Aldersgate Renewal Ministries

06/19/2026

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

While we were still sinners. Paul will not let us clean that up or soften it. The love of God did not arrive after we had made progress. It did not wait until we had our lives in better order or our faith more figured out. It came all the way to us in the worst of it, in the middle of our wandering, before we had any intention of turning around.

That is what makes this verse so different from the way we usually think about love. We tend to believe that love has to be earned, that it is something offered in response to our effort or our worthiness. But God does not operate that way. He looked at humanity in full rebellion and sent His Son anyway. Not because we deserved it. Because that is who He is.

There is no version of you that God looked at and decided was too far gone. The cross was planted in the ground before you ever thought to ask for it. That is not a reason to take grace lightly. It is a reason to be undone by it.

You were loved before you were ready. You are loved still.

06/18/2026

"For it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." Matthew 10:20

Jesus says this to people He is sending into difficult places, people who would be called to speak the gospel in rooms where it was not welcome. And He knows the first thing that rises up in us when we imagine that moment. What do I even say?

It is one of the most honest fears in ministry. Not the big theological questions but the simple, practical terror of opening your mouth and having nothing come out. Of standing in front of someone who is hurting or searching or hostile and feeling completely unqualified for the moment.

And Jesus meets that fear not with a script but with a promise. It will not be you speaking. The Spirit of your Father will be speaking through you. That is not a reason to be lazy or unprepared. It is a reason to stop trusting entirely in your own cleverness and start trusting in the One who knows every person you will ever talk to better than you ever could.

The Spirit does not need you to be eloquent. He needs you to be available. Show up, open your mouth, and trust that God will fill it with what is needed.

You are not in those conversations alone.

06/17/2026

"Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation." Isaiah 12:2

Notice what Isaiah does not say. He does not say the circumstances changed. He does not say the danger passed or the hard season came to an end. He says I will trust and not be afraid. That is a decision made in the middle of things, not after they resolve.

Fear and trust are not opposites in the sense that one cancels the other out completely. They coexist. Isaiah knew real threat. The people he spoke to knew exile and loss and the grinding uncertainty of lives lived under pressure. And into that reality he speaks this confession, not as a feeling that arrived on its own but as a choice anchored in who God is.

The Lord himself is my strength. Not my own resilience. Not my ability to hold it together. The Lord himself. That phrase carries so much weight. It is not a principle or a system. It is a person. And that person has already become our salvation, not just promised it but done it.

Whatever you are afraid of today, you do not have to manufacture courage on your own. The strength belongs to Him, and He is not withholding it from you.

06/16/2026

"Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm." Proverbs 13:20

Scripture does not mince words here. Who you walk with shapes who you become.

We like to think we are immune to influence, that we can spend our time with anyone and remain unchanged. But the wisdom literature of the Bible keeps returning to this truth because it knows something about us that we sometimes resist admitting. We are formed by our friendships. The voices we let closest to us quietly shape our values, our habits, our vision of what life is for.

This is not a call to be cold or to write people off. It is a call to be intentional. To ask honestly who is speaking into your life and whether those voices are pulling you toward wisdom or away from it. To seek out people who love God, tell the truth, and make you want to be better. That kind of friendship is one of the great gifts God gives us for the journey.

If you do not have people like that around you right now, pray for them. And be willing to become that kind of person for someone else.

Who are you walking with?

06/15/2026

Never thought I’d find someone like you.

06/15/2026

"If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

Paul could have made this more complicated. He did not.

Two things. Belief in the heart. Confession with the mouth. Not a long list of requirements to check off before you are worthy enough to approach God. Not a performance of spiritual maturity or a record of good behavior. Just the honest movement of a heart toward truth and a mouth willing to say out loud what that heart has come to believe.

There is something important about the confession being spoken. Faith is not meant to stay locked inside where no one can see it. When we say with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, we are planting a stake in the ground. We are declaring, to ourselves as much as anyone else, where our allegiance belongs and who holds our life.

And the promise attached to that declaration is not small. You will be saved. Not you might be, not you could be if everything goes right. You will be.

If you have never said it out loud, today is a good day to start.

06/12/2026

"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." Mark 16:15

All the world. Not just the parts that feel receptive. Not just the people who look like us or think like us or are already halfway there. All of it.

Jesus says this to eleven people. Eleven ordinary people who had just spent three days thinking everything was over. And He hands them the most expansive commission imaginable. Go everywhere. Tell everyone. The whole creation is the mission field.

It is easy to read a verse like this and feel the weight of the impossible. The world is so large and we are so small. But Jesus does not give this command without giving Himself along with it. He is the one who goes with us. He is the one who opens doors we could never open and softens hearts we could never reach on our own.

The question is not whether the world needs the gospel. It does, desperately. The question is whether we are willing to be the ones who carry it, starting with the small piece of the world we actually live in.

All the world begins right where you are standing.

06/11/2026

"As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." John 20:21

Jesus says this on the evening of the resurrection. The disciples are behind locked doors, frightened, not sure what comes next. And the risen Christ walks into that room and the first thing He gives them is not a strategy. It is peace. And then a commission.

As the Father sent me. That is the pattern He points to. The Father did not send Jesus with fanfare and a comfortable platform. He sent Him into ordinary life, among ordinary people, into real pain and real need, with nothing to rely on but the Spirit and the will of the One who sent Him. That is the sending we have inherited.

It is easy to think of mission as something that happens somewhere else, carried out by someone more qualified. But Jesus is speaking to a room full of frightened, doubting, grieving people and He says you. I am sending you. Not someday when you feel ready. Right now, as you are, into the world right outside that door.

The same peace He breathed over them He breathes over you. Go.

06/10/2026

"So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." 1 Corinthians 3:7

This is one of the most liberating verses in all of scripture for anyone who has ever poured themselves into ministry and wondered if any of it mattered.

Paul is talking to a church that had started dividing itself over personalities. Some were loyal to him, others to Apollos, as if the growth of the gospel depended on who was doing the talking. And Paul cuts right through it. You are focused on the wrong thing, he says. The one who plants is not the point. The one who waters is not the point. God is the point. He is the one who makes things grow.

That is both humbling and freeing. Humbling because it means we do not get to take credit for what only God can do. Freeing because it means the pressure is not on us to produce the harvest. Our job is to be faithful with the small act in front of us, to plant when it is time to plant and water when it is time to water, and then trust the God who makes things grow to do what only He can.

Be faithful today. Leave the growth to Him.

06/09/2026