Group: Adult

Jesus has a way of saying things that stop us in our tracks. At first glance, this verse almost sounds backwards. How can losing our life possibly lead to finding it?

The answer is found in what Jesus says just before this verse. He calls His followers to deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Him. In other words, the Christian life isn’t about adding Jesus to our plans. It’s about giving Him our lives.

That’s difficult because everything in us wants to hold on tightly. We want control over our future, our comfort, our reputation, and our plans. We assume that if we can just keep everything in our hands, we’ll find the life we’re looking for. But Jesus lovingly turns that thinking upside down. The life we’ve been searching for isn’t found by clinging to ourselves; it’s found by trusting Him.

The good news is that Jesus never asks us to surrender something without offering something far greater in return. Every step of obedience, every act of trust, every sacrifice made for His sake draws us deeper into the life He created us to live. We may lose comfort, control, or certainty, but we gain something those things could never provide: a deeper relationship with Christ.

As we draw near to God, let’s open our hands instead of tightening our grip. The more we trust Jesus with our lives, the more we discover that He is enough. The life He offers is always better than the one we’d try to build on our own.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what was on Jesus’ mind as He walked this earth? Every conversation, every miracle, every step toward the cross was intentional. Jesus wasn’t making things up as He went. He knew exactly why He had come.

In these verses, Jesus gives us a glimpse into His heart. He says He came to do the Father’s will. Then He tells us what that will was: that everyone who believes in Him would have eternal life. Before we ever reached for God, He was already reaching for us. Before we ever thought about drawing near to Him, He was making a way for us to come near through His Son.

I love what this tells us about the heart of God. The Father’s plan was never simply to send Jesus into the world. His plan was to bring us back to Himself through Jesus. From the very beginning, His desire has been that we would know Him, trust Him, and have life in Him. When we look at Jesus, we don’t have to wonder what God is like. We see His love on full display.

As we spend time with God, it’s easy to focus on everything we need to say or all the ways we’ve fallen short. But these verses remind us to first remember who we’re coming to. We’re coming to a Father who loved us enough to send His Son, and to a Savior who willingly came so we could have life. The more we understand His heart, the more we’ll want to draw near to Him.

I remember a season in college when I believed I had to earn the right to hear from God. If I had been consistent in reading my bible, praying, and staying away from sin, I felt like God would be pleased with me. But when I struggled or fell short, I assumed He was distant. Looking back, I realize I had turned my relationship with God into something that depended on my performance instead of His grace. Maybe you’ve felt that way too.

That’s why Colossians 1:13 is such good news. Paul reminds us that God “has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” Notice that Paul speaks in the past tense. God has rescued us. If our faith is in Christ, we aren’t working toward acceptance; we’re living from it.

That doesn’t mean obedience isn’t important. It means obedience is our response to God’s grace, not our attempt to earn it. We pray, read God’s Word, and pursue holiness because we belong to Him, not because we’re trying to convince Him to love us.

There are still days when it’s tempting to believe that God is somehow more willing to listen after a “good” week than after a difficult one. But the cross reminds us that our confidence has never rested on our performance. Jesus has already done what we never could. Through Him, we’ve been welcomed into God’s family.

As we draw near to God, let’s come with confidence, not because we’ve earned the right to be in His presence, but because Jesus has made a way. The Father isn’t waiting for us to prove ourselves. He invites us to come as His children, trusting the finished work of Christ and resting in His amazing grace.

It’s easy for all of us to become consumed by what’s next. We worry about finances, schedules, careers, health, and countless other responsibilities. Those things are real, and Jesus isn’t dismissing them. In fact, the verses leading up to Matthew 6 are all about our tendency to worry over the necessities of life.

Instead of telling us to ignore those concerns, Jesus redirects our focus. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” In other words, our greatest pursuit should be knowing God, becoming more like Him, and caring about the things He cares about. When God’s kingdom becomes our highest priority, everything else begins to find its proper place.

As a dad to two little girls, ages three and one, I often think about the future. I want to provide for them, protect them, teach them, and prepare them for whatever lies ahead. Those are good desires, but if I’m honest, they can also become a source of worry. Jesus reminds me that while caring for my family is an important responsibility, my first calling is to seek His kingdom. The greatest gift I can give my daughters isn’t a perfectly planned future; it’s a father who is faithfully following Jesus. More than anything else, I want them to see what it looks like to trust God.

The promise at the end of this verse is often misunderstood. Jesus isn’t saying we’ll always get everything we want. He’s reminding us that our heavenly Father knows exactly what we need. When we seek His kingdom first, we can trust Him with the things that keep us awake at night because we know He is faithful to care for His children.

Seeking God’s kingdom first doesn’t remove our responsibilities; it gives them the right perspective. As we draw near to God, our confidence shifts from our own ability to provide, protect, or control the future to the faithfulness of our heavenly Father. We still faithfully care for what He’s entrusted to us, but we do so knowing the One who holds our future, and the future of those we love, is perfectly faithful.

Have you ever prayed for something with complete confidence, only to have God answer differently than you expected? Those moments can be confusing and even discouraging. We naturally want God to bless our plans, solve our problems, and work according to our timeline. But when Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He started somewhere unexpected: surrender.

In the middle of what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tells us to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” Before we ask for daily bread, forgiveness, or protection, Jesus reminds us that prayer is first about aligning our hearts with God’s. It’s an invitation to trust that God’s wisdom is greater than our own.

That doesn’t mean our desires don’t matter to God. Scripture encourages us to bring every request before Him, but as we spend time with Him, something begins to change. Our prayers become less about convincing God to do what we want and more about trusting Him to accomplish what is best.

Jesus Himself modeled this perfectly. In the Garden of Gethsemane, knowing the cross was before Him, He prayed, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Even in His deepest sorrow, Jesus trusted the Father’s will. If the Son of God prayed with that kind of surrender, how much more should we?

Drawing near to God means learning to hold our plans with open hands. We can be honest about our hopes, dreams, and fears while also saying, “Father, I trust You more than I trust myself.” That kind of prayer doesn’t weaken our faith; it strengthens it because it reminds us that our confidence is in God’s character, not in getting the answer we expect.

The longer I walk with Jesus, the more I see that we are all human beings created for worship. Worship is in our blood. Making idols out of things is in our DNA, and no one can escape it. We all worship something, whether that is the Lord Himself or something we make to be an idol in our lives.

The things we look at are the things we eventually become. There is an old saying that puts it in this way… “We become what we behold.” It’s a simple yet profound reminder to constantly evaluate what we are beholding. So, I want to ask you, my friend, what are you looking at?

We can all try to transform in a plethora of other ways… willpower, behavior modification, guilt. One thing I have found is that none of those things bring true transformation. The only way to become the person we were meant to be is by beholding the One who created us. We have a God who doesn’t hide His face from us.

We can take a deep breath because our job is not to change ourselves. Our job is simply to look at Jesus, draw near to Him, and obey Him. It’s the beautiful dance of grace. We lay our lives down for Him, and He takes us on the best adventure of our lives. Before you know it, you’ll look back and see how much God has done in your life.

Friend, you don’t have to question if you are being changed; you can know that you are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. Don’t give up; keep looking at Jesus. The best is still yet to come.

The words “quiet time” can bring up different things for everyone. Depending on the season you’re in, maybe quiet time sounds like an absolute dream right now. Or, maybe during this season it feels like there’s too much quietness in your life. Perhaps you haven’t had a quiet moment in a while on purpose–maybe the solitude and stillness feel too overwhelming to face. No matter where you fall on that continuum, your Savior can relate to you. I have no doubt that Jesus had moments when he both craved solitude and felt his human flesh wanted to resist it.

I love the way Tara-Leigh Cobble with the Bible Project frames it. She calls her time with God “priority time” rather than “quiet time”. She does this to remind herself that time with Jesus is the top priority of her life. Fun fact: The word priority was coined in the 1400s. Only in the 1900s did the term become plural. We were designed to have our priority set on one thing… We were created to prioritize Jesus and His Kingdom.

If you’re exhausted from playing the game of balance, I get it; we weren’t created for balance; we were created for His Kingdom. That’s why Jesus gives us a solution… Seek Him first, and everything else will be added (Matthew 6:33). There is no other thing we were meant to prioritize. Get to that quiet, secret place no matter what it takes. Create a time for just you and Him to sit together. He loves you more than you know.

The world tells us to keep ourselves afloat; to not get our hopes up on one thing. But this is one basket you can put all of your eggs into. This is the one thing we can always count on. This is one thing you can never spend too much time on… Jesus. Cling to the rock of your salvation; His arms are wide open at every moment.

As I prepared to write this devotional, I was reminded of just how quickly I brush past these verses in my day-to-day life. When I find myself reading and praying through Matthew 9 with less attention than it deserves, it is usually a reminder that I need to return to the basics and the beauty of the Gospel. As Jesus instructs us to pray these words in Matthew 9, we could spend all day talking about the first two words alone… “Our Father”.

Jesus could have instructed us to address God by any other name. Instead, He instructs us to approach God as Father, a word that reflects a deep, personal relationship. This relationship we now have with God Almighty is only possible because of Jesus’ redeeming work on the cross.

God’s heart has always been to rescue. He has always desired that we be in right standing with Him. But… Why do we need to be in right standing with God to have a relationship with Him?… Because He is holy. To “hallow” something quite literally means to make it holy or to set it apart.

When I put the nature of God into perspective, it is almost unfathomable. He is untouchable in holiness, yet I can approach Him as Father. I can draw near to Him because of something He did for me. When I question if I can draw near to God, I reflect on the proof of His love for me.

If you are by chance questioning this truth, I want to share a quote from one of my favorite Bible teachers. Jackie Hill Perry puts it this way… “If God is holy, then He can’t sin. If God can’t sin, then He can’t sin against me. If He can’t sin against me, shouldn’t that make Him the most trustworthy being there is?”

Father, we call on your holy name. We acknowledge that you are the most trustworthy being to exist. We choose to draw near to you today because you chose to pave the way. Help us to receive what you have provided; help us draw near.

 

I often hear conversations about figuring out what God’s will is for our lives; I have definitely been there myself. Whether that’s a next step or a major life decision, the desire for God’s will to be done is a beautiful thing. Scripture actually tells us that we discern God’s will as we are transformed by Him (Romans 12). However, Jesus desires that we are filled with His peace as we seek Him, not decision paralysis or fear of moving forward.

I love that God’s word always makes it simple for us. When we begin to wonder, or even get overwhelmed about what the will of God is for our lives, we can go back to 1 Thessalonians. He desires that we rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances. There is no life puzzle for us to solve because He has already gone before us.

The longer I walk with Jesus, the more I realize that it was never about figuring things out or cracking the code to His plan. God has already given me everything I need to know. I was made to be in close relationship with Jesus by rejoicing always, praying continually, and praising Him in every season. The more I draw near, the freer I am.

The more I loosen my grip for control and answers, the clearer my next steps actually become. One of the only things our hearts can never really grow tired of is surrender. I really did find my life when I laid it down.

Jesus, we desire to draw near to you today. Would you help us surrender control by praying continually, rejoicing, and giving thanks to you? You are so worthy of it all.

If I can be totally transparent, sometimes I go through life as if I forgot this verse was in Scripture. I let the anxious thoughts take up real estate in my mind for too long, or I choose to condemn myself throughout the day rather than receive God’s love and forgiveness. The worries snowball and the thoughts tangle. Calendars, schedules, audio messages, and that “one more” checklist task fight for our attention throughout the day.

If we’re not careful, the day can go by without a moment we have been mindful of God. Before we know it, one of the most beautiful promises from God can become something we grow apathetic towards. If you’ve ever found yourself in these shoes… you’re not alone.

Each of us has things that keep us from approaching God’s throne of grace boldly and with full assurance. Yes, the busy schedule is the obvious answer. But I encourage you to look a little deeper than that. What’s underneath that desire to turn to other things? What is underneath that fear, or even apathy, towards drawing near to God?

This promise of God that we can draw near to Him is true, unbreakable, and sweet in all seasons. Yet, sometimes we find it hard to believe. So, what do we do about it when we find ourselves in a season like this?… We tell God about it. We can be honest with God about every frustration, every desire (or lack thereof), and every thought we’ve had towards him. And what do we do if our mind starts to wander? We can tell him about that too, and ask him for help in fixing our eyes on Jesus.

My friends, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. We can go to Him with our wandering mind and with our every need, and leave with faces that are radiant. I pray that over these next forty days of intentionally drawing near, we are able to run into the Father’s arms with every joy and sorrow. May we truly seek Jesus with all of our hearts, and find out what He has in store.