Before the Lord

Insolence — an old word for a pride so sure of itself it won’t be told anything. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 13:10 and traces the line Solomon draws: arrogance breeds strife, while humility that listens and takes counsel breeds wisdom and peace. Underneath most conflict, he says, is a quiet need to be right, to win, to not back down — and he shares a phrase from his friend Scott Engelman he returns to constantly: “You can be right, or you can be in relationship.” You have to pick.But the heart of it is a mirror: before you replay everything the other person did wrong, turn the lens on yourself and ask whether there’s arrogance in you — because it hides in the smallest habits. Blake calls us to confess it, to seek to understand rather than defend, and to choose the relationship over the win. He also offers an honest caveat about the times peace isn’t possible, and how to step back humbly — not as one more way of insisting you’re right.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.” In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 13:5, where the Corinthians were busy questioning Paul — and Paul flips the script, turning the lens back on them. It’s the move we all need, Blake says, because it’s so much easier to spot what’s wrong in someone else than in ourselves. But genuine faith isn’t merely something we agree with; it’s something alive that bears fruit — the evidence, not the earning, that faith is real.Drawing on John 15 and Galatians 5, Blake keeps the focus on grace: the fruit is the Spirit’s work, not something we manufacture by trying harder, and self-examination isn’t anxious scorekeeping but a way of noticing whether we’re staying connected to the Vine. He calls us to make honest self-examination a daily rhythm — a running conversation with God that keeps course corrections small and quick — rooted not in fear of measuring up, but in love for the One who already loves us.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

It’s five words from James 1:27 that Blake can’t put down: “keep oneself unstained from the world.” In this episode, he looks at how the world actually stains a soul — not with one dramatic splash we’d catch and wipe away, but through what slips past us unnoticed, a drop at a time, until one day the white isn’t white anymore. Drawing on Romans 12:2, he frames the two directions a life can move — attention versus drift — and locates the grace in it: the transforming isn’t ours to do; God works it in us as we stay close to Him.Blake also names why the pull feels so relentless — an enemy Paul calls “the god of this world,” who blinds minds to the gospel — and then turns to the hope: if you belong to Christ, you are kept. Finally, the two halves of James’s verse come together. God keeps us unstained not merely for our own comfort, but to make us usable — clean vessels He can pour His light through, and send into the affliction and the blindness to reach people still caught in the world.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

It’s possible to know a lot about God and still have a heart that’s never experienced Him. In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 3 and draws out Paul’s picture of truth written not “on tablets of stone” but “on tablets of human hearts” — the very difference between head and heart. Head knowledge is truth on the outside; heart knowledge is that same truth moved inside, until it’s not just something you know but something you are.The trouble, Blake explains, is that head knowledge is easy and everywhere — a sermon, a study, a podcast, another book — while heart knowledge is mysterious, messy, and slow, found in the places we tend to avoid. Sharing from his own four years in counseling, where the Lord walked him from his head to his heart, he calls us to stop hiding in the safety of more information and step into the honest, holy work of the heart — asking the Spirit to move the truth those last eighteen inches.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

One thread in Proverbs 4 stopped Blake cold: a parent’s job is to pass godly wisdom down to their children — not by accident, but on purpose. In this episode, he opens Solomon’s words as a handoff between generations, and names the quiet culprit that crowds it out for most of us: the sheer noise of the calendar. Drawing on Deuteronomy 6, wisdom is passed in the ordinary moments — the car ride, the dinner table, the hard conversation at bedtime.The stakes are high, Blake reminds us, because faith is always one generation from being forgotten — yet the pressure is off, because we are not the ultimate source. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Our job is faithful, prayerful presence; the outcome belongs to God. So we don’t parent in fear — we parent in faith, passing the torch and leaving the fire to God.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

We live with more access to applause than any generation in history — and social media has turned it into an obsession. In this episode, Blake opens the wisdom of Proverbs on praise and glory, and names the tender hunger underneath our scrolling: a longing to be seen, known, and loved. Carried to the crowd, he says, it’s like living on cotton candy — sweet for a second, and somehow leaving us emptier than before.Drawing on Psalm 81:10, Psalm 107:9, and Jeremiah’s image of “broken cisterns that can hold no water,” Blake shows the trade we keep making — the living fountain for a broken cistern, the approval of God for the applause of strangers. But here’s the freedom: in Christ, the verdict we keep auditioning for has already been spoken — accepted, loved, His. The person who is full of God’s love has no need to chase the world’s applause.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

One sentence can undo in five seconds what took five years to build. In this episode, Blake opens James 3 and walks through the apostle’s three vivid pictures of the tongue — the bridle that steers a horse, the rudder that turns a ship, and the spark that sets a forest ablaze. Each one carries the same truth: something small can control something large, for good or for harm.But James also says something deflating — “no human being can tame the tongue.” Blake shows why: the tongue isn’t the real problem, it’s the gauge. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Real change isn’t willpower clamped over our words; it’s God doing patient work in the heart behind them — a “Coram Deo” life lived under His control. Not a tongue muzzled by effort, but one bridled by a heart that finally belongs to God.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Not many in Scripture suffered more than Paul — beaten, imprisoned, hunted — yet he wrote the Bible’s most joyful letter, Philippians, from a prison cell. In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 8 and asks how Paul found such deep, durable joy in the middle of such suffering. The answer: we are never more like Jesus — who loved and bled — than when we suffer, and that nearness to Him carries a joy the world can’t touch.Blake holds up the Macedonian church, who in “severe affliction” and “extreme poverty” still overflowed with joy and begged for the privilege of giving beyond their means. Joy, he reminds us, isn’t the same as happiness — it’s the presence of Christ in the midst of pain. And for anyone in a hard season who’s beating themselves up for not feeling it, the word is grace: the Lord knows exactly where you are, He is near to the brokenhearted, and the invitation is simply to turn toward Him.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

It’s natural to avoid pain and chase pleasure — but when that drive outruns our love for God, it quietly becomes idolatry. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 4:23 (“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”) and names the hidden machinery beneath so much of what we do: the shadow mission, a wounded heart’s plan to find life apart from God, and the adaptations — the everyday behaviors we adopt to pull it off.Blake gets personal about his own shadow mission — to be loved and never rejected — and the people-pleasing it drives, then walks through the crisis of belief that comes when we set an adaptation down: will God really be enough? This teaching is drawn from his forthcoming book, Raise Them Right, releasing this fall.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Colossians 3:23-24 quietly rewires how you see your whole day: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” In this episode, Blake widens the word “work” to cover nearly everything we do — job, service, parenting, even our walk with God — and asks why Paul adds that pointed phrase, “and not for men.”The answer exposes a trap: human approval is fleeting and never satisfied — always asking, “What have you done for me lately?” — while the Lord promises an inheritance that never fades (1 Peter 1:4). Blake closes with three shifts for working unto the Lord — see yourself as a servant, stay humble, and remember who you actually work for — so that even the most ordinary task becomes worship.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

We spend so much energy on how things look on the outside — but God has always been after the heart. In this episode, Blake opens Matthew 5:8 and Psalm 34:18 to ask a searching question: what kind of heart does God actually seek? Scripture gives two answers that belong together — a heart that is pure and a heart that is broken.A pure heart, Blake explains, isn’t a flawless one but an undivided one — God alone on the throne, with no rival loyalties. A broken, contrite heart is the humble, repentant heart God can soften and shape. And here’s the relief: you don’t manufacture that heart, you ask God for it. As David prayed after his worst failure, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10). The Lord isn’t waiting for you to arrive with a perfect heart — He draws near to the one honest enough to admit it isn’t.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

What is the “old self,” what is the “new self,” and what does it actually mean to “put on” the new one? In this episode, Blake opens Ephesians 4 and walks through Paul’s sobering picture of life without Christ, the radical transformation of the new self, and the truth many miss — that you don’t manufacture a new self, you receive it. It’s the fruit of a new birth, a new heart only God can give (Ezekiel 36:26; 2 Corinthians 5:17).From there, Blake makes a key distinction: receiving the new self is a one-time event, but learning to live out of that new heart is a lifelong process — reshaped into Christ’s image in the ordinary, everyday moments. The episode closes with a clear invitation to anyone who has never come to Christ.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

It’s difficult to be content in every situation — and Paul knew it. In this episode, Blake opens Philippians 4:11-13, where Paul says he “learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger,” and shows how Paul took the Greco-Roman ideal of self-sufficiency and flipped it: his contentment wasn’t built on needing nothing, but on complete dependence on Christ.Blake gets honest about how discontentment hides — the busyness, the scrolling and comparing, the numbing habits, the quiet “never enough” that runs our lives while we’re the last to see it. Then he points to where real contentment comes from: it isn’t manufactured, it’s learned — one surrendered moment at a time, as we draw so near to Jesus that He becomes enough. When Christ is your treasure, the endless “never enough” finally goes quiet.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Silver doesn’t become valuable by what’s added to it, but by what’s removed. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 25:4-5 — “take away the dross from the silver, and the smith has material for a vessel” — and unpacks a truth we’d rather avoid: what you eliminate from your life is just as important as what you include. Refinement comes through subtraction.Blake looks at how God, the patient Refiner (Malachi 3:3), uses the heat of hard seasons to surface the dross — the influences we’ve welcomed in and been unwilling to release — and widens it beyond people to the feeds, voices, and inputs shaping us every day. There’s no neutral input. And the goal was never subtraction for its own sake: God removes what’s dishonorable so we can become “a vessel for honorable use” (2 Timothy 2:21). He closes with a tender assurance — what you remove, He fills with Himself.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

James doesn’t pull punches: “Your gold and silver are corroded… this corroded treasure you have hoarded will testify against you.” In this episode, Blake looks at James 5:3 — first at its sharp warning to the hoarding rich, then at the principle underneath it that reaches every one of us: everything we have is a gift, and a gift kept to itself corrodes instead of blessing.Blake widens “hoarding” beyond money to our time, talents, wisdom, and voice, points to the manna that “bred worms and stank” when Israel tried to store it, and names the fear underneath our gripping — that there won’t be enough. The answer is the economy of the Kingdom: what flows through you multiplies; what stays with you corrodes. God doesn’t bless us so we can hoard; He blesses us so we can be a blessing.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Wisdom is one prayer away — but most of us save prayer for the big decisions and handle the rest on autopilot. In this episode, Blake sits with James 1:5: “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you.” God offers His wisdom generously, without a hint of reproach, for every circumstance, big and small.Blake unpacks why asking doesn’t come naturally — we’re used to handling things ourselves — what it means to ask in faith of a God who is near rather than far off, and how His wisdom usually arrives: not as a voice from the sky, but through a fitting verse, a wise friend, a closed door, an unexpected peace. He calls it spiritual concentration: learning to see God’s hand in all things, and keeping a simple record of His answers that builds a trust you can look back on.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

We live in a culture that rewards action — fix it, resolve it, make it happen. But in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul offers a humbling correction: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” In this episode, Blake unpacks what it means to do your part faithfully and leave the results to God, instead of getting ahead of Him.Blake looks at how trying to force our own growth is like tugging on a seedling to make it grow faster — you only tear up the roots — and offers a freeing reminder: sometimes your role is just one step in a much larger process. Someone else may water what you plant, and someone after them may see the harvest. Your job is to be faithful in your step and trust God with the rest.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

“Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me.” Years ago, the Lord used a painful experience to expose a pride Blake didn’t know he had. In this episode he tells the story — being ordained a deacon, feeling like he’d finally arrived, and then losing it all in a church conflict — and what God taught him through the collapse.Blake gets honest about how spiritual achievement can quietly become a substitute for depending on God — spiritual cotton candy that looks substantial but dissolves the moment you need it most — and points to where our worth is actually settled: not in applause or recognition, but in Christ’s finished acceptance of us. He closes with a practical way to diagnose and repent of a performance-based faith.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

For years, I read Proverbs 22:3 — “the prudent sees danger and hides himself” — as a warning about temptation. But recently he came to see it from a harder, more personal angle: what if the danger also includes harm done to you? This episode is about the courage to step back from a relationship that’s slowly wearing you down.Today we walk through how to tell a hard-but-healthy relationship from a truly toxic one (which way is it moving?), why the enemy loves to isolate us and why we’re never meant to make this call alone, and how David models a God-honoring way to withdraw — deliberately, prayerfully, without vengeance. Stepping back, he reminds us, is not the same as failing to forgive.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

"Be still, and know that I am God." We usually reach for Psalm 46:10 as comfort in a storm — and it is that. But in this episode, Blake shares how putting his phone down for a few days opened up a fresh reading of the verse: as I set aside the technology, I picked up the Lord.Blake digs into the Hebrew word behind "be still" (raphah — to let go, to cease striving), shows how this is the opposite of emptying your mind (it's the rhythm Jesus Himself kept, withdrawing to be with the Father), and gets honest about why stillness is so hard: silence exposes us. The beautiful irony? The very things the quiet surfaces are often exactly what God wants to use to draw us to Himself.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Have you ever weighed in on something — sure you were right — only to learn later you didn't have the full story? In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 18:13 and James 1:19 on a habit that trips up even the most mature believers: forming opinions, taking sides, and passing judgment before we've heard the whole thing.Using Potiphar in Genesis 39 — who threw Joseph in prison without ever hearing his side — Blake shows what it looks like to get James 1:19 exactly backward, and turns to Proverbs 18:17 for why we fall for it: the first version we hear almost always sounds convincing, until the other side speaks. He closes with honest self-examination of what really drives the rush to judge, plus practical guardrails you can put to use today.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

What does it actually mean to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord”? In this episode, Blake opens Colossians 1:10 — a verse he once marked with a question mark in the margin — and unpacks the rich biblical picture of the Christian “walk”: a whole life, shaped by the Lord from the inside out, that reflects His conduct and character.Blake traces the many walks of Scripture — by faith, humbly, in the light, by the Spirit, in love — and brings each down to the ordinary moments of a Tuesday. Then the key turn: we don't walk worthy by trying harder. These walks are produced in us, not manufactured by us — the way a branch bears fruit by staying connected to the Vine. He closes with practical ways to stay connected, daily and in the moment, and a simple exercise for the one walk God may be putting His finger on.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Why is gossip so hard to resist? In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 18:8 — the words of a whisperer are like “delicious morsels” — to unmask gossip as a relational counterfeit: it feels like connection, but it's empty, always needing more to sustain itself, and it harms everyone it touches — the one who spreads it, the one who listens, and the one talked about.Blake looks at what Scripture says (Proverbs 26:20 and a vivid word from James 3), gets honest about what our appetite for gossip reveals in our own hearts, and offers practical safeguards — including a simple three-filter test (is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?) that echoes Philippians 4:8 and Ephesians 4:29. The heart of it: gossip destroys everyone it touches, so starve it of oxygen and it dies.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Timothy was a gifted young leader — and he was letting fear get the better of him. In this episode, Blake walks through 2 Timothy chapter 1, where Paul hands his fearful friend five encouragements to stop shrinking back and step forward in faith.The five: a praying friend; a God-given gift (and that famous line — God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline); a holy calling; a faithful Savior worth dying for; and godly examples in the loneliness of ministry and everyday life. Each comes with honest questions and a concrete next step. And the thread running through them all: when fear makes us hesitate, God has not left us powerless.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Psalm 37 comes about as close to a formula as Scripture gets: trust, delight, commit — and He will act. In this episode, Blake opens Psalm 37:3-5 and walks through the three, while guarding against the trap of turning them into a lever we pull to make God move.Along the way, Blake shares the strange grace of praying for something so long that one day you realize you're already standing in the middle of the answer; what it really means to “delight” (and how that reshapes the desires of your heart); and what “commit your way” actually pictures — rolling your path and burdens onto the Lord. The heart of it: this isn't a performance that earns God's action, but a posture that anchors us in Him, so that whether or not we notice, He is already at work.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Who in their right mind rejoices in suffering? The Apostle Paul did — beaten, jailed, and driven from town after town, yet full of joy. In this episode, Blake opens Colossians 1:24 to ask what Paul saw that we so often miss.First, a careful word on that puzzling phrase, “filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions” — Paul is not saying Jesus's work fell short. Then Blake walks through why Paul could rejoice: because in his suffering he was following his Savior — serving Him, blessing His church, and being shaped into His likeness. The heart of it: when our suffering comes because we belong to Christ, it isn't meaningless pain but a doorway to Christlikeness, and a place where joy is possible.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

What does it mean to be a “helper fit for him”? In this companion to the episode on masculinity, Blake opens Genesis 2:18 and reclaims a word we've made too small: ezer — the very term Scripture uses of God Himself when He comes to rescue His people. A helper isn't a lesser partner; she's a strong ally, placed alongside to strengthen the good God is doing in the men she loves.Blake gets practical and tender — noticing and naming the good so it grows, and knowing what's yours and what isn't when a man withdraws or turns to anger. His response is his own before God; your part is to pray, speak truth in love, and keep pointing him to the Lord. There's an honest look inward at the ways we can make it easier for a man to stay passive, a word about not carrying the weight of his choices, and the hardest part of all — waiting on the Lord while keeping your own heart soft.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

What is a man for? In this episode, Blake opens Genesis 2:15 — the man placed in the garden "to work it and keep it" — to unpack a masculine strength that isn't about dominating, but blessing: a man made to move into the hard, chaotic places of life and bring order, beauty, and life out of them, the way God Himself moves into the formless dark of Genesis 1.Blake gets practical — stepping into a tension-filled conversation instead of avoiding it, and bringing order (truth over fear's fiction), beauty (honoring the good in someone), and life (quick to listen, slow to speak). And he guards it from macho self-reliance: a godly man is neither the one who withdraws nor the one who forces, and the strength to step in isn't manufactured — it's Christ's power made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Have you ever noticed that the harder you fight not to think about something, the more it takes over? Temptation works the same way. In this episode, Blake opens Colossians 3:1-2 with a better way to fight it — not more willpower, but turning your eyes, the instant the pull hits, to Christ.Using the picture of target fixation — you steer toward whatever you stare at — Blake unpacks how fixating on a sin only tightens its grip, while setting the mind on things above loosens it. He gets honest about his own long season of hurt and the temptation to pass the pain along, and points to where the strength to turn away actually comes from: not our willpower, but the Spirit who lives in us (Galatians 5:16). And for when we slip, there's grace — the price is already paid.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. 

Proverbs 20:7 draws a straight line between a parent's integrity and a child's blessing — and it starts with a sobering truth: our kids are watching everything. In this episode, Blake looks at how faith is really handed down, not through lectures but through a life children can see up close.He gets honest about his own home — including going to each of his children to ask their forgiveness when he got it wrong in front of them — and holds Proverbs 20:7 as the principle it is, not a formula. Your integrity is the most powerful influence you can offer, but children are their own souls before God; you plant and water, and He gives the growth. A word of challenge for parents, and grace for those whose child is wandering.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Most of us don't enjoy confrontation — for many, it's a real fear. Blake opens up about a friendship that quietly strained until his friend did the hard, humble thing and reached out first. In this episode, he turns to Matthew 5:23-24, where Jesus puts reconciliation ahead of worship and tells us plainly: go, and be reconciled.The one who moves first isn't necessarily the one who was wronged — it's the one willing to obey. Blake unpacks why taking the first step is about trust and obedience rather than winning, how going first puts the reaching love of Christ on display (especially to those who don't yet know Him), and where wisdom draws the line for relationships that aren't safe to re-enter.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

On December 11, 2012, Blake wrote down a line from his friend and mentor Scott Engelman: “Jesus went to people searching for God; He didn't focus on people content with life.” In this episode, he opens 1 Chronicles 16:11 to ask a question comfort makes easy to dodge — if Jesus walked through your ordinary week, would He find you searching for Him, or content without Him?There's a contentment that's a gift, and a quiet self-sufficiency that no longer feels its need for God. Blake traces how ease can dull our hunger — and why the Psalms, and even a group of joyful kids in Nicaragua who had almost nothing but Jesus, point us back to Him. The seeking goes both ways: He comes looking first, and He gives Himself in a special way to those who reach back.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

When we pray for the people we love, we usually pray about their circumstances. Paul prayed for something deeper. In this episode, Blake opens Colossians 1:10 — Paul's prayer that the church would walk worthy of the Lord, bear fruit in every good work, and grow in the knowledge of God.These three aren't a checklist to grind through; they're the strands of one life rooted in Christ. Blake unpacks each — a walk that resembles Jesus, fruit that grows from staying on the vine rather than trying harder, and a knowledge of God that's less about information and more about intimacy — and shows how each one feeds the others.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up.

Do you feel a lack of peace? Jesus promised His followers a peace the world can't give — but it doesn't always fill the room. In this episode, Blake opens Philippians 4:6-8 to show how we learn to receive the peace God has already offered.Paul's counsel comes in two moves: don't be anxious — pray, bringing everything to God with thanksgiving, and His peace will stand guard over your heart and mind; then fill that mind with what's true, noble, just, pure, and lovely (verse 8). It's not positive thinking or self-help — it's handing our worry to God and giving our minds something better to hold, while He does the guarding He promised.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Have you ever lost to someone who cheated to win — who used dishonest means while you played fair and honored the Lord? Blake has, and he calls it a doubly bitter pill. In this episode, he opens Proverbs 21:5-6 to ask how a follower of Jesus is meant to cope when integrity feels like a losing strategy.Dishonest gain, Scripture says, is “a vanishing mist and a deadly trap” — it never satisfies, and it leads somewhere far more costly than it looks. But Blake resists the pull to take comfort in the wrongdoer's downfall. Anchored in Romans 12:19, this devotional points to two responses: hand justice to a God who judges rightly and guard your own heart from bitterness, then pray for the person — because their real danger isn't escaping consequences; it's a life headed away from Jesus.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Since 1998, Blake has started his quiet time with a Proverb — and he's still finding something fresh. This time it was Proverbs 16:17: “The highway of the upright turns aside from evil.” His first reaction was “been there, done that” — until a quiet whisper asked, “Are you sure?”In this short episode, Blake looks past the “big” sins we're proud to avoid and at the little ones we stop noticing — the grudge, the sharp word, the flash of ingratitude — and the pride (Proverbs 16:18) that quietly waves them through. Through the life of King Saul, he traces how a string of small, self-justified compromises can snowball into catastrophe. The call isn't grim self-scrutiny; it's staying close enough to the Lord to let His Spirit surface the small sins and turn from them in real time.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Years ago, in the middle of a long, grinding trial, Blake got two waves of bad news in a single day. That night, God gave him something he's never forgotten — light in the dark, without changing a single circumstance. In this episode, he tells the story of how it came: an ordinary evening, an unexpected nudge, and a line from Henry Blackaby that stopped him cold.Anchored in Matthew 6:10 and Blackaby's Experiencing God, this devotional gets at the order most of us skip: before you can discern God's will in a hard season, you first have to settle your unconditional “yes” — committing to obey before you even know what He'll ask. The light God gives usually isn't an answer, an escape, or a change in circumstances. It's Himself — enough to steady you, and enough to show you the next step to walk.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Proverbs 7 warns against sexual temptation, but one verse in it diagnoses every temptation we face: “Let not your heart turn aside… do not stray.” In this episode, Blake unpacks two words — heart and stray — to show how temptation actually gets its grip: not on a heart marching into sin, but on one that has quietly drifted from being satisfied in God.Anchored in Proverbs 7:25 and Psalm 107, this teaching devotional traces the pattern of the wandering heart — restless, empty, hunting to fill a void — and the way home: not clenched willpower, but a cry to the Lord who leads wanderers back. It closes with grace for when you fall: no penance to earn, just turn, confess, and let Him satisfy the thirst until the old paths lose their pull.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

On the road to Jerusalem, Jesus tells His disciples He's about to die — and two of them respond by asking for the best seats in His kingdom. In this episode, Blake looks past the obvious selfishness to what's really underneath: fear. James and John fled the terrifying present into an imagined future, and in doing so missed the chance to be with Jesus in His pain.Anchored in Mark 10:32-45 and Romans 8:5, this devotional names the three ways we flee a hard reality — denial, control, and future-casting — and what all of them steal: our presence. The cure isn't gritting our teeth; it's a mind anchored in the Father. Whatever you're tempted to run from, the peace you're chasing somewhere else is found right here, with Him, in the present.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

Sometimes we just can't seem to feel close to God — the quiet time goes flat, and everything feels like going through the motions. In this episode, Blake shares three words the Lord pressed on his heart in a season like that: input, output, and throughput — three ways to guard your heart when the distance sets in.Anchored in Proverbs 4:23, this devotional is a practical, watch-your-heart framework: guard what you let in, what comes out of you, and what runs through your mind. Blake walks through how to spot the drift early and, using a simple four-step process — recognize, confess, ask, act — work each area back toward God. You may not feel close right away, but faithfulness in these three is the road back.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

James says to count it all joy when we face trials. In this episode, Blake hands you a different word for “trial” — disruption — and makes the case that God never wastes one. Life settles into a groove; a disruption breaks it, and often that's exactly where we meet God in a new and deeper way.Anchored in James 1:2-4, this devotional gets personal. Blake shares the hardest disruption of his life — the death of his sister in 2001 — and the second disruption hidden beneath it: a false belief that good Christians are shielded from real suffering. What God taught him in that season reframes how we meet every interruption that levels us.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

Years ago in counseling, Blake unloaded a grievance he was sure was justified — and his counselor looked right through him: “Blake, you're a lonely man looking for love in all the wrong places.” In this episode, Blake shares why that hard word landed, and what it revealed about the real mark of a wise person.Anchored in Proverbs 9:8-9, this devotional makes the case that wisdom isn't having it all together — it's being rebukeable and teachable. Blake gets honest about what it takes to receive correction, why some of us end up with no one willing to challenge us, and how a hard word, handled right, becomes one of God's kindest gifts.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. 

The words that come out of us — especially when emotions run high — say more about our hearts than our vocabulary. In this episode, Blake gets honest about a season when the doubt and fear churning inside him turned even his wife's smallest comment into a fight, and what finally changed it.Anchored in James 1:26 and Matthew 15:18, this devotional traces our words back to their source: the heart. Rather than white-knuckling the tongue, Blake walks through a guided descent — from the sharp words on the surface, down to the wound underneath, and into surrender — where the old story a wound tells gets rewritten and its grip finally breaks.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. 

On the night before the cross, in the agony of Gethsemane, Jesus gave His three closest disciples one job: stay awake and pray. Three times He asked; three times they slept. In this episode, Blake looks at why that failure was so tragic — and what it reveals about how the big moments of our lives are really won or lost.Anchored in Mark 14:38, this devotional takes an unexpected turn through a lesson Blake learned running a landscaping company: a whole lot of little issues become one big issue. The same is true of the soul. Spiritual readiness for the big temptations and trials isn't summoned in the crisis — it's built in the small, ordinary moments of daily dependence on God. You can't draw on a reserve you never built.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

For most of his life, Blake had a hair-trigger — the moment he sensed he might disappoint someone, fight or flight would fire, and he’d swing or bolt before he ever paused. In this episode, he gets honest about the hurtful consequences of plunging ahead, and the slow lesson underneath it: his recklessness wasn’t confidence, it was fear.Anchored in Proverbs 14:16 and Isaiah 30:15, this devotional reframes godly caution — not as timidity or passivity, but as the wisdom to pause and bring the moment to God before reacting. Blake unpacks the difference between real caution and cowardly avoidance, why we so easily mistake fear for wisdom, and how the small gap of a holy pause turns a reaction into a response.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

We can spend years learning about God and still not know Him. In this episode, Blake gets honest about the season he chased Bible knowledge just so he wouldn’t feel stupid around more mature believers — and the shift that finally brought his time in the Word to life.Anchored in 1 Corinthians 8:1 — “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” — this devotional traces the move from head knowledge to heart knowledge: from knowing about God to actually experiencing Him. Drawing on Jeremiah 9 and Ephesians 1, Blake shows why that shift is the Spirit’s work, not ours — and how to come to Scripture longing to meet God rather than just collect facts.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

Jeremiah handed God’s people a picture they couldn’t miss: they had walked away from a spring of living water to dig their own cisterns — cracked pits that couldn’t hold a drop. In this episode, Blake gets honest about the cisterns he spent years digging with his own hands: people-pleasing, pretending, showing off — every one of them a way of trying to find life apart from God.Drawing on Jeremiah 2:13, this devotional traces the two evils behind a thirsty soul — forsaking God and replacing Him — and the reckoning that comes when you finally see what you’ve been doing. Blake shares what it actually took to stop digging and turn back to the Fountain: a retraining that felt mysterious, even like death at times, but led to something better than results — a deeper connection with the Lord.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

How did Jesus love? He laid down His life. In this episode, Blake gets honest about the quiet ledger most of us run when we love — the subtle expectation of getting something back — and holds it up against the way Jesus loved: with nothing held back and nothing owed.Featuring John 15:12–13 and Philippians 2:9–11, this devotional traces what sacrificial love actually costs, why the Father honors the downward path, and how remembering the cross gives us the strength to keep loving when it hurts. There’s a love that keeps score — and a love that lays itself down.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

When life presses in, we all go looking for something to steady us. In this episode, Blake opens an old journal entry — “Lord, I am struggling” — and traces the choice every struggle sets before us: reach for a quick substitute, or reach for the nourishment of God’s Word.Featuring Matthew 4:4, where Jesus meets the tempter in the wilderness at His weakest and takes hold of the Word instead. Blake also shares how, in a season of deep loneliness, Isaiah 40:11 and the promise of a tending Shepherd kept him from sinking. There’s bread that leaves you empty — and a Word that holds you.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.

Have you ever felt God nudging you toward something you feel completely unqualified to do? In this episode, Blake gets honest about his own version of that fear — sensing God asking him to publish his writing while feeling utterly inadequate — and finds unexpected company in Moses at the burning bush.When Moses asks “Who am I?”, God doesn’t argue that he’s capable. He gives a better answer: “I will be with you.” Featuring Exodus 3:11–12, this devotional shows why our adequacy was never the point — and why the assignment always rested on His presence, not our credentials.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen.