Chad Bird

08/13/2025

It’s been called “The Darkest Psalm.” And with good reason. Psalm 88 ends, literally, in darkness: “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (v. 18).

We are accustomed to thinking of Psalm 22 as the crucifixion psalm, and rightly so, since Jesus prayed it on the cross (Matt. 27:46). But Psalm 88 is the other Good Friday prayer, for this day ends with Christ in the darkness of the grave, cut off from all others.

In this, I have found, and still find great comfort. It means that, no matter how dark my darkness, no matter how much I feel cut off from others, Jesus is still there.

+He was there in the darkness of my suicidal moments almost 20 years ago.
+He was there during my lonely hours as I drove a truck on the night shift.
+He was there on the night our son was missing and later found dead.

There never has been a night when Jesus was too busy to be there for me.

What about you? On what night, in the darkness, was Jesus there for you?

Jesus has been to all the places described in Psalm 88: Sheol, the pit, the grave, among the dead, in regions dark and deep.

So wherever you are, in the dark, Jesus has not only been there. More importantly, he knows the way back to the light. In fact, he IS the light, and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

Our Lord knows the way out of Psalm 88. He blazed that resurrection trail long ago. The Darkest Psalm is no match for the Lord of Light. He will be with you until your time in Psalm 88 ends as well, and will carry you forth into the brilliance of hope once more.

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Want to learn how to pray the Psalms? Check out my forthcoming book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. Preorder your copy at https://a.co/d/dohEnsk

08/12/2025

Are all Christians priests? The Bible says an emphatic YES. Jesus has made us “priests to his God and Father” (Rev. 1:6). We are “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). We are “priests of God and of Christ” (Rev. 20:6).

I am a priest—and if you’re a Christian, so are you. Yet this is one of the most neglected vocations in much Christian teaching and preaching today. Why? Two reasons come to mind. One, we associate priests with the Aaronic priests of the old covenant. Because they were so immersed in ritual, animal sacrifice, and the sanctuary, we see little connection to ourselves. Two, we equate priests with Roman Catholicism, and far too many Protestants have an irrational phobia about any connection to that Christian tradition.

Let’s recover a robust and rewarding teaching about the priestly vocation of every disciple of Jesus. On the day you were baptized, you became a priest. That was your ordination into the Christian priesthood.

What does this mean? As priests, we pray, we intercede for those in need. We teach others the Word of God. We offer our bodies as living sacrifices in acts of love. In baptism we are ordained; in the Supper we eat his holy bread, as OT priests ate the bread of the presence. With the divine name on our foreheads, we enter with boldness into the Holy of Holies before the Father.

Wherever we serve—in a hospital, classroom, tractor, computer desk—we serve as priests at his altar. Rejoice in this sacred title and duty. You are a priest, called to proclaim the excellencies of him who brought you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

08/11/2025

No one brags about being conceived or born. Only a fool or madman would claim any credit for that. How did each of us come to be? Well, Dad’s s***m united with Mom’s egg, we were conceived, and then some forty weeks later, we were born. It is hard to imagine a more passive experience. All this happened to us and for us.

Being conceived and born is thus a gift we receive, to which we contribute nothing.

So it is with being re-conceived and re-born as a Christian.

In 1 Peter 1, which we read today in Bible in One Year, Peter twice speaks of us being “born again”:

Verse 3: “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be BORN AGAIN to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”
Verse 23: “…You have been BORN AGAIN, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God…”

Peter uses the Greek verb ἀναγεννάω (anagennaō), which more accurately means to be “begotten [or conceived] again” (vv. 3, 23).

Now understand the clear implications of this: just as when we were first conceived and born again, we contributed nothing, but all work was performed by our earthly parents, so also when we are reconceived and reborn, it is a work done upon us, a gift given to us by our Heavenly Father. We had no involvement in it. We are purely passive.

Therefore, we are not re-conceived because of some work we performed. We are not reborn because we made a decision to do so. We are not born anew because we reasoned our way into it, committed our lives to God, or cooperated in our new conception and new birth.

Just as none of us decided to be conceived and born the first time, neither did any of us Christians decide to be reconceived and reborn as children of the Father.

All glory goes to God, who by the Gospel brings us to faith in Christ, generates new life within us, makes us a new creation, and causes us be born again.

God gives, we receive. And that's that.

08/10/2025

When Jesus says in John 15, “I am the true vine,” he is teaching us that he is the faithful Israel who bears fruit where the old vine failed.

The imagery of the vine draws directly from Psalm 80, which we covered today in Bible in One Year. In that psalm, Israel is pictured as a vine God brought out of Egypt, planted, and blessed, yet one that was destroyed. The psalm then shifts from vine imagery to the “the son of man” at his right hand (vv. 8–17).

Throughout the Old Testament, Israel is God’s vineyard (Isa. 5; Jer. 2; Hos. 10), yet it consistently fails to produce good fruit. In contrast, Jesus is the true, fruitful vine. He fulfills Israel’s calling, and those joined to him by faith, Jews and Gentiles, become the people of God, branches abiding in the true vine.

This is part John’s wider theme: Jesus fulfills Israel’s festivals and sacred spaces. He is the Passover Lamb of God (John 1), the true tabernacle and temple (John 1-2), the fulfillment of the feasts (John 6–10), and also the true vine (John 15).

The place of God’s blessing is fully and exclusively in Christ.

Psalm 80’s cry for restoration finds its ultimate answer in him. The vine and “son of man” imagery converge: Jesus is both the Son at the Father’s right hand and the vine through whom life and fruitfulness flow into us.

In calling himself the true vine, Jesus makes it clear that the salvation story is now centered and fulfilled in him. The failed vineyard of Israel has been reduced to one faithful man, the Son of God, so that in union with him a renewed people might bear fruit for God.

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Want to learn how to pray the Psalms? Check out my forthcoming book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. Preorder your copy at https://a.co/d/dohEnsk

08/10/2025

08/09/2025

About halfway through Psalm 78 is a verse that always makes me nod in agreement. Not because I like the verse but because, like it or not, it’s painfully true.

The verse is talking about the rebellions of Israel in the wilderness. It reads, “When [God] killed them, then they sought him” (78:34).

How true to humanity is that?

When a man’s stomach is stuffed, he does not think of hunger.
When a woman is well-clothed, she does not think of freezing.
When the house is secure, the inhabitants do not think of danger.
When we are healthy, we give little thought to being sick.

So, too, when all is going well with us, when life is at least OK, we are lulled into thinking that maybe, perhaps, we are getting along just fine on our own. I mean, we probably won’t say that aloud, or even whisper it, but the voice is there. Subdued. Suggestive. Sinister.

It’s easy, when life is good, to forget that all goodness comes from God.

“When God killed them, then they sought him.” Thorns in the flesh are a great encouragement to get down on our knees. Trials that we never wanted, but that came our way, awaken us from slumber to seek the God who has never left our side, but whom we so foolishly forgot was there.

“Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” So we pray and so the Lord Jesus hears. He is mindful that we are but weak and dumb sheep, easily swayed, easily distracted, frequently lost, so he shepherds us, sometimes, into dark valleys where we remember to listen for his voice and follow him, come what may.

And come what may, we are safe with him.
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Want to learn how to pray the Psalms? Check out my forthcoming book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. Preorder your copy at https://a.co/d/dohEnsk

08/08/2025

Psalms which call upon God to destroy, curse, or judge the wicked...can we pray these? Do these contradict the teachings of Jesus?

As we work our way through the psalms in Bible in One Year, and as you pray them, such questions have likely come to mind. In this video, I explain how we not only can but should pray the imprecatory psalms.

Psalms which call upon God to destroy, curse, or judge the wicked...can we pray these? Do these contradict the teachings of Jesus? In this week's video, Chad...

08/08/2025

Sometimes the best thing you can do—sometimes the only thing you can do—is borrow light from the past.

That’s what I had to do in late 2022 and 2023, by far the darkest and worst years of my life. I didn’t find joy or happiness in the “today” of those years. There was none to be found. Instead, I found light in the past. I borrowed it from yesterday and used it to illumine where I was in the present.

That’s what the psalmist does in Psalm 77. He asks,
“Will the Lord reject us forever?
Will he never again be favorable?
Has his steadfast love ceased forever?
Have his promises come to an end?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?”

What does he do in the “today” of that moment? He says, “I will remember the days of old.”

He recalls how God was good to his people, how he rescued them from slavery in Egypt, and brought them into freedom, light, and hope. That memory brought him hope.

I did the same. You can do that same. We think back to all that God had done for us in the past, to all he had done for his people in the past.

We borrow light from yesterday and carried it into our present darkness.

That’s how I kept going. That’s how all of us in Christ can still keep going, because our hope is in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, who, as he was faithful in the past, is faithful to us now.

08/07/2025

One of life’s ironies is that the things we want most are often the very things that destroy us. When I was younger, Career Success became the god on whose altar I sacrificed everything. That blood-stained altar became the grave of my hopes, dreams, and loves.

Do not be surprised, friends, when the idol whose head you are stroking suddenly bares his teeth and sinks them into your throat. That’s just an idol being an idol. They exist only to destroy.

I thought of this when studying Psalm 73. The psalmist’s complaint is that unbelievers seem to have it easier than Yahweh’s followers. In modern terms: “Why, O Lord, do the wicked have the biggest homes, the highest paying jobs, the finest vacations, all while defying you—while I try to be pure and faithful and get nothing in return?”

He confesses, “I was envious of the arrogant” (73:3). Why envy? Because he wants what they have. Envy desires what another possesses, and here the psalmist shows his hand: the very goals of the wicked are the things he longs for—the very things that would destroy him.

Thankfully, God brings him to repentance. He admits, “I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you” (v. 22). He was not thinking like one made in God’s image, who seeks first the kingdom, but like an animal.

Having confessed, he says, “There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (v. 25). In those ten words is the heart we pray for:

Lord, grant me a heart that loves you above all.
Lord, fire in me desire for you—your presence, your love.
Jesus, make seeking you and your kingdom my chief goal.
Lord, fill me with your Spirit so that greed, envy, and worldliness die.

Do not misunderstand: setting and striving for goals is good. Scripture praises diligent work. But true contentment is not in career success, prosperity, or health.

True contentment is in Jesus, who brings us into communion with the Father and Spirit. When he is our goal, life’s pains and pleasures, successes and failures, yachts or sinking ships, fall into perspective.

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

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Want to learn how to pray the Psalms? Check out my forthcoming book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. Preorder your copy at https://a.co/d/dohEnsk

08/06/2025

“Every “I forgive you” from God’s lips to our ears is like the “Let there be light” in Genesis 1. It makes things happen. As there was light, so there is forgiveness.”

🙏🏼 Preorder your copy of Untamed Prayers today https://a.co/d/4f4upDv

08/06/2025

Do an online search for “things that improve with age,” and listed will be everything from wine to blue jeans to cast iron skillets. One item that should never be in that catalog, however, is people.

Yes, of course, some men and women do progress in virtue or expand in compassion as they grow older, but many do not.

We all have seen this. Aging is no guarantee of amendment of life.

As Thomas à Kempis said: “If it is a fearful thing to die, it may be perchance a yet more fearful thing to live long.” Some, while living long, have souls shortening, wrinkling, withering into small and grotesque chambers full of nothing but the gasping wheezes of ego.

Psalm 71 charts a better course. The poet began his autobiographical psalm in utero, but he quickly jumps forward, asking God, “Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent” (71:9). And, “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come” (71:17-18).

His has been anything but a carefree life. Even while he ages, his enemies lurk, mock, and accuse, going so far as to claim that the Lord has deserted him (71:10-11, 13).

Despite these ongoing hardships, who the psalmist is, what he has suffered, and his steadfast hope in God, have become known: “I have been a marvel to many, for you are my strong refuge” (71:7 NASB). He is a marvel, a portent, an example of a believer who trusts that, no matter what, the Lord’s innumerable “deeds of salvation” are his haven of rest (71:15).

Grant, dear Father, that such a confession of faith in your loving, faithful, rescuing Son may be our legacy, as we praise you and proclaim your saving “power to all those to come” (71:18).

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This is a sample devotion from my next book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms. Preorder your copy at https://a.co/d/dohEnsk

08/05/2025

There was a first-century rabbi nicknamed Rabbi Gamzu because whenever adversity came along, he would say, "Gam zu l'tovah," that is, "This, too, is for the good." Those first two words in Hebrew, גם זו (gam zu), mean "This too..." Therefore, he was called Rabbi Gamzu. He was the Gamzu man.

There was also another first-century Jewish teacher who said something similar: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." His name, of course, is Paul, the apostle of Jesus the Messiah. He wrote these famous words to the church in Rome.

Paul, too, was a Gamzu man.

There are times in life when, after something bad happens, we look back and see that God brought good out of it. And there are many times when, after something bad happens, we look back and still do not know what possible good did, or ever could, come from it.

Either way, we are Gamzu Christians because we worship the God who specializes in bringing good from bad, light from darkness, life from death, resurrection from crucifixion.

We do not need to understand how this happens all the time. Rather, what we need to know and confess is that the Lord God of heaven and earth does make it happen, in his own inscrutable and mysterious ways. How he does so is usually above our pay grade.

I am NOT saying that we should stop lamenting, stop questioning, stop beating on heaven's doors with the words of those fierce psalms. Do it. Keep doing it.

I am saying, however, that when the tears cease for a few moments, when that kernel of peace begins to grow in the drought-stricken soil of our souls, we can take a deep breath and say, "Gam zu l'tovah," this too is for the good. We leave the "how" of that to Jesus, but we confess it nonetheless.

We are Gamzu Christians. This too, whatever it is, did not happen in a meaningless universe, but in a world ruled by our good and gracious Father.