GraceNotes Podcast

FINDING CONFIDENCE AND STRENGTH (May 29, 2026)

Sit quietly with grace, and let it work its slow, substantial change.

Nothing is more common for those whose hearts have been divinely warmed than to pledge themselves to new, exacting duties. We’ll read our Bibles for an hour each day; pray for all our friends and even for some enemies; tell “unconverted” colleagues, neighbors—even strangers—of their task to do as we have done. We move at hyper-speed as if to make up for the months—the years—when we ourselves were unresponsive to the gospel.

But what we need—and what our friends and enemies much need—is that we answer the first call of grace: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). Our rush to vow new righteous duties, work new holy deeds, and tell what we have only started to experience is often just another act of foolish self-atonement.

Heaven wisely urges us to quiet. “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘Only in returning to Me and resting in Me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength’” (Isa 30:15-16).

Grace received always grows into grace well-lived. But beware of pledging your good deeds until you’ve more fully learned all that the Lord has kindly done for you.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

WHAT ONLY GRACE CAN DO (May 22, 2026)

“This is not your own doing” (Eph. 2:8).

One author calls it “the most contrary line in human history”—six words that run against our culture, schooling, and experience.

We push ourselves from bed to answer the alarm we set just hours before. We wash and eat and ready clothes for work, conscious that one slip in our performance may unravel all the day. We move ourselves to work to push through hours built on grit and weary bodies. Then we cycle back again, preparing for the round that starts with that insistent first alarm. What, in all of this, is not of our own doing?

And yet the Scripture is insistent: none of this, for all its stress and sometime glory, can make us right with God—even if our work is feeding homeless people or lighting candles in a church.

But the phrase that cuts against the grain begins with something only God can do: “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8). In undeserved mercy, each of us is offered hope and light and daily joy if we will trust Christ’s hand to make us whole. Even the alarm sounds kinder; the labor of the day becomes our gift of gratitude.

“Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Ps. 3:8). Only He can turn grit into grace, our work dirge to a song, our inability into witness.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

ALL THE TIME (May 14, 2026)

What makes your eyes light up with glee, or stirs you to an unforced smile?

Is it the 4-year old who stomps through puddles—without boots? Is it the lily blooming on some sun-drenched bank, so hidden no one else can find it? Is it the ballad from your youth that fills your thoughts with gentle love? 

So grace delights us when we learn that it is God’s first way of seeing us—that He is glad to see us dancing in the rain, and loving every growing thing, and finding hope in much-loved songs. It is His joy to know our joy: He made us for receiving love and sharing it with others. 

And when we chide the gleeful child, or calculate the price of flowers, or brush away the tenderness we knew, we turn our backs on His warm grace to find cold comfort in self-righteousness.

Only God is always right, and only God is always gracious. Jesus said of His Father, “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45). 

Receive His gift. Enjoy His grace.

And stay in it. -Bill Knott

THE LONG ARC OF GRACE (May 08, 2026)

If you can’t recall the day or the hour you came to faith, you’re in good company.

Millions of believers candidly describe both deep faith in Jesus as their Saviour and an inability to recall just when it happened—a “sunrise experience” as one author calls it.

This is the way that grace unfolds, for “Damascus Road” conversions are far fewer than we claim. That road, it should be noted, was 150 miles long, requiring six days of travel. Grace had been working every mile to soften the heart of the angry man who would become its chief apostle.

So grace also walks with the prodigal as he leaves home; in his disturbing revelries; when he finally “comes to himself”; and when he ultimately is encircled by the father’s arms, and once again wears ring and robe. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Grace is the long arc of the Father’s kind intentions—and it may take months or years before that seeking love brings us to clarity and gratitude.

You have always been loved. You have always been sought. And your faith is an equally long arc of learning just how deeply Jesus values you.

Now stay in grace. -Bill Knott

GRACE WATCHING OVER ME (May 01, 2026)

I sing because I'm happy; I sing because I'm free;

For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

The soprano’s voice soars above the swell of the orchestra, her eyes caught up to heaven. Every heart in the concert hall leans forward, drawn by an ache, a longing.

Why do such moments move us so deeply—in seasons of faith, or in our midnight struggles? Why does our hope cling more tightly to the lyrics of an old hymn than to a hundred bright and restless tunes?

Because we bear reminding—every day—that the God who flung the stars in their courses still sees us; still chooses to see us—in all our tired, ordinary uniqueness. In heaven’s chosen language, there is no “same as that” or “same as them.” Even our unvoiced whispers are heard, fully understood, gently answered.

This is the grace that watches over us, that’s never weary, never indifferent. Jesus made it very clear: “Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to Him than they are?” (Matt 6:26).

Grace sees our tears, knows our stress, and comforts our distresses. And grace gives us a song that carries us through every hour to come.

Hope is your sign of grace.

So stay in it. -Bill Knott

FREEDOM TO BE HEALED (April 24, 2026)

It seems, at first, a profoundly foolish question: “Do you want to be healed?”

Jesus once asked it of a paralyzed man who for 38 years had lingered beside a legendary pool.

The answer feels self-evident: who wouldn’t instantly reach out for healing, for wholeness, for a mended body and the restoration of fractured relationships?

But Jesus knows how tenderly we caress our wounds; how suffering weaves itself into our core; how grief and bitterness pulse with dark, compelling energy. So He lingers before He heals, honoring the sacred freedom He gave to every soul: “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). “Do you want to live beyond your pain? Do you want to live without rehearsing narratives of those who injured you, or why your bitterness is justified?”

It was not an easy question then; it never is an easy question now. Yet Jesus asks again, for His grace is neither hurried nor forced. Will we be remade, renewed, restored? Or will we settle again onto familiar broken ground, grimly content to recount the ancient wounds that now define us?

Grace passes by your mat today. The question stirs your waiting place, echoing around your pool.

Take the hand that reaches for you. Respond with faith—yes, even trembling faith—and grace will lift you to your feet.

Then stay in it. -Bill Knott

HELP MY UNBELIEF (April 17, 2026)

So you don’t have perfect faith. There are moments—even hours or days—when trusting God’s continued goodness seems beyond your reach. You wonder if the effort of this life of trust is wise—or yields anything.

Join the crowd—the great, blood-washed crowd of those who say they follow Jesus. Unlike the spiritually intimidating stories we often tell each other, there are no sturdy souls who never know a moment’s doubt—who always sing the sun up in the morning and bless the coolness of the night. We invent such myths in hope that we might yet grow into them, more righteous than our peers.

But real life has real tests—when our money, strength, or patience come up short; when secretly we envy the ultra-rich, the ultra-smooth; the carefree media influencer. With the psalmist we complain: “Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence” (Psa 73:13).

The same gracious Word that voices our human frustration also gives us words to say to our Creator when faith is thin or weak: “Yet I still belong to You; You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny” (Psa 73:23-24). Grace plucked us from our foolishness: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).

Trust the Lord who called you on to life eternal. And stay in grace.

-Bill Knott

A MELODY FOR THE UNCHAINED (April 10, 2026)

Is grace, at heart, believable?

‘Of course,’ you say. Why not believe? It’s the noun that always follows “Amazing,” the tune the bagpipers skirl at dawn; the soaring hymn a tenor lifts into a vast cathedral.

For some, it may be what the sermon is about, or what we learned in Bible class.

But is grace believable at the baseline of our fears—in those tough places in the soul where shame and memory combust to make us cringe again, again? Does grace reach down below the intellect, the wonderful idea, and heal those wounds we so much never want to show the world?

At its heart—and in our hearts—grace offers us what no one else is giving. Redemption is for real—for all those moments and those years we’ve blown it big and ruined all our future. “All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve turned every one to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him”—on Jesus, the only righteous one who ever lived—"the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6).

It seems too good—too kind; too merciful—to be true. And so we linger in the half-light of our fears, humming a tune we dream might yet be ours.

The hymn has outlived every copyright. God’s grace is clearly in the public domain.

Make this song yours. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

THE MORNING DOUBTS DISAPPEAR (April 03, 2026)

“What if?” the soldiers wondered, as they watched His body sag. “A miracle man with a brazen claim—could He really rise again?”

“What if?” the wise ones wondered, with a nagging, dull unease. “Could disciples come in the dead of night and spirit His body away?”

“What if?” the governor worried, as he doubled the guarding troops. “Is there truly a power in heaven or hell that would dare to break my seal?”

But the doubts that rang in their hollow souls had begun to lose their grip. This Man had life—gave life—gives life. No sword, or spear, or stone, or seal could keep the dawn from rising.

What if the night is over? What if He won’t stay dead? What if the dying Lamb of God becomes our living Head?

When we begin to doubt our doubts, the life of faith begins. We pull the morning toward us, certain only of one thing: we’ve had enough of night and fear and death and loss. There’s joy beyond the cross.

Resurrection—His and ours—begins to change the world. So pick some lilies. Sing His song. Plant some kindness. Practice risen life each day.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

THE JOURNEY OF A WEEK (March 27, 2026)

We walk the Passion story slowly, knowing it will seem to end as far too many stories end—with pain, with shame, with lonely death.

The palm fronds we waved wildly on Sunday were woven into simple brooms that swept up 30 tarnished silver pieces; in ropes that tied Messiah to the blood-stained lashing post on Friday. All things trudge slowly toward His end, as if no other fate could be.

Of Himself, the Saviour said: “The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death . . . They will mock Him, and spit upon Him, and flog Him, and kill Him” (Mk 10:32-33).  

But never miss the finish of His prophecy: the future of the world hangs on it, or actually, on Him. “And after three days He will rise again” (vs 33).

There is no darkness, long or dull, that Light can never penetrate. It’s not a story that must end with grief on Friday afternoon. “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him” (Rom 6.8).

Keep walking through His Passion, then, for it will end as you will end—with hope, with light, with joy, with life. The morning dawns, and so will you.

Now stay in grace. -Bill Knott

NOTHING IN MY HAND I BRING (March 20, 2026)

Ever long for the bad old days when you could at least depend upon yourself?

We tire of grace when we’re tempted by the easy arrogance of effort. “If I just say another prayer; read another Bible verse; light another candle—then I can pull the love of God toward me and close up any distance.” We think to work our way back toward His will with scrupulous self-discipline—with vegetables, and fasting, and money given to the homeless. We want connection, but without the cross.

As satisfying as it can feel to deliberately make the life of faith more painful and intense, the gospel shines with clarifying grace: “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:24).

The self-denial for which Christ calls isn’t made of beets or gruel or things we naturally dislike. It’s the denying of our own efforts, of the value of our “good deeds,” and yes, of our own homemade theology to which the Saviour calls us. “Christ made us right with God; He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin. Therefore, as the Scriptures say, ‘If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord’” (I Cor 1:30-31).

“Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent’” (John 6:29).

Now stay in grace. -Bill Knott

A WORLD WITHOUT HATE (March 13, 2026)

The great illusion of our age is that the world must be divisible into clans and races and nations who inevitably hate each other.  The histories of some countries—and entire political careers—have been built on this dangerous idea. 

Left versus right; rich opposed to poor; theists against atheists; the educated despising the illiterate. Trillions of dollars, euros, yen and rubles have been invested to sustain this pernicious illusion, for much money can be made by channeling hatred and distrust. 

So it is that grace, which teaches us that “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5)—grace will always seem so strange and otherworldly to people who believe that they have been fated to hate those different from themselves. The gospel declares of Jesus, “For He is our peace; in His flesh He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Eph 2:14).

Grace is the promise that we can learn to love without divisions, without malice, without hate.

And when it comes to you, you’ll stay in grace. -Bill Knott