Listen to Pastor Nick read the Firestarter and Luke 11:1-13.

A newly seeded garden needs daily gentle care and watering to nurture the growth to full maturity. However, when it is time to move a plant to a garden, to change it from pot to plot, we turn the plant upside down and give it a strong whack on the bottom to loosen the clinging hold that the soil has to its first home.

The chapter opens with the disciples moved by the results of Jesus’s personal time of prayer. They want to receive this gift—to learn how to pray. Jesus opens the treasures of his heart and talks to them about prayer. They are like the freshly seeded garden needing nurture and protection for the seed-word to grow.

There are those who resist being transplanted from a religion of law, manipulation, self-interest, and greed, into the fresh garden of the Kingdom. Jesus’s harsh words to them are designed to jolt them into saving space. Protect the planted word in your heart.

Luke 11

Create your own Bible Breaths Learn More…
Example: Protecting the planted Word v. 28

Fridays are dedicated to the Gospels.
In the season of Pentecost this year we read Luke 9—19:27.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

Listen to Pastor Nick read the Firestarter and Hebrews 2:14-18.

If angelic annunciations were such powerful moments of God’s intervention in history, how much more are the words of Jesus to you right now! The writer uses Psalm 8 to ground the argument so that we understand and rejoice in the accessibility that we have to Jesus. Christ has completely entered our history, even taking on death that he might deliver us from this last and final enemy to life and love. The triumph of Jesus in his suffering is the source of the victory that we have over all that would diminish us.

The first listeners to this letter needed to be reminded of the truths this letter teaches. Find yourself in similar need as you drink in these words of extraordinary truth about God and about you.

Hebrews 2

Find out all about Bible Breaths Learn More…
Example: Jesus tasting death for us v. 9

Thursdays are dedicated to the letters of Paul, other letters,
the Book of Acts, and the Book of Revelation.
In the season of Pentecost this year we read 1 Timothy and Hebrews.

For all the Firestarters in the original version, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these Firestarters with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

Listen to Pastor Nick read the Firestarter and the Psalm.

Tap here for a video meditation on Psalm 113.

Psalms 113 to 118 form a group called the Hallel songs, taken from the Hebrew word for “praise.” Wednesdays in the middle weeks of the Pentecost season this year find us lifting our voices in these special  songs that were sung in homes at Passover time. They all contain Alleluia, the Hebrew word that means  “Praise Yah.” Yah is the shortened form for the covenant name Yahweh. 

Alleluia: this unique word of joy and praise only occurs in the Psalms—twenty-six times to be exact. Today let your hours be flooded—saturated with Alleluia. When you are tempted to become a victim and  self-conscious with “poor me,” take on the heavenly perspective of the Lord looking down on the whole earth, not losing the smallest detail of your need. If your heart is barren as the childless mother in the final verse, Alleluia prayed with faith can fill your empty heart with God. 

Psalm 113

What are Bible Breaths? Learn More
What verse lifts itself for you to create a seven-syllable Bible Breath?

We continue to pray the Psalms in numerical order.

For all the Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information