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

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

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

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

Who are you trying to please? It is a simple question, yet it has the power to reveal so much about our hearts. If we are honest, many of the decisions we make are influenced by a desire to be accepted, understood, or admired by others. We want to fit in. We want people to approve of us. We want to avoid standing out. Yet I wonder if one of our greatest struggles is not simply resisting temptation, but caring too much about what other people think. As followers of Christ, Scr

How can we expect God to lead us if we have already decided we know the way? It is easy to think that wisdom comes from experience, intelligence, or simply having the right answers. The world often tells us to trust ourselves, follow our hearts, and believe that everything we need is already within us. Confidence is celebrated, while admitting we do not know something is often seen as weakness. Yet Scripture paints a completely different picture. Again and again, the Bible re

Can you truly know someone without spending time with them? It seems like an obvious question, yet I think it's one many of us, including myself at times, need to wrestle with. Relationships don't grow by accident. They grow through conversation, trust, intentionality, and simply choosing to be with one another. The same is true in our walk with Christ. We all desire a deep relationship with Jesus, but relationships are nurtured. They don't flourish on desire alone. For years

Which path am I choosing? I've recently spent some time rereading the Psalms, and the more I meditate on Psalm 1, the more one truth continues to stand out to me: your roots determine your fruit. Psalm 1 presents two ways of living. One life is rooted in the Lord, delights in His Word, and remains steadfast through every season. The other slowly compromises with the world until it loses its roots. The contrast isn't merely between two outcomes, it begins with two different pa

Recently, I heard a pastor say something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: "God does not have grandchildren." The statement caught me off guard because it sounds strange at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how profoundly true it is. God is a Father, and fathers have children. No one inherits a relationship with Jesus through their family tree. No one enters the Kingdom because their parents loved God, their grandparents prayed faithfu

When you are lost and it is your fault, you are relentlessly pursued. When you are found, you are ridiculously celebrated. I recently got the chance to hear Father Mike speak on his Parables tour. One thing he discussed was the Parable of the Lost Coin. If you haven't heard it, basically the story is about a woman who loses one of her ten valuable silver coins. Once she finds it, she is so overjoyed that she calls all of her friends and neighbors over to celebrate. The overal

Recently, I watched a speech Harrison Ford gave, and if you know anything about me, I love Star Wars almost as much as I love Jesus. And one thing I’ve discovered about loving Jesus is that somehow, almost everything eventually points me back to Him. Ford said this: “What’s worse than getting to the end of your life realizing you haven’t fully lived it?” And honestly, that question hit me harder than I expected. Most people hear a quote like that and immediately think about a

We live in a world that constantly teaches us to measure ourselves. By beauty, by success, by attention, by whether or not we fit the standards placed in front of us. Everywhere we look, there is pressure to become “better,” prettier, more accomplished, more desirable. And if I’m honest, as a woman, I completely understand how easy it is to fall into that mindset. It becomes so natural to focus on outer appearance and criticize every flaw we think we see. Sometimes we become

Sometimes the hardest thing to accept isn’t that God forgives us, it’s that we’re allowed to live like we’ve been forgiven. We bring our past to Him. We confess it, pray through it, ask for mercy. We know what Scripture says. We know that Jesus paid for our sin. And yet, even after all of that, something in us still holds on. We replay the moment, revisit the decision, and carry the weight like it still belongs to us. It’s strange how we can believe in God’s grace and still s

What will you do in the dark? Will you sow the seeds you have? I have recently been reading this book called Slow Burn , and it is about the waiting seasons in our lives. One topic that I am trying to work on is all about the soil of your soul and how it is much more important than the soil of your circumstances. It’s easy to look around at our lives and focus on what isn’t ideal. Maybe the timing feels off, doors seem closed, or prayers feel like they’re echoing back unanswe

Recently, I was talking with one of my best friends about faith and the quiet pressure people sometimes feel to adjust themselves in order to fit someone else’s expectations. We were reflecting on how easy it can be to slowly reshape parts of who we are so that we feel more acceptable to the people around us. Sometimes the pressure to shrink does not come loudly. It rarely announces itself. More often it appears quietly, in small hesitations. In moments where we feel the subt

Sometimes when we talk about Jesus, we speak about Him as if He is distant from the pain we experience. We pray to Him, sing about His love, and read about His promises, yet when life wounds us, it can still feel like we are carrying those wounds alone. Pain has a way of isolating us. It convinces us that our hurt is unique and that no one could fully understand what it feels like to carry it. Maybe someone you trusted betrayed you, a relationship broke your heart, or words s

I was talking with my sister the other day about how subtly sin trains us. Not all at once. Not in loud rebellion. Slowly, step by step. We were reflecting on how sin conditions people over time to place their own desires above everything else. Above wisdom. Above relationships. Above truth. Even above God. It rarely begins with outright defiance. It begins quietly. A small justification. A moment where what I want feels more important than what is right. In the middle of tha

I was talking to a friend recently and something was shared that truly stayed with me. It was said that a podcast host had mentioned that as he grows in his faith, he prays he would “disappear” more and more; so that when God looks at him, and when other people look at him, they don’t really see him… they see Jesus. There was something deeply moving about the humility in that prayer. Not a desire to be unnoticed or insignificant, but a sincere longing for Christ to be so evi

Before there were roses, handwritten cards, or candlelit dinners, there was a love that chose us first. Valentine’s Day is filled with flowers, chocolates, and carefully chosen words that promise forever. It’s a day that celebrates love in its sweetest, most visible forms. But today, I want to center our hearts on a love even deeper, a love that didn’t come wrapped in ribbon, but wrapped in sacrifice. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever

Faith is not something to be concealed; it’s meant to radiate outward. Loving like Jesus isn’t about having the perfect words or always knowing what to say. Often, it’s about how we show up in the world, how we treat others, how we respond when things get difficult, how we love when it would be easier to turn away. That’s where the light comes from. Being a light doesn’t mean being flawless. It means being willing: willing to love, willing to forgive, willing to choose grace