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I was going through the car wash and it dawned on me that as I was going in there and they instructed me to follow and get into line and then put the car into neutral. Take your hands off the wheel. Don’t hit the brakes. You have to have a lot of trust in this process in order to get your car clean. And it dawned on me that in many ways, it’s similar to the work of the Holy Spirit. This is something that Martin Luther in the Small Catechism really emphasized in his explanation to the third article of the Creed when he wrote,

I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength. Believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

We’re tempted sometimes to think that we have to do things in order to get ourselves clean, and we take a lot of that credit. We take a lot of that pressure. We internalize it. What does God want from you and me? He wants us to come to him and let him do the work. And at times that work can be pretty intense. Just as you’re going through a car wash and and you’re hearing that beating of the brushes on the car, and you see the spray, and you can almost feel the vibrations through the window of that powerful washing. So too is it as God, the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives, to make us what he wants of us, to strengthen us, to make us holy and beautiful creatures before him. That work of sanctification that the Holy Spirit does. Sometimes it can be alarming, and we might be tempted to try and take control of things ourselves, but that can be really dangerous.

In fact, I saw a video recently of someone who ended up rear ending a car in front of them in a car wash, and it caused damage to their car, the other car, it caused thousands upon thousands of dollars of damage to the car wash itself. No, you have to keep your hands off the wheel. You have to leave it in neutral. You have to let the car wash do its work.

So to with us. Are we willing to let God do the work of cleansing us? As Christians, we know that he is the one who takes care of us. He’s the one who has already gone to all the effort. He’s already put the payment down for your cleanliness. And that payment, of course, was the blood of Christ your Savior. Jesus has done all the work, and now God wants to come and give that to you. And that’s the work of the Holy Spirit who goes to work in your heart, cleansing you by bringing Jesus to you, installing Jesus in you, putting faith in Christ into you. It’s not something we do. We get to be the passive passengers. And yet God does that incredible work for us.

What a blessing the pressure is off of us. Thank you Lord for giving us this cleansing. God’s peace be with you.

The current podcast feed will be changing to a “new devotions only” feed. We will continue to share the new devotions which typically come out every Monday and Thursday.

We will also be starting a new feed called Peace Devotions Daily. This feed will share new devotions on Monday and Thursday along with reruns on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, just as we do now.

But… why?

Keeping a daily podcast feed populated with episodes is a time intensive task. We’ve recently automated this system so it no longer requires the posting to be done manually. Having the feed update automatically is a huge blessing (and time saver), but the new system requires a new podcast feed URL.

We have submitted the new URL to Spotify, Apple, and other podcast distributers so you can continue to find it using the same system you currently use. Listeners who only want to hear the new devotions as they come out can continue to use the current podcast feed.

The new daily feed will only contain one episode, updated each day. (This feed will also supply the audio for our Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing skill.) In our testing we’ve found that podcast players will often download and store each devotion until it has been listened to so you will still be able to play previous episodes.

[UPDATE (Feb 21, 2026)] It appears that Castbox also archives episodes in the podcast feed, so the “daily” feed may contain more than one episode. Also, we thought we should clarify that we have not deleted any episodes from the original feed, so the original feed does contain all of the rerun episodes up until we made the switch.

One more thing. We’ve created a new page on our site where you can find our entire audio archive and listen to devotions right from your web browser. (We’re still working on uploading the audio files, but you can already check it out.) Peace Devotions Podcast Player.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, but we are excited to have a new system in place to ensure the podcast will continue with minimal upkeep.

You can subscribe to the new feed with any of the links below:
RSS Feed: Peace Devotions Daily Audio Podcast
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
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Or visit our new podcast information page to find all the links for both podcasts.

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I am a forgetful person. I’ll forget where I set down my phone or my keys. I forget all the different tasks I have to do throughout the day. I’ll even forget the names of people who I meet. So I need to make reminders. I need to jot down the things I have to do for the day on a piece of paper so I can check them off. I’ll take notes in my phone so I can remember what I have to do. I’ll even place sticky notes all over the place saying do not forget. But the thing that I need to be reminded of the most is that God loves me.

Today you might need to be reminded that God loves you. Maybe you’re going through something right now in life. Maybe it feels like life is really tough or things are never going your way. And maybe it even feels like things are never going to get better and you can’t see a way forward. And when we’re in these low moments in life and we’re feeling sad, afraid, or even angry, our emotions have this tendency to cloud our ability to remember what’s good and only allow us to focus on what’s bad. And in those times, we need to be reminded of all the good things that God has done in our lives up until now.

All over the Bible, you can find people who, when faced with challenges, had to be reminded of all the things that God had done for them. The Israelites needed to be reminded of how God brought them out of Egypt and gave them the Promised Land. The exiles who were taken out of Jerusalem into Babylon, needed to be reminded of God’s promises for their future. Even the disciples who were with Jesus needed to be reminded over and over again of the things that Jesus did and said. And like he reminded all those people, God reminds us of his love too.

God through His Word and the Holy Spirit reminds you that you have a Savior who lived, died, and rose again to set you right with God. A Savior who is still working for your good and can get you through all situations. The truth is that no matter what you might be going through right now, there was a time in your life when you were going through something else, something that God brought you through. A time when God was working in your life to get you to where you are right now. And when we can remember all those good things that God has already done for us, we are reminded that God still loves us and that he has the power to get us through again.

It’s easy to forget about all those things that God has done for us, and we need to be reminded over and over again of his love. So today, remember that God loves you. Jesus has died for you and your sins are forgiven. God promises that he is working for your good and that you are going to be okay. Amen.

Today we praise God for seven years of peace devotions. Since 2017 we have filmed 860 devotions with 37 different pastors.

We thank God for blessing us with this opportunity to share the message of the Gospel. And we pray he continues to bless our ministry.

If you are interested in supporting our efforts for the future, you can do so at peacedevotions.com/donate.

We appreciate your comments and your prayers and we hope these devotions help keep you focused on the Peace that only Jesus can give.

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I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I hurt you. Now, if somebody says that to you, how do you normally respond?

Many people will say “it’s okay.” But is it really okay? I mean, if it was okay, why are we talking about it? Why are we having this conversation? The truth is, it wasn’t okay. And now we might say it’s okay as trying to say like we forgive you. But the reality is, for many of us, it’s hard to forgive. And we struggle with it. Partly because when we say it’s okay, it’s kind of like we’re just letting them off the hook. Or in some ways it feels like we’re devaluing ourselves.

And then when you just say it’s okay, it kind of just leaves things almost like there’s this tension between us, or almost like one of us is maybe better than the other now. And this isn’t just something we feel individually when you look at the world around us, when something happens, there is this outcry for justice. I remember a few years ago there was a crime that had been committed. The eventual sentence that he received was not very severe. And there are so many people calling out, there’s got to be justice for this.

Or when we see injustice in the world, people will call out loudly, come on, there’s got to be justice. This has to be set right. There’s something in us that knows there needs to be justice. And this is something that really, I think, sunk into me a few years ago. And also when this sunk into me, the hope of the gospel really became more real to me as well. When it sunk in, I was having a conversation with someone who was sharing with me in vivid detail how they were abused as a child and then going up into their adult years. And as they were sharing this with me, they were expressing such anger over this, over how they had been wronged and rightly, rightfully so. It was then, as they were saying this, that I really, in a new way, understood our need for justice. And I also understood the cross of Jesus.

Sometimes we may wonder, why do we have this ugly cross? Why do we talk about Jesus’s blood being shed? Like, it’s kind of intense, right? But it’s intense for a reason. It’s intense because when we’ve been wronged, it causes hurt. It causes pain. Sometimes people, when they’re wrong, it causes death. And so how do you deal with that? Well, in the cross, Jesus took all that sin, all of that pain, all that death on himself. On the cross, God condemned sin itself and he pointed there. And he didn’t say, sin is okay. He said, sin is terrible. It’s awful. It needs to die. And it died there with him.

All the justice for anything ever done wrong in this world was placed in Jesus. All the justice or anything you’ve ever done wrong, all the justice for anything anyone has ever done wrong to you was all placed on Jesus, and it was paid for. All the righteous anger that it deserves was sent there, was directed there to the cross and met so that now you and I can know that we are forgiven. And it’s not God just saying it’s okay. It’s not a big deal. He’s saying that wasn’t okay. But we can be okay because Jesus took it away. He paid for it. The justice has been met.

And in that same way, now we can look at others and we can look at things going on in this world, and we can say, I forgive you. Instead of saying, it’s okay, I forgive you is not saying it’s okay, it wasn’t a big deal. I forgive you is saying that wasn’t okay, but I don’t have to try to find the justice. I don’t have to hold this against you. God is taking care of it. And we may not experience the healing right away. We may not experience the renewal of friendship right away, necessarily, but because of Jesus, someday we can be okay because Jesus took it away. We can find real forgiveness because the cross brings real justice.

Isaiah 30:15

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Are you getting what you want out of Snapchat? Is Instagram giving you what you thought it would? Is TikTok being kind to you? Now, if you’re at all confused by any of those questions, your answer is probably no. But if you’ve never considered those questions before, I really want to ask you to really consider. Are you getting what you want out of social media? Out of Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Snapchat? Do you want to feel more connected to people? Do you want to make sure that you stay up with the latest lingo? If a video goes viral do you want to make sure that you aren’t left behind when everyone else has already seen it?

Let’s just imagine something for a second. Okay, Let’s imagine that you spend four hours a day driving around in a car and just looking at stuff. What, what are you looking for? What are you hoping to get out of this? Is this experience being kind to you? When you park your car after four hours, are you able to answer that question? Because if you don’t want to appear like a crazy person and someone asks you, why are you driving around for four hours, I would think you probably want to have an answer.

Why, why four hours? Because according to TechJury.net, the average adult, if you’re under the age of 50, the average adult. This isn’t just teenagers. The average adult spends at least four hours a day on social media. Okay. So I want you to imagine just taking 25%, one hour, in God’s word.

Now, maybe that’s just reading through your Bible. Maybe that is listening to an audio recording of the Bible. Maybe that’s going to a YouTube video that is a reenactment of a specific book of the Bible that is sticking strictly to the biblical text. When you get done with that one hour and you park your car, figuratively speaking, I am very confident that you are going to answer the question, what are you hoping to get out of this? I’m very confident you’re going to have a positive answer, that you’re going to have a clear answer.

I want to bring up just one Bible passage and this Bible passages from Isaiah, chapter 30. God says

In repentance, (admitting the wrong things you’ve done,) in repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength. (Isaiah 30:15)

Now imagine not just driving around for four hours and not being able to answer, what am I trying to get out of this? Imagine driving around for just one hour and hearing of the wrong things you have done. Hearing of how your Savior has killed the wrong things you have done on the cross. Imagine the quietness, the strength, the trust. The rest that you would get out of this.

And I know one hour is probably not realistic. Right? I think five minutes is certainly a realistic. 15 minutes would be better. And a half an hour, well, you might as well be at superstar status. Okay.

You probably don’t know me and I probably don’t know you. But for what it’s worth, I promise you, if you take time to speak to God in prayer. And if you take time for God to speak to you in His Word. You are going to 100% definitely have an answer to anyone who might ask you, what are you hoping to get out of that? And I would love to hear what your answer is.

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Human beings and the world were designed together. This world provides for us everything that we need in order to get by. It gives us agreeable climates so that we can live and live comfortably. Sadly, there are millions of human beings who ignore these good gifts and instead choose to live in Minnesota.

Now, admittedly, I’m a little bit salty about Minnesota today. I practically had to dig my way here today through the snow. I know that we need the snow, right? Intellectually, I know that it has to be here, but that doesn’t change how I feel. In a certain nonreligious way. I could say I have faith that this snow, even though I don’t like it, is going to ultimately do something that is good. But that doesn’t change how I feel about it in the moment.

This is actually one of the questions that I end up fielding most often from Christians. Christians who know that God has secured for them good blessings in heaven and that they are theirs. But at the same time, have to go through the struggles and difficulties and evils of this world. Nowhere is this more apparent than with death. There’s no evil in this world that rivals death. There is nothing that so clearly illustrates that this place has fallen. We have death because we have sin and it hits hard.

So Christians end up oftentimes with questions around these most difficult points when you are experiencing the death of a loved one, because intellectually you might know that God has won wonderful things for that loved one who has passed away. You might know that they are right now enjoying the victory feast in heaven, produced and provided by God. At the same time, you might be feeling very different from what your head knows. You might be feeling anger and sadness and pain. So the question that I oftentimes gets is, does that mean they lack faith? Is the way that I feel in the face of death, a bad reflection on my state of faith?

Remember that this world is populated by evil people with exclusively evil desires who do evil things. And yet God is so unbelievably powerful that he’s able to come into this place, filled with all of this evil and still work his will still work it for good. In fact, it was through this absolute worst of evils that God worked his absolute greatest good. On Jesus’s last day. We could read it as a story of just moving from one horrifying, hideous evil to the next. We don’t call Jesus’s last day evil Friday. We don’t call it Sinful Friday or Dark Friday. We call it Good Friday, because all of those things that were committed over the course of that day were placed on Christ on the cross. All of the sins that we commit today were placed on Christ, on the cross. He paid the punishment for all of that evil and swapped out for his own perfection.

That is the essence of Christian faith. Just like my non-Christian faith in the idea that the snow will one day do something good and that we need it doesn’t alleviate my suffering. Just in that same fashion, I might know that death is transformed into something new, a portal into eternity, and yet still have feelings that are attached to the fact that it was necessary in the first place. That it takes place in the first place. The core of Christian faith is clinging to the hope that God has won for us in Christ. Even when we feel the effects of a sinful world.

Matthew 28:18-20

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Our Bible reading today is from Matthew chapter 28 versus 18 through 20, sometimes called the Great Commission.

Jesus approached and spoke to them saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and gather disciples from all nations by baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to keep all the instructions I have given you. And surely I am with you always until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

One day a member of the church I was serving a man who was 97 years old, called me up and asked me to come over to visit him. Apparently he wanted some advice in writing a letter to a woman who was in her seventies who at one time had been one of his foster children, and she had never been a believer in Jesus Christ.

And he wanted advice in writing this letter to her to try to convince her to realize how badly she needed a savior. It was amazing to me that this 97 year old man still had the heart of a missionary and an evangelist wanting to be so concerned about this woman’s soul. There’s a passage in the Book of Acts where Peter and John say, We cannot help speaking about the things we have seen and heard when it comes to the Gospel of Christ. (Acts 4:20)

And the reason that this man was so concerned about her is this the Bible says salvation, that means getting to heaven, is found in no one else besides Christ. So faith in Christ is the only way to heaven and proclaiming the Gospel to people and telling them of that and bringing that to them likewise in the beautiful sacrament of baptism.

These are the only ways that people can know Jesus Christ as their Savior. God has no other plan that He’s told us about other than the confession and the work of his church. And only when you properly understand the force of God’s law do we see and realize the need for the Gospel.

Saint Paul once said he talks about knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men, in other words, knowing how awful it would be to fall into the hands of a holy God who hates sin, only then would we realize how important it is for people to know they have a Savior who died to forgive them of that sin. And so the message about Christ is how God does this work in the world?.

The Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17) The Gospel always has a missionary effort at its very core. Jesus entire work in this world, his entire ministry was about this very thing simply to seek and to save the lost. And so it is with the Bible. Any teaching that is in the Bible is ultimately supporting the great goal of getting people to heaven and even for yourself.

Every time you hear the Word of God and repent of your sins and come back to Christ as your Savior, it’s like a little mini conversion that takes place in your heart. A little work of evangelism that takes place in us every time that happens. That’s how God goes about this work in us all the time. Amen.

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When I was in high school, I got to play Scrooge in a Christmas Carol, and he was such a fantastic character to be able to portray this snarling, snarky, creep. But I do have to say, when people are interpreting Christmas Carol, I think that they miss some of the critical elements when they look at what’s really a rather pointed story of Scrooge’s conversion. The way that he starts off just miserable and wretched and evil and cruel and ends up being like everybody’s Santa. And I apologize if I’ve just spoiled it for any of you, but you have had 150 years to watch it.

But it starts off with Scrooge being in a state of what actually looks like poverty. We’re told that he’s rich, but he goes into his home and all the lights are out. He lives in literal darkness and he’s got meager little bits of food that he eats. As he’s pursued his own interests he’s effectively ruined his own life and lives merely in every way. He eats meagerly. He lives meagerly. He loves meagerly. And his life is in a shambles. The spirits of Christmas, past and present show him that he’s ruined the lives of people around him. He’s left a trail of victims. He’s made the world a worse place. And then finally, you get the ghost of Christmas future. And it shows up and shows him his tombstone. It reminds him, in a pointed way, that he is going to die.

When you see the lack of mourners around his grave and you hear the people celebrating that he is gone, you get this very pointed reminder that he deserves it.

Just like any conversion story, A Christmas Carol starts off with the law. That in pursuing our own interests, we ruin our own lives. We live meagerly. That by pursuing our own interests, we end up making victims and making the world a worse place. And finally, we have to face our death. The tone shift that we get in the Christmas Carol is made really clear at the end. And I think that people don’t necessarily always pick up on this, right? When he transforms into a happy go lucky guy who’s living life to the fullest, sometimes people are like, oh, he’s embraced the true spirits of Christmas and goodwill towards his fellow man.

But that’s not actually the root of what happens. When he’s looking at his tombstone he isn’t begging the ghost of Christmas future to give him a second chance so that he can be a better person. He isn’t asking him to let him be a light in the world. Those are all things that happen. But what he begs the ghost of Christmas present for is he says, let me sponge out the writing upon the stone.

Scrooge doesn’t want to die. Now, it would have been incredibly ham fisted if it had played out in this exact way, but you can almost imagine a character then telling Scrooge why he doesn’t have to die, why that writing does get sponged out. Because, of course, in a real sense he does die. And so why is it that we would expect anything to change? Well, it’s his conversion. You can expect that somebody standing there says it’s Christmas. Jesus came. He lived the life that you should have lived. He died the death that you should have died. As Scrooge is standing there over his own open tomb. It’s not open because it’s going to suck him in. It’s open because Christ opened it up and he has an escape.

Scrooge, just like all of us, has an open tomb through faith. When he wakes up and it’s Christmas morning. What we see is not a drive to be a better person for the sake of being a better person. What we see is a guy who’s living in the light of repentance, a guy who’s living a life under Christ.

When we go through the Christmas season, I actually kind of like these little moments that turn me into a worse grump that gives me sort of a reprisal of that role as Scrooge. As I’m rushing around trying to make the whole season festive for my family and I start to get grumpier and grumpier, I can’t help but quirk a little bit of a smile and think back on that king of the humbugs Scrooge, and then remember what it was that turned him. Remember that by focusing on Christ and Christmas, that’s how things ultimately are made to be merry.

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Imagine, if you will, that someone comes to you and they say, I’ve made the personal decision to accept into my heart the truth that George Washington was the first president of the United States. And I’d like you to make the decision to accept the truth that George Washington was the first president of the United States. How would you react to that?

Odds are you’d think it’s somewhat ridiculous. Well, why? Why? Well, because you know that it’s an objective truth outside of whether or not you make the decision to believe it. It’s an objectively true statement. George Washington was the first president of the United States. End of story.

Now think of that in terms of Christianity. In Christianity, we know something that’s called objective justification. That’s the idea that Christ, when he went on to the cross, he objectively died on the cross. And he objectively, apart from you and me, and our personal decisions, he took upon himself the sin of all mankind. Objective justification. A real event that happened in history that you can’t change. It objectively happened.

So to make the statement, then I made the decision to have that apply to myself. Well does it really make sense? Well, not only is it un-scriptural, but it doesn’t really make sense. And it’s objective truth of what God has done for you and me in the work of Christ.

Now there’s really only one thing that we can do when it comes to an objective truth. We can choose to reject it. You can choose to not believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States. You can choose to believe that Christ didn’t die on the cross for your sins. You can reject it, but what you can’t do is take credit for a truth that exists objectively outside of you.

And so what I would encourage for you and myself to consider, instead of thinking about this, our faith, as a decision that we make is to ask yourself some simple questions. Was Jesus, the Son of God who died on the cross for the sins of the world? Yeah. He was. Are you a sinner, then? For whose sin he died? Yes, you are. So am I. Did God come to you? Either in the waters of baptism or maybe through the witness of a friend, or through the words of a preacher, or even in opening up Scripture itself. Did he come to you? And bring this wonderful truth into your life? Yes. Well, that’s all there is to it. Our conversion, our coming to faith. Our salvation. It’s all the work of Christ and what He’s done for us. Praise be to God for that. Amen.

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My grandmother was raised in an abusive household and she was raised not knowing her Savior at all. When she was 14 years old, she had gotten a job working in mechanic’s shop and she was working on the car one day when the radio came on and it was set to a Christian radio station. Just so happened that that day they were carrying the latest episode of the Lutheran Hour. And as my grandma worked on the car, she heard the message of the gospel for the very first time. In her mind, up to that point, God was an angry thing. God was a nebulous thing, and God was a thing that had nothing to do with her life, which was miserable and poor and dangerous here on Earth. But over the course of that show, the Holy Spirit worked on her heart. When it returned to the regularly scheduled program after that, there was a little advertisement for a Bible study where they said, This Bible study program takes six months, it costs a dime to participate, but if you don’t have a dime, you know, send us a letter anyway. We’ll see what we can do.

Well, my grandma was exceedingly poor. She did not have a dime to spend on this Bible study program, but she was interested. And so she sent the letter and somebody at the radio station ponied up the dime so that grandma could take the Bible study program. She took it the whole way through the six months. They sent her a pin at the end of it. The pin is still in my family. She came to faith. She married a Christian man. They had six children. All those children were Christians. Two of those children became pastors. She has like 36 grandchildren and one of them ended up becoming a… well, Bethany professor and a seminary professor. And so many Christians, generations of faith, resulted from that radio broadcast. I cannot wait to get to heaven and meet the guy who ponied up the dime that saved my soul.

Christians have a different way of viewing the message that we share. Most of the time when you say something or when you do something, it has an impact on the people around you right at that moment, we have a special message. We have a message where the impact goes on and on through multiple generations, across centuries, across millennia. We have faith because of work that took place in Ephesus. We have faith because of work that took place in Wittenberg. The community of Christians, the Fellowship of the Invisible Church is one that links us together unbelievably closely. Despite differences of miles and differences of time. This makes pretty good sense.

The message of the gospel is something that has the power to transform lives. It changes how we live to know that we don’t need to fear death. Death rightly holds every terror for us. We are afraid of it for good reasons, and God sent his Son to take that fear away. He confronted all of the evil of death, the pain, the punishment, and he bore it on the cross. He instead gave us what he had: eternal life in heaven as princes there. He gave us his inheritance of the eternal lands above.

While you enjoy your faith, never fail to forget what it could mean for other people and their lives here on Earth and their lives in eternity.

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Most of these Devotions tend to be kind of little sermons. This is going to be a bit of a deviation from that. This is just something that I’ve noticed. I’m very lucky to be a communication professor at Bethany Lutheran College, and I do tend to kind of think a lot and even obsess a little bit about how Christians have employed communication through history. And it’s something that jumps out at me to look at history and see how God seems to have positioned his church right at the epicenter of every single communication revolution that has ever taken place.

Egypt is where writing really managed to explode in a huge number of institutions, became highly dependent upon writing. They expanded the system of writing using hieroglyphics and really developed it. And it just so happened at that time the children of Israel were there in slavery. The only people in Egypt who could actually learn to read and write would have been aristocracy and priests. And it just so happened that the way God chose to deliver Moses was by bringing him into a palace where he would have been one of the very small portion of the population that actually could learn how to read and write. And then God made use of that right away when he had Moses record Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

The children of Israel got to the Promised Land, and there they drove out all the peoples. But there was one group that God didn’t instruct them to remove, and that was the Phoenicians. And it just so happened that at this exact same time the Phoenicians were developing an innovation concerning writing called phonics, where all of a sudden the alphabet went from tens of thousands of characters to a much more manageable 22 for their system. The Phoenicians simplified writing and made it so that it could apply across a whole bunch of cultures. It was much easier to record information, it was much easier to get information. And Israel and Phoenicia were besties. They did everything together, shared people, shared wars. They were very good friends, and most importantly, shared language. We have the Old Testament recorded in Hebrew because of the Phoenicians and their development of phonics. And God’s church just happened to be centered right there.

When the canon of Scripture, the books that we have in the Bible, started coming together the Church was kind of headquartered in Rome at the time, and it just so happened that at the same time they were inventing the codex, they were inventing a book. So we have the Bible in the form that we’ve got it, where a whole bunch of different books have been put together into this single searchable browser able compendium because of the technological innovation that happened to take place right where the church was centered.

If you’re a Lutheran, you already know this one. The printing press was invented in Germany just in time for Martin Luther to write 95 theses and a small catechism and share it with the entire world. The gospel has been dwelling here in the United States as we developed radio and thank goodness we developed radio, my grandma came to faith listening to a radio broadcast.

God throughout history always positioned his church right at the center of every single communication revolution that ever took place. It gives us a way of thinking about the importance of the message that we share. God places a huge amount of emphasis on the need for us to spread the gospel. There is a message for every human being that you can not save yourself, that you are worthy of the punishments that you fear after death, but that God loved you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to take the punishment that you deserve to live the life that you should have, and that the end to turn all the credit for that life over to you. It’s no surprise, maybe, that we’ve been at the center of every single communication revolution since the sharing of that message is so foundational to our faith, to our hope, and to our lives.

Now, whether this moves you to faster embrace the next communication revolution, I don’t mind one way or another. But hopefully it does bring something to the forefront. Hopefully it plants right at the front of your brain the urgency, the need, and the fun that comes along with introducing someone new to Jesus.