Luke Werth

Maranatha | husband, dad, chiropractor

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@MikeWingerii Check out what @Joel7Richardson has to say on the topic if you haven’t already!

[Rabbi Brian Samuel @rabbriansamuel]

The New Covenant doesn't replace Torah.

It relocates Torah.

From stone...

to hearts. ❤️

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Anyone meeting a man saying he is the God of the Universe (Light of the World, Heavenly Bread, Son of Man, Son of God, ‘I AM’, Forgiver of all sins, Judge of the Earth, etc) could not rationally just ‘like’ him. You could not even respond with mere pity if you also saw his miraculous power and the following he was commanding. You would reject his claims and him with shock, fear, or anger. Or you would accept them and worship him. Nothing in the middle.

Not every contact with Jesus in the Bible exposed the hearers to his self-claims. But anyone in the gospel who heard them or saw the exercise of his supernatural power asked him to leave (Mk 5:17; Lk 5:8) or tried to kill him (Lk 4:28-29; Jn 10:31; 11:53) or became his disciple. Not only is this orthodox theology—that Christ must be worshipped—it is also common sense that claims of exclusive deity would provoke immoderate responses.

This argument—that if you recognize the Jesus who really lived and spoke you will have to reject him wholly or worship and serve him supremely—was liberating for me when I accepted it. It moved me over a line I was previously unable to cross. It transformed me. It is the reason I can face cancer. It is a life-giving truth.

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@HunterFran58999 @EmmausWire Agreed!

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

If you can't show the difference between religion and the gospel, people will confuse morality with a changed heart.

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@Osint613 @Joel7Richardson any prophetic implications to this?

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@TDekkersPhysio Maybe it’s a test question and you’re supposed to pick a, b, c, or d from the OP?

[Nathan White @NWhite_GA]

My 16yr old son is reading The Screwtape Letters for school, and he has to write a paper and create a piece of art on a theme from the book. He said the phrase, “Prosperity knits a man to the world” struck him and inspired him to paint this (by hand).

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@Retlouping Thank you!

[Pastor Rich Bitterman @w_bitterman]

The Cross Still Offends

The bullet tore the air in half.

A folding chair rattled. A Bible dropped. A young man slumped sideways beneath a white event tent, eyes wide with the weight of eternity.

It was supposed to be a conversation. A “prove me wrong” segment. But this time, rebuttal came not with words, but with a rifle.

Charlie Kirk didn’t get to finish his sentence.

I got the news just before prayer meeting. I contemplated this death as I prepared to lead the saints in prayer. But I didn’t feel like praying. Not tonight. My hands were still. My mouth was ready. But my soul was pacing. Angry. Grieving. Tempted.

Tempted to grow quiet.
Tempted to sit this one out.
Tempted to wonder if any of this, faith, boldness, public gospel witness, is still worth it.

Because hatred in this country isn’t simmering anymore. It is boiling.

Europe is trembling. Israel is burning. Rockets lit the sky over Gaza again. And now, here on American soil, the blood of a Christian apologist paints the pavement of a university quad.

What do you do with that?

What do you say when courage gets gunned down in daylight?

Charlie Kirk was no perfect man. None of us are.

But he had backbone where most of us don’t anymore. He was a believer. Unashamed. Unafraid. He understood that real conversations only happen when truth is welcome at the table. And the truth he carried most was Christ.

He brought the gospel into public space on purpose. Because the gospel isn’t supposed to stay in church basements and private Bible studies. It is meant to confront. It is supposed to offend. It was not made for safety.

The Word became flesh and they nailed Him to a tree.

So of course they came for Charlie.

Of course they reached for a gun.

This is what evil does when it runs out of arguments. It doesn’t reason. It kills.

That’s the part that catches in my throat. Not just the sadness, but the strategy of hell behind it.

The Enemy wants us afraid.

He wants us to see what happened to Charlie and backpedal.

He wants the rest of us to whisper, to soften the message, to believe the lie that faith should stay private.

But Christ never whispered.

He preached in temples, on hillsides, in courtrooms, at dinner tables.

And when they told Him to be quiet, He picked up His cross.

Not a symbolic one.
A real one.
Heavy. Bloody. Splintered.

When Jesus said, “Follow Me,” He didn’t hand out maps. He handed out crosses.

That’s what I remembered tonight.

I sat in our prayer space, surrounded by saints who had brought prayer lists and worn Bibles. And I realized I didn’t want to lead them in mourning. I didn’t want to lead them in mourning. I wanted to lead them into battle. Not with banners or fists, but with open Bibles and tear-stained prayers.

The kind of war that kneels in gravel beside the wounded, hands them living water, and refuses to leave. The kind that speaks both mercy and judgment without flinching. The kind Charlie died for.

This world is not a friend to grace. But grace isn’t fragile.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

Paul didn’t leave that question unanswered.

“Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?”
—Romans 8:35

He piles up every fear you and I carry and then sets them on fire.

“No. In all these things we are more than conquerors.”

That means bullets don’t win. Slander doesn’t win. Prison bars don’t win. Death doesn’t win.

You can lose everything in this world and still walk into glory with your head lifted high. Because the love of God in Christ Jesus isn’t suspended by headlines or gunfire.

There are two worlds unfolding right now.

The one you see.
And the one you don’t.
One is filled with chaos. The other is filled with crowns.

I believe that when Charlie Kirk’s body slumped to the concrete, his soul stood upright in heaven. Not limping. Not silenced. Not stunned. But crowned.
He didn’t fall.
He crossed.

The great cloud of witnesses gained another voice.
And I wonder if Stephen met him there.

The first martyr.

The man who got stoned for preaching what the crowd didn’t want to hear.

The man who, in his final breath, saw the heavens open.
The only time in all of Scripture we see Jesus standing at the right hand of God, rising to receive one of His own.

I like to believe He stood again.

Are you afraid?

Do you feel the tremble in your spirit?

Do you wonder if it’s still worth it to speak boldly, to carry your Bible, to preach the gospel in a world that doesn’t just disagree but wants you gone?

You’re not alone.
You’re not weak for feeling that.
But you are called to something stronger than silence.

Don’t let fear become your theology.

The cost is high. But the reward?

The reward is Christ. And He’s not a concept. He’s a King.
Heaven is not empty.

It is filled with scarred saints who refused to bow to fear.
Men who were stoned.
Women who were burned.
Children who sang while the flames climbed.

And every last one of them arrived.

There is no difficulty that can cancel the promise of God.

There is no persecution that can derail your destination.
There is no sniper’s bullet that can separate a soul from Christ.

Your life is not measured by how long you live on earth, but by how much of it was spent pointing to heaven.

Paul said, “I have fought the good fight… I have kept the faith.”

Then he looked toward the reward.
Not a monument. Not a mention in history books.
But a crown.
Handed to him by the One with nail marks still in His hands.

So let me say this clearly.
We do not mourn like the world mourns.
We do not write eulogies dripping with sentiment.
We sing songs of resurrection.
We carry the banner of a Kingdom that does not tremble.

Charlie Kirk did not die for nothing.

He died carrying the same message you and I must now carry forward.

The cross stands tall.
The tomb is still empty.
And the gospel has not lost one ounce of power.

So pick up your cross.
Wipe your eyes.
And keep going.

The crown is worth it.
The King is coming.
And there’s still time to speak.

Even if they shoot.

Lord, give us courage.
And if not safety, give us joy.
For we carry not just the message, but the marks.
And You are worth every bruise.

[Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11]

Jesus defeated death so you can live.

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@SamaHoole @grok evaluate all the claims in this thread and give a synopsis

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@Conor_Harris_ @grok fact check?

[Pastor Rich Bitterman @w_bitterman]

Where Was God in the Texas Flood?

The sandals are still by the door. Her toothbrush is dry. There are fingerprints on the car window that no one can bring themselves to wipe away.

She was seven.

On the Fourth of July, she slipped beneath the water and did not come back. She was not alone. Her sister was found close by, their fingers still laced together. As if one last act of love might hold the river back.

Sometimes, the sky just breaks open and nothing is ever the same. When time becomes before and after. When pain is not a page in someone else’s story, but the sound of your own heartbeat.

This is one of those moments.

And what can be said now? What words can rise in a flood of pain so sudden, so wide, that entire families are washed into silence?

Still…we must speak. We must try.

Not to explain away the ache. Not to tidy up the tears. But to tell the truth, because silence leaves a vacuum, and in that vacuum, where truth stays quiet, shadows multiply: that this was meaningless, that God is cruel, that death always wins.

Let me speak, then, not as one above the sorrow but as one who believes there is a God who entered it.

The Ache We Cannot Escape

There is a question rising in the throat of every mother whose arms are empty tonight:

Where was God?

If God is love, where was He when the river rose? If God is powerful, why didn’t He stop it? If God is wise, why did the storm come at all?

That question is not a sign of disbelief. It is a cry of faith that feels betrayed. It is the heart’s protest that says: I know You’re there, but I cannot understand You.

And that’s important.

Atheism has no right to ask why. It has no category for meaning. But grief demands an answer because we know, in our bones, that things are not as they should be. We rage at death because somewhere deep in our soul we remember Eden. We remember a garden where death did not belong.

We rage against death because something in us remembers how it used to be. It is evidence. The way your heart recoils at caskets and coffins is not weakness…it is a whisper of the world we lost.

And the world we long for.

The Suffering That Shook the Heavens

But here’s the question grief never expects: What if God grieved first?

What if He didn’t stand above suffering, but walked straight into it?

He did.

His name is Jesus.

He didn’t come as a king in gold. He came as a child in straw. Born to peasants too poor to afford a proper sacrifice. Raised in a forgotten town. Misunderstood, slandered, betrayed, beaten. And then He was crucified.

You’ve heard the story so often, maybe it doesn’t shake you anymore. But let it.

The Eternal Son of God, hanging naked, bleeding before His mother. Not just dying. Being judged. Treated as if He had committed every sin of everyone who would ever believe. The One who knew no sin became sin. And the Father turned His face away.

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”

That was the cry that echoed across the sky. That was the moment the earth trembled. That was the night sorrow pierced heaven itself.

And that, dear reader, is the only reason we can speak hope into tragedy.

Because three days later, the tomb cracked open. And death blinked.

He is alive. Still scarred, but alive. And one day, every grave will lose its grip. Every river will be rolled back. And every child in Christ will rise.

The Suffering God Allows and Enters

But what about now?

What about the parent who holds a balloon they meant to give their daughter but now releases into the sky with tears?

There is a kind of suffering God allows, so that we might wake up. When tragedy comes, the wrong question is, “Why them?” The harder and holier question is: “Why not me?”

We live in a world we did not make, with a breath we did not earn, in bodies we did not design. Every heartbeat is borrowed. And every moment is mercy.

Jesus once spoke of a tower that fell and crushed eighteen people. His words were sharp and strange: “Do you think they were worse sinners than all others? No. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

He wasn’t being cruel. He was being clear. Suffering is a trumpet blast: turn around. Come home.

There is another kind of suffering God gives. The suffering of conviction.

When the Spirit of God shows you that your greatest problem is not what’s happened to you, but what lives inside you. When your eyes open to the weight of your own sin, it hurts. It stings. But it is the pain that leads to healing. The ache that leads to a Savior.

There is yet another kind of suffering…one reserved for God’s children. It is not punishment. It is preparation.

Job lost everything. Children. Wealth. Health. Dignity. His friends blamed him. His wife told him to curse God. He sat in ashes scraping his skin with pottery shards.

And then God spoke.

Not to answer every question, but to remind Job of who He is. To pull Job out of his pain not with explanations, but with presence.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

Job never got the why. But he saw the Who. And it was enough.

The cross tells us this: God never wastes suffering. For the believer, every sorrow chisels away what is not like Christ. Every wound makes room for glory. Every trial becomes a testimony. Even if no one else understands, He does.

What We Must Do

Now…hear me clearly: We do not just sit with suffering. We move.

Jesus fed the hungry. He touched the leper. He wept at funerals. And He calls us to do the same.

Grief is not a reason to retreat. It is a reason to love harder.

We must hold the hand of the widow. Sit with the father who cannot speak. Bring meals. Write cards. Show up. Keep showing up. And when the words won’t come, we weep with those who weep. That, too, is holy work.

But we do more. We speak.

We tell the world what Texas still needs to hear: Death is not the end. Loss is not meaningless. And there is one name under heaven by which we must be saved.

His name is Jesus.

He welcomes sinners. He binds the broken. He walks into funeral homes and whispers, “She is not gone. She is with Me.”

To every family grieving this week, I say with trembling: He is there. In the quiet. In the storm. In the empty bedroom. He knows. He sees. He weeps.

And He will make all things new.

We grieve. But not as those without hope.

Because the hands that hold your sorrow are scarred.

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@AmericanTorah @Joel7Richardson

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@redprepper1 @AmericanTorah 🙌🏼

[Luke Werth @LukeWerth1]

@BillingMartin As someone else already said, people are coming to us for the interventions. To not use the expected tool might just send the public down the road to the next guy. Let’s use the tools and leverage each interaction to broaden the public’s understanding of what makes one well.

[First Fruits of Zion @followffoz]

What did God mean when he called Israel “a kingdom of priests”? In this article, Bill Scofield of The Apocalyptic Gospel Podcast explores Shavu’ot, Pentecost, and the irrevocable calling of Israel. @wscofield77 @ApocGospel

[Travis M Snow (Dept. of Eschatology) @travismsnow]

In some ways, regret over roads not taken is a form of self-idolatry, because it is built on the presumption of self-omniscience, as if you know everything you should have done bc you know for a fact that everything would have turned out much better if you had chosen path A instead of path B.

Is your understanding of all contingencies really all that deep?

I think not.

And secondly, regret over roads not taken is also rooted in a kind of utopian idolatry, one that builds perfect worlds that do not exist, but yet holds you captive to this vision of utopia that you failed to achieve.

The reality is that brokenness, and corruption, and catastrophe, and problems exist down every road. So there is no path you could have taken that would have brought you to your fantasy land, because that fantasy land is not real. It only exists in your head.

You must live. Accept suffering. Make decisions. Make mistakes. Correct course, and most of all, trust in God's Providence over everything.

"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." Proverbs 16:9