Daily Bible Verses

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11v1)

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-11-5-faith-r25 

“You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13)
Many of us, myself included, have a confused, guilt-ridden, obsessive attitude about money. There’s hardly anybody who can think in a clear-headed way about it. At the end of Luke’s parable of the so-called dishonest steward, Jesus creates a clear dualism between God and wealth, or what he calls “mammon”: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Mammon was the god of wealth, money, superficiality, and success. Jesus...

³⁴ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever wants to save their life^[b] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will...

The body is meant not for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.  1 Corinthians 6:13

The Old and New Testaments affirm that sexual intercourse belongs exclusively within the covenant of marriage. For many today, this approach to sex is a big reason for rejecting the Bible, even though many of the values our culture insists on – individual rights, gender equality, consent for intimacy – have come from the Bible and were revolutionary in their...

‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:15)

What some call “liminal space” or threshold space (in Latin, limen means a threshold) is a very good phrase for those special times, events, and places that open us up to the sacred. All Saints Day and...

12 Jacob had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: ‘I am the ...

He said to the paralytic –  ‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your home.’ And he stood up and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’  Mark 2:10b–12

Supernatural stories of extraordinary miracles may discourage some people from taking the Bible seriously. There seems to be a disconnect between the world we inhabit, where the laws of...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-10-1-accent-r25

Matthew 26:73  After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, ‘Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.’

When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed those who were ill. Matthew 14:14

Among his other functions it is clear that Jesus functioned as a prophet. In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal empire consciousness…. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people.

Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion....

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-10-13-when-it-rains-r25 

God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear,...

²⁹ ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel ³⁰ will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields – along with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life. ³¹ But many who are first...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-10-15-tough-talking-r25 

Proverbs 3v1-12

1 My son, do not forget my teaching,
    but keep my commands in your heart,
...

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a...

‘Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.’   Mark 6:41–44

Food shapes our daily routines. So it’s striking that one of Jesus’ most famous miracles is about a meal – the...

Psalm 100v1-5

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-29-presence-r25

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
²     Worship the Lord with gladness;
    come before him with joyful songs.
³ Know that the Lord is God.
    It is he who made us...

¹¹ Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Colossians 3:11

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-26-whose-news-r25

³¹ those who use the things of the world, [should live] as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. 1 Corinthians 7:31

Francis and Clare of Assisi were not so much prophets by what they said as in the radical, system-critiquing way that they lived their lives. They found both their inner and outer freedom by structurally living on the edge of the inside of church and society. Too often people seek either...

8 ‘Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labour and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and...

St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) began his community with a clear intention: “The Rule and the life of the Friars Minor is to simply live the gospel.” The first Rule (the guide for the community’s way of life) that he started writing around 1209 was little more than a collection of New Testament passages. When Francis sent it off to Rome, the pope looked at it and said, “This is no Rule. This is just the gospel.” You can just hear Francis saying, “Yes—that is...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-10-1-accent-r25

Matthew 26:73  After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, ‘Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.’

“Peace be with you” was the greeting of Jesus to the apostles at his sudden appearance among them. They were in a locked room in Jerusalem (Luke 24:36; John 20:19), and behind them was the stupendous fact of the resurrection. Was this a ghost? To reassure them, Jesus showed them his pierced side and the marks of the nails on his hands and his feet. On this momentous meeting, he breathed on them the power of the Holy Spirit and commissioned them to preach in his name to all the nations,...

“Blessed are the meek,” (Matthew 5:5) Jesus says in the Beatitudes. “Meekness” is the biblical word for nonviolence. Blessed are the meek, the gentle, the nonviolent—they will inherit the earth. A life of nonviolence leads to oneness with creation and her creatures. 

A life of violence, of course, leads to an abrupt discord with creation. In a time of permanent warfare, nuclear weapons, and catastrophic climate change, the message couldn’t be clearer. The God of peace, the...

28: 19  Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, 20 and teach them to do everything I have told you. I will be with you always, even until the end of the world.

 ...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-10-8-storm-r25

45 Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46 After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.

...

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12

Richard Rohr explores the apostle Paul’s teachings on “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” to clarify the often systemic and hidden nature of evil, including systems of money.  
For most of history we believed that evil was almost exclusively the...

[The rich man] said, “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”  Luke 12:18–19

This man epitomizes the confidence and narcissism of a civilization…. He talks to himself about himself, and neither listens to nor thinks of anyone else…. He asks himself what to do to maintain stability, to keep the system going, to keep...

You cannot serve God and mammon (Luke 16:13) 

Many of us, myself included, have a confused, guilt-ridden, obsessive attitude about money. There’s hardly anybody who can think in a clear-headed way about it. At the end of Luke’s parable of the so-called dishonest steward, Jesus creates a clear dualism between God and wealth, or what he calls “mammon”: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Mammon was the god of wealth, money, superficiality, and success. Jesus says, in...

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.   John 21:12–14

It reminds us that Jesus meets us in the ordinary places of life. The disciples weren’t in the Temple or on a mountain, they were at work,...

The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ (John 1:43)

“Think now about your feet. Think about your feet as you look out the window at people on the street. Do you see someone in need of kindness? It is often easy to find someone who appears lonely. Do your feet move you in their direction? We often move around so quickly that we fail to notice when someone needs...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-10-3-good-r25 

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!  (Matthew 7:11)

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, (Romans 8:1)

...

42 Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 ...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-22-jesus-in-the-boat-r25 

35That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-24-a-tale-of-two-sons-r25    
11Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger son said to him, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
13After a few days, the younger son got everything together and journeyed to a distant country, where he squandered his wealth in wild living.
14After...

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2

Richard Rohr offers a summary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of nonviolence:  ...

Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44)

King so imbued this understanding of nonviolence into his followers that it became the ethos of the entire civil rights movement. One evening … the large crowd of black and white activists standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church was electrified by the sudden arrival of a black funeral home operator from Montgomery. He reported that a group of black students demonstrating near the capitol just that afternoon had been surrounded by police on...

Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it can do nothing except by consent. 

In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion but an act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbours, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cosey emotional feeling....

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Matthew 5:44)

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  said … 

When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality…. ...

Jeremiah 17v7-8

7But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in Him.
8He is like a tree planted by the waters
that sends out its roots toward the stream.
It does not fear when the heat comes,
and its leaves are always green....

We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.  (2 Corinthians 4:8–10)

When suffering hits, it’s natural to wonder why God allows it to happen. The Bible is disarmingly honest about the issue. It publishes numerous complaints to the Almighty from people in pain....

Jesus instructed, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16
 
Faith-based organizer Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra reflects on Jesus’ teaching in Scripture about wielding power: 
In Matthew 10:16, Jesus calls his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Serpent power is evident and measurable—it is the power of force, wealth, social influence and numbers. There is nothing wrong with...

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14...

For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one an other.  Mark 9:49–50 

Australian theologian Sally Douglas considers Jesus’ teachings about power:   

In Mark 9, we hear about an argument between Jesus’ male disciples. They have been disputing amongst themselves which one of them is the...

It is precisely the parts of the body that seem to be the weakest which are the indispensable ones.
 —1 Corinthians 12:22 

How ingeniously you get around the commandment of God in order to preserve your own traditions! 
—Mark 7:9 

Father Richard Rohr examines different ways of understanding and using power: 

The epigraphs above are two subtle scriptures that I...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-17-lamenting-church-economics-r25

James 2v1-9

1My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favouritism. ...

Richard Rohr explores the ways we have used our God-given power for good and ill:  

Despite the many abuses of power documented throughout history, power itself cannot be inherently bad. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is described as dynamis, which means power (Acts 10:38; 1 Corinthians 2:4–5). Jesus tells his disciples before his Ascension that “You will receive power when the...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-22-deep-roots-real-life-r25

But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.  They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-09-1-heroes-r25

Hebrews 11: 32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness...

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:16)

Every day I would sit at a particular set of five-way traffic lights at the end of my road. It always seemed like an interminably long red light, but one day, it seemed even longer than usual, and I clearly heard God saying to me, “Richard, are you really going to be any happier on the other side of the traffic light?”   ...

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (1 John 4v16)

In his letters to a laywoman, Brother Lawrence shares: 

God does not ask much of us, merely a brief thought of them from time to time, a little love, sometimes asking for...

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

• In Genesis, God makes humans in his own image. Seeing a troublesome neighbour as someone bearing the image of God will change how we deal with them.
• In Genesis, Adam and Eve are told to steward creation on God’s behalf. Understanding that creation is God’s handiwork will affect how we make use of its resources.
• In Genesis, Adam and Eve listen to the voice of temptation and disobey...

Surrender yourself to the Lord, and wait patiently for him (Psalm 37:7)

In the mid-17th century, a man named Nicolas Herman joined the Carmelite monastery in Paris, France. Wounded from fighting in the European Thirty Years’ war, and suffering a sustained leg injury, he took the monastic name “Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.” He worked in the monastery kitchen and eventually became the head cook. Amid the chaos of food preparation and the clanging of pots and...

There was silence in heaven for about half an hour. (Rev 8:1)

Father Richard Rohr describes prayer as a practice of being present before the mystery of God.  

I believe that immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union. Naked, undefended, and nondual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence.

Prayer is the way to make contact with God, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or...

45 ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought...

He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
...

“Love your neighbour as yourself” Leviticus 19:18

Brian McLaren recalls how he felt led to reach out to local mosques in the days after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks: 

While praying, I felt a voice speaking, as it were, in my chest: Your Muslim neighbors are in danger of reprisal. You must try to protect them. The next morning, I wrote and made copies of a letter extending,...

‘Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall...

Blessed are the pure of heart; for they shall see God. —Matthew 5:8  

Cynthia Bourgeault explains how understanding the ancient meaning of the word passion can help us gain emotional equilibrium:   
The tradition from about the 4th century on has been unanimous with what gets in the way of becoming pure of heart. I will quote directly from the Philokalia: “The problem with the passions is that they divide the heart.” The passions are the culprit that sucks the...

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-08-18-burning-bushes-r25

1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the...

‘And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?’   Matthew 6:28–30

Our clothes say a lot about us, whether we mean them to or not. In this case they’re symbolic not only of our...

Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘What is that in your hand?’. 
‘A staff,’ he replied. (Exodus 4:2)

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-08-15-what-is-that-in-your-hand-r25...

We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, (1 Cor 1:23)

Richard Rohr describes how Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ death critiques both the conservatives and liberals of his day: 

One of the dialectics that Paul presents is the perennial conflict between “conservative” and “liberal”, to use today’s terms. In his writings, Paul’s own people, the Jews, are the stand in for pious, law-abiding traditionalists; the...

“I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). 

The earliest documentary witness to Jesus Christ which we possess is the witness of mysticism; and it tells us, not about His earthly life, but about the intense and transfiguring experience of His continued presence, enjoyed by one who had never known Him in the flesh.  

Paul was a great contemplative: we have not only a sense of vivid contact with the Risen...

“Because of Christ, I now consider my former advantages as disadvantages.… All of it is mere rubbish if only I can have a place in him” (Philippians 3:7–8).

Richard Rohr writes of conversion as an experience of participating in divine reality: 
Before conversion, we tend to think God is out there. After transformation, God is not out there, and we don’t look at reality. We’re in the middle of it now; we’re a part of it. This whole thing is what I call the mystery of...

‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.’ Matthew 5:38–42

Jesus sits close to his disciples, teaching...

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.  (1 Timothy 1:15)

Richard Rohr explores how Paul’s mystical encounter with the risen Christ led him to embrace paradoxical thinking. 

Meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed everything for Paul. He experienced the great paradox that the crucified Jesus was in...

29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 ...

“Whatever you do to these least ones, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40)

Richard Rohr describes the apostle Paul’s transforming encounter with the risen Christ, which changed Paul from a vengeful zealot into a universal mystic.  

Paul is probably one of the most misunderstood and disliked teachers in Christianity. I think this is largely because we have tried to understand a nondual mystic with our simplistic, dualistic...

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.” (Matthew 9:35)

Nothing in the Gospels suggests that Jesus was interested in creating a religion. He was offering everyone a chance for a peaceful and fulfilling life by adopting a different set of values. The crux, of course, is a shift from judgment, competition, and aggression to the rule of an open heart...

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ (Mark 10:25)

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-08-8-meaningful-life-is-more-important-than-money-r2 

‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, Matthew 4:19

Jesus came to teach us the way of wisdom by bringing us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies of the world and the lies lodged within ourselves. The wisdom of the gospel creates an alternative consciousness, solid ground on which we can really stand, free from every social order and every ideology. The preaching of the gospel pulls the rug out from under us, and we have to put our life...

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; (Hebrews 11:29)

https://www.thefuelcast.com/library/2025-08-6-the-people-r25

14 ‘You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand,...

Wisdom is another way of knowing and understands things at a higher level of inclusivity, which we call “transformation” or nondualistic thought.  
—Richard Rohr, Things Hidden 

Richard Rohr considers wisdom a path of transformation based on humility and honesty and grounded in reality.    

There is a...

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

Cynthia Bourgeault says “When I talk about Jesus as a wisdom master, I need to mention that in the Near East “wisdom teacher” is a recognized spiritual occupation … one who taught the ancient traditions of the transformation of the human being. 

These teachers of transformation—among whom I would place the authors of the Hebrew wisdom literature such as...