Engage God Daily

Scripture: Matthew 5:17–20; Luke 4:14–30 (Week in Review) Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 8 minutes It's Friday — time to step back and take in the full arc of what this week revealed. We started on a mountainside where Jesus told His followers He came not to throw out the story but to fulfill it. We moved to a synagogue in Nazareth where He read Isaiah's words of jubilee and...

Scripture: Luke 4:24–30 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 8 minutes Jesus could have performed a miracle. He could have healed someone in the synagogue, silenced the doubters, won Nazareth over. Instead, He told two stories from Israel's own history — and the room went from amazed to furious. Why? Because the stories He told made the same uncomfortable point: God's grace has ne...

Scripture: Luke 4:20–23 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 7 minutes The scroll is rolled up. Every eye in the synagogue is fixed on Him. And Jesus says one sentence: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Not someday. Not when the Messiah eventually arrives. Today. In this episode, Lisa slows down to sit with one of the most extraordinary sentences in the Bible —...

Scripture: Luke 4:14–19 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 8 minutes Jesus walks into a synagogue in His hometown. The scroll handed to Him is Isaiah. And the passage He reads — Isaiah 61 — wasn't just a scripture. It was the passage. The one that carried centuries of exile, longing, and hope. Every phrase was loaded: good news for the poor, freedom for captives, sight for the b...

Scripture: Matthew 5:17–20 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 11 minutes When Jesus says He didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, most of us nod along without feeling the weight of what that actually means. But to the people standing on that mountainside, it was a staggering claim — because the law wasn't just a rulebook. It was a story. A centuries-long narrative ab...

Scripture: Mark 5 (Week Recap) Est. Runtime: ~8 minutes This is the wrap-up episode for one of the most layered weeks in the Big Story series. In Day 5, Lisa brings the full arc of Mark 5 into focus — from Jairus's desperate fall at Jesus's feet to the hemorrhaging woman's hidden reach to the quiet Aramaic words spoken in a dead girl's room — and draws out the bigger picture these stories are pain...

Scripture: Mark 5:35–43 Est. Runtime: ~11 minutes While Jesus was still speaking to the woman he had just restored, the message came: Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher anymore? Day 4 brings us to the conclusion of Jairus's story — and to the most dramatic moment of the week. A little girl is gone. The mourners are already wailing. And Jesus walks into the house, takes her by the hand,...

Scripture: Mark 5:30–34 Est. Runtime: ~7 minutes The physical healing happened in one verse. What follows takes five more. That's not an accident. Mark is a spare, fast-moving writer — and when he slows down and gives five verses to what happens after the healing, he's telling us where the real weight of the story falls. Because Jesus didn't have to stop. The woman was already healed. Jairus's dau...

Scripture: Mark 5:25–29 Est. Runtime: ~9 minutes She had no name. No status. No advocate. And she'd been suffering for twelve years. In Day 2, Lisa introduces the second character in Mark's carefully interwoven story — a woman who had spent more than a decade financially ruined, physically deteriorating, and cut off from the place where God's presence was thought to dwell. Her condition of chronic...

Scripture: Mark 5:21–24 Est. Runtime: ~9 minutes Jairus had everything to lose. As a synagogue leader, he had reputation, authority, and social standing in his community — and by this point in Mark's gospel, the religious establishment was already suspicious of Jesus. But his daughter was dying. And desperation has a way of stripping everything else away. In Day 1 of this week's study, Lisa walks...

Scripture: Matthew 5–6 (Week Review) Runtime: ~6 minutes It's Friday — time to pull back and take in the full picture of what Jesus taught on that hillside. Because the Sermon on the Mount isn't just beautiful teaching. It turns out to be something more surprising: a self-portrait. Everything Jesus asked of his followers, he did first. He blessed those no one else would bless. He pursued reconcili...

Scripture: Matthew 6:19–34 Runtime: ~9 minutes The Beatitudes described who belongs to God's kingdom. The "You have heard it said" statements showed what kingdom relationships look like. The Lord's Prayer taught us to say your kingdom come . Now Jesus asks the question that tests whether we meant any of it: Where is your treasure? And who are you actually trusting? Jesus doesn't tiptoe around mone...

Scripture: Matthew 6:5–15 Runtime: ~8 minutes Jesus doesn't begin his teaching on prayer with technique — he begins with motive. Before he shows us how to pray, he addresses why prayer so often goes sideways. Some people pray to be seen. Others pray to manipulate, believing the right formula might finally get God's attention. Jesus says: that's not how it works with your Father. He already knows w...

Scripture: Matthew 5:21–24, 43–48 Runtime: ~10 minutes "You have heard it said… but I tell you." Six times in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes a familiar command and digs beneath it. He's not contradicting Scripture — he's exposing what God intended all along. Today's episode looks at the first and last of those six statements: the one about anger, and the one about enemies. Both are uncomfort...

Scripture: Matthew 5:3–12 Runtime: ~11 minutes After 20-plus weeks tracing God's big story from creation through the prophets, something has shifted. The long-awaited king has arrived — and in his very first major teaching, he rewrites the script on what it means to be blessed. Jesus doesn't call out the powerful, the successful, or the religiously impressive. He calls out the poor in spirit. The...

Matthew 1 | ~7 min We close out the week by pulling the whole story together — and asking what it means to live in light of it. Five unexpected women. Forty-two generations. One unbroken thread. This is the genealogy most people skim right past. Now you know better. Key takeaways from the week: None of these women had the full picture — they simply trusted God and took the next faithful step. God...

2 Samuel 11:1–5 / Matthew 1:16–17 | ~8 min Matthew names three women by name — and then refers to the fourth only as "Uriah's wife." That choice is deliberate. Today we look at what the text actually says about Bathsheba, why Matthew protects her rather than blames her, and how the genealogy's careful grammar at verse 16 signals that something unprecedented is happening with Mary. Key takeaways: T...

Ruth 1:16–17 / Ruth 4:13–17 | ~9 min One of the most beloved stories in Scripture gets just half a verse in Matthew's genealogy: "Boaz, the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth." But behind that single line is a story of grief, loyalty, and a kind of rescue that points directly to what Jesus came to do. Key takeaways: Ruth, a Moabite widow with every reason to return home, chose to stay with Naom...

Genesis 38:24–26 / Joshua 2:8–13 | ~9 min Matthew's genealogy includes four women no one expected to see there. Today we meet the first two — a Canaanite woman who refused to be written out of the story, and a woman of Jericho who staked everything on a God she'd only heard about from a distance. Key takeaways: Tamar acted within legitimate customs when Judah abandoned his responsibility — and Jud...

Matthew 1:1–17 | ~11 min Four hundred years of silence. No prophets, no word from God — just a promise and a people waiting. Then Matthew opens the New Testament not with a dramatic entrance, but with a list of names. A genealogy. And yet, for anyone who knows the story, those names are anything but ordinary. In this first episode of Part 3, Lisa Scheffler sets the stage for everything we'll explo...

Scripture: Matthew 28:1–20 | ~7 min On a Sunday morning nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus stepped out of his tomb. The grave couldn't hold him. Death had no claim on him. And the same disciples who ran away in fear were about to become the foundation of a movement that would change the world. Everything changed that morning. And because of it, everything changes for us. In this episode: The angel at t...

Scripture: Matthew 27:57–66 | ~7 min It must have felt like it was over. Jesus was in the tomb. The disciples were scattered. The women prepared spices to care for a body. No one was expecting the miracle that was just hours away. Holy Saturday is the day of silence — the day between death and resurrection. And sometimes life puts us in our own Holy Saturday. In this episode: Joseph of Arimathea:...

Scripture: Matthew 27:32–56 | ~10 min This is the darkest day of the story. Jesus is stripped, nailed to a cross, mocked by soldiers, and abandoned. From noon to three, darkness covers the land. And then Jesus cries out the most anguished words in all of Scripture: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is not a lapse in faith. This is what it cost. In this episode: The brutal ironies of...

Scripture: Matthew 27:11–31 | ~9 min Jesus stands silent before the most powerful man in the region — and somehow, Jesus is the one in control. Pilate knows he's innocent. His own wife warns him in a dream. And yet he washes his hands of the whole thing and hands Jesus over to be crucified. Then there's Barabbas. A violent outlaw. A guilty man who walks free because an innocent man took his place....

Scripture: Matthew 26:57–27:1 | ~9 min Jesus stands before the Sanhedrin. False witnesses. A staged verdict. And outside in the courtyard, Peter — the man who swore he'd die before denying Jesus — crumbles three times before a servant girl. Two men who both fail Jesus. Only one finds restoration. But here's the thing: this story is bigger than either of them. In this episode: How the religious lea...