http://www.kitchenerbaptist.org/

Kitchener Baptist Church, 1720 Glasgow Street, Kitchener, ON (2026)

06/18/2026

📖 TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL: IF THE LORD WILL
📅 DATE: June 18, 2026
✍️ BY: Pastor Burns
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📜 KEY VERSE:
"For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that."
— James 4:15

✨ DEVOTIONAL:
Most of us begin each day with tomorrow already arranged. Our calendars tell us where we must be. Our phones remind us what must be done. And somewhere in the quiet of our minds, we assume that tomorrow will arrive exactly on schedule.

The Bible does not discourage planning. It is wise to prepare and to work with diligence. James is not condemning preparation. He is condemning presumption. The trouble is not that we make plans. The trouble is that we make them as though God were not part of them. The natural heart says, God, here are my plans, please bless them. The surrendered heart says, God, here are my plans, please direct them.

Jesus once told of a rich man whose ground brought forth plentifully. His barns were full, so he resolved to pull them down and build greater ones. He looked at all that he had gathered and told his soul that he had enough laid up for many years. He would take his ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. His sin was not that he owned barns, nor that he thought about the future. His sin was that he planned his future as though God had no say in it.

I will never forget the day my father was taken to the hospital. One moment I was outside playing street hockey with my friends. The next I was sitting in a waiting room with my mother and my sister, listening to a doctor explain that my father had acute leukaemia and that there was nothing more they could do. That day is engraved deep upon my heart. It was a tomorrow that none of us had planned. Perhaps you know that feeling. One telephone call. One diagnosis. One conversation. And everything changes.

We cannot worry enough to keep the hard days away. We cannot plan carefully enough to govern every circumstance. But we can rest in the care of the One who is already standing in our tomorrow. God knows every joy that waits for us, every burden we will carry, and every trial we will face. Nothing will take Him by surprise.

Trusting God with tomorrow begins by submitting to Him today. Pride says, I can manage my life. Humility says, I need God. When a child is afraid, he does not ask for a long explanation. He simply wants to be near his father. So it is with us. When the future frightens us, we draw nearer to our heavenly Father, who promises, Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.

God does not hand us all the strength we will ever need in one moment. He gives grace day by day. Strength for today’s duties. Peace for today’s worries. Wisdom for today’s decisions. Tomorrow may be heavy, but there is nothing waiting for you there that the grace of God cannot carry you through.

So make your plans. Only hold them with an open hand, and say, If the Lord will. We do not need to control tomorrow through worry, nor claim it through presumption. We need only place it into the hands of God. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow.

🙏 PRAYER & APPLICATION:
Bring your plans before the Lord today. Ask Him not merely to bless what you have decided, but to direct your steps according to His will. When worry about tomorrow begins to fill your mind, turn that worry into prayer and remind yourself that God is already there.

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🔗 Read more: http://kitchenerbaptist.org/devotional/if-the-lord-will/

06/17/2026

Wednesday Night Bible Study - June 17, 2026

06/17/2026

📖 TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL: THE DAY WE STAND BEFORE GOD
📅 DATE: June 17, 2026
✍️ BY: Pastor Burns
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📜 KEY VERSE:
"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God."
— Romans 14:12

✨ DEVOTIONAL:
There are many appointments in life that we cannot avoid. We may postpone a meeting, reschedule a doctor’s visit, or miss a flight, but there is one appointment that every person will keep. One day, each of us will stand before God and give an account of our lives.

That truth is both sobering and motivating.

We live in a world that often encourages us to focus on the here and now. We chase deadlines, build careers, pursue hobbies, and make plans for tomorrow. Yet Scripture continually reminds us that life is brief. James compares it to a v***r that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Before long, our earthly journey will be finished, and we will stand before the One who created us.

For the believer, this is not a day of condemnation. Our sins were judged at Calvary. Jesus Christ paid our debt in full. But it is a day of evaluation. The Lord will examine how we used the opportunities, abilities, resources, and time He entrusted to us. The question will not be how successful we were in the eyes of the world, but how faithful we were in the eyes of God.

I often find myself asking, “Will what I’m doing today matter then?” Many of the things that seem urgent now will be forgotten in eternity. The souls we reached, the prayers we offered, the kindness we showed, the sacrifices we made for Christ—those are the things that will endure.

Imagine hearing the words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” What greater reward could there be? On that day, earthly applause will mean nothing, but the smile of our Saviour will mean everything.

Until then, let us live with eternity in view. Let us serve faithfully, love deeply, forgive quickly, and walk closely with the Lord. The day is coming when we will stand before Him. May we live today in such a way that we will rejoice when that day arrives.

🙏 PRAYER & APPLICATION:
Ask yourself honestly: If I stood before the Lord today, would I be pleased with the account I would give?

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🔗 Read more: http://kitchenerbaptist.org/devotional/the-day-we-stand-before-god/

06/16/2026

📖 TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL: FOLLOW THOU ME
📅 DATE: June 16, 2026
✍️ BY: Pastor Burns
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📜 KEY VERSE:
"Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me."
— John 21:22

✨ DEVOTIONAL:
The fire had burned low on the shore. The fish were eaten. And the Lord had just walked Peter through the hardest conversation of his life.

Three times Peter had denied his Lord beside another fire, in another courtyard, on the night everything fell apart. Now, three times the risen Christ asks him, lovest thou me? Three denials answered by three affirmations. The wound is being healed, stitch by stitch. And then the Lord tells Peter how his story will end. He speaks of stretched out hands and a road Peter would not choose for himself, the road of the martyr. He tells Peter, in so many words, that one day Peter will glorify God by dying for Him.

Imagine carrying that. You have just been forgiven, restored, recommissioned, and then handed the knowledge of your own cross. The weight of it must have pressed down hard.

And what does Peter do? He turns his head.

He sees John following close behind, the same John who had leaned on the Lord’s breast at the supper, and Peter asks, Lord, and what shall this man do? In other words, what about him? If I am to suffer like this, what is his road going to look like?

John, telling the story years later, does not let that question pass without reminding us of something. He takes us back to the upper room, back to the table, back to the night he reclined nearest the Lord and asked, for Peter, which is he that betrayeth thee? Why drag that detail up here? Because it is the very same pattern. At the supper Peter wanted to know another man’s destiny and could not ask it himself. Here on the shore he is doing it again. The head turns. The eyes wander. The heart asks about somebody else’s portion.

And both times, the answer of the Lord is the same in spirit. He will not feed the curiosity. He will not lay John’s future out for inspection. He simply says, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.

There is a tenderness in that rebuke, and there is steel in it too. The Lord is saying, Peter, John’s road is mine to write, not yours to read. Your business is not his calling. Your business is to follow.

How well we know that turning of the head. We are forgiven, we are called, we are given a work to do, and still we crane our necks to study the path of the believer next to us. We wonder why their burden looks lighter than ours. We wonder why their gift seems brighter, their door more open, their season more kind. And while we are measuring our lot against theirs, the Saviour stands in front of us with one quiet, piercing word, follow thou me.

He does not promise that your road will match anyone else’s. He does not owe you an explanation of what He is doing in another man’s life. He has marked out a path that is yours alone, and He asks one thing of you upon it: faithfulness, step after step, with your eyes fixed on Him and not on the man beside you.

🙏 PRAYER & APPLICATION:
Today, when you feel the pull to compare your path with another’s, resist it. God has assigned to you a stewardship that belongs to no one else, and what He requires of you there is simply that you be found faithful. When your gaze begins to drift toward someone else’s portion, hear the Lord speak it again, over your own heart, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then turn your eyes back to Him, and take the next step on the road He has set before you.

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🔗 Read more: http://kitchenerbaptist.org/devotional/follow-thou-me/

06/15/2026

📖 TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL: WHEN JESUS WEPT
📅 DATE: June 15, 2026
✍️ BY: Pastor Burns
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📜 KEY VERSE:
"Jesus wept."
— John 11:35

✨ DEVOTIONAL:
It is the shortest verse in the English Bible. Two words. Yet those two words carry more comfort for the grieving heart than almost any other line in Scripture. The scene is the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus had already declared, “I am the resurrection, and the life,” and He knew the miracle was only minutes away. He knew Lazarus would walk out of that grave. He knew the weeping of that afternoon would soon turn to wonder. And still, standing there, He wept. If we want to understand grief, we must begin where Jesus began, at a graveside, with tears.

Look closely and you will find that His tears were not gentle resignation. Verse 33 tells us that Jesus “groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,” and the word carries the force of indignation. He was stirred. He was confronting what sin had done to His good creation. Scripture calls death “the last enemy that shall be destroyed.” Death was never part of Eden. It is a cruel intruder, the bitter fruit of the Fall. This is why the Bible speaks of the sting of death, for the sting is not merely that a body ceases to live. The sting is separation, the tearing apart of lives that God Himself had woven together. Jesus wept because death is an enemy, and He hates what it does to those He loves.

He also wept because He loved. The onlookers understood it in a moment, for they said, “Behold how he loved him!” Lazarus was His friend, and friendship makes us tender to sorrow. As John Stott wrote in The Cross of Christ, “Who is capable of love is also capable of suffering.” Grief, then, is not a flaw in our discipleship. Grief is love wounded. Where there is no love, there is no grief, and so the depth of our sorrow is only ever the measure of our love. If you are grieving deeply today, it is because you loved deeply, and that is no sin.

This frees us from a quiet guilt that many believers carry, the suspicion that a stronger Christian would not hurt so much. Scripture says otherwise. The text Principles and Practice of Grief Counselling calls grief “the normal and natural reaction to loss,” and Megan Devine, in It’s OK That You’re Not OK, writes that it is “a healthy and sane response to loss.” Even the most settled saint is shaken by it. After losing his wife, C. S. Lewis confessed in A Grief Observed, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” The Bible never asks us to pretend. It gives us Ecclesiastes, “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” It gives us a Saviour who is “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” It gives us the laments of David, the tears of Jeremiah, and the heavy heart of Paul. Grief is not the absence of faith. It is often faith at its most honest.

And into that honest sorrow God draws near. He does not stand at a distance from the broken. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart,” says the Psalm, and our great High Priest is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” He does not rebuke our tears. He did not silence Mary, and He will not silence you. As Mark Vroegop writes in Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, “Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.” God even sends His comfort through other people, for as David Powlison reminds us in God’s Grace in Your Suffering, “Other people are part of the comfort God brings to us in affliction.” Sometimes the most Christlike thing a friend can do is not to explain, but simply to sit, as Job’s friends did well before they ever began to speak. Timothy Keller, in Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, observes that the Bible does not hand the sufferer a tidy philosophy of pain. It hands us a person. And that Person weeps.

This is the hope that makes Christian grief unlike any other in the world. Paul does not tell us not to sorrow. He tells us not to sorrow “even as others which have no hope.” We weep, and we cling. We grieve, and we wait, because a day is coming when God “shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.” Until that day He walks with us patiently, and as Carol Peters writes in A Christian’s Journey Through Grief, “He respects your humanness and limitations.” So bring Him your sorrow without apology, for as Peter promises, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” The old hymn by Frank Graeff asks whether Jesus truly cares when the heart aches to breaking. The answer of John 11 is settled and sure. He cares. He came. He wept. And one day He will raise the dead.

🙏 PRAYER & APPLICATION:
Give yourself permission to grieve. You do not have to hide your tears or pretend that everything is well. Pour out your heart before the Lord, for He is a refuge, and He keeps your every tear in His bottle. Bring your sorrow to Him honestly. Then do not walk the valley alone. Reach out to a pastor, a trusted friend, a family member, and let the comfort of God reach you through the presence of others. You will sorrow. But you will not sorrow as those who have no hope.

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🔗 Read more: http://kitchenerbaptist.org/devotional/when-jesus-wept/

06/14/2026

Sunday Evening Worship Service - June 14, 2026

06/14/2026

Sunday Morning Worship Service - June 14, 2026

06/14/2026

📖 TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL: LOOKING UNTO JESUS
📅 DATE: June 14, 2026
✍️ BY: Pastor Burns
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📜 KEY VERSE:
"Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."
— Hebrews 12:2

✨ DEVOTIONAL:
Hebrews 11 is the great hall of faith. We read the names and we marvel. Abel worshipped. Enoch walked with God. Noah built. Abraham obeyed. Moses chose the reproach of Christ over the treasures of Egypt. Some built arks, and some built walls. Some defeated kingdoms, and some were cut in two. They were not perfect people, but they believed a perfect God.

And here is the wonder of it. They never held the promise in their hands. They saw it from a distance, through types and shadows and the pictures of the lamb and the blood. They believed the spoken Word of God about a coming Saviour, and they ran their race without ever seeing Him with their eyes. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.

We stand on the other side of the cross. We do not look ahead to Calvary, we look back to it. We have the testimony of Jesus, and we have the Word of God written and in our hands. The faith that Abraham saw faintly, we now see in the face of the Saviour. He is the Author of our faith, for He began the work in us. He is the Finisher of our faith, for what He began He will surely complete. He ran our race perfectly. He endured the cross. He despised the shame. And He is now seated at the right hand of God.

So the writer of Hebrews points to that great cloud of witnesses, and then he points to you. Lay aside the weight. Lay aside the sin. Run the race with patience. And do not run it staring at your problems, or comparing yourself to others, or looking back at yesterday’s failures. Run it looking unto Jesus.

One day the saints who looked forward to Christ and the saints who now look back to His finished work will be gathered around the same throne. We will be made perfect together. And we will declare with one voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.

🙏 PRAYER & APPLICATION:
You may feel insignificant in the work of God, but you are not. God has given you a stewardship, and He asks you to be faithful in it. When you cannot see the answer, keep looking unto Jesus. When the road is hard, keep looking unto Jesus. When your heart is tired, keep looking unto Jesus. Faith does not mean that we see everything clearly. Faith means that we trust the One who does.

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🔗 Read more: http://kitchenerbaptist.org/devotional/looking-unto-jesus/

06/13/2026

Ladies, don't forget to sign up to attend our Spring Ladies' Meeting on June the 20th at 10 am. You can sign up in the church foyer, or call or message Kerry Johnson. We hope to see you there! 😀

06/13/2026

📖 TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL: MY GOD IS NEAR
📅 DATE: June 13, 2026
✍️ BY: Dr. Jeff Reason
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📜 KEY VERSE:
"For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock."
— Psalm 27:5

✨ DEVOTIONAL:
In January of 1856, the missionary David Livingstone found himself in real danger. A hostile chief had threatened to attack his small party as they attempted to cross the Zambesi River, and his companions urged him to flee under the cover of darkness. Livingstone was afraid. That night he opened his journal and confessed the temptation to run. Then he turned to the promise of his Saviour, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” He wrote that this was the word of a Gentleman of the most sacred honour, and so that was the end of it. He stayed. He slept. In the morning he crossed the river unharmed.

Every believer faces seasons of fear, anxiety, and discouragement. When circumstances grow dark and the pressures mount, the temptation to quit can feel overwhelming. Some are tempted to step away from their studies. Some are tempted to walk away from a calling. Others quietly withdraw from the people who love them. Fear is an adversary. It works to pull you away from your purpose and to isolate you from the work of God.

David knew this battle well. Enemies pursued him, friends forsook him, and darkness pressed in on every side. Yet David did not begin with his circumstances. He began with his God. He testified, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” The cure for overwhelming fear is not pretending the trouble does not exist. It is deliberately turning your focus away from the trouble and back to the character of God. Three truths anchored David, and they will anchor you.

First, God knows everything. He is fully aware of your financial struggles, your health problems, and the quiet anxieties you have never spoken aloud. David wrote, “Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.” You do not have to explain your pain to God. He already understands it perfectly.

Second, God is always with you. Even in the darkest moments, His presence never leaves you. He promises, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.” He even pledges to take you by the hand, “For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.” You may feel entirely alone. You are not.

Third, God is greater than your circumstances. He is the rock and fortress that stands above every trouble. David could say, “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.” When everything around you feels unsteady, God is able to set your feet on solid ground.

I have noticed that fear shrinks when it is brought into the presence of God. The troubles that tower over me at midnight look very different when I carry them into His pavilion in the morning. David did not hide his fears from God; he hid himself in God with his fears. And there, in the secret of His tabernacle, David offered what he called “sacrifices of joy.” A sacrifice costs something. Praise in a dark season is not pretence. It is trust.

The Lord is near to you today. “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” If fear has been whispering that you should quit, bring that fear to the One who knows you, who is with you, and who is greater than anything you face. Happiness in trial is not found in escaping the storm but in discovering that God is in it with you.

🙏 PRAYER & APPLICATION:
Take a piece of paper and write down your present fears and troubles, naming them honestly before God. Then read Psalm 27 aloud and thank Him for one specific way He has been faithful to you in the past. Offer Him a sacrifice of joy, even if you do not feel joyful in the moment.

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🔗 Read more: http://kitchenerbaptist.org/devotional/my-god-is-near/

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