First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge

When the church is truly living out of our identity in Christ, we know that we are not really home here. We are fish out of water when our neighbors think the real meaning of life is actually accumulating the most wealth. We do not repudiate material things, we simply hold them but lightly. These are means, not ends; gifts not possessions. We weep when we have losses of property and houses but we...

A pilgrim on the journey to God sings out, “I lift up my eyes to the hills? From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” That word for “help” is a beautiful Hebrew word, ezer. It was first used by the LORD when he saw that it was not good for the man to be alone. I will make an ezer for him. Not a maid. Not a trophy. Not a project manager. An ezer. One cal...

Stand on Christ who can strengthen you in temptation. Stand on Christ who paid for your sins completely. Stand on Christ who alone conquered death. Stand on Christ who prays and intercedes for you even now. Stand on Christ who calls all who thirst to come to him and drink of living water, to eat the bread of life. Stand on Christ who promises to never cast out those who truly come to him. Stand on...

We have good news to proclaim. We need to return the name of Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to our lips. We need to do it in loving witness to what matters most. We need to rehearse our story, to immerse ourselves in the Word of God so those words come readily to us. We need to engage worship more often and more robustly than ever before that we might strengthen each other as we defy t...

We depend on each other more than we ever know. Every choice matters. Whether in public or in secret. We can rip away at the fabric of community, or we can strengthen it, build it and grow it for Jesus’ sake. Achan discovered how interconnected we are, especially as God’s people. He ended up sitting on a pile of sin he didn’t really even want. He thought he was a private individual whose choices m...

We have a gospel to proclaim. We need to return the name of Jesus to our lips and bring God back into our conversations. To break the spell. Not in anger but in loving witness to what matters most to us. We need to rehearse our story, to immerse ourselves in the Word of God so those words come readily to us. We need to engage worship more robustly and regularly than ever before so that we can stre...

Joshua 5 seems like bizarre military strategy. But God means us to see that the victory belongs to him alone. We enter covenant with him, even though it’s a wounding and a dying to self. We adjust our lives to God’s rhythm through his church. We look not first to culture and its baiting of us to hate each other, but to the commander who is the LORD and follow his call into Christ’s mission.

Joshua relayed the message, "Raise the stones," so that our children will ask what they mean. And we can tell them, “The LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan so you could pass over. So that. So that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, that you might fear the LORD your God forever.” People of God, raise the stones and let the story be told!

The priests carried the Ark into the water before the people followed. If the Ark means God’s presence, then it means the LORD jumped into the water first. God doesn’t ask us to do anything he has not done already on our behalf. How supremely we see this in Jesus! God took up our flesh and blood in Jesus. Then he went ahead of us into a life of love and obedience. He got baptized in the Jordan. He...

What God has in store for us can be exhilarating and overwhelming. For Joshua, the fear of the circumstances, personal shortcomings, surely felt overwhelming. But he trusted God in his times of change and upheaval.

We know that all things work together for good for those who are called according to God’s purpose, but that doesn’t mean every step is going to feel good. It means that one day it will be revealed as ultimate good, and sometimes we must trust that the answer to “why” isn’t clean and easy, but the reason will be made known in glory. It’s in response to this very difficulty that we remember a stanz...

Jesus tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you.” It’s enough. It satisfies. Your lack of strength opens you to receive my strength. If you could live on your own without me, you would. And you would miss out on what truly makes for life. You would end up with nothing but yourself and you would be lost. My way leads to life. Trust me, this narrow path is hard but it is true. I am leading the very...

Salvation is the work of God in our lives. I can’t make you repent and believe. You can’t make yourself repent and believe. This is God’s work. If you want it, that’s God prompting you to want it. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the equation. You want God to show himself to you? Ask him. Are you tired of kicking against God’s reality and getting smacked and bloodied? Turn to the Lord Jesus. Em...

There’s a step of faith that carries you across from where you are into an experience of the risen Christ. If there’s a spark, would you fan it into flame with faith? He’s real. He’s risen. And he’s here. Lord Jesus, stay with us! For the hours fly by and we are far from home. Too much breaks. Too many leave. Our grip is fragile and our hope is frail. Stay with us. Be known to us. Open our eyes to...

The truth is that I need to be liberated from myself. I need so desperately to be free from the ruin that comes when I get my will and my way. I need to be retrieved from being lost in trying to create my own reality. I need to be redeemed out of demanding and into gratitude. Redeemed out of proving myself and into the grace of Christ’s acceptance. Redeemed out of the deep pit of swirling around m...

God has given you the church. You are not meant to go through this threshing world alone. Strengthen your brothers that kernels of faith might bring forth life!

Jesus hears your heart cries. When all strategies fail. All pretense blows away. All reasons to commend you are dismissed. Below all that precarious house of cards that is your life. Jesus sees you and he hears you. You drop your pride. You let down your guard. Your heart cries for mercy: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He replies, “I do. Come here. I call you to myself.”

When you know the depth of the mercy you require and the wonder that such compassion has been given to you by Jesus, then your heart can be open to love. Then you look mercifully upon your fellow humans. Because you are as broken and needy as those you used to despise. And real life, eternal life, means entering that loop of mercy. Christ Jesus picks you up and carries you home in mercy. Then he s...

Jesus did not avoid the realm of death to which all humans go. Rather he went there. He died as the sinless one who was made to be sin on our behalf. He went to the inky darkness of the state of death so that we never go there alone. Now he leads us through. We, like Jairus, are dismayed by all this suffering. But Jesus himself went off the map into the wasteland of hell. There are no regions of h...

It is we who journey away from Christ. And then ask in our misery, “Why have you treated us so? Why won’t you be a savior who arranges life the way I want it?” Jesus takes no delight in our anxiety. He does not sneer at the distress we feel when we’ve lost sight of him. He grieves all the tragedies that flow from the broken communion between God and humanity. He wants us to be reconnected. But he...

All human life is sacred and precious to our God. How do we know that in the deepest way of all? Because we have news, news like no other ever announced on the face of the earth. The eternal God has stepped into our world through the womb of a human being. Jesus became an embryo, alive within the womb of Mary, completely himself but also completely dependent on her. The Son of God became an embryo...

We're about being connected to the world's only hope; the deepest reality that can be known. If we sink our roots into that, we discover that we are living and breathing in unity with eternal beings all around us.

It matters that you are here! We are called to one another because we belong to one another. We gather in person to be formed as a living temple in which the weary find encouragement, the weak find strength, the anxious peace and the lost come home. It matters that you are here!

We reach our wits’ end and collapse in a puddle of tears and frustration. We drop to our knees in helplessness. We are not the lords of the universe. We are not the captains of our destiny. We are just frail children of dust and as feeble as frail. What a mercy it is to realize that! What freedom to stop trying to do God’s job and let him be God. What peace to lean back on the everlasting arms. We...