Every trip is a chance to see God work. These verses remind us how to walk with Him wherever we’re headed.

We Need God's Presence - Crosswalk PLUS Video Devotional

God wants married couples to serve in His Kingdom work and to grow in their relationship with Him.

My commute to small group took almost an hour. While I sat in rush-hour traffic amid honking horns and angry drivers, I wanted to redeem the time. So I listened to sermons I found online or in apps. It was an edifying and wonderful privilege to experience the diverse gifts God has given to his servants in the broader church. How did I choose what to listen to? I’d scroll through each preacher’s sermon lists to find something I felt was relevant to my life that week or season. While there’s nothing wrong with picking out and listening to online sermons in this way, it’s odd that I was searching for specific and meaningful insight from pastors who weren’t involved in my life at all. After all, there was a better answer to my need: the pastors at my local church. A pastor who knows you well will preach sermons crafted specifically for his congregation. He’ll also care for your soul throughout the week. For this reason, local flocks should esteem their local pastors, and when you’re seeking to be fed spiritually, you should make receiving spiritual nourishment from your local shepherds’ hands your first priority. Bringing the Word to You What makes a sermon? A good sermon exposits God’s Word (2 Tim. 4:2) and seeks to proclaim Christ and his gospel to his people (1 Cor. 9:16; Col. 1:28). Yet preaching isn’t a generic task. Preachers must also apply God’s Word to their congregants’ lives. In my Presbyterian tradition, our Directory for Public Worship states that in preaching, ministers should “wisely make choice of such uses as, by his residence and conversing with his flock, he findeth most needful and seasonable; and, amongst these, such as may most draw their souls to Christ, the fountain of light, holiness, and comfort.” In other words, learning to apply Scripture to congregants’ lives and circumstances is one of the great privileges of preaching. Local flocks should esteem their local pastors, and when we’re seeking to be fed spiritually, we should make sitting under our local shepherds’ hands our first priority. Personal application, exhortation, and comfort in Christ best come from a preacher who knows and loves you—one who knows the sorrows of your heart, your losses, and your joys. Pastors sit with their congregants amid the grief of miscarriage, losing a job, relational conflict, anxiety, or depression, and in all these, they draw their flock’s eyes back to our perfect Savior. Your local pastors are in a unique position to think about how to speak into your situation and then to comfort you each week from the Word. Of course, God can use online sermon resources to encourage and grow your faith, but that’s not how God has ordained to administer to you the means of grace. Scripture exhorts us to love and respect our pastors because they feed us through their preaching and ministry (1 Thess. 5:12–13). Shepherd Who Knows Esteeming your pastor may seem odd. In a culture of celebrity pastors, it may even seem harmful to give affection and honor to a minister. Certainly, Christians are forbidden from identifying themselves as followers of particular pastors rather than of Christ (1 Cor. 3:3–9). Yet God’s Word guides believers to show appropriate respect for their ministers. Pastors shouldn’t be put on a pedestal, but they should have a healthy influence on their congregants’ lives in several key ways. One clear exhortation given to pastors and elders is to shepherd the flock God has given to them (1 Pet. 5:1–4). Like a shepherd with his sheep, a pastor must know his flock intimately to care for it well. In one scene from Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, a herd of sheep break into a clover field, eat the harmful plants, and get bloated with gas. To save the sheep, the shepherd, Gabriel Oak, has to pierce each sheep in a precise place to relieve the gas but not harm its major organs. Because of Oak’s familiarity with his sheep (and his precision), he’s able to save his flock. Similarly, a minister must be familiar with his flock and precise in his treatments. He must know his people’s sin struggles, doubts, griefs, and hardships to precisely and effectively apply the gospel to their lives. If you have such a shepherd in your life, pray he’ll have wisdom to apply God’s Word well. Example Who Exercises Oversight In tandem with preaching and applying God’s Word as a shepherd, ministers are called to be examples of piety for their people. The author of Hebrews states, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (13:7). To follow this instruction, Christians must be part of a local church where they can observe their pastors and elders (Titus 2:7; 1 Pet. 5:3). We may remember key lines from a favorite preacher, but if we’ve never met him, we aren’t able to imitate his life and observe him as an example of godliness in the way we can with a pastor who is nearby. A minister must know his people’s sin struggles, doubts, griefs, and hardships to precisely and effectively apply the gospel to their lives. Hebrews says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (v. 17). This command is tied to a wonderful arrangement: As we entrust ourselves to our leaders, they exercise a careful watch over our souls, and God holds them accountable for doing so. This high accountability and oversight requires a closeness that can only come from being a member of a local church with a pastor who can serve and love you personally. Imperfect Signpost As important as your pastor is for accountability, support, and shepherding, no pastor is perfect in a fallen world. Some weeks, your pastor’s sermons will be flat. Your shepherd’s counsel will sometimes come without precision, and his capacity to shepherd you well may fluctuate based on his human limitations. So while it’s important to esteem and prioritize your pastor, you must also remember he’s an undershepherd. Look from your local pastor to the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, and esteem and love him with all your heart. This Shepherd who died to save his people will never let his sheep down. He’ll always care for them (John 10:7–11). If you have a pastor who points you to the chief Shepherd through his preaching of the Word, in his counsel, and in conversation, thank him and encourage him in his labors. It will make his work a joy.

A growing number of public intellectuals are changing their minds about the church. Not all are ready to make a bold confession of faith, but many are willing to recognize Christianity’s role in shaping civilization. Ryan Avent’s In Good Faith: How the Nature of Belief Shapes the Fate of Societies reflects this shift. Though not a work of theology, it argues for the social necessity of faith. Best known as a journalist at The Economist, Avent recognizes the remarkable achievements of the modern world. Economic growth, scientific progress, democracy, and expanding individual freedom have produced unprecedented material prosperity. Yet he contends that this success has also exposed the liberal order’s fragility. Beneath economic markets, democratic institutions, scientific advances, and technological progress of the liberal order lies something more basic: shared meaning. “Shared meaning,” Avent writes, “is the basis for any cooperative acts we undertake; it is the foundation of society; no social complexity is possible without it” (56). At the heart of shared meaning is faith. We’re cultural creatures who inhabit stories, institutions, rituals, identities, and inherited moral expectations. We cooperate because we trust, we trust because we share meanings, and those meanings are held together by forms of faith that are so pervasive and often imperceptible. These days, however, the “shared” part is getting harder as divisions and partisanship deepen. Modern Faith One major reason for the loss of shared meaning is something Avent calls “Modern Faith,” which he defines as “a supreme confidence in correct systems” (10). Liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, and technocracy become the high priests that shape and administer our daily rituals. Yet these systems remain deeply human. We’re cultural creatures who inhabit stories, institutions, rituals, identities, and inherited moral expectations. “Systems,” Avent writes, “are not independent of human behavior” (17). Democracy, for example, isn’t something separate from the people but is constituted by their actions. When Modern Faith encourages ways of thinking and choosing that prioritize utility and optimization, it suppresses genuine human meaning and erodes the very foundations of shared meaning on which it rests. Avent experienced the power of shared meaning in church when he was younger. He no longer believes in the resurrection, miracles, heaven, or hell. But he now recognizes what he lost when he rejected God. He writes, When I left the church . . . I lost the familiar stories that had entertained and comforted me . . . I lost the hope of heaven . . . It took me twenty-five years to realize what a terrible emptiness those losses left. (222–23) It’s difficult to overlook Christianity’s enormous role in reshaping Western moral consciousness that helped loosen the bindings of clans and tribes, fostered universal moral claims, elevated the dignity of persons, and contributed to the formation of social trust and institutional capacity. Modern Faith threatens many of those blessings Christianity formerly provided. Emergence of Goodness The heart of the book is a historical journey through the ways cultures are formed by faith. For that formation to happen, first you need a “democosm,” which is a set of people entangled closely enough to permit significant cultural exchange. This then permits “emergence,” the phenomenon by which interactions among simpler structures give rise to higher-order structures, thereby creating a culture that emerges from shared meaning. Avent observes that the emergence of a global democosm “creates rich opportunities for potent cultural admixture and innovation,” even as “the cultural foundation of the nation may be weakening” (197). According to Avent, Christianity produced a genuine moral revolution. It universalized ethics in ways that older tribal religions hadn’t, cultivated commitments to work and self-restraint, and deepened social trust across wider circles. He builds on the work of anthropologist Joseph Henrich, who argues that WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) were the product of the cultural evolution that Christianity set in motion. Christianity produced a genuine moral revolution. “Our moral journey is not over,” Avent argues, and there’s nothing inevitable about its future (100). The pursuit of goodness remains the goal, but goodness must be conceived collectively. He observes, “The extent to which we can be good individually depends in part on the extent to which we can be good collectively” (100). Liberal society has achieved much, and Avent concludes that it “is not heaven on Earth, but it is closer than we have ever been” (265). This account is compelling because of its emphasis on the relational nature of goodness, yet it stops short of the spiritual horizon of the Christian tradition. Christians understand goodness in relation to both God and neighbor, with the love of God ordering the latter relationship. The true goal of goodness is conformity to the likeness of Christ for the individual and the collective—not only in this life but in the next. Without God, notions of goodness are mere glittering vices. Threats to Faith In the final chapters, Avent turns to the future threats to social stability: the disruption of information flows, a cultural nihilism that corrodes cooperation, and the emergence of new ideological faiths to fill the vacuum left by older ones. The only way to navigate these treacherous changes, he argues, “is by devising powerful stories that remind us why we are special and what our responsibilities to each other are” (257). The looming challenge of generative AI gets particular attention. “You do not need to poke around in AI-focused online forums very long to stumble across material of what can only be described as a theological nature,” Avent remarks (258). Christians understand goodness in relation to both God and neighbor, with the love of God ordering the latter relationship. AI functions for many like a new religion, promising technological miracles and even everlasting life. But AI, like all other cultural innovations, requires faith. Humans remain moral agents participating in a nondeterministic system. We remain responsible for the systems we create and the outcomes they produce. Avent’s In Good Faith achieves something genuinely difficult: a synthetic account of human belief, cultural evolution, and social meaning that takes religion seriously without being religious. He writes candidly about his own losses and uncertainty, giving the book an unusual intellectual honesty. Where it falls short is in the space between diagnosis and prescription. Avent recognizes our need for community, narrative, trust, and meaning, but his frame can’t explain whether these goods can be recovered and on what terms. Near the end of the book, he reflects on gratitude for “the sheer absurdity of being” and wonders whom we’re to thank for this gift (268). His immanent account strains toward transcendence, stopping just short of faith. Christians need not. While cultural forms of faith may sustain social order, they can’t replace faith in the God who created us, redeemed us through his Son, and continues, even amid our chaotic age, to lead his people toward goodness in this life and the life to come.