Daily Bread Pastor Mike Anderson 2026

Reflection: In our world one of the things we see going on is the church trying to make God relevant to today’s society. Of course, most of this is from a good intention, as for years the church had been irrelevant, and we saw the church go through some dark periods. But I believe we have to be careful in our desire to make God relevant, that we don’t forget the holiness of God. I do this sometimes myself. I become so casual about God, like He is a “good buddy”. Yes God wants us to call on him like a Father, like when Jesus prayed “Abba Father”. But we never got the sense the Jesus ever used God’s name in vain, or trivialized Him as He called on Him in prayer, praise and thanks. Today in 1 Chronicles, we see one of David’s first tasks was to bring the Ark of God back to the people. The Ark was the symbol of God’s presence, and the Ark of the Covenant contained the Ten Commandments among other things. The Ark was holy because God chose to dwell there and make His presence kno...

Reflection: Though there are certainly times of persecution for the people of God as they seek to advance God’s purposes, we see God empowering His people so that His will be done. David spent much time hiding out from Saul, who sought to kill him. But over time, as we see in 1 Chronicles, he amassed an army of men, and many of them were Saul’s greatest commanders and became king. The men around Saul were able to see that Saul no longer had the anointing of God for leadership, and clearly saw God’s hand on David. We see the same change in the New Testament of another Saul, who is renamed Paul. This time in worked in the opposite way. While originally a persecutor of the Christians, he is now a leader filled with the Holy Spirit advancing God’s kingdom in powerful ways. Today Saul (Paul) and Barnabas are joined by John Mark, who will be a valuable partner in their mission but also cause some issues down the road due to his fickle nature. We also see various people in worldly p...

Reflection: In life we don’t choose when we are born into this life, and we don’t choose when we die. These are the two great “bookends” of life that define our tenure here on earth. There is though the most unfortunate situation when someone chooses to end their life. Some people have called it the “unforgiveable sin”, though there is no teaching about this specifically in the bible. To keep it simple, salvation is by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ, and we are saved from our sins by what Jesus did for us on the cross. There is no ranking of sins, Christ died for them all. Therefore suicide like any other sin is forgiven, if the person had faith in Jesus while they lived. In today’s readings, we have two very different types of deaths. We have Saul, who takes his own life, preferring to do that instead of being killed by Philistines. This is a sad ending for the first King of Israel and the Chronicler says in summary of his life, “Saul was unfaithful and died bec...

Reflection: Is God a number’s guy? Do numbers matter to God? Is it quality or quantity? Or both? As one reads through the bible, we see quite a bit of focus on numbers. After all the original covenant promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, or the sands on the sea shore. Too hard to count but still related to numbers! The animals were counted two by two on the ark to make sure they were accounted for. Of course, we have the twelve tribes of Israel, the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert, the Ten Commandments, and the counting of the fighting men number a little over 600, 000 in King David’s time. We even have a book in the Old Testament called “Numbers”. So it appears as if numbers have spiritual significance. Why? Because they account for things that are important to God, most of all people! As we see in the Psalm 8, David marvels at God’s handiwork and the crown of his creation, human beings, which were made ...

Reflection: Sometimes we hear the phrase “the best surprise is no surprise!” We like to have things in order and our general nature is to be controlling. We like patterns and order because they give a sense of security and being in control. But as we read through the book of Acts we see that it is full of surprises. Today is no exception, as the Holy Spirit is poured out even on the Gentiles. The circumcised believers have a major paradigm shift. As the leader of the movement Peter has tried to prepare them through the vision he had to not declare unclean what God had declared as clean (meaning the Gentiles who were not steeped in the Jewish rituals for purity which came from the Torah/Pentateuch). As evidence that God’s favor had rested on these Gentiles, was the power of the Holy Spirit, which manifested itself by the new believers speaking in tongues and praising God in new languages. While this was the way God manifested the power of the Holy Spirit in the new believers ...

Reflection: Everybody is familiar with the concept of having “Favorites”. We have our favorite restaurant, our favorite sports team (mine are any Detroit or Michigan team “Go Blue”!), our favorite movie or musical, and our favorite friends. It is just a fact of life that we develop favorites of different kinds and stripes. So it interesting today that Peter says, “I realize today that God does not show favoritism, but accepts people from all nations the one who fears him!” Then, we see later on that Peter says that God testified to his plan by anointing His Son to be baptized and to go out in power to heal all who were under the devil’s power to show that God was with him. Jesus revealed the one true God, and God also chose people like Peter to be witnesses to this so that when Jesus died and rose again, God’s plan to reach all people could continue. God went as far as to have His Risen Son eat and drink with the apostles confirming all that He said He would do and sending th...

Reflection: Most of us have some sort of smart phone device to keep us aware of our appointments for the day. They usually come with all sorts of alarms that alert us that our appointment is 15 minutes away. And they are helpful for busy people who want to make sure they keep all of their appointments. In our lesson in Acts today, we see another kind of appointment. We might call it a “divine appointment”. Peter has just gone through the huge paradigm shift, when he has the dream declaring that what God has called clean, he should not declare as “unclean”, even though his Jewish upbringing might have called for that. For him that means that he should not look at the Gentiles (basically everyone who wasn’t Jewish) as unclean either. This prepared him for when Cornelius, who was a Centurion (a leader of a large contingent of soldiers) sent three men to check out the vision he had received from an angel when he was praying (Cornelius was consider a God seeking man!). At the s...