assumed that holiness was something you could maintain by managing externals. If you avoided the wrong foods, performed the right washings, and kept yourself separate from “common” things, you could remain pure and useful to God. In their minds, defilement was something that happened from the outside in.

Jesus overturned that entire framework. He didn’t deny that defilement is real—He insisted it is far more serious than they imagined. But He located the problem where they refused to look: inside the human heart. The heart is where selfishness, pride, lust, envy, deceit, and cruelty begin. The heart is where we resist God long before any outward action reveals it. As Jeremiah said, the heart is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” If the core is corrupted, no amount of external polish can make a person truly clean or truly useful.

So Jesus redirects us away from managing appearances and toward the deeper work only God can do. We don’t need a spiritual cleaning; we need a spiritual repair. We need the kind of restoration that reaches the hidden places, the motives, the desires, the instincts—the places no one else sees but God.

Lord, repair what is broken within us. Heal the defects we cannot reach on our own. Make us whole from the inside out, so that our lives reflect Your kingdom and Your purposes.

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worship and theology disconnect

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 7:6-13

⁶ He said to them, “Isaiah rightly prophesied about you hypocrites, when he wrote, ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; ⁷ in vain do they worship me, while teaching human precepts as their teachings.’ ⁸ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” ⁹ Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ ¹¹ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)– ¹² then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, ¹³ thus making empty the word of God through your tradition that you have passed on. And you do many things like this.”

worship and theology disconnect

Jesus was exposing a kind of religious hypocrisy that hides behind pious language while resisting the actual voice of God. But there is a modern version of this same posture—one that often appears among people who claim no formal religion at all. They may insist that they “worship God in their own way,” yet the god they describe bears little resemblance to the One revealed in Scripture. Their theology is built from personal preference, cultural sentiment, and inherited assumptions. Anything in the Bible that challenges their sense of fairness or autonomy is dismissed as outdated. And in a strange twist, those who actually take God’s word seriously are the ones they accuse of being Pharisees, as if reverence for Scripture were the true hypocrisy.

But the Lord does not overlook the rejection of His message. He is patient, but He is not indifferent. Obedience does not earn salvation, yet it reveals the orientation of the heart. A person can speak beautifully about God, spirituality, or kindness, but words alone do not reveal loyalty. The heart that trusts God will eventually obey Him. The heart that resists Him will eventually reveal that resistance in its choices.

This is why Jesus’ warning still matters. It is possible to disconnect worship from obedience, to craft a spirituality that feels comforting but avoids surrender. And when that happens, devotion becomes hollow, no matter how sincere it sounds.

Lord, keep us from separating our worship from our obedience. Shape our hearts so that our love for You is expressed not only in our words but in the way we live, trust, and follow Your word.

Posted in genuineness, hypocrisy, obedience, relationship with God | Tagged Mark 7 | Leave a comment

not like us

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 7:1-5

¹ Now after the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ² they saw that some of his disciples were eating with ordinary hands, that is, without ceremonially washing them. ³ (Because the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they vigorously wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴ and they do not eat anything from the market unless they immerse it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the immersion of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) ⁵ So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with ordinary hands?”

not like us

The Pharisees and the scribes were convinced they had found the formula for pleasing God. Their routines felt safe, their traditions felt holy, and their discipline made them feel set apart. Then along came the followers of an unconventional Rabbi—men and women who didn’t fit the mold, didn’t keep the expected rituals, and didn’t seem troubled by the boundaries the religious experts guarded so fiercely. To the Pharisees, this kind of devotion looked careless, even irreverent. They could not imagine a life with God that wasn’t built on their definitions of purity and godliness.

We still meet people every day who don’t share our assumptions or follow our rhythms. They don’t see the world the way we do, and they feel no obligation to adopt our habits. And sometimes, if we’re honest, they expose the fact that we Christians can cling to practices Jesus never required. Yet the witness we offer the world is not found in rigid rituals or inherited expectations. It is found in the quiet, confident freedom Christ gives—the freedom to not be ruled by the pressures, fears, or standards that shape everyone else. When we live unburdened by the need to fit in or keep up, our lives become a signpost pointing toward a different kind of kingdom.

But that freedom must never harden into superiority. If we begin to look down on those who are still shaped by the world’s expectations, we slip into the very posture that blinded the Pharisees. The moment we start measuring others by our standards, we lose sight of grace. The gospel frees us not only from the world’s demands but also from the impulse to judge those who are still caught in them.

Lord, teach us to walk in the spacious freedom of the gospel—freedom that shines, freedom that invites, freedom that makes people wonder what kind of Savior could produce such peace.

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rescue on demand

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 6:53-56

⁵³ When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴ When they got out of the boat, people just then recognized him, ⁵⁵ and rushed around that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶ And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the edge of his cloak; and all who touched it were rescued.

rescue on demand

There is something in all of us that envies the people in those villages. They lived in a moment of history when Jesus walked their streets in flesh and blood. All they had to do was place themselves in His path, reach out a hand, whisper a request, and they received undeniable proof of His power. No theological debates. No long seasons of waiting. No wrestling with silence. Just Jesus—present, visible, touchable—bringing wholeness wherever He went.

And right now, you can probably think of people who desperately need that kind of rescue. People whose bodies are failing. People whose minds are unraveling. People whose hearts are breaking. People you would carry to Jesus yourself if only you knew where to find Him in that same immediate, guaranteed way. You believe in Him. You don’t need a miracle to prove He is real. The resurrection is enough. But that doesn’t stop you from longing—aching—to help those who need Him now.

Eventually, Jesus is going to make His way back to us. His return is not a metaphor. It is a promise. And when He comes, every sickness will bow, every wound will heal, every broken thing will be restored. Until then, His Holy Spirit is here—present, powerful, able to heal just as Jesus did. But learning to walk in that power is not an exact science. It is not a formula. It is not a button we press. It is a relationship of trust, surrender, and mystery.

Some prayers are answered with a yes.
Some are answered with a slow.
And many, painfully, are answered with a no.

We don’t always know why. We don’t always understand the timing. We don’t always see the purpose. But we do know this: Jesus is coming back. And because He is coming back, we refuse to give up. We refuse to stop praying. We refuse to stop hoping. We refuse to stop longing for His presence and His power. There is no plan B for ultimate rescue. There is only Him.

So we live in the tension—believing in His power, longing for His touch, trusting His timing, and waiting for His return. And in that waiting, our hearts learn to hunger for Him more deeply than for the miracles themselves.

LORD, make us people who long for the power of Your presence, even if we have to wait for Your return to see it. Teach us to trust Your heart when Your hand seems hidden, and to hope in the day when You will make all things new.

Posted in faith, faithfulness, healing, second coming | Tagged Mark 6 | Leave a comment

seeing the ghost of Jesus

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 6:45-52

⁴⁵ Just then he compelled his disciples to get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. ⁴⁶ After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray. ⁴⁷ By the time evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. ⁴⁸ When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them about the fourth watch, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. ⁴⁹ But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought he was a ghost and cried out; ⁵⁰ because they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ⁵¹ Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, ⁵² because they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts had been hardened.

seeing the ghost of Jesus

These were committed disciples—men who had left their nets, their families, their livelihoods, and their reputations to follow Jesus. They had seen miracles with their own eyes. They had participated in ministry themselves. They had just returned from preaching, healing, and casting out demons in His name. Their faith had been tested and strengthened. Their confidence in Jesus had grown. And yet, all it took was a few hours of difficulty with Jesus not physically present for everything to unravel inside them.

The storm rose. The night grew long. Their strength failed. Their fear grew. And the absence of Jesus’ visible presence became, in their minds, the absence of His actual presence. When He finally came to them—walking on the water, doing the impossible—they didn’t even recognize Him. They thought He was a ghost. The very One they needed most was mistaken for something frightening and unreal.

This is not just their story. It is ours.

You may have seasons—hours, months, even years—when you cannot feel the presence of your Savior. You pray, and the heavens feel silent. You worship, and your heart feels numb. You read Scripture, and the words seem distant. You look for signs of His nearness, and all you see is darkness. Like the disciples, you may assume that because you cannot sense Him, He must not be there. But that is never true. He sees. He knows. He is closer than the waves that threaten you.

You will cry out for help, and sometimes there will be no immediate answer. You will plead for relief, and sometimes the storm will continue. Your heart may even begin to harden under the weight of disappointment. And in those moments, the danger is not the storm outside—it is the storm inside. Some people, in seasons like this, turn away from what once seemed like genuine faith. They interpret silence as abandonment. They interpret delay as disinterest. They interpret hardship as evidence that God has withdrawn.

But stories like this are in the Bible for a reason. They remind us that the absence of feeling is not the absence of God. They remind us that Jesus sometimes comes to us in ways we do not immediately recognize. They remind us that what looks like a ghost—what looks like fear, confusion, or uncertainty—may actually be the first glimpse of His real presence coming to rescue.

The disciples’ fear did not keep Jesus away. Their confusion did not offend Him. Their failure to recognize Him did not stop Him from climbing into the boat. And the moment He stepped in, the storm ceased. That is the promise for us as well. He will come. He will speak. He will steady the waves. But He often allows us to endure the storm long enough to learn trust that is deeper than sight, deeper than emotion, deeper than circumstance.

Faith is not proven in calm waters. Faith is proven in the dark hours when Jesus feels far away but is, in truth, drawing near.

LORD, prepare our hearts to trust You during the storm, and wait for Your return. Teach us to recognize Your presence even when it comes in unexpected ways, and to hold fast until You step into our boat and bring peace again.

Posted in faith, fear, presence of God, trust | Tagged Mark 6 | Leave a comment

an experiment in trust

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 6:35-44

³⁵ When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; ³⁶ send them away so that they may go into the country and villages around and purchase something for themselves to eat.” ³⁷ But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” ³⁸ And he said to them, “How many loaves have you got? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” ³⁹ Then he ordered them to get all the people to recline in groups on the green grass. ⁴⁰ So they reclined in groups of hundreds and of fifties. ⁴¹ Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. ⁴² And all ate and were filled; ⁴³ and they took up twelve baskets full of bread fragments and of the fish. ⁴⁴ Those who had eaten the loaves included five thousand men.

an experiment in trust

When Jesus sent His disciples out on their first evangelistic tour through the Galilean villages, He told them to travel light—no extra bag, no extra tunic, no extra provisions. It was a lesson in trust, not austerity. And now, as they return from that mission, they face another test that presses the same point. A massive crowd has gathered. The people are hungry. The disciples know full well that the meager meal they’ve found—five loaves and two fish—is nowhere near enough. This is not a situation where “making do with less” will keep the ministry going. This is a situation where nothing short of divine provision will do.

And that is precisely the point.

Jesus wasn’t teaching them to survive on scraps. He was teaching them to trust the God who sends them to also sustain them. The lesson was never about minimalism. It was about dependence. It was about learning that the God who calls us into ministry is the same God who brings us to our destination and supplies what we need along the way. The disciples needed to see that the scarcity in their hands was not the final word. The abundance in God’s hands was.

Our Lord wants to teach us the same truth. He wants us to know—not theoretically, not theologically, but experientially—that He provides what we need to accomplish what He calls us to do. Once we truly know that, we won’t need the “mass fish sandwich” experience to convince us. Until we know that, all the fish sandwiches in the world won’t bring Him glory, because the miracle is not the point. The trust is.

Provision is not meant to replace faith. Provision is meant to confirm faith. And Jesus wants His disciples—then and now—to trust Him before the provision comes, not only after it arrives. He wants us to step into ministry with confidence that He already knows what we need, already sees the crowd, already has the solution, already holds the abundance we cannot yet see.

So we pray—not merely for the miracle, but for the heart that trusts before the miracle appears.

LORD, show Your glory by providing for our needs as we minister. But help us to trust You before the provision comes.

Posted in faith, ministry, miracles, trust | Tagged Mark 6 | Leave a comment

he chose to continue

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 6:29-34

²⁹ When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his corpse, and laid it in a tomb. ³⁰ Then the apostles gathered around Jesus again, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹ He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a little.” Because many were coming and going, and they had no free time even to eat. ³² And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³ Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴ As he went ashore, he saw a large crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he started teaching them many things.

he chose to continue

In His deep sorrow, our Lord looked around Him—and what He saw were the crowds. They had followed Him across towns, across hillsides, across the shoreline. He could not escape them, not because He lacked the strength to withdraw, but because people needed Him. When He longed for quiet, they brought their noise. When He needed space to grieve, they pressed in with their sicknesses. When His heart was breaking, theirs were breaking too. And instead of sending them away—which He had every right to do—He stayed.

He stayed when His emotions were raw.
He stayed when His heart was heavy.
He stayed when His own need for healing was real.

He stayed because compassion moved Him.

Jesus was not obligated by any law—human or divine—to keep ministering that day. No one would have blamed Him for stepping aside, for taking time to mourn, for letting the disciples handle the crowd. But He chose the path of self‑giving love. He put the needs of others above His own sorrow. He allowed compassion to redirect His steps. And that is the Savior we follow—the One who came not to be served, but to serve, even when His own heart was wounded.

Matthew tells us that two great miracles happened that day: Jesus fed the five thousand, and He walked on water. But perhaps the greatest miracle of all was quieter, hidden beneath the surface—the miracle of a grieving Savior choosing ministry over withdrawal, choosing compassion over self‑protection, choosing to pour Himself out even when His own soul was aching.

That is divine love.
That is holy strength.
That is the heart of Christ.

And it speaks to us, because we know what it feels like to face tragedy and disappointment. We know what it feels like to want to retreat, to shut down, to step away from the needs around us. Grief drains us. Pain isolates us. Loss makes us want to curl inward. But Jesus shows us another way—not a denial of our sorrow, but a grace that empowers us to keep loving even while we are hurting.

He does not ask us to pretend we are strong. He offers His strength so we can keep serving. He does not ask us to ignore our grief. He walks with us in it. And He teaches us that compassion, even in seasons of pain, can become a channel of healing—not only for others, but for us as well.

LORD, fill us with Your compassion for the needy. When we face tragedy and disappointment, may we find strength to stay committed to ministry to others. Teach us to love as You loved, to serve as You served, and to trust that Your grace is enough for every sorrow we carry.

Posted in compassion, Jesus Christ, ministry | Tagged Mark 6 | Leave a comment

what Herod was thinking

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Jefferson Vann

Mark 6:21-28

²¹ But a day of opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and high ranking officers and for the leaders of Galilee. ²² When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you want, and I will give it.” ²³ And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” ²⁴ She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” ²⁵ Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptizer on a platter.” ²⁶ The king was deeply grieved; yet because of his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. ²⁷ Immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, ²⁸ brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother.

what Herod was thinking

Herod, what were you thinking? It’s easy to ask that question when we read the story, but the truth is far more uncomfortable: most of us have been caught in the same trap. We may not have ordered anyone’s execution, but we have all spoken rashly, impulsively, foolishly. We have all let words slip out in anger, or lust, or fear, or self‑defense—words we wish we could pull back the moment they leave our mouths. Words that wound. Words that complicate. Words that corner us into choices we never intended to make.

The enemy loves to use our own words against us. He twists them. He magnifies them. He turns a careless sentence into a relational fracture. He turns a heated comment into a long‑term regret. He turns a moment of pride into a trap we cannot easily escape. Herod is a tragic example of this. He was intrigued by John’s message. Something in him recognized truth when he heard it. But his ego, his lust, and his need to save face were stronger than his desire to obey God. One rash promise—made in the heat of a moment, in front of the wrong audience—became the noose that tightened around John’s life.

Herod, the mighty king, was ruled by his own mouth. And that is the warning for all of us. Power does not protect us from foolishness. Influence does not shield us from impulsive speech. Even spiritual interest, like Herod’s fascination with John, cannot save us from the consequences of words spoken without thought. A hair‑trigger tongue can undo years of wisdom. A single sentence can unravel a relationship. A moment of pride can silence the voice of God in our lives.

But the story also invites us to humility. It reminds us that self‑control is not something we muster on our own. It is a fruit of the Spirit. It grows in us as we walk with Christ, as we slow down, as we learn to pause before we speak. It grows as we surrender our impulses to the One who speaks only what is true, what is necessary, what is life‑giving.

So we pray—not because we are strong, but because we know how easily we stumble. We pray because we want our words to heal, not harm. We pray because we want our mouths to serve Christ, not our egos. We pray because we know the damage a single sentence can do, and we long for the Spirit to guard our tongues.

LORD, give us the capacity to stop and think before we say something that does more harm than we would ever want. Teach us to speak with wisdom, to pause with humility, and to let Your Spirit shape every word that leaves our lips.

Posted in anger, fear, self-control | Tagged Mark 6 | Leave a comment