Simply Christ

Week 24 of our journey with Christ through 2026

If you’re going to follow Christ and walk like he walked you’re only fooling yourself if you don’t think about Him throughout the week, talk to Him during the week, and do what you can to show and tell others about his amazing love and purposes for them.

There’s no “set way” to go about this but to help people get started we offer a Verse-A-Week for you to focus your thoughts, prayers, and actions on during the week. Every week a different verse but every week the same three things.

This week’s verse to think about, pray, and share involves Jesus’ statement in John chapter 11 where we see him raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus says,

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me live even though they die.”

What a verse to take with me through the week. If we add to this some of the other things Jesus says about Himself, life and His returning to make things right, the door is wide open for me to go through the week full of hope and purpose – NO MATTER WHAT!!

All that’s needed on our part is to hang on to Jesus and what He says about Himself, us and the future throughout the day. Forget this or drift away from it and it’s going to be a long week. But if we hang on to Jesus for all we're worth then we’ll be good. Wait - we'll be better than good - we'll be overcomers!!

Blessings as you go through the week with Christ,

Pastor Pete

Morning fellow followers of Jesus Christ -

It's so exciting to take some truth about Jesus Christ and the life that he offers with me through the week. It keeps my thinking focused, my prayers grounded, and my actions purposeful.

I'm glad that so many of you are following my lead in this. You don't need to use the verse that I'm using, any verse from the Bible involving Jesus will do. The key is to bring what you're learning about Jesus through the verse that you've picked out into all of your thoughts and actions throughout the week.

So this week my verse comes from 1 John 5 where the Apostle John says:

“And this is the victory that overcomes the world - even our faith in Christ.”

This reminds me that just as a football player has to keep their faith and focus on the coach and the plays he’s calling, so I need to keep my faith and focus on Christ and the “plays” he wants me to run this week.

The plays are pretty straightforward and involve loving others, showing them how great it is to trust Christ and his love, forgiveness, power and purposes. If I do this this week I’ll be able to shake off those things that seek to distract me and bring me down.

Ready set - Hike!!

Blessings - Pastor Pete

Greetings everyone, this is the 22nd week of our journey through the year with Christ and or verses for this week come from Colossians chapter 1. In that chapter the Apostle Paul prays for the believers in Colossi that - "God would fill they with the knowledge of his will through all of the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. This is so that they would live worthy of the Lord and please him in every way; bearing fruit in every good work and growing in their knowledge of God."

This wisdom that the Spirit gives and that helps us understand God better is all about Jesus Christ, who he is, what he's done for us, and what he'll do for us and to the world in the future.

If we don't commit ourselves to that this coming week, we'll end up walking in darkness this week. This doesn't some like anything that I want to do for I'm sure to mess things up. Our only hope of making sense of what's going on in our lives and in the world is to join up with Christ and allow God to guide and direct us day in and day out.

So this week I encourage you to go off with Christ, not thinking just about yourself, but thinking about Jesus, talking to him, and seeking to help others see how great Jesus really is.

Blessings - Pastor Pete

Good morning – with summer unofficially starting in the United States today and with my wanting to “enjoy” all the warm sunny days, my verse for the week comes from Proverbs.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all my ways acknowledge Him and He will direct my paths.”

Several things seem to jump out at me with these verses:

All my heart - not just some, not just a part, but all. When it comes to God, it’s an all or none affair - sort of like marriage.

Not lean on My own understanding - my view of things is very limited and often self-centered. If there’s anything that I’ve learned over the 50 years that I’ve followed Christ, it’s this one. I know so little and I’m prone to doing the silliest and stupidest of things on my own. So I’m a definite believer in not leaning on my own understanding or view of things….🙏🙏

Acknowledge God in all things - this has really become clear to me over the last, several years. Bringing God and his love, power, and purposes into my life changes EVERYTHING for the better. It’s really my only hope for a great summer 😳.

So today I’m committing myself wholeheartedly to bringing Christ and his love, power and purposes into everything going on this summer 🤗. Hopefully you’ll join me…🙏

Blessings - Pastor Pete

Week 20 in our journey through 2026 with Christ

"Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” I Peter 5:6-7

With yesterday being the national day of prayer here in in USA I decided to take what the Apostle Peter says about prayer in his first letter to focus on, to pray, and to share with others this week. This will help me that though trusting God and putting his will above mine may not be easy and comes with its share of anxiety, difficulties and hardship, the opposite is utter disaster – not only for me but for those around me as well.

But if we humble ourselves God has promised to life us up in the end. This lifting up will be an exalting and the beginning of a new life in a new body and in a new world. To bridge the two God has encouraged us to pray, to case our anxiety, fear, and concerns, which will be many, upon him.

So off into the week we go with God’s will and kingdom on our mind, all the time keeping our hand on the hot line to God for encouragement, help and support.

Blessings – Pastor Pete

“Do this to remember me.” The words of Jesus during the last supper.

Our aim here at SimplyChrist in giving you a verse each week to think about, pray, and seek to share is to help you walk with Christ during your day. It’s easy to go to church, read your Bible, and enjoy uplifting Christian songs during the day but it’s a lot harder to bring Jesus and His power, promises and purposes into all the things that take place during the week.

Our “Verse-A-Week” focus seeks to help with that. If you’re thinking about a certain aspect of Jesus’ greatness, and if you’re praying that verse back to him when you’re upset or concerned about something, it will be a lot easier for you to actually bring Christ and his promises and purposes into things in faith. So our verse for this the 19th week of the year comes from the Gospels where Jesus is instructing His followers to eat some bread and to drink some wine in remembrance of Him.

Today we call this communion or we call it the Lord’s Supper and I was blessed to be able to do this very thing yesterday with some fellow Christians at a church in Sauk Village, Il. We had a wonderful time reminding ourselves of what Jesus had done for us when he died that horrible death on the cross. Out of that death came forgiveness, hope, and a new way of living, one with love at its center.

Any notions I might have about changing myself, others or the world for the better involving my own wisdom, strength, and determination have to be put aside. They may be able to invent some pretty cool things but they are unable to change the heart and fill it with what it needs to truly live. Only Jesus can do that and he does it when we “eat” and “drink” in his sacrifice, his love, his forgiveness, and his power into our hearts and minds in faith.

Jesus’ use of bread and wine for this show that we need to take in Jesus’ love every day for without Him we’ll surely fall back into old selfish and sinful ways of getting through our day. So this week I’ll be thinking about, praying, and seeking to share with others the importance of remembering how great Jesus is and how he wants to change my life by showing me a new way of living involving His love and purposes.

Blessings – Pastor Pete

Good Morning Fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ

The verse that I’ll be meditating on, praying, and seeking with God’s help to share this first full week of May comes from the book of Titus chapter 2. There we see the Apostle Paul urging Titus to encourage the believers of his day to -

“Live godly lives during this present age, waiting for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus gave himself for us and rescued us from evil self-centered lives eager to do what was truly good.”

This is one of those verses that help me to see how perspective is everything. In order for me to live fully I need to know what’s important and what’s not. I need to understand that It’s not a matter of how big I think something is or feels to me - It’s how big it is in God’s plans for me, for others, and for the universe.

When it comes to God’s plans Jesus Christ is front and center. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Cornerstone, and the King of Kings. If I'm to make sense of myself and what’s going on in my life and in the world, I need to keep Jesus and His return to make all things new, front and center in my thinking and in my actions. To neglect this is to bring anxiety, frustration, pain and grief into my day, my week and my future.

So this week I'll check my life compass regularly to make sure it’s pointing towards the truth of Jesus’ return. If you have a favorite verse involving the Lord's return I'd love to have you share it with me as a comment to this post.

Blessings – Pastor Pete

Good morning. everyone.

My verse that I'll be thinking about, praying and seeking to share for this last week of April is about Paul and Silas from Acts 16 where after being beaten with rods and thrown in prison I read,

“But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God while the other prisoners were listening to them.”

I was reminded by this verse how people are always watching me, especially when I go through something difficult, unexpected, and painful.

They’re not watching me because I’m that interesting or even that they’re that interested. They’re watching me because they’re trying to make sense of why I’m keeping my cool when I should be losing it.

Thankfully this is Something Jesus knows a lot about and now wants to help me with - 😍

Blessings - Pastor Pete