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Everlasting November 10, 2025 Devotional

by David Joynt on November 10, 2025


MARK 1:19-20 | 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

 

Simon and Andrew left their nets. James and John left their boats but also their father, Zebedee. For the next three years of itinerant ministry, these men saw little of their extended families. Like         soldiers with a remote posting, they no doubt missed “family time.” What was harder for them was that there were no ways to communicate with their clans. Still today, incorporation into God’s family can require compromises with our obligations and patterns with our natural families. It is wonderful when these two “families” align, of course, but sometimes there are tensions.

 

Have you ever experienced tension between family and church?

 

 

Gracious God,

Teach me to honor the obligations and opportunities you give me to love and serve, within both my natural and my faith family.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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