Across the long story of human faith, one truth echoes through every generation. Closeness to God does not grow in the soil of comfort; it grows through discipline, devotion, and the willingness to deny oneself something greater than oneself. Every great tradition bears witness to men and women who chose the narrow road, the demanding road—the road where the desires of the flesh are restrained so that the call of the spirit might rise.

The history of holiness, my friends, has always been a history of discomfort. In the Judean wilderness, Jesus of Nazareth fasted forty days and forty nights. The sun scorched his brow; the stones burned beneath his feet.

Hunger pressed upon his body, yet his soul reached toward God. His fasting was not starvation; it was sanctification. He taught us that intimacy with God is born when the will of the body bows before the will of Heaven. High in the Himalayas, Siddhartha Gautama sat beneath a bodhi tree.

After relinquishing all the comforts of royalty through silence, fasting, and severe austerities, he discovered the Middle Way; he entered enlightenment. In early Christianity, the desert fathers and mothers withdrew into barren landscapes, clothed in coarse garments, sleeping on bare earth, believing that silence and suffering could cleanse the soul. The Prophet Muhammad climbed to the cave of Hira, praying through the night, fasting, listening, preparing himself until revelation arrived. Saint Francis of Assisi stripped himself of wealth and privilege.

He kissed the hand of the leper, and he embraced poverty as Lady Grace, finding joy in surrender. The Dalai Lama, exiled from his homeland, still rises before the sun to discipline his mind in study and prayer. Mother Teresa walked the crowded streets of Calcutta, touching the untouchable, feeding the dying, sleeping little and praying much, embracing what she called the discomfort of compassion. My friends, these witnesses across history remind us of a central truth.

Holiness is not accidental.
Holiness is disciplined.
Discomfort becomes devotion; sacrifice becomes sanctuary.

And these leaders, these faith leaders, taught us that if we wish to walk closely with God, we cannot cling to ease.

We must pick up the cross and walk the harder road that leads to transformation. This is how we shall begin in 2026. We turn to the second chapter of the Gospel according to John, and here—at the beginning of this year—we find Jesus entering the temple and overturning the tables of the money changers.

Most people love the drama of the scene—this angry Jesus forcefully cleansing his Father’s house. But I want us to pause and ask a deeper question: not what did Jesus do, but why was Jesus angry?

He was not angry simply because merchants were selling in the temple. Jesus was angry because the sacred struggle had been exchanged for shallow ease. The costly call of faith had been replaced with the cheap comfort of convenience. Endurance had been abandoned for efficiency. The refining fire of devotion had been forsaken for the lukewarm flicker of familiarity.

The discipline of discipleship had been traded for the luxury of distraction. When Jesus entered the temple, he expected reverence; instead, he encountered a marketplace.
He expected prayer; instead, he heard profit.
He expected surrender; instead, he saw sale.

The sin, my friends, was not the selling itself; it was the spirit behind the selling. It revealed a deeper corruption—a spiritual marketplace where the heart had become transactional, where holiness could be bought, and where devotion was divided between God and gain.

We all know what a marketplace is—endless options. Consumers compare and choose and negotiate. Value is driven by preference, and the more options we have, the more we believe we are in control. But the more the heart indulges in choice, the more the heart becomes divided.

What Jesus confronted that day was not merely a marketplace of animals. It was a marketplace of ideas, of spiritual priorities—a place where convenience overshadowed conviction. People came to God as consumers rather than disciples and friends.

When the heart becomes a marketplace, Jesus cannot be Lord of all—because he is no longer Lord at all.

The temple gleamed in the sunlight, symbolizing God’s presence among the people. Yet corruption crept beneath its marble floors like a serpent in the garden. You did not first hear prayer—you heard bleating sheep, cooing doves, and clinking coins.

A house of prayer had become a place of profit. And the spirit, my friends, had died.

Today, this sickness wears a different face. Companies like Amazon, Uber, and DoorDash fuel desire through the illusion of endless choice. Convenience has become our god. Desire has become our habit; consumption, our way of life. And the modern heart often mistakes the freedom of choice for the freedom of the soul.

Walking into this environment, Jesus declares: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” He was not only diagnosing a sickness in the temple—he was diagnosing a sickness in the human soul.

He saw worship reduced to transaction.
Faith treated like merchandise.
Prayer drowned beneath the noise of profit.
Greed dressed in religious garments.

So Jesus overturned not only the wooden tables in the temple, but the invisible tables in the human heart—where greed sits where grace should reign, where pride stands where prayer should kneel, where convenience crowds out communion.

And so, on this first Sunday of 2026, the Spirit asks us: Where have we turned our own hearts into marketplaces? Where must we overturn the tables in our lives?

The call of Christ is not transactional; it is transformational. We are called to overturn the tables where production matters more than presence, where attendance is counted but anointing is ignored, where budgets are measured but brokenness is overlooked.

God did not deliver Israel from Egypt to build an economy of exploitation, but an economy of justice and compassion. And we must overturn the tables where empire has replaced divine will—where efficiency and profit shape our hearts more than the Messiah.

Consumer religion asks, “What has the church done for me lately?”
Convictional discipleship asks, “What has Christ called the church to do for the world?”

So how will you leave this message? As consumers—pleased with good preaching and beautiful music? Or as participants in divine disruption—unsettled, awakened, ready to overturn the tables?

For Jesus did not come to tidy the temple. He came to transform it. God’s house is not a franchise—it is a freedom. Not a marketplace, but a movement.

And so it is with your heart. Your heart is not a marketplace; it is a movement. A sacred sanctuary where mercy outweighs money, conviction outruns convenience, and compassion pushes back complacency.

God never intended the heart to be comfortable. God intended the heart to be consecrated.

So go forth, reclaim the moral imagination of the church. Believe again that tables can be overturned. That the poor can be lifted. That God’s presence can dwell among us.

Walk boldly into the discomfort of discipleship. For when faith grows comfortable, holiness loses its power. But when conviction rises—the Spirit still moves.

And so I ask you, my friends: What will you reimagine? What table will you overturn?
What marketplace in your heart needs cleansing?

God bless you, Day1, and may heaven smile upon you.