The Saddest Story and the True Story
By Donavon Riley
08/27/25
10mins

The Saddest Story and the True Story

Here is the true story, the one worth remembering: You are a gift.
An Excerpt from Untamed Prayers: Psalm 19 and Psalm 29
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
08/26/25

An Excerpt from Untamed Prayers: Psalm 19 and Psalm 29

The following entries are excerpts from Chad Bird’s upcoming book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of the Psalms (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 32, 52.
Eating the Word Again
Bradley Gray
Bradley Gray
08/25/25

Eating the Word Again

Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too.

All Articles

Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/19/15

Losing that Holy Feeling

It’s like I’m eavesdropping on the two friends and the stranger who walks with them. Something about the way they hang their heads, something about the desperation in their voices, and certainly something about the stranger, has me grasping hold of every word as if gold is spilling from their lips.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/17/15

You’ll Never Hear the Opening Words of the Bible the Same Again

The task—the joyful task!—of the interpreter is to go around the house, trying various keys in various doors, until they are all opened. This is one way to picture our reading of the Bible.
Daniel Deen
Daniel Deen
01/16/15

Young Earth, Old Earth - What Of The Gospel?

I’ve always been taken aback by how much apologetic ink is spilled over understanding Genesis in the light of contemporary science, usually evolutionary biology.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/12/15

Hollywood, Nashville, and the Lord's Supper

That hunger to connect with one who is greater than we are will be satisfied only in the one who created that hunger within us in the first place.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/07/15

Honky-Tonk Baptism: Carrie Underwood’s “Something in the Water”

When the Holy Spirit finally gave me a fresh set of ears, I heard—really heard—what He’d been saying all along. Baptism really does save.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/05/15

I Am Not Unbroken

I thought I had it all together. I had my life figured out. Even though outwardly I was serving God, inwardly I served only the god named Ego. My heart was the shrine at which I bowed the knee.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/03/15

My Secret Struggle with Atheism: Seeking Answers to the Wrong Questions

That’s what I mean when I say that I’ve struggled with atheism. And still do. The suffering me becomes the questioning me who becomes the doubting me who becoming the unbelieving me.
Jessica Thompson
Jessica Thompson
01/02/15

Feeling Restless and Finding My Resting Place

I woke up this morning feeling restless. It could be the 7,000 holiday calories I have eaten every day for the past two weeks or it could be that a new year has started and so follows the resolutions.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/30/14

When the Psalms Pray Me

Yes, I pray, but it is the Spirit who prays for me, in me, through me. I no more make up my own prayers than I made up the English language.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/10/14

Heaven's Gaze in a Child's Eyes: An Eight-Month-Old Teaches Us How God Loves the Outcast

As God is prone to do, He sometimes shows us who He is through people whom we would never think of as teachers, much less imitators of God.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/24/14

Everything I Needed to Know About Vocation I Learned at the Lord's Supper

We usually understand vocation in a very narrow sense; it’s your job, your “calling.” Vocation, however, is not so much what you do for a living but what Christ does through you for the living. It’s a 24/7 calling, not a 9 to 5 occupation.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/16/14

Taking the Road More Traveled By: The Benefit of Tradition in the Church

Ultimately, however, I fell in love with traditions—and specifically, traditional worship—for a single, overarching reason: its components, to varying degrees, are all in the service of the Gospel.
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