Category: Truth

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.”

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.

“This I declare about the LORD: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; He is my God, and I trust Him.” Psalm 91:2 (NLT)

This morning, I decided this needs to become my daily declaration. I have recently been in a season of such challenge and demand that I have forgotten the truth declared here. Specifically, I have forgotten the phrase immediately following the colon.

He alone is my refuge…

Oh how 2026 didn’t open the way I thought it would.

The call came through about 8:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. I excused myself from the group of friends I was with to take the call from my Dad. An unfamiliar voice greeted me. An EMT was calling on his phone to let me know they were taking my 85-year-old dad to the ER with concerning O2 sats and extremely elevated heart rate.

Accepting the invitation extended in the gospel of Christ allows a person to receive a new identity: that of God’s beloved child (John 1:12). After accepting God’s invitation to salvation, however, we must respond to His continual invitation to intimacy, to return, and to rest. 

This invitation to experience more of Him is true for a new Christian or one who has walked with Him for decades. 

“And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings…” Hebrews 10:21-22a (NIV)

I’m old enough to remember singing hymns in church every Sunday. One I have strong memories of is Fanny Crosby’s Blessed Assurance. We sang it at many Wednesday-night suppers at the Baptist church of my childhood.