Immanuel

10/29/2026

Daily Devotion
Thursday 10/29/26
I will always be with you
Read John 4:19-24
“God is spirit,” Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). It was a quiet moment of profound teaching, offered to an unlikely student, about who God is fundamentally. The woman had come to the well expecting nothing more than water, but instead she met the One who revealed the very nature of the Father.
The fact that God is spirit means He is not bound by time or space. He is with every believer during every moment of life. When we sense His presence in corporate worship at church or during personal prayer time at home, that is His Spirit interacting with our own.
Our heavenly Father is too vast to be confined by physical boundaries. By begging for a golden calf to worship (Exodus 32:1-4), the Israelites showed they didn’t understand or appreciate His boundless nature. Idolatry is an attempt to elevate finite things that fit our perceptions and desires above an infinite Lord.
The Father is infinite in His being and, therefore, in every one of His attributes. His love has no restrictions, and His mercy is without end. We cannot sin enough or fall so far that we are beyond the reach of His loving grace. Take comfort in this: No matter where you go or what you do, your Father is with you.

10/28/2026

Daily Devotion
Wednesday 10/28/26
Be Patient in the Lord
Read Psalm 27:13-14
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord” (Ps. 27:14). Remarkably, these encouraging words occur at the end of a psalm that spoke of David’s enemies, fears, and sense of abandonment. How interesting that he could conclude with a determined command to himself: “Wait.”
Waiting is one of the hardest things we do as believers. It’s easy to think of waiting as passivity—in other words, as empty time, when nothing is happening. But the waiting David describes is something else entirely: active trust. It’s the soul’s refusal to give up on God when the answer hasn’t come, the door hasn’t opened, the healing hasn’t arrived. It’s choosing, in the middle of the silence, to believe the Lord is still good and still near.
Most of us aren’t just waiting for small things. We’re longing for a relationship to heal, a child to return, a diagnosis to change, a hope to come to life. In that kind of waiting, the temptation isn’t merely impatience; it’s discouragement—the slow erosion of belief that God is at work.
That’s why Scripture urges us to be strong and take courage. God hasn’t forgotten (Isaiah 49:15-16). The waiting isn’t wasted. We simply keep looking for Him.

10/27/2026

Daily Devotion
Tuesday 10/27/26
I will be with you till the end of the age
Read Acts 1:4-8
Before Jesus ascended to the Father, He gathered His disciples one last time and gave them a remarkable promise. They were not to leave Jerusalem yet; they were to wait for something to happen that would change everything: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses” (Acts 1:8).
Notice that Jesus spoke these words to a group. He didn’t commission one man to go it alone. He gathered all of His apostles and told them, together, that the Spirit would equip them, together, to bear witness to what they had seen and heard. The early church was never meant to be a collection of isolated believers taking individual stands. It was meant to be a community whose shared life made Christ visible.
That’s still the essence of witnessing today. We don’t have to manufacture courage on our own, and we don’t have to figure out what to say in the moment. We belong to a body of believers—past and present—in which the Spirit is already at work. Our job is to live faithfully inside that community, trusting that when the time comes to speak, the same Spirit who filled the disciples will give us exactly what we need (Luke 24:49). Witnessing is not a performance. It is the overflow of a shared life in Christ.

10/26/2026

Daily Devotion
Monday 10/26/26
I will be with you always
Read Matthew 28:18-20
The Christian life is an active life—one given over to working, serving, sharing, and loving. It’s tempting to think that being a believer mostly means showing up for church each week and putting something in the offering plate. Those are good habits. But Jesus’ final charge to His disciples encompassed far more.
In today’s passage, Jesus tells His followers to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (v. 19). Notice He doesn’t say “convert” or “recruit” but “make” disciples. A disciple is someone who walks alongside, watches, learns, and slowly becomes like the teacher. That kind of formation doesn’t happen automatically. It takes place over meals and loving conversations, through friendships and seasons, as faith becomes visible in how we live.
This takes pressure off. To have a kingdom impact, you don’t have to quit your job to become a missionary, and you don’t have to convince your neighbors with a gospel presentation. Simply notice the people God has put in your life and live in a way that shows honesty, love, and genuine interest in them. Then, when questions come, answer them with gentleness (1 Peter 3:15).
Most Christians were influenced by people they already knew and trusted, who showed love before ever sharing their faith in Jesus. That’s the quiet, lifelong work Christ has given us.

10/25/2026

Immanuel Lutheran Tonawanda
Reformation Sunday 2026
Rev Michael Dobler Pastor
www.ilctny.org

10/24/2026

Daily Devotion
Saturday 10/24/26
By Grace We Are Saved
Rea Romans 5: 1-11
Paul’s words in Romans 5 might come across as surprising. A lot of people may have thought he’d write about what we did to earn God’s favor; instead, he wrote about what God did when we were still far off: “While we were still helpless ... Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (vv. 6, 😎.
Notice the timing. Christ didn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up. He didn’t pause until we were closer to worthy. He moved toward us even though we had nothing to offer—and that movement was the very reason we could move toward Him.
This is the picture of grace. It’s not a reward for people who finally got it together; it’s a rescue extended to people who couldn’t. Paul says we were helpless, ungodly sinners and enemies of God. Rather than use words to shame us, he underscored how far the Lord was willing to reach out in love (vv. 6, 8, 10).
As a result, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:19-20). Far from some fragile truce, this is a settled peace, grounded in what our Savior has done rather than what we can sustain in our limited human strength. The good news is not that we are finally acceptable. It is that we have been loved from the beginning, by the One who chose to reconcile us to Himself.

10/23/2026

Daily Devotion
Friday 10/23/26
I will be with you till the end of the age.
Read Acts 4:13-22
The rulers, elders, and scribes in today’s passage were amazed. Peter and John, standing before them, had just healed a lame man in Jesus’ name and preached Christ’s resurrection to a crowd (Acts 3:1-26). Interrogating them, the authorities expected the fumbling defense of uneducated Galileans. Instead, they witnessed clarity and courage that were hard to explain. As a result, the leaders “began to recognize them as having been with Jesus” (4:13).
That small observation contains an enormous truth. What set Peter and John apart wasn’t credentials or natural gifts. It was proximity. They had walked with Jesus. They had eaten with Him, listened to Him, watched Him, been rebuked and loved and sent by Him. And it showed.
We sometimes imagine the Christian life is about becoming impressive for God. But Scripture gently tells a different story. The Lord isn’t seeking people with the right résumé; He’s looking for those who will sit near Him long enough to be changed by Him. He wants people like the disciples—fishermen, a tax collector—none of them remarkable by the world’s standards.
Whatever your life looks like, time spent with Jesus is never wasted. Others may not always notice what you’ve done. But hopefully they’ll come to recognize Who you’ve been with.

10/22/2026

10/22/2026

Daily Devotion
Thursday 10/22/26
Always Be Kind, Faithful and Uplifting To Others
Read Hebrews 10:23-25
The writer of Hebrews knew that faith is not a solitary project. After a long and breathtaking argument about what Christ has accomplished for us, he turns to practical counsel: Hold fast to your hope because God is faithful. Then, immediately after, he gives a second charge: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:24 NIV).
Notice how naturally the two belong together. We hold fast together. We spur one another on (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). The Christian life was never meant to be a private endurance test.
That’s a quietly liberating idea for anyone who’s tried to grow in faith on willpower alone. God does give us His Spirit, His Word, and prayer. But He also gives us people—friends, mentors, and fellow travelers who notice when we’re flagging, who speak truth with kindness, who pray when we cannot, and who draw out of us a faith more generous than we knew we had.
The best friends we have in the Christian life do something rare: They love us exactly as we are and gently keep pointing us toward Christ. That’s the kind of friend worth having and worth being. Ask God to bring such people into your life—and to make you into that kind of friend to someone else.