Based on Pastor Isaac's sermon on Colossians 4:7-10, "Connections"

I opened my 2020 planner today and found the notes for a guest speaker we had at the barn. There were the event details and a list of things I needed to do to make it happen. No visions. No questions. Nothing about what I thought of the plan.

Back in those early days, our staff meetings were held around a small table at a coffee shop in Sundance. Tom, Isaac, and I would sit together, with my laptop open to pull up stats and information and my notebook ready to capture what needed to be done. I was good at taking their ideas and turning them into action. I'd listen, take notes, make sure I understood, and then get to work.

I had questions about whether that guest speaker was the right fit for our church, but I didn't bring them up. Instead, I made the flyer, wrote the announcement, and handled the rest. I could do the work. I just wasn't ready to trust my voice.

Last Sunday, Isaac said something that took me back to those early days. He said, "Forgiveness is something you give or grant. Trust is something that's earned."

Those words touched two different chapters in my life. One involved someone I had to forgive. The other involved two people I slowly learned I could trust.

At a church where I served years earlier, I had learned that asking questions wasn't safe. Things I shared or questioned in moments of honesty could be brought back later and used against me. That season wasn't all bad. I made dear friends there, and I learned skills and gained experiences that I still carry with me. But the hurt was real, too.

I had already made the decision to forgive the pastor who led that church. That didn't mean what happened was okay, or that trust had been restored. It meant I was choosing to release him to God and trust Him with what was just. Today, I can talk about that season without feeling like I'm back in it. I don't spend my time looking back or keeping tabs on what happened next. Forgiveness didn't automatically make me ready to trust again.

In his letter to Philemon, Paul writes about Onesimus, a runaway slave who had become a believer and was now returning to his master. The stakes were serious. A runaway slave could face severe punishment, even death. Paul had the authority to tell Philemon what he ought to do. Instead, he chose to ask, and to ask in love. He writes, "I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would not seem forced but would be voluntary" (Philemon 14, NIV). He wasn't interested in forcing the right behavior.

It took six months to a year before I really began to trust Tom and Isaac. One of the first times I remember speaking up was during a staff meeting at the coffee shop. It was 2021, and the barn floor had become a problem. We had plywood laid over the dirt, but the dust was still terrible. I couldn't keep the sound and video equipment clean, no matter how hard I tried. I'd been thinking about concrete for a while, but I was hesitant to bring it up. I worried they'd think I was being difficult or that I was overstepping my role. I also wondered if they'd simply dismiss the idea.

Eventually, the practical problem outweighed my hesitation, and I brought it up. They had good reasons for wanting to keep the plywood and preserve the rough, barn-like feel of the space. But we could talk about it. I could explain why I thought concrete made sense, and they could explain their concerns. They didn't have to agree with me immediately for me to feel heard.

These days, I'm not even the one taking notes at staff meetings. Tom recently suggested using an AI note-taker, and I admitted I was uncomfortable with the idea. He used it anyway, and we all survived. I also bring our online numbers to the table, not just to report them, but to help the team understand what they mean. Those numbers represent real people hearing the message, sometimes in places we'll never visit.

Every Sunday, I stand on that concrete floor in the barn. It reminds me of a conversation I once might not have had, and of the trust that grew when I could speak honestly, even when we didn't see things the same way. Paul could have commanded Philemon. Instead, he appealed to him and left room for a willing response. God does the same with us. He invites us to respond to His love and gives us room to do so freely.

When I open that 2020 planner, I see a page full of tasks and instructions. No visions. No questions. Today's notes, typed by a machine, tell a different story. They hold my ideas and my questions. I didn't suddenly become someone with a voice. I learned that I could use the one God had already given me.


This Week
This week, think of one question you've been afraid to ask or one concern you've kept to yourself. If there's someone who has earned your trust, bring it up with them. Say what you really think instead of talking yourself out of it. Pay attention to how they respond. Can they hear you, even if they disagree? Is there room to disagree? If no one comes to mind who feels safe, start by bringing that concern to God. Ask Him for the wisdom to recognize where an honest conversation is possible.


Prayer
Lord,
Thank You for meeting us with grace and inviting us to respond to Your love. Help us release those who have hurt us into Your hands, while giving trust the time and care it needs to grow. Give us wisdom to recognize safe people, courage to speak honestly, and patience with ourselves along the way. Remind us that You are not threatened by our questions, and that we don't have to leave our discernment behind to follow You.
Amen.

Gideon was hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat. Normally, wheat was threshed out in the open, up where the wind could blow away the chaff. But Gideon wasn't out in the open. He was down in a low, enclosed place, trying to keep the Midianites from finding what little grain he had. There was no breeze to help separate the wheat from the chaff, just dust, sweat, and the constant glance over his shoulder.

When the angel of the Lord appeared, he greeted Gideon with these words: “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” (Judges 6:12, ESV)

Gideon didn't seem to recognize himself in that description. Instead, he asked:
“If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” (Judges 6:13, ESV)

I've asked that question, too. I've had nights when I couldn't make sense of what was happening, when I didn't know what to do with the distance between what I believed about God and what I was seeing around me.

I wonder how many of us know that feeling. Maybe it's another dry summer, a tough calving season, or simply the weight of showing up every day and doing what needs to be done when you're not sure how much longer you can keep doing it.

Sometimes God doesn't explain what's happening. Instead, He promises that He will be with us, and calls us to go.

God gives Gideon an assignment: “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?” (Judges 6:14, ESV)

What “might” is God talking about? I think we need to look back at verse 12. Before Gideon ever does anything courageous, God calls him a “mighty man of valor.” Gideon doesn't see himself that way. He's still hiding. But God calls him by a name he can't yet recognize, then calls him to live into it.

Gideon isn't convinced. His answer is essentially that God must have the wrong guy. His clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and he's the least in his father's house. This past Sunday at Black Hills Cowboy Church, Brian Mills shared a story about being a young boy sent by his dad to gather cattle, with a long list of gates to open and ridges to push. It was a job that felt far bigger than he was. I imagine Gideon understood that feeling.

But notice the question God asks: “Do not I send you?” Gideon's confidence isn't supposed to come from his family standing, his experience, or his own assessment of what he's capable of. It comes from the One who is sending him.

God doesn't back away from the assignment. He doesn't tell Gideon to believe in himself or pretend he has no reason to be afraid. He says, “But I will be with you” (Judges 6:16, ESV).

He isn't asking Gideon to do this by sheer determination, and He isn't asking him to sit back while God does everything. God is calling Gideon to respond, and His grace will make that response possible. Gideon will have to leave the winepress, but he'll walk out with God.

Nearly 3,000 years after Gideon, another man came to the end of a long life with a simple declaration of faith. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, was 87 years old. His voice was failing, and the people around him struggled to understand his words. But he summoned what strength he had left and said, “The best of all is, God is with us.” Then he lifted his arm and said the words again.

When I came across those words from Wesley, something about them stopped me. Not because he had figured out every mystery or because his life had been free of hardship. But because he understood something I think takes a lifetime to learn: God's presence is better than having all the answers.

Wesley certainly didn't spend his life sitting still. He preached, traveled, organized, and kept going even when the work was difficult. Yet, near the end of his life, he didn't point to all he had accomplished. He pointed to the presence of God.

I have to remind myself of that when life feels out of control. I can get caught up in trying to hold things together and make sure they turn out the way I think they should. But I was never the one holding it all together. When I look back, I can see God's hand in circumstances I couldn't manage or understand at the time. He was at work even when I couldn't see how things would unfold.

Remembering His faithfulness helps me face what lies ahead. I don't have to control the outcome to take the next step. I can rest in His character, do the work He's put in front of me, and leave the results in His hands.

Gideon didn't go straight from the winepress to the battlefield. His first assignment was much closer to home. God told him to tear down his father's altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Gideon obeyed, but he did it at night because he was afraid of his family and the men of the town. (Judges 6:25–27)

I love that detail. He hadn't suddenly become a fearless warrior. He obeyed while he was still afraid. He left the winepress, even if his first step was taken in the dark.

Maybe that's what walking out of the winepress looks like for us, too. It doesn't always mean our circumstances suddenly change or that we finally understand why things have happened. It could mean asking for help, having a conversation we've been avoiding, taking on a responsibility that feels bigger than we are, or simply getting up tomorrow and faithfully doing the work that's waiting for us.

We may not have answers to all our questions. We may not know how the story will unfold. But we can take the next step, knowing God goes with us.

John Wesley's words weren't an explanation for everything he'd experienced. They were a declaration of what mattered most, a truth he carried to his last breath.

The best of all is, God is with us.


This Week
What is one thing you've been putting off because you don't feel ready? Maybe you've been waiting for more confidence, a clearer plan, or just the right moment. Name that thing in prayer this week. Remember God's words to Gideon: “But I will be with you.” Then choose one small, specific step you can take before the week is over. You don't have to feel ready. Gideon wasn't.


Prayer
Lord,
We have asked the same questions Gideon asked. There are times when we don't understand what is happening or why things have turned out the way they have. Thank you for meeting us in those questions and promising us that you are with us.

Thank you for seeing more in us than we sometimes see in ourselves. Help us trust your character when we can't see the whole picture. Give us willing hearts to take the next step, even when we're still afraid. Help us remember that we don't have to hold everything together because you are faithful and you are at work.

May we live this week trusting that the best of all is still true: you are with us.
Amen.

My sister props her phone in the dash holder, hits record, and takes me along for the ride, a passenger from halfway across the country. She talks to me all the way to work, and I love getting these little glimpses into her day, especially when she’s excited about a new business idea. But while she’s thinking out loud, my mental checklist starts filling up. How much will it cost? How much time will it take? Who’s going to do the work? Didn’t she try something like this before?

She’s still dreaming, and I’m already doing the math.

I’ve been playing the voice of reason with my little sister since we were kids, and the habit follows me into other parts of my life. In staff meetings, when someone brings up a new idea or plan, I can get practical pretty fast. The same checklist kicks in, and I start thinking through the obstacles before we’ve had much time to consider the possibilities. I want the plan to succeed, but if I’m honest, I also want people to recognize that I’ve thought things through and have something important to contribute.

With my sister, it’s different because I worry about her. I want to help her see the things she might be overlooking, and sometimes I just want her to hear me out and understand why I’m concerned.

A few months ago, my sister left me a Marco Polo on her way to lunch with her childhood best friend. She was her usual animated self, talking about her latest business idea. I didn’t get a chance to watch the messages right away, so when I finally did, I watched them back to back. The second one was different. The excitement was gone. She looked defeated. Her friend had been blunt about the idea, raising concerns that I recognized because I’d had many of the same ones.

Her friend wasn’t being mean or judgmental. She had simply been honest, and I think my sister took it harder than her friend intended. But watching that second message, I felt my sister’s sadness. Even though I agreed with the concerns, all I wanted to do was give her a hug.

And I saw myself in that moment. I didn’t want to be that kind of sister, the one who could be so focused on what might go wrong that she left little room for encouragement.

So I made a choice. I would let my sister dream, plan, and come up with as many business ideas as she wanted. I would listen. If I had something I thought she needed to hear, I would share it. I didn’t have to stop being practical. I just didn’t have to lead with it every time.

Paul writes in Colossians 4:5-6 (NIV):
“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Paul was writing about how we engage with people outside the faith, but Pastor Isaac pointed out that the principle reaches into all our relationships, including the ones closest to us.

In his closing prayer, Isaac prayed, “Sometimes for us, sometimes being right isn’t really right. That is, we’re correct, but it gets in the way of right.”

That’s a hard thing to sit with, because I like being right. But grace reminds me that God moved toward me before I ever moved toward him. He didn’t wait for me to get everything figured out before extending his love.

I’ve been thinking about what that means for my sister. My concerns about her ideas aren’t necessarily wrong. Some really might be difficult or expensive to pull off. But loving her well means letting her gifts and excitement flourish before I start listing all the reasons an idea might not work. I can still be honest when the moment calls for it. I just want my conversations with her to be full of grace, with a little salt sprinkled in, not poured over everything.

I haven’t gotten this right every time. Just last week, I had concerns about another situation with my sister, and I wanted her to hear me out and consider the hard parts I was seeing. But in wanting to be heard, I poured instead of sprinkled.

Now, when my sister props her phone in the dash holder and takes me along for another idea, the checklist still starts forming in my head. I think about the costs, the time, and all the things that could go wrong. But I don’t have to say all of that right away. Sometimes I wait before responding. Sometimes I just say, “Tell me more.”

She’s still dreaming, and I’m learning to enjoy the ride.

This Week
When someone shares an idea you’re not sure about, ask one question that invites them to keep talking before you offer advice or raise a concern. Try “Tell me more.” You may discover that what they need first is someone willing to listen.

Prayer
Lord, thank you for moving toward us with grace before we ever moved toward you. Forgive us for the times we care more about being right or being heard than about loving the person in front of us. Give us wisdom to recognize what each moment can hold and patience to listen before we speak. Let our conversations be full of grace, with salt in the right measure, not poured out before anyone is ready to receive it. Amen.

The fall air was crisp, and the last of the leaves were hanging on as I headed out for a walk on the ranch. Once I lost cell service, I started singing worship songs. Loudly. Badly. The horses seemed curious about what I was up to, and a few of them wandered along with me.

I sang for a while, then started thanking God for the ranch, for my family, and for the people he's placed in my life. Before long, I was praying about parenting, work, and the Cowboy Angel Tree. I had gone out hoping to let my prayers wander, to simply be with God and see where the conversation went.

Somehow, my wandering prayer went in a straight line.

Part of me was disappointed. I'd hoped to let go of my usual patterns, but even out on the ranch, away from my phone and the usual distractions, my mind wanted to get things done.

I wonder how often I do that in prayer. I show up wanting to be faithful, but somewhere along the way I start evaluating whether I've done it well. Have I remembered everyone? Have I prayed about everything that needs attention? Have I heard anything useful? Even my attempt to stop accomplishing things can become another thing I'm trying to accomplish.

Maybe learning to pray differently starts with being honest about that tendency, without turning it into one more thing I need to get right.

I started setting aside time for prayer at 7:45 during our church's launch meetings seven years ago, and it's been part of my routine ever since. I even have an iPhone reminder that stays on my lock screen until I get to it, whether that's at 7:45 or later. A regular part of that time is praying for the church, for its reach, and for Isaac and our other teachers as they prepare and share God's Word. I don't want to discount that kind of faithfulness. I've spent those years asking God to open doors for our church and help those who teach communicate his message clearly. Those are things worth praying for.

There's nothing wrong with having a list or setting aside a regular time to pray. Isaac talked about both the discipline of devoting ourselves to prayer and the kind of ongoing conversation with God that becomes part of everyday life. His answer was that we need both.

Maybe the question isn't whether I'm praying the right way, but whether I'm leaving room for God in the middle of it. What might I notice if I weren't so focused on making sure I'd covered everything?

In Colossians 4, Paul asks the church to pray for an open door for the message of Christ and for him to proclaim it clearly. What makes that request so striking is where Paul is when he makes it. He's in prison, and he's asking for more opportunities to do the very thing that landed him in chains.

When something I care about brings difficulty or costs me something, my first instinct is usually to want it to go away, not to ask God for another opportunity. Sometimes I just want God to change the situation and let everyone move on. That’s especially hard when someone I love is involved and the decisions aren’t mine to make.

I find myself wondering what faithfulness looks like when I'm still in the middle of something I'd really rather see resolved. Maybe it means continuing to pray and love the people involved, even when I can't change the circumstances or know how things will turn out.

Isaac shared a story about Darrell, who was recovering from a serious horse wreck when an old military friend reached out to him with some heavy guilt he was carrying. Darrell had an opportunity to talk with his friend about God's forgiveness. Spending time alone with God, often while hunting, was something Darrell treasured, and it had prepared him to share the hope he'd come to know.

Later, while the friend was out elk hunting, he prayed, and the guilt he'd been carrying gave way to peace. Then he saw a rainbow and took a picture to send to Darrell.

A rainbow. A reminder of God's promise.

Even in the middle of his own difficult season, Darrell was able to share what he knew about God's forgiveness when his friend needed to hear it. God used that conversation, and its impact continued long after it ended.

We don't always get to see where a conversation will lead, or what God might do with something we say. But Paul's prayer and Darrell's story have me thinking about how easily I can become so focused on what I want God to change that I miss what God might be inviting me to do.

I think about that walk on the ranch. I set out hoping to let my prayers wander, but I still found myself following my usual patterns. I didn’t come home with any big revelation, but I did come home content. Maybe the point wasn’t to figure something out or accomplish anything. I had spent time with God, and that mattered, even if it hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped.

I still want God to fix the things that are hard, especially when they involve people I love. There's nothing wrong with praying for that. But prayer does more than give me a place to bring the things I want God to change. Time spent with God shapes how I see the people around me and helps me recognize opportunities to be part of what he's doing. I don't always recognize those opportunities, and I certainly don't have everything figured out. But I want to keep making room for what God might do, even when I'm still waiting on something I wish were different.


This Week
Choose one person you're praying for this week. Ask God not only to meet their immediate need, but also to open a door for his work in their life and show you how you might be part of it.

Prayer
Lord, thank you for meeting us in the middle of our ordinary days. Help us be faithful in prayer, but don't let us get so caught up in our lists that we miss your presence. Teach us to look beyond the things we want you to fix and notice where you're already at work. Open doors for your love and grace, and help us recognize when you're inviting us to walk through them. Give us patience to trust you when we don't understand what you're doing, and the willingness to respond when an opportunity comes.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Pastor Isaac admitted he wanted to skip this passage. Then the words appeared on the screen: “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands.” The room laughed. He had set us up for it, and we knew exactly why he’d wanted to skip this one.
 
I laughed, too, but these words have never been easy for me. Throughout my professional life, I’ve wrestled with the way Scripture has been used to put women in their place, as though our voices matter less or our judgment is somehow less trustworthy than a man’s. I know these verses belong to a larger conversation, but I also know the weight they can carry.
 
Isaac read on. After wives and husbands, children and parents, came slaves and masters. Christians have used these very verses to defend slavery itself. My discomfort with how Scripture has been used to silence women is not the same as the suffering of enslaved people, but both make me pay attention to who holds power and whose voices get heard. Isaac’s point doesn’t erase that history or resolve every tension in the passage. But it does turn the question back toward us: whatever our position in this world, we all answer to a Master in heaven.
 
Pastor Isaac put it plainly: “You never get promoted to God.”
 
We never outgrow our need for correction. No matter how capable or experienced we become, we still have things to learn.
 
It’s easy to recognize that truth in other people. It’s harder to recognize it in ourselves, especially when we’re accustomed to being the one who sees what needs to be done and reminds others.
 
Recently, our church administrator pointed out that I had left Big Buckaroos out of the Sunday program. I thought I was finished for the evening, but I had to open my laptop back up, make the correction, and send it back so she could print it for the next day. The last-minute scramble was frustrating, but what bothered me most was knowing I had missed something that should have been there in the first place.
 
I like to think that when I remind someone of something or point out a detail they’ve missed, I’m simply trying to help. But when she caught it, I was too busy bristling to see it that way. I didn’t want to be the person who had overlooked something, the one who needed someone else to point it out. She was right.
 
But needing a reminder isn’t a failure of faithfulness. Pretending we no longer need one might be closer to the problem. Grace meets us in our defensiveness and makes another response possible. We don’t have to prove we’ve arrived. As God continues working in us, we can become more willing to listen, to receive correction, and to keep growing in love.
 
My own moment of defensiveness was small, but it reminded me how easy it is to resist something we don’t want to hear. Sometimes, though, the words we need to hear come from people whose experiences we haven’t taken the time to understand.
 
On the morning of February 24, 1791, just six days before his death, John Wesley read a tract written by a man he referred to as “a poor African.” Historians identify the writer as Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, who wrote that he had been kidnapped in Africa as a child and sold into slavery.
 
Equiano described a system in which a Black man wronged by a white man in the colonies had no legal recourse because his testimony counted for nothing. The voice of a man who had endured slavery was being dismissed simply because of who he was. Wesley was struck by this injustice and wrote to William Wilberforce that same day, urging him to continue his fight against the slave trade.
 
He wrote:
“O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
 
At 87, Wesley was still listening, still being moved by the suffering of others, and still calling for change. Grace was at work in him, turning what he heard into love for people he would never meet and strengthening his resolve to keep speaking for them.
 
In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church moved toward a split into northern and southern branches, largely over slavery, after a dispute involving a bishop who held enslaved people. A church that had inherited Wesley’s powerful words against slavery still couldn’t agree to stand against it.
 
The same pattern shows up in us when we hold tightly to our faith but dismiss the voices of people whose experiences challenge us, especially when listening might require us to change.
 
Wesley’s words have stayed with me: “O be not weary of well doing!” But listening is only the beginning. Following through on what we hear, especially when it asks us to change, takes the kind of endurance Wesley was urging. Whose voice might we be tempted to dismiss this week, and what might grace ask us to do once we’ve heard them?
 
This Week
The next time someone reminds you of something or offers a correction, let your first words be “thank you” before you explain yourself. You don’t have to agree with everything someone says to take their voice seriously.
 
A Prayer
Lord, remind us that we are not the Master, and that we never outgrow our need for your grace.

Give us humility to receive correction, ears to hear the voices we’ve overlooked, and courage to respond when what we hear asks us to change.

Keep us from growing weary of doing good and loving our neighbors well. Continue your work in us and through us.

Amen.

I was probably fourteen or fifteen, sitting on the floor of my parents' living room on Christmas morning.

Our family had finished opening presents. We had gone around the room, one person at a time, so everyone could see what everyone else got. My grandparents lived in Florida, so their gifts usually came in a box in the mail. Now the box was empty, and I was helping my mom clean up, stuffing wrapping paper into a trash bag.

That's when I realized I hadn't gotten a gift from my grandmother.

I didn't say anything. I just kept busy.

And my first thought wasn't even, She doesn't care about me.

It was, Maybe she forgot. Maybe I missed something.
Maybe somehow, this was my fault.

Much later, when my mom and I were talking about my grandmother, she told me she'd noticed that morning. She knew I'd been hurt, even though I never said a word.

I thought I'd been invisible. I wasn't.

The Christmas gift wasn't the only time I felt the difference.

There were other moments over the years, especially when my grandmother was in town. I noticed the attention she gave my brother and sister, the things they were included in, the ways they seemed to fit more easily into her life. I noticed what I wasn't included in, too.

But I didn't know what to do with any of it. So mostly, I kept it to myself.

Then, in my early twenties, I finally asked.

My dad had died that October. My grandmother parked her fifth-wheel camper in my mom's driveway and lived there for months.

It was early spring, sometime in the late afternoon. I was home visiting, and the two of us were sitting on the covered front porch. It was one of those pretty days when the weather was warm enough to sit outside, and we were having a nice visit.

We talked about college and what I was going to do next. Nothing was tense. We were alone, and it felt like an opening.

So I found the courage to ask her what had happened between us.

I don't remember my exact words. I remember the way I asked, though. There wasn't an accusation behind it. I was hurt, and I wanted to understand.

Instead of answering, she started crying.

She said she would never treat her grandchildren differently and accused me of being ungrateful for everything she had ever done for me. She told me that bringing this up while she was still grieving my dad was incredibly insensitive.

And just like that, the question I'd carried for years became something else I had done wrong.

When she walked away, I went upstairs to my childhood bedroom.

I tried to make myself as small as possible so I wouldn't cause any more trouble.

I never asked her about it again.

Last Sunday, Pastor Isaac preached from Mark 10. As I listened, I started hearing some of my own old prayers in the story.

Just before the story of Bartimaeus, James and John come to Jesus with a request of their own. Jesus asks them, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Their answer is pretty clear. They want the good seats. They want position. They want to be close to Jesus when he comes into his kingdom.

Later in the same chapter, Jesus asks Bartimaeus the same question.

Bartimaeus doesn't ask for a better position. He asks to see.

The irony isn't lost on me. James and John could see perfectly well, but they didn't seem to know what they really needed. Bartimaeus couldn't see at all, and he did.

Pastor Isaac wondered what Bartimaeus might have asked for instead. Maybe a better spot to sit. Maybe a better cup for begging. He imagined Bartimaeus praying, "God, could you give me a better beggar's cup?"

I thought about some of the things I'd asked God for over the years.

Lord, I want her to treat me like she treats everyone else.
Lord, I want her to realize how much she has hurt me.

I don't think those prayers were wrong. I was hurt. I wanted to be understood. I wanted to know that I mattered.

But I was asking God to change her.

I hadn't yet asked God to help me see.

Long after that, I was sitting in Allison's office in Lexington. My grandmother had died by then.

Allison was the counselor I had started seeing during a season when I had a lot to work through. In our sessions, she would open in prayer, and we would ask God to bring to mind whatever he wanted us to look at that day. Sometimes it took one session. Sometimes it took a few.

That day, it was my grandmother.

The porch came back to me.

And everything came with it. The hurt. The shame. The confusion. I could feel what it had been like to sit there, ask a question I'd carried for years, and somehow walk away feeling like I was the one who had done something wrong.

So we worked through it.

At some point, I pictured Jesus holding a package.

It was about the size of a shoebox, wrapped up like a present. I didn't know what was inside. But the way Jesus was holding it made it seem precious, almost fragile, like it could break if he jostled it too much.

I knew it was mine.

The hurt was real. So were the resentment, confusion, and disappointment.

But I didn't have to keep holding them.

Jesus already was.

So I let go.

I still remember those things. I still know what happened. But they don't sting the way they once did.

This summer, I talked with my mom and my sister about some of those years, and I noticed something. The memories were there, but they weren't charged. They were simply things that happened.

They don't hold my worth anymore.

For years, I wanted my grandmother to see me.

To see what had happened. To see what had hurt. To understand me.

But while I was praying for her sight, God was giving me mine. Jesus was showing me that he had seen me all along.

Being misunderstood doesn't mean I am unseen.

I hear that question differently now when Jesus looks at Bartimaeus and says, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Maybe sometimes the answer begins with admitting that we don't see as clearly as we thought we did.

So now, when I hear that question, my prayer is different.

Lord, help me see what I am carrying.
Help me see what you are asking me to let go of.
Help me see you holding what I can't carry anymore.

At Christmas, so long ago, I was the girl looking around for a gift that wasn't there.

Then, in Allison's office, I pictured Jesus holding what I had been carrying for so long, wrapped up like a present.

He didn't ask me to pretend it hadn't hurt.

He just held it, and let me let go.

This Week
Think of one hurt you've been carrying for a while.

Not the person who needs to change. Not the conversation you wish you could have. Just the thing you're carrying.

Take ten quiet minutes this week. Sit somewhere you won't be interrupted, and ask Jesus:

Lord, help me see what I am carrying.

Then pay attention to what comes to mind.

You don't have to sort it all out at once. You don't have to figure out what to do with everything you remember. Just notice what Jesus is bringing into the light.

And if what comes up feels bigger than something you can work through on your own, tell someone safe. A pastor, a trusted friend, or a good counselor can help you walk through it.

You don't have to do it alone.

Prayer
Lord,

Thank you for seeing us, even when we feel unseen or misunderstood.

Teach us to bring you what we've been holding onto, trusting that you can hold it with more care than we ever could.

And as you give us clearer sight, help us notice the people around us, too. The ones we've overlooked. The ones we've misunderstood. The ones who may be carrying something we cannot see.

Give us the grace to see them with the same compassion you have shown us.

Amen.

I have spent a lot of years teaching myself things I never expected to need to know.

Church tech is one of them.

When I first started putting our tech booth together, I was figuring things out piece by piece. I learned what I needed to learn, bought what we needed when we could afford it, added another piece here and another piece there, and somewhere along the way, that booth became something I knew how to run because I had built it myself.

And there was one thing I had never really done.

I had never completely unplugged it.

For months, Mark and Audrey and I had been talking about finishing the booth. Because our church meets in an arena, the tech booth is right there in the middle of everything. The exposed studs and unfinished walls had been part of the landscape for years, and we had finally gotten to the point where we could do something about it.

They came to me with the idea of putting in a new counter and covering the inside walls with tongue-and-groove boards. I agreed. It was time. I wanted it finished.

Which meant all the tech stuff had to come out.

Every cable had to be unplugged and labeled. Every piece of equipment had to be moved. Hours of work went into getting everything out of the way so they could do their work.

The work itself didn't bother me. It was the thought of what might happen when I plugged everything back in.

What if something didn't work?

What if I couldn't figure out why?

What if I got it all back together and we were suddenly standing there on Sunday morning with a very expensive pile of equipment that didn't know how to talk to each other anymore?

At one point, I told Vic, "I hope I don't screw this up."

We were both standing there in the middle of the mess, surrounded by cables and equipment, and Vic gently reminded me that this was something I'd wanted done.

This was a good thing.

I just needed to remember that.

This wasn't some disaster happening to me.

I just wasn't feeling particularly grateful about it in that moment.

A few days later, Mark texted to ask when I was coming over to hook everything back up.

I told him probably the next day and Thursday. He said they were finished unless I wanted any changes, and then he offered to come help.

My first thought was, "For sure, I should be able to do this myself."

But then he followed up.

He wanted to be there while I worked, not just drop things off. He'd picked up a few things that might help tidy up the cables, and he figured he'd be there in case anything needed adjusting.

He had Bible study in Spearfish early that morning, but he said he could come whenever it was convenient for me.

So I told him I'd be there right after bus drop-off.

And honestly, I was relieved.

Once I thought about the actual size of the job, I realized this wasn't going to be a quick little plug-everything-back-in-and-go kind of project. There were a lot of cables, a lot of equipment, and a lot of opportunities for something to need adjusting.

Having someone there who knew what he had just built, who could help me figure out the things that didn't quite fit back together, suddenly sounded pretty good.

When I walked into the booth that morning, the first thing I noticed was how different it looked.

The new counter was in. The tongue-and-groove paneling covered the walls that had been unfinished for so long. It looked like a finished space instead of something we had just learned to work around.

And then it was time to put everything back.

Mark and Audrey were there with me, actually working alongside me as we started putting the pieces back where they belonged. Most of it came back on right away, which was a huge relief. There were a few things that needed adjusting, a few little hiccups to work through, but nothing that couldn't be figured out.

And standing there in that finished booth, I realized how much I had to be grateful for.

I was grateful for Mark and Audrey and the work they had put into that space. They had taken something that had been unfinished for years and turned it into something that felt intentional and finished. It was good work, and they had done it well.

I was grateful that Mark had shown up to help me put my part of it back together, too. I could have done it myself. Eventually, I probably would have figured it all out.

But I didn't have to.

And maybe that's part of the habitude of gratitude.

Sometimes gratitude isn't the feeling that comes naturally in the middle of the mess. Sometimes you have to stop long enough to recognize what is actually happening.

The thing I was worried about wasn't a disaster. It was a good thing that required some work. I had people around me who were willing to do that work with me. And when it was finished, I got to stand in the middle of it and see what I might have missed while I was worrying about everything that could go wrong.

I've written before about Wesley's idea of temper, a settled disposition that is formed through repeated practice. We don't become a certain kind of person by having a certain feeling once. We become that person by practicing something until it starts to shape the way we respond.

Pastor Isaac called it the "habitude of gratitude." Not just an attitude we put on when things are going well, but a habit we practice until gratitude becomes part of the way we see our lives.

That feels a lot like temper to me.

We practice gratitude until it becomes less about forcing ourselves to feel thankful and more about becoming people who notice what there is to be thankful for.

Because there will always be something that doesn't go exactly the way we planned. There will always be cables to unplug, things that have to be moved, pieces that don't quite fit, and moments when our first instinct isn't necessarily gratitude.

But there will also be things worth noticing.

People who show up.

Work that gets done.

Good things that we almost miss because we're too busy worrying about the process.

Maybe that's the work of forming a grateful temper. Not pretending everything is easy or good, but learning to recognize God's goodness in the middle of whatever is actually in front of us.

We practice gratitude until we get better at noticing what was there all along.

These days, I've been trying to end my days by running through a short list of things I'm grateful for.

Not because every day has been good. Some days aren't.

But because I want gratitude to become something I practice, not just something I feel when life happens to cooperate.

And this week, I knew exactly what would make the list.

The finished booth.

Mark and Audrey's work.

The fact that Mark showed up and helped me put everything back together.

The things that worked, the things that needed adjusting, and the fact that none of it turned into the disaster I had imagined.

Those are easy things to be grateful for now.

The harder part will be remembering to practice gratitude the next time something is sitting in front of me that I don't particularly want to deal with.

There will be another mess. Another disruption. Another thing I have to take apart before I can put it back together.

I won't always feel grateful when I'm standing in the middle of it.

But maybe that's exactly why we practice.

Maybe the goal isn't to become someone who is always grateful, but someone who keeps looking for what is worth noticing, even when the thing in front of us isn't what we would have chosen.

I'm still practicing.

And tonight, Mark and Audrey's work will be on my list.


This Week
Think about something in front of you right now that you're dreading, a project, a conversation, a mess that needs cleaning up before it gets better. Notice what your first instinct is, worry, complaint, or wanting to handle it alone.

Then try building your own version of a gratitude list, even just for this week. Before you go to bed each night, name two or three things from the day you're grateful for, even on the days when gratitude doesn't come easily.

You're not trying to force a feeling. You're practicing a habit, one small notice at a time.


Prayer
Lord,

Thank you for the good things we almost miss when we're distracted by what isn't working yet.

Teach us to practice gratitude instead of waiting to feel it, and give us patience with ourselves as we build that habit one small notice at a time.

Help us welcome the people you send to help us, and shape us into people who notice your goodness even in the middle of the mess.

Amen.

A coyote came in too close to the house. Too close to the horses, anyway.

That was last year.

Vic grabbed his rifle and headed outside while I stood at the front door, keeping Ginger from following him. She's a ranch dog and normally has the run of the place, but I figured this wasn't a good time for her to join the hunt.

I watched Vic raise the rifle and fire.

The coyote took off over the ridge and kept going, and honestly, I was relieved. The horses were fine. The coyote was gone. Problem solved.

Or at least, that's what it looked like.

Vic came back to the house a few minutes later. As far as either of us knew, he'd simply taken a bad shot. Maybe he'd rushed it. Maybe he'd just missed. We didn't think much more about it.

A few days later, Vic and his friend Trampas headed out to sight in their rifles before an evening of calling coyotes. Sighting in is part of the fun for them, so they took their time getting everything set up and started working through their shots together.

As they shot and checked their targets, they discovered that Vic's rifle was hitting about an inch off from where he was aiming.

An inch doesn't sound like much. But at a distance, an inch can be the difference between a clean shot and a miss. Maybe that explained what had happened with the coyote in the pasture. Maybe it didn't.

Vic wasn't upset about it. If anything, he seemed almost relieved to have an answer. Something was off with the rifle, and he hadn't known it.

Sighting in isn't a quick fix. Vic and Trampas spent a good chunk of the afternoon shooting, checking where the rounds landed, adjusting, and shooting again. Neither of them seemed to mind. If anything, that's part of what they enjoy about it, the patience of getting it right, one small correction at a time.

And sometimes, you need someone else there to help you see what you can't see on your own.

That evening, they headed up into the hills to call in coyotes. Two came in at dusk, and Vic and Trampas were far enough apart that they couldn't signal each other. They hadn't worked out ahead of time who would shoot first, so when Vic heard Trampas fire, he fired too.

They got both coyotes.

The rifle was sighted in.

Pastor Bryan talked Sunday about being one degree off course. In aviation, a tiny difference in direction can become a very big problem the farther you travel.

And as I thought about that rifle, I realized there was another part of that idea that caught me.

You don't always know you're off.

Vic wasn't ignoring a problem with his rifle. He wasn't being careless. He and Trampas were doing what they normally do before a hunt, and somewhere along the way, something had changed by just enough to matter.

I think our spiritual lives can be like that too. It might be a little less time in God's Word, a prayer life that's grown more occasional than continual, or a habit that's slowly taken up more room than it used to. None of it feels like a crisis in the moment, but if we keep going that way, the distance eventually adds up.

That's why I don't think the answer to spiritual drift is living in a constant state of worry, wondering if we're secretly getting everything wrong. The answer is learning to regularly check our aim.

Are we still pointed toward Jesus?

Are our lives actually moving in the direction we say we want to go?

And sometimes, we need someone else to help us see what we can't see on our own.

That's one of the gifts of Christian community. We need people who love us enough to tell us the truth, who will notice when something seems a little off, and who will walk with us while we make the adjustment.

Maybe that's part of what it means to keep growing in Christ. We don't make one great correction and assume we're finished. We keep listening. We keep learning. We keep surrendering. We keep allowing God to show us where we need to adjust.

Maybe that's what I like about the picture of sighting in a rifle.

You don't sight it in once and never look at it again. You check it. You make an adjustment when you need to. You shoot again. You keep working until you're where you need to be.

Following Jesus is a little like that.

Not because we're constantly failing or because God is waiting for us to get something wrong. We check our aim because we're still growing. Sometimes we need Scripture to bring something back into focus. Sometimes we need the Holy Spirit to make us aware of something we hadn't noticed.

And when we discover that we've drifted a little, we make the next faithful adjustment.

Not a panic. Not a punishment.

Just another step toward the One we're trying to follow.

From the front door that evening, everything looked fine. I didn't know the rifle was off. Vic didn't know. Neither of us could see it from where we stood.

Sometimes we can't see the drift until we stop and check.

And maybe that's okay.

Maybe that's part of growing.

One small correction at a time.

One degree closer.



This Week
Maybe the question this week isn't, "Am I doing everything right?"

Maybe it's simply, "Where am I pointed?"

Take a few minutes to sit with that. Ask God to show you what has been taking up your attention lately, where your time and energy have been going, and whether something has quietly become more important than you intended.

Then ask someone who knows you well, "Is there anything you think I'm not seeing?"

You don't have to have an answer right away. Just pay attention to what comes up, and bring it honestly to God.


Prayer

Lord,
Help us notice when we've begun to drift, and give us the humility to listen when you show us something we need to see.

Keep us from fear and self-condemnation. Teach us to trust your grace as we keep growing and following you.

Help us trust you with what we cannot yet see.
Amen.

We were in Wyoming for Christmas, visiting Vic's family, and that afternoon we'd been out riding four-wheelers around the ranch. I was riding behind Vic, watching the snow begin to gather on the branches of the trees lining the road.

That evening, the ranch house was full. Everyone was gathered around the dinner table, the kids and the rest of the family, with conversations happening all around us.

At some point, I looked across the room and saw Vic sitting in his dad's recliner. He was relaxed and laughing. I watched him longer than I meant to.

The years leading up to that Christmas had held plenty of good things, but they had also asked a lot of us. And something about seeing Vic there, back on the ranch where he had grown up, made me wonder what it might be like if this wasn't just a place we came for Christmas.

Then, somewhere in the middle of all the dinner conversation, Beth mentioned some of the changes happening around the ranch and that she would be looking for someone to help with the work.

She wasn't offering Vic a job. She wasn't suggesting that we move. It was simply part of the conversation.

But suddenly, a thought I'd never seriously considered was sitting there with me.

Could this be home for us?

It wasn't a decision. It wasn't even a plan. It was just a possibility.

Back at the cabin, I finally said it out loud to Vic.

What would it look like for us to move here?

He was surprised. I think he had long ago decided that I would never want to leave Lexington. And honestly, I understood why. We had a good life there. A paid-off house, jobs we liked, friends we loved, and my mom and family only two hours away.

Moving to Wyoming meant leaving something that was already working. We weren't running away from a bad situation. We would be choosing something different, and there were some pretty big questions attached to that choice.

Could I really live that remotely? What would it mean to be that far from my mom and family? What about our jobs, our friends, our house? What if I hated ranch life? What if Vic loved being back here and I didn't?

Beth eventually offered Vic the job, and he accepted. Even then, we didn't immediately tell everyone. We sat on the decision for a while. We talked about it late at night and turned it over from every angle.

The questions never completely disappeared, but underneath them, the sense of peace about moving stayed.

Eventually, we started telling the people closest to us, and those conversations made the cost of the decision real.

Vic's best friend, who was also his boss, was understandably very sad. Telling my mom was heartbreaking too. She knew what moving meant. I would be much farther away, and there was no way to make that part of the decision easy.

We knew we were leaving people and a life we loved.

We also knew we could make this choice with peace.

We put our house on the market, and it sold within a day with multiple offers. By May, after the school year was over, we were headed west with an agreement that we'd give Wyoming a year and see how it went.

We didn't know what that year would hold. We didn't know if we'd stay or go back to Kentucky.

We just knew we were willing to take the next step.

That story makes me think differently about what Paul means when he says, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts."

Pastor Isaac pointed out that some translations use the word "umpire" instead of "rule." I love that picture. An umpire is there to call the play, to help determine what counts and what doesn't. In the middle of a decision, something is going to have a voice. It might be fear. It might be anxiety. It might be what other people think we should do. Or it might be the peace of Christ.

But that word "let" matters too.

Peace wasn't a substitute for the work of deciding. It was what we kept coming back to while we did that work.

Vic and I had to actually make the decision. We talked. We asked questions. We considered what we would be leaving behind and what we might be stepping into. We didn't know exactly what would happen, and we couldn't guarantee that moving to Wyoming would turn out the way we hoped.

We were using the freedom God had given us to choose, while also paying attention to what was happening in our hearts as we chose.

That's why I think testing matters. Isaac talked about not rushing peace. If something really is peace from Christ, we can give it time and see whether it holds. We don't have to grab onto the first feeling we have and call it God's direction.

That's part of what happened for us. We didn't announce the move the minute we got excited about the possibility. We held it between us for a while. We talked about it again and again. We let the questions come. We let the reality of what we would be giving up sink in.

We eventually agreed to give Wyoming a year.

Looking back, I think that year was part of the discernment too. We didn't need to know everything before we took the next step. We needed to be willing to take the step and pay attention to whether the peace held.

Peace doesn't always give you certainty about what is going to happen next.

Sometimes it simply gives you enough confidence to take the next faithful step.

The eleven years since haven't always looked the way we imagined. Vic's work has taken different turns, and there have been hard seasons and plenty of things we couldn't have predicted from that Christmas night.

And yet, the peace didn't disappear just because life didn't unfold exactly the way we thought it might.

These days, I can sit in our living room and look over at Vic in his own recliner. Outside the window is the pasture his dad loved. The ranch that once belonged to Vic's childhood is now the place where our life is happening.

Sometimes I look around and think about that question from all those years ago.

Could this be home for us?

It is.

Not because we know what the next eleven years will hold. Not because every part of living here has been easy. And not because choosing Wyoming somehow guaranteed that everything would work out exactly the way we hoped.

It is home because this became our life. This is where we've put down roots, built friendships, raised our family, and made a life together.

And right now, this does feel like home. I don't want to live anywhere else.

For now, that's enough.


This Week
Think about one decision you're carrying right now, especially one where there isn't necessarily a right or wrong choice, just two different paths forward.

Start by giving yourself permission to slow down and listen. Write down the questions, fears, and practical concerns that come with the decision. Then, underneath all that noise, pay attention to whether there is any sense of peace.

You don't have to make the decision today. Give it some time. Come back to it in a few days and ask yourself: Is the peace still there?

You may still have questions. You may still feel nervous. You may still have reasons to hesitate. Peace doesn't mean all of that disappears.

The question is whether, underneath it all, the peace of Christ is still there.

Prayer
Lord,
When questions, fear, and other people's opinions get loud, help us slow down and listen.

Give us grace not to rush to an answer, but to bring our questions honestly to you and pay attention to what remains underneath the noise.

Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and guide us as we choose our next faithful step.
Amen.

Sunday morning, I was standing behind the camera in the tech booth, watching the service through the little screen in front of me. When Pastor Isaac invited Cody Tupper to come up and share his testimony, I kept the camera shot wide. That was partly because it was the right shot for the moment, but I also made a deliberate choice to keep Pastor Isaac in the frame with him.


Cody is only a little over 130 days into a very different life. He stood in front of our church and spoke openly about struggles with substance abuse and mental health. He talked about the things he had allowed to take the highest place in his life, the idols that had been leading him for years, and the pain and destruction they had caused, not just for him, but for his family and his community.

And now he was standing in front of us, talking about what God had been doing.

As I watched him through that little screen, I kept thinking about the fact that this is new. This matters. He shouldn't have to stand here by himself.

Cody talked about being blessed to have been raised by good people and surrounded by good people.

Then he told us about how he ended up at a Bible study at the sale barn.

His mom told him that Jim Thompson and Mark Thiel were meeting there for Bible study. At first, he couldn't believe it. A Bible study at the sale barn?

But he went.

He talked about how, after years of letting the wrong things lead him, he began to see the people and circumstances around him differently. Maybe they weren't coincidences after all.

"There's no coincidences," he told us. "I've been saved so many times that there's no way it's a coincidence."

Then he asked the question that stuck with me.

"Is it odd or is it God?"

He stood there with a little over 130 days behind him, grateful simply to be able to stand in front of a church and tell his story. And throughout it all, he kept pointing the credit back to God.

Thank God first.
Change what you're listening to.
Be careful about what and who you put on the pedestal.
Keep coming to church.

After Cody finished, Isaac talked about what we had just witnessed. He called Cody the quintessential example of what it looks like to put off the old self and put on the new self.

That was exactly what we had been talking about in Colossians 3.

It wasn't a theoretical picture of transformation. We had just watched a real person stand in front of us and tell us what God was doing in his life.

And all the while, I was watching it happen through the camera.

Cody was the one giving his testimony.

But Isaac was still in the frame.

Watching Cody that morning, and knowing why I had chosen to keep Isaac in the frame, made me think about my own life.

If I know that someone who is struggling needs people around them, do I give myself that same grace? When the struggle is mine, do I keep the shot wide?

I thought about a moment from college.

I was my sorority's recruitment director, and we were preparing for our first recruitment party. It was a big responsibility, and I was supposed to be the person who had it all together. I was the one organizing things, answering questions, solving problems and making sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing.

And then, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I had a panic attack.

I don't remember every detail of what was happening around me, but I remember how small I felt. Everything that had seemed manageable suddenly felt overwhelming. The person who was supposed to have it handled couldn't seem to get her own thoughts and emotions back under control.

And I wasn't alone.

Vic, who was my boyfriend then and is my husband now, and some of my sorority sisters sat with me. They stayed with me. They helped me regain perspective and focus.

They didn't fix everything.

They just stayed.

At the time, that mattered more than I probably understood.

What I remember just as clearly as the panic itself is the embarrassment that came afterward.

It wasn't just that I had had a panic attack. It was that other people had seen it.

I had always been looked at as capable and strong. I was the person who could organize things, figure things out, answer the questions, and keep moving when something needed to get done. I was comfortable being that person. I knew how to be that person.

But in that moment, I didn't feel strong. I felt small. Inadequate. Out of control.

And the people who knew me that way had seen this version of me too.

I think that was the part that was hardest to sit with. I couldn't convince myself that I was still the same person because, in my mind, being capable meant being able to handle things. If I needed someone to sit beside me and help me find my way back to perspective, then maybe I wasn't as capable as everyone thought I was.

Of course, that wasn't true. But it felt true.

Vic and my sorority sisters didn't see me as less of a person because I needed them. They didn't seem embarrassed for me. They didn't treat me like I had become someone different.

I was the one who had decided that needing help was something to be embarrassed about.

Looking back, I can see how much of that embarrassment came from being seen outside the version of myself I was comfortable showing people. I knew how to let people see me when I was organized, confident, and getting things done. I didn't know what to do with being seen when I was overwhelmed and needed someone else to help me get my footing again.

I know that better now than I did then.

But I also know that I'm not completely past the instinct to crop the picture.

I can still feel the pull toward figuring things out on my own, toward getting my thoughts organized before I let anyone see the mess, toward wanting to come to the other side of something before I admit I was struggling in the first place.

Maybe that's why Cody's testimony and that camera shot stayed with me.

I knew, without really thinking about it, that Cody shouldn't have to stand there alone.

I just have to remember that the same thing is true of me.

And maybe that is where the camera turns again.

Because sometimes the temptation isn't only to hide the parts of ourselves that feel weak. Sometimes it's to measure them. To look at someone else's story and decide that theirs counts more because it is bigger, harder, more dramatic, or more obviously changed.

That is where Isaac's words to Cody caught me.

Isaac told Cody that a hundred and thirty days of transformation and sixty years of following Jesus don't put two people in different categories. They don't create a hierarchy. They are both in Christ, and Christ is in both of them.

"I can't pull some superior act on you," Isaac told him.

I love how plainly he said it.

There was no minimizing what God had done in Cody's life. A hundred and thirty days was worth celebrating. Cody had come through things that had caused real damage, and God was doing something new in him.

But sixty years of following Jesus didn't give Isaac a higher standing.

And a dramatic turnaround didn't give Cody a higher standing either.

They were both in Christ.

That is exactly where Colossians 3 takes us. Paul has just spent the passage telling us to put off the old self and put on the new, and then he names all the ways we are tempted to divide and rank one another: Jew and Greek, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free.

Those categories mattered deeply in the world Paul was writing to. But in Christ, they don't determine someone's standing.

Neither does the length of their story.

Neither does how dramatic their testimony is.

Neither does how obvious their transformation looks from the outside.

We are not standing in front of Jesus with a scoreboard.

And that gets uncomfortably personal for me.

Because if I'm honest, my temptation probably isn't to look at someone else's dramatic story and think, "I'm better than them."

It is almost the opposite.

I can look at someone whose life has changed in a big, visible way and wonder if my quieter, slower, still-unfinished growth really counts for as much.

Their testimony has a before and after you can point to.

Mine can feel more like a long series of small decisions, wrong turns, course corrections, and ordinary days of trying again.

It is easy to think that dramatic transformation must be more meaningful transformation.

But Jesus doesn't measure us that way.

A hundred and thirty days next to sixty years doesn't create a hierarchy.

And neither does my story next to someone else's.


None of us have arrived. Not Cody at a hundred and thirty days. Not Isaac after sixty years. We are all still on the same unfinished road, still being made new a little at a time.

That's not a discouraging thought. It means the finish line was never the point. Being shaped, day by day, into the likeness of Christ is the point, and none of us reaches the end of that in this life. We just keep walking it.

Maybe this is what putting off the old self and putting on the new self looks like this week.

Not always something dramatic.

Maybe for me, the old self looks like cropping people out of the picture. Trying to handle things on my own. Only letting people see the organized, capable version of me and keeping the overwhelmed version just outside the frame.

Putting on the new self might look a little different.

It might look like staying in the frame.

Letting someone sit with me when I don't have it all together. Letting people know when I need help instead of waiting until I've already figured everything out. Remembering that needing someone doesn't make me less of a person.

Cody didn't stand in front of our church alone that morning. Isaac was in the frame with him.

And years ago, when I needed someone to sit with me and help me find my perspective again, Vic and my sorority sisters stayed in the frame with me too.

Maybe that's what I want to remember this week.

The next time I'm tempted to go it alone, I want to remember to leave room for someone else in the shot.

This Week
As you go into this week, think about where you might be tempted to crop the picture.

Is there something you're trying to handle on your own? Someone you've been reluctant to let see that you're struggling? A place where you're waiting until you have everything figured out before you let anyone in?

You don't have to fix all of it this week.

Just notice it.

Then think of one person you trust and consider what it might look like to let them into the frame.

Maybe that means asking for help. Maybe it means admitting that you're having a hard day. Maybe it simply means letting someone sit with you without feeling like you have to make yourself look okay first.

And as you do, remember what Isaac reminded Cody: there is no pulling rank in Christ.

We're all still being changed.

We're all still learning what it means to put off the old self and put on the new.

And none of us was meant to do that alone.

Prayer
Lord, thank you that you are still making us new. Forgive us for the times we try to go it alone, hide our struggles, or measure our journey against someone else's. Give us the humility to admit when we need help and the courage to let others come alongside us.

Thank you for the people you have placed in our lives who are willing to stay in the frame with us. Help us to be those people for someone else. Remind us that there is no pulling rank in Christ. Whether we are taking our first steps or have been following you for sixty years, we are all being shaped by your grace.

This week, help us put off the old self and put on the new. Teach us to trust you, to receive the people you have given us, and to keep becoming more like Jesus.

Amen.

Lydia is almost ready.

She's sitting at the kitchen table finishing breakfast, and I'm already at the door. We've done this before. The night before, we packed the backpack and got everything ready for school. But somehow, when it's actually time to leave, she remembers the things she needs to take with her.

A book.

Her volleyball clothes.

A snack.

One more thing she suddenly can't possibly leave without.

I'm standing at the door, waiting. I glance at the clock. I look toward the car parked out front.

And then there's the trail.

Something gets left by the door. Then something else. I already know that after I take Lydia to the bus stop, I'll walk back into the house and pick up whatever she has left behind before I start work for the day.

I can feel the thought forming before I ever say it:
This is going to create more work for me.

And apparently, my face has already said it.

Colossians 3 doesn't begin with a command to be more patient. Paul begins by reminding me that I have been raised with Christ.

So the question isn't simply, How do I become a more patient person? It's, What do I do with reactions that belong to a self I no longer am?

That changes the way I think about these little moments. I'm not standing at the door trying to manufacture a better version of myself through sheer willpower. I'm learning to recognize what doesn't belong in the life Christ has given me.

Even recognizing that reaction for what it is means grace is already at work in me. God is helping me see what is happening in my heart and giving me what I need to respond differently.

Grace isn't just about pardon for what I've already done. It is God's active work in me, meeting me before the moment of choice and enabling me to choose a different response.

Paul tells me to get rid of anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language. At first, that list can sound like it's aimed at people with a much bigger anger problem than mine. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if Paul is also getting at what happens long before the words ever come out.

A thought can become irritation. Irritation can become an attitude. An attitude can show up in my expression or my tone. And eventually, it can become words.

Sometimes my face gets there before my mouth does.

Then Paul says something that seems almost contradictory. He tells me I have taken off my old self. It's done. It's no longer who I am. And yet I keep discovering pieces of that old way of living showing up in my reactions.

Both things can be true.

I have been changed by Christ, and I am still being changed by Christ.

I don't have to believe that my old reactions define me. But I also don't get to ignore them simply because I know they aren't supposed to be there anymore. When they surface, they become an opportunity to notice where I still need God's grace to work in me.

And then Paul reminds me that I am being renewed in the image of my Creator.

That's bigger than simply learning to behave better. God is restoring in me what sin has distorted. That restoration reaches deeper than my record. It reaches me.

And that's where I have to get honest about what my reactions are actually revealing.

So what's really going on when I think, This is going to create more work for me?

Maybe it's impatience.

Maybe it's control.

Maybe it's frustration with inconvenience, or an expectation that everyone should move at my pace.

Maybe it's the assumption that my way is the better way.

Maybe it's resentment that I have to accommodate someone else's pace or choices.

The extra work may actually be real. Lydia really may leave a trail by the door that I will have to pick up later. But the fact that something is inconvenient doesn't automatically give me permission to be irritated with the person who caused the inconvenience.

That makes me wonder whether this is more than a passing temptation. Maybe it's a temper in the old Wesleyan sense, a settled tendency I keep finding myself returning to. Not simply a feeling that flashes up once, but a pattern of responding that has become familiar.

And if that's true, then maybe the point isn't just to catch the moment when I'm annoyed. Maybe it's to notice what that moment keeps revealing about me.

Because the question isn't really, How do I stop making that face?

It's, what is happening in my heart when things don't go according to my plan?

Once I start seeing the pattern, I still have to decide what I'm going to do with it.

There are two easy ways I could respond to all of this.

I could decide that I just need to try harder. Keep my face under control. Watch my tone. Be more patient. Perform the right response through sheer willpower.

Or I could go the other direction and tell myself that because I am forgiven in Christ, the reaction doesn't really matter. I didn't say anything. I didn't hurt anyone. It's just a face.

Neither one gets to the heart of what God is doing in me.

Grace doesn't ask me to manufacture holiness on my own, but it also doesn't leave me exactly where it found me. God is actually changing me, and He invites me to participate in that work.

So when I catch the reaction, I can notice it. I can surrender what is happening in my heart to God. I can choose how I respond. And I can trust Him to keep doing the deeper work in me.

That's different from simply managing my behavior.

I don't want to get better at hiding the reaction. I want Christ to change the temper itself, the settled tendency that keeps pulling me toward the same old response.

Real change is possible, not because I can make myself into a better person, but because God's grace is at work in me and I am invited to cooperate with it.

This week, I want to practice catching the face.

The pause gives me a moment to pay attention to what God may already be showing me. It's a small practice, but it can become a place where I slow down enough to notice His work in me.

So when I catch that familiar look, I want to pause and ask:
What is happening in my heart right now?
Then:
What would it look like to surrender this to Christ?

And maybe the harder question is:
Am I making someone else carry the weight of my frustration?

I don't need to solve everything in that moment. I just want to notice, surrender, choose, and trust God to keep doing the deeper work.

That's the practice this week: catch the face, and pay attention to what it's revealing.

I know there will be another morning when Lydia is sitting at the kitchen table finishing breakfast, and I'm already at the door, ready to go.

She'll get up to put her shoes on, and suddenly she'll remember the book she wants, her volleyball clothes, a snack, or something else that apparently must come with her.

I'll wait.

There will probably be another little trail of things left behind.

And there will probably be a moment when I feel that familiar frustration rise up.

I hope I learn to see that moment differently.

Maybe that little facial expression can remind me to slow down, look a little deeper, and let Christ keep shaping me.

I don't want Christ to simply make my outside look better. I want Him to transform what is happening underneath it.

I want the grace that helps me notice my reaction to keep working in me until patience becomes more than something I try to look like. I want it to become part of who I am.

Prayer
God, thank You for raising us with Christ and continuing to make us new.

Help us notice what our faces, our words, and our reactions reveal before we even realize what is happening in our hearts. When those old patterns show up, give us the grace to surrender them to You and the strength to choose a different response.

Help us recognize the ways You are already drawing us toward You, even before we know to look for them. Keep renewing us into Your image until patience becomes more than something we perform. Make it part of who we are becoming in You.

Amen.

A few weeks ago, Lydia and I sat across from each other over brunch and talked for a few hours. We lingered over our food, caught up on life, and slipped right back into the friendship we have had for as long as I can remember. Our parents were friends and part of the same Sunday School class, so Lydia has been woven into my story for decades. We spent a lot of time together growing up, even though we went to different schools. Eventually, we stood beside each other at our weddings. I even named my daughter after her.

Today is my wedding anniversary, and it has me thinking about the people who have walked alongside me through the many seasons of my life, even when life has taken us in different directions. I live about 1,400 miles away from our hometown, and I wish we talked more than we do. But when we are together, it doesn't seem to matter how much time has passed. We just pick up where we left off.

That reminded me of something Isaac preached recently from Colossians 3: that because we've been raised with Christ, we're called to set our hearts and minds on things above. He talked about it almost like setting a cornerstone. Once a cornerstone is set, it establishes a direction. It isn't about how you feel on any particular day. It is about deciding where you are going to point yourself and continuing in that direction.

And right now, I wish I could be closer.

What Lydia is walking through right now isn't a rough patch. It's something that will change the shape of the rest of her life, and there are parts of it I'm not able to share here. I know enough to wish I could do more. I wish I could show up at her house, help with her younger kids, sit with her on the hard days, and carry some of the emotional weight with her. But I live 1,400 miles away. There are some kinds of help that distance simply makes harder.

So I pray. I support the ministry work she is doing. And when I am home and we have the chance to sit across from each other over brunch, I try to be fully there. Those things are small compared to what I wish I could do, but they aren't nothing. And somewhere in all of this, I have had to remember that my hope for Lydia was never supposed to rest on whether I could be physically present for her. It rests on God. He can be present with her when I am so far away. He can carry what I cannot carry. He can work in places I cannot reach. And He is not limited by the things that limit me.

That doesn't make the distance stop hurting. I still wish I could be there. But it does mean I don't have to be enough for her. I can love her, pray for her, give when I can, and trust the One who is already there. The miles may have changed our circumstances, but they don't have to change where my hope is pointed.

My mind is very good at collecting things. An email I need to answer. An appointment I need to reschedule. A conversation I need to have. Something at church that needs to be figured out. A kid who needs something. A grocery list running through my head while I'm trying to pray. None of those things are necessarily important enough to be called a crisis, but somehow they can fill every available corner of my mind.

Maybe that's part of what Isaac was getting at when he talked about setting our minds on things above. It doesn't mean the ordinary things don't matter. They do. It means they don't get to become the thing that occupies the center of my attention. I can take care of what is in front of me without letting it become the thing I build my hope around. My circumstances can change. My to-do list can get longer. There will always be something else competing for my attention. But I can keep bringing my mind back to what is true, to who Christ is, and to where my hope is actually anchored.

A few weeks ago, Lydia and I sat across from each other over brunch, and for a few hours the miles between us were simply the miles between us. They were still there. Her circumstances were still there. Nothing about our conversation changed any of that. But I was reminded that some things can remain firmly set even when everything around them changes.

I wonder if this is what Paul is getting at in Colossians 3. We have been raised with Christ, and we are called to set our hearts and minds on things above. Not because life will stop changing, but because we have somewhere fixed to turn when it does.

We don't get to choose everything that happens around us. We don't get to control the miles, the circumstances, the interruptions, or even every wandering thought. But we do get to keep returning to what we have set our hearts and minds on.

Where has your heart been set?


This Week
Think of one person or one worry that's been pulling at your heart or your mind lately, someone whose circumstances aren't yours to control, or something ordinary that keeps crowding out your attention.

If your heart is already staying steady on Christ even while you're carrying that person or that worry, take a minute this week to notice that, and thank God for it.

But if you keep catching your mind wandering back to the same nagging thing, here's the practice: when you notice it happening, don't try to solve it right then. Just name it, hand it to God, and point yourself back toward Him.

You don't have to get your whole heart reset in one sitting. You just have to keep pointing yourself back.


Prayer
Lord, thank you for being the fixed point our hearts can return to, even when everything else keeps shifting.

Forgive us for letting our minds drift toward whatever is loudest instead of staying set on you, and for believing our hope has to rest on what we can control. Help us set our hearts on you like a cornerstone, established on purpose, not moved by how we feel today. Where we love people we cannot reach the way we wish we could, remind us you are not limited by what limits us.

We don't have to get it all reset in one sitting. Just keep pointing us back to you.

Amen.

The Bible was near me most of the time.

I had a teal green, leather bound copy that I got in high school. It had my name in gold letters on the front. It became less of a book and more of a map. The pages were soft, the gilded edges worn off, evidence of years of use, inside and out. The colors had their own stories. Yellow for something I wanted to remember. Purple for a characteristic about God. Green for the ways to grow. Pink for something that stuck out to me personally. Certain passages were underlined because they mattered to me, and sometimes I couldn’t remember why they were underlined until I read them again.

I had a habit of putting that Bible in a place that I would see it. On my bedside table. On my desk. Not just because I needed to remember that I owned it, but because I wanted it to be in a place where I would stop what I was doing to read it. It went with me to church, to youth group, and even occasionally to school.

I wanted to be a person who noticed things in Scripture. Who remembered. Who went back. Who kept learning.

So I highlighted. And underlined. And starred things. And highlighted more.

The past few years, I have stopped highlighting altogether.

Last Sunday, Pastor Isaac preached from a big chunk of Colossians 2.

Paul warns us about a collection of wrong turns: hollow philosophy, rituals, powers and authorities, and man-made rules about food, festivals, and Sabbaths. He even warns about things that appear to be spiritual but are really just self-imposed worship and false humility. If you want to know how to think, speak, or act right, just hang out with Jesus. Stay rooted in Him.

That is especially important because religion has a long history of putting guilt on people for things that God actually never required. Something can look very spiritual and still miss the whole point. What caught my attention was It felt like Paul was describing a system that looked a lot like the one I grew up in.

I grew up in a very rules-centered version of Christianity. There were a lot of things that you did, and a lot of things that you didn’t do, if you wanted to be a good Christian. Following those rules made me feel more spiritual and more serious about my faith. Maybe even a little better than the people who didn’t seem to be trying quite as hard.

Inward disciplines came easy for me. I liked digging into what a passage meant and spending time in meditation and prayer. I enjoyed having a quiet time and checking the box that said, Yes, I did that today!

And at the time, I thought that ease was a sign of strength. I thought that maybe that was what spiritual maturity looked like.

It has taken me years to realize that something coming easily and something being healthy are not necessarily the same thing.

At the church I attended in Lexington, I was in a  leadership class where the senior pastor gave an assignment to have a color coding system for our daily Bible reading. So certain colors represented certain things in our reading, and my Bible slowly became a color coded record of what I was learning.

And I loved it!

But, I also developed a habit that is a little harder for me to admit now: I would sometimes take my Bible with me to Sunday services and leave it open on a chair next to me so I could make sure it was visible.

I wasn’t necessarily thinking, Look how spiritual I am, but looking back I can see that there was some of that in there. And the uncomfortable part of that is that I thrived in that system.

The more disciplined I was, the more spiritual I felt. The more I studied, marked, remembered, and practiced, the more I felt like I was getting Christianity right. From the inside, performative discipline didn’t feel fake, it genuinely felt like I was flourishing.

That’s what makes Paul’s words in Colossians 2 hit me differently now.

“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” and then he describes these practices as having an appearance of wisdom with their “self-imposed worship and false humility” (Colossians 2:20-23).

My highlighter wasn’t a metaphor for this passage. It was an ordinary, contemporary example of what Paul was talking about - taking something that can be good and turning it into a measuring stick of spiritual growth and then quietly believing that that measure makes me more acceptable, more disciplined, or more spiritual than someone else.

What’s interesting to me now is the difference between the disciplines I practiced publicly and the ones I didn’t.

Bible study was visible. I could carry my Bible with me, open it up on a table, underline something then highlight it, and then let others see the evidence of my spiritual life.

Fasting was different. I really only remember doing it corporately. When I was in youth group in high school we would do it as a part of praying together or for something that was happening in the world. I don’t remember making fasting a personal practice, just between me and God.

In Matthew 6:16-18, Jesus just assumes that his followers would fast and he tells them to do it in secret and then also that they should wash their faces and not make it obvious to other people that they’re fasting.

My problem wasn’t the Bible study, it wasn’t the highlighting, it wasn’t discipline. Those can all be good gifts. The problem was what was happening when a good thing became a visible way of demonstrating how serious I was about my faith.

Invisibility isn’t a magic safeguard against performance. I didn’t need anyone else to feel proud of me, I had the mental checkbox to do that. Nobody ever saw that checkmark, but it still worked as a measuring stick. But, there is something built into a hidden practice that makes performance harder to sustain. A secret fast doesn’t earn me any credit with the people around me.

A highlighted Bible carried around in public can.

So recently, I stopped highlighting. I stopped underlining too.

Part of me did it as an act of humility, I wanted to loosen my grip on the whole system of measuring myself by what I had marked. I want to read Scripture without turning the page into a record of how well I am doing. And that feels like freedom.

But I’ve also had to wonder if I just created a new rule. Maybe I’ve taken the old system and turned it upside down. Maybe the new standard is: I don’t highlight because I have learned that highlighting can become performance. And now I can quietly measure myself by how free I am from the things I used to measure myself by.

That thought is uncomfortable to me. I don’t think that I intentionally judge people who highlight or underline their Bible. But maybe. I don’t have the answer for that yet.

There is another image in Colossians 2 that I hadn’t really connected to all this before: “circumcision not performed by human hands” (Colossians 2:11). And that took me back to John Wesley.

In 1733, Wesley preached The Circumcision of the Heart, years before his Aldersgate experience (a moment that he later described as a profound awakening of faith). He used Romans 2:29 to describe the marks of a heart truly changed by God as "humility, faith, hope, and charity.” Humility comes first. That word stopped me.

Paul, in this same passage, warns about “false humility.” Wesley is pointing towards the real thing. False humility can become another religious performance. True humility looks different: it begins when we stop trying to prove ourselves and let God do His work in us.

That makes me look at my highlighter story differently. The problem wasn’t the Bible study or the highlighting. The problem was what I was asking those things to prove: that I was disciplined, serious, and doing Christianity well. I have taken something that could have been a means of grace and turned it into evidence of my spiritual worth.

The outward practice had become a substitute for the inner work. Maybe that is what I have been trying to learn: not less discipline, but discipline that makes space for God to change my heart, instead of letting the discipline prove that my heart was already changed.

Wesley’s definition of humility is even more sharp: "Humility, a right judgment of ourselves, cleanses our minds from those high conceits of our own perfection.”

High conceits of our own perfection. I had already written about that without having the words for it: I thought that ease was a sign of strength. I thought, “Maybe this is what it looks like to be spiritually mature.” Oof. Wesley had a name for it.

So is discipline still in? I think it is. Richard Foster opens Celebration of Discipline with a chapter called “Door to Liberation.” The disciplines, he says, aren’t a checklist for earning God’s approval, they're practices that make room for us to encounter God and be changed by Him.

Wesley called it the “means of grace.” Prayer, Scripture, the Lord’s Supper, and fasting aren’t the engine of grace. They are places where we put ourselves in a posture to receive it.

That distinction has become important to me. A rule tells me how I am doing. A means of grace helps me receive what God is doing in me.

The outward action can look exactly the same. I can read my Bible because I want to be seen as someone who reads the Bible. Or I can read it because I want God to meet me there.

Same action, different posture. So yes, discipline is still in. I am just learning that it has be held as a means, not a measure.

There was one part of Pastor Isaac’s sermon that I had to take a little further for myself. The sermon focused on Paul’s warning not to let other people judge us, and that is an important freedom. But then I had to ask myself what that freedom looks like from the other side, when I am the one who stopped. Because if I don’t want to be judged for my freedom, I have to be willing to offer that same freedom to someone else.

Even if someone is still holding the highlighter.

That’s not a correction of Pastor Isaac’s sermon as much as the next step I needed to take with God. Paul is clear about not letting someone else’s rules define me, but I don’t think that the freedom stopped there. It has to cut both ways. If I don't want someone else’s rules to measure my faith, I can’t turn my freedom from those rules into a new standard for measuring someone else.

If highlighting is no longer something I need, that doesn’t make my choice a measure of someone else’s faithfulness. I don’t want to trade one measuring stick for another.

So the highlighter is still sitting on my desk. I haven’t thrown it away. Maybe I’ll pick it up again someday. I just want to be more honest with myself about why I am reaching for it when I do.

And maybe that’s the question I am left with today: not whether a practice is right or wrong, but what I am asking that practice to do for me.

The disciplines in my life may look different from yours. But what if we ask ourselves: Is this a rule I am using to measure myself (and maybe someone else)? Or is it a means of grace, something I’m using to make room to meet God?

I don’t know that there’s always an easy answer. I am still trying to figure it out. Maybe you are too.

This Week
I'm not going to tell you to start or stop a spiritual practice this week, that would just hand you a new measuring stick to replace the old one.

Instead, pick one discipline you already practice, whatever it is: reading your Bible, praying, fasting, serving, showing up on Sunday. Before you do it this week, pause for a second and ask yourself honestly: what am I hoping this proves? Am I using it to measure myself against who I used to be, or against someone else? Or am I using it to make room for God to actually meet me there?

You don't need a tidy answer. Just notice.


A Prayer
Lord, thank You for tearing down the rules we build to prove ourselves to You and to everyone watching.

Thank You for the freedom Paul writes about—for freedom from measuring our worth by what we've read, marked, or given up.
Keep teaching us true humility. Not the kind that quietly congratulates itself for being humble, but the kind that simply stops trying to prove anything at all.

Help us hold the disciplines You've given us loosely enough that they remain means of grace, not measures of who's doing better.

And give us the same grace for others that we're asking You to give to us, for the ones still holding their highlighters, and for the parts of us that still want to be seen.

We don't have this figured out. We're still learning.

Meet us here.

Amen.

It's 5:30 in the morning. Vic's already gone to work, but the coffee's going. He starts it before he leaves. I'm in the recliner by the living room window, breakfast on my lap, looking out over the ranch. Bible open, before the day gets moving. Nothing dramatic about it. Just an ordinary morning.

It wasn't always like this this summer, though. And it took a sermon to help me name what had actually happened in between.

Pastor Isaac preached this week on Colossians 2, in a sermon called "Continue." One line has stuck with me since: receiving Christ isn't a parking spot. It's a merging lane.


I didn't fully understand how true that was until I looked back at my own summer.

I didn't make a decision to stop reading my Bible this summer.

I just started doing it less.

At first, maybe I skipped a morning here and there. Then a couple of mornings in a week. Summer schedules got a little looser, mornings got a little busier, and before I really noticed what was happening, sitting down with my Bible before the day started had become the exception instead of the routine.

My workout routine followed a similar path. I didn't quit working out. I just let it slide. And now that I'm slowly adding those things back into my mornings, I've been reminded of something I wish I hadn't forgotten: it is much easier to keep a good habit going than it is to rebuild one you've let go. Getting back to the weights is harder than it was when I was doing it consistently.

My muscles remember what they used to do, but they aren't quite ready to do it again. And spiritually, I think something similar happens. I didn't suddenly decide I didn't need God's Word. I didn't stop believing it mattered. I just stopped making space for it as consistently as I had before. The drift was so ordinary that I almost didn't notice it. But I'm noticing the difference now that I've started again.

This past week, I've been getting up when Vic leaves for work at 5:30 and reading my Bible while I eat breakfast. And yes, I'm physically more refueled because I'm not waiting until 10:00 to eat. But there's something deeper happening, too.

I'm starting the day grounded in Truth.

I don't read my Bible each morning because I'm trying to collect more information. After nearly 30 years of reading Scripture, that's not really what I'm looking for. I need the grounding. Without it, I can slip pretty easily back into my old patterns of perfection and performance. I start measuring the day by what I accomplish, trying to control what I can't control, feeling like I should be doing more, and generally forgetting that I am not the one holding the whole thing together.

Before the emails, errands, decisions, kids, distractions, and whatever else the day throws at me, I need to remember what is true.

The weights are coming back this week. But Scripture came first.

Colossians 2:7 gives us three pictures for what happens next: rooted, built up, strengthened.

Rooted, I already know what that looks like right now. Scripture, breakfast, 5:30am, before anything else gets a vote.

Built up doesn't happen in one sitting. It's one ordinary morning, then another, then another. No single dramatic day where I "arrived." Just another course added to what was already there. Scripture is anchored to breakfast now. This week, the weights get stacked on top of both. That's habit stacking, and it's also just what being built up looks like, one anchored piece at a time.

Strengthened is still ahead of me, if I'm honest. The weights go back on the schedule this week, and I already know it won't feel the way it used to for a while. That's not a setback. That's just what strengthening looks like.

Last week, the words "overflowing with thankfulness" felt a little out of reach. It was hard. Parenting an adult child and a middle schooler under the same roof brings two very different kinds of hard, and there were things happening that I could not control. And if I'm honest, that is where I struggle most. I want to fix things. I want to make things better. I want to be able to do something that changes the outcome. But sometimes loving someone means standing beside them when you cannot fix it for them.

I'm not overflowing with thankfulness this week. But I am starting my mornings in the Word again, and I think there is something important about that. I am reminding myself, before the day gets going, that I am not the one holding it all together. I don't have to have the answers. I don't have to control the outcome. I can be rooted in the One who does.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be back in that recliner by the window, breakfast on my lap, looking out over the same ranch. The coffee will already be going, not because I made it, but because Vic made it for me before he ever left the house.

I don't know if this will be the week overflowing with thankfulness finally shows up. I don't know if next week will be easier than this one or harder. But I know where I'll be sitting, and I know who I'm rooted in while I'm sitting there.

Not a parking spot. A merging lane.

Continue.

This Week
Think of one habit or rhythm that's quietly slipped this summer, not something dramatic, just something ordinary you used to do without thinking and now have to talk yourself into. Don't try to fix all of it this week.

If you're already back in it, rooted and steady, use this week to notice that and say thank you for it. If you're still parked, still meaning to get back to it, here's the assignment: pick the smallest piece, not the whole routine, and do that one piece tomorrow morning before anything else gets a vote.

Continuing was never about arriving. Real merging doesn't work that way either. You match the speed of what's already moving, then you go. Maybe that's what continuing actually is, not setting your own pace, but matching a rhythm that's already there, and letting it carry you in.

Prayer
Lord, thank you for being the ground we can stand on when nothing else feels steady.

Forgive us for the ways we quietly let go of the habits that keep us rooted in you, not all at once, but a little at a time, until we hardly noticed it happening. Help us start again this week, not in one big moment, but in small, ordinary steps.

Remind us that we are not the ones holding everything together, and that you are strong enough to hold what we cannot. Even in the weeks we're not overflowing with thankfulness yet, keep us rooted, keep building us up, and keep strengthening us for whatever this week holds.

Amen.

This past Sunday, Pastor Isaac walked us through the three goals Paul lays out for the church at Colossae in chapter 2: encouraged in heart, united in love, and full understanding in Christ. Two of those I want to touch quickly. The third is where I want to sit with you for a while, because it's the one I'm still working out in my own life.

Encouraged in Heart
Isaac's right that this goes deeper than a pep talk. The encouragement Paul is after isn't a mood you talk yourself into or a compliment that makes you feel good for an afternoon. It's closer to what the Holy Spirit does when he "testifies with our spirit that we are God's children" (Romans 8:16): an actual work of grace, not a feeling you manufacture by trying harder to be positive. You can't will yourself into that kind of courage. You can only receive it.


I can say that from experience. Isaac has been generous with his encouragement of my writing for years now, and it's done exactly what he preached about Sunday: it gave me the courage to keep growing as a communicator and to try things I wouldn't have attempted otherwise. But God didn't design any of us to be a reservoir, holding what we're given just for our own benefit. He designed us to be a riverbed, something it's meant to flow through. So this post is, in a small way, an attempt to pass along what's been poured into me rather than just keep it.

Complete Understanding
Pastor Isaac made a good move separating wisdom from knowledge. Charles Wesley, John Wesley's brother and the movement's great hymn writer, once wrote that he wanted to "unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety." Wesley wasn't inventing a new idea; he was pressing Paul's vision into everyday church life. Knowing about Jesus was never supposed to just sit in your head. Paul isn't talking about accumulating more information. He's talking about a life shaped by the truth you already know. Some of the wisest people I know couldn't win a theology debate, and they don't need to.


United in Love
Both encouragement and understanding ultimately lead somewhere: into the way we love one another.

Paul's ambition for two small churches down the road from each other, Colossae and Laodicea, was that they would stay together in love without agreeing on everything. Isaac made that point Sunday, and he’s right. But it’s also an easy point to accept because it costs us so little. Of course we can love people we disagree with politically. We don’t actually have to do anything about that.

Here's the harder version, the one I've been sitting with.

John Wesley used to say there is no holiness but social holiness: your faith was never meant to be a private transaction between you and God. It's meant to get worked out inside real relationships, with real people, including the ones who are hard to be around. The class meetings that shaped Wesley's movement existed so people would actually watch over one another, not merely avoid conflict with one another. Unity, in his mind, wasn't the absence of a fight. It was people staying close enough to be changed by each other.

That's a much higher bar than "don't argue about the upcoming election." And I don't think I've cleared it.

I have a family member I worked closely with through the years. When that working relationship ended, it was a hard season for both of us, hard enough that I don't think we'll ever get back to what we had. These days, we see each other at family gatherings. I don't avoid her in town. We live close to each other, and I've made peace with the fact that I'm not part of her work anymore. But we aren't close, not the way we used to be. I've put up some boundaries around my heart, on purpose, because I needed to.

I wish we had real unity, not just the absence of conflict. Some days I genuinely don't know how that's possible.

Here's what I've had to learn to sit with: those might be two different things. Reconciliation of heart before God isn't the same as restoration of a relationship to its old shape. Paul's ask in Colossians is the first one: that we're united in loving God, loving what's true, and not carrying bitterness toward each other. It doesn't necessarily mean rebuilding every relationship back to what it used to be. Sometimes love looks like showing up, staying kind, and keeping the healthy boundaries that protect your heart from being wounded in the same ways again. That isn't necessarily a failure to love well. It may simply be what faithful love looks like in this season.


I don't have a bow to put on this one. I'd love to tell you it all got resolved and we're close again. It isn't, and we're not, at least not yet. But I've stopped believing that unresolved means unfaithful. Paul wasn't asking the Colossians to manufacture perfect relationships in their small town. He was calling them to remain rooted together in Christ, bearing with one another in love even when life together was complicated.

If there's someone in your life like that, someone you can't fully reconcile with but haven't walked away from either, I don't have a tidy answer for you. But I don't think you're failing at unity. I think you might be living it, even in the tension and unfinishedness of where things are right now.

This Week
Think of one relationship where full agreement, or full closeness, isn't there right now. Don't try to fix it this week. Instead, ask yourself honestly: Have I let go of bitterness? Am I loving this person as faithfully as I can in this season?


If you're still hoping for something to be repaired, don't rush past that hope this week. Bring it to God plainly, in the actual words you'd use with a friend. He already knows, and he isn't asking you to perform a peace you don't yet feel.

A Prayer
God, thank you for encouraging our hearts, not because we've earned it, but because that's who you are. Give us the courage to receive your encouragement and to pass it on to someone else this week.

Teach us to love beyond the absence of conflict. Where relationships remain unresolved, comfort us in the not-yet. Keep bitterness from taking root, give us wisdom to love well with healthy boundaries, and keep our hearts open to the work you're still doing.

Keep drawing us back to Jesus, so our understanding is never just information, but a life increasingly shaped by his love. Amen.

Pastor Isaac preached on Colossians 1:24-29 this Sunday, and he was honest about it before he even started: "I don't like this message." Paul writes, "Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you," and Isaac's first reaction, like most of ours, was come on, that can't be real.

By the end, he'd shown why it is real. Paul isn't performing stoicism. He's saying his suffering has become a place where he identifies with Christ, on behalf of the church.


I want to sit with that a little longer than the sermon had time for, because there's a real danger hiding just underneath it.

The Line that Helps, and the Line that Hurts
"Did you ever imagine your suffering may not be about you?" is a genuinely good question. Most of us curl inward when we're hurting: the deer that jumped out, the AC that broke at the worst time, the diagnosis that landed on the wrong week. Paul's answer to his own suffering wasn't to minimize it, but to widen the lens. This is for the body of Christ, not just for me.

Here's the danger. That same sentence, unmoored from Paul's specific context, becomes something people say to each other in the hospital waiting room, at the funeral, in the small group where someone finally admits they're not okay. "This isn't about you. God's going to use this for someone else."


And scripts don't leave room for someone to just be devastated for a while.

Paul earned the right to say "I rejoice in my suffering." He'd been beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and he wrote those words from inside all of it, not as advice for someone else's pain, but as his own hard-won posture toward his own.

What I Learned, but only Afterward
I think of the years after my dad died. There were seasons where I couldn't see a way through, where all I could see was what other people still had that I'd lost. That's an honest, ugly part of grief nobody warns you about: the comparison, the resentment that creeps in when you're the one who's empty-handed. I didn't have anything close to Paul's rejoicing available to me then.

But years later, I found myself sitting with a friend who'd lost a parent too early in their life, the kind of loss that reshapes a whole life. And I knew what she needed, because I remembered exactly what I had needed, even though no one could walk that road for me.


That's the only place I've found Paul's words to be true for me, not in the middle of my own pain, but years later, on the other side of it, watching what God had quietly built in me through that suffering, without asking my permission first.

Grace Still has to be Met
That gap, between the suffering and whatever it produces, is the part worth naming carefully, because suffering doesn't automatically produce anything. John Wesley talked about growth in Christ as grace offered and then received, over and over again, rather than pain doing the work by itself. Two people can walk through the same loss and come out very different: one more closed and fearful, another more compassionate, more open, more like the friend I had the privilege of becoming.

That's not a promise, and it's not a formula. For someone wrestling with clinical depression or deep trauma, "meeting grace" isn't a decision they're failing to make every time they can't get there. That's where patience, professional care, and people who simply stay become as much a part of God's grace as prayer itself.


The way Paul does, and the way I'm trying to here.

One Step for this Week
If you're the one suffering right now, Paul's rejoicing is not a bar you have to clear today. Grieve badly if you need to. The hope of glory is real, but it isn't a performance requirement.

If you're not currently in the thick of it, here's the assignment. Find one person this week who is, and sit with them without trying to fix, explain, or hand them a verse.

No script. Just presence.

That's the whole thing Paul earned the right to say. Start by earning the smaller version of it.

A prayer
Lord,

We don't want to rush anyone's pain, including our own. Where we're hurting, give us permission to not have arrived yet. Where someone near us is hurting, take the fix-it words out of our mouths and replace them with the willingness to just stay.

Do in us, over time and without our noticing, whatever you did in Paul. We're not asking to feel it today. We're asking to trust that you're not finished.

Amen.

Vic had known for a few days he was going out. A neighbor, laid up with a bad knee, needed help spraying weeds and getting hay put up, and he'd asked Vic ahead of time if he could come on his day off. Vic said yes.

Partway through the afternoon, the sky opened up. Not a passing sprinkle, a real storm, the kind that soaks you through in minutes and turns dust to mud under your boots. They kept working anyway, drenched, because the job still needed doing. By the time they called it a day, the storm had blown through and the sky had cleared.

The neighbor was grateful enough to ask him to come back this week.

That's the whole story, on the surface. A man helped a neighbor. It happens all the time around here. But underneath it is something older than that afternoon, something that didn't start with Vic at all.

Gratitude has a way of outliving the moment that caused it.

Pastor Isaac preached last Sunday on July 5th, the day after America's 250th birthday. He walked us through 1 Timothy 2, where Paul tells the church to pray for those in authority, to live lives marked by godliness, and to let that spill over into how we participate in the places we live.

One line from the sermon has stayed with me all week: gratitude that stays a feeling hasn't finished its work yet. It's meant to move. It's meant to become something we do, not just something we say thank you for on Sunday and forget by Monday.

As Pastor Isaac talked about gratitude, I found myself thinking less about fireworks and flags and more about a story from Vic's family.

When Vic's dad, Gerald, was a young man, he inherited a ranch that was deep in debt. The note was strict, no room for a missed payment, and to have any hope of making it work, he needed cattle he couldn't afford. He went to the bank. They said no.

He had one more option, a neighbor named Cooley. Cooley didn't have to help him. There was no favor owed, no arrangement that made this Cooley's problem. He co-signed the loan anyway, on a young man the bank had already turned down.

Gerald never got over it. For the rest of Cooley's life, he showed up whenever Cooley needed something, not once, not as a favor repaid and closed out, but as a standing posture. Years later, when Cooley was old and his own family wanted to sell off his land to the highest bidder, Cooley called Gerald instead and sold it to him at a price that let it stay a working ranch. One gift answered by a lifetime of showing up, answered by one more gift at the end.

That's the story Vic grew up inside of, whether he could always name it or not.

Here's the part I don't want to skip past. Vic will be the first to tell you he didn't always live this way. In high school, this wasn't who he was. It's something he grew into, something he had to recognize and choose, more than once, before it became who he is now. That matters more to me than if he'd simply been born generous. A gratitude that has to be grown into, chosen again after we've drifted from it, looks a lot more like the kind of gratitude God is actually after in us. Not a personality trait. A response we keep choosing.

So when Vic worked in that storm on his day off, he wasn't just being a good neighbor in the abstract. He was standing in a line that started with a man who didn't have to co-sign a loan, and it kept going because Gerald never let himself forget it, and it's still going because Vic decided, at some point, to grow into it too.

What has been given to you that you never earned?

Maybe it's not a co-signed loan. Maybe it's a person who believed in you before you'd done anything to deserve it, a season someone carried you through, a debt of some kind, financial or otherwise, that somebody chose to absorb instead of collect. Gratitude that stops at "I'm thankful for that" hasn't finished the job. It's meant to turn into something you do for someone else, especially someone who can't pay you back either.

This Week
Think of one specific gift you were given that you didn't earn and couldn't have demanded. Not a general blessing, but a specific act of kindness, generosity, or grace. Then ask yourself: Who is standing where you once stood? How can you show up for them this week?

Gratitude hasn't finished its work when we say thank you. It finishes its work when it becomes something we pass on.

Prayer
Lord,
Thank you for the people who showed up for us before we deserved it and kept showing up long after they had to.

Forgive us for the times we let gratitude stop at words instead of letting it become action. Help us remember what we've been given, and give us eyes to see who's standing where we once stood.

Make us people who show up without keeping score, the way it was shown to us.
Amen.

I don’t remember the sermon. I don’t remember the songs we sang. What I remember is staying late after the service, talking with Danielle and Sandra while most everyone else had already gone home.

I remember feeling heavy. I’d spent years learning the right answers, attending Bible studies, getting a religion degree in college, working in churches, and doing all the things a good Christian was supposed to do. But somewhere in that conversation, I admitted what I had been carrying: I knew a lot about God, but I wanted to know Him. Not as a subject to study, but as a friend to walk with.

That night I took communion with a gratitude I had never felt before. What I know is that something shifted. The years that followed were different from the years that came before. My faith stopped being primarily about learning facts and became a relationship I wanted to cultivate every day.

I keep coming back to that younger version of me sitting there with Danielle and Sandra, trying so hard to “get it right.” I wonder what Paul would have prayed over her in that moment.

What strikes me in Colossians 1:9 is that Paul doesn’t tell the Colossians to work harder to figure God out. He prays that God would fill them with the knowledge of His will through the wisdom and understanding the Spirit gives.

That means the knowledge is a gift before it becomes a responsibility.

My younger self was approaching faith as something to master. Paul’s prayer suggests that knowing God’s will begins with receiving from the Holy Spirit, not merely accumulating information. The goal isn’t becoming an expert on God. The goal is becoming the kind of person who can recognize His leading and walk with Him.

That same shift from striving to receiving is what I see so clearly in my own backyard.

My garden looked very different a few weeks ago after a hailstorm rolled through. Leaves were shredded, stems were bent, and everything looked like it had taken a step backward before it started growing again.

But the roots were already there, doing work I had never earned and never noticed.

Right now, my garden doesn’t look finished. The parsley and basil are thriving, but the rosemary is still struggling to come back. The zucchini is slowly pushing out new leaves, and the beans and tomatoes are growing, even if they’re not as tall as I wish they were by now.

Most mornings start the same way: checking the plants, noticing what’s changed, and dragging out the hose again. With the dry weather and constant wind, missing a watering isn’t really an option. Growth is happening, but it isn’t dramatic. It’s the kind that comes from showing up day after day and paying attention.

This Week
Take ten minutes with no agenda except to be with Jesus. No checklist. No study plan. No pressure to learn something new. Just pay attention. Talk to Him. Listen. And notice what grows when relationship becomes more important than information.

A Prayer
God, thank You for the work You do beneath what I can see. When life looks shaken or unfinished, remind me that You are still forming something deeper in me.

Help me to release the need to control what only Your Spirit can grow, and instead stay attentive and willing to respond to what You are doing day by day. Teach me to show up faithfully, even when I don’t see the full story yet.

Hold me steady in what You’ve already begun, and keep shaping me by Your grace, one quiet layer at a time.

Amen.

We don't get to choose everything we inherit.

Some of it is beautiful. Some of it is heavy. Most of us receive a mixture of both without ever having a say in how it was formed or what it cost the people before us.

Faith, silence, strength, fear, generosity, survival. It all gets carried forward in ways we don't always recognize at first.

That's what makes Deuteronomy 6 so striking. Moses doesn't begin with where things came from. He begins with what happens next: you, your children, and their children after them.

The past is real, but it is not the final word.

And somewhere between what we’ve received and what we will pass on, we turn.

There's an old saddle hanging in our shed that belonged to Vic's dad.

For years, Vic's dad rode that saddle across our family's ranch. Long before I was part of the story, it carried him through calving seasons, checking cattle, fixing fence, and all the ordinary work that makes up a cowboy’s life. What I love about that saddle is that it didn't stop with him. Vic still rides in it. He'll tell you it's comfortable, broken in just right, and fits him perfectly. The leather is worn smooth in places. The stirrups show years of use. Every mark tells part of a story, and the story is still being written.

When I look at it, I'm reminded that inheritance is rarely simple.

We receive gifts from those who came before us. We also receive things that leave scars. Most of us inherit some mixture of both blessing and burden.

But God's grace has a way of stepping into the middle of those stories.

Grace goes ahead of us.

Long before we recognize it, God is already at work softening hearts, opening eyes, and awakening a desire for something more.

Grace is never passive in us. It awakens a response that we choose, even as it enables that choice.

The past is not erased. The miles are still there. The saddle still bears the marks of where it has been.

But over time, even the same saddle can begin to tell a different story.

That's what I hear in Moses' words in Deuteronomy 6.

What strikes me most about this passage is where Moses begins. Before he talks about children, grandchildren, teaching, or remembering, he starts with the heart.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

Then he says, "These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts."

That's easy to miss.

We tend to think generational faith begins with teaching. Moses says it begins with surrender.


Before faith can be passed on, it must first take root in us. Before it can be written into the lives of our children or grandchildren, it must be written into our own hearts.

The handoff of faith doesn't begin with a lesson plan. It begins with a life that is being shaped by God.

That's good news for those of us who come from complicated stories.

The hope of Deuteronomy 6 is that God starts with us, whether we are continuing a godly legacy or beginning a new one.


It's coming before God and saying, "Lord, start with me. Write Your Word on my heart."

As I think about that old saddle, I’m reminded that every one of us has received a story we didn’t completely choose. Some parts are worth celebrating. Others remind us how much we still need God’s grace.

This week, take a few moments to thank God for the good things you’ve received. Be honest about the parts of the story that still need His grace. Then bring all of it to Him. Ask Him to do what He promised in Deuteronomy 6. Ask Him to write His Word into your heart.
Not because we are strong enough to rewrite the story on our own, but because His grace is already at work writing His Word into us.

A new legacy doesn’t begin when we finally figure everything out.
The past is part of your story. By God’s grace, it doesn’t have to be the final word.


A Prayer
Lord, thank You for the story You've given me. Thank You for the parts that have shaped me through love, faith, and blessing. And thank You for Your grace in the parts that still need healing.
Write Your Word on my heart. Help me surrender to the work You are already doing in me. Where I need courage, give courage. Where I need wisdom, give wisdom. Where old patterns need to end, help me respond to Your grace.
Use my life to point others to You, and let the legacy I leave be one that reflects Your faithfulness.
In Jesus' name, Amen.

The Hope That Comes Before
When life feels uncertain, my instinct is usually to focus on whatever is right in front of me. I pay attention to the problem that needs solving, the relationship that feels strained, or the responsibility that can't wait until tomorrow. Hope often ends up feeling like a luxury reserved for easier days.

But as I read Paul's opening words in Colossians, I was struck by how differently he sees things. He thanks God for the Colossians' faith and love, yet he traces both of them back to something deeper: a settled confidence in what God has promised. It made me wonder how much of my own faith and love are shaped by the hope I am holding onto, or the hope I have forgotten.

Hope Is the Root, Not the Reward
The good news of the gospel is that our standing before God does not depend on our ability to earn His favor. We belong to Him because of what Christ has done, not because of what we have accomplished.

At the same time, grace is not merely a promise about our future; it is God's power at work in our present. The same grace that forgives us is also transforming us, teaching us to love more deeply, trust more fully, and reflect Christ more clearly.


Paul describes faith and love as fruit growing out of the same root: hope. Scripture shows this pattern on a scale most of us will never personally face. But I want to start with Peter, because when you see it in Acts 10, you begin to recognize it in smaller, closer moments too, like Baptism this past Sunday.

Peter Catching Up to Grace
Peter's vision on the rooftop in Joppa did not make immediate sense to him. Unclean animals, a voice telling him to eat, a command that cut against everything he had been taught about clean and unclean, who belonged inside God's people and who stood outside it. Before he fully understood what it meant, messengers were already at the door. Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had been praying, and the Spirit had already been moving in his house before Peter ever arrived.

Peter's obedience came before his understanding caught up. He walked into a Gentile home not because he had it all figured out, but because he trusted that the same God who had raised Jesus and was still at work in him was now doing something he hadn't expected. That is faith flowing from hope, not confidence that everything will make sense in advance, but willingness to follow when God leads further than he had planned to go.

And then came the love: a Jewish apostle sitting at a Gentile table, welcoming people the purity laws had taught him his whole life to keep at a distance. Not because he had forced himself to feel differently, but because he had caught up to what God was already doing in them. Cornelius wasn't waiting for Peter to arrive before God started working. God had gone ahead. Peter's part was learning to see it.

Standing at the Edge of the Water
This past Sunday I was standing at the edge of the water on Baptism Sunday when a young cowboy I know walked toward the tank to be baptized, with his family and friends watching.

My first instinct about him had been shaped more by the people he spent time around than by him. I had quietly placed him in a category. I did not know the full story of what God had been doing in his heart, only what I could observe from a distance.

But as I stood nearby and watched that moment unfold, I became aware that something deeper was going on than I had assumed. He had come to recognize his need for forgiveness and his desire to walk with Jesus.

When he came up out of the water, the expression on his face was relief and quiet joy, like something heavy had finally been lifted. In that moment, I was reminded again how often I see a category where God is already at work in a person.

This Week
This week, instead of asking God to simply show you who you've misread, pay attention to someone you've decided you already know how their story goes. And then, from the security of what Christ has already done and the hope that He is still at work in people you cannot yet see clearly, take one step toward them in love.

Not to prove anything and not to get it right, but because hope frees you to move toward people without fear. God is the one already at work in them, and He is the one who holds what you cannot yet see. God is the one already at work in them, and He is the one who holds the outcome of your obedience.

A Prayer
Lord, help me see people the way You see them. Where I've put people into categories, soften my heart and open my eyes.
Teach me to trust that You are already at work in places I cannot see.
And give me the courage to respond in love, even when I don't fully understand what You are doing.
Amen.

Most of us don’t just notice the weather where we live, we track it. Weather is spontaneous out here in Wyoming. One moment the sky is clear, and the next it has shifted entirely. But gratitude often doesn’t feel like that. We tend to treat it like something that shows up or doesn’t, something we react to rather than something we practice.

But what if gratitude is not something that comes and goes with our circumstances? What if it is a way of seeing, something we learn to practice over time, until it begins to shape how we respond to everything else?

Paul opens his letter to the Colossians with that kind of posture. Not an argument. Not a correction. At least not yet.

Before Paul teaches, corrects, or encourages, he gives thanks. Gratitude is not an afterthought for him. It is where he begins. That alone is worth noticing. The things we lead with often reveal what has shaped us most deeply.
Pay attention to where Paul’s gratitude leads him. Before he says anything about the Colossians, he anchors his thanksgiving in Christ.

The title matters here. Paul does not say “Jesus our teacher” or “Jesus our example.” He says “Christ,” the Anointed One, the Messiah, the One the whole story was pointing toward. Before he writes another word, Paul plants a flag.

And then he tells them why he is grateful. Not because they are impressive or successful or growing numerically. Because he has heard of their faith and their love.

Someone told him. A report traveled from Colossae to Paul, and their ordinary faithfulness had a radius they probably were not even aware of. It reached an apostle who had never met most of them.

Notice the direction of Paul's gratitude. Their faithfulness did not make Paul compliment them. It made him pray. Their lives redirected him toward God.

That is what a faithful life does. It does not just inspire the people around it. It gives them reason to thank God out loud.

This is what gratitude does.

Gratitude grows when we learn to notice God’s grace expressed through the faithful lives of others. It is not just a reaction to our own circumstances. It is a response to what God is doing in people around us.

Paul is not simply thankful for the Colossians. He is noticing God at work in them, and that noticing turns into worship.

And this is where gratitude becomes more than a feeling.

Most of us think gratitude arrives when circumstances cooperate. We imagine it as something we feel after the promotion, after the healing, after the relationship improves, after life finally settles down.

Paul treats gratitude differently here.

For him, gratitude is a habit of attention.

It is the practice of noticing evidence of God's work and responding to it.

That means gratitude can exist even in seasons that are unfinished. It can coexist with frustration, uncertainty, and unanswered questions because it is rooted not in perfect circumstances but in the faithfulness of God already at work.

I think that is why my gratitude for my husband, Vic, has deepened over the years.

Not because life has been easy. Not because our marriage has been effortless.

Quite the opposite.

His faithfulness shows up in ordinary moments: the way he works at becoming a better man, the friends he keeps who tell him the truth, the fact that he has not given up on us when giving up would have been easier.

Early in our marriage he would shut down when things got hard. So did I, honestly. We needed people to come alongside us. Friends who refused to let us drift. A counselor who gave us words and tracks to run on when we had none of our own.

That was grace.

We did not manufacture it, but we did steward it.

There are people we love whose marriages are fracturing right now. And when I see that, I notice what God has done in ours. The people He provided. The wisdom we did not have. The help we needed.

And noticing leads me to gratitude.

Not because our marriage is perfect.

But because God's grace has been present.

Pastor Isaac puts it this way: we have the ability to give God a good day.

Not because God needs anything from us. As Pastor Isaac illustrated Sunday, even a grandchild’s delight brings real joy to a grandparent. In the same way, our gratitude and faithfulness matter to God, not because He is deficient without them, but because love delights in relationship.

We often think of gratitude primarily as something that benefits us. And it does. It changes our perspective and softens our hearts. But Scripture consistently presents gratitude as relational. Thanksgiving is one of the ways we participate in God's joy. Like a child proudly showing a parent a drawing, gratitude delights the One who gave the gift in the first place.

Your faithful life has a radius you cannot fully see.

The way you show up for your family, tell the truth to a friend who needs it, and keep going on an ordinary Tuesday.

Most faithfulness is remarkably unremarkable. It happens in ordinary kitchens, ordinary workplaces, and ordinary conversations. It is built one small decision at a time, long before anyone notices the cumulative effect.

Someone is being shaped by that faithfulness.

Someone is being redirected toward God because of it.

Maybe gratitude is not something that arrives like the weather after all.

Maybe it is a posture.

A way of paying attention.

A habit of noticing God's fingerprints in the people around us and responding by saying, "Thank You."

So whose faithfulness has become your prayer lately?
And who might be thanking God right now because of yours?





A Question to Sit With
When was the last time you intentionally thanked God for the faithfulness of someone in your life? Who are the people whose ordinary obedience, quiet perseverance, and steady love have redirected your attention toward God?

And what might change if gratitude became less about waiting for a feeling and more about learning to notice?

A Prayer
Lord, thank You for the people whose faithfulness has shaped our lives in ways they may never fully know. Thank You for the friends who tell us the truth, the mentors who guide us, the family members who stay, and the ordinary believers whose quiet obedience points us toward You.

Teach us to pay attention. Open our eyes to the evidence of Your grace all around us. Help us become people who notice Your work and respond with gratitude. And may our own lives become the kind of faithful witness that gives someone else reason to thank You.
Amen.

A reflection on James 5:19-20 and the people worth going after

If you have spent any time around cattle, you know that most of the herd follows without much trouble. But there are always a few that present challenges. Some are bunch quitters: independent spirits that resist going with the group. Others are young and inexperienced, still learning the way. And then there are the protective mothers, hiding their calves in the brush, driven by instinct to shield what they love from perceived danger.

For those of us at Black Hills Cowboy Church, this is not abstract imagery. It is the kind of thing that makes immediate sense. And it turns out James had the same picture in mind when he wrote his closing words.


The word James uses for “wander” in the original Greek was specifically used to describe grazing animals that drift away. That is not accidental language. It is a precise and compassionate description of how most people end up far from where they intended to be, not through dramatic rebellion, but through gradual drift.

HOW WANDERING ACTUALLY HAPPENS
Most of us do not struggle primarily with choosing between obvious evil and obvious good. We generally choose good when those are the only options. Our real challenge is distinguishing between good and best, or even more difficult, between really good and best.

Grazing animals move because they are designed to. They see something green and appetizing and they pursue it. That instinct is not bad. It actually prevents overgrazing in one spot. But the same instinct that keeps them fed can lead them straight off a cliff edge if nobody is paying attention.

We function remarkably similarly. And wandering tends to happen in a few recognizable patterns.

Some people are natural boundary-pushers: entrepreneurial, curious, and drawn to the edge. That quality is often a gift. But the same spirit that makes someone innovative can also lead them to wander, grazing closer and closer to the precipice without realizing the danger.

Some people wander protectively, pulling away from community because they have been hurt before and isolation feels safer than vulnerability. Like a mother cow hiding her calf in the brush, the instinct is understandable. But isolation that begins as protection can become its own kind of danger.

And some of us, and I will put myself in this category, wander because something shiny caught our attention. I have a tendency to get genuinely excited about a new idea or direction and slowly lose sight of what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. No dramatic rebellion. Just distraction, gradual and quiet.


A STORY I WATCHED FROM A DISTANCE
Sometimes wandering stories end badly.
Sometimes they do not.
I have a story of one that did not.

I have a brother who is seven years older than me. When he finished high school, he went his own way, away from faith and away from the things he had been raised with. I was young enough that I do not remember the specifics. I just knew he was gone in an important sense.

I cannot tell you exactly who went after him or what that looked like. I was not close enough to see it. But somewhere along the way, something turned. I think having kids was part of it, maybe. The weight of being a parent has a way of pressing questions back to the surface that we thought we had buried.

What I can tell you is who he is now. He is an attentive, devoted father to six children, present in a way that clearly costs him something and clearly matters to him. He is an artist, thoughtful and kind, with a faith that is genuinely his own and a church community where he is growing.


And I am grateful, deeply and quietly grateful, for whoever went after him in those years I was not watching. Whoever asked the questions, kept the door open, and refused to write him off.

That is what James is talking about. That is the stakes.

FOUND PEOPLE AND LOST PEOPLE
Jesus told a story about a shepherd with one hundred sheep. When he discovered one was missing, he did not calculate that ninety-nine out of a hundred was an acceptable success rate. He secured the ninety-nine and went looking for the one.

Here is an uncomfortable truth: I know some found people who do not care much about lost people.

Sometimes it is selfishness. I am safe, that is unfortunate for you. Sometimes it is judgment. That was a really poor choice, what were you thinking? And sometimes it is a failure of imagination. We assume everyone faces the same temptations and battles we do, and we measure their struggle against our own experience of it.

During Sunday's message, Pastor Isaac spoke about those stuck in addiction. Someone who does not struggle with it might look at someone who does with bewilderment, thinking: just stop. But that completely misses what that person is actually facing, a stronghold that exerts real and serious power. True compassion requires us to recognize that different people face different battles. What is manageable for you might be devastating for someone else.

True compassion requires honesty about this. Mercy grows when we remember how much grace it took to bring us home, too.

Rather than writing people off, we are called to reach out, to understand, and to help pull them back.

WHAT TURNING AROUND ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Biblical repentance is more than acknowledgment and remorse. It is a complete change of direction, a 180-degree turn that is physical and practical, not just emotional.

It is not enough for the wandering animal to feel bad about having strayed. It needs to actually turn around and head back toward safety. True repentance involves acknowledging what went wrong, being genuinely sorry for it, and then moving, actually moving, in the opposite direction.

This requires humility from the wanderer. But it also requires patience and wisdom from the person doing the rescuing. Showing up and announcing “you really messed up and need to turn around right now” is rarely effective and almost never kind. What actually works is helping someone see what they truly want, where they truly need to go, and what God has genuinely designed for them. We lead people back. We do not drag them.

WHY IT MATTERS THIS MUCH
God designed us as herd animals. We function better together than alone. We learn better, make better decisions, and are stronger in community than in isolation. This can feel frustrating when we are convinced we are right and someone keeps asking hard questions. But the truth remains: we need each other.

When someone wanders from truth, they are not just taking a minor detour. They are heading down a path that leads toward real loss, loss in relationships, loss of purpose, and spiritual drift that compounds over time. By going after them, we do not just help with their current situation. We turn the trajectory of a whole life.

My brother is proof of that. Six kids who have a present, attentive father. A life full of art and kindness and genuine faith. That is not a small thing. That is the result of someone, somewhere, refusing to give up on a young man who had gone his own way.

And here is one more thing worth saying, because it happened just this past week and I do not want to let it pass without naming it: our congregation prayed for rain. And it rained.
The same God who answered Elijah’s prayers on a dry mountainside, the same God who goes after wandering sheep and brings prodigal sons home, heard our prayers over a dry Wyoming range and sent rain. He is not a distant God who set things in motion and stepped back. He is present. He is listening. And He moves when His people ask.

That matters here because the same faithful God who sends rain when we pray is the God who pursues wanderers when we go after them in His name. We are not doing search and rescue in our own strength. We are joining a God who is already looking, already moving, already refusing to give up on the one.


We are all part of that team. The question is whether we are actively looking, and whether we are willing to go after the one, even when the ninety-nine are accounted for and it would be easier to stay put.

If you are wandering today, let someone help you find your way back. The humility to admit you have strayed is the first step home. And if you know someone who has wandered, do not write them off. Go after them. The stakes are higher than they look from the outside.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Is there someone in your life who has wandered, from faith, from community, from the person you know they were meant to be, that you have quietly written off? What would it look like to refuse to give up on them? And if you are honest with yourself, is there an area of your own life where you have been slowly drifting without naming it? Name it today. That is the first step back.

A PRAYER
Lord, thank You for the people who refused to give up on the wanderers in our lives. Thank You for whoever kept the door open for my brother, for whoever kept asking questions and staying present during the years he was gone. Give us that same stubborn, patient love for the people in our lives who have strayed. Keep us from the comfortable selfishness of caring only about the ninety-nine who are accounted for. And in the places where we ourselves have been quietly drifting, distracted, isolated, or grazing toward the edge without realizing it, bring us back. Gently if possible. Firmly if necessary. But bring us back. And thank You for the rain. Amen.

A reflection on James 5:16-18, Elijah, and the kind of prayer that actually moves things

What makes prayer powerful? Is it the eloquence of our words? The perfection of our lives? Our theological credentials?

James gives us a surprising answer, and an even more surprising example.

"The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are."  ~James 5:16-17

Elijah. The prophet who called down fire from heaven, shut up the sky for three and a half years, and then, in what might be my favorite detail in all of Scripture, mocked the 450 prophets of Baal by suggesting their god might be asleep or otherwise occupied. The man had a gift for snark. I relate to him more than I probably should.

But James is not drawing our attention to Elijah's accomplishments. He wants us to notice something much simpler: Elijah was human, just like we are. Flawed. Inconsistent. Capable of extraordinary faith one day and extraordinary fear the next.

Right after his greatest victory, he collapsed under a tree and asked God to let him die. The same man. The same God. The same story.

And yet his prayers stopped the rain and started it again. Full circle. The same broken person, still useful, still heard.

That is the point. That is the encouragement. Not that Elijah was exceptional, but that he wasn't.


RIGHTNESS VERSUS RIGHTEOUSNESS
We tend to assume that powerful prayer belongs to people who have their lives more together than we do. People who pray longer, sin less, and use better vocabulary when they talk to God. But that assumption misunderstands what James means by righteousness.

Pastor Isaac pointed out in Sunday's sermon that righteousness is not the same as rightness.

The religious leaders in Jesus' day had rightness down to a science. They had volumes of rules detailing exactly how far you could walk on the Sabbath and precisely what you could and couldn't carry. They were technically correct about nearly everything.

Yet Jesus said the righteousness of His followers needed to exceed theirs. How is that possible?

Because righteousness is not primarily about rule-keeping. It is about relationship. It is about being in sync with God, understanding His heart, His purposes, and His direction, and aligning yourself with them.

Vic has been working toward getting his CDL, so there have been driving videos playing in the background of our house for weeks. One thing I have reflected on lately is that you can follow every traffic law perfectly and still be driving in the wrong direction.
Righteousness is about heading where God is heading, not just driving correctly. It is possible to be technically right and still miss the heart of God.

This is deeply freeing. It means the question is not, "Am I good enough to pray powerfully?" The question is, "Am I oriented toward God? Am I moving in His direction, even imperfectly?"

And the good news is that God is always at work drawing us further in that direction.

PRAYER AS PARTNERSHIP, NOT PETITION
Here is where I have to be honest about my own struggle.

My default mode in prayer is still too often, "God, here is what I am doing. Would You bless it?"

Being a planner and a lover of checklists, I come to God with my agenda, my plans, my preferred outcomes, and hope He will get on board. It is prayer as a divine rubber stamp rather than prayer as genuine conversation.

But the posture James describes, the posture Pastor Isaac often talks about, and the posture Elijah models is the opposite.

It starts with listening.

It starts with asking, "God, what are You already doing? Where are You moving? How can I join You in that?"

God does not need our information. He already knows everything about everything all the time. Prayer is not about updating His database or convincing Him to care.

Prayer is, in part, God's invitation to us to participate in what He is already doing in the world.


The Lord's Prayer models this beautifully. It begins with, "Hallowed be Your name," getting in sync with who God is. Then comes, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done," getting in sync with what God is doing. Only after that alignment do we bring our daily needs.

The order is not accidental. It is the shape of righteous prayer.

I am still learning this. Some mornings I get it right. Many mornings I do not. But the direction matters. The direction is toward listening before speaking, toward asking what God is up to before telling Him what I need.

THE CRASH UNDER THE TREE
I want to linger for a moment on what happened to Elijah after his greatest triumph because I think it is one of the most honest and underpreached moments in the Old Testament.

He called down fire from heaven. He defeated 450 false prophets. And then he ran, collapsed, and told God he was done. Finished. Ready to die.

And what did God do?

He did not rebuke him. He did not deliver a motivational speech.

He sent an angel with food and water and told him to sleep.
Twice.

Rest first. Eat first. The journey ahead is too much for you without it.

I am writing this at the end of a long school year, during a week I have intentionally kept quiet and set aside for rest, catching up on work that has piled up, finishing a blog post I have not written in weeks, and tackling the housework that gets neglected when every other kind of work takes over.

I am, in my own small way, sitting under the tree.

And reading this passage in that season, I find it remarkably tender.

God is not impatient with our crashes. He is not frustrated that we need to stop. He built rest into the fabric of creation because He knows what sustained output costs a human being.

The angel did not tell Elijah to pray harder or get back out there.

He told him to eat because the journey is long.


If you are in a crash season right now, tired in a way that goes deeper than sleep, running on empty after a long stretch of output, this passage is for you. And honestly, it is for me too.

Rest is not a failure of faith.

Sometimes it is an act of faith.

PRAYING FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE HURT YOU
Righteous prayer is not only about aligning ourselves with God's purposes for our own lives. It also changes how we approach the people around us.

There is one more dimension of righteous prayer worth naming because it is one of the hardest.

How do we pray for people who have wounded us?

Our instinct is to dress up our grievances in prayer language.

"God, help them see what they did."

"God, give them what they deserve."

Which is often just asking God to vindicate us while pretending to intercede for them.

A more honest prayer sounds something like this:


That prayer is righteous not because it is perfectly gracious, but because it is honest about its own limitations and aligned with God's heart rather than our wounds.

It is getting in sync with a God who loves the person who hurt us just as much as He loves us.

That is hard.

It is also holy.

SEVEN TIMES
When Elijah prayed for rain after three and a half years of drought, he did not pray once and walk away.

He sent his servant to look for clouds seven times.

Seven times the servant came back with nothing.

Seven times Elijah stayed on his knees.

Not every prayer calls for that kind of persistence. But when we are genuinely in sync with what God wants to do, when we are praying in alignment with His purposes rather than merely our preferences, there are seasons to press in, to stay, and to keep sending the servant back to the horizon.

And when the servant finally spotted a cloud the size of a man's hand, barely a smudge on the sky, Elijah knew.

Not because the cloud was impressive.

Because he trusted the faithfulness of the God he had been praying to.

The size of the answer did not matter.

The character of the One answering did.

That is what righteous prayer looks like in practice.

Not perfectly articulated.

Not always immediately answered.

Not free of doubt, exhaustion, or crash seasons under trees.

But persistent, aligned, and rooted in the faithfulness of God rather than the adequacy of the one praying.

You are just as human as Elijah.

That is not a limitation.

According to James, that is exactly the point.

The power was never in Elijah.

It was always in the God who listened.


A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Is your prayer life currently shaped more by what you want God to bless, or by what God is already doing?

What would it look like this week to start your prayer time with listening rather than asking? To pause and say, "God, what are You up to? How can I join You?"

Try it once today and see what happens.

A PRAYER
Lord, I confess that I come to You more often with my agenda than with open hands. I confess that I talk more than I listen and that I am more comfortable telling You what I need than asking what You are doing.

Forgive me for the times I have used prayer as a way of managing outcomes rather than meeting You.

Teach me to be in sync with You, with Your heart, Your purposes, and Your direction.
And in the seasons when I am sitting under the tree, exhausted and empty, remind me that You are not frustrated with my limits. You built rest into the fabric of things. Meet me there. Feed me. And when I am ready, send me back out, not in my own strength but in Yours.

Amen.

Prayer, Praise, and the People Who Show Up

I want to tell you about the scariest season of my life, and what I learned about prayer, community, and praise on the other side of it.

When I was pregnant with our oldest daughter, something was wrong. She was diagnosed with IUGR, intrauterine growth restriction, which meant she was not growing the way she should. Every appointment carried that particular kind of dread that settles into your chest and does not leave. Vic and I were young. My faith was real, but still growing. We were both genuinely scared.

James 5:13-16 is a passage I have read many times since then. But I read it differently now, because I have lived it. I want to walk through it with you, not as a theological exercise, but as a story about what happens when we actually do what James says.

PRAY WHEN YOU ARE IN TROUBLE AND DO NOT WAIT
“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray.”
James 5:13

This seems obvious. When trouble strikes, pray. And yet, how many of us exhaust every other option first? We puzzle and strategize and lose sleep, and only after we have completely worn ourselves out do we finally think maybe we should pray.

I understand that instinct. Vic and I are capable people. We are the kind of people who fix things. But there is no fixing a baby who is not growing. There is no amount of effort that changes what is happening in the womb. That helplessness, as terrifying as it was, became one of the most spiritually clarifying experiences of my life.

When you have no other options, you find out what you actually believe about prayer. Not what you say you believe. What you actually believe.

What I found was this. Prayer is not a last resort. It is not the thing you try when everything else has failed. It is the first and most honest acknowledgment that there is a God, and we are not Him. It is how we open ourselves to His grace in the middle of what we cannot control.

James does not say pray harder, or better, or more eloquently. He simply says pray. When you are in trouble, pray. Start there. Stay there. Let that be the posture from which everything else flows.

LET YOUR COMMUNITY CARRY YOU
“Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them.”
James 5:14

Here is where the passage moves from private devotion to shared life, and where our story becomes personal in a different way.

We had a small group during that season, and they showed up in the way small groups are meant to show up. They prayed for us, not just “I will be thinking of you,” but real, gathered, intentional prayer. They came to see us in the hospital. They brought meals.

It sounds simple. Meals and hospital visits. But when you are young and scared, and your tiny baby has just been taken from you before you even had a chance to hold her, simple is exactly what you need.

You do not need polished theology in that moment. You need presence. You need someone to sit with you. You need food at your door without having to ask. You need people who love you enough to step in without being told how.

James is not describing an empty ritual when he talks about anointing with oil. He is describing a community that takes responsibility for one another. The oil is a sign of God’s presence and healing grace. The people are the means through which that grace is often experienced.

God has always worked this way. He forms a people, not just individuals. He distributes gifts across the body so that we remain connected, dependent, and humble enough to receive from one another.

We were not designed to be sick alone.
We were not designed to be scared alone.
We were not designed to sit in hospital rooms alone, waiting for news we cannot control.
We were designed for community. In that season, our small group became the hands and feet of Christ to us.

PRAISE WHEN THE RELIEF COMES
“Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.”
James 5:13

I want to be honest about what it felt like when we found out she was healthy.

It was not a dramatic burst of joy. It was relief. Quiet, overwhelming, almost weightless relief. They had taken her away right after she was born, and when the nurse came back and told us her lungs were fully developed, that this tiny four and a half pound baby was going to be okay, what I felt first was the slow release of a breath I had been holding for months.

That matters, because not every answer to prayer looks the same.

Sometimes praise is loud.
Sometimes it is tears.
Sometimes it is sitting very still and whispering thank you.

James tells us to praise, not because God needs it, but because it reshapes us. It trains our hearts to recognize grace. It reminds us that we are not the source of the good in our lives. We are recipients of it.

She came home after a few extra days in the hospital. Four and a half pounds, fully developed lungs, and as it turns out, a whole lot of opinions about the world. We were so grateful.

That gratitude is praise. Returning to it, letting it shape how we see even ordinary days, that is part of the life James is pointing us toward. Not just a moment of relief, but a way of living that remembers we were held.

WHAT THIS PASSAGE IS REALLY ABOUT
James 5:13-16 is not a formula for getting what we want from God. It is a picture of a life formed by trust in Him.

Pray when you are in trouble. Not as a last resort, but as your first response.

Seek community when you are suffering. Not because people are the answer, but because God chooses to work through His people.

Praise when the relief comes. Not only in the big moments, but in the quiet ones too.
The thread running through all of it is this. We are not self-sufficient, and we were never meant to be.

Grace meets us in our need. It draws us into prayer, places us in community, and teaches us to recognize God’s presence in both the waiting and the outcome.

The more we stop pretending we can do this alone, the more fully we step into the life God designed for us.

PUTTING THIS INTO PRACTICE
If this passage is meant to be lived, not just read, here are three simple ways to begin this week.

Pray first, not last
The next time something stressful hits, pause before you problem-solve. Even if it is brief, say something honest to God right away. It does not have to be polished. It just has to be real.

Let someone in
Think of one person you trust and tell them what is actually going on. Not the edited version. The real version. Let them pray for you, sit with you, or help in a practical way.
Name one thing and thank God for it

At the end of the day, take a moment to notice something good. Big or small. Say thank you for it. This is how praise begins to take root in ordinary life.

A LIFE STILL BEING WRITTEN
Our daughter Meaghan is grown now. She is quiet and thoughtful, a little shy with adults, but she comes alive around children. She is studying to become an elementary school teacher. She is a loyal friend, creative and a little theatrical, and she carries a tenderness that I think was shaped, at least in part, by a story she does not fully remember, but we never will forget.

She is a living reminder that God hears prayer, that community matters, and that sometimes the miracle arrives quietly. Four and a half pounds, fully developed lungs, and a whole life still unfolding.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Which of these is hardest for you right now?

Sit with that this week. Then take one small step in that direction. Not all three. Just one.
If you are in a season of trouble or sickness, consider who you could call. You were not designed to wait alone.

A PRAYER

Can I be honest about something?

I don’t usually have a hard time speaking my mind. Ask anyone who knows me. But there is one specific situation that still makes me go quiet, and I didn’t fully understand it until I started paying attention.

When I am not confident about a topic. When I feel out of my depth. When vulnerability feels like too high a price.

That is when my yes stops being fully yes. And my silence stops being wisdom.

It becomes something else. A way of staying safe. A way of staying in the room without really being in it.

And I carried that pattern for years without naming it.

The Loophole We Don’t Talk About
When Jesus is teaching in Matthew 5, He is speaking to people who had built an entire system around managed truth. You could swear by heaven, or by earth, or by Jerusalem, each oath carrying a different level of weight, a different level of accountability.

It sounded serious. But underneath, it was a way of sounding truthful without fully being accountable.

Jesus doesn’t adjust that system. He dismantles it.

Heaven is not a workaround. It is God’s throne. Earth is not neutral ground. It is His footstool. There is no category of speech where God is not already present.

Which means the loopholes were never protecting anything. They just gave the illusion of control.

And then He says something that feels almost too simple. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

No reinforcement. No verbal padding. No escape hatch.

Because the goal was never to find better words.

The goal is to become the kind of person who doesn’t need them.

My Quieter Kind of Loophole
I never built elaborate verbal escape hatches. Mine was simpler.

Silence.

For several years at Black Hills Cowboy Church, I would sit with thoughts about what I was learning, reactions to sermons, questions that wouldn’t leave me alone, and I kept most of it to myself.

Not because I was dishonest. But because putting my real thoughts out there felt vulnerable in a way I wasn’t ready for.

What if I was wrong?
What if I didn’t know enough?
What if speaking up cost me something?

So I showed up. I served. I did the job I was assigned.

And I kept the most honest part of myself tucked away where it couldn’t be challenged or changed.

James 5 puts it plainly. Above all, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Don’t reach for stronger language. Don’t soften what needs to be said. Just stay steady.
But I was doing a version of the opposite.

I wasn’t overstating. I was understating. Withholding.

And the gap between what I was actually thinking and what I was willing to say was quietly costing me, and maybe the people around me too.

The Tap on the Shoulder
About a year ago, I was in a conversation encouraging someone else to step into what they were called to do.

And right in the middle of that conversation, I felt the Holy Spirit ask me the same question.

"What are you waiting for?"

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. But it was clear.

And I knew exactly what it meant.

So I started writing. Just putting my honest thoughts into words, out loud, where people could read them and respond.

It felt exposed. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it.

But I did it anyway.

And something shifted.

Pastor Isaac started engaging with what I was writing, encouraging it, challenging it, pushing back on it. Our church community started responding.

What began as a quiet act of obedience has become one of the most significant things in my growth.

Not because I became an expert.

But because I stopped hedging and just said the true thing.

My yes finally became yes.

The Gap Words Can’t Close
Here is what I have learned about the moments when we reach for stronger language or retreat into silence.

Both usually point to the same thing, a gap.

A gap between what we say and what we do.

Between who we want to be and who we have proven ourselves to be.

Between the thought we are having and the words we are willing to speak.

And we try to manage that gap. With intensity. With hedging. With silence. With whatever keeps us feeling in control.

But words were never meant to carry that weight.

Silence was never meant to be a hiding place.

God is not just interested in cleaning up our language. He is forming something deeper, a kind of wholeness where our inner life and our outer words actually match.

Where we are not divided. Not hedging. Not hiding.

Where we stop needing loopholes because we are no longer trying to live in two directions at once.

The Christian tradition has a word for this. Sanctification.

It is the slow, grace-driven work of God forming us from the inside out. Not just changing what we do, but reshaping who we are. Unifying our heart.

Wesley called it moving toward perfect love, not moral flawlessness, but an undivided heart fully oriented toward God, where the gap between our inner life and our outer words gradually closes.

Not through willpower. Not through better communication.

Through surrender, over time, to the God who is already present in every word we speak.
That is not a communication technique.

That is what it looks like to be made new.

What It Looks Like Now
I still feel the pull toward silence. When vulnerability feels expensive, staying quiet still feels safer.

I don’t think that instinct ever fully disappears.

But this kind of formation does not happen in private.

It happens in relationship.

It happens when we submit our honest thoughts to community, when we let people see what we actually think, push back on it, challenge it, and help refine it.

That is what writing this blog has been for me.

Not just a personal discipline, but a communal one.

Pastor Isaac’s challenges have shaped my thinking. Your responses have deepened my faith.

The willingness to say the true thing out loud, in community, is one of the ways God does His forming work in us.

John Wesley understood this. He didn’t just preach transformation. He built communities around it.

Because an undivided heart is not formed in isolation. It is formed in the company of people who will tell us the truth and stay with us while we grow into it.

That is what your yes being yes looks like in community.

Not just honest words, but an honest life, lived openly, accountably, with people who know you well enough to notice the gap.

So maybe the question is worth sitting with.

Where is your yes not fully yes?

Where is your silence not wisdom, but self-protection?

What would it look like to just say the true thing, not perfectly, not confidently, but honestly, and let your community help you grow into it?

Because integrity is not built in the moment we speak. It is built in the life we live afterward.

And it starts with telling the truth.

A Question to Sit With
Is there a true thing you have been withholding, from a person, from your community, from God, because vulnerability felt too expensive?

What would it cost you to say it?

And what might it cost you, and the people around you, to keep staying quiet?

A Prayer
Lord, I confess that I am better at managing my words than surrendering them. I have used silence as a hiding place and careful language as a way of staying in control.

Forgive me for the gap between what I truly think and what I am willing to say.

Form in me the kind of wholeness where my inner life and my outer words match, where I am not divided, not hedging, not hiding.

Give me the courage to let my yes be yes and my no be no.

Surround me with people who will tell me the truth and stay with me while I grow into it.

And where vulnerability feels too expensive, remind me that You already know the truth, and You are not afraid of it.

Amen.