Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

After losing a dramatic civil rights showdown with President Lyndon B. Johnson, Fannie Lou Hamer thought her work was in vain. To refuel her for the fight, her employer sent her on a trip to Africa.

There, resting her head on the back of a bathtub, Hamer marveled at how far God had brought her since her days picking cotton on a Mississippi plantation. Who would ever have thought that she would find herself halfway around the world relaxing in a beach bungalow on a sprawling estate in Guinea? 

Suddenly, a knock at the door interrupted her bath. “Fannie!” called the voice on the other side of the door. “The president is here. Can you come?” 

Hamer let out a laugh. “Yeah right! Tell His Excellence that I’ll see him in a couple of hours. I’m having my bath, darling.” 

But the ...

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Fannie Lou Hamer had gone from sharecropper to civil rights activist. But on June 9, 1963, that decision almost cost her her life.

Hamer and some fellow activists were on a bus heading home when they stopped for food in Winona, Mississippi. The restaurant unlawfully refused them service. Instead, the police inside the restaurant unjustly arrested Hamer and four of her coworkers.

Hamer was shocked. “Why was I arrested?” she asked. The officers responded with jeers and racial slurs as they drove past the city jail and straight to the county jail. Out there, Hamer realized, “Wasn’t nobody gon’ hear us.”

Once at the jail, the officers shoved four of the five women into cell blocks, keeping one of the activists, June Johnson, wit...

It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13)

Fannie Lou Hamer suffered inconceivable injustices. She was born into generational poverty, cheated out of wages, coerced by doctors into a hysterectomy against her will—the list goes on and on.

Hamer longed to fight against these injustices. But there were two major problems. First, speaking out against injustice in Mississippi in the mid-1960s often got you killed. Second, Hamer was taught to “let go and let God” handle your problems. If she was going to do more than that, it was going to take a sign from God. And on a summer night in 1962, that’s exactly what she got.

“Stop waiting on a sign from God!” preached James Bevel from the pulpit. 

Upon hearing those words, Hamer’s hand stilled. Her paper fan—and the sweltering humidity—were briefly forgotten as she leaned in to hear what the preacher had to say. 

Reverend Bevel’s goal was to stir fellow Christians to register to vote...

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28)

I’ve never met a white friend who knows Fannie Lou Hamer’s story. And I’ve never met a black friend who doesn’t. Over the next four weeks, we’ll study how this remarkable sharecropper-turned-activist followed Jesus in her work and extract lessons for our own jobs today. Let’s begin by parachuting into one of the most dramatic scenes of her life.

Election Day 1964 was three months away, but President Lyndon B. Johnson wasn’t worried about his Republican opponent. The greatest threat to his presidency was Fannie Lou Hamer testifying at the Democratic National Convention, AKA the DNC.

For weeks, Johnson did everything he could to stop her. He had the FBI tap her phones and pressured DNC leaders behind the scenes. But it was no use. On August 22, the DNC decided America needed to hear Hamer’s testimony.

At 3:00 p.m., Hamer took the stand, and the nation tuned in ...

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:16-18)

My friend Josephina was so excited to tell me that she had finally landed a job packing boxes in a warehouse.

“Congratulations!” I said. “How’s the job going?”

“Well,” she said, “they are only paying us minimum wage and my boss is constantly screaming at me and my co-workers. But I feel like I get paid $50 an hour.”

“What!? Why?” I asked incredulously.

“Because every day I get to pray for my co-workers who are in that brutal environment.”

Josephina is excited about a tough, low-paying job because she understands the privilege and power of prayer—a theme James focuses on at the conclusion of his letter. 

James says, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” He then ...

If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (James 4:17)

If you were to ask me to confess the last three sins I can remember, they would all be sins of commission—things I’ve done that fall short of God's commands. None would be sins of omission—good things I felt the Lord prompting me to do that I failed to act upon. But in today’s passage, James is directing my (and your) attention to the latter.

“Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family,” says pastor John Piper. “So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing—just lots of hard work during the day…and lots of fun stuff on the weekend—woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more.”

Because Jesus lived a life of far more! Jesus didn’t just avoid evil. He proactively did righteousness. And so, if we long to fully image him—if we long for ...

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. (James 3:13-17)

If I had today’s passage in mind at the time, I likely would have avoided one of the dumbest mistakes I’ve made in the last few years.

I was in a conflict with a brother in Christ when he sent me a lengthy email that (I'm ashamed to admit) annoyed me. I was in the midst of a particularly busy week. And rather than stop and pray and ask God for wisdom, I hit the easy button and fed the email thread to AI ...

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4)

I’ve made no secret that I am a superfan of The West Wing. But I may be an even bigger fan of how well the show’s star, Martin Sheen, lived out today’s passage.

In a terrific memoir of the show, the cast shared how Sheen would shake the hand of each background artist (or “extra”) and learn their names before filming. 

When “crew lunch” was first announced and those “extras” were sent to a separate area to eat, Sheen shut down this Hollywood habit, saying, “We’re all going to eat together.”

My f...

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17)

To kick off the new year, we are diving into one of the most practical books in the Bible: James. Over the next five weeks, I’ll focus on one section of each of the book's five chapters and apply it to the work God has called you and me to do in 2026.

Given that Christmas has just passed, I thought we'd start with James’s reminder that “every good and perfect gift” is not ultimately from Amazon or even your mother, but from God.

Of course, God is perfectly capable of giving good gifts miraculously (see manna from heaven as case-in-point). But all throughout Scripture, we see that God most frequently chooses to deliver his gifts through the work of human hands. 

For example, while God could have miraculously ended the famine in Egypt and Canaan, he chose to do that work through a government official named Joseph (see Genesis 41-45). W...

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

The Sawi tribe of Papua New Guinea celebrated cannibalism, revenge, and treachery. When a group of Christian missionaries read from the gospels, the Sawi were more drawn to Judas than Jesus. The missionaries were at a loss about how to share the gospel—until they witnessed a Sawi peace ceremony.

To make peace with a warring tribe, the Sawi chief ripped his only child from his screaming wife’s arms and gave his son to the enemy chief, who did the same in return. Both tribes understood that harming a “peace child” was forbidden. As long as the peace children lived, there would be no war.

The missionaries were horrified, but also hopeful. They explained that, “True peace can never come without a peace child.” The good news is that God gave his only Son, the ultimate Peace Child, to make pea...