Danny Panter

Gifts of Belonging

Re:Verse passage – 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, Romans 12:4-8 (day six).

(Sorry for the late post! I’ve been at All-Church Retreat enjoying a little “community.”)

The Spirit of God gives gifts in the context of Christian community. Scripture is clear: Jesus didn’t just redeem individuals, He redeemed a people. In a world marked by division, separation, and rivalry, the church bears witness to a different reality. In Christ, we are one body. We are family, not because of shared background, ethnicity, economic status, gender, or season of life, but because of what Jesus has done.

That’s why spiritual gifts never exist in isolation. Their place and purpose are always within the body. This reframes an important question. The primary question is not, “Do I know my spiritual gift?” but “To what degree am I participating in the community Jesus has already secured for me?”

Historically, the church understood this well. In the early centuries, discerning spiritual gifts was not an individual project but a communal one. Gifts were named, affirmed, and stewarded together.

My conviction, more and more, is that we must get back to that kind of community, or as Pastor Chris would say, “deeper relationships.”

Will you join me?

Today

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 5:15–17 (day six)

When Paul writes in Ephesians, “Make the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil,” he is not saying that the day itself is morally bad. He is not condemning time, work, or ordinary life. Rather, Paul is naming a reality we all feel: our days are filled with forces that quietly resist God’s purposes.

In Scripture, “evil” often describes not just overt wickedness, but a shaping pressure. Genesis 6:5 says that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the day.” The problem wasn’t that time itself was corrupt, but that the day had become crowded with thoughts, desires, and patterns pulling humanity away from God.

Paul is getting at something similar. The days are “evil” because they are full of distractions that dull our attentiveness, forces that slowly deform our loves, and currents that pull us away from God’s will and the life of His Kingdom. Left unattended, our days do not remain neutral.

That’s why Paul urges us to live wisely. His exhortation is not anxious or frantic, but intentional: fill your day with what is good before something else fills it for you. Live awake. Live sober. Live responsive to God today.

Kingdom Servants

Re:Verse passage – Psalm 24:1-10 (day six)

Who may climb the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place? Psalm 24:3

Psalm 24 is not, at least directly, a psalm about stewardship, and yet it fits perfectly. It is a song that declares the greatness, holiness, and majesty of God, the King of Glory. Before Scripture ever calls us to give or manage resources, it first calls us to lift our eyes and recognize who God is.

As we begin our new series, Kingdom Generosity, we are not starting with money, but with identity. This series is about how we live as servants of the King of Glory. In God’s economy, stewardship always flows from belonging. Before we ask what we do with what we have, we must ask who we are and who we serve.

Psalm 24 serves as the perfect reminder. Ultimately, we discover that our identity as Kingdom servants finds its home in Jesus, who alone can ascend God’s holy mountain.

Good Questions

Re:Verse passage – Luke 7:18-35 (day six)

One of Luke’s consistent emphases is that news about Jesus did not stay contained. It spread quickly, widely, and almost uncontrollably. From the earliest chapters, Luke tells us that fear, wonder, and word about Jesus moved through towns, synagogues, and households (Luke 1:65; 4:15, 36–37; 5:15; 7:16–17). This is simply the nature of the Kingdom of God. When God’s reign breaks into the world, it unsettles the status quo. People talk. Questions surface. Expectations are challenged.

John the Baptist heard these stories too. Sitting in prison, he sends messengers to Jesus with a question that feels surprising: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” Hadn’t John already seen the Spirit descend at Jesus’ baptism? Hadn’t he proclaimed the coming kingdom? And yet, like many in Israel, John may have expected a different kind of Messiah.

Luke invites us to notice an important distinction. John’s question is not dismissive skepticism; it is sincere seeking. He brings his confusion honestly to Jesus. That posture stands in sharp contrast to Jesus’ hometown, whose familiarity bred contempt rather than faith. Luke reminds us that the Kingdom spreads not only through miracles and proclamation, but through honest questions brought humbly to Jesus—questions that keep us listening rather than closing ourselves off.

Division

Re:Verse passage – Luke 4:14-30 (day six)

Luke’s purpose in this scene is unmistakable. As Bryan has already noted, Simeon prophesied that Jesus would be a sign that would be opposed; a dividing line running straight through the human heart. Luke wants us to see that division take shape in real time in Jesus’ hometown, the place you would least expect.

At first, the people of Nazareth are impressed. They marvel at his words. But admiration quickly turns to offense. Why? Because Jesus refuses to be reduced to a hometown hero or a comforting religious voice. He declares that God’s salvation is not controlled by familiarity, ethnicity, or entitlement. By pointing to Elijah and Elisha, Jesus makes it clear: God’s mercy has always reached beyond expected boundaries, often bypassing those who assume it belongs to them.

This is where the tension erupts. Jesus is not a novelty to admire; he is the promised Messiah who demands a response. Luke presses the question on every reader: Will you receive him on his terms, or reject him because he refuses to conform to yours?

There is no neutral ground.

Waiting

Re:Verse passage – Luke 2:4-7; 3:23, 31-34, 38 (day six)

Scripture insists that God is never late, even when it feels like He is. What we often experience as delay, Peter reminds us, is not indifference but mercy (2 Peter 3:9). God’s timing is shaped by love, not haste. Paul puts it this way: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son” (Galatians 4:4). Long before Bethlehem, God’s redemptive plan was already unfolding, moving toward its appointed moment (Ephesians 1:9–10).

That truth is both comforting and challenging. History is heavy with suffering, violence, and loss. We’re left wondering: why wait so long? Why allow the world, and our lives, to become so painfully broken? Some of you may feel that tension personally right now, stuck in a season of waiting, exhausted, questioning God’s goodness.

Christmas doesn’t deny the pain. It declares that God enters it, at just the right time, to redeem, restore, and make all things new.

Found

Re:Verse passage – Luke 2:21-38 (day six)

There was a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. Luke 2:36

Luke doesn’t waste words. Every detail matters. Anna’s lineage is not incidental; it is theological.

The tribe of Asher was one of the lost northern tribes, scattered during the Assyrian exile centuries earlier. These tribes were never fully reconstituted as a people. Many assimilated into surrounding nations; others quietly migrated south into Judah. By the time of Jesus, Asher existed mostly as a memory, fragmented, overlooked, and seemingly beyond restoration.

And yet here she is.

Anna stands in the temple, faithful, prayerful, and waiting. Luke names her tribe to signal something deeper: the Messiah has come not only for the obvious heirs of promise, but for those history seems to have forgotten. In Anna, we glimpse the Messiah’s redemptive reach and the heart of God’s Kingdom, a Kingdom that gathers the scattered, restores the overlooked, and remembers what the world has written off.

Filled

Re:Verse passage – Luke 1:57-80 (day six)

In Luke 1:67, the Holy Spirit fills Zechariah, and immediately, he speaks about Jesus. After months of silence, his first words are not about his son’s significance, his own suffering, or Israel’s political future. They are about God’s faithfulness and the coming Savior. This is one of the clearest signs of the Spirit’s work: the Spirit always bears witness to the Son.

The signs of the Spirit are not power, wealth, or influence. Nor does he draw attention to human achievement. Instead, he opens mouths to proclaim Jesus, his mercy, his kingdom, his salvation.

This invites an honest question: What do our words reveal about what fills us? When the Spirit is at work, Jesus becomes central. Our stories, hopes, and longings begin to orbit around him.

True Adam

Re:Verse passage – Luke 1:26-38 (day six).

When Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will “come upon” her and that the power of the Most High will “overshadow” her, Luke is deliberately recalling the opening scene of Scripture. In Genesis 1, before anything is formed or filled, “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,” brooding, moving, preparing to bring order out of chaos and light out of darkness. That same Spirit now descends on Mary, not to establish Jesus’ divinity (for the Son is eternally divine), but to bring forth a new kind of humanity; humanity reborn, humanity remade.

In Jesus, God is beginning the new creation. He is the true Adam, fully human and fully divine, the one through whom God will restore what was lost. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters now brings life in Mary’s womb, announcing that the world’s renewal has begun.

Christmas is not just the story of a birth; it is the dawn of new creation. And the miracle is this: the same Spirit who brought forth Christ now brings new creation in us (John 3:5; 2 Cor. 5:17).

In The Spirit of John the Baptist

Re:Verse passage – Luke 1:5-17 (day six)

John the Baptist’s story isn’t just an announcement about the coming Messiah; it’s a picture of the kind of people God forms by His Spirit. When Gabriel speaks to Zechariah, he describes a child who would be filled with the Holy Spirit even in the womb and sent as a voice crying in the wilderness, calling people to repentance and renewed allegiance to God’s Kingdom. John’s whole life pointed away from himself and toward the One who was coming.

And here’s what has been stirring in me: isn’t that also what the Spirit does in us?

Every follower of Jesus is reborn by the Spirit, brought into a new identity, and empowered to bear witness to the King. We live between two great moments, looking back to the first coming of Jesus and pointing forward to His return. Our lives, our words, our hospitality, our faithfulness become small but real reminders that the Kingdom of God is here and the King is coming again.