Open Hands, Closed Fists
It's easy to be gracious when people are kind to us. It's easy to love when love is being returned. But what about when it isn't? What about when someone hurts us, disappoints us, or treats us in a way we never would have treated them? I never want someone else's actions to determine the condition of my heart. I want to be hard to offend and quick to forgive. Not because everything people do is okay. Not because boundaries don't matter. But because I never want bitterness to
16 hours ago3 min read
What Good Is a Faith We Refuse to Live?
What good is a faith we proclaim with our mouths if we are unwilling to practice it with our lives? I've been thinking about this question lately, and the more I sit with it, the more I realize how easy it is to speak about a God we are not always willing to reflect. We talk about grace, but struggle to extend it. We preach forgiveness, but hold tightly to resentment. We declare our trust in God, yet question His goodness the moment life stops going our way. And I wonder, hav
Oct 124 min read
Manifestation is God's plan minus God.
We live in a world obsessed with getting exactly what we want. Visualize it, speak it, believe it, attract it, write it down, act like it is already yours, and somehow the universe will eventually give it to you. And I understand why that sounds appealing. Deep down, most of us would love to believe that if we just think positively enough, believe strongly enough, or say the right things enough times, we can control what happens next. But somewhere along the way, we have take
Sep 265 min read
Your Circle Is Either Feeding Your Faith or Stunting Your Future
I have been thinking lately about how much the people around us shape the people we become. The conversations we have, the advice we receive, the things we normalize, and the voices we run to when life gets hard all have influence over us. Proverbs 13:20 says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Who we walk with matters, and I think sometimes we underestimate just how much. Jesus loved everyone. He sat with sinners, welcome
Sep 83 min read
What If You’re Winning the Wrong Game?
You are never going to win a game if you completely miss the point of it. You can have the highest score, the most attention, and everyone around you convinced that you are winning, but if you have misunderstood the entire objective, none of it really matters. I think the same can be true of the way we live our lives. The world gives us countless ways to measure whether we are “winning.” How successful are you? How much money do you make? How many people know your name? How m
Aug 283 min read
The Cross We Share
Isn’t the cross we share with Christ a cross we can’t wait to share with the world? I have been thinking about that question lately, and the more I sit with it, the more I realize that the cross is not simply something we look at and remember. It is something that changes us. We know the story of the cross. We know that Jesus willingly gave His life for us, taking upon Himself the weight of our sin so that we could be reconciled to God. We celebrate the empty tomb and the vic
Aug 114 min read
As He Sees
What if the way we see the world says more about the condition of our hearts than we realize? As I was reading one day, I found this quote: And so I try to be kind to everything I see, because in everything I see, I see Him. The more I sat with those words, the more I realized they were describing something much deeper than kindness. They were describing transformation. Following Jesus does not simply change what we believe. It changes the way we see. The longer we walk with
Aug 55 min read
