Not many in Scripture suffered more than Paul — beaten, imprisoned, hunted — yet he wrote the Bible’s most joyful letter, Philippians, from a prison cell. In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 8 and asks how Paul found such deep, durable joy in the middle of such suffering. The answer: we are never more like Jesus — who loved and bled — than when we suffer, and that nearness to Him carries a joy the world can’t touch.

Blake holds up the Macedonian church, who in “severe affliction” and “extreme poverty” still overflowed with joy and begged for the privilege of giving beyond their means. Joy, he reminds us, isn’t the same as happiness — it’s the presence of Christ in the midst of pain. And for anyone in a hard season who’s beating themselves up for not feeling it, the word is grace: the Lord knows exactly where you are, He is near to the brokenhearted, and the invitation is simply to turn toward Him.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

It’s natural to avoid pain and chase pleasure — but when that drive outruns our love for God, it quietly becomes idolatry. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 4:23 (“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”) and names the hidden machinery beneath so much of what we do: the shadow mission, a wounded heart’s plan to find life apart from God, and the adaptations — the everyday behaviors we adopt to pull it off.

Blake gets personal about his own shadow mission — to be loved and never rejected — and the people-pleasing it drives, then walks through the crisis of belief that comes when we set an adaptation down: will God really be enough? This teaching is drawn from his forthcoming book, Raise Them Right, releasing this fall.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Colossians 3:23-24 quietly rewires how you see your whole day: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” In this episode, Blake widens the word “work” to cover nearly everything we do — job, service, parenting, even our walk with God — and asks why Paul adds that pointed phrase, “and not for men.”

The answer exposes a trap: human approval is fleeting and never satisfied — always asking, “What have you done for me lately?” — while the Lord promises an inheritance that never fades (1 Peter 1:4). Blake closes with three shifts for working unto the Lord — see yourself as a servant, stay humble, and remember who you actually work for — so that even the most ordinary task becomes worship.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

We spend so much energy on how things look on the outside — but God has always been after the heart. In this episode, Blake opens Matthew 5:8 and Psalm 34:18 to ask a searching question: what kind of heart does God actually seek? Scripture gives two answers that belong together — a heart that is pure and a heart that is broken.

A pure heart, Blake explains, isn’t a flawless one but an undivided one — God alone on the throne, with no rival loyalties. A broken, contrite heart is the humble, repentant heart God can soften and shape. And here’s the relief: you don’t manufacture that heart, you ask God for it. As David prayed after his worst failure, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10). The Lord isn’t waiting for you to arrive with a perfect heart — He draws near to the one honest enough to admit it isn’t.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

What is the “old self,” what is the “new self,” and what does it actually mean to “put on” the new one? In this episode, Blake opens Ephesians 4 and walks through Paul’s sobering picture of life without Christ, the radical transformation of the new self, and the truth many miss — that you don’t manufacture a new self, you receive it. It’s the fruit of a new birth, a new heart only God can give (Ezekiel 36:26; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

From there, Blake makes a key distinction: receiving the new self is a one-time event, but learning to live out of that new heart is a lifelong process — reshaped into Christ’s image in the ordinary, everyday moments. The episode closes with a clear invitation to anyone who has never come to Christ.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

It’s difficult to be content in every situation — and Paul knew it. In this episode, Blake opens Philippians 4:11-13, where Paul says he “learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger,” and shows how Paul took the Greco-Roman ideal of self-sufficiency and flipped it: his contentment wasn’t built on needing nothing, but on complete dependence on Christ.

Blake gets honest about how discontentment hides — the busyness, the scrolling and comparing, the numbing habits, the quiet “never enough” that runs our lives while we’re the last to see it. Then he points to where real contentment comes from: it isn’t manufactured, it’s learned — one surrendered moment at a time, as we draw so near to Jesus that He becomes enough. When Christ is your treasure, the endless “never enough” finally goes quiet.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Silver doesn’t become valuable by what’s added to it, but by what’s removed. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 25:4-5 — “take away the dross from the silver, and the smith has material for a vessel” — and unpacks a truth we’d rather avoid: what you eliminate from your life is just as important as what you include. Refinement comes through subtraction.

Blake looks at how God, the patient Refiner (Malachi 3:3), uses the heat of hard seasons to surface the dross — the influences we’ve welcomed in and been unwilling to release — and widens it beyond people to the feeds, voices, and inputs shaping us every day. There’s no neutral input. And the goal was never subtraction for its own sake: God removes what’s dishonorable so we can become “a vessel for honorable use” (2 Timothy 2:21). He closes with a tender assurance — what you remove, He fills with Himself.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

James doesn’t pull punches: “Your gold and silver are corroded… this corroded treasure you have hoarded will testify against you.” In this episode, Blake looks at James 5:3 — first at its sharp warning to the hoarding rich, then at the principle underneath it that reaches every one of us: everything we have is a gift, and a gift kept to itself corrodes instead of blessing.

Blake widens “hoarding” beyond money to our time, talents, wisdom, and voice, points to the manna that “bred worms and stank” when Israel tried to store it, and names the fear underneath our gripping — that there won’t be enough. The answer is the economy of the Kingdom: what flows through you multiplies; what stays with you corrodes. God doesn’t bless us so we can hoard; He blesses us so we can be a blessing.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Wisdom is one prayer away — but most of us save prayer for the big decisions and handle the rest on autopilot. In this episode, Blake sits with James 1:5: “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you.” God offers His wisdom generously, without a hint of reproach, for every circumstance, big and small.

Blake unpacks why asking doesn’t come naturally — we’re used to handling things ourselves — what it means to ask in faith of a God who is near rather than far off, and how His wisdom usually arrives: not as a voice from the sky, but through a fitting verse, a wise friend, a closed door, an unexpected peace. He calls it spiritual concentration: learning to see God’s hand in all things, and keeping a simple record of His answers that builds a trust you can look back on.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

We live in a culture that rewards action — fix it, resolve it, make it happen. But in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul offers a humbling correction: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” In this episode, Blake unpacks what it means to do your part faithfully and leave the results to God, instead of getting ahead of Him.

Blake looks at how trying to force our own growth is like tugging on a seedling to make it grow faster — you only tear up the roots — and offers a freeing reminder: sometimes your role is just one step in a much larger process. Someone else may water what you plant, and someone after them may see the harvest. Your job is to be faithful in your step and trust God with the rest.

Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.