Believers Sword Grace for Today: Trusting God One Day at a Time
God does not give us every answer about tomorrow, but he gives us his presence and enough grace to trust him today.
- anxiety
- trust
- peace
- surrender
- faith
Bible Sermons and Messages
Messages to read and study, with the passage and audio or video where available.
Start with the Bible passage, then use these messages as a companion to your reading. Read our editorial policy or learn to study with the app.
He Called Him Brother
Jesus asked a frightened man named Ananias to visit the man who had come to put Christians in prison. The first word Ananias spoke to him was brother, and it shows how Jesus turns enemies into family.
- acts
- fear
- forgiveness
- welcome
- church family
The Enemy Who Stopped
An expert in God's law asked Jesus who counted as his neighbour, hoping for a short list. Jesus told a story where two religious men walked past a beaten traveller and a hated outsider stopped to save him, then asked a better question: who acted like a neighbour?
- luke
- parables
- good samaritan
- neighbour
- mercy
- love your enemies
- jesus
Let Him Wash Your Feet
The night before he died, Jesus knelt and washed his friends' dirty feet, a job for the lowest servant, and Peter tried to say no. Jesus told him that only people who let Jesus wash them can belong to him, and then told them all to serve each other the same way.
- john
- jesus serves
- humility
- cleansing
- forgiveness
- serving others
- the cross
The Day They Were Told to Stop Crying
When the people of Jerusalem heard God's law read aloud, they saw how badly they had broken it, and they cried. Their leaders told them to go home, eat a feast, and share food with anyone who had none, because God's joy, not their own sadness, was the safe, strong place they could stand in.
- joy
- repentance
- forgiveness
- generosity
- nehemiah
- jesus
He Invited Himself Over
Zacchaeus was a rich tax collector who had cheated his own neighbours, and he climbed a tree just to get a look at Jesus. Jesus stopped, called him by name, and invited himself to his house before Zacchaeus had changed anything, and the change came after the welcome.
- grace
- jesus seeks the lost
- tax collectors
- change
- welcome
- luke
The Portion Nobody Can Take
Jesus came to Martha's house, and she worked hard to feed him while her sister Mary sat and listened to him. When Martha complained, Jesus did not call her work bad. He said Mary had chosen the one thing that matters most, time with him, and that nobody would take it from her.
- listening
- worry
- busyness
- priorities
- discipleship
- luke
Not One More Day
Jesus healed a woman who had not stood up straight in eighteen years, on the one day of the week set aside for rest. When the man in charge said people should come back on a work day, Jesus showed that God made that day for setting people free.
- sabbath
- rest
- freedom
- healing
- worth
- luke
The Easier Thing to Say
Four friends made a hole in a roof and lowered a man who could not walk, right in front of Jesus. Jesus told him his sins were forgiven, which nobody could see, then told him to walk home, which everybody could see, to prove the first thing was true.
- forgiveness
- authority of jesus
- healing
- friendship
- faith
- mark
More Afraid After the Storm
Israel got trapped between the sea and the army chasing them, with no way to save themselves. God opened a path through the water, and afterwards they feared him instead of the army, a picture of how Jesus rescues people who cannot rescue themselves.
- fear
- rescue
- salvation
- fear of the lord
- exodus
- jesus
The Same Question Twice
Jesus asked two of his closest friends and a blind beggar the very same question, and their answers were nothing alike. The beggar knew he needed mercy, and he shows us how to come to Jesus.
- mercy
- prayer
- faith
- following jesus
- mark
The Deed in the Clay Jar
While an army was breaking into Jerusalem, God told Jeremiah to spend real silver on a field he could not even reach, and to file the paperwork in a clay jar. It was not an investment. It was God putting money down on a promise that would take seventy years to arrive.
- promises
- hope
- obedience
- waiting
- new covenant
- jeremiah
She Was Not the Only Plan
A queen was asked to risk her life to save her people, and the man asking told her straight out that the rescue did not depend on her. Help was coming either way. That is the strangest encouragement in the Bible, and it is the reason she went.
- esther
- courage
- fear
- hidden work of god
- jesus
He Sent the Army Home
Gideon was hiding from raiders when God called him a mighty warrior. Then God said his army of thirty-two thousand was too big and sent all but three hundred home, so that nobody afterwards could say Israel had saved itself.
- judges
- weakness
- doubt
- faith
- jesus
Charge It to My Account
A slave ran away from his owner, met Paul in prison, and became a Christian. Paul sent him home with a short letter asking the owner to welcome him as a brother, and offering to pay out of his own pocket for anything the man had stolen.
- philemon
- forgiveness
- debt
- reconciliation
- the cross
The Name the Story Left Out
A widow came home to Bethlehem with nothing, and Israel's law said her nearest relative had to buy the family out of ruin. The man with the first right agreed, until he heard the full price. The Bible records his refusal and never records his name.
- ruth
- redemption
- cost
- jesus
- outsiders
They Ate First
A starving city was surrounded by an army that had already fled at twilight, and nobody inside the walls knew. The four men who found the empty camp were the ones shut out of the city, and they ate and hid the plunder before they told anyone.
- good news
- outsiders
- grace
- telling others
- 2 kings
- elisha
The Message Their Father Never Sent
After their father's funeral, Joseph's brothers sent him a message saying their father had ordered him to forgive them. Genesis never records their father saying it. Joseph had been feeding them for seventeen years, and they still expected him to strike.
- genesis
- forgiveness
- guilt
- jesus
The Sword Was Already Drawn
Outside the first city he had to capture, Joshua met a man holding a drawn sword and asked the obvious question — friend or enemy? The man refused both, called himself the commander of God's army, and told Joshua to take off his shoes.
- joshua
- obedience
- authority
- holiness
Nobody Said He Was Innocent
Zechariah watched a trial where the accused was guilty and everybody knew it. God did not argue the evidence. He told the servants to take the dirty clothes off the man and bring clean ones, and then promised someone who would deal with the dirt for good.
- zechariah
- guilt
- forgiveness
- the cross
The Man They Threw Out
A man born blind was healed, and when he would not change his story about who did it, the leaders threw him out of the community. Jesus heard what happened, went and found him, and told him who he was.
- john
- suffering
- honesty
- belonging
- jesus
All She Had to Live On
A widow with almost nothing gave more than every rich person in the temple courtyard. Read the lines on either side of that story and it is not a fundraising talk. It is an accusation, and a picture of what Jesus was about to do himself.
- mark
- money
- justice
- the cross
Nobody Walked Out
Two men were beaten and locked in a Roman jail for costing someone money. When the walls shook and the doors swung open, they did not run, and the reason they stayed is what saved the life of the man who had locked them in.
- acts
- freedom
- enemies
- prison
The Priest Who Sat Down
Israel's priests worked standing up, every day, because the job was never done. The tent they worked in did not even have a chair in it. Hebrews says Jesus made one sacrifice and then sat down, and that one movement is the difference between a debt paid off and a debt you top up forever.
- hebrews
- the cross
- rest
- forgiveness
The Journey Is Too Great for You
Elijah had just watched God answer him with fire in front of a whole nation. Days later he sat under a desert bush and asked God to let him die. What came next was not a telling-off and not another miracle show, and the last thing God told him was that he had been wrong about being alone.
- 1 kings
- despair
- rest
- endurance
The Miracle That Stopped Halfway
In Ezekiel's vision the bones pull together, grow muscle and skin, and stay dead. God stops the miracle halfway on purpose, and the gap he leaves is the difference between a life that has been tidied up and a life that is actually alive.
- ezekiel
- hope
- resurrection
- holy spirit
He Paid for What Was Already His
A prophet named Hosea was ordered to go and love the wife who had left him, and to hand over money to get her back — money for a woman who was already his. What he paid, and what he asked of her the moment he had her, is one of the plainest pictures in the Bible of how God treats people who walk away.
- hosea
- redemption
- love
- waiting
The Goat That Walked Away
Once a year Israel's high priest put both hands on a living goat, said out loud everything the nation had done wrong, and sent it into the desert. Nobody went to fetch it. That second goat is the half of forgiveness most of us skip.
- leviticus
- forgiveness
- the cross
- atonement
He Wanted a Bigger Cure
An enemy army commander with a skin disease came to Israel with a fortune to pay for a cure. He was told to go and wash in a small river, seven times, and he nearly went home sick because the offer was too cheap and too plain.
- 2 kings
- healing
- humility
- grace
The Redeemer Who Said No
A foreign widow with nothing needed a relative to buy her family's land and take her in. The relative with the strongest claim said no, because it would cost him his own future. The man who paid instead ended up in the family line of Jesus.
- ruth
- redemption
- belonging
- cost
We Had Hoped
On the day Jesus rose from the dead, two of his followers were walking away from the city, telling a stranger that they used to have hope. The stranger was Jesus. Instead of showing them his face, he took them through the whole Bible first.
- luke
- hope
- disappointment
- resurrection
Where Is the Lamb?
Abraham told his son that God would provide a lamb. What God provided was a ram. The difference is right there in the Hebrew, and it leaves the promise open for a very long time.
- genesis
- the cross
- promise
- substitution
The Snake They Had to Look At
Israel was dying of snakebites and asked God to remove the snakes. He left them there and told Moses to raise a bronze snake on a pole, so that anyone who looked at it would live. Jesus later said that pole was about him.
- numbers
- the cross
- faith
- healing
The Bread That Would Not Keep
Israel was given exactly one day's food at a time, and whatever they saved went bad by morning. That rule was not cruelty, it was training, and Jesus later said the whole arrangement had been pointing at him.
- exodus
- provision
- trust
- jesus
The Name She Gave God
Hagar was owned, used, and driven out, and when she ran into the desert with nowhere to go, God came and found her. She answered by giving him a name nobody had used before — the God who sees me.
- genesis
- hagar
- being seen
- suffering
Strike the Rock I Am Standing On
Israel ran out of water in the desert and took God to court over it. His answer was not a lecture. He told Moses to raise the same staff that had punished Egypt, aim it at a rock, and strike — and he said he would be standing on that rock himself.
- exodus
- thirst
- judgment
- christ
Still Lame at the King's Table
A king sent servants to find a surviving grandson of the family that wanted him dead — not to kill him, but to give him a seat at dinner every night for the rest of his life. The reason had nothing to do with the man they found, and the story never heals his legs.
- 2 samuel
- grace
- welcome
- promise
The Blessing Came With a Limp
Jacob spent his life taking what was not his, until a stranger wrestled him in the dark, knocked his hip out of joint and asked him his name. Saying that name out loud was the first honest thing he had done, and the blessing he finally received left him limping for the rest of his life.
- genesis
- confession
- weakness
- blessing
The Prayer That Came Back to Him
Boaz prayed that God would keep Ruth safe under his wings. Weeks later she asked Boaz to cover her with the edge of his own coat, using the very same Hebrew word, and saying yes meant paying for her out of his own pocket.
- ruth
- redemption
- cost
- outsiders
She Touched His Coat
A woman who had bled for twelve years pushed through a crowd to touch Jesus' coat. Under the law she lived by, her touch should have made him unclean — instead his wholeness travelled to her, and he stopped the crowd to say so out loud.
- mark
- healing
- shame
- faith
Two Men Went Up to Pray
Jesus told a story about two men praying in the same building. The famous line — God, be merciful to me, a sinner — uses a word that means more than mercy, and only one of the two men went home right with God.
- luke
- prayer
- grace
- humility
Even If He Does Not
Everyone remembers that God saved three men from a furnace. The sentence they said before the fire matters more. They would not bow even if no rescue came, and that is the one thing a king with a furnace could not answer.
- daniel
- courage
- suffering
- worship
He Ran Because He Knew
Everyone remembers the big fish. The book ends somewhere else — with a prophet sitting on a hill in the heat, angry, waiting to see if a city he hated would be destroyed after all. God asks him a question, and the book stops before he answers.
- jonah
- mercy
- enemies
- anger
The Second Fire
John uses the word for a charcoal fire only twice, and both times Peter is standing at it. What happens at the second fire is not a telling-off, and it is not only forgiveness. Peter is handed work.
- john
- failure
- forgiveness
- peter
The Water Arrived Warm
Lukewarm gets preached as half-hearted, but Revelation 3 has Christ wishing a church were cold, which no version of that reading can explain. The letter is not about intensity. It is about a congregation that needed nothing, and the Christ left standing outside the building he owns.
- revelation
- self-sufficiency
- repentance
- church
The Year the Throne Emptied
Isaiah 6 gets quoted at send-off services for four words in the middle of it. Read whole, it dates a vision to a funeral, hands the prophet the woe he had been spending on everybody else, and commissions him to be ignored.
- isaiah
- holiness
- atonement
- calling
Jesus Wept
He cried at a grave he was about to open, minutes from the miracle. Four things John refuses to smooth over about grief, delay, and the God who arrives late on purpose.
- john
- grief
- lament
- hope
A Door in Your Hand
The Greek word for shield in Ephesians 6 means door. It names the four-foot infantry shield built to lock into a line, which changes both what the flaming arrows are for and who the shield was ever meant to cover.
- ephesians
- faith
- spiritual warfare
- church
Songs of Ascent · Part 4
Arriving Together
Psalm 133 describes unity through the pictures of precious oil and refreshing dew. It invites us to receive shared life as a blessing and practise it with care.
- psalms
- unity
- church
- relationships
Songs of Ascent · Part 3
Out of the Depths
Psalm 130 moves from a cry for help to forgiveness and hope for a whole people. Waiting does not require a calm mood; it has someone trustworthy to turn towards.
- psalms
- forgiveness
- waiting
- hope
Songs of Ascent · Part 2
Not From the Hills
Psalm 121 points beyond the hills to the God who made them. Its repeated promise of care helps us pray without pretending that faith removes every danger.
- psalms
- trust
- care
- prayer
He Was Asleep
The disciples wake Jesus during a storm and question his care. He stills the sea, then asks about their fear and faith. The story leaves them asking who he is.
- mark
- jesus
- fear
- prayer
Songs of Ascent · Part 1
Where the Climb Starts
Psalm 120 begins with a cry for help among people who speak falsely and reject peace. It gives us words for prayer before a difficult situation has changed.
- psalms
- prayer
- peace
- honesty