Peace Helps Us Belong

From Advent: A 25 Day Countdown to Christmas on YouVersion

The holiday season is special for a number of reasons. For many, it’s an opportunity to gather with family and loved ones to celebrate Christmas together. It’s a season for belonging.

At the same time, we all have those family members or friends who put us on edge, even just a little bit. If we’re not careful, our differences and tensions bring division and crush unity.

However, there is a source of deep, unbreakable peace. As followers of Jesus, we are part of the family of God. We have a kind of belonging that cannot be taken from us by others because it was given to us by God.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. – Romans 12:18 ESV

When we remember the ultimate family we’re in, we’re able to empathize with the people around us—even the ones who sometimes rub us the wrong way.

Peace is a state of wholeness, calm, and renewal between us, God, and others. So when we experience peace, it has the power to fight division and bring wholeness to all of our relationships.

From the very beginning of the Bible, we see how God works with and through people to lead everyone to be at peace with one another. One example of this is the story of a shepherd named Abraham.

In Genesis 12, we see God promising blessings to, and through, Abraham.

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” – Genesis 12:2-3 NIV (emphasis added)

Still, like nearly everyone in the Bible, Abraham had moments of conflict with his family and with others around him. But these moments didn’t disqualify him from God’s promises or God’s family.

It was from Abraham’s family line that Jesus, our ultimate Peacemaker, would be born. Through Jesus, we’re able to be made whole and complete in our relationship with God.

And in Revelation 14:6, we learn that this good news and invitation to God’s family is a free gift offered to everyone—to every nation, tribe, language, and people.

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. – Revelation 14:6 ESV

Today, we can have peace because we belong to God’s family.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. – Hebrews 13:20-21 ESV

Pause and Pray:

God, thank You for Your love for humanity. You have always been gracious to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. Thank You for blessing all people, including me, through Your one and only Son, Jesus. Please give me Your peace that surpasses all understanding. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Reflect or Discuss:

How can you share the peace from being in God’s family with those around you today?

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Friday May 1 2026 - Scanner News - Panhandle Scanner News

It's time for Scanner News, and I'm your host, Brian Hale, brought to you by RNC Welding in Gering, Nebraska. Another swatting incident took place in the Panhandle yesterday. This one, Gering High School was the target. A series of this type of calls is happening nationwide, with selected Walmarts being targeted recently, and now schools. On Thursday the 30th, at approximately 12:32 PM, the Scotts Bluff County Communications Center received a call on a non-emergent phone line indicating there was a threat at Gering High School. Officers from the Gering Police Department and deputies from the Scotts Bluff County Sheriff's Office responded. School officials placed the building on lockdown out of abundance of caution. Law enforcement entered the building and were able to clear it without incident. The investigation revealed that this incident was a swatting call, and there was no threat to any students, staff, or visitors at the school. Swatting incidents are intended to elicit a large emergency response and disrupt the functions of the targeted location. If you have any information related to this incident, we ask that you contact the Gearing Police Department. Very busy night over scanner traffic. Early this morning, there was a two vehicle accident with injuries, as well as several traffic complaints and fire calls. There was even a call for a vehicle versus pedestrian accident near East 27th Street and First Avenue near Pioneer Park in Scottsbluff. Scanner traffic indicated a 14-year-old female was hit by a car. We continue to ask people to please respect speed limits and school zones and the safety of our children. Please use an abundance of caution in school zones. With all of the recent power outages, we installed a new tab on our website listing all of the local power companies and their outage maps. Look for it today under resources. That's panhandlescanner.com. That's going to do it for today's scanner news. Thanks again for listening and may God bless. I'm Brian Hale.

Focus On Your Why (You're Not Finished Yet) - Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

From You’re Not Finished Yet with Christine Caine on YouVersion And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. – Galatians 6:9 Kylie is my oldest and dearest friend, and like so many of my friends, she frequently runs in marathon races. I am not sure if I am living vicariously through them, but I seem to have amassed many friends who love to run long distances. One thing I love about Kylie is the fact that she follows the same ritual in every marathon race she enters. As soon as the starting gun fires, she says aloud, “Kylie, all you have to do is finish.” Throughout the race, she says this to herself at least one hundred times. She does not try to beat everyone, she does not compare her pace to the speed of everyone else in the race, she simply sets her own pace and runs her race. And most importantly, she wants to get to the finish line. It’s such a great lesson for us all. If our goal is to be conformed and transformed into the image of Jesus, then becoming more like Jesus is our goal. Running our race, the way Jesus wants us to run our race, is our goal. Therefore, we’re not out to beat anyone else; we’re not out to be better than anyone else; we’re doing our best to be more like Jesus. If we inadvertently get our eyes off the ultimate prize—Jesus—our eyes will fall on other things like people, status, and self-gratification, and we will get off balance and off track. If we take our eyes off the goal, we will quite possibly develop a mentality that things are not moving fast enough. That we’re not being rewarded or acknowledged soon enough. And we might even unintentionally uproot ourselves and walk out of our purpose. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. – Acts 20:24 To be honest, during some of the greatest challenges of my life and hardest times of ministry—those times when I found myself thinking, Why am I doing this? and had twenty legitimate reasons to quit—I’ve had to get myself refocused on the ultimate goal of when and why God called me. That is what has sustained me in my darkest hours. It’s the why that helps me keep running when the how makes no sense. Maybe this is where you’re wrestling today. Perhaps part of the answer is to refocus on your why. More of the answer could be to not get distracted with short-term things that will gratify our immediate wants, so we can finish our course and attain our prize. Let’s refocus our eyes and hearts and minds to be on Jesus. Let’s purpose to finish our course and the ministry we’ve received from Jesus, as Luke wrote, so we can testify to the gospel of God’s grace. Prayer Jesus, my purpose is to finish my course and the ministry I have received from You. Please help me reach this goal. Help me keep my eyes on You, the ultimate prize. In Your name, amen. Continue Your Journey This reading plan was taken from You’re Not Finished Yet by Christine Caine. Read more at ChristineCaine.com/Devo

Self Help to God's Help (Free Me From Me) - Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV We’ve looked at performance and comparison. Avoiding is another way to keep self at the center. It tends to happen in one of two ways. First, on those rare occasions when we actually feel like we’re doing and saying all the right things, we avoid our inner brokenness by thinking too highly of ourselves. The second (and more common for me) way we avoid is through the deflated self. The moment we fixate on just how imperfect we are instead of participating in life, we get down on ourselves and look for ways to avoid it altogether. Whether you’re puffed up or deflated, you’re making the same mistake. You’re placing yourself at the center of this story, thus inheriting the unrelenting pressure that comes with it. The apostle Paul said, “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:9-10 NIV). Self-reliance, or what Paul elsewhere called living according to “the flesh,” puts an enormous weight on your shoulders. Because the problem with being the one in charge is you are the one in charge. Do you know what’s a lot better than self-help? God’s help. And that takes us to one of the wildest things Jesus said. On the night he was betrayed, he told his disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7 ESV). Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Helper. And he basically told the disciples, “As great as it’s been to have me here in person these last few years, the Helper is the better option now.” We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. – Romans 6:9-14 ESV The same is true for us today. We’ve got a much better option than self-help; we’ve got God’s help. It’s time to let the Helper do what the Helper does best. Today’s Truth Statement: I am created in the image of a self-surrendering God.

Self Care to Soul Care (Free Me From Me) - Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

If Jesus’s invitation “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NIV) sounds like an empty promise to you, there’s a good chance one last obstacle to your freedom is standing in the way—control. Maybe you (like me) tend to turn God into a vending machine. Where you decide you’ll put in a certain number of songs worshipping or hours praying and, in return, God will move in the exact way you want him to. Maybe you figured at this point you wouldn’t have any questions left about faith or struggle with any doubts, but you still do. So you try to control those thoughts by pushing them into a back room in your soul and locking the door. Maybe you’ve become impatient with the long work of God and have started scouring the internet for those quick-fix solutions. You still show up to church and read your Bible and all that, but if you’re honest, you’re way more interested in practices where you can be at the center. The challenge of control has existed ever since Adam and Eve ran, hid, blamed, and sewed together fig leaves in the garden. If that reminds you of you, try a new perspective. Imagine yourself standing with King David and staring up at a starry night sky, contemplating the God who created the whole universe. David prays, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4 NIV) The One who hangs constellations in the night sky is mindful of you. He cares for you. Not some future version of you who better reflects his image—the you right here and now. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. – Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV You don’t have to get stuck in your insecurities. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to get caught in the comparison trap. You don’t have to run away from the present moment. You don’t have to try to control any of it. You can be free from you, enjoying the scandalous freedom of trusting God. And it finally will feel like rest for your weary soul. Today’s Truth Statement: I am created in the image of a self-giving God. We hope you are encouraged by this reading plan. To learn more about FREE ME FROM ME by Ryan Wekenman, click here.

Peace Helps Us Belong

From Advent: A 25 Day Countdown to Christmas on YouVersion

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