Month: February 2026

“I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13 (Common English Bible)

What is so remarkable about these words is that they are spoken by a man in chains. Paul is a prisoner in Rome. In a life dedicated to serving Christ, Paul has endured much—shipwreck, ridicule, hunger, and excruciating poverty. Now he sits in a Roman prison and writes that whatever the circumstances, Paul has learned the secret of inner strength and contentment. Perhaps even more remarkable, Paul lays aside his own needs and concerns to write a deeply personal letter to the Philippians to encourage them in their faith. Despite his imprisonment and impending trial, Paul’s one desire is to share with the church in Philippi that joy and strength do not come from outward circumstances but from an intimate relationship with Jesus. That power is so tremendous and so available that Paul feels he can face anything knowing that nothing can diminish his spirit. His spirit was invulnerable. Paul wants the Philippians to utilize that same power.

The interesting thing about the New Testament is that we find that same power animating most of the early Christians. A profession of faith in Jesus usually pushed people to the margins of their communities. Families were torn apart—mothers and daughters, fathers and sons no longer in relationship with one another because one or the other decided to become a follower of Jesus. Worship services were conducted in secret and often disrupted by Jewish leaders eager to destroy the Jesus movement. The worst tortures that could be imagined were invented and performed to discourage participation in the new Christian faith. There was every reason for ignoring the swelling growth of the Christian Church, keeping your head down, and simply avoiding trouble. Yet, for all the compelling reasons to remain separate from those following Jesus, men and women who risked believing in Jesus made one dominating impression wherever they went, the impression of uncommon power.

That power has not been withdrawn. It is not a closely guarded secret. Where men and women continue to take Christ’s attitude of loving others and serving others that same power is unmistakable. What is troubling is that few would say that the church today impresses the world with the same power as it once did. Somehow those who claim discipleship to Jesus Christ show little evidence of a changed life, a life of uncommon power. Absent in many Christians today is a sense of adequacy for meeting challenges and adversity. Membership and attendance decline of the Christian church has been tracked and documented for many years now. This has resulted in the publication of resources to perfect the church’s hospitality, increase the vitality of its worship, and harness the power of technology. However valuable these may be, the most urgent need is for followers of Jesus Christ to get back to that power that is possessed by the daily nurture of a personal fellowship with Jesus.

Return for a moment to the first two words above, “I can.” Some years ago, I was working with a personal trainer, Michael Bishop. One particular day he had me on my back, bench pressing what seemed to be an incredible weight for me. After pushing the bar above my head several times, I did a controlled drop of the bar to my chest. I was depleted. I delivered an eye message to him to remove the bar from my chest. I will never forget his response, “That’s not my bar. You place it back on the upright supports.” Then he did what his training taught him to do. He placed his hands around the bar with my own. That was simply to ensure that I didn’t hurt myself. But the lifting belonged to me. I pushed with everything in me; I summoned all the power I could to lift the bar back onto the supports. As my strength began to fail, he matched the loss of my strength with his own until the bar had returned to rest on the support. Paul writes, “I can, through the power who gives me strength.” If you are depressed or in trouble, say, “I can in him” and you will find God’s strength comes alongside your own. If you struggle with passions or addictions that frighten you, or if you feel that you are losing your grip on life, say, “I can in him” and you will discover an unseen hand on the bar with your own, matching your strength. The Christian’s strength begins with, “I can.”

Joy,

The following meditation was written by Dr. Doug Hood’s son, Rev. Nathanael Hood, pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Junction City, Kansas.

Early in the morning as Jesus was returning to the city, he was hungry. He saw a fig tree along the road, but when he came to it, he found nothing except leaves. Then he said to it, “You’ll never again bear fruit!” The fig tree dried up at once. When the disciples saw it, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree dry up so fast?” they asked. Jesus responded, “I assure you that if you have faith and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree. You will even say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the lake.’ And it will happen. If you have faith, you will receive whatever you pray for.” Matthew 21:18-22 (Common English Bible)

In all the New Testament, few incidents are more famous than the time that Jesus Christ threw a group of money changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem. He’s so enraged by the sight of money changers and merchants selling animals for sacrifices that he flips over their tables and calls them crooks! The Gospel of Matthew goes on to describe that after turning the money changers out, Jesus started to heal those blind and lame people already there in the Temple, and yet in the face of these miracles, the Temple priests still challenge him and his authority! I don’t know about you, but I understand Jesus’ anger in that moment—how willfully ignorant must the Jewish authorities have been to witness literal miracles and yet still question the man performing them!

Yet Jesus’ anger doesn’t end there. Even after spending a night in the nearby city of Bethany to cool off, Jesus was apparently still in a fiery enough mood the next day that when he encountered a barren fig tree along the road back to Jerusalem he cursed it, causing the tree to dry up and die. His disciples, the men who had seen him heal the sick, raise the dead, and feed the multitudes, were amazed! How did that fig tree dry up so fast, they asked their master in bewilderment. To this, Jesus answered, “I assure you that if you have faith and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree. You will even say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the lake.’ And it will happen. If you have faith, you will receive whatever you pray for.” These are wise words about the effectiveness of prayer and faith, but it’s important to note Jesus’ temperament during this lesson, for it proves an important point about when Jesus wants us to pray—that being when we’re angry.

See, this text is somewhat controversial among biblical scholars and people who are just starting out on their journey through scripture because it’s one of the only times—if not the only time—that Jesus does something destructive in the Bible. Strange, this, am I right? Now, commentators throughout church history have struggled to explain this bizarre event as somehow being symbolic. Perhaps. But I think it’s important not to ignore the surface of this text which is that, quite simply, Jesus was hungry and, not finding figs on a fig tree, got angry. We tend to shy away from expressions of anger in our society, particularly in holy places, but in this text we see God not just getting angry but acting upon said anger and then, presumably while still angry, discoursing about prayer. I think the simple lesson here is that anger is not incompatible with prayer. On the contrary, I believe that this passage illustrates that it’s precisely when we’re the most angry that we most need to communicate with God.

Why is that? Well, ask yourself what is anger, when you get right down to it? It’s an assertion, a demand to be heard. Anger disrupts, anger gets peoples’ attention, anger gets things done—maybe not always the right things, maybe not always the godly things, but it gets things done nevertheless. Remember—God is no stranger to anger. God spoke words of great fire and fury through the ancient prophets in the face of societal corruption and evil. God violently routed enemy armies and doomed God’s own kings for their wickedness. God gets angry! So it’s okay for us to get angry as well! Indeed, God demands our anger in the face of evil and injustice. What matters is how we use that anger. Do we let it consume us, hurt others, and destroy? No, may we instead take our anger and offer it to God, asking our Father in heaven how best to use it for his purposes, for his designs, for his justice.

Joy,

The following meditation was written by Dr. Doug Hood’s son, Rev. Nathanael Hood, Pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Junction City, Kansas.

“Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Whoever seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door is opened. Who among you will give your children a stone when they ask for bread? Or give them a snake when they ask for fish? If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” Matthew 7:7-11 (Common English Bible)

There’s a famous scene in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991) where the former Peter Pan—now all grown up and played by Robin Williams—sits down for a meal in Neverland with the Lost Boys he abandoned decades ago. The Boys’ new leader, the fiery, charismatic Rufio (Dante Basco) takes his seat at their long table and unexpectedly holds his hands together in prayer. Everyone, Williams included, does the same, bowing their heads and closing their eyes in reverence.

“Everybody say grace,” Rufio sternly commands.

“Bless this, Oh Lord…” Robin begins before he’s suddenly cut off by the sound of everyone at the table loudly shouting “GRACE!” then maniacally grabbing at the food in front of them.

It’s a wonderful moment, but one can’t help but wonder if this portrayal of prayer isn’t somehow an accurate one for many Christians. How many among us view prayer as just magic words or mystic incantations one says out of habit, not devotion?

Jesus addresses such performative piety in his Sermon on the Mount, specifically in a brief aside during a length list of moral commandments. “Ask, and you will receive,” Jesus commands in verse seven, “Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”There are three operative words in this verse, three words which break down exactly how the act of prayer should be done: “Ask,” “Search” or the more common translation “Seek,” and “Knock.”

Ask, Seek, Knock.

“Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find.

Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”

But what exactly does it mean to ask, seek, and knock? First, to ask is to admit to ourselves that we have problems in the first place! It’s to admit that there’s something out of the ordinary in our lives that needs help we cannot provide ourselves. For some of us, that’s impossible. Many are overburdened with pride. For example, while working in an inner city hospital early in my career, I learned that some poor people refuse monetary aid or handouts because they report that accepting them makes them feel like they’re admitting to personal failure in their lives. Likewise, many of us are yoked with the terrible weight of vanity which balks at the suggestion that one might have any needs or weaknesses in the first place. The obituary pages are full of such people who let their vanity get the best of them. If only they had the courage to ask for help!

Second, what does it mean to seek and knock? Both are verbs that denote continued actions. If you lose something valuable you don’t give up the search after a few seconds. Likewise, when you knock on someone’s door you don’t just knock once and hope whoever is inside hears you. You bang on the door until someone responds! Therefore, to seek and to knock are to have perseverance when we pray. Even though we believe that God answers prayers, Jesus expects us to pray for things repeatedly, even the same things we’ve prayed countless times for. I think of Jesus’ parable in Luke 18 of the Persistent Widow who petitions a corrupt judge for justice over and over and over again until he finally relents. If an evil man will eventually do what’s right when asked enough times, how much more powerfully will our perfectly loving, perfectly just, perfectly righteous God respond to us if we are persistent in prayer? Only by being persistent can we truly establish a relationship with our God, and in that relationship we will find something greater than just an answer to our prayers. We will find in God a companion, a friend, a Father. Amen.

Joy,

“He lifted me out of the pit of death, out of the mud and filth, and set my feet on solid rock. He steadied my legs.” Psalm 40:2 (Common English Bible)

Here is a life that many of us understand. Life is characterized as being a “pit of death—a life of mud and filth.” This poignant description betrays that present circumstances did not simply fall upon the one who speaks. “Mud and filth” are not the consequence of disadvantage, not the result of some disaster or illness that comes without personal consent. Rather, this decay of a personal experience of life has been fashioned by intentional choices, one bad choice following another. Perhaps the choices made were hesitant at first, slow, and then questioned. But once a descent into careless living began, movement became more swift and confident. Delight in drinking, or gambling, or immoral behavior brought increasing pleasure.

Then comes the collapse of all self-worth, a reckoning of the internal depravity that begins to reveal itself in physical appearance and behavior. The face can no longer hide the ruin of the interior life. Others clearly see the writing of the unfortunate choices written upon the man or woman. The signs of rot and disorder grow stronger and clearer. Any good or decency that remains continues to diminish until it is nearly smothered as the tyranny of the immoral life assumes command. The individual—both body and soul—once a sweet habitation of all that is good, decent, and holy now entertains what is corrupt and evil. Choices, once deliberate, now are in control. The man or woman is now held hostage in a “pit of death.”

Then comes a cry for help. What once was pleasurable has become agony—what once was pursued has become a master. The cry of desperation is made to Almighty God. Some years ago when my daughter, Rachael, was quite young I overheard her telling other little girls her faith story. With four other sets of eyes mesmerized by the narrative that flowed from her libs I heard, “I was a slave girl in Egypt and Pharaoh was so mean to me. But my God is bigger than Pharaoh and God came one day, beat Pharaoh up, and brought me home.” For a four-year-old girl, this was her understanding of the Exodus story she had heard from her father so many times. The message was clear and certain. She could count on God.

The one who shares this faith story in Psalm 40 knows they can count on God. A cry of desperation is made to Almighty God to come, overwhelm the master that holds them captive in “a pit of death” and bring them home. The cry may be made at the eleventh hour but God comes. God comes without ridicule, and without mockery, or taunts of “I told you so.” God simply comes. From the place of captivity of whatever enslavement, whatever addiction that holds a grip upon the man or woman, the hand of God appears. That hand is stronger. Once more, the enslaved is brought home. His or her feet are set on solid ground, strength is returned to the legs, and life is steadied. A nightmare of horrible dreams ends.

Joy,