Draw Near

Hey, friend. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here — whether you're listening from your kitchen while the coffee's brewing, or maybe you snuck away for five quiet minutes before the day picks up. However you've found your way here, I want you to know: this time is for you.

We're starting something together today. For the next few weeks, leading all the way to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, we're going to walk through Lent as a community — slowly, intentionally, and with open hands. And we're starting with one simple word: draw near.

James 4:8 says, "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." It sounds almost too simple, doesn't it? Like there must be more steps. Like you need to have your quiet time perfectly organized, your prayer journal up to date, or your spiritual life in better order first. We're so good at telling ourselves not yet.

But Lent invites us into a different posture. It says: come now. Come as you are.

Lent is a season of intentional drawing near — of clearing away the noise and the distractions to say, Jesus, I want to be close to You. Not just close in a churchy, once-a-week way. But close the way a friend is close.

These next few weeks before Holy Week are a gift. They're an invitation to travel with Jesus — to walk alongside Him as He moves toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward the greatest act of love the world has ever known. And as we walk with Him, I believe we'll find ourselves changed.

So here's my question for you today: what does drawing near look like in your actual, real, ordinary life? Small. Consistent. Faithful. That's how we draw near.

Good morning, friend. Take a breath. You made it to Monday, and I'm so glad you carved out this time. Let's begin.

Have you ever been truly, desperately thirsty? Not just I'd like a glass of water thirsty — but bone-dry, parched thirsty? That kind of thirst has a way of blocking out everything else.

That's the image the Psalmist uses in Psalm 42. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, my God. There's something raw and honest about that verse. It sounds like someone who has gone too long without what their soul truly needs — and they know it.

I think a lot of us walk around with that kind of soul thirst and we don't even realize it. We're filling up on so many other things — busyness, entertainment, scrolling — and yet there's this quiet ache underneath it all.

Lent is a season of honest naming. Of saying: I have been looking in the wrong places. My soul is thirsty, and only You can satisfy it. Jesus said in John 7:37, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink." He knew we'd be thirsty. He offers Himself as the answer.

Letting go is hard. Whether it's letting go of control, of comfort, of our own agendas — our hands have a way of gripping very tightly to the things that feel safe.

Jesus says in Luke 9: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me. For us in our everyday lives, that doesn't usually mean dramatic sacrifice. More often, it looks quiet. It looks like loosening your grip on something you've been holding too tightly.

Lent has traditionally been a season of fasting — of giving something up. And there's wisdom in that practice. When we give something up, we create space. Space that we can intentionally fill with more of Jesus. But fasting isn't just about food. We can fast from comparison. From criticism. From the need to have the last word.

Letting go is actually an act of trust. It says: I believe Your hands are safer than mine.

To be hidden with Christ in God means that your truest, deepest self is held in the most secure place in the universe. You are tucked into the heart of God Himself.

You are not defined by what others see. You are not defined by your productivity, your appearance, your roles, or your mistakes. Your real life is carried by Christ.

There's such freedom in that, if we let ourselves receive it. We don't have to prove ourselves. We don't have to perform. During Lent, there's a countercultural invitation to do our devotional life quietly. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 6 — praying in secret, fasting without announcing it. Not because God doesn't want others to see His work — but because He wants the audience of your heart to be Him.

We all know this story. Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha. Martha is in the kitchen doing all the things. Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet, just… listening. And Jesus says: "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things. But few things are needed — or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better."

Martha gets a bad reputation and I think she deserves some grace — somebody had to make the food. Service is holy. But Jesus is pointing to something important: there is a way of being so busy for Jesus that we forget to simply be with Jesus.

Where are you on that spectrum today? Are you running so fast, giving so much, that you can't remember the last time you simply sat — quiet, unhurried — at the feet of Jesus?

Lent is your permission to slow down. You don't have to earn your place at His table. You just have to come and sit.

In Mark 14, a woman comes carrying an alabaster jar of expensive perfume — worth a year's wages — and she breaks it open and pours the entire thing over Jesus' head. The room erupts. "Why this waste?"

But Jesus silences them: "She has done a beautiful thing to me… Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."

She gave extravagantly. She gave wastefully, by the world's standards. She didn't give from her leftovers — she broke the whole jar. And she didn't do it to be seen. She did it because she loved Him.

This Lent, what would it look like to give God something extravagant? Not necessarily money — maybe your time, your vulnerability, your willingness to go deeper. What is your alabaster jar? Are you willing to break it open?

Jesus says: "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest… and you will find rest for your souls." Rest for your souls. Not just rest for your body — though that matters too — but the deep, settling, it-is-well kind of rest that can only come from Jesus.

We live in a world that glorifies being busy. Rest feels lazy. Stillness feels unproductive. But God built rest into the very fabric of creation. Lent isn't only about stripping away — it's also about receiving. Receive rest today as a gift from God.

Jesus makes a stunning claim in John 6: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

There's something in us that is always looking for the next thing that will finally satisfy. The next accomplishment, the next relationship, the next season when things will feel better. We're all chasing a kind of bread that keeps running out.

Jesus says: I am the bread that doesn't run out. But notice the verb He uses — whoever comes to me. Coming. It's an active, ongoing thing. We come daily. We come again and again, in every season, with every need. What are you hungry for today, at the deepest level?

A woman loses one coin — one of ten. She doesn't shrug and say nine out of ten isn't bad. She lights a lamp. She sweeps the whole house. She searches carefully until she finds it. And when she does? She throws a party.

This is the picture Jesus paints of how God feels about you. He doesn't settle for nine out of ten. He comes after the one. He comes after you.

You are that coin. On the days you feel invisible, forgotten, not enough — God is lighting a lamp and sweeping the corners of the world to be close to you. And when you turn toward Him, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God — over one person. Over you. Let that sink in today.

Not after we got it together. Not once we were cleaned up. While. We. Were. Still. Sinners.

I think a lot of us come to God with this quiet, underlying belief that we need to earn our way in. We apologize too much in prayer — not out of genuine repentance, but because we're afraid He might not want to hear from us. We hide our struggles. We bring our best version to church and leave the real version in the car.

But the gospel says: He already knows the real version. And He came anyway. He loved you when you were at your worst. The cross wasn't the reward for your goodness — it was the gift for your brokenness.

You don't have to arrive with everything in order. Come with the hard conversation. Come with the thing you're ashamed of. Come with your doubt. Just come. He is not surprised by any of it.

Paul says we carry the treasure of the gospel in jars of clay. In the ancient world, clay jars were ordinary, fragile, common. And Paul says — that's on purpose. God placed His extraordinary treasure in our very ordinary, breakable selves so that it's clear the power comes from Him, not from us.

Your weakness is not a problem God is working around. It is the very place where His strength is most visible.

What would it look like to bring your brokenness to Jesus today? Not hide it. Not apologize for it. Let Him be the treasure that shines through it. Cracked jars let light through.

The woman at the well comes to draw water at noon — the heat of the day, when no one else was around. She had a complicated past, and she knew it. And Jesus is sitting there. He not only speaks to her, He offers her something extraordinary: living water.

Jesus knows everything about her. Every relationship that fell apart. Every choice she regrets. Every reason she came alone at noon. And He doesn't lead with any of that. He leads with the gift.

Friend, you may come to Jesus carrying a lot. Come anyway. He already knows. And He offers you the same living water — a spring inside you, welling up to eternal life.

Cast. That's an active word. It's not mention your anxiety, or occasionally acknowledge your worry. Cast. Like you're throwing something with your whole body. Like you really want it to leave your hands.

But most of us don't cast — we cling. We carry. We worry privately, especially the things that feel too small to bring to God. He has bigger things to deal with. But Scripture says He cares for you — not just your big crises. Your specific, personal, daily worries.

What are you carrying today? God is not tired of hearing it. He's not impatient with your anxiety. He invites you to throw it at Him — all of it — because He can hold what you can't.

The context of this psalm is actually chaos. Nations are in uproar. Kingdoms are falling. And in the middle of all of that, God says: Be still.

Stillness isn't the absence of problems. It's the presence of trust. It's choosing, in the middle of your own personal uproar, to stop and say: You are God. You are in control. And I am not.

The more we practice being still before God, the more quickly we can find our way back to peace even in the middle of storms. Today, be still. Let your soul remember what it knows: He is God. He is good. He is with you.

Luke 9:51 is one of the most quietly powerful verses in all of Scripture. Resolutely. He set His face. He knew what Jerusalem meant — betrayal, suffering, the cross. And He didn't turn back. He walked toward it.

This is not a resigned march. This is a deliberate, willing movement toward the hardest thing imaginable — done out of love. Love for you. Love for me. Love for every person who would ever need a Savior.

As we enter these final days before Holy Week, I want us to walk with Jesus on this road. Not rushing past it. Not jumping straight to Easter. Letting ourselves sit with the weight of what He chose to do — for us.

Jesus is in the garden, hours before His arrest. He falls to His knees and prays: "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me." He asked for a way out. Let that settle for a moment. Jesus — fully God and fully human — knelt in the dark and asked His Father if there was another way.

And then: "Yet not my will, but yours be done." Those seven words are the hinge on which all of redemption turns.

This is the prayer of surrender. It means trusting that God's plan — even when it leads through pain — is good. Jesus shows us that surrender isn't weakness. It is the most courageous act of trust in all of history.

Is there something in your life right now where you're asking God to take the cup away — and He hasn't? Can you, in your own garden, whisper: not my will, but Yours?

As Jesus carries His cross through Jerusalem, among the crowd are women who were mourning for Him. Later, while most of the disciples had fled, the women were still there — "watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs."

They followed. They stayed. They didn't run.

These women couldn't stop what was happening. They couldn't fix it. They could only show up and bear witness — with broken hearts and faithful feet. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply stay. Stay in the hard moment. Stay with someone who is suffering.

Faithfulness is never wasted. And Jesus honored them — it was to the women that He first appeared on resurrection morning.

In Gethsemane, while Jesus prayed, He asked His disciples to keep watch with Him. He came back and found them asleep. Three times. And His words are gentle, even then: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

He knew. He wasn't angry — He understood. Even in His greatest hour of need, He extended grace to those who failed to stay awake.

How often does that describe us? Our intentions are real. We want to pray. We want to be close to God. But our busyness and distraction keep pulling us toward sleep.

We are almost at Holy Week. Don't fall asleep now. What does it mean for you to keep watch in these final days?

The night before He died, Jesus gathered His friends around a table and shared a meal. He took bread, broke it, and said, "This is my body, given for you." He took a cup: "This is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you."

For you. He said it twice.

At that table there was a betrayer. There were men who would deny Him and abandon Him within hours. And Jesus washed their feet and broke bread with them anyway. This is grace at its most extreme — not offered to the deserving, but to the human, the failing, the frightened.

Whenever we take communion, we are sitting at that same table. We are saying: I receive what you did for me. For me.

"It is finished." Three words in English. One word in the original Greek: Tetelestai. It was a commercial term — it meant paid in full. When a debt was settled, this word was stamped on the account.

Jesus, in His final breath, declared: Paid in full. Every debt. Every sin. Every broken place in every human heart.

He didn't have to do it. He chose to do it. He walked toward it resolutely because the joy set before Him was you. That's Hebrews 12:2 — He endured the cross for the joy set before Him. You are His joy. Let that in.

What was broken in humanity's rebellion — He finished it. So that you could be close to God. So that nothing could separate you from His love.

The disciples didn't know what we know. On that Saturday — the day after the crucifixion — they were in hiding. Grieving. The One they had given everything to follow was dead. The tomb was sealed. Just silence.

We know Sunday is coming. They didn't.

And I think that's the most honest picture of what faith feels like in hard seasons. We know the story ends in resurrection — but we're still in the waiting. Still in the dark. Still sitting with the unanswered questions.

Maybe you're there right now. A loss that hasn't resolved. A prayer still unanswered. A hope still deferred. Psalm 30:5 says: Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. The night is real. But morning is coming. You are not in Holy Saturday forever.

Friend. We made it. Three weeks of walking together — of drawing near, going deeper, moving toward the cross. And today, on Palm Sunday, we arrive at the gates of Jerusalem. Welcome to Holy Week.

The crowd lays their cloaks on the road. They wave palm branches. They shout, "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"

And Jesus enters on a donkey. Not a war horse. Not at the head of an army. Humble. Gentle. Exactly the kind of king no one expected.

The word Hosanna means save us now. It's a cry of both celebration and desperation — people who are desperate for rescue, believing rescue has arrived. They were right. Just not in the way they imagined. The rescue was coming through sacrifice. Through death. Through an empty tomb.

As we begin Holy Week, enter it with that same spirit — Hosanna. Save us. We need You. Come. Because He does come. He always comes. And He comes for you.

Walk with Him this week. Through the upper room. Through the garden. Through the cross. Don't skip to Sunday before you've sat with the weight of what He did to get there. And then — Sunday morning — let the celebration be real. He is risen. And that changes everything.