Today’s Always Uplifting Verse and Devotional to start your day off right!

Letting Go of Baggage

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Psalms 55:22 — Give your burdens to the Lord, and He will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

I am telling you. I need Jesus and a nap. Probably in that order.

It started in the airport with the smell of burnt coffee drifting from a kiosk, and the fluorescent hum overhead making everyone look tired before we’d even boarded. My gate was a picture of modern travel fatigue: people slumped in chairs, scrolling their phones, and clutching paper cups.

I was supposed to be in Baltic, South Dakota by nightfall. Instead, I got delay after delay. For hours, I just shuffled from one end of the concourse to another, checked my phone, and watched the same janitor push the same mop across the same patch of floor.

By the time the final cancellation came, I had already stopped hoping. I trudged back through the airport disappointed.

But you know what’s coming next, right? My luggage had already made it to South Dakota without me.

I travel a lot, so I have learned to pack light. But that one piece of luggage had my whole life in it (at least everything I think of as essential).

In the days that followed, I realized this debacle of losing my suitcase, in a way, was a good thing. It helped me to remember and reflect on how I carry other kinds of baggage with me everywhere I go. Things like worry, expectation, and stress,

I came home lighter than I’d expected, and it wasn’t because I didn’t have my suitcase. No, it was because I had a bed that smelled like my favorite detergent, pajamas that fit perfectly, and the relief of realizing that life is rarely as heavy as we make it.

Sometimes losing what you thought you couldn’t live without is the exact thing you need to finally run your race well. The weight falls off, and your arms and heart feel free for the first time in years.

So maybe today is a good day to consider what baggage you’ve been dragging around. What might happen if you simply set it aside, give it to God, and walk forward unburdened?

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Love Without Fixing It

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James 1:19 — Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters; You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.

It started like any other coffee date—two friends meeting in the middle of a busy week.

We ordered and found a small table by the window. The late-afternoon light stretched long across the floor. I noticed a sad look in her eyes, as she held her mug with both hands. It was like she was trying to keep from coming apart.

We eased into the conversation with safe topics, but it didn’t last. She confessed the load she had been carrying, the sleepless nights, and the ache of not knowing what to do next.

I could feel my instincts firing. How do I fix this? What should I suggest? Who could I get her to call. My brain had already sketched a plan before she’d even finished talking.

That’s my reflex. I come ready with solutions. It feels like love to hand someone a map, to draw a line from here to there, to make things better. But something in me—something quieter than all my ideas—said, “Don’t fix this. Just be here for her.”

So, I leaned in and listened. Really listened. Not waiting for my turn to speak, not waiting for an opening to drop a piece of wisdom, but staying present as she shared her story.

She talked about the ache she carried and the decisions she wasn’t ready to make. She didn’t sugarcoat anything. I didn’t either. I just asked questions and let her answer however she needed.

Somewhere between sips of coffee and pauses in her sentences, her shoulders softened. She was still carrying the same weight, but it wasn’t pressing her down as much. She even laughed once.

When it was time to leave, I still had all my “solutions” tucked away, unused. And yet, I think she walked out lighter.

I used to think love meant having all the right answers. But I realized that God really doesn’t require us to.

So that’s what I want to encourage you with today as you interact with others. Most of the time, the kind of love God is really looking for is just knowing how to be a friend.

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When Being Right Hurts

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Matthew 6:12 — And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

A year is a long time not to speak to someone.

At first, you don’t notice how long it’s been. The days pile up quietly, like snow on a roof, until one morning the weight could cave you in. That was me staring at the silent phone in my living room and thinking about the fight that started it all.

I had been determined to be right. Not “right” in the polite, let’s-agree-to-disagree kind of way. I mean one-hundred-percent, no-question-about-it, paint-it-on-a-billboard kind of right.

I told him so.

I told him exactly what I thought about the way he treated my sister and me compared to our half-brother. The words came hot and fast. Dad’s anger rose to meet mine, and somewhere in that heat, I crossed the line from honest to hurtful.

Instead of walking it back, I planted my feet. I dug my heels in like a stubborn mule. And he did the same.

So began the longest silence of my life. Christmas came. No call. My birthday. His birthday. Father’s Day. No call. Somewhere along the way, “being right” began to feel empty. It was like carrying a trophy no one wanted.

Then one day the phone rang.

It was my dad’s best friend.

“Tammi,” he said, “you’ve got to make things right with your dad. This tension between you two, it’s killing him.”

I didn’t hesitate. “No. He’s wrong. Flat wrong.”

There was a pause. Then he said the words that split my pride in two:

“Tammi, it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong when you walk up to his coffin.”

Those words took the air right out of me. In that moment, “being right” didn’t seem nearly as important as forgiveness. I wanted to be close to my dad again.

So that same day, I drove to his house. I told him I was sorry—for my pride, my sharp words, and my stubbornness. I asked for his forgiveness, and he gave it.

That day, I learned you can win an argument and still lose what matters most. God knew what He was talking about when He taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

That’s why we need both kinds of grace. We need the kind that flows to us and the kind that flows from us.

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Faith Around the Flagpole

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1 Timothy 4:12 –Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.

Coach Jeremy stood a step back from the circle of students at the flagpole, hands in his jacket pockets, fighting the coach’s reflex to lead.

He reminded himself what he had told faculty and parents: this was student-led, not a show for adults. His job this morning was to watch, to pray quietly, and to make sure the kids owned what they were doing.

Nash Wisner was one of the middle schoolers there. His shoulders were squared, eyes sweeping the crowd. Coach Jeremy knew the kid’s family and liked them. Nash had a steadiness to him and seemed to care about things that mattered.

By the time the clock edged toward 7:30, the crowd had swelled to two-hundred. The sound of them filled the small courtyard.

Between the songs, students like Nash Wisner stepped forward. They were awkward at first. Their words weren’t polished, but they were leading their peers. They prayed for friends who were struggling, for teachers carrying heavy loads, and for families needing strength.

Jeremy thought of how rare it was to see middle schoolers stand in front of peers and live their faith out-loud like this.

As their prayers came to a close and the school bell rang across the campus, the coach’s throat tightened as he looked in the eyes of these students. It was like each of them were given a jersey with their name on it.

Nash and other students knew they were agents of change, and today they were going to live like it.

Coach Jeremy stayed where he was for a moment under the flag flicking overhead. He knew on a day like today how easy it would be to sleep in or blend into the crowd without anyone noticing. But these students, along with others across the country, chose faith over comfort.

And as he followed them inside, he decided he would too.

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The Bible That Prayed

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Isaiah 55:11 — It is the same with My word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

She almost didn’t find it.

There was no spotlight on it. No labeled box. As she searched through the closet, she pulled a stack of old blankets down, one by one, until something hard and flat slid forward and landed in her lap.

It was her grandmother’s Bible.

The leather was the color of coffee left in the pot too long. It was cracked at the edges, soft in the middle. The spine sagged under strips of tape that had yellowed after decades.

She carried it to the kitchen table and sat there for a moment, just running her fingers over the cover. Then she opened it.

It was beautiful in the way only old things can be. The pages were soft as tissue. Corners were bent from years of folding.

And then the names.

There were dozens. Scrawled in the margins. Squeezed into the white space between verses. A cousin she hadn’t thought of in years. A neighbor who passed away before she was born. A church friend from decades ago.

Every name was written by a verse. A promise. It was like her grandmother had gone through the whole Bible and decided that no one she loved was going to leave this earth without being prayed for according to God’s Word.

She felt tears come before she even realized it. She took it home for safekeeping, and that night, she opened her own Bible.

It had clean pages and plenty of white space.

So, she started writing names and started praying.

And here’s the part that gets me—some Bibles are read through, while others are prayed through. If you believe prayer is powerful, imagine just how much more powerful it is to pray for people according to God’s word.

Because God’s word will not come back empty-handed.

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When God Sends a Friend

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Matthew 7:7 — Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

When Dad passed to glory, his beloved pup Billie Jo lost her reason for getting up in the morning.

She’d been his partner in crime in every conceivable way. Every morning, she’d ride shotgun for the coffee run. Every evening, she’d curl herself up into the crook of his knees.

After he was gone, she wasn’t interested in anything—or anyone—else. Our dogs tried, bless their hearts, to pull her into a game or two. She’d just turn her head away. She ate just enough to keep living, and her eyes stayed fixed on the door, like maybe she was waiting for him to walk back through.

I prayed for her one night while rinsing dishes. It was just a quiet, “Lord, help her find someone to love again.”

A few days later, Steve Holland—our funeral director—came by. Steve is the sort of man who can step into a room where grief is thick as blazes and somehow make it breathable. He stepped in a few days before the service, wearing that warm, steady smile of his.

Billie Jo was lying in the corner when Steve came in. She lifted her head, studied him for half a second, and then… well, she crossed the room and pressed her head into his chest. Steve wrapped his arms around her without missing a beat. It was like they’d both been handed exactly what they needed.

By the end of the week, she had a new home at Holland Funeral Home. Steve calls her “Boo” now, and she’s earned her place as a full-time comforter of the brokenhearted. She sits quietly beside those who can’t find words, reminding them they’re not alone.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. God has a way of taking small prayers and giving them big answers. And I have to wonder, how many miracles do we miss because we never think to ask?

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Tell Your Heart to Beat Again

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Psalms 73:26 – My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.

They tell me the smell of an operating room stays with you.

Cold. Sharp. Like steel and lemon.

Randy Phillips wasn’t a surgeon. He was a pastor and a singer in the band Phillips, Craig & Dean. But there he was, watching a friend perform open-heart surgery in an Ohio hospital. The lights were white-hot, the room too quiet except for the patient’s heart monitor, and every movement felt like it had been rehearsed a thousand times.

The repair was finished. The surgeon massaged the heart gently, coaxing it to life.

Nothing.

He tried again. Still nothing. That silence was deafening, like the whole room was holding its breath.

Then the surgeon did something strange. He pulled off his mask, bent down close to the patient’s ear, and said in the kind of voice you’d use to redirect a scared child.

“Mrs. Johnson, this is your surgeon. The operation went perfectly. Your heart has been repaired. Now tell your heart to beat again.”

And it did.

That moment followed Randy home to Nashville. It wouldn’t let him go. So, he sat down with Bernie Herms and Matthew West, and they turned a hospital whisper into a song. Phillips, Craig & Dean first recorded “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again” for their Breathe In album.

Years later, Danny Gokey heard it. He was carrying his own grief, and the song felt like it had been written just for him. He recorded his version in 2014, and by 2016 it was climbing the charts. But the real story was in the people writing letters and sending messages back—widows, widowers, and others who had lost children, jobs, health, and hope.

They’d play the song on repeat. Some said it got them out of bed in the morning. Some said it kept them from giving up entirely.

And I think about that surgeon’s whisper. Sometimes God works the same way—not with a shout or a lightning bolt, but with a quiet nudge in your ear. A reminder that there is still life left in you. That it’s time to breathe.

And maybe that’s where you are right now. Maybe the room feels cold and the silence is heavy. But the Surgeon hasn’t left. He’s leaning in close.

And He’s telling your heart to beat again.

 

 

Lyrics

You’re shattered like you’ve never been before
The life you knew in a thousand pieces on the floor
And words fall short in times like these
When this world drives you to your knees
You think you’re never gonna get back
To the you that used to be

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Beginning, just let that word wash over you
It’s alright now, love’s healing hands have pulled you through
So get back up, take step one
Leave the darkness, feel the sun
‘Cause your story’s far from over
And your journey’s just begun

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Let every heartbreak, and every scar
Be a picture that reminds you
Who has carried you this far
‘Cause love sees farther than you ever could
In this moment, heaven’s working
Everything for your good

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday’s a closing door
You don’t live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you’ve been
And tell your heart to beat again

Your heart to beat again
Beat again

Oh
So tell your heart to beat again

Songwriters: Bernie Herms / Randy Phillips / Matthew Joseph West

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Trusting God on the Road Ahead

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Psalms 37:23 – The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.

You’d be surprised how much thinking a man can get done behind the wheel of a sausage delivery truck.

All day long, rumbling across southeast Texas, I’d pass pine trees, small-town diners, and gas stations that sold boiled peanuts. I’d be wondering things like, “What’s next?” and “Am I out of my mind?”

It’s not the kind of pondering that comes with a side of confidence. No, this was the “Did I just ruin my life?” kind. I had quit my youth pastor job, sold half of what I owned, and crammed my wife and three kids into a single-wide trailer so I could haul my guitar around Texas and sing songs I’d written.

Nobody in Buna, Texas, where I’m from, had ever called that a solid business plan.

And truth be told, I didn’t know how to be a “professional musician.” I only knew I had to step out in faith.

I started with two rules for writing songs. Rule one: they had to line up with Scripture—no exceptions. If God didn’t say it, I didn’t want to sing it. Rule two: the songs had to be honest. If I hadn’t lived it, I couldn’t write it.

That meant some songs had to wait their turn, because there are lessons you can’t write until you’ve bled through it yourself.

Night after night, I’d play to small crowds in church gyms and fellowship halls. Sometimes folks would come up after and say, “That song… it’s like you knew what I was going through.” And I’d think, “Friend, you don’t know how much I needed to hear it too.”

Years later, my life looks different—bigger venues, more miles, more people. But the passion and the drive haven’t changed a lick from those sausage truck days.

Turns out, God doesn’t need us to see the whole road before we start driving.

He just asks us to be faithful where we are. So, choose to be faithful with what God has given you. Somewhere down the line, you’ll look back and realize—He’s been faithful the whole way.

— Micah Tyler

 

Lyrics:

You know I really tried so hard
But I couldn’t make the waters part
Didn’t matter how many times that I had said it
You know I couldn’t save myself
It had to be someone else
And there’s only one who’s getting all of the credit
God did it

Who put the breath in my lungs
Who calls us daughters and sons
All praise goes to just one
God did it, God did it
Who raised me up from that grave
Who’s always making a way
Let me hear the whole church say
God did it, God did it

You can blame it on amazing grace
I could count about a million ways
That I’m not who I was and I don’t regret it
And now you know I’m walking free
Since heaven got a hold of me
It’s the moment my life changed
How could I forget it
God did it

To God be the glory
To God be the glory
To God be the glory
For all He has done
New mercy each morning
Rewriting my story
To God be the glory
For all He has done

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Counting on God a Latte

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Isaiah 41:10 – Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

It was just spilled coffee.

Just a brown splash stain on a dress that wasn’t new and wasn’t even my favorite. But there I stood, blinking fast, tears mixing with the moisture from my coffee cup that’s now staining the fabric.

It wasn’t the coffee that got to me. It was that this was “one more thing.”

These days, I’ve turned into a clumsy, uncoordinated mess. I trip over nothing. I drop phones, books, and water bottles. Cups seem to leap from my hands before I even know I’ve lost my grip.

I read once that older folks become more prone to this. Something about damaged nerve endings that don’t send the right messages to the brain.

The balance and coordination that once happened without thinking now require effort.

I used to be steady. Steady as she goes. I could tie my shoes without leaning against anything. I could walk across the room without wondering if the floor would feel different under my feet.

My feet have always been my foundation. Without a good foundation, nothing else works the way it should.

And yet… the coffee in my lap reminded me of my only real foundation. My only steady thing. Jesus.

I wish aging didn’t come with so many humbling reminders of what I can’t do anymore. But maybe those reminders aren’t the worst thing. Maybe they’re the reason I keep leaning harder on Him.

I know someday I’ll walk without effort again. One day I’ll get a new body in Heaven, one with the balance of an Olympic gymnast. My steps will be sure, and my hands will hold things without slipping.

Until then, I’ll keep sipping my coffee and holding on to the One who never lets me down. And I invite you to, too.

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God’s Goodness All Around

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John 15:11 — I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!

When I turned eight, my mom hosted a sleepover that, to my little heart, felt like the event of the year.

We didn’t have decorations or matching pajamas or a color-coded plan. What we had was a popcorn bowl the size of a sink and sleeping bags piled so high you couldn’t even see the carpet.

We stayed up way too late giggling and ate mountains of popcorn. Someone tried to braid hair. Someone else turned a flashlight into a spotlight and declared it was time for a talent show—one that ended in thunderous applause and absolutely zero talent.

I laughed so hard my face hurt.

And my mom? She stayed in the background, quietly watching like we were her favorite show… one she already knew by heart but still wanted to rewatch.

She kept the popcorn coming, refolded blankets we knocked over, and never once told us to quiet down. Not even when we absolutely should have. She just wanted us to enjoy it.

It’s one of my favorite memories. Not because it was extravagant, but because it wasn’t. It was simple and full. Joyful and messy. It’s the kind of memory that sinks deep into your bones and keeps resurfacing when you need it most.

Back then, I didn’t have the words for it. But I see it clearly now: my mom wasn’t just throwing a party. She was giving us a place to belong. A space to be kids.

Looking back, I think God does that too.

He shows up in rooms we almost overlook, in laughter that bubbles up unexpectedly, and in the people who keep refilling our bowls, folding our blankets, and loving us without making a fuss.

So, if He has felt far away lately, do not wait for it to look like something grand. It might already be here.

You can see His goodness all around. It is there in the presence of someone who loves you, the noise of good company, or the touch of sticky hands passing a bowl of popcorn.

God’s goodness is not distant. He is near.

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