Continuing the conversation, post ‘PEACE!’ We’re aiming to encourage, inspire, and challenge you with these articles and devotionals.
Our current devotional series will be going through the book of Mark.
Finding Freedom
Recently after giving a youth group lesson I was confronted by a group of 5 teens that wanted to debate me about Christianity. Our youth group is a mix of Christians, atheists, and everything in between. Most of the teens stayed after the lesson to watch this debate go down until about 11pm. The leader…
Christians with Bad Gas
Mark 8:14-21 A lot of Christians have bad gas. They stink. Their stench is partly to blame for driving people away from the church. Of course, I say ‘partly,’ because those who don’t go to church have to take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming Christians with gas. But I digress. I’m not talking…
Idol in Every Home
If you’re reading this, then you have an idol in your home. Well, to be more precise, you have the potential to have an idol in your home. Before I tell you what it is, you need to know that this post is going to be about porn. So the idol I’m referring to has…
True Judgment Free Zone
Mark 8:11-13 The Pharisees were the religious leaders in Jesus’s day and Jesus clashed with them quite a bit. They were literally the ‘religious police’ of their day, judging and condemning those who did not live up to their impossibly high standards. Near where I live, there’s a Planet Fitness gym; on the building there’s…
Empathy and Action
Mark 8:1-10 Empathy means to “feel into” the situation of another. To have empathy for the plight of another is to be able to put yourself in his or her shoes and feel what the person feels, as if you were going through the same situation as that person would. Truly to have empathy doesn’t…
Box Top Parable
At the beginning of your life, you are given a bag full of puzzle pieces. Some bags are bigger than others, but that’s not ours to decide. It simply is what it is and no one can do anything about it. Our job is to put the puzzle together, one piece at a time. At…
Merry Christmas from Holy Ghost Notes!
Christmas, 2020 Martin Luther, the 16th Century monk who protested against the wrongs of the Church, knew his share of trials, including a pandemic. His precious thirteen year old daughter, Lenchen, died during the plague, almost paralyzing Luther and his wife, Katie, with grief. This was the second daughter they had lost. Luther literally had…
He Heals by Breaking
Mark 7:31-37So far in Mark’s gospel, we’ve been learning about the power of Jesus’s words. His words are like seeds planted in soil that break open, grow, and bear fruit. His words are not sterile, but potent. We’ve learned this is why Jesus is constantly repeating, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,”…
Bitch May I Be…
Mark 7:24-30 There are several provocative things about this passage of Scripture. First, Jesus was hiding (Mark 7:24). He didn’t want anyone to know where he was. Has this ever happened to you? You were looking for God, but he was hiding from you? Next, a strange woman tracked him down (Mark 7:25-26). She not…
Are You Out of Touch?
Mark 7:14-23 Jesus gives us a pretty heavy dose of reality in these verses. The religious leaders had been telling everyone to perform religious traditions, such as ceremonial hand washing, and condemning those who didn’t. But, as Jesus pointed out, these religious leaders didn’t really love God, they only loved looking better than other people. …
The Big Secret about Super Religious People
Mark 7:1-13 The Pharisees turned God into a checklist of traditions people could accomplish, making their faith superficial and their hearts far from God. The Pharisees were the elite religious leaders during the time of Jesus and they looked down their long noses at Jesus and his disciples. Verse 1 says they had “come from…
Love Contagion
Mark 6:53-56 Has anyone yet told you they loved you today? We thought so. Maybe you just got done looking at porn, maybe you just got done looking at divorce papers. Maybe you just got off a double shift, maybe you just got off a bar stool. Whether you’re beginning your day or wishing it…
Job Remix
The book of Job in the Bible is one of the most outstanding works in all literature. But what if Job lived in the United States today? And what if Satan’s greatest strategy for attacking our faith were to make us rich, rather than poor? To give wealth, not take away. Before you wish you…
The Real Meaning of Jesus Walking on Water
Mark 6:45-52 The story of Jesus walking on water is not a story to show you he can do miracles, it’s not even a story to show you he’s God, but it’s a story to show you he is undoing the old law and putting the gospel in its place. In order to help us…
You Are More Than Enough
Mark 6:30-44 You want us to do what? Feed them. But they’re like 5,000 people here! So. And we’re in the middle of nowhere… So. And none of us have jobs, because we left them to follow You, in case You forgot. And your point is? It would take a year’s salary to feed all…
From Prison to Platter
Our Scripture passage today, Mark 6:14-29, tells us what happened to John the Baptist. King Herod put John in prison because John kept telling Herod he was abusing his power by taking his brother’s wife, Herodias. One day, during a party, Herodias’s daughter danced so well for King Herod that Herod promised to give her…
Dust Dance
“And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” —Mark 6:11 Jesus sent out his followers on their first mission without him. He didn’t allow them to take much with them, either,…
Stripped
Mark 6:7-13 As we saw last time, Jesus was rejected by the people of his hometown, which was a preparation for what was to come, the complete rejection of Jesus on the cross, as he hung between heaven and earth, forsaken by both. Now it’s the disciples’ turn. To be a disciple of the Rejected…
10 Powerful Ways to Handle Rejection
I want to take a moment really to sink our teeth into Mark 6:1-6, the text we covered in our last devotional, which was affectionately titled, “God Pooped.” If you haven’t read that one, then be sure to check it out! Let’s cover the same text, but this time, let’s pull from its lessons on…
God Pooped
If you’re offended by the title, then this little devotional is already starting to do its job! I want us to feel what the folks in Mark 6:1-6 felt when Jesus returned to his hometown. He taught in the local synagogue and everyone was astonished at his teaching. Like everyone who heard him, they thought…
A Bleeding Woman and a Dead Girl
Go ahead and spend a few minutes reading today’s section, Mark 5:21-43, so that rather than retelling the story, I can go straight to some meditations on these precious verses. Here are nine applications from the story of Jairus’s daughter and the bleeding woman. 1. Our Stories Are Connected All our stories are connected. The…
Christ Our Pig
Mark 5:1-20 I know what you may be thinking, how can we be so irreverent, comparing the Son of God to a pig! I don’t mean to be too much of a ham, but I think you’ll find this idea to be quite tasty, if I have the chops to pull it off. Though it’s…
Storm Grace
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so…
You Don’t Really Understand the Bible, and That’s Good
And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than…
Perfectly Good Sinner
Moses gave God many excuses the day he spoke with him in the burning bush. Even though the dry bush was on fire in the desert, it was not consumed, which indicates to us that God was about to be encountered outside the normal laws of nature and reason. We were just told Moses killed…
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