Lift Up Your Day
Lift Up Your Day with Pastor Rodney Coe — a 5-minute Christian devotional podcast for the heart that needs lifting.
Every Take 5 episode is a true story from history and Scripture about ordinary people God used to do extraordinary things. Pastor Rodney Coe — author of 5 books, devotional writer, and pastor — tells the stories warm, well-paced, and pointed at the part of your day that needs the most lifting.
You'll meet missionaries saved by angels (John Paton), a watchmaker's daughter who forgave a Nazi guard (Corrie ten Boom), a Tennessee farm boy who took a hill in the Argonne (Alvin York), a Senate chaplain who wasn't ready (Peter Marshall), a man who walked with God at 4 a.m. (George Washington Carver), and more.
Each episode ends the same way: "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
Free 7-day devotional When Worry Won't Let Go at rodneycoe.com/worry-devotional. Books and blog at rodneycoe.com.
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Lift Up Your Day
Samuel Rutherford: The Higher Summons
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They summoned him for treason. He told them he had already been summoned by a higher Judge.
Samuel Rutherford was a country pastor banished to a cold northern city, where exile turned him into one of the most beloved letter-writers in church history. This is the story of the book they burned, the pulpit they took, and the deathbed words that have comforted believers for more than three hundred years.
Scripture echoes: Romans 8:31; John 14:2; Psalm 73:25
Key figure: Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600-1661), Scottish pastor and author of the Letters and Lex Rex.
Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/samuel-rutherford-higher-summons/
Five minutes. Pull up a chair.
The man in his door carried a death warrant, a summons from Parliament. The charge was high treason. The penalty, if the court had its way, was a scaffold. But when they stepped inside they found a frail old man propped up in bed too weak to stand. The most dangerous thinker in Scotland was dying. They read in the charge and he almost smiled. His response? Tell them I have a summons already before a higher judge. I must answer that one first. Stay with me. You'll want to hear how this one ends. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a daily five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today the story of a Scottish pastor who answered a king's court from his deathbed and pointed a watching world to a country he called Emmanuel's land. Samuel Rutherford was born in Scotland around the year 1600. In 1627 he became pastor of a small country church at Anworth in the Green Hills of Galloway. He was no big city preacher. He shepherded farmers and fishermen, and he gave them everything he had. People who knew him said he was always at it, always preaching, always praying, always visiting the sick. He rose before dawn to be alone with God, and neighbors said you could hear him in his study pleading for the souls in his care. Then trouble came. Rutherford would not bow to the king's rules for the church. He believed Christ alone was its head, and no crown could take that place. So in 1636 they stripped him of his pulpit, forbade him to preach anywhere in Scotland, and banished him to the cold northern city of Aberdeen. They thought they had silenced him. They had only handed him a pen. From exile he began to write letters, hundreds of them, letters to greeting mothers, to frightened young believers, to weary pastors. They overflowed with love for Jesus and a longing for a place he called Emmanuel's land, where Christ is seen face to face. A Puritan named Richard Baxter later said, apart from the Bible, the world had never seen a book like it. When the storm lifted, Rutherford came home. He helped shape the faith at the Westminster Assembly. He wrote a daring book called Lex Rex, which means the law is king, arguing that even a king must answer to the law and the law to God. Rulers hated it. So when a king came to power they burned that book in the public square. Then they came for its author with a charge of treason, but Rutherford was already dying and already unafraid. In his last hour someone leaned close and asked, What do you think now of Christ? The dying Pasper whispered I shall live and adore him. Then came his final words Glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. The court never got its day. He was already home. Here's what I want you to carry today. Two summons came for Samuel Rutherford, one from an earthly court that could take his life, one from a heavenly father who had already secured it. He knew which one mattered most. You and I stand before that same high court. People's opinions will rise and fall. Some will praise you, some may try to burn your good name in the public square. But there is one whose verdict over you is already settled in the blood of his son. Live for that audience. Answer his summons first. And when your own midnight feels long, remember what Rutherford saw from his deathbed. Glory dwells in Emmanuel's land. For everyone who belongs to Jesus, that morning is coming. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.