It’s time to stop crying in our soup about the consumeristic commercializationof Christmas. Instead of bashing the culture for making Black Friday bigger than Thanksgiving, let’ do something different this year. Let’s do Advent. Instead of quibbling over saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” let’s recover what it means to celebrate Holy Days. Instead of our cheesy slogansabout the “reason for the season,” let’s practice a sacred season for the sake of the re...

In Wilderness, J. D. Walt takes us deep into the challenging story of the Israelites’ journey from the Red Sea into the wilderness of crisis and challenge. Here we witness the struggle to trust God in the midst of chaotic circumstances. Cloud by day. Fire by night. Manna in the morning. Quail in the evening. Water from the rock and covenant on the mountain.As the journey unfolds, we experience tremendous correlations between the cataclysmic crisis of Covid-19 and the classic Exodus...

Find transformation not in more religious activity but by deeper spiritual awakening through daily immersion in ScriptureWhile much of the New Testament concerns itself with the general spread of the gospel, James offers us something of an advanced course in discipleship. You will move beyond education and knowing things about Jesus to spiritual awakening and transformation through daily immersion in Scripture. J.D. Walt encourages reading the Bible with others and...

The day of Pentecost is not coming sometime in the future. Nor is it a one-and-done event that happened in the past. The day of Pentecost came, is come, and is now here. In fact, Pentecost is an eternal day—it inaugurated the Age of the Holy Spirit. Once that day came, it never stopped coming. We either wake up into that day or we slide into another intervening day of slumber.In Still Day One, J. D. Walt calls the church to wake up to that new day afresh. It is the day after the da...

As we impress the Word of God on our hearts, talk about it along the way, write it on our gates and our doorpost, bind it to our wrist, text it to our friends, anchor in with our families, the Word does the work. Our part is not passive. It’s just not primary.Only one kingdom will prevail—the kingdom of Jesus—and it is hovering just over the present state of chaos in our world, already breaking in through the tiniest seeds that will become—and indeed are becoming—the tallest trees....

In What Happens in Corinth, J. D. Walt digs in to the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul was writing to a fledgling community of about 150 people in a city of 150,000. And these 150 believers were a hot mess. Paul doesn’t spend any time wishing for a better church; he works with what God gave him. He knows it only takes a few truly consecrated souls to turn the world upside down.Though what happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, what happened in Corinth has reached the...

The Psalms are songs, written not for reading but singing. What if we could sing them again, claiming the Psalms as the soundtrack of our lives? In this forty-day devotional guide, J. D. Walt shows us a way.Each daily entry begins with a psalm followed by a short reflection; not a list of things to do, but a simple plan to invite the Holy Spirit to weave melody and message into your day. And, yes, we will provide melodies at seedbed.com/soundtrack for each day so you can sing along...

No matter how far along on the journey, you never progress beyond this core aspiration: I want to know Christ. It is ever in front of us. It can take time to get there; and be even more challenging to stay there. So why would we make such a declaration? Only one reason—Jesus has already made this kind of declaration toward us. This is the invitation. Paul believed because Jesus had attained to the resurrection of the dead in this life, that it was somehow possible for him and us—to attain ...

For the followers of Jesus, the new year begins with Advent. And what a beginning it is as we start by looking to the very end of the age and the second coming of Christ. Advent issues a clarion call to wake from our slumber, realign life, and get in step with the Holy Spirit.The Christian New Year unfolds a journey from the second coming all the way to Bethlehem and the first coming, setting the stage for the year ahead. Gather with family, friends, and neighbors and take the jour...

The Awakened Life is an invitation for a long-haul journey. It is an invitation to the people of God to band together and sow for a great awakening. Not a passing revival or a spiritual renewal or a refreshing, but a full-scale awakening. It’s time for us to recognize that as essential as our institutions of governing, education, and healing are to our world, they lack, even combined, the capacity to provide for the desperate needs all around us. Only a broad-scale, comprehensive awakening...

Who are these people and what did they say? This Daily Text series begins in the celebrated eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews. “People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own” (Heb. 11:14).J. D. Walt leads readers all the way back to Genesis, examining the storied lives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. From there the journey jumps to the book of Exodus, which takes us from the shoreline of the Nile River i...

A disciple of Jesus must become a student of Jesus in every conceivable fashion. As we are baptized into his death, we are raised into his life. As we are raised into his life, we are filled with his Spirit. As we are fi lled with his Spirit, we learn to think aft er his thoughts and to discern his mind to do the stuff of his work.In the Gospels, we see what it looks like when the Holy Spirit perfectly and completely inhabits, possesses, and empowers a human being in the midst of t...