This article is the first part of a two-part series. The second part will take a look at when pastors abuse their congregations.
The following entries are excerpts from Chad Bird’s new book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of the Psalms (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 311 and 335
Why did the church dedicate a day to St. Michael anyway? Who is he, and what does he do?

All Articles

The gift is God’s and not ours, and the fact that any of us have any role to play at all in the Body of Christ is an amazing grace.
Thus, the people weep and mourn, but they are told to cease with their mourning and rejoice and celebrate as a festival without worry or care, for the day is holy to the LORD who is their refuge and strength.
During this season of Epiphany, we experience more than the revelation of who Jesus is. We also celebrate how Jesus makes God fully known.
God created mankind to be His bride and now, in Christ Jesus, the Church of God is the bride of Christ.
Jesus turning water into wine calls for you to believe: To believe in Him.
The most counter-cultural action any Christian church could take right now would be to foster healthy and constructive conversations among its members and neighbors across their variety of opinions and perspectives.
Viewing the Word as a unified theological narrative prevents us from treating the Scriptures like a cage match between competing theological systems, with prophets duking it out with apostles, and psalmists with evangelists, all supposedly fighting for their voice to be heard.
The church’s song goes on and on, singing and ringing down to us today.
This Epiphany text brings the coming of the Light and the Light shining in the darkness drawing all men to it together.
Not only does God reveal the identity of Jesus in this season through what we see and hear Jesus doing and saying, but God also reveals His gracious will through Jesus despite what we see and hear.
Paul is thinking of the cross and empty tomb, but the liturgical calendar places us at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not the end: Jesus standing waist deep in the Jordan River.
Christ has received the mark of law that we might be marked with the gospel, with the sign of his holy cross on our heads and hearts as redeemed children of God.