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
Augustine: The Prayer He Was Afraid to Pray
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A garden in Milan, Italy in the year 386. A brilliant young professor named Augustine is sitting under a fig tree and he's coming apart. He's one of the finest minds in the Roman Empire, and he's miserable. For years he had known the truth about God and run from it. Because surrender means give up the sins he loves. He is weeping so hard he can barely breathe. And then over the garden wall he hears the voice of a child singing a little sing song phrase. Take up and read. Take up and read. Stay with me. You're gonna want to hear the rest of the story. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today the honest prayer of a divided heart and the words that finally set a brilliant man free. Long before that garden, Augustine had prayed one of the most honest prayers ever spoken. He wanted God. He really did. But he also wanted his old life, his pleasures, the sins that had a grip on him. And so he prayed in his own words, Lord, give me purity, but not yet. Give me purity, but not yet. If you've ever wanted to do right someday, just not today, you have prayed Augustine's prayer. He knew what was good. He simply was not ready to let go of what was killing him. His mother, Monica, had prayed for that boy for more than thirty years. She had followed him across the sea, wept rivers of tears, and never stopped asking God to save her brilliant runaway son. And now here he was in the garden, finally at the end of himself. When he heard the child's voice say, Take up and read, he ran to where he had left a scroll of Paul's letters. He opened it, and his eyes fell on Romans chapter 13. Put off the works of darkness, make no provision for the flesh, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. He said that moment he finished the sentence, a light of certainty flooded his heart, and every shadow of doubt melted away. The prayer he had been afraid to pray, the prayer for purity now and not someday, was finally answered. He stopped running. He surrendered everything. That broken man under the fig tree became Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest teachers the church has ever known, whose words still shape how we understand God sixteen centuries later. Maybe you've been praying Augustine's prayer without knowing its name. Lord, change me. But not yet. Lord, I will deal with that, just not today. There is a mercy in finally being honest about it. God already knows the part of your heart that is holding back. You can stop pretending and simply tell him, like Augustine did, that you are divided, and you need Him to make you whole. Here are the words that freed Augustine. Romans thirteen fourteen. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts. Notice the choice. Stop feeding the thing that is starving your soul and put on Christ instead. The someday you keep promising God can become today. Augustine waited years for a freedom that was available the whole time. Do not wait as long as he did. And that, friend, is how God lives up your day.