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?

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The theology is obvious: God is in control—so much so, that He can even use evil to accomplish His purposes.
By listing a series of situations in rapid succession, Jesus overwhelms us with how practical, how real, how tangible, how concrete, how utterly achievable life in the kingdom can be.
It is precisely from the cross that the glory of God shines most brightly into our lives, as dark and sinister as Golgotha appears from a sinful distance. Cross trumps crisis.
If God ever forgives you, it is not just allowing you to start over and try harder the second time, but it is a whole, new, complete justification that is given as a free gift and without any work of our own—outside the law.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
God’s design in the Law is to enable man to know himself; to perceive the false and unjustified state of his heart; to discover how far he is from God and to disdain his own goodness.
The question the pericope begs us to contemplate is not whether the heart trusts or believes, but rather, what does the heart trust and believe in.
The foundation of the faith Paul wants you to cling to is not an abstract principle, but a human body: the human body of Jesus, that once was a corpse, and now is alive forever more.
Jesus curses our cultural expectations. He says "woe" to those who are rich, satisfied, joyful, and praised. The good life of our world is not good for discipleship.
Because Jesus has set us free, we enjoy a freedom of movement in His world, under His grace, that loosens our tongues to sing His praise.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
Isaiah finds himself in the presence of the living God—the Holy One. This is a terrifying situation because Isaiah knows full well that the unholy cannot endure the presence of the Holy.