 Scripture
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs - heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:16-17) From the Sermons of John Wesley “The testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God. This is properly called the full assurance of faith - not a bare conjecture, a feeble hope, or a wavering trust, but a clear, inward conviction, wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost, that we are the children of God. It is not enthusiasm; it is not presumption. It is the very gift of God, promised in the gospel, sealed to us in Christ, and witnessed to our own heart by the Spirit who cannot lie.” John Wesley, “The Witness of the Spirit, Discourse I” (1746) From a Letter of John Newton “You say you dare not call yourself a child of God. But I ask you this: Do you love him? Do you grieve when you have offended him? Do you run to Christ when your conscience smites you, or do you run from him? Do you find in yourself a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, a longing to know him better, to serve him more faithfully, to love him more purely? These are not the marks of an enemy of God, my friend. These are the marks of a child who does not yet know his Father’s face. The Spirit witnesses not always in thunder, but often in this still, small voice of longing - this ache for God that the world cannot give and cannot take away. That very longing is his seal upon your soul.” John Newton, Letters (adapted) A Word for the Journey One of the subtler cruelties of the enemy is to convince a true child of God that they are not, in fact, a child of God. He cannot undo your salvation, so he works instead to rob you of the joy of it. He whispers that your doubts disqualify you, that your failures have worn through God’s patience, that the assurance others seem to carry so easily is somehow not available to you. These are lies. Ancient lies, and well-worn ones. But lies nonetheless. John Wesley understood this battle from the inside. Before Aldersgate, he was a man of formidable religious discipline who lacked the one thing discipline cannot manufacture: the settled, Spirit-given assurance that he was a beloved child of God. The Aldersgate moment did not make him a Christian, many historians believe he was genuinely converted before it. What it gave him was the witness of the Spirit. That inward impression, that direct testimony of the Spirit to his spirit, that he was God’s own. And it changed everything. John Newton, that sailor, slave-trader-turned-pastor who understood grace from the gutter up, had a different pastoral instinct for those wrestling with assurance. He did not argue them into certainty with syllogisms. He asked them to look at their own heart’s direction. Do you love God? Do you grieve your sin? Do you run toward Christ or away from him when you fail? Newton knew what the anxious soul often forgets: the very longing for God is evidence of the Spirit’s presence. Dead men have no pulse. Dead souls have no hunger. Paul, writing to the church at Rome, grounds assurance not in our performance but in a double testimony. The Spirit himself, the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, witnesses together with our spirit. It is not a solo act of human introspection. It’s a duet. As one person put it, it’s God’s Spirit harmonizing with the deepest register of your redeemed soul to sing the same song: you are his. You belong to him. You are an heir. Assurance is not arrogance. To be certain of God’s love is not to be proud of your own merit, it’s to be overwhelmed by his. The believer who walks in full assurance does not strut; he kneels. He knows too well what he was saved from, and too well by whom, to think the confidence is his own. It is all of grace, received through faith, sealed by the Spirit, the very Spirit that was promised, given freely, and who will not be taken away. If you are struggling to feel the warmth of that assurance today, may I offer you Newton’s pastoral question? Do you love him? Even a little? Even through the fog? That love did not originate with you. It is, as John tells us, derivative; we love because he first loved us. The fact that you love him at all, that you are reading these words and hoping they are true, is itself the Spirit’s footprint on the ground of your soul. Press on, dear pilgrim. You are more his than you know. Thanks be to God. Questions for Reflection 1. How would you honestly describe your present level of assurance of salvation: settled, wavering, or largely absent? What do you believe most contributes to where you are? 2. Is there someone in your life, (a family member, a friend, a fellow pilgrim), who is quietly struggling with doubt or assurance? How might you come alongside them this week with Newton’s pastoral wisdom rather than argument or pressure? 3. Take ten minutes this week in silence with Romans 8:14-17 open before you. Ask the Spirit to witness to you directly. Then write down what you notice, whatever comes, however small. Make this a practice, not a one-time exercise. A Closing Prayer From the Prayers of John Calvin, adapted O Lord, we confess that we are too prone to cast our eyes downward upon our own unworthiness, and to forget that you have sealed us with your Spirit as a pledge of your love. Grant us, we pray, the full assurance of faith - not in ourselves, but in Christ alone, in whom we are fully known and fully loved. Let your Spirit bear witness with our spirit, that we might walk as your children, free from the bondage of fear, and firm in the hope that does not disappoint. May we neither presume upon your grace nor despair of it, but rest quietly and completely in your mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Want to go deeper? 📖 Devotions & Bible Studies → daletedder.substack.com 🎙️ Practical Christianity Podcast → Spotify | Apple Podcasts 📚 Books & Publications → Browse the Bookstore
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 Pride Wearing a Watch
There are days when I seemingly believe that my time is more important than other people’s time. I don’t say this out loud, of course. I’m a pastor. I mean, how would that look? But the belief is there, crouching just below the surface, and it announces itself clearly enough when I’m stuck behind someone who can’t seem to decide between the left lane and the right lane, or when I’m waiting in a line that’s moving at a pace that seems deliberately designed to inconvenience me. Here’s what I’ve come to understand about those moments: my impatience is rarely about the traffic. It’s about something much older, and much uglier. It’s about pride. My pride. It’s about a quiet, persistent conviction that I deserve better than this, that my agenda matters more, that my time is more valuable, that the universe ought to organize itself more thoughtfully around my schedule. That’s entitlement. And entitlement is just pride “wearing a watch.” This lesson sits in uncomfortable territory, because none of us enjoy looking at our impatience and seeing pride staring back at us. It’s far more flattering to chalk our frustration up to stress, or a busy season, or difficult people. But the Scriptures are not flattering; they are honest. And they have something important to say about the connection between a humble heart and a patient spirit. The good news is that God doesn’t leave us in the diagnosis. He offers transformation. The same Spirit who names our pride is also the One forming patience in us, slowly, faithfully, and with far more patience toward us than we typically show toward one another. So let’s take an honest look in the mirror for a moment, and then lift our eyes toward the grace that reshapes what it reflects. The Root Beneath the Reaction Most of us know what impatience feels like. The tightness in the chest. The jaw that clinches. The sigh that escapes before we can catch it. The words that follow it, which we often regret. Impatience, in its everyday form, feels like a reaction, a response to the slow, the inconvenient, the late, the inefficient. It presents itself as a situational problem: “Put me in a better situation and I would be a more patient person,” we tell ourselves. But the Scriptures have a habit of looking past the surface reaction to the root condition, and what they find underneath most impatience is pride. Proverbs 13:10 states it plainly: “Where there is strife, there is pride.” Impatience almost always produces friction, with other drivers, with a slow cashier, with a spouse who won’t move at our pace, with a God who won’t answer on our timeline. And where there’s that friction, pride is usually the fuel. The proud person can’t wait because waiting requires yielding, and yielding feels like a small death to someone who has quietly arranged their interior world around the conviction that they’re at the center of it. The Proverbs return to this theme with striking consistency. Proverbs 16:18 warns that “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” But perhaps more directly relevant to our subject is Proverbs 19:11: “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” Notice what this proverb assumes. It assumes that there will be offenses, inconveniences, delays, frustrations, moments when people fail to meet your expectations. Wisdom doesn’t prevent those moments. Wisdom changes how you respond to them. And the humble person, the one who has stopped placing themselves at the center, has the most room to yield. The Consumer Mindset We live in a culture that has normalized entitlement. We expect packages delivered by tomorrow. We expect results now. We’re conditioned to treat our preferences as needs and our needs as rights. And if we aren’t intentional, this mindset finds its way into the Christian life as well, into our prayers, our expectations of the Church, our understanding of God’s timing, and yes, our relationships with one another. Entitlement in the Christian life is subtle. It rarely looks like arrogance. It looks more like low-grade disappointment. “God should have answered that prayer by now. That person should have changed by now. My circumstances should have improved by now.” Underneath each of those sentences is an unexamined conviction that we’ve earned something, that we’ve contributed enough, waited long enough, suffered enough, and that God, or others, are now in our debt. The Apostle Paul dismantles this quietly but completely in Philippians 4:11-13. “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” That word learned is worth pondering. Paul doesn’t say contentment was given to him in a moment of spiritual illumination. He says it was learned, which implies a school, which implies a curriculum, which implies tests. The school of contentment is not a comfortable one. Paul sat in prison when he wrote those words. His contentment was not the product of comfortable circumstances. It was the product of a will that had been brought under the Lordship of Christ. The humble person is the student of that same school. They’ve stopped demanding that life deliver what they believe they deserve, and have begun receiving what God provides, including the waiting, as sufficient grace. What Humility Actually Does C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, observed that pride is essentially competitive. It isn’t satisfied with having something good; it wants to have more of it than the next person. The proud person measures everything in relation to others: their time, their status, their rights. And so impatience is almost always a comparative grievance. “Why is that person moving so slowly when I have somewhere to be?” “Why are they getting more attention than I am?” “Why is everyone else’s problem more urgent than mine?” Humility breaks the comparative spell. The humble person doesn’t need to win the comparison. They have already conceded that they aren’t the measure of all things. They have, in the words of Paul, considered others better than themselves (Philippians 2:3). This doesn’t mean self-deprecation; it means a genuine release of the need to be first, fastest, most accommodated, and most important. And that release, it turns out, creates a remarkable amount of interior space, space to wait, space to yield, space to extend grace. Richard Baxter understood this deeply. In The Reformed Pastor he wrote with characteristic plainness that the minister, and by extension the Christian, who hasn’t dealt with his own pride will find it surfacing in every relationship, poisoning patience at the root. Baxter’s remedy wasn’t technique but orientation: the soul that has fixed its gaze on Christ rather than on its own standing in the world finds it far easier to yield, to wait, to absorb what others couldn’t. The humble person isn’t immune to frustration or delay or disappointment, but they don’t sink under them, because they’re no longer riding so high on their own sense of importance. John Wesley understood this as well. His doctrine of sanctification, what he called “going on to perfection,” wasn’t a doctrine of instantaneous spiritual achievement. It was a doctrine of ongoing transformation in which pride is gradually, prayerfully surrendered, and Christlike love, patient, humble, others-oriented, increasingly fills its place. Wesley didn’t teach that we would reach perfection in this life in the sense of flawlessness. He taught that we could grow, genuinely and substantively, in love toward God and neighbor. And that growth requires the long work of humility. The Beautiful Fruit of a Humble Patience What does a patient life rooted in humility actually look like? It looks like the person who holds the door and means it. Who listens without waiting to speak. Who absorbs a slight without cataloguing it for future reference. Who can be passed over for recognition without quietly seething about it. Who can wait in the literal or figurative line without the internal narrative that their time is being stolen. More importantly, it looks like the person who can sit with suffering, their own and others’, without demanding immediate resolution. It looks like Colossians 3:12-13, where Paul instructs the church to clothe themselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” and to “bear with each other and forgive one another.” These are active, costly choices made by people who have faced their own need for grace and have decided to extend it. The humble person is patient not because they have no feelings, but because they’ve submitted their feelings to something larger than themselves. They’re patient because they’ve met the God who is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8), and they’ve found, to their continual astonishment, that this God has been patient with them. Not because they deserved it. Because he is good. Thanks be to God. And that experience, of being the object of patient, undeserved grace, is the most powerful force in the world for producing humility in us. You can’t truly receive that grace and remain entrenched in entitlement. One must give way to the other. Patience rooted in humility isn’t weakness. It’s the mark of a soul that has stopped insisting on its own rights because it has found something worth more than rights. It has found a Savior who, being in very nature God, “did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing” (Philippians 2:6-7). That’s the ultimate picture of humble patience. And it is, by his Spirit, being formed in us. Study Questions 1. Read Proverbs 13:10. This brief verse makes a striking claim, that all strife has pride somewhere at its root. Think about a recent moment of friction or impatience in your own life, whether in traffic, at home, or in a relationship. As honestly as you can, trace that moment back toward its root: what did you believe you deserved in that moment that you weren’t receiving? What does your answer reveal about what you are quietly placing at the center? 2. Read Proverbs 19:11 carefully. The verse describes wisdom as the thing that produces patience, and calls it glory to overlook an offense. In the culture of the ancient Near East, glory was tied to honor and public standing; the glorified person was the one who was respected and esteemed. What does it suggest about the nature of true honor that the wise person finds it not in demanding their due but in releasing it? How does this challenge the way our culture, and perhaps your own instincts, define what it means to be respected? 3. Read Philippians 2:3-8, where Paul calls the church to have the same mind as Christ Jesus, the one who did not cling to his rights but emptied himself. Paul presents this not as an abstract ideal but as a practical instruction for how the church should treat one another. What specific aspect of Christ’s humility does Paul seem most intent on applying to everyday Christian community? And where in your own daily relationships would this application be most costly for you? 4. The teaching suggested that entitlement often disguises itself as reasonable disappointment, low-grade frustration that God, others, or circumstances haven’t delivered what we feel we’ve earned. Without self-condemnation, do an honest inventory: where in your life are you carrying quiet expectations of God or others that have the flavor of a debt owed rather than a grace received? What has that underlying posture cost you relationally, spiritually, or emotionally? 5. Read Philippians 4:11-13. Paul says contentment is something he learned, past tense, through experience. If contentment must be learned, then impatience and entitlement are among the lessons, not obstacles to them. How does this reframe the frustrating, inconvenient, or slow seasons of your life? Where in your life right now are you most tempted to want the reward without the road, the character without the cost of acquiring it? 6. Read Colossians 3:12-13. Paul uses clothing as his metaphor; these virtues (compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience) are to be put on deliberately. They don’t simply appear; they’re chosen. What makes it hard to choose patience in the specific moments when it costs you most? Is the obstacle primarily a lack of awareness, a lack of desire, or something else? What would it look like to begin putting on patience the way you put on a garment, consciously, before you walk into the situations that test you? 7. Read Psalm 103:8-14. The psalmist anchors God’s patience not in divine indifference but in a particular kind of knowledge; God “knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” His patience with us is not blind. He knows exactly what we are, and he’s patient anyway. How does it change your posture before God to know that his patience belongs to someone who sees your failures fully and is still slow to anger? And how might that same posture, truly seeing someone in their limitations and choosing patience anyway, change how you treat the people most likely to exhaust yours? 8. The teaching drew on C.S. Lewis’s observation that pride is inherently comparative; it measures itself against others. Examine your own impatience honestly: how much of it is genuinely about your need to be somewhere or get something done, and how much of it is actually comparative, a sense that this person’s slowness, failure, or different pace is somehow an affront to your standing? What does it suggest about the spiritual work still ahead if our impatience often has less to do with time and more to do with status? 9. Read James 4:6, where Scripture states that “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” This is among the more sobering declarations in the New Testament, not that God ignores pride, but that he actively resists it. In the seasons of your life when you’ve felt most spiritually dry, most blocked in prayer, most distant from God, is it possible that pride, including the subtle pride of entitlement, had something to do with it? What would genuine humility before God look like in the specific area of your life where you are most impatient right now? 10. Read Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus tells us explicitly that this parable was directed at those who “were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else” (v. 9). The Pharisee’s prayer is technically full of true statements; he does fast, he does tithe. His problem is not his facts; it’s his frame. He’s measuring himself against others rather than standing honestly before God. Where in your spiritual life are you most prone to the Pharisee’s posture, quietly satisfied with your relative standing, rather than standing, like the tax collector, simply on grace? 11. Think of the person in your life who is most difficult to be patient with, not the stranger in traffic, but the one closest to you. What would it require of you, specifically, to extend to that person the same quality of patient, undeserved grace that God has extended to you? What pride or entitlement would have to be surrendered for that to happen? And what concrete step, one action, one prayer, one shift in posture, could you take this week toward that surrender? 12. Read Romans 5:3-5. Paul traces a chain from suffering through perseverance to character to hope, and he says this hope does not disappoint, because “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Patience, by this account, grows from a heart increasingly filled with the love of a God who has been overwhelmingly patient with you. How does this vision of patience, formed by the Spirit rather than managed by willpower, change the way you pray about your impatience? What might it look like to pray less “Lord, help me be more patient” and more “Lord, fill me with the love that makes patience natural”? Walking Points 1. This week, when you feel impatience rising, pause long enough to ask one question before you react: “What do I believe I deserve right now that I’m not getting?” This is a spiritual discipline of self-examination, not a therapy exercise. The goal is to see the frustration clearly, trace it to its root, and bring that root before God in the moment rather than after the damage is done. Begin simply: keep a mental or written note of what triggers your impatience this week, and what it reveals about where you may be quietly carrying entitlement. 2. Choose one consistent situation this week where your impatience tends to surface, a commute, a particular relationship, a recurring inconvenience, and make a deliberate, prayerful decision to yield in it. Not reluctantly, not while cataloguing how generous you’re being, but as an act of humility offered to God. You might pray, before entering that situation, something as simple as: “Lord, this is a place where my pride shows up. I offer this moment of surrender to you.” The goal is to engage the Spirit in a specific, named arena of struggle and to practice the humility that makes patience possible. 3. Identify one person in your life toward whom you’ve been carrying impatience, and do something this week, one act, one conversation, one withheld criticism, that extends toward them the grace God has extended toward you. This is about the quiet, deliberate practice of what Colossians 3:13 calls “bearing with one another,” choosing, in one concrete moment, to treat another person’s limitations with the same patient mercy God shows you in yours. Let the Gospel motivate the action: “because I’ve been forgiven much, I can bear with much.” Closing Prayer Lord, we confess that what we call impatience is often pride in disguise, a quiet insistence that our time matters more, our agenda is more pressing, our needs more deserving of attention than those around us. Forgive us for the entitlement we carry so naturally and notice so rarely. Teach us to receive the waiting, the inconvenience, and the slow work of grace not as frustrations to endure but as invitations to the humility that makes us more like Christ. Give us eyes to see, in the face of the person who slows us down or disappoints our expectations, a fellow traveler as needy of grace as we are. Fill us, not by our own effort but by the power of your Spirit, with the love that’s patient, the love that doesn’t insist on its own way. We ask this not because we deserve to be changed, but because you are good, and because you have promised to complete what you have begun in us. To that promise we cling, and for that grace we are grateful. In the name of Jesus, who yielded everything so that we might receive everything. Amen. Want to go deeper? 📖 Devotions & Bible Studies → daletedder.substack.com 🎙️ Practical Christianity Podcast → Spotify | Apple Podcasts 📚 Books & Publications → Browse the Bookstore  Opening Scripture
Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved! ... Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth. Stir up your might and come to save us! (Psalm 80:3, 1-2) Where We Are in the Story We’re nearly halfway through Lent, that forty-day journey of honest self-examination and intentional preparation for Holy Week and Easter. Lent positions us in Act III of God’s great Story: Redemption is underway, but the battle isn’t over. The world is still groaning. We are still groaning. And in this season, the church invites us to groan honestly before God rather than pretend otherwise. The Cry You’re Afraid to Pray Have you ever been afraid to tell God that things aren’t okay? That the world feels broken in ways that frighten you? That your family is struggling, the culture seems to be unraveling, and the church doesn’t seem to be making much of a dent? Asaph wasn’t afraid. Psalm 80 is one of the most honest prayers in all of Scripture; a raw, unvarnished cry from a people who feel abandoned. Israel has been devastated. Their enemies laugh. Their defenses are down. And the most painful part? God, the One who led them like a flock and planted them like a vine in the land, seems to have turned away. Three times, Asaph repeats almost the same refrain: “Restore us, O God. Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” He isn’t experimenting with liturgical form. He’s praying from desperation. When things are this bad, you say it again. And then again. The Shepherd Has Gone Silent The psalm opens with a stunning image: God as shepherd, enthroned above the cherubim, leading his people like a flock. This is covenant language, the language of a relationship built on promise and faithfulness. And now Asaph is crying out to this same Shepherd-God: Where are you? We need you. Come and save us. This isn’t the prayer of someone who’s lost faith. This is the prayer of someone whose faith is so deep that God’s apparent absence is unbearable. You don’t cry out to a God you don’t believe in. You don’t ask a shepherd you don’t trust to come and lead you home. Asaph is in agony precisely because he knows who God is, and what God has done, and yet cannot reconcile that with what he’s experiencing right now. We know this feeling, don’t we? We’ve all had seasons when our prayers seemed to hit the ceiling and fall back down. When God felt utterly unreachable. When we looked at our family, our church, our nation and asked in all honesty: God, where are you in all of this? There’s no shame in that prayer. There’s profound faith in it. What Lent Teaches Us About Honest Prayer Our culture has a chronic allergy to lament. We want to fix problems, not sit in them. We want answers, not prayers. We default to positive thinking, or worse, we paste on a spiritual smile and pretend that everything is fine because “God is good.” And God is good. But God is also the kind of God who included forty-two psalms of lament in his Word. God is the kind of God who says, through the mouth of his psalmists, that it’s not only acceptable to cry out in pain, it’s an act of faith to do so. Lament is not the opposite of trust. Lament is what trust sounds like when it’s walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It’s faith refusing to pretend. It’s love refusing to disengage. “I believe you’re there, and I believe you can act, and I need you to come,” that’s not doubt. That’s prayer. The church in our day desperately needs to recover the language of lament. We’ve been formed by a therapeutic Christianity that promises to make you feel better, not to form you in truth. But the people who endure, the people who come out the other side of suffering with their faith intact and even deepened, are almost always the ones who learned to pray like Asaph. Honestly. Repeatedly. Desperately. And without letting go. The Vine and the Vineyard In the middle of the psalm, the imagery shifts. Asaph pictures Israel as a vine transplanted from Egypt into the promised land. God cleared the ground, planted it, and it grew to fill the whole land. Kings sheltered under its branches. Its roots went down to the sea. It was magnificent. And then the walls came down, and the vineyard was stripped bare. This imagery, (the vine, the vineyard, the one whom God planted and now seems to have abandoned), runs through all of Scripture. It reaches its climax in John 15, where Jesus says: “I am the true vine.” What Israel failed to be, the fruitful, faithful people of God, Jesus became. He is the vine that was cut down, trampled, and pressed. He is the one who prayed in Gethsemane, with all of Psalm 80 ringing in his ears: “Restore us, O God. Let your face shine.” And he heard, for a moment, only silence. But not forever. The cry of Psalm 80 is answered not in Israel’s restoration, but in Christ’s resurrection. The face of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). The Shepherd came to seek and save the lost. The vine was cut down so that we could be grafted in. This is the arc of the Story. And Lent invites us to stand inside the cry, “Restore us!” long enough to feel its weight, so that when Easter comes, the relief is real. Praying Through the Pain So what do you do when God seems silent? When you’re crying out for restoration and nothing seems to change? You do what Asaph did. You keep praying. You refuse to stop. You name what you’re experiencing, honestly, without spiritual-sounding embellishment. You remind yourself of what God has done before. You hold on to covenant promises even when you can’t see their fulfillment. And you say it again: “Restore us, O God. Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” The cry itself is an act of faith. The holding on is an act of worship. And the God who called himself Shepherd will not leave his flock without a shepherd, no matter how long the darkness lasts. Reflection Questions 1. Is there an area of your life, (your family, your church, your nation, your own soul), where you’ve been afraid to bring honest lament before God? What would it look like to bring that before him today? 2. How have you been formed by a version of Christianity that avoids lament? What would change in your prayer life if you gave yourself permission to pray like Asaph? 3. How does seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of the Vine imagery in Psalm 80 change the way you read this psalm, and the way you pray it? Prayer (Based on Psalm 80) O God, Shepherd of your people, enthroned in glory, hear us. We are hurting. The world is not well. There are places in our lives, our families, and your church where the walls are down and the vineyard is stripped bare. We aren’t pretending otherwise. Restore us, O God. Turn again, and look upon us. Let your face shine, the face we have seen in Jesus Christ, and by that light, save us. We will not let go. We cannot. You’ve been our Shepherd too long, and we have known your faithfulness too well, to stop crying out now. Restore us, O God of hosts. Amen. Action Step Set aside ten minutes today to write a prayer of honest lament. Don’t clean it up. Don’t make it sound spiritual. Name what is genuinely broken… in you, in your relationships, in your world, and bring it before God. Then close with Asaph’s refrain: “Restore us, O God. Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” Carry that prayer with you through the week. Benediction (Based on Psalm 80:19 and Numbers 6:24-26) May the Lord your God, the Shepherd of his people, turn again and look upon you. May his face shine upon you, and may you be saved. Go into this day not in your own strength, but in the strength of the One who calls you back, again and again, to himself. Want to go deeper? 📖 Devotions & Bible Studies → daletedder.substack.com 🎙️ Practical Christianity Podcast → Spotify | Apple Podcasts 📚 Books & Publications → Browse the Bookstore  Welcome to the Week
Lent is not a season for the faint of heart, but neither is it a season for the proud. It’s a time to go deep, to strip away the noise and the pretense, and to stand honestly before the One who already knows us completely. We are now three weeks into this holy journey, and perhaps the initial resolve has begun to soften. Perhaps the busyness of life has crowded in. That’s precisely why we return to prayer this week: not because we’ve performed well, but because we belong to the God who answers us in the deeps. Come as you are. Come with your weariness, your questions, your half-kept intentions. The God who holds the new creation in his hands, the One who promises that weeping and distress shall be no more, this same God bends his ear to you this week. He’s not waiting for your eloquence. He’s waiting for you. “God always answers us in the deeps, never in the shallows of our soul.” (Amy Carmichael) This Week’s Scripture
Adoration Psalm 118:28-29 You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you. Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! We Believe in One True God (verse 1) We believe in one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ever present help in need, praised by all the heavenly host; by whose mighty power alone all is made and wrought and done. (Tobias Clausnitzer) Take time now to offer God your praise and worship. Confession 2 Thessalonians 3:11-13 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. May the almighty and merciful Lord grant us remission of all our sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit. Amen. (The United Methodist Book of Worship) As David did in Psalm 139, ask the Lord to search you and know you through and through. Confess the sins God brings to mind, knowing you are forgiven and that He will cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Thanksgiving Sovereign Father, Creator of all things, we give you praise that even now you are preparing a place for your children, that one day you will bring us to be where you now are. You will one day bring forth the new heavens and a new earth. The thought of such a perfect place overwhelms us, and yet we still cry out to you in praise and gratitude for who you are and what awaits those who know and love you. Let us be marked as those who are glad and rejoice in you forever. We humbly thank you that one day weeping and the cries of distress will be no more. We will eternally live with you and others in perfect fellowship, harmony, and peace. Indeed, the wolf and lamb shall graze together. In your loving power, we ask you to enable us to begin to realize such a promise of future days in our own day. For it is in the name of the Prince of Peace we pray. Amen. (based on Isaiah 65:17-25) Spend some time reflecting on the prayer of thanksgiving above and then thank God for who he is and the many ways he has poured out his goodness and grace in your life. Prayer Prompts Use the following prayer prompts to encourage you to pray beyond your usual prayer requests. These prompts are included here to help get your own creative juices flowing and not to be regarded as strict and legalistic requirements. Use them or do not use them according to your need. May the Lord bless you as you go deeper with him in the holy communion of prayer. Petition – prayers for yourself
Intercession – prayers for others
Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 9:23-24) A Word as You Go The deeps you entered this week in prayer are not empty spaces, they are the very places where God meets his people. You came with your weariness, and he was there. You came with your confession, and he was faithful. You came with your thanksgiving, however small, and he received it. You met with the living God, and it was holy and grace-filled. As you carry this week’s scriptures with you into the days ahead, let the promise of Isaiah linger in your heart: that the same God who is fashioning a new creation has not forgotten this one, or you in it. He is still making things new, including you. Do not grow weary in doing good. The road is long, but the One who walks it with you is faithful to the end. Go in his peace. Want to go deeper? 📖 Devotions & Bible Studies → daletedder.substack.com 🎙️ Practical Christianity Podcast → Spotify | Apple Podcasts 📚 Books & Publications → Browse the Bookstore The Gap Nobody Talks About
There’s a particular kind of frustration that doesn’t announce itself as impatience. It just feels like a bad day… the morning that didn’t go as planned, the project that stalled, the person who didn’t come through, the conversation that went sideways. We rarely step back and ask what actually went wrong. But if we did, we would often find the same culprit waiting quietly at the scene: an expectation that reality declined to honor. Impatience is almost always born in a gap, that space between what we assumed would happen and what actually did. It’s the “child of a disappointed assumption.” And until we look honestly at the expectations we carry into our days, we’ll keep treating the symptoms while the root goes untouched. Hope Deferred The book of Proverbs cuts straight to it: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). This is one of the most honest sentences in all of Scripture. When what we hoped for doesn’t arrive on the schedule we imagined, something sickens in us. We dress it up in different language such as stress, frustration, a short fuse, but the ancient writer saw it plainly: the ache of deferred hope is real, and it has consequences. Notice, though, what Proverbs does not say. It doesn’t say that hope itself is the problem, or that having expectations is foolish. The same verse ends with a tree of life when longing is fulfilled. We were made to hope. The question isn’t whether we’ll carry expectations, but whether those expectations are tethered to reality, and more importantly, whether they’re submitted to the one who actually governs reality. Learning, Not Arriving The apostle Paul wrote from a Roman prison, which is not, by any reasonable measure, where he had planned to spend his time. Yet it was in that setting that he wrote these words: “I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content” (Philippians 4:11). Notice that word: learned. Contentment wasn’t Paul’s natural condition. It was not a gift that arrived gift-wrapped. It was the hard-won fruit of a man who had been through shipwreck, rejection, and long stretches of waiting, and who discovered, on the other side of all of it, that Christ was enough. He didn’t get there by lowering his expectations of God. He got there by lifting his trust in God above his expectations of circumstances. That distinction matters. The goal isn’t to stop caring or to drift through life without desire; that isn’t patience, that’s closer to spiritual numbness. Real patience holds genuine hopes and legitimate desires with an open hand before a God who orders all things well. Wisdom Moves Slowly Proverbs 19:11 draws a line we often miss: “A person’s wisdom makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” Patience and wisdom, the writer tells us, are neighbors. The wise person is not someone with no expectations, they’re someone who has learned to hold them rightly. They have built enough margin into their thinking, enough genuine trust in God’s gracious providence, that when the day doesn’t cooperate, they aren’t undone by it. They bend rather than break. And in that bending, the writer says, there’s something called glory, not weakness, but a kind of spiritual steadiness that’s worth far more than getting what you wanted on time. How I wish that described me more! Thomas Watson, the Puritan pastor, wrote that patience is “the ballast of the soul.” Ballast keeps a ship upright when the wind shifts. It doesn’t prevent the storm, but it keeps you from capsizing in it. Patience functions exactly this way. Not by eliminating the gap between what we expected and what is, but by giving us the stability to navigate that gap without being wrecked by it. Where the Pursuit Begins And that patience is not something we manufacture by trying harder. It’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), grown in the soil of a surrendered life, cultivated by the very tests that feel, in the moment, like nothing but inconvenience. We begin here: not with the difficult people or the long seasons of waiting, but with the expectations we carry, often without knowing it, into every single day. The pursuit of patience starts with an honest look under the hood and understanding (and naming) those expectations for what they are. Study Questions
Walking Points
Closing Prayer Lord, we confess that we carry more expectations into our days than we usually realize, about our time, our relationships, and how things ought to go, and that much of our impatience is simply the gap between those assumptions and what you have actually seen fit to give us, which is always, even when it doesn’t feel like it, exactly what we need. Forgive us for the times we’ve mistaken our preferences for your plans. Teach us to hold our expectations with open hands before you, trusting that what feels like disruption is often your design. Give us the wisdom that Proverbs describes: slow to anger, steady under pressure, and free enough from our own agendas to overlook what doesn’t ultimately matter. May the patience you call us to be the fruit of a life surrendered to your Spirit, not the product of gritted teeth and good intentions. We ask this in the name of Christ, our peace and our portion. Amen.  The Dilemma
No one fails on purpose. Yet spiritual and moral failures abound. A few years ago I taught a lesson to my church which focused on temptations we face. The workbook we were using quoted C.S. Lewis on this subject, and it was a turning point for many in the group. Lewis wrote, “It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the person away from the light and out into the nothing… Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” The truth communicated by Lewis rang true. It reminded me of something a former mentor of mine once said. He emphasized repeatedly that compromise comes through the smallness of our daily surrenders. It’s giving up that little bit of personal conviction each day. It’s the little piece of candy no one will ever know you ate. It’s watching that program or visiting that website when you’re all alone. You get the picture. Usually the first surrender to “small, insignificant sins” makes it easier to fall prey to them again and again. The damage comes from the “cumulative effect” Lewis was pointing to. Few people wake up in the morning planning to sin spectacularly later in the day. Yet those daily surrenders build up over time. Give a little ground here and there and before you know it, you’re in trouble. In fact, you become practically unrecognizable, even to yourself. You didn’t plan for this to happen, but those daily surrenders were enough to do the trick. The Solution Therefore, we must be vigilant. We need to work from the foundation of knowing who we are in Christ. We need to count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11). Those “daily surrenders” needn’t reign over us. The same Spirit who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead dwells in us as well. Yet, we also need to exercise the self-awareness that recognizes those areas in our lives wherein we are weak. Each of us ought to ask ourselves: Am I being less watchful in some areas of my life than others? Even the small, seemingly insignificant areas? Am I overly confident I would never again fall prey to that particular temptation? A member of my church used to remind me often, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” If you want to avoid those small daily surrenders, then pray for God to deliver you from temptation. But don’t forget to do your part. Name those temptations in advance. Talk with a godly person you trust and ask them to hold you accountable. Renew your mind daily in God’s Word. The Apostle Paul shared God’s wisdom on this point when he wrote in Philippians 4:8-9, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. What are you thinking on? Walking Points
Prayer Merciful and patient Lord, I don’t want to sin. I don’t want to “fail on purpose.” Yet I confess to you that I have not always put in place or practiced those wise spiritual disciplines that would draw me ever closer to you and protect me from the snares of the devil and my own fleshly weaknesses. Please forgive me and renew me. As David cried out, put a right spirit within me. Give me such a desire for you that turning away from you would be the last thing on my mind. Give me greater Spirit-enabled self-discipline and self-control to practice those means of grace you have given to your children to help us conform more and more to the likeness of your Son, our Lord and Savior. For it’s in his name and for his sake I pray. Amen. Scripture
Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ ... ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’ (John 3:3, 6) From the Journal of John Wesley (May 24, 1738) “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.” (John Wesley’s Journal, the Aldersgate experience) A Prayer by Augustine of Hippo “Too late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient and so new, too late have I loved You! Behold, You were within me, while I was outside: it was there that I sought You, and, a deformed creature, rushed headlong upon these things of beauty which You have made. You were with me, but I was not with You. They kept me far from You, those fair things which, if they were not in You, would not exist at all. You called, You cried, and You broke through my deafness. You flashed, You shone, and You dispelled my blindness. You breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and now do pant for You. I tasted You, and now I hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I have burned for Your peace.” (Augustine, Confessions, Book X) Reflection John Wesley was already an ordained minister, a missionary, a man of prayer and discipline, yet he hadn’t been born again. On that May evening in 1738, Wesley experienced what Jesus described to Nicodemus: spiritual rebirth. It wasn’t emotional manipulation or religious excitement; it was the work of the Holy Spirit bringing him from death to life. Augustine’s prayer captures the same reality from a different angle. For years, he sought satisfaction in created things - philosophy, pleasure, ambition - while God was calling him home. When the Spirit finally opened his eyes, Augustine realized he had been searching outside himself for what could only be found within: God himself, dwelling in the regenerate heart. The new birth is not reformation but regeneration. It isn’t becoming a better version of yourself; it’s becoming a new creation in Christ. As Paul declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is the foundation of the Christian life. Without the new birth, we’re merely religious. With it, we’re children of God, indwelt by the Spirit, alive to righteousness. Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed” because the Spirit bore witness with his spirit that he was a child of God (Romans 8:16). Augustine’s soul finally found rest because God had made him for himself, and his heart was restless until it rested in God. Have you been born again? Not: have you attended church, been baptized, or grown up in a Christian home, but have you personally trusted in Christ alone for salvation? Has the Spirit brought you from death to life? This is where the journey begins. Questions for Reflection
Closing Prayer Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, You have brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see You in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Your glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells, the brighter Your stars shine. Let me find Your light in my darkness, Your life in my death, Your joy in my sorrow, Your grace in my sin, Your riches in my poverty, Your glory in my valley. Amen. (Adapted from The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers) |
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