Before the Lord

Blake S. Crawford
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Christianity
  • Daily

Before the Lord is a daily Christian devotional that goes beyond surface-level encouragement. Each episode digs into a single passage of Scripture with pointed observations, honest questions, and a practical application you can carry into your day. The name "Before the Lord" comes from the Latin phrase Coram Deo — "before the face of God" — the idea that everything we do is carried out in His presence: with Him, under His authority, and for His glory. Whether you're in your car, at your desk, or starting your morning, these short episodes are designed to help you know and experience the Lord o

  1. 1d ago

    Holding Firm

    Reading Hebrews 3:14, Blake asks two questions: what does it mean to be a partaker of Christ, and what does it take to remain one? The answer turns on a single Greek word. “Have become” is gegonamen — a perfect-tense verb for something finished whose result still stands. Not “we are becoming” or “we might become,” but “we have become — as in done, and still standing.” Our partnership with Christ, Blake says, is already a settled, accomplished fact — and the word for partaker, metochoi, means a true sharer: we share in His righteousness, His Spirit, His Father, His inheritance, His everything. So what's the “if we hold firm” doing at the end? Not naming the price we pay to stay partners, Blake argues, but the evidence the partnership was real all along — it's not the price of admission, it's the evidence of admission. Drawing on John 15, he reframes abiding not as white-knuckle striving but as remaining near the One who holds us (the vine does the holding and the feeding). The danger isn't that a true partaker loses the partnership — it's that we can live as strangers to it: holding the title while never drawing on the riches. The call of Hebrews is simply to live as what we already are. Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

  2. Oct 12

    You Are Salt

    Blake opens with a confession: during the last election, he let the political fight spill onto his social media — and it cost him his witness with a younger sister in Christ who had been reading his devotionals. To borrow Matthew 5:13, his salt lost its flavor. In this episode he traces how it happened, and the harder truth underneath it: few things make a believer go flat faster than caring more about winning an argument than loving the person on the other side. The turn comes through Henry Blackaby's devotional “You Are Salt,” where Blake realized the one who needed adjusting wasn't her — it was him. So he stopped trying to win, reopened the door he'd let slam shut, and put her soul above his point. The takeaway widens past politics to any hill we plant a flag on — a parenting opinion, a hot take, who was right in the family argument: being salt means caring more about people's souls than being right, and abstaining from anything that dilutes our witness. A watching world, Blake says, is far more moved by a believer who loves across a disagreement than by one who wins it. Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

  3. Oct 9

    Divine Guardrails

    A cartoon by Mike Waters has stuck with Blake: a man fed up with a fence labeled “God's Commands” jumps over it — only to discover it wasn't a fence at all, but a guardrail at the edge of a cliff. In this episode Blake reframes God's commands the way the cartoon does: not a warden's fence meant to confine us, but guardrails set by a Father who loves us, placed at the edge of cliffs we'd drive off if left to ourselves. Anchored in Proverbs 19:16, obedience isn't the price of the good life — it's the protection of it. Blake tells it personally. After a very public trial left him bitter and aching to tell his side, he knew his motives weren't pure — so instead of a green light, the Lord gave him sixteen questions to answer before he said a word. Those personal guardrails (distinct from God's commands, but built from them) have kept the story largely untold to this day. The takeaway isn't his restraint but God's protection — and a practice anyone can borrow: when your emotions are at the wheel, name your guardrails in writing before you act, because memory edits itself and the page doesn't (Proverbs 4:23). Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

  4. Oct 8

    Full Vent

    I know the moment my temper starts looking for a target — early evening, after a day when nothing went as planned, walking through the door wanting peace and finding chaos instead. Here's what I've learned to ask: what am I actually angry about? Because it's rarely the spilled milk. Underneath almost every outburst is a desire I carried through the door that went unmet. But here's the turn that changed everything for me: the desire usually isn't the problem — the demand is. Wanting rest, respect, or to feel adequate are good wants; the trouble starts when a good desire hardens into a demand, and everyone around me becomes a supplier or an obstacle. Proverbs says a fool gives full vent to his spirit, but the wise quietly hold it back — the same word used when God stills the roaring sea. Your anger isn't a verdict on your walk with God. It's an alarm — and the desire beneath it is the doorway home. 🎧 Full devotional + podcast → https://blakescrawford.com/listen 📩 Free daily devotional in your inbox → https://blakescrawford.com/sign-up

  5. Oct 7

    Spiritual Drift

    One of the most dangerous places we can find ourselves spiritually, Blake says, is drifting from God without ever realizing it. We picture spiritual drift as something obvious — skipping church, dropping prayer, a visible pattern of sin. But what if the drift is quieter: we keep doing all the outwardly Christian things while our hearts slowly begin to pursue something else? In this episode Blake walks through James 4:1-10, where James refuses to stay on the surface and goes beneath our behavior to the desires driving it. God exposes our drift, Blake argues, not to condemn us but to bring us home. The passage turns on five extraordinary words — “But he gives more grace” — and then calls us to see the drift, grieve it honestly (“be wretched and mourn and weep”), and draw near. The invitation isn't perpetual misery; it's restoration: turn around, take one ordinary step back toward God, and discover that even when we've wandered, He gives more grace. Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

  6. Oct 6

    Him Alone

    Few things test our faith like waiting on God for an answer that never comes. In this episode — the third and final movement of the Power of Patience series — Blake gets underneath the how of waiting to the what it rests on. Prayer and stillness only hold, he says, if they rest on Someone who won't move. Drawing on Psalm 62, where a little Hebrew word meaning “only” drums through the psalm six times, he shows how we're tempted to widen our trust — to keep other rocks nearby just in case — when God calls us to narrow it to one: Himself. Anchored in Psalm 62:1-2, “He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress,” Blake unpacks the paradox of David's calm in the middle of enemies (and Paul's “pressed but not crushed” in 2 Corinthians 4:8), then names the danger he watches in himself — treating God like a genie we only summon in a crisis. Trusting Him alone, he argues, isn't a lever you pull under pressure; it's a relationship built in the ordinary, so that when the ground shakes, you already know the Rock beneath your feet. Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

  7. Oct 5

    Trust is Standing Still

    When we're waiting on God and the answer won't come, Blake says the hardest thing He asks isn't to keep believing — it's to hold still. In this episode he unpacks why: everything in us equates action with progress, so we scramble to fix and manage even when we haven't heard from God. Drawing on Henry Blackaby's memorable inversion — “Don't just do something, stand there” — he shows that our frantic activity is often a quiet confession that we're not sure God will come through, so we'd better handle it ourselves. Anchored in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God,” Blake reframes stillness not as idleness but as the doorway to remembering who actually runs the world. He names the hard part — being still when those who ignore God seem to thrive (Psalm 37) — and lands on the promise: when we stop scrambling and let God be exalted, we discover He's been our fortress all along. It isn't weakness to be still. It's trust. Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

  8. Oct 2

    Wait Expectantly

    Few things test our faith like waiting on God — we pray, and then nothing. In this episode, Blake names the two ditches we fall into: forcing an answer ourselves, or going passive and checking out. Biblical waiting, he says, is neither — it’s active trust. He walks through what happens when we rush ahead (“creating an Ishmael,” from Abraham to Saul to Israel), then reframes the silence itself: God isn’t slow or absent, and the delay is often where He does His deepest work in us. Anchored in Psalm 5:3, Blake shows how David waited — praying and watching like a watchman on the wall, expecting God to act. And he gets personal about his own unresolved waiting season: stepping away from a business and a church he loved, “retired” at forty-nine and unsure of his identity, still watching for the fuller chapter while doing the two things God has made clear. Waiting, it turns out, isn’t idle time — it’s watchman’s work. So don’t just wait. Wait expectantly. Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

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About

Before the Lord is a daily Christian devotional that goes beyond surface-level encouragement. Each episode digs into a single passage of Scripture with pointed observations, honest questions, and a practical application you can carry into your day. The name "Before the Lord" comes from the Latin phrase Coram Deo — "before the face of God" — the idea that everything we do is carried out in His presence: with Him, under His authority, and for His glory. Whether you're in your car, at your desk, or starting your morning, these short episodes are designed to help you know and experience the Lord o

Information

  • Creator
    Blake S. Crawford
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    122
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Blake S. Crawford
  • Show Website
    Before the Lord