Category: 2026 Trek Intro
Week 2–Day 1–Jesus Loves the Hurting
Scripture reading for January 5: “Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn and live.” Ezekiel 18:31-32
Man’s biggest need is forgiveness for sins and transgressions. We have all broken God’s laws or crossed over His boundary lines. When we fall into sin, we are separated from God and damage our relationship with those around us. Our own soul becomes clouded in darkness. Scripture declares that all have sinned or transgressed and all have fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
But God the Father sees everything and knows every heart, thought, and transgression. He loves each person and desires that none die for their transgressions. In today’s passage, God sent Ezekiel to His people with a call to repent. Repentance is a change of mind that precedes a change of direction. If we continue in sin, it will lead to our ruin. If we will confess and acknowledge our sins and turn from them in biblical repentance, God is faithful and will forgive us. Turning to God saves us from ruin and death.
As first responders to the calls of hurting people for help, we must always keep God’s love for hurting people as a foundation for our response. We enter each incident responding to people God loves and desires to help. We would do well to start each day with humble repentance and invite God to lead us in His ways to provide the help called for. We represent Him and are sent as an act of God’s love. He wants no individual to die or come to ruin.
Father God, thank You for Your love for each person, desiring their highest good and meeting their deepest needs. Search my heart today and reveal anything that displeases You. Fill me with Your love to respond to others who are in need. Amen.
BibleTrek 2026–911 Faith Responders
Week 1–Day 1 Dear fellow First Responders and disciples of Jesus,
Welcome to 2026! I have worked as a pastor for nearly forty years and have worked with many first responders during that time. I began my ministry at Glad Tidings (now Good News) church in Omaha, Nebraska where I worked initially part time visiting the sick in hospitals and homes. I was invited by the Chaplain of Good News jail and prison ministry, Morris Jackson, to do a weekly class in the Douglas County Correction Center. This involved weekly entrance into the jail and spending time there with inmates who had volunteered to attend the life learning program of the ministry. I got to know them and their corrections officers and learn how to cooperate with our Lord to help those incarcerated.
During my time as a pastor, I often visited the incarcerated, helped those returning from jail to reintegrate into society, and ministered to first responders who were a part of our church family. In Owensboro, Kentucky, where I pastored for 14 years, a local police officer invited me to interview with the police chief to become a volunteer chaplain for the city police. I enjoyed doing that for over ten years along with pastoring a church. I would take time to regularly ride along with officers and experience their world. I would be on call for difficult situations like suicides or hostage cases. I regularly visited the county jail and helped recruit a full time Good News chaplain who organized weekly services for the over seven hundred inmates. I became friends with the jailer and many of the corrections officers.
For the past eight years I have served as a chaplain and firefighter with the Rock Creek Fire Department in Jefferson County, Kansas. The men and women that I am serving with and have served with are dedicated, hard-working, and willing servants of those that are hurting and in need. They choose to volunteer and place themselves in harms way as they help others. They experience physical dangers and sometimes emotional and spiritual threats that they need to process and overcome. They deserve our thanks as well as our prayers, encouragement and support.
I am dedicating this year to write devotions for those who serve as first responders. These devotions are meant to help all believers to more fully cooperate with our Lord Jesus, the ultimate example of God’s loving response to sinful man’s deepest need. “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:12-13 My desire is to see all first responders become ‘faith responders’, willingly answering those ‘911’ calls of those in need following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In His Service, Chaplain John Morse