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?
The Antichrist offers another continual presence. It is every whisper that tempts us toward autonomy, that tells us to carry it alone, that insists suffering is meaningless.

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Here we have the other major theme within Romans: God will have mercy on whom He has mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He has compassion
I rededicated my life as many times as I could when the guilt was unbearable. I would read my Bible more and pray more, yet I still struggled. I knew deep down, I was breaking God’s heart with my failure at being his child.
New normals are always sneaking up on us. Preachers ignore them to their peril and the peril of our hearers.
Jesus’ miracle in this sermon, then, is a type of the compassion He has for your hearers. While they certainly have many physical needs, your hearers also (more fundamentally) need Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness.
The lifeblood of Christ is the treasury that defines personal worth – your worth, my worth. Preach that; the price tag on your soul.
This food, already purchased and freely given in our pericope, is a foretaste of the feast to come as well; the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end.
Our stories, be they ever so inspiring or worthy of emulation, should never be equated with proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Gospel Jesus Christ commissioned to be proclaimed.
To dwell with a Holy God in their camp, Israel lead holy lives. Anything standing in the way of and threatening this holy relationship must be avoided or eliminated.
It is that love, finally, which comes back again and again, not as an afterthought, but as the underlying theme of the entire section.
These parables invite us to consider the mysterious way of the reign of God. The Kingdom of God comes by grace to those who are seeking and not seeking it.
In our attempts to conform the Gospel of Jesus Christ to material, therapeutic, and mystical standards of religion and spirituality we've arrested, inhibited, distorted, and handicapped God's Word and gifts of salvation.
Twenty-first century North American believers face challenges unique in the history of God’s people, for we have an abundance of the material gifts of God unparalleled in human history.