Devotions with Pastor Stanton

Imagine somebody hands you a gift. Free. No catch. And you reach for your wallet anyway.What just happened to the gift?It stopped being one. The moment you pay even a quarter for it, it is not a gift anymore. It is a purchase.Now hold that thought, because there is a poor prophet standing in front of a fortune in this story, and what he does with it is the reason many Christians never enjoy their salvation.

Here is something strange in this story that is easy to read straight past.Naaman came to Israel with a fortune, because he thought he had to buy his healing. He never spent a shekel of it. The cure was completely free.So the money is still in the wagons, sitting there, unspent.And the very first thing the healed man tries to do is give it away.Same money. Same wagons. Completely different man. That is today's business.

If God actually did something in you, how would you know? How do you know it was real?Not the emotion. Not the date on the calendar. Not the fact that some church wrote your name in a book once.Today, we will find out how the Bible answers that question in a single sentence out of the mouth of a Syrian soldier and we shall see that the answer is not about his behavior at all. It is about what he could suddenly see.

Here is a question that will tell you more about your heart than almost any other.When God answers, do you come back to thank Him?Not, do you feel grateful, I mean, has gratitude ever actually cost you something? An hour. An evening. A resource. A drive you did not need to make.Last week we watched a man come up out of a muddy river with the skin of a child. And what he does next tells you exactly what God had done inside him.

Have you ever been disappointed by how ordinary God's help looked? You were in real trouble. You wanted heaven to move. And what came was a friend with a verse. A sermon you almost skipped. A page in a book somebody handed you years ago. No thunder. No moment. Just words, from somebody unremarkable.There is a general in the Bible who got exactly that, and it nearly killed him.

Think about the last time you came to God with something heavy. Now be honest about what you brought with you. I do not mean the sin. I mean the other things. The years of church. The giving. The clean record. Or even, the fact that you are, by any reasonable standard, a decent person. There is a man in the Bible who brought all of that to the door of grace. He brought it in wagons. And what we find, is that the door did not open for him.

Is there something in your life that you were counting on that has fallen apart? The career stalled. The savings drained. The plan collapsed. The person disappointed you in a way you did not think they could.Have you read those situations as God's absence? I want to give you one verse this morning that may make you read it again.

Let me pose to you a serious question: Is it possible to be closer to the things of God, and still be a stranger to God Himself? With things I mean: To know the songs. To go to church. To know when to sit and when to stand. To have a Bible with your name stamped on the cover. And yet to still not know Him. Well there is a king in Second Kings who shows us exactly what that looks like.

Have you ever noticed how quickly we start bargaining with God?The failure happens on Saturday, and by Sunday morning we are in the pew early. The guilt settles in, and suddenly we are volunteering for something. The conscience aches, and the giving goes up.We would never say we were buying anything. But our actions speak for themselves.There is a man in Second Kings who did not bother hiding it. He loaded it onto carts.

There are some days we just feel off. Maybe it is a guilt that will not wash off, or a hollow place in your soul that nothing fills, or a habit you have quietly stopped fighting.Whatever it is, what do you do first?Be honest with me. What do you actually reach for first, in the first ten minutes, before you have prayed one word?There is a man in the Bible who answered that question with a caravan, and his answer is our answer.

If you were God, and you had decided to save the most powerful man in Syria, who would you send?A prophet with a reputation, probably. A delegation. Somebody with high standing, who could get a meeting.What if God sent a child instead. One with no name. No rank. No rights. And what if she was living in that house because that man's own soldiers had taken her by force out of hers.

You know what happens when your foot falls asleep. You could step on a nail and not feel a thing. The nerve is not gone , it has just stopped reporting. The injury is real; the alarm is broken.Now hold on to that picture, because this morning we are going to look at the one thing Naaman's armor could not reach. And the trouble with it was not first that it was ugly. The trouble was that it did not hurt the way it should have.

How far back does God go with you?Most of us start the story at our conversion. That is when we began paying attention, so that is where we assume God started working.But listen in a few minutes, to how the Bible introduces a Syrian general who did not know the Lord, had never worshiped Him, and had no interest in Him. It says God gave him his victories.Which means the answer to my question is further back than you think. He was working the years you were not watching.

Think for a second about the last time you had to introduce yourself. Maybe it was a job interview. Maybe it was a new neighbor over the fence, or a name tag at a conference. You said the good part, didn't you. The title. The years of experience. The kids and what they're doing well. Nobody opens with the other thing. Well, this morning the Holy Spirit is going to write somebody's introduction for him. And He is going to spend almost the whole sentence on the good part: the titles, the medals, the record. And then, with three letters, He is going to tell you what that man actually was.

What is the one thing God has asked you to do that you’re delaying simply because you're terrified of what happens next? The hard conversation. The confession. The decision to walk away from something you know is killing you. We stay disobedient, because we're convinced that if we move forward, the hills will collapse on us. Today, Genesis 35 shows us that the safest place you can ever be is in motion.

If there is anything that American's are good at, it is Hoarding. Take for example the following statistic: Americans rent two billion square feet of storage space. Think about that. Two billion square feet of units full of things we do not use, cannot fit, and will not release. We pay rent, every single month, on things we should have thrown away years ago.And I wonder if that's not the most accurate picture of the Christian life. Because most of us don't get rid of our idols. We store them. We put them somewhere out of sight, we tell ourselves it's handled, yet we keep a key. This morning, watch what a man does when he finally gets serious. He doesn't rent a unit. He digs a hole.

Have you ever hit the snooze button on your alarm, thinking, "I just need nine more minutes" and then woke up an hour later? Of course you have. And notice: you never once decided to sleep away the whole morning. You decided on nine minutes. That's all. Just a little more sleep, and then you'd get up.Now let me ask you something that may sting a little. Is your walk with God on snooze? Not abandoned. Not denied. Just... nine more minutes. For about ten years now. This morning we meet a man exactly like that, and the first word God says to him is an alarming one: Arise.

Have you ever patched things up with someone, walked away, and still felt... a little uneasy? Maybe the initial tension broke, you both cried or apologized, but you knew in your heart that things couldn't simply go back to the way they were. We often think that unless a relationship is fully restored to late-night chats, constant contact, and total vulnerability, the reconciliation was a failure. But is that what the Bible teaches? What if true forgiveness can exist alongside wise boundaries? What if real peace sometimes means taking different roads?

Think for a moment about an emotional debt someone owes you. Maybe they stole your peace, your reputation, your childhood, or your trust. You carry a ledger in your mind, and you want them to pay. But why is it so exhausting to hold onto that ledger, yet so terrifying to tear it up? We often try to force ourselves to forgive by sheer willpower, only to find our resentment is too strong. But what if the secret to releasing what others owe us isn't about looking harder at their debt, but staring deeply at a completely different face?

We live in a world governed by transactions. If you want a warm cup of coffee, you pay first, then you drink. If you want a promotion, you put in the hours first, then you get rewarded. "Pay first, receive later" is the unwritten law of human survival. And naturally, we bring this transactional mindset straight into our broken relationships. We tell ourselves: Grovel first, then I’ll think about forgiving you. Or, Let me suffer and pay for my mistakes first, and maybe then they’ll accept me. But what if the kingdom of God operates on a totally different currency?

Close your eyes for just a moment and bring a face to mind. A face of the person you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it's a former friend, a family member, an ex-spouse, or a coworker whose name alone makes your stomach drop. For years, you've managed the distance. You've told yourself that some things are just too shattered to ever fix, and that trust, once broken, stays broken. But what if the resolution of that conflict doesn't actually depend on your strength? What if the restoration you dread has already been initiated by someone else?

What is the single hardest word for you to say? For some of us, it’s "I’m sorry." For others, it’s "I was wrong," or perhaps even "I need help." But if we look beneath the surface of our daily lives, many of us find that the hardest thing to admit is simply who we really are when the masks are off. We spend an enormous amount of energy trying to project an image of success, competence, and goodness. We want people, and we want God, to see the polished version of us.But true transformation never begins with the person you are pretending to be. It only begins when you have the courage to stand in the light and declare who you actually are.

Nobody prays for a scar. We pray for protection, we pray for success, and we pray for comfort. When we experience physical, emotional, or spiritual pain, our automatic reaction is to ask God to take it away immediately. We view our weaknesses as liabilities—obstacles keeping us from living our best lives.But what if your greatest weakness is actually your greatest spiritual asset? What if the very area where you feel most broken is the only place where God's power can finally reside?Today, we are looking at the moment Jacob’s strength was permanently shattered, and why it was the most merciful thing God ever did to him.

Have you ever had a sleepless night where your mind simply refused to shut down? You lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, tossing and turning, fighting with your thoughts, fighting with your future—maybe even fighting with God. There is a unique, heavy exhaustion that only happens in the dark. It is the moment when the distractions of the daytime are stripped away, and you are forced to face the very things you’ve spent months, or even years, running from. But what if the struggle you are in right now isn't a sign that you've been abandoned? What if the struggle is actually proof of a divine encounter?

Have you ever noticed how exhausting it is to keep up the appearance of having everything under control? We live in a world that praises the self-made, the strategic, and the hyper-prepared. We build backup plans for our backup plans. We calculate, we anticipate, and we scramble to secure our own peace. But what happens when you finally reach the end of your options? What happens when you've run every calculation, played every card, and you're still staring at a crisis you cannot manage? Today, we're looking at a man who reached that exact boundary. And we'll see why the scariest place in the world might actually be the very place God begins His greatest work.

Have you ever done a massive amount of hard work that went completely unnoticed? Or perhaps you've carried a quiet, aching hurt that felt entirely invisible to everyone around you. It is so easy to feel like our sleepless nights, our silent sacrifices, and our absorbed losses are just empty space, meaningless and wasted. We tell ourselves, "No one sees, and no one cares." But what if there is a Witness to your quietest trials? What if the God of the universe has been keeping a perfect ledger of your sleepless nights, your tears, and your hidden faithfulness?

Have you ever stayed awake tossing and turning, worrying about the things you cannot see? We exhaust ourselves worrying about the phone call that hasn't come, the decisions being made behind closed doors, or the unseen storms brewing in our future. We try so hard to guard every single angle of our lives. But what if the greatest protections you have ever experienced were the ones you knew absolutely nothing about? What if some of God’s most decisive rescues in your life happened while you were fast asleep?

Whenever you pack your bags for a big move or a new season of life, what is the one thing you refuse to leave behind? Often, it’s not just clothes or keepsakes. If we are honest, we also try to pack our invisible baggage. We pack our old coping mechanisms, our secret fallback plans, and our subtle "just-in-case" safety nets. We want to follow God into the new territory He has for us, but we desperately want to smuggle a little bit of our old comfort zone along with us. But what happens when the very things we carry for security actually put our entire journey in jeopardy?

Have you ever caught yourself waiting for the "perfect sign" before you finally take a leap of faith? Maybe you’re waiting for the fear to completely vanish before you have that difficult conversation, step away from that toxic environment, or say yes to what you know God has clearly commanded. We tell ourselves we’ll move when the coast is clear and our hearts are totally calm. But what if God’s call to move isn't an invitation to a paved, worry-free road? What if the path of obedience actually begins while your hands are still shaking?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where the harder you work, the more the goalposts seem to move? Maybe it’s a job where you’ve done everything right, but a promotion is still out of reach. Or a family situation where you’re keeping the peace, but nothing ever changes.We call it being "stuck." But what makes it even harder is that you've been faithful. You’ve kept your word. You’ve done it God’s way. And yet, you are still standing in the exact same field, facing the exact same locked situation wondering when it’s ever going to end.In moments like that, the quiet temptation is to start cutting corners or compromising. But what if there’s a better way? What do we do when the hard places simply won't let us go?

If you have ever had to clean up after a big dinner party, you know there are two ways to deal with a Hot dish that has burnt cheese onto the sides.The first way is sheer brute force. You grab a metal scrubber, you roll up your sleeves, and you scrape with everything you’ve got. You sweat, your muscles ache, and you might even scratch the dish, but you force it clean.But there is a second, much better way. You fill that dirty dish with warm, soapy water, slide it into the sink, and you just walk away. You let it soak. And while it sits in the soak, the warm water does all the hard work. When you come back later, the burnt cheese wipes away effortlessly.When it comes to your relationship with God, are you scraping... or are you soaking?

Have you ever watched a toddler scream in absolute agony because their parent took away a sharp object or a toy they were using to hit their sibling? To the child, it feels like the end of the world. It looks like an act of pure cruelty. But to the parent, it is an act of fierce, protective, and necessary love. Sometimes, love has to take away what we cherish to protect who we are.Today, we're talking about those painful moments in our lives when God reaches in and makes a cut that runs incredibly deep.

Have you ever walked into a teenager’s bedroom and realized things had gotten completely out of hand? There are clothes piled on the floor, empty cups on the desk, and books scattered everywhere.As a parent, your response to that mess isn't to condemn the room or tear down the house. You step in, point out the mess, and say, "Hey, it's time to clean this up." You do it because you care about the person living there, and you know they can't thrive in chaos.Today, we're exploring how God does the exact same thing in our hearts. He doesn't look at our mess and walk away. Instead, He steps in with a gentle, loving Word to clean things up so we can truly thrive.

Have you ever caught yourself simply going through the motions? You show up to church, you sing the songs, you listen to the message, and you go home feeling... relatively good. But deep down, you know nothing has actually changed. You’re living in a safe, predictable routine, but spiritually, you feel like you're standing still.Today, we're asking a vital question: What if Jesus didn't save us to keep us in the comfort of "regular-sized" routines? What if He has invited us into an experience that is radically, unimaginably bigger?

Have you ever sent a text, and waited hours for the person to reply and even maybe a whole day.There is a unique kind of anxiety in the silence of waiting. You feel like you have been ignored, overlooked, or completely forgotten. Prayer often feels like this. You sent a prayer text to God, and you’re waiting on a medical report, a job offer, or a prayer that you’ve been praying for years, but the sky just feels like brass. You start to wonder: "Does God even know I’m here? Has He forgotten about me?" Today, we are looking at the turning point of our story, where the faithful grace of God steps in to act on His covenant promise.

Have you ever had a relationship that felt constantly strained, no matter how hard you tried to make it work? Maybe it’s a spouse who never seems to say the right thing, a friend who always lets you down, or a parent whose approval you’re still chasing.It is so easy to blame them. We think, "If they would just change, I’d finally be happy." But what if the real issue isn't that they don’t love you? What if the problem is that you’ve placed a burden on their shoulders that they were never, ever designed to carry? What if you are asking them to give you something only God can give? Today, we’re looking at a raw, high-friction moment in an ancient marriage. In their conflict, we'll see a mirror for our own relationships and learn how to stop crushing the people we love under the weight of our expectations.

Have you ever noticed how quickly a good day can turn sour the moment you start looking around?You could be perfectly happy with your car, your house, or your career. But then you scroll past a post of a friend’s tropical vacation, or you hear about a colleague's promotion. Suddenly, what you have feels small. It feels cheap. It feels like you’re falling behind. That is the poison of comparison. It makes us look sideways at other people’s blessings instead of looking up at our Creator. Today, we’re diving into the story of a woman who had almost everything she ever wanted, yet was completely consumed by what she didn’t have. In her story, we'll discover how to cure the toxic habit of comparison before it ruins our relationships.

You know that feeling... right after you post a photo or share a thought online? Where you’re watching the eyes watching you. You’re counting the likes. You’re waiting for the comments. In those quiet moments you're basically wondering: "Am I beautiful enough? Am I interesting enough? Am I worth seeing?" Living like that in our daily life can be exhausting because we are  measuring our worth by who is looking at us. But this isn't just a social media phase. It’s a deeply human ache. Today, we're going to meet an Old Testament woman who lived this exact same exhaustion long before a smartphone ever existed. In her story, we’re going to find out how the gaze of God offers the only real rest for a soul that is starving to be noticed.

Jesus once painted a hilarious but convincing picture of someone walking around with a giant wooden log sticking out of their own eye, while trying to pick a tiny speck of sawdust out of another’s. It’s easy to laugh at that image, but how often do you do it? We get so incredibly angry at other people's flaws. But what if God is actually doing something deeper? What if He is using the very splinter in someone else to expose the giant log in our own hidden patterns?

Have you ever felt like God’s guidance is completely missing simply because your life feels incredibly ordinary? You might love the biblical stories of burning bushes and parted seas. You often expect God to guide you with flashing neon signs or overwhelming emotional experiences. But what happens when you wake up, go to work, run errands, and experience absolutely nothing supernatural? You can easily fall into the trap of believing that if a moment isn't spectacular, God must not be active. But what if God’s most profound work is happening right now, hidden in the utterly normal details of your everyday life?

Have you ever tried walking with a backpack filled with heavy rocks? At first, you might manage a decent pace as you lean forward, and push through. But eventually, after a few miles, the weight won’t just exhaust your physical body, it will completely crush your spirit. So many of us are walking through life exactly like this. We are carrying invisible backpacks loaded with the heavy stones of past guilt, present shame, and deep anxiety about the future. We are completely exhausted, and we haven't even reached our destination yet. But God meets us on this road to give us the strength to persevere.

Picture a man kneeling beside a still pond of water. He leans over, looks at his reflection, and he absolutely does not like what he sees. So, what does he do? He plunges his hand in and stirs the water. The face breaks apart. It moves. It distorts. And for a fleeting moment, it feels like something actually changed. But then... the ripples fade. The water settles. And the exact same face comes right back. How often do we do this with our very own lives? We constantly try to change the water and circumstances, fully convincing ourselves that we have somehow changed the person.

Imagine being invited to the home of a billionaire. He looks at you and says, "I want to give you the keys to my estate, full access to my resources, and a guaranteed inheritance that will secure your family's future for generations." And in response, you look back at him and say, "That’s great. But really, if you could just give me five dollars for a cup of coffee on my way home, we’ll be good." It sounds absurd, doesn't it? To be offered something so massive and settle for something so incredibly small. Yet, when it comes to our prayer lives, we often do this exact same thing with the Creator of the universe. He offers us eternal, unshakeable promises, and we often shrink them down to our immediate, temporary comfort.

Have you ever tried to make a deal with God? You probably didn't call it a negotiation, but it sounded something like this: "Lord, if You just get me out of this financial mess, I promise I'll finally start giving." Or, "God, if You heal this relationship, I'll go to church every Sunday." We often treat our faith like a contract negotiation. We want a guarantee of comfort before we give God our complete obedience. We hold our full surrender hostage, waiting for God to meet our specific terms. Today, we are going to look at how God invites us to trade our restless "if" for His restful "I will."

Have you ever gone through a season so difficult that, once it was over, you just wanted to erase it from your memory completely? When we experience pain, discomfort, or failure, our natural human instinct is to run from it, hide it, or throw it away. We want to leave the hardest parts of our story behind us as quickly as possible. But what if the very things that are causing you the most discomfort right now are the exact materials God wants to use to build your greatest testimony? Today, we are going to look at how encountering God's presence changes not just our perspective, but what we do with our pain.

Have you ever found yourself in a season that just feels... completely uncertain? Seasons where your soul feels restless, like you're trying to sleep on a bed of rocks. The hardest part isn't even the discomfort; it’s the spiritual whiplash. You know the promises of God, but your current reality feels like a complete contradiction. You catch yourself asking, "If God is so faithful, why am I here? If He is with me, why does this road feel so incredibly lonely?" Today, we are going to look at a man who was asking those exact questions, and we'll discover how God meets us when we feel the most exposed.

Think about a time you tried to force a heavy door open, throwing all your weight into it, only to realize it was locked from the other side. In the same way, we spend so much energy trying to control our own lives, fighting for control over our families, our careers, and even our futures. We push, we pull, and we scheme. But what happens when our stubborn plans collide head-on with the sovereign will of God? Today, we look at a terrifying but beautiful moment when a man realizes he has been fighting the Almighty, and he finally drops his illusion of control to surrender to the Word of God.

Have you ever decided to "help God out" because He wasn't moving fast enough for your liking? We all have an instinct to take matters into our own hands. When we want something, even a good, God-ordained something, we often adopt the mindset that the ends justify the means. We bend the truth, we force the issue, or we manipulate the circumstances, all under the guise of securing a blessing. But what happens when we try to force God's holy promises through unholy means? Today, we are looking at the painful fallout of trying to grab the steering wheel from God.

We live in a world obsessed with merit. From the classroom grades to the performance reviews at our jobs, to the way we select players for a sports team. Our default operating system is that the best person gets chosen. It makes sense to us. It feels fair. So, because of this, it is incredibly easy to project that same operating system onto God. We secretly assume that God chooses to bless those who have the best moral resumes or the most impressive spiritual track records. But what happens when we look at the people God actually chooses and realize... they aren't the best players on the field?

Have you ever looked around your family, your church, or even your own heart, and wondered: Is things too broken for God to work here? We often carry this quiet assumption that God needs a stable, spiritually impressive environment to accomplish His Sovereign purposes. But what happens when the very people entrusted with God's holy promise are entirely compromised? Today, we are going to look at one of the most famous, and most dysfunctional, families in the Bible, to discover a truth that can anchor us when everything else feels messy.