May 26-30
[M] 1 Chron 22-25; Psalm 78; Rom 5
[T] 1 Kings 1; 1 Chr 26-28; Rom 6
[W] 1 Kings 2; 1 Chr 29; Rom 7
[T] 1 Kings 3; 2 Chr 1; Ps 42; Rom 8
[F] 1 Kings 4; Prov 1-2; Ps 43; Rom 9
Dwell Plan Day 106-110 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
1 Chronicles 25:3 | Some teachers take a very narrow view of prophesy and prophetic work, narrower than the Bible uses itself. Some of this instinct comes from a desire to maintain the authority of the Bible, which isn’t a bad thing. But the Scripture doesn’t need protecting. It isn’t fragile. It’s God’s perfect word and we can trust that. But here we see prophesy in such wonderfully personal terms—it’s the work of singing, thankfulness, and praise! We are all prophets in this sense, much like we’re a kingdom of priests. Let this give your personal devotional life a new vigor and hope and joy. Your private time of prayer and worship is prophesy. Praise Him!
Psalm 78 | This Psalm reminds us how vital it is to know the story of God, and to keep telling it. The psalm opens with a call to teach the next generation the mighty works of the Lord, not just so they remember, but so they trust Him. Israel’s downfall, the psalmist says, came when they forgot what God had done. Stephen echoes this in Acts 7 as he tells the story of Israel to the religious leaders, not just to inform them, but to show how their hearts had become hardened by forgetting the very God who rescued them. Paul does the same in Acts 13 when he preaches in Antioch, walking through Israel’s history to show how it all leads to Jesus. The story of God isn’t just history, it’s fuel for faith—especially when you’re weary or doubting. Preach that story to yourself often: God rescues, God keeps His promises, and God is still writing the story through Christ.
Romans 5:3 | Paul describes a chain of cause and effect here, similar to James 1, where our suffering is clearly made essential to God’s work in us. It’s the way He shapes us—and from these texts it’s clear it’s the only way He does it. These passages are bedrock for us, a place where we can track our own hopes when suffering and trials come. Here our God rescues us from our pain being meaningless, from our hurts and griefs having no purpose or plan.
Romans 5:12 | One of the slogans of our age is “born this way.” The Scripture is in full agreement with this idea, but doesn’t allow it to be an excuse for whatever way you may have been born. It doesn’t matter what weakness or disposition or personality or desires you were born with—you’re guilty because of the “startup sin” of Adam, the first human. Your corruption is explained, but isn’t excused. This is all a setup, though, for something really wonderful. It is bad news at first, but it’s a prelude to gloriously good news for all of us. If it can all really go bad for humanity because of this startup sin of Adam, then it can also get fixed by an even greater man—the God/man Jesus Christ. If one man can ruin it all, the Son of God can bless all. Praise Him.
Tuesday
1 Chronicles 25-28 | All of this organizational stuff can be challenging to read. Lots of names and responsibilities that we don’t easily relate to. But there’s a larger message. The kingdom has structure and roles, with authority and job descriptions—and it’s all holy. This becomes an invitation to figure out where your name would go on these lists. This becomes, in the New Testament, a picture of a body with different parts working together. Our Father’s kingdom is the same as it always was.
1 Chronicles 28:12 | Somehow the temple and its design were in David’s mind, something he must have obsessed over and constantly thought about. He talks frequently in his poems about the house of God and living there. Here we find out that his imagination and planning were how Solomon knew what to do. It’s an invitation to us to imagine and dream of what we can build in our Father’s kingdom—building not with stones and wood, but with the Spirit—with us as living stones.
Romans 6:1 | If your message about God’s grace never makes someone ask, “Wait—doesn’t that mean I can just go on sinning?” then maybe you haven’t quite tapped into how radical His grace really is. That’s the exact tension Paul had to address in Romans. It’s always better to risk sounding too grace-filled than to slip into a gospel that’s mostly grace with a little bit of works sprinkled in. God’s grace doesn’t just rescue us, it changes us from the inside out.
Romans 6 | We are one with God through Jesus Christ. And unpacking what that must mean is the work of the Bible, your faith, and all of eternity. Frankly it’s shocking, amazing, and beyond our wildest dreams.
Wednesday
1 Kings 2 | This is about tying up loose ends. We’ve been witness to the brutality of Joab all through these histories. We saw the evil of Shimei as he cursed David at his lowest point. We’ve seen before how David’s other sons ignored his authority and his will (with Adonijah not learning anything from Absalom.) This can read a bit like a political thriller or a mob movie, and it is a bit like that. Solomon has to remove these threats or his kingdom will never be established. He’ll always be looking over his shoulder. The lesson here continues into the New Testament—we must be ready for wolves, for folks who are about their own purposes and not God’s. The kingdom of God is the same, with the same threats and the same hopes and the same need for wisdom.
1 Chronicles 29:29 | This is a little note about all these histories we’re reading. The authors are two “seers” and a “prophet.” What’s the implication? The historians of the kingdom are directly inspired by the Spirit, as the Scripture tells us again and again about its authors. Trust the Bible.
Romans 7:4 | This verse tells us that through Christ’s death, we have died to the law so that we might belong to Him. To “die to the law” means we are no longer bound by its demands as a way to earn righteousness—it no longer holds power over us. Instead of striving to be good enough, we now live in union with the One who fulfilled the law perfectly on our behalf. Our new purpose is not rule-keeping, but fruit-bearing: a life of love, obedience, and holiness that flows from being joined to Christ. In Him, we don’t serve under fear, but in freedom and grace.
Romans 7:13-24 | How often have you said, or heard someone say, “I can’t believe I did that” referring to some mistake or sin they committed? Whenever we do that, we express our disbelief in what the Bible predicts about us. Here Paul is telling us we shouldn’t be surprised at all. The Bible predicts our struggle. This part of Romans is precious to us for that reason. It describes something that every believer has experienced: the battle between what you oftentimes desire and what you really and truly want. They aren’t the same thing. This battle inside is so constant and so fierce at times, that it can lead to frustration, bewilderment, and discouragement. It often does in many Christians. We can’t believe the things we sometimes do or want to do, and how often we fail to do good. It’s hard on us. Such double-mindedness can lead us to seriously doubt God’s work in us. But it’s at this very point of despair that gospel assurance meets us. The blessing of Romans 8:1 is one of the most powerful statements of mercy in all the Scripture, and it’s meant for those who struggle with how much they struggle. Praise Him!
Romans 7:15 | This is one of the most honest and relatable verses in all of Scripture. Paul, the great apostle, confesses a deep and ongoing struggle with sin, something every Christian knows intimately. It’s not just that we fail; it’s that we fail in the very places we long to be holy. This inner conflict exposes that sin isn’t just bad behavior—it’s a power, a force at work in us, and it runs deeper than willpower alone can fix. But the beauty of the gospel is that God doesn’t save us because we win the battle, He saves us while we’re still in the fight. Jesus knew the full weight of sin’s pull, yet never gave in, and now He stands not just as our example, but as our righteousness. When we hate the sin we keep doing, that hatred is itself a sign of the Spirit’s work in us; it means our hearts are alive. The real hope isn’t in our performance, but in the One who has already delivered us and promises, one day, to finish what He began.
Thursday
1 Kings 3:1 | This is our first warning about Solomon. It’s a red flag, not a beige one. Going back to Egypt was one of Israel’s great crimes and became symbolic of all disobedience. Solomon is already compromised just as he is seeking wisdom. His request for wisdom should inspire us to do the same, but it should also give us real fear. Solomon started off so right, like so many of us do. But he becomes a cautionary tale. The greatest king and wisest man of history winds up being foolish in the end. The seeds of his hope and his destruction are all right there together in one package. I don’t want to be a cautionary tale, do you?
Romans 8 | Can you highlight a whole chapter? I think that would defeat the purpose, but if you were to try it, this would be the chapter.
Romans 8:26 | Confused, halting, wandering, uninformed prayer is good conversation to our Father.
Romans 8:29–30 | This passage gives us one of the most powerful summaries of how salvation works, often called the ordo salutis—Latin for “the order of salvation.” It’s a sequence that reveals how God, from beginning to end, is the One who saves. Paul tells us that those whom God foreknew—which in Scripture always means a deep, covenantal love, not just awareness—He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. In other words, before we ever reached for God, He had already set His love on us and determined to make us like Jesus. Then in time, God called us—not just outwardly with words, but inwardly by the Holy Spirit, breaking through our resistance and awakening faith. Those He called, He also justified, declaring us righteous because of Christ’s perfect record. And those He justified, He also glorified—spoken in the past tense, because in God’s eyes, it’s already a done deal.
This means salvation isn’t a ladder we climb, but a gift God gives. We aren’t saved because we were smarter, more spiritual, or more open; we’re saved because God acted in love and grace. The ordo salutis shows us that grace isn’t just how we start the Christian life, it’s how we finish. And if every step is God’s work, then every failure on our part can be met with assurance, not fear. We don’t have to anxiously hold on to God—He’s the One holding on to us. That’s the kind of security and joy that leads not to passivity, but to deep worship and transformed lives.
Romans 8:30 | Glorified is in the past tense in this verse, described by the verb form as something that’s already happened. How can this be true of us? Let me put it another way: do you feel very glorified? Of course not, which is, I suppose, the first lesson. The Scripture speaks about us in realities that we can’t really perceive or understand. Emotions and feelings are not a sure and reliable guide. Your gut instincts are going to be wrong, especially about God’s kingdom. That’s why He makes the point about His ways looking nothing like our ways. So feeling glorified is irrelevant. We must learn to trust His word, even when we can’t connect to its truth. So how are we glorified? In one sense, if our God promises something, it can be said to be done. God’s future actions can be described in the past tense because they’re so certain. That’s a deep comfort. But this isn’t enough yet. This text and the context drive home a new glorious reality for the children of God. Somehow being “glorified” is something to describe us now, not just as a reference to the future. There seems to be something deeper here, as if we had some “glory self” that we need to live into, some inner part of us where God’s secret work has already taken shape.
Friday
Romans 9:14 | This is one of the most important theological chapters in the entire New Testament. I (Jon) grew up in a pretty run-of-the-mill Arminian evangelical church. The idea that God chooses whom He saves wasn’t just unfamiliar—it felt wrong. But everything changed for me after hearing an episode of R.C. Sproul’s Renewing Your Mind podcast, where he was teaching through this very verse. That moment shook my theological foundation. I had already been studying the doctrines of election and predestination and starting to wonder if the Arminian view I had inherited actually lined up with what Scripture taught.
I remember exactly where I was—on my motorcycle riding down Highway 1 to Santa Cruz with the wind in my face and the ocean air all around me—when R.C. unpacked this verse. He said something to the effect of, “Paul knows what people are going to say about what he’s teaching. He anticipates the objection: ‘Wait, that’s not fair!’” And then R.C. made the point that changed everything for me: if Paul is expecting people to cry “unfair,” then he can’t possibly be teaching the Arminian view. No one hears “God chooses those who choose Him” and thinks that sounds unjust. But if Paul’s teaching makes people bristle at God’s fairness, then he must be presenting a view of election where God chooses—not based on foreseen faith, but according to His own mercy and purpose.
Since that moment, I’ve come to see the beauty, the grace, and yes—even the love—in the truth that God is sovereign in election. But for me, it all began with the uncomfortable but honest admission: I may not like this at first, but I’m pretty sure this is what the Bible actually says.
Proverbs | Please take a look at the Bible Project video for Proverbs, it’s great.
Proverbs 1 | What are the first warnings about foolishness in this book about wisdom? What threats are the most serious, the most immediate danger to us? The greatest challenges you will ever face are: the lure of easy money, the influence of bad friends, and the honey pit of pleasure. Wisdom and folly don’t seem to have changed much in the past three thousand years.