Where do you think God lives? What comes to mind as you consider the location of His dwelling place?

This past Sunday, the call to worship in our service came from Psalm 84:1-4. The opening verses read: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord…” (verses 1-2a, ESV)

In my last blog I wrote about shifting your gaze from your circumstances to the reality of the gospel, the new life we have in Christ, and the way He is always at work in us (even if we cannot sense it at all times).

Psalm 111:3 says, “Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty” (NLT).

One way to shift your gaze Godward is to intentionally pursue and enjoy God’s majesty.

This morning I was struck by the fact that I can barely remember Easter.

I couldn’t recall anything about the date or celebration of Easter in my life this year—not even what month it was in without consulting a calendar. I had a vague sense that I never finished out my Lenten practice of watching episodes of The Chosen.

My inability to locate a memory of Easter 2026 was immediately accompanied by another upsetting realization: my struggle to remember Easter is more than just a calendar and memory-related fact.

Do you remember what January 9 was like? If you set a New Year’s resolution, January 9 would be about the time when you might have encountered some resistance to your resolutions. It may have even been the day you realized you had already abandoned them.

This phenomenon is real enough that the second Friday of January, which this year was the ninth, has earned the moniker “Quitters Day.”

There are a couple of holidays this time of year. I am sure you had Valentine’s Day on your radar, but perhaps you did not yet have Ash Wednesday in your sights. So, I wanted to give you a reminder that the Christian season of Lent begins Wednesday, February 18.

Here’s some calendar trivia for you: In 2024, Ash Wednesday fell on Valentine’s Day. Ash Wednesday is what is known as a “moveable feast,” which means it’s observance moves around the calendar from year to year, since the Christian Church calendar is tied to the lunar calendar.

We live in a world that drives us to think of our value in terms of our behavior, our productivity, our merits. The grace of the gospel overturns such ideas. Knowing how God sees His children is critical to our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Today I'm sharing a excerpt from my latest book, which focuses on the astounding identity available to us in Christ. One of those identities is that we are blameless before Him.