Hey friends!

It’s been a little over a week since I returned to London after a nice long visit in the states, where I split my time between New Jersey and the Outer Banks, two of my favourite places. I also had the pure joy of officiating my brother Paul and his wife Shannon’s wedding blessing, which was such an honour. It was an amazing three weeks between their wedding celebration and then time with family and friends in places I love.

I ended the three week trip with my parents at their home in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. The OBX is a thin place for me. Every time I step foot back on the island, it feels like the space between heaven and earth is radically thin.

The peace I experience there is unlike anything else. The stillness, the sounds of crickets in the evenings, the sunrise over the beach and the sunset over the sound, the forest walks, the rocking chair on the front porch I find myself nestled in early in the mornings with a cup of tea and my Bible. The whispered prayers that held me through so many seasons carried through the air of that porch.

Three years ago, when I was stretched between continents, I spent half my time in London and half my time in the Outer Banks.

It was a real wilderness season for me. I had really sensed God calling us back to London so Dan and I left our life in California by faith and made the leap, but the next year was full of unexpected delays with my visa. So for thirteen months, we had no home of our own and the sabbatical I had planned to live out in London became a shuffling between countries.

It was also a season of deep healing, excavating, shedding of false narratives, a reordering of my heart with God’s. And boy, did I spend a lot of time in that rocking chair on that front porch in prayer, wondering whether I had gotten it all wrong, desperate for God to shift things in my life.

Every time I walk through the maritime forest near their house, I think of the many walks before—the tears as I contended for the future I believed God had for us, the declarations of his goodness in the midst of uncertainty, the longings I whispered through the evergreens and pines along the sandy paths. I can almost hear the prayers that opened me up in the salty air—opened me up to God, to his presence even in the midst of disappointment and delay.

What I had experienced as delay, God was using as formation. I wanted him to change my circumstances in that season, but much of the time, he was changing me.

So, whenever I go back, I feel grateful.

I feel so connected to the Divine Love that held me through one of the harder seasons of my life and then launched me more fully into my calling here in London. And yet, it’s also so much easier to live at a slower pace when I’m there. The quiet settles me. The stillness soothes this city girl. And the contemplative in me celebrates in the silence and solitude.

I always leave restored.

And each time I come back to London, to my home, I come back knowing this is where I’m supposed to be. I come back with a fresh fire for what God is doing not only in my life, but in this city, in this nation. I come back with fresh vigour to step into what’s next.

But the tricky bit for me is remembering that the pace of my life internally needs to remain the same. The quiet has to come with me. That monastic stillness I find by the sea, where my days are shaped by Scripture, prayer, silence and long walks, and laughter with people I love, it all has to come with me too.

So how do I do that? Well, I suppose I’m still figuring that part out.

Because the vibrance and city life of London doesn’t just change the pace around me. If I’m not attentive to God, if I don’t continue to intentionally move slow with him, to remain in step with his Spirit, it can change the pace within me too.

And that’s where we’re headed today. How do we build, serve and create, living the life we feel called to, without letting the pace around us make us less attentive to the voice of God?

So, let’s dig in together…

We can have a still body and a hurried soul.

On the Saturday I got home, I spent the afternoon building a website and began transferring the written content of Boldly Rising, a course I created for women on identity in Christ and calling, onto a digital platform, so I can get ready to launch an online version of the course this autumn.

Then I spent a few hours reading and praying through the Scripture I would be preaching on the following weekend, scribbling down my thoughts, praying, trying to listen to what God may be inviting me to share.

I picked up my phone to check for messages and found myself scrolling before I realised I was actually scrolling. The news app on my phone popped up with another catastrophe, another prediction of impending doom, another unexpected natural disaster. I felt a quickening anxiety bubble to the surface.

I put my phone on ‘do not disturb’ and placed it back in the other room, even though it had already disturbed the stillness I was trying to carry. As I sat back down on my couch, I felt that anxiety linger. I found myself worrying about my sermon, about Boldly Rising, about the pace of my building, about the ministry I longed to spend more time on, about work starting up again on Monday, about the blood work I was waiting on results from.

I could feel the change in my body before I had really even thought about it. Suddenly all these voices around and within me were shouting louder than the gentle voice of the loving Shepherd. So quickly my nervous system shifted into another gear. I had left the peace and stillness of my time off and now the noisiness of a busy life was bursting in—all the things I needed to do, all the things I wanted to change.

And the stuff I was building, the sermon I was writing, the work I was doing, it all mattered. And in fact, I really enjoyed doing it all. I’ve also known for quite some time that I’m in a building season with God and I’ve been ready for this shift for a while.

But if I’m really honest, there was still quite a bit of me that wanted to control it all. I wanted to control the outcome and know everything I was putting my hands to would be good. And I found myself wondering how quickly a time of refreshment can be replaced by a pace that leaves little room for the slow work of attuning ourselves to the voice of God. How quickly I began to strive again instead of abide.

Because here’s the reality of what we’re all up against in much of the Western world: we live in a culture that idolises productivity and self-sufficiency, which fuels striving. And it can be easy to think, it’s all up to me. This mindset feeds anxiety, convincing us that control equals security.

On top of it all, entire industries spend billions designing systems to capture, monetise, and fragment our attention. Social media, constant stimulation, the 24-hour news cycle, and a culture of hurry and instant gratification are all competing to shape what we notice and give ourselves to.

And whether we’re intentional about it or not, formation is always happening. We’re constantly being formed, shaped by what we watch, scroll through, read and engage with every day.

So perhaps the question I’m asking as I return to a full life of work and ministry is: what is forming the pace of my soul?

Because we can have a still body and a hurried soul.

So how can we be unhurried when life is full?

Jesus never confused being needed with being led by God.

Dallas Willard, the late philosopher and author, was once asked by a student he was mentoring to describe Jesus in one word. Out of all the possible words he could choose in relation to the characteristics of God—loving, gracious, compassionate, merciful, generous—he paused and said, “relaxed.”

I find this remarkable. And yet, when I turn to Scripture, reading through the gospel narratives, I begin to see what he meant. Jesus was quite relaxed and definitely unhurried.

And let’s be real, Jesus lived under extraordinary pressure. After decades of hidden life, his public ministry unfolded over just a few short years—a mission that would lift the unseen, confront the powerful, and ultimately lead him to the cross.

Jesus also wasn’t untouched by deep anguish or sorrow. He wept and grieved and felt the whole spectrum of human emotions. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see him deeply distressed as he faces what’s ahead of him. Jesus’ unhurriedness wasn’t the absence of urgency, grief or anguish. It was the absence of anxious striving. He could move with purpose without becoming inwardly frantic because his life was anchored in trust and obedience to the Father.

And you can see that trust woven through the way he moved through the world. He withdrew into quiet places to pray, even when the crowds were searching for him. He allowed himself to be interrupted. He sat around tables. He made space for people others would have walked past.

Jesus was deeply purposeful, but never frantic.

The needs around him were endless, and people were constantly looking for him, calling for him, wanting something from him, but Jesus never confused being needed with being led by the Father. He never allowed the urgency of everyone around him to set the pace within him. His life continually flowed from relationship with the Father.

And perhaps that’s what challenges me the most. Jesus didn’t withdraw into solitude so that he could become more productive when he came back. Prayer wasn’t another practice helping him optimise his life.

He withdrew because he wanted to be with the Father. His doing flowed from his being with the Father and his ministry flowed from intimacy. His earthly life wasn’t organised around accomplishing as much as possible within the time he had, but around remaining attentive and obedient to the Father in each moment.

I can see how easily even the practices meant to form me into Christlikeness can become another set of things I’m trying to do well, another routine to perfect, or another way of measuring whether I’m doing enough. But the practices aren’t transformative in and of themselves. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit within and through us that actually transforms us.

Prayer, fasting, Scripture, Sabbath, silence and solitude create space for us to become attentive and receptive to God, but formation is bigger than a morning routine or a list of spiritual disciplines. Our relationships form us. Our work forms us. Our habits of attention form us. The stories we consume, the communities we belong to, and the ways we arrange our time are all shaping who we’re becoming. All of life is forming us.

And this matters in a culture that so often invites us to approach ourselves as something to construct, improve, and optimise.

But Christian formation has a different aim. Its aim isn’t the optimised self but Christlikeness, holiness. It’s becoming fully human in the way revealed by Jesus—embodied, relational, dependent upon God, capable of love, receptive to grace, rooted in belonging, able to give ourselves for others, and increasingly free from the desires and powers that deform human life.

So I guess the questions I’m asking myself are less about which spiritual practices I need to refine and more like, what kind of life am I arranging around the presence of God? Am I building a life that helps me remain attentive to him?

Which brings me back to the question I’ve been asking since returning home: how do I actually carry that kind of life with me?

How do I actually carry the quiet with me?

What exactly am I receiving when I’m in the stillness of the Outer Banks that I need to recreate, not geographically but spiritually, here in London?

Perhaps it’s not actually the beach or walks in the maritime forest or the quiet mornings on the rocking chair. Perhaps it’s spaciousness, attention, silence, presence. Maybe it’s long conversations in community, awe and wonder, shared meals around a table, being fully present where my feet are.

I can’t bring the Outer Banks to London, but I can bring the rhythms that help my soul recognise and respond to God.

As I sat across from my spiritual director last week for our monthly meeting, I rambled on and on about all I sensed God saying while I was away. Fresh ideas, exciting opportunities, so much I was eager to get started on and build.

We were nearly halfway through our session before I finally stopped talking.

She asked what my rhythm of reading the Bible looked like in this season. And I felt this deep conviction arise within me that I didn’t want to name.

Because the truth was, I had still been reading my Bible daily, but it was feeling quite lifeless at the moment. I couldn’t help but feel like I was box ticking. You see, I usually love reading God’s Word. Every time I read it, something new is revealed. But in all I was doing for God, I was easily forgetting the most important practices that keep me rooted in him.

“What has God been saying to you as you read?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been a little slack with the whole listening bit if I’m honest. I still read my Bible daily but I’m often rushing through it,” I confessed.

I felt sad as the words left my mouth.

She gently pointed out how easy it can be in a season like mine to spend all my prayer time talking to God about the things I’m building and doing, and the things I long to see fulfilled. Of course, it’s good to pray about those things, but she encouraged me to spend more time listening to God through his Word, allowing Scripture to bring fresh perspective rather than simply bringing it into conversations I had already decided I wanted to have with him.

The question she was asking is this, what would it look like to come to Scripture without an agenda and simply receive?

Oof. I felt that one deeply.

Because I realised how quickly even the things I’m doing for God can begin to compete with simply being with God. It’s possible, I’m discovering, to orient an entire life around the work of God while slowly losing attentiveness to him.

And maybe that’s what carrying the quiet with me actually looks like.

Of course I can’t recreate the Outer Banks in London. I can’t transplant the rocking chair, the maritime forest, the sound of the waves, or the slower rhythm of those days. But what I can do is learn to protect the things that keep me attentive to God.

And I think for me in this season it looks a bit like this… Scripture before screens, prayer without an agenda, walking without needing to get somewhere, silence long enough to notice what is actually happening within and around me, and space to listen before I rush to act. And I think it also looks like meals around a table, time with people I love, worship and prayer in a community I’m committed to growing with.

And you know what? None of these practices are boxes to tick or another set of things to optimise. They are ways of creating space to become more attentive and present to the God who is already present to me.

Because I think that’s what I’m learning—the goal isn’t necessarily to make my life less full. Jesus’ life wasn’t empty of demands, but it was free from being governed by them.

There are things I feel deeply called to build right now. There is work I love, ministry I care about, people I want to serve, ideas I feel excited to bring to life. I don’t want to shrink back from any of that.

But I also don’t want to build a life for God that leaves me too hurried or busy to actually be with him. I don’t want the urgency around me to become the pace within me. And, like Jesus, I want my doing to flow from my being with the Father.

So perhaps what makes a place feel thin isn’t that God is more present there, but that something in me has become quiet enough to notice the God who was present all along.

And maybe that’s what carrying the quiet with me really means, learning to recognise that God is already here. Here in London. Here in the ordinary Monday morning. Here in my walks to work and the crowded tube and the unfinished to-do lists and the quiet moments before anyone else wakes up.

The same Divine Love that met me in that rocking chair is present here too, and the invitation is to become attentive enough to notice.

Maybe carrying the quiet isn’t learning how to escape a hurried world. Maybe it’s learning how to remain with God in the middle of it.

The Poetry Nook

A poem I wrote this week inspired by my morning walks in the park outside my flat in London.

The Quiet Within

sirens wail,
and buses shuffle.
trains clang along busy tracks,
screeching
as metal on metal
brings things to a halt.

trees sway.
leaves crunch beneath my feet.
it feels too early for autumn.

my mind wanders—

another doctor’s appointment to schedule,
a big meeting ahead,
a ministry to build,
a course to release,
a full life to lead.

but you draw me to the leaves.

and when I listen,
I can hear the seasons changing,

and when I settle into your presence,
the clanging of the tracks
the bus tires on pavement,
the sounds of the city,
begin to sound
a little like a symphony—

all the movement,
the life.

and then you say,
look at the leaves.

the trees are still full,
yet at their feet
dry leaves gather,
evidence of the change ahead.

and I hear a duck
dip its bill into the Thames,

the rustle of a squirrel
preparing quietly
for the cold ahead.

the sound of a dog
sprinting through the brush
along the park’s edge.

and again you say,
look at the leaves.

and we talk about changing seasons,
and the things we’ve lost,
and the longings we still hold,
and the hope
of a new beginning.

and somewhere,
in the midst of all the noise,

it’s quiet
in my soul.

There’s a Book on That

There are few poets more attentive to the living world—and God within it—than Mary Oliver. Her poems explore the sacredness of nature and ordinary life with such tenderness and wonder. Every time I read a Mary Oliver poem, I feel transported into a slower pace of life, one that notices, honours, and makes room for every living thing as precious and worthy of our attention. And I believe that kind of attentiveness reflects something of the heart of God.

One of my favourites as a taster…

“When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Learning to Find God in the Life I Didn’t Plan: Why contentment is both learned and received.

• Free from the Burden of Outcomes: On discernment, certainty, and trusting God with the outcome.

• Where Formation Finds Its Way Home: Sunday reflection on the sacred ground of ordinary life, and how Christ’s life in us takes shape among the people closest to us.

• Move With Me: On embodied prayer, healing, and learning to trust my body again.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

As I write to you, I’m at one of my favourite places in the world, Long Beach Island, New Jersey. My grandparents bought this little beach house when my mom was a kid, and they’ve since passed, but it’s remained in our family for all these years. The house is nothing special really, a bit musty and dated, but boy is it full of love, full of memories. So much of this place reminds me of my childhood. I think I did most of my growing up here.

I’ve said this before, but the best thing about the jet lag when I fly home is waking up early enough to watch the sunrise over the sea. This morning, I woke up just before 5am and tried to convince myself I’d fall back asleep. I gave up around 5:30am and laced up my trainers to head outside while the sky was still clinging to the night. As I walked, the light slowly began to leak in.

When I got back to the house, soft peachy clouds laced the skyline over the ocean, so I quickly grabbed my Bible and headed up to the beach just as the sunlight took over the sky.

There’s something about looking out at the ocean that soothes me like nothing else. I feel my nervous system settle and my heart warm. I think the ocean must be one of God’s favourite bits of creation — full of beauty and life and depth and mystery. I feel most like myself when I’m near it. As E.E. Cummings writes, “It’s always ourselves we find in the sea.”

As I prayed through the Scripture I was reading, I felt contentment rise within me. A soft joy, delicate enough to dance along the edges of a peaceful morning. And this contentment arrived far before I reached this moment. I had been learning it throughout this last year really, or I had received it as a gift of grace. Perhaps a bit of both, I’m finding.

So, this is where we’re headed today, exploring contentment as both a practice and a gift. Let’s dig in together…

Sitting in Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport for eleven hours was not how I anticipated spending my birthday this year.

On Tuesday night, I finally arrived at Newark Airport just before midnight as my birthday was coming to an end. I had planned to spend all day with my family and friends, intentionally booking the early morning flight from London Heathrow so I would arrive midday with plenty of time to take the two-hour drive down the shore and celebrate with my parents, who would already be there waiting. My husband, Dan, was also already in New Jersey waiting for me. He’d pick me up, and we’d make our way down the shore together.

So, what happened?

Well, I arrived at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday morning with plenty of time before my 9:30am flight. I boarded the plane without issue, and just as we pushed back, an announcement blared over the speaker: “Hi folks, this is your captain speaking. We were running our normal checks here, and we seem to have an issue with flight control. We’ve contacted maintenance, who are heading over now to take a look. Sit tight and I’ll update you in about half an hour.”

Half an hour turned into an hour, which turned into two hours, until finally the call was made to cancel the flight entirely. I was so disappointed. I hopped onto the airline’s app to look for an alternate flight, and it quickly became obvious they were already all fully booked. I managed to get on the standby list for a 6pm flight that evening, but it was all quite uncertain.

I felt my eyes well up with tears. It had been a long, busy season at work and I was so looking forward to getting back home with my family. And to top it all off, I didn’t expect to spend my birthday alone at the airport all day.

But, you see, life is full of unexpected interruptions like this. Plans change suddenly, and you have to quickly adapt—diversions, disruptions, delays. I suppose it’s in those moments that I become aware of how attached I am to things going according to my plans.

Walking through the airport, knowing I would spend the bulk of my birthday here, I began to pray, “Lord, this is not what I planned for but show me where you are and help me experience your peace despite this disruption”.

I suddenly began to feel God’s presence all around me. He was with me and for me, even in this. I felt this unexpected peace and even some joy mix in with my disappointment. Somehow, I felt content.

And while this contentment felt like a gift, I don’t think it appeared out of nowhere. I think I’ve been learning for some time how to be content in the circumstances I find myself in, especially when things have unfolded differently than I hoped.

And in this moment, in the middle of Heathrow Airport, I realised the work God has been doing in me has begun to impact the way I walk through disappointment.

The slower pace I’ve been learning to cultivate in my life has made space for me to recognise where God is in the interruptions. Hurry tells me the present moment is an obstacle on the way to a better one, but contentment receives the present moment as a place where God is already available.

Paul tells us that contentment is something that can be learned.

In Philippians 4:11, Paul says, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”

You see, this doesn’t sound like contentment came naturally to Paul, or even that he simply received it as a gift. He says he learned it. This tells me contentment is learned through experience, and knowing a bit of Paul’s journey — losses, delays, imprisonment, disruptions — perhaps it can be learned best in circumstances we wouldn’t choose.

He goes on to say, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13).

The Greek word for content here is autarkēs, which carries with it this sense of being sufficient or inwardly steady, and not dependent on external circumstances for one’s inner steadiness or sense of sufficiency. At first, this meaning can sound a bit like self-sufficiency, but Paul quickly makes it clear that he’s not talking about finding the strength he needs within himself. He emphasises that his contentment comes “through him who gives me strength.” This deep dependence on Jesus allows him to remain steady through both abundance and lack.

Paul also makes clear here that contentment must be learned in both lack and abundance. I suppose plenty can shape and unsettle us just as much as need. Yet, in either condition, the source of our contentment is the same: Jesus.

As I sat in the airport on my 39th birthday, I found myself reflecting on the last year. Two miscarriages, two surgeries, endless blood work and tests — so many disruptions and delays in the plans Dan and I had to start our family these last few years.

And through it all, I’ve learned just how little control I actually have. I’ve learned to trust God in ways I had never thought possible. And in all of it, somehow, I’ve learned to be content.

I want to be clear here because this contentment is not because I no longer long for a child, or because the losses have somehow become less painful. Contentment hasn’t erased my grief or longing, but it’s simply taught me that my life with God is not on hold until my circumstances change. God has not withheld his presence until all my problems are resolved or all my prayers answered. He is with me here, in the life I am living right now.

I also don’t say this as someone who has mastered contentment or moved beyond struggle or grief. It’s been hard-fought, imperfect, and often fragile. But like Paul, I think I’m learning how to be content in my circumstances, regardless of how it all unfolds.

I’m learning that while our circumstances can become the classroom in which we learn contentment, God is the teacher and the spiritual disciplines make us much more attentive students.

We can’t muster up contentment through our willpower when a flight is cancelled, a diagnosis comes, or a longed-for future is delayed, but we can cultivate a life in which we are increasingly able to notice God, release control, and receive the present as it unfolds.

Dallas Willard often distinguished between trying and training. We can’t just try harder to become peaceful, trusting, or content in the moment we need those qualities the most. But we can train. We can arrange our lives around practices through which God slowly forms and reshapes us, so that when disruption arrives (and it will), we are more able to remain present to him within it.

Practices like slowing down, prayer, silence and solitude, gratitude, and surrender help me become more attentive to the presence of God. They teach me to notice what is here, to release my grip on how I thought things should unfold, and to receive the moment in front of me whatever it is. Over time, these small acts of attention begin to reshape my instincts so that when disappointment comes, I’m less likely to rush past the moment or resist it entirely.

So, perhaps the peace I noticed at Heathrow had been formed in quieter, less dramatic moments throughout the year — in prayer, in slowing down, in learning to surrender plans, in allowing disappointment to be felt without letting it become the whole story.

Perhaps this is the grace of contentment, sometimes we discover it has been growing within us before we even knew to name it.

This morning contentment met me looking out at the sea, in a place where peace comes easily. But the greater gift may be knowing that the same God was present in Terminal 2, in those hospital rooms, in my unanswered questions, and in the life I did not plan.

And not every place will feel like the ocean, but contentment is the growing trust that no place is absent of God.

The Poetry Nook

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

There’s a Book on That

Ruth Haley Barton has been instrumental in supporting my spiritual formation journey. She is brilliant and funny, grounded and wise. Everything I read by her helps me arrange my days in ways that make me more attentive to God’s presence in the ordinary rhythms of life. Sacred Rhythms is no exception. It explores a range of spiritual practices, including solitude, Scripture, prayer, Sabbath, discernment, and creating a rule of life, and shows how these rhythms can help us become more attentive to God’s presence and more open to his transforming work. It’s less about adding more religious activity to our lives and more about creating space to notice God, listen deeply, and allow our inner lives to be reshaped over time.

As always, here’s a taster:

“Something inside me stood at attention and said, This is my life. This is what it’s like to be all the way here now rather than always longing for something else. This is my life as it is meant to be lived in God. The moment passed as quickly as it came, one of many that made it a delightful evening… And the thought came anew: This is my best self. This is who I want to be more and more, by God’s grace. These are the moments I will remember on my deathbed and say, ‘That was what I was meant for.” Then it ambushed me — my longing, that is. A prayer welled up from the depths of my being, a prayer so full of desire that it was barely articulate: “O God, give me more moments like this — moments when I am fully present to you and to others in love. Moments when I am connected with what is purest and most authentic within me and able to respond to your presence in that place. I want to live my life in such a way that there is more of this!”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Free from the Burden of Outcomes: On discernment, certainty, and trusting God with the outcome.

• Where Formation Finds Its Way Home: Sunday reflection on the sacred ground of ordinary life, and how Christ’s life in us takes shape among the people closest to us.

• Move With Me: On embodied prayer, healing, and learning to trust my body again.

• The Slow Work of the Garden: Holy Week and the life God is growing in us — from Eden to new creation.

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Saturday morning I walked around the park before the rest of the morning crowd began to arrive. A few dogs dotted my path, but it was mostly quiet as the sun was just coming up over the trees at the far edge of the park.

Paying attention to the way the sun’s rays glistened off the leaves, so full this time of year, I whispered my usual prayer:

Here you are.
Here I am.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I felt the warmth of the summer mix with the cool of the morning breeze. I listened to the soft rustle of leaves, reminding myself how much I treasure that sound, tucking it away in my mind so I can remember it at summer’s end when autumn strips the trees bare again.

God was with me. In all of it.

Walking with me in the cool of the morning before the hot summer sun would take over the day. Whispering in the rustling leaves and the sun’s rays, and in the playful dogs leaping through the open field.

So much love is present when I pay attention. I can feel it move within me.

In a few hours, I would stand in front of a group of women and teach on discernment. I had prayed, prepared, practiced, pieced together bits of my own story and insight from others much wiser than me. I patiently listened as I asked God for wisdom and courage and love.

And if I’m really honest, I was in the middle of my own wrestle with discernment.

It was no surprise, really. Since the very first time I was given an opportunity to speak, God has walked me through the topic before I ever stood up to teach it. Before the words were collected and arranged on the page, I had to walk them out myself.

I don’t take that for granted, because there is something in the wrestle, in the journey, in the discovery, that breathes life into what we speak—the kind of life that can only come from lived experience.

This particular wrestle had been less about the discernment process and more about my desire for absolute certainty at the end of it. You see, God has been teaching me what it looks like to abandon outcomes to him, and I can tell this one is going to be a long training because I am still a long way from living this out the way I long to.

So, that’s where we’re headed today.

How do we become free from the burden of outcomes? How do we learn to trust God with our decisions, knowing he is working in all things? How do we detach from performance and applause and stay rooted in the never-failing, never-ending love of God?

So, let’s dig in together.

Discernment is not about achieving certainty. It’s about growing in trust.

A little over a year ago, I launched the pilot of Boldly Rising, a course I created for women on identity in Christ and calling. The pilot was a success, and I’m now in the process of refining the content, collecting and filming testimonials, and getting the course ready for its official launch in the autumn.

It’s the first ministry resource I’ve created, and it began as an idea God gave me back in 2019. An idea he only breathed life on again in 2023 during a sabbatical season.

This course is the culmination of a personal journey that has stretched over more than a decade—a journey that led me back to faith and into a deeper discovery of my belovedness, purpose, and calling. Boldly Rising is very precious to me because I’ve walked through it.

I remember looking through my journals and beginning to see the dots connect, the course slowly taking shape. I heard that familiar whisper: “I want you to make this into a course for women. Help them see themselves the way I do and discover their purpose and calling.”

After running a successful pilot at my church with over fifty women signed up, I’m now moving things into the next phase. And to be honest, it’s quite scary. I feel excited and fully alive as I continue this journey, but there’s also a part of me that wants absolute certainty at every turn.

Is this the right platform? Is this the right model? Should I begin online? Do I put it under a charity or a business? Do I partner with churches and organizations right away, or do I wait? Who is my audience?

And these aren’t bad questions. They’re important ones. But the deeper question is: do I trust God? Because I can do the work of discernment the best I know how, but I can’t guarantee the outcome. What I can do is trust that God is with me.

I sense God with me. I feel his presence and his peace. But it’s still scary, and I still want to get it right. I guess I’m realising that if it’s absolute certainty I’m seeking at every stage, I simply won’t get it. And if it’s absolute certainty I need in order to take the next step, I may never move forward.

I should do the work of discernment, and I do at each stage. But at some point, I have to make the best decision I can with the information I have and trust God with the outcome.

What I’m learning through this process is that discernment is not about getting everything perfectly right from the beginning. It’s about walking with God honestly and attentively: returning to Scripture, testing what we sense against God’s character, paying attention to the fruit, inviting wise community into the process, noticing peace, holding good things with open hands, and trusting God with the outcome.

Here is the truth: we can never be absolutely certain of God’s will in every situation because we are not God. Isaiah 55:8 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

That doesn’t mean God is distant or impossible to know, but it does mean God sees what we cannot see. His wisdom is higher than ours, his timing is not always our timing and his ways are not always obvious to us, especially in the moment.

There are things God has made crystal clear to us. We can be certain of God’s revealed will in Scripture. We can be certain that God calls us to love him, love our neighbour, forgive, pursue holiness, seek justice, walk humbly, tell the truth, love our enemies, and become like Jesus.

But when it comes to everyday decisions—calling, timing, relationships, opportunities, transitions, and the particular choices we make—we often don’t get absolute certainty. So we do the work of discernment. We pray. We listen. We test what we are hearing. We seek wisdom. We pay attention. And then, at some point, we take the next faithful step and trust God with the outcome.

But here’s something I’ve been wrestling with myself: sometimes I don’t just desire certainty. I cling to it. And sometimes, without realising it, I make certainty an idol. I want to know for sure before I move. I want more and more confirmation before I actually obey. I want a guarantee before I take any risks. And the result is often decision paralysis.

I feel stuck, frozen, just a few steps away from walking in faith, but unable to move because I am terrified of getting it wrong.

But not all uncertainty is bad. Sometimes uncertainty simply means we’re human. Sometimes it means we do not have all the information yet. Sometimes it means the decision really matters and wisdom takes time. Other times, it means God is inviting us to wait.

But uncertainty can also become a place where fear takes over. So the question is not simply, “Do I feel uncertain?” The better question is, “What is this uncertainty producing in me?” Is it producing humility, prayer, patience, wisdom, and dependence on God? Or is it producing fear, control, paralysis, striving, and distrust?

Because the goal of discernment is not to eliminate every trace of uncertainty. The goal is to learn how to walk with God faithfully in the middle of it.

Faith is not the same as certainty. Faith is trust. And trust is the foundation of discernment.

Jon Ortberg tells a story about Dallas Willard that has been lingering with me. He talks about going with Dallas to one of his many talks. If you’ve ever listened to Dallas Willard, you know he was incredibly smart—a philosopher and a deep thinker.

Ortberg shares how sometimes one of Dallas’s talks would captivate people and draw them deeply into what he was sharing. While other times, people could feel quite lost, and the talk didn’t seem to land in the room.

This particular talk, Ortberg remembers, was the latter. Throughout the talk, people looked lost. Confused, even. But as they left the conference centre and walked to the car, Dallas was whistling an old hymn, completely unbothered by the outcome of the talk.

He truly lived what he taught. He had been faithful to share what he felt given to share, but the outcome was not up to him. God’s love for him was there either way. The results were up to God. His worth was not on the line.

He was free.

Free from the concern of what others thought. Free from the burden of outcomes. Free to trust God to hold what was never his to hold anyway. It was the kind of freedom that can only come from total trust in God.

And I find this so inspiring.

I have such a long way to go in my formation to become the kind of person who lets go of performance and achievement, who doesn’t strive for accolades and acceptance, who lives free like this. The kind of person who makes decisions and releases the burden of outcomes to the only One who can actually carry it.

I never take for granted the opportunities I get to speak and teach. But it is a wrestle not to assess every talk and sermon afterward, wondering if it was good enough, if I was good enough. Boy, do I have a long way to go to walk in the freedom of abandoning outcomes to God.

But I am learning.

God is slowly deforming the parts of me that still cling to outcomes, the bits that long for accolades and achievement, for certainty and control. And with every talk I give, I remember again: obedience is mine to walk in, but the fruit belongs to God.

So I’ll keep discerning. I’ll keep praying. I’ll keep listening. I’ll keep taking the next faithful step, not because I’m certain of every outcome, but because I’m learning to trust the One who holds my future.

Discernment is not about achieving certainty. It’s about becoming the kind of person who can trust God in the absence of it. It’s about becoming free enough to obey without needing to control how everything turns out.

It’s in this space that we can act faithfully and release the fruit. We can simply be the tree, rooted in God, trusting that when the season comes, the fruit will grow. We can become free enough to say, “God, I have listened. I have prayed. I have sought wisdom. I have taken the next faithful step. And now I trust you with what comes next.”

So maybe the prayer is still the same one I whispered beneath the trees that morning:

Here you are.
Here I am.

And maybe, for today, that is enough.

The Poetry Nook

Whispers Woven Into Creation

I miss the sound of crickets 
as the sky darkens in spring,

and fireflies 
in the early hush of summer,

the smell of dew soaked grass,

honeysuckle
as August begins to steal summer away.

Before long,
the crunch of leaves 
carries me into autumn,

and then the crisp smell 
of a first snow in December,

or early in November, 
tip toeing into winter.

Sounds that move me through time.

A lifetime ago, it seems.

Whispers of the Creator 
woven into creation.

There’s a Book on That

Recently, my friend Hannah gifted me Christine Caine’s Faith to Flourish, and I couldn’t be more grateful. This book is such a beautiful exploration of what it means to live a life marked by flourishing and fruitfulness—not just in seasons of ease, but through faith, surrender, and trust in God’s timing. From the very first pages, it invites you to reflect on the ways God cultivates growth in us, even in hidden places, and how he calls us to bear lasting fruit in every season.

As always, here’s a taster:

“The challenge for us is whether we are willing to trust him and his ways above our own thoughts and our own ways… We need to ask ourselves, Are we willing to trust God even when we don’t quite understand why he is asking us to do something or to give something up? Are we willing to believe he knows what’s best for us? Are we willing to trust his timing and his ways? Proverbs reminds us ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.’ Faith is predicated on trust rather than understanding, so we need to put our trust in God during our Gethsemane moments. And with that trust, we need to run to him and pour out our heart to him just like Jesus did.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Where Formation Finds Its Way Home: Sunday reflection on the sacred ground of ordinary life, and how Christ’s life in us takes shape among the people closest to us.

• Move With Me: On embodied prayer, healing, and learning to trust my body again.

• The Slow Work of the Garden: Holy Week and the life God is growing in us — from Eden to new creation.

• Who are you becoming?: Lent, the wilderness, and the slow work of spiritual formation.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Well, this last week we had the hottest May day on record in UK history. It was just over 35 degrees (95 F) in London, and let’s just say, this city isn’t made for that kind of heat.

There’s no air conditioning or overhead fans in our old Victorian flat, and it was stifling, my friends. The roof of our lounge is a large skylight, which most of the year is lovely because of all the natural light, but in this intense heat it quickly turns my work space into a humid greenhouse. My plants are thriving, but I am roasting.

All over the city this last week, parks were filled with sunbathers and pubs were crowded with customers cooling off with cold ciders and glasses of rosé. People flocked to the coast as seaside towns were filled to the brim with beachgoers seeking relief in the cool waters of the sea. Is there anything better than swimming in the sea on a hot, sunny day?

There is something about heat that sends us searching for refreshment.

We open our doors and windows seeking a breeze, drop ice cubes in our drinks, and seek the cool of the ocean when the city heat bears down.

But heat has a way of revealing things too. It shows you where the air gets stuck, where the sun lingers too long, and how quickly small discomforts can begin to feel enormous.

And I wonder if the same is true of us.

Pressure, tiredness, inconvenience, and discomfort have a way of revealing what is being formed in us. Not the polished version of ourselves we bring when we’re on our best behaviour, but the truer version that emerges in the ordinary places, with the people who know us best.

And this is where we’re headed today.

Is the life of Jesus being formed in me finding its way into the places where I am most known? Is the grace I long to offer others also becoming embodied in the ordinary, hidden places of my life? Because if grace is taking root in us, then it should bear fruit first in the soil of our ordinary lives.

So, let’s dig in together…

For me, one of the places God is meeting me most tenderly in my formation right now is my marriage.

Years ago, I remember hearing someone share a statistic about pastors’ kids walking away from the faith they were raised in. The question was posed as to why this number was so high. The guesses in the room were all familiar: parents working too much, ministry taking over family life, time away from home, and all the pressures that can come with public ministry.

And of course, those things can all be contributing factors. But the answer offered that day was much more sobering: the pain of disconnect.

A parent who preaches one thing from the pulpit while something very different is experienced behind closed doors. A home where the faith proclaimed publicly is not always embodied privately.

Because the reality is, people will always pay more attention to how you live than to what you say.

When I first heard this, I felt so sure I would never struggle with that kind of disconnect. I was new in my faith and committed to my own formation. I wouldn’t let my life reflect anything other than the truth of the transformation Jesus was doing in me.

But as I’ve matured in my relationship with Jesus, I’ve realised just how susceptible I am to this kind of divide, and how easily self-deception can keep me from noticing where my life is becoming less integrated than I long for it to be.

As my husband and I approach our ten year wedding anniversary this summer, I’m finding that God is meeting me in my formation in a particularly tender way through my marriage. It has become one of the places where he is showing me how love becomes embodied. There are moments when I realise that the very graces I hope to offer my community, my church, and my work—patience, gentleness, presence, and love—are the same graces God is inviting me to practice more deeply with the person closest to me.

What is being formed in me must eventually find its way home.

I suppose I’m saying that these ordinary places are actually sacred ground for deeper formation, places where the life of Jesus slowly takes shape in the ordinary rhythms of love.

And I wonder where that place is for you?

Maybe if you’re married, it’s your marriage, or maybe it’s your parenting, or your friendships, or the way you show up with housemates, colleagues, siblings, or the people who see you at your best and at your worst. We all have places where we’re being invited to become more integrated, ordinary rooms where the Spirit is quietly asking, “Is the life of Jesus in me finding its way here too?”

It is my deepest desire for my husband and those close to me to continue experiencing me as a woman who is slowly becoming more patient, more gentle, more present, more joyful, and more free. And I’m learning that this kind of love is not something I can produce through sheer willpower. It requires a deeper formation and integration than I’m capable of creating on my own. It requires the power of the Spirit living within me.

And it also requires a slow enough pace to pay attention to what God is shaping in me in the ordinary moments of my life.

Let me give you an example.

During Lent, one of the practices I implemented in an effort to give up condemnation was giving up the last word. I don’t think I realised how much I love having the last word until I practiced giving it up. I also quickly realised that the most difficult moments of this practice would take place in my marriage.

I remember one specific occasion. Dan and I were walking in the park, discussing a topic where we hold slightly different opinions. We bantered back and forth for a while until the conversation began to whittle down. Then Dan said something I completely disagreed with—something I was sure I was right about.

Every ounce of me wanted to explain why I was right. I wanted to win the argument. But before the words began to take shape, I sensed the Holy Spirit remind me of my Lent practice.

I wanted so badly to explain myself, to have the last word, to drive home my point.

But instead, I was silent.

I said nothing.

The conversation soon shifted to something else, as if nothing monumental had occurred. And yet for me, it was the most challenging moment of my week.

Dan didn’t seem to notice that I held back. Our conversation moved forward, and we went on to have a lovely evening together.

And to be clear, I don’t think the invitation is to stop seeking to be understood by my husband, or to stay silent when something needs to be said. Of course a good marriage requires honesty, vulnerability, and the courage to speak truthfully. But I’m also learning that formation asks me to practice humility and attentiveness to the Spirit, so I can discern when it’s time to speak up and when it’s time to be silent.

I’ve thought a lot about that conversation in the park. For me, it felt like a significant moment. I recognised God’s nudge to give up the last word. I was obedient in the moment, even though I didn’t want to be. And the result was peace.

I don’t know what would have happened if I had given way to my desire to have the last word—to prove I was right. Would we have argued about our differing views? Would I have said something I regretted in the heat of the moment? Would we have felt a distance between us as I insisted on being understood?

I can’t say for sure.

But I can say that something shifted within me. And this is the life I long to live—one where I am attentive to the Spirit in my ordinary conversations and relationships, living into my calling to become a person of love in the world but also in my home with the people closest to me.

As I begin to build a ministry around spiritual formation, this lesson is teaching me that one of the first places my formation is meant to bear fruit is in my home.

Before I ever teach on patience, humility, surrender, or attentiveness to the Spirit, I need to be living these practices out at home. Before I help others pay attention to the Holy Spirit’s work in their lives, I need to keep paying attention to his work in mine, especially in the hidden, ordinary places of my life.

Because building something for God can take so much energy, vision, sacrifice, and work. There is always another person to meet with, another talk to prepare, another session to lead, another dream to carry. And all of it can feel holy and important. And much of it genuinely is.

But it’s also dangerously easy to become more attentive to what we’re building for God than to what God is building in us.

And I’m learning that, even with good intentions, I can move ahead for quite some time before noticing that I need to let the Spirit set my pace again. I can become so focused on fruitfulness, impact, and momentum that I forget to pause and ask whether my inner life is still in alignment with Jesus.

And the sobering thing is, it’s possible to build something for God without remaining present to God. It’s possible to build something that looks fruitful while parts of it are being built from hurry, striving, and ego rather than from communion with the Creator.

I recognise this temptation in myself.

I can feel the subtle temptation to keep producing when my prayer life needs tending. I can feel the pull to keep showing up for others while becoming less attentive at home. I can feel how easily even good, faithful work can begin to drift from communion with the One who called me to it in the first place.

This is why formation matters so deeply. Not because ministry isn’t important, but because ministry is never meant to become a substitute for intimacy. The work God does through us was never meant to outrun the work God is doing within us.

So, God is using this slower, more attentive pace of life to teach me how to steward the gifts he’s given me well—forming me into a non-anxious and loving presence first in my home, and then in the world.

And I’m grateful for every bit of it.

I’m grateful that God is so kind to bring to my attention the ways in which I am tempted to go at it alone.

I’m grateful that God is so present and patient to help me see that my first place of ministry is my marriage and my family.

I’m grateful that God is so good to keep me humbly aware of my own tendency toward self-deception.

And you know what, I will still be learning. I will still sometimes give into the pull to fight for the last word when I should seek peace instead. I will still find myself needing to slow down because I’ve begun moving again at my own pace instead of God’s.

Until Jesus returns and my formation is complete, I will still get it wrong sometimes. But I want to be the kind of woman who is becoming more loving, more patient, more gentle, more honest, and more kind. I want to be a wife, and hopefully soon, a mother too, who is present, loving, and a little more like Jesus.

So, I move slower than I’d like.

I repent daily and seek God’s guidance as I go.

I listen and look for nudges from the Spirit in all the ordinary moments of my day.

I make time to invest in my marriage and my relationships.

I look at my whole life as the place where God is forming me.

And along the way, slowly God shapes me into a person of love, a person who is becoming more like Jesus in the places where I am most known.

And yes, it is imperfect on this side of eternity.

But boy, is it good.

The Poetry Nook

Memorial Stones

Flickering lights across the skyline
and I'm remembering the promises 
spoken over this city,
over my life,
over my marriage and my family. 

Before the sun rises
and the day begins its carrying on
each flicker of light in the darkness 
becomes a memorial stone.

I can feel you call me to remember
reminding me 
of the promises fulfilled
and the ones yet to come. 

"Blessed is she who believed that the Lord would fulfil what he has spoken to her." (Luke 1:45).

There’s a Book on That

In Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren invites readers to discover God’s presence not only in church services or dramatic spiritual encounters, but in the small, ordinary rhythms of everyday life. From waking up and brushing our teeth to losing our keys, to eating leftovers, and checking our emails, Warren shows how ordinary moments can become places of prayer, formation, and grace. This book beautifully invites us to see our daily lives as sacred, recognising how God meets us every day in small moments we often overlook.

As always, here’s a taster:

“The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today… We tend to want a Christian life with the dull bits cut out. Yet God made us to spend our days in rest, work, and play, taking care of our bodies, our families, our neighborhoods, our homes. What if all these boring parts matter to God? What if days passed in ways that feel small and insignificant to us are weighty with meaning and part of the abundant life that God has for us?”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Move With Me: On embodied prayer, healing, and learning to trust my body again.

• The Slow Work of the Garden: Holy Week and the life God is growing in us — from Eden to new creation.

• Who are you becoming?: Lent, the wilderness, and the slow work of spiritual formation.

• A Hope that Lasts: Hope tethered to outcomes is fragile, but hope anchored in God holds steady even when life unravels.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

We have had an absolutely glorious week in London. The sun is shining and it’s meant to hit 21°C today (that’s a warm 70°F for my lovely readers in the States). The warm breeze and sunny skies feel like a welcome teaser for summertime, even if London summer often arrives with rain.

As part of my rule of life, I usually spend time in silence and solitude early in the morning as I begin my day. This has been a regular rhythm for me for years and I’ve grown to love this routine.

Still. Quiet. Attentive to God’s presence in the silence. I find these mornings are when I hear God the clearest, before the demands and disruptions of the day topple in.

However, at the start of March, when I gathered myself in the morning and got to my spot on the couch with a warm cup of tea, I heard the Lord say, “Move with me. Let’s go for a walk.”

So, I slipped on my trainers (yes, we call sneakers trainers here in the UK. I’m learning), I took my cup of tea to go, and I headed out the door. And in this new early morning rhythm, I find that God has been teaching me a lot about embodied prayer practice.

For now, I’ve swapped morning silence and solitude for the soft chatter of birds and the occasional rhythmic beat of feet striking the ground from those out for an early morning run. Or, the whirling wheels of mums and dads looping and lulling their newborns to sleep as they gulp down coffee with tired eyes and warmed hearts.

I walk the labyrinth loop of the park as it hugs the edges of the Thames River and meanders through rowed trees circling a large grassy patch in the centre.

I move slowly, probably slower than I’d like, but when I do, I catch the morning light breaking through the trees now full with fresh leaves. I listen to the sounds of the living world. The whisper of my Creator carried on the edges of the wind and the scampering of squirrels.

As time passes, I find myself praying, attuned and attentive to God’s presence.

I quickly realise it is still my favourite part of the day.

And that is where this month’s post is headed: embodied prayer — why our bodies matter to God, and how we can learn to pray and worship with our whole selves. Body included.

So, let’s dig in together…

This new rhythm didn’t come out of nowhere.

A few months ago, I kept waking up every morning with a sore jaw, as if I had been clenching my teeth through the night. If you had asked me whether I was worried or particularly stressed at the time, I probably would have said “No, not really.”

Work was busy as usual, but not overwhelming. I had just walked through another hard season of miscarriage, surgery, and grief, but God was healing my heart in beautiful ways. And as March began, I felt surprisingly good — hopeful and rooted, grounded in my identity, and inspired as I moved with purpose.

Ministry life was moving forward as I preached at church, prepared talks for speaking events, led a connect group of amazing women, and continued the slow and steady work on my course, Boldly Rising.

Externally, I felt fine.

But my body was speaking a different story.

My body was telling me I was stressed. Anxious. Carrying something through the night that I had not yet consciously named. Confused by this revelation, I prayed, asking God for clarity. I didn’t think I was stressed. I felt fine, but my body was signalling otherwise.

As I got nestled into my little prayer spot on the couch where I regularly practice silence, solitude, and prayer, I heard the familiar whisper: “Move with me. Let’s go for a walk.”

An invitation to move my body as an act of worship.

I know prayer walks are common and I’ve done them before, but a meditative prayer walk is not my usual style. I usually like to be still as I pray. I’ve grown to love silence and solitude, to prioritise it and treasure it. And I loved my little prayer spot in my flat.

But God was asking for something new — he was inviting me to move with him physically as I prayed. And whenever God prompts you to try something new, obedience is key.

So, I obeyed.

Every morning I set my alarm for 7am and I have a minute or two of silence and solitude before the Lord, because those practices are still important. I centre my heart and mind on him, then I slip on my trainers, head out to the park near my house, and begin to walk.

As I walk, I pray, “Lord, here I am. Show me where you are.”

And as I walk, I quickly begin to feel my body settle. I feel calmer, more grounded, and more present. I can hear God just as clearly as I did sitting in silence in my prayer spot.

Very quickly into this new rhythm, I realised I stopped clenching my teeth at night. When I wake up, my jaw is no longer sore. My body feels looser. Less tense. My spirit feels attuned to God throughout my day. I feel gentler too, more patient perhaps.

And the reality is, my work situation, ministry load, and life circumstances haven’t changed. In fact, some things have gotten even harder. But my posture has changed.

My body is releasing the tension as I move, and my presence in the natural world, walking around a beautifully lush, green park, has shifted something in my nervous system. And it’s become clear, God is speaking through the movement of my body.

This is not the first time I’ve sensed God speak through my body.

The first time I heard the voice of God, I experienced it deep in my body before the words came. There was warmth, a depth of love, an electric tingling sensation that seemed to pulse through me. Shortly after this initial bodily experience, I heard his gentle whisper. But the sensation came first.

At the time, I wouldn’t have considered myself a Christian. I was in a really low place, crying out to this mysterious God I was pretty sure didn’t want anything to do with me. And before the words even left my mouth, he responded with a powerful sense of love in my body.

I had no theology for how God could speak to me through my body in this way. I had no language for embodied prayer or discernment, but I knew what I had experienced. It was undeniable.

I felt love deep in my bones, in my heart, I felt heat move through my body until it erupted in this overwhelming sense of being known, seen, and treasured. Somehow there was a connection here between body, soul and Creator, and I didn’t know how it happened or what it meant, but I knew it was real.

As I’ve matured in my faith and my relationship with God, I’ve come to recognise the many ways I discern God’s voice in my body. I’ve also come to trust the cues my body is giving.

When I sense I have a word from the Lord to share with someone, whether at church or in prayer, with people I know or with strangers, the feeling is the same. I feel my heart rate increase slightly and a deep sense of knowing in my gut. I experience it as a physiological response to the voice of God. I know what it feels like in my body when I hear him speak. I’ve come to recognise it — it’s familiar to me now.

Our relationship with God is not disembodied. It is felt, carried and lived in our bodies too. God cares deeply for our bodies — I am a whole person, you are a whole person, and that’s intentional.

Embodied prayer is not a new invention or a trendy add-on to Christian spirituality.

It grows from the belief that we are not souls trapped inside bodies, but whole persons created by God. Christian spiritual formation has long made room for embodied prayer — prayer expressed through posture, movement, fasting, kneeling, lifted hands, and walking with God.

Dallas Willard writes about the spiritual disciplines as embodied practices that train us to become the kinds of people who can live more fully in the presence and power of God. So much is out of our control, but disciplines and practices that open us up more fully to God, these are within our power to practice. And we don’t do them to earn God’s attention, we do them to open ourselves up to his presence which is already all around us.

I’ve learned that much of my anxiety and worry is carried in my body long before I show external symptoms, or become aware of it through my words or actions. I am really good at convincing myself I’m okay, but my body is often better at signalling when I’m not. And I’m learning to recognise those cues as nudges from the Holy Spirit to slow down, to be present, to receive grace and healing.

I can’t force myself into peace, or simply command my jaw to unclench, or demand my nervous system to simply settle. It won’t work - trust me, I’ve tried.

But I can walk.

I can put on my trainers and move slowly through the park outside my house, asking God to speak to me as I move. I can bring my body into prayer and let the rhythm of my feet, the morning light, the birds, the trees, and my own breathing become part of my attentiveness to God.

And somehow, in that simple embodied practice, grace meets me.

The more I walk this same loop each morning, the more I see it as my prayer labyrinth. There’s one way in and one way out for me, and I wind along a familiar path in a rhythm.

Christians have used labyrinths as tools for prayer and reflection for centuries, with some of the earliest examples dating back to the fourth century. They offer a way to slow down, quiet the mind, and pray with the whole body.

So what has God been saying to me while we walk?

Well, he’s been teaching me how to care for my body again.

He’s been healing my nervous system after the repeated trauma of miscarriages, surgeries and grief. He’s been teaching me how to love my body again.

You see, one of the more hidden challenges of walking through miscarriage is that you don’t always trust your body anymore. As a woman, I’ve struggled to trust my body to do what I thought it was designed to do. After both losses this year, I found myself almost distancing myself from my body.

And when you’re poked and prodded throughout multiple surgeries, it’s easy to begin seeing your body as something separate from you. After my most recent surgery, I had a longer recovery physically. And I felt resentful. Frustrated that my body failed me. Annoyed that the hospital care felt less attentive and more rushed. Disappointed that this is the journey I’m walking through. Angry at my body for not doing what I thought it was supposed to do.

And if I’m not careful, all these little open doors left unchecked can become roots of bitterness in me. And God wanted to heal it all, dig them up, before the roots stretched out. Because he loves my body, and longs for me to as well.

So we’ve been loving my body together. Our walks have soothed my spirit and helped me see my body as something to treasure again. Our movement together has reminded me that I still have lots to be grateful for. My health physically is now the best it’s been in years.

We’ve slowed things down together.

And I’m still on a journey of healing. I’m still learning to trust my body as I care for it. I’m still not ready to start trying for another baby. But I know God is journeying with me. And perhaps there is a deeper lesson here in this embodied prayer practice, an invitation to give my whole self to God, body included.

So, I suppose that is what God has been teaching me here.

That healing does not only happen in the mind or in the heart.

Sometimes grace meets us in motion.

My body matters to God.

And loving it, caring for it, and learning to trust it again is helping me walk more fully in my identity as beloved.

The Poetry Nook

Still Waters

I look up in time to see the sunlight trickle through the canopy of leaves above me. 

The light sparkles,
almost like it knows how precious it is.

My hand dips into the water beside me
tracing the ripples of my touch.
The soft current parts my fingers,
but only just enough to cool my open palm.

He leads me beside still waters.

Is this what healing feels like?
Warm sun on your face.
Cool water on your skin.
Leaves swaying softly in the breeze.

A canopy of green filters the light so it dances along my body,
playing games with the shadows.

How long have I been here?

How long does it take to heal a broken heart 
and restore a soul?

A moment, You say, 
or a lifetime,
but we've got all the time in the world, my darling. 
My beloved. 

There’s a Book on That

John Mark Comer and Practicing the Way’s new book, Sabbath Meditations, is coming out in May with the hard back edition releasing on May 5th in the States and a bit later in May here in the UK. This book is a collection of readings, reflections, poems, and Bible passages designed to accompany you in your Sabbath practice. I’m also delighted to share that one of my poems is featured in this publication.

The book is structured around four movements: Stop. Rest. Delight. Worship.

The intention is to help you pause, slow down, set a day apart, and anchor your whole life with God. You can pre-order now, or pick up your copy when it releases wherever you usually buy your books. My hope is that it blesses you as you enter into the beauty of Sabbath each week.

As always, here’s a taster…

“We live much of our lives producing and achieving. Sometimes, without even realizing it, we try to prove our worth by how much we get done, how much we own, or how much others notice us. But now, we stop. On this Sabbath day, we step off the hamster wheel. We breathe deeply and give thanks. We remember that our value comes not from what we accomplish, what we have, or what others think of us but from who we are — daughters and sons deeply loved by our Father in heaven. This day invites us to rest in that love. To let go of striving. As we let go, we become more aware of how fully we are known and cherished.” — Ken Shigematsu

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• The Slow Work of the Garden: Holy Week and the life God is growing in us — from Eden to new creation.

• Who are you becoming?: Lent, the wilderness, and the slow work of spiritual formation.

• A Hope that Lasts: Hope tethered to outcomes is fragile, but hope anchored in God holds steady even when life unravels.

• The Sacredness of an Attentive Gaze: During Advent, we reflect on darkness in the world and within ourselves, waiting with hope for Christ’s light. In this waiting, attentiveness becomes a spiritual discipline, tuning our hearts to God.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Spring has sprung in London, and I’m loving the bits of sunshine breaking through the cloudy days. It’s been a very windy few weeks, but there’s something quite magical about the way the wind carries cherry and almond blossom petals as they dance through the spring air. I find myself walking along petal-lined paths, caught up in the sudden swirls of soft pink and white drifting all around me.

Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the alumni at the theological college I work at. She’s now the Head Gardener at a beautiful location here in London, and it was such a gift to walk with her through winding paths and sweeping landscapes, talking about how she sees God in it all.

As we step into Holy Week, I can’t help but notice how the garden seems to echo the story we’re entering — life and death held together, beauty and letting go, things blooming even as others fade away.

I love a garden in the spring.

I love that you can walk through the same stretch again and again and still be surprised, if you pay close enough attention. A new bud pushing through the hardened ground as winter loosens its grip. A daffodil that only just yesterday stood wide open, now beginning to fall and decay, quietly nourishing the soil beneath. A bluebell, its deep cobalt blue set against the dew-soaked grass. Blossom trees full and lush, yet already beginning to shed their petals. Magnolias — dramatic and vast, yet also fleeting.

Spring brings such joy to a garden. Perhaps all the seasons do, in their own way, because each one has its purpose. Nothing is wasted.

And isn’t that the story of Holy Week too?

This week, I want to reflect on our lives as a garden and dig into the biblical garden imagery woven throughout the story of God’s people — the uprooting and planting, the tending and pruning, the dying and growing, the beauty and the forming.

So, let’s dive in together…

First, a reflection on the many seasons I find myself living through right now.

A few weeks ago, I was asked what season I felt I was in. It’s a question I’ve been mulling over, because I’m not sure it’s just one — I think, at the moment, it’s all four at once.

In the Christian walk, we often speak of our faith journey in seasons: spring, where new life begins to peek through after a long winter; summer, where abundance and bloom are around every corner; autumn, where things are dying as change and transition takes place; and winter, a season of dormancy often marked by wilderness.

And although sometimes we are planted firmly in the middle of a specific season, more often, I’m learning, we experience all or many of them at once.

Recently, I’ve been feeling quite stuck in a few areas — places where I know God has released me to move forward in, where He has invited me to partner with him and build, things that require my participation, not his miraculous intervention.

And yet, if I’m honest, I expected other areas of my life to look different before moving forward. I expected all the blooms to come up at once. I didn’t expect part of the garden to still feel barren, the ground still cold with frost, the promise still buried deep in the bulbs beneath the soil. I didn’t expect parts of the garden to still be dying — parts of me to be dying — things that need to in order to open up more space for love.

I didn’t expect my life to look like all seasons at once.

Yet, this is the reality of so much of our lives. I’m realising that God will sometimes call me to build while there are still parts of my life he is tearing down. He will call me to harvest blooms while, in other places, he is still pruning and tending. He will call me to plant seeds in one area while, in another, he is still enriching the soil.

You see, the invitation is to trust him with the whole of my life — to move in step with the Spirit, even when things don’t quite look the way I imagined. The invitation is to a full life. And that full life requires both my surrender and my participation.

As the good Gardener, God leads me through the garden of my life, walking with me to the places where weeds have overgrown so they can be uprooted, tending the soil so roots can grow deep, caring for each seed, knowing that in the right time it will break through the ground, small at first, but opening into fullness according to his plan.

He leads me to what needs pruning so that it may flourish, always walking with me. And when parts of the garden feel barren, he sits with me in grief, promising that there is a time for everything.

We harvest in abundance together and we uproot the weeds together. And the blooms? Well, they don’t all come up at once. And some we may not see at all in our lifetime. But we can trust the Gardener.

This is what the Christian life looks like. It looks like a garden.

Perhaps it was always God’s intention from the very beginning, when He created man and woman and placed them in a garden and invited them to co-labour with Him, to tend to it and care for it.

We didn’t quite get it right then, instead we chose self, we chose to take what wasn’t ours, and the consequence was sin — a separation from God. And yet, the Gardener did not give up on the garden. He wove it into the very story of his people, knowing there would be a perfect Son who would make a decision to be faithful in another garden.

And that decision would change the whole course of human history.

When you zoom out, a pattern emerges, a biblical garden-to-garden thread throughout Scripture that reveals the heart of God.

At the very beginning, God creates humanity and places them in the Garden of Eden to “work it and watch over it” (Genesis 2:15). In this moment, humans are fully alive with God — walking with Him in the cool of the morning, living in sync with his presence, in deep intimacy with their Creator. It is a place of unbroken communion between God and humanity.

But rupture comes in the fall when humans eat from the one tree they were forbidden to eat from. And beneath this act lurked a deeper question: will they choose to trust God, or define good and evil for themselves?

In that moment, humanity chooses control over communion. And the result is devastating — shame enters the story, anxiety, darkness, and separation from God — and they are exiled from the garden, cut off from the very life they were created for.

But God’s love for humanity does not end in this moment. Even after the fall, a redemption story begins to unfold. God’s plan for restoration will come through the sacrifice of his Son, a plan of reconciliation that would change the course of human history forever.

Then on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus enters another garden, Gethsemane. He brings his closest friends and withdraws to pray. He is in deep anguish, fully aware of the suffering ahead, and in all his humanity prays an honest and raw prayer: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me — nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

Once again, a human stands in a garden facing a decisive moment. And the same question is beneath it all, will he trust the Father? But this garden is different. Adam and Eve faced temptation in a perfect garden and failed. Jesus faces overwhelming sorrow in a broken garden and obeys. Where Adam said, “my will be done,” Jesus says, “not my will, but yours be done.”

And this changes everything.

A great reversal takes place because Jesus’ obedience doesn’t just address sin, it begins to reverse it. Where there was separation, he makes a way for restoration with the Father. Where there was exile, he opens the path back to life with God. Intimacy between Creator and creation is restored, and communion with God is made possible again.

Another garden. A completely different outcome.

So my question is, why a garden?

I don’t think a garden is just some random setting God chose by chance, I believe it’s a picture of the kind of life God created us for. In a garden, life is abundant, but growth takes time. Fruitfulness comes through care, connection, and presence. Life is cultivated not manufactured.

In a garden, participation is required. It must be tended to and cared for. There is responsibility, stewardship, and co-laboring with God in order for things to flourish and thrive.

In a garden, there is freedom and choice. What will be planted? What will be nurtured? It is not passive, it is deeply relational and participatory.

And it is in the garden that intimacy with God is most clearly seen. From the very beginning, this is what we were made for — life with God, in communion with him, intimacy with the Gardener.

It is no coincidence that when Mary encounters the risen Christ, she mistakes him for the gardener. In that moment, the story comes full circle — this image echoing throughout the story of redemption.

The story doesn’t end in a garden lost, but in a garden restored. At the end of Scripture, in Revelation, we read of not just a garden, but a garden-city to come. God’s goal is not to abandon the world, but to renew it, to bring creation to its fullness.

So the story of Scripture — the story of God and His people — moves from a garden, through a garden, and toward a garden restored.

So what does this mean for us now?

I suppose I’m looking at my life like a garden. I’m choosing to trust God in all the seasons, even when they feel like they’re happening all at once. I’m remaining rooted in my identity in Christ so I can live like a tree planted by flowing streams — whose roots go deep, whose leaves never wither, and who bears fruit in season.

I’m not the Gardener, but I walk with him.

And he’ll show me when the fruit is ready. He’ll lead me to the weeds that need uprooting. He’ll prune away the branches that aren’t producing. He’ll show me what it looks like to cultivate a good life, a flourishing one. Because I can trust Him.

And my role in all this isn’t passive, it’s participatory. The invitation has always been to co-labour, to co-create, to join him in what he is growing and doing in this world.

So what might it look like for you to see your life as a garden? To let that image speak into what God may be inviting you into in this moment? What is he growing in you right now, and what is he inviting you to tend to?

In this Holy Week, we see again that in God’s garden, even death becomes the soil where new life begins. So as we look toward the cross, may we do so with hope, knowing that through Jesus, the perfect Son, death has been defeated. And one day, we will dwell in a perfect garden-city, where suffering will be no more, and all things will be made new.

The Poetry Nook

The Giver of Life

In the wind, I whisper
in the clattering of barren branches and the soft sounds of summer’s full foliage
in the nearly silent slice of a bird’s wing through the still air
in the sudden splash of a dipper foraging food

In the celestial cycles, I dance
in the beams of sunlight leaking in through the skylight at dawn
in the bright moon that hangs heavy in the night sky
in the sinking sun as it dips just over the horizon's edge

In the seasons, I speak
in the flowers that bloom early carrying hope
in those that blossom late — waning, yet waiting
in the perennials and the annuals, and the buds in between

In the elements, I move
in the first touch of the ocean’s kiss in June
in the warm bonfires that linger at autumn’s end
in the first frost and the soft snowflakes in winter's peak

Don’t you see? 
I’m all around you, my darling, in everything
through everything
for everything.

I am the Giver of Life
And oh, how sweet life becomes when you see I’ve been here all along.

There’s a Book on That

Tom Wright, also known as N.T. Wright, writes this beautiful book, Surprised by Hope, inviting Christians to live as “resurrection people” — wide awake to the truth of the gospel, living as “Easter people.” He explores the biblical hope of a new heaven and new earth, and shows why the resurrection of Jesus is not only the cornerstone of the Christian faith, but the power that shapes how we live in the present.

As always, here’s a taster:

“As I see it, the prayer [‘thy kingdom come, on earth as in heaven.’] was powerfully answered at the first Easter, and will finally be answered fully when heaven and earth are joined in the new Jerusalem. Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future to the present. The ultimate future hope remains a surprise, partly because we don’t know when it will arrive, and partly because at present we only have images and metaphors for it, leaving us to guess the reality will be far greater, and more surprising, still. And the intermediate hope — the things which happen in the present time which implement Easter and anticipate the final day — is always surprising, because left to ourselves, we lapse into a kind of collusion with entropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and foretaste of the second.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Who are you becoming? Lent, the wilderness, and the slow work of spiritual formation.

• A Hope that Lasts: Hope tethered to outcomes is fragile, but hope anchored in God holds steady even when life unravels.

• The Sacredness of an Attentive Gaze: During Advent, we reflect on darkness in the world and within ourselves, waiting with hope for Christ’s light. In this waiting, attentiveness becomes a spiritual discipline, tuning our hearts to God.

• The Danger of a Comfortable Gospel: The way of Jesus is narrow and marked by humility, repentance, surrender, and truth, not comfort or compromise. Where are we domesticating God’s Word to fit our own agenda or desires?

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Up until this week, it had rained every single day of 2026 here in London. I’m not sure I realised just how much that quantity of cloud coverage and rain impacts my mood. But this week the sun has finally broken through the moody skies, daffodils have pushed up through the cold ground, and like so many other Londoners, I suddenly feel as though everything will be okay again.

Last week we stepped into the Lenten season, which on the Christian calendar, is the forty days leading up to Easter. Jane Williams writes, “Lent is not primarily about ‘giving things up’, or denying ourselves. It is about finding ourselves.” And I couldn’t agree more. Recently I posted a note on Substack about the death-to-self reality of the Lenten journey, and I find myself reflecting on the deep character formation in my own life, asking myself who is it that I am becoming?

So, this is where we’re headed today. My prayer is that as you read, and perhaps as you journey through Lent this year, you would become curious about the deep work of formation happening within you—about the person you are becoming.

So, let’s dig in together…

But first, a reflection on the quiet work of formation God has been doing in me.

A week ago I sat on a familiar couch at my spiritual director’s house for our monthly session. Sometimes I wonder how she pieces together the rambling threads of my verbal processing each month, but miraculously—and perhaps with a bit of help from the Spirit—she always seems to do so with ease. Her questions, thoughtful and open-ended, tap into something deep within me. I often don’t have clear answers, but I find myself meandering down trails within, noticing how much God is actually at work in me in both seen and unseen ways.

Lately I’ve been reflecting a lot on the peace and love I have been living in as I walk through this recent journey of grief and uncertainty. It’s been quite remarkable, really, as I’m subtly aware of an expansion in my level of trust in God, the rootedness of my identity in him, and the confidence I have in his unchanging character. I suppose I’m realising that the formation I’ve spent my Christian life pursuing actually does work. It really does transform me. As I lean in and do the inner work formation requires, Jesus really does renew my mind and align my heart.

More often than not, we’re in seasons where this is less obvious. Perhaps subtle changes in our reactions or behaviour hint at it. Maybe we notice we’re walking with more patience or moving at a slower pace. Maybe we’re more attentive to God’s presence. Maybe we become aware of some sharp edges softening.

But when you go through something tragic, life-upending, when you’re in the thick of it, you realise where your foundations truly lie. Or as Jon Ortberg says, '“When the bottom falls out of your outer world, you turn to your inner world because that’s all you have left and it’s there you find God.”

And I’ve found that the foundations I built in him are sturdy. I’ve found that I’m able to have peace when surrounded by storms. I’ve found that the deep work in my identity in Christ, the small acts of obedience, the daily choices to turn toward God—all of it has built something solid within me that can withstand the changing winds of circumstance and still hold onto love.

And although I still have a long way to go in my formation—we all do—I feel steadied and encouraged that this work really does transform us. I’m slowly becoming a person more capable of holding both joy and suffering, a person less anxious and more patient. A person who trusts God in all seasons. A person of love.

In a few weeks I’m preaching at church on Exodus 16. This is the section of Scripture where God leads the Israelites into the wilderness for forty years. Throughout this time, he trains them to trust him and to rely on him for all their needs. He starts to deform the ways of Egypt out of them and the slow, steady work of forming them into people who can recognise how deeply loved they are begins—people who believe that God is who he says he is.

The wilderness, it turns out, is often where parts of us must die so something truer can be formed.

As I study and pray over this section of Scripture, I’ve been thinking a lot about the wilderness and the formation that happens there. Two years ago, God very clearly led me into my own wilderness season. Thankfully it didn’t last forty years, but it did stretch out for over a year, much longer than I would have liked.

At the time I was walking in obedience, taking a sabbatical I sensed God invite me into and moving across the Atlantic to a country I felt God calling us back to, and yet I faced significant delays, obstacles, and tragedies at what seemed like every turn. My husband, Dan, and I slept in twelve different beds in a thirteen month stretch, hopping from place to place, no where to really call home. I was stretched between continents and my sabbatical quickly became a wilderness I never expected.

In all the shuffling and shifting, God began to do a deep work within me around identity and calling, uprooting false narratives, healing deep wounds from my past, and reordering my life around an attentiveness to his presence. I had promised to give God six months of sabbatical and he took a year. It was one of the hardest seasons of my life, and yet the work God did in me during that period is something I’m only just beginning to see the fruit of now.

And the difficult fertility journey I’m currently walking in? I know that I wouldn’t be able to stand in the peace and trust and hope I am sitting in without the formation God did within me during that wilderness two years ago. It was a season I wanted to rush through, but one where God took his time. You see, there was work in me that took time. God knew what I needed—what I would need—more than I did. I had no idea then that I would be walking through what I am now.

He’s that good. He’s that loving. He’s that kind.

Who am I becoming?

Well, I’m realising that if I let him—if I practice the spiritual disciplines Jesus taught, seek to live like him, walk in step with the Spirit, stay attentive to God in the ordinary moments of my life, and bring the shadow sides within me into his light—I am slowly becoming a person of love, a person of peace, a non-anxious presence in the world.

The formational work God invites us into is slow and it is lifelong. We will never outgrow our need for spiritual formation in the way of Jesus. I am always a work in progress, but God is so faithful. When I walk with him, when I seek him, he renews my heart and mind so that I can navigate the complexities of this life with a peace that surpasses understanding, a hope not tied to circumstances, and a love rooted in his promises and presence.

It is an invitation into what Jesus calls, life and life in abundance.

And as you faithfully walk this narrow path, every once in a while, you’ll be shockingly aware of just how far you’ve come, of just how much work he’s done within you, and it will fill your well to overflow knowing that God has been at work all along.

The work of God in us is to form lives rooted in love for the sake of others.

There’s a famous phrase from the Desert Fathers and Mothers that positions the goal of the spiritual life as becoming ‘all flame’. ‘All flame’ is described as living in a state of deep, passionate love and communion with God.

This idea of becoming fully alive in God wasn’t just mystical language from the desert, it echoes a much older biblical vision of salvation.

Biblically, salvation was often described using the Greek word theosis, an ancient term meaning “becoming.” In this context, it refers to becoming more like God through living in union with him, sort of like the grafting of human beings back into God’s love.

This transformation, this becoming, is what the Christian tradition has often called spiritual formation. Robert Mulholland defines spiritual formation as, “the process of being formed into the image of Christ for the sake of others.”

To live as loved.

To move toward love.

To become people of love.

For the sake of others.

It’s really easy to think about our formation as work within me for the sake of me, so that I can become whole, so that I can experience the fullness of God’s love, so that I can walk confidently in my gifts and boldly in God’s call on my life. And all of this is certainly a byproduct of formation, but ultimately our formation is for the sake of others, it is so we can become people of love.

If the goal of formation is love, it makes sense that Jesus centers the entire spiritual life around love.

Jesus tells us the greatest commandment of all is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself”. It’s not accidental that three loves are woven into one commandment. He doesn’t say the greatest commandments are the following, he says commandment, singular. They all feed into one another with love at the center. We can’t love others well without loving God with our whole selves. And we can’t truly love God while rejecting ourselves as his beloved.

When we become ‘all flame’ and live in complete unity and communion with God, we can’t help but love others well because each person has been created in his image.

Dallas Willard says, “The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It’s the person you become.”

And this is where the conversation hits home.

If I’m honest, I can get so focused on what I’m doing for God that I forget to pay attention to what God is doing in me. And as someone who leads in the formation space within my community, I have to practice what I preach.

Recently I listened to Jon Ortberg talk about formation in the church to a group of church leaders. He said something that’s been echoing within me that I’m bringing to God in this season. He questions, “Is the life I’m inviting others to live the life that I myself am living? Am I sending out my roots like a little seed? … The temptation of ministry is to make the outcomes we pursue more important that the person we become.”

So I ask you the same question I have been asking myself, who are you becoming? Are you moving toward love? Are you allowing God to train you in trust, to form you in the wilderness and the mountain tops and then in all the ordinary moments of your day in between? Are you willing to look at the parts of you that may need to die in order for God to deform the ways of the world out of you and reform you in the beloved child of God you’ve always been, rooted in him.

Because becoming people of love is not simply about adding more goodness to our lives. Often it requires letting something in us die.

There’s a simple question from Henri Nouwen that I’ve been sitting with: “But how can I ever really celebrate Easter without first observing Lent?”

We love resurrection. We don’t love dying. We want the light but not the surrender. The joy, but not the pruning. The Hallelujah, but not the ashes.

But nothing rises that has not first been laid down.

Nouwen prays, “There is so much in me that needs to die…”

False attachments. Impatience. Anger. Envy. The need to be right. The need to be seen.

Lent isn’t about giving up chocolate. It’s about giving up whatever keeps us from Love.

So maybe the prayer this year is simple:

Lord, make this Lent different. Not louder. Not more impressive. Just more honest. Let something in me actually die. So that when Easter comes, it’s not just a celebration, but a resurrection in my heart. Amen.

The Poetry Nook

Recently my cousin Will asked if I had any new poetry to share. When I thought about it, I realised I hadn’t written much poetry lately. Most of my writing recently has been prose—columns, Substack posts, and the bits and pieces that fit around work and everyday life.

At first I assumed it was just a question of time. But the more I reflected, the more I realised it probably has less to do with busyness and more to do with willingness—the willingness to write the poems as they come, worrying less about editing and polishing and more about truth telling.

I wrote this poem around 1am a few days ago, as I was thinking about the theme of becoming.

Who am I Becoming?

Allow me to be steeped in you
saturated by your Spirit
immersed in your truth

soaking
steady
surrendered

until trust becomes my default
until the dividing lines in my heart disappear
until love is my first and last choice

and in between is
all grace
—a patient transformation.

There’s a Book on That

During Lent this year, I’ve been reading Jane Williams’ The Merciful Humility of God. Jane is a theologian and professor—brilliant and deeply wise—and this book has been a real gift to me this season. I once heard her say that before meeting someone, she asks God to give her eyes to see that person as he does. When you speak with her, you sense that it’s true. The book is a beautiful reflection on the humility of God and the invitation Lent gives us to contemplate the whole of Jesus’ life—from birth to ascension—while weaving in the stories of historic Christian figures whose faith journeys reflect God’s mercy and humility.

As always, here’s a taster:

“Jesus does not come out of nowhere. Like us, he grows, develops, learns; like us, he becomes who he is; he is not born full grown, but grows into the one we meet in the gospels. The day-to-day encounters, choices, joys and sorrows of growing up help to make him who he is, and so are part of God’s self-gift to us in Jesus. It is not wasteful simply to be; Jesus waits patiently, living his life quietly, unremarked by a wider audience, until the time is right, and then he is ready; everything is there, the fruits of those hidden years, grown to fullness. These Nazareth years are part of God’s humble gift. They give a kind of nobility and purposefulness to what can seem to us like emptiness… This is purposeful living, those hidden years suggest; it is enough to simply relate to God and to each other, and let God do with that what is necessary. Our Lent may start with the confrontation in the wilderness, and the sharp sting of temptation, but it has to continue in daily choices, for 40 days and then for life.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• A Hope that Lasts: Hope tethered to outcomes is fragile, but hope anchored in God holds steady even when life unravels.

• The Sacredness of an Attentive Gaze: During Advent, we reflect on darkness in the world and within ourselves, waiting with hope for Christ’s light. In this waiting, attentiveness becomes a spiritual discipline, tuning our hearts to God.

• The Danger of a Comfortable Gospel: The way of Jesus is narrow and marked by humility, repentance, surrender, and truth, not comfort or compromise. Where are we domesticating God’s Word to fit our own agenda or desires?

• Antidote to an Anxious Age: Again and again, Scripture speaks of dwelling in God. But what does it mean to truly dwell in him, and could this practice help shape me into a non-anxious presence in an anxious age?

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

When I lived in southern California, January was just another month on the calendar. I never noticed how long the month could feel or counted down the days until spring time. I forgot how long the winter months can feel in the UK, and how deep the longing is for the first signs of spring.

Although the sun peeks out here and there, I won’t lie, January in London can be quite dreary. Grey and wet. Cold. Barren trees, damp walks, sideways rain on the days when the wind whips through. And yet, there’s a subtle tenderness to winter here with frost in the early mornings, cozy pubs, toasty fireplaces, and warm Sunday roasts. It’s not all bad. I suppose that phrase feels a bit like the start of the year for me.

I began this year with some real disappointment as I grapple with hope deferred and heartbreak in a particular area I’ve been longing to see God move in. It’s so hard to hold onto hope when things don’t quite unfold the way you’d like.

And yet, even though I’m beginning the year with a painful longing, even though I’m wrestling through another season of grief, I’m still carrying hope. Because deep down I know the most important truth: God is who He says He is. The King is the King. The earth is still spinning on its axis in just the right way to sustain life. The stars are still hung delicately in the sky. The moon still fills the night with light. The sun, although elusive in London’s January, still rises each day. There is still breath in my lungs and love in my heart. Hope is actually all around me. Godly hope, I’m realising, relies on something much deeper than circumstances or outcomes, it relies on the unchanging character of God.

I thought I would be writing to you about trust this month because, well, I usually write about the things I’m working through in my own formation journey, and trust is at the top of the list. But as I began typing, I realised I’m actually writing about hope — perhaps the two are more intertwined than I thought.

Hope.

How can we have hope when it seems the world around us is fixated on destruction? How do we hold onto hope when the waiting is long? Can hope live alongside grief and disappointment? Where do I find a hope that endures?

Well, my friends, this is where we’re headed today. And I pray as we work through this together, we may just discover a hope in something stronger than a desired outcome or a longing fulfilled. A hope embedded in the very heart of the Father, in your own heart through His Spirit. A hope that lasts.

So, let’s dig in together…

Real, lasting hope rests in God’s character.

This truth is easy to write, but much harder to live out. I would love to say my hope is solely anchored in God’s promises, but if I’m really honest, I often attach it to things working out the way I imagine. Too often I tie my hope to outcomes, to life turning out the way I want and in the timeframe I think is best.

The trouble is that when my hope is based on my circumstances, it becomes incredibly fragile. Life can change in an instant and so much of it is completely out of my control. I can do all the right things, tick all the right boxes, say all the right prayers, and still face outcomes that look nothing like what I hope or prayed for. This is the reality of life in a broken world.

Sometimes things go our way. We experience miracles and answered prayers, and life works out just the way we envisioned, and that’s brilliant. I love when that happens, and we should keep praying and believing for it. But if my hope is tied to life going a certain way, it will fail me, because when circumstances change, my hope changes too.

But when my hope is tied to God, to His character and His promises, it doesn’t disappear in hard seasons. Hope is resilient when it is anchored in the One who sustains me. When we put our hope in God, it means we can still have hope even when we don’t have answers, because our hope isn’t rooted in outcomes, it’s rooted in the author of life.

Thomas Merton writes, “The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.”

God’s promise isn’t that we’ll avoid suffering or never face trouble. He doesn’t offer a life untouched by pain, but He does promise His presence in it. Jesus says, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). The Bible is full of God’s promises. He promises to be with you wherever you go (Joshua 1:9). He promises that when you walk through difficulty, he is with you (Isaiah 43:2). He promises to redeem what is broken (Isaiah 61:3). He promises to work things together for your good (Romans 8:28). He promises to renew your strength (Isaiah 40:31). I could go on and on.

The real hope we have isn’t that God will always remove us from our suffering — although sometimes He does — but that he will always redeem it. Somehow and someway, He will work all things together for our good. He will use every bit of our story for His glory. Even the parts that feel broken or unredeemable, He will restore. This is who He is.

There is so much mystery in this life, so much we don’t understand and may never fully understand. But hope reminds us we’re not alone in the mystery. Hope says, I’m walking with you in the mystery. I’m leading you through the valley of dry bones with a plan to breathe new life. I’m guiding you through the shadows of brokenness with the promise of redemption. I am with you always. You are deeply loved.

Henri Nouwen writes, “Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand in the gentle pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.”

So, what is your hope tied to? Is it tied to life looking a particular way, or to having all the answers? Or is it tied to the Giver of Life — the One whose very breath is in your lungs, who created the universe, who knows every part of you, and loves you unconditionally, more deeply than you could ever imagine? Perhaps the better question isn’t, what is your hope tied to, but who is your hope tied to?

I don’t know about you, but I want a hope that lasts, not one that changes with every shifting wind of circumstance. And as I put my hope in Him, I’m still praying for the deep desires of my heart. I’m still believing in faith for the family I know is in my future. I’m still actively participating in my own formation, knowing that I am forever on a journey to become more like Jesus. I’m still feeling all the emotions that surface in this life, in all my humanity.

My longings are still deep. My waiting still feels long. But my God? My God is faithful, unchanging, and relentless in his pursuit of my wholeness. His love weaves a hope that lasts in my heart, one not fixated on outcomes or circumstances, but secured by my Saviour. A hope that lasts.

Hope can rise in the most unlikely moments.

*I do mention pregnancy loss in this section

Two weeks ago, I walked into Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for an emergency scan after experiencing complications with my pregnancy. I had suffered a missed miscarriage just seven months prior, so I was overwhelmed with worry. I wanted to believe this time would be different, but the complications were similar and my hope felt tattered and worn out. I was weary. It’s been such a long road.

Sadly, the scan confirmed my fears, another loss. Another baby I won’t get to hold, to grow within me, to bring into this world. Another journey of grief ahead.

Because of additional concerns in my scan, my doctor recommended surgery. I knew the steps that would follow as I’d walked this same painful path just seven months before. The surgery was “uneventful,” according to the discharge paperwork. Not exactly the word I would’ve chosen for this kind of procedure, but I was grateful to be heading home.

That night, I found myself unable to sleep. Wide awake in the quiet, still hours of the night. Around 2am, I put my headphones on and began listening to some soft instrumental music, a balm for my anxious thoughts. Moved by the sounds and wading in the waters of grief, I stared up at the ceiling as tears streamed down my cheeks, puddling on my pillow case. I had no words to shape into prayers, just tears releasing the grief and sadness, the disappointment.

The day before my surgery, a dear friend prayed with me and said she sensed God wanted to pour his love over me again, the way he did when I first turned to him. She asked if I remembered the moment I first encountered his love. I knew the exact day: May 10th 2013. I was in grad school in London and on a run in Wimbledon Park. In a pretty low place, I cried out to God for the first time after nearly a decade of rejecting him. I was desperate. I was lost. Searching for purpose. And God met me there by his Spirit and poured His love into me. I remember every second of that moment as it sparked a journey of faith that changed the whole trajectory of my life.

At 2am, this memory came rushing back.

I cried out again. Lord, I need you to fill me with your love like you did that day. I’m lost in this grief. I need to know you’re here.

Suddenly I felt this soft wind whip through my room, almost like a gentle shaking around me. It was as if angels were standing guard all around me, this remarkable sense of safety and security swept in. I opened my eyes wide in the dark bedroom and felt this incredible presence of love.

I began to see a vision of large oak trees rising along the edges of my room, growing with a cascade of leaves forming this beautiful canopy over my bed like a divine covering. I felt God’s protection and peace over me, over my family. Tears poured out as waves of healing washed over me. Every tear felt treasured. I was safe, loved and secure. I could feel healing pulsing through my heart, this gentle warmth which didn’t dismiss the pain but held it, carried it.

I began to see myself lying down on the grass of a forest looking up as light broke through a canopy of leaves above me. Each trickle of light striking a match as love moved through my body, wave after wave. An indescribable peace enveloped me. My hand gently brushed the top of a cool, still river.

Rest in me. You are safe. You are deeply loved.

The words of Psalm 23 began to tumble from my lips in soft whispers: “The Lord is my shepherd… He makes me lie down in green pastures… He leads me beside quiet waters… He restores my soul.”

Completely at peace, I felt held in my grief. But most importantly, I felt hope. A hope unlike anything the world could offer me. A hope rooted in love.

It was all going to be okay. I was going to be okay.

I sat for what felt like hours in this space of prayer and peace. You see, God was bringing me to a place of rest in Him, in his love. He was healing me, yes, but more importantly He was reminding me who He is and who I am. Quite literally I was laying at His feet, letting His angels become trees of covering, as He gave me rest and restored my soul.

He was with me.

He was with me in this painful place. The God of the universe, the Creator of every living thing, the Creator of me. So full of love and compassion. So full of hope. He was here. Right here, in my deepest pain, in my greatest longing, in the promise yet to be fulfilled, in the waiting. He was here.

And He wasn’t asking anything of me.

Only offering me His love and His peace. Allowing me to feel all that I was feeling — the anguish of loss, the depth of grief, the sting of disappointment, the sadness of heartbreak — in His compassion, He felt it alongside me. He held me through it, and began to heal me as I surrendered in honest tears all that I was carrying.

As I wept, He wept.

When people ask me why I believe, it’s these moments that I can’t quite articulate. I can’t explain the way an experience like this builds my faith. I can’t dismiss God’s tangible presence, a manifestation of His healing, the very real presence of His love and His peace — nothing in this life is more real than this.

You see, I was being held by my Heavenly Father — the One who sees me, who knows me, who comes close to my suffering, who doesn’t turn away. My God, who is aware of the depth of pain and the very real ache for redemption. The God of Sarah, the God of Hannah, the God of Elizabeth and Mary.

The One who holds my story, who holds my family’s story. The One who has walked every baby I’ve not been able to hold in this world into his Heavenly gates.

When I called to Him, He answered.

This is the God I worship.

This is the God who restores within me a lasting hope. The One who leaves no story unfinished, who walks with us in the pain with the promise of redemption. It’s His hope that carries us through heartache and brokenness; it’s not a fragile hope the world gives, one fixated on our circumstances. It is a hope that is unending and unshakable because He already holds the victory.

And my reality? Well, at the moment, my womb is still empty. My grief is still deep. My heart is still aching. And there is plenty of uncertainty ahead. My longing to be a mother to living children is still present and real and raw. And yet as I type these words, tears fall on my keyboard, because even in this midst of all of this, I have hope. And Jesus walks with me through it all.

There is so much promise yet to be fulfilled in my life. This is not the end of the story. There is so much God will redeem that I don’t have vision for yet. And there is likely still more heartbreak ahead because this world is full of it, but I know He is near. And He will never leave or forsake me. And I know that nothing in this life is wasted. None of my story will be left unfinished or unredeemed. I can trust Him with my future. I can trust Him with my family. I can trust Him in hope knowing he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

You see, no matter what I face, God is still God.

He is who He says He is.

He hasn’t changed.

He is for me and His love for me is endless.

And the same is true for you.

I don’t know what January has looked like for you. I don’t know what season you are walking through, but I know that God is a God that comes close. I know that His plan for redemption is already unfolding in your life in remarkable ways — in the seen and unseen moments. I know that God is still God. The King is still the King. And it’s His unshakable hope that carries us through every season.

The Poetry Nook

Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

There’s a Book on That

One thing I know for certain, everything I read by Henri Nouwen awakens something within me that longs for more of God. His writing is deeply honest and profoundly relatable, and through it I sense the light of Christ shining into the darkness of our world. Turn My Mourning into Dancing has been an especially timely read for me right now. It has helped me make space to recognize God’s presence and movement in the midst of my suffering, anchoring my hope more firmly in him. But it’s also not a book meant only for seasons of grief, it’s profoundly inspiring no matter what season you’re in, inviting us into deeper trust, lasting hope, and attentiveness to God’s faithful work in every part of life.

As always, here’s a taster:

“Hope does not mean that we will avoid or be able to ignore suffering, of course. Indeed, hope born of faith becomes matured and purified through difficulty. The surprise we experience in hope, then, is not, unexpectedly, things turn out better than expected. For even when they do not, we can still live with a keen hope. The basis of our hope has to do with the One who is stronger than life and suffering. Faith opens us up to God’s sustaining, healing presence. A person in difficulty can trust because of a belief that something else is possible. To trust is to allow for hope.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• The Sacredness of an Attentive Gaze: During Advent, we reflect on darkness in the world and within ourselves, waiting with hope for Christ’s light. In this waiting, attentiveness becomes a spiritual discipline, tuning our hearts to God.

• The Danger of a Comfortable Gospel: The way of Jesus is narrow and marked by humility, repentance, surrender, and truth, not comfort or compromise. Where are we domesticating God’s Word to fit our own agenda or desires?

• Antidote to an Anxious Age: Again and again, Scripture speaks of dwelling in God. But what does it mean to truly dwell in him, and could this practice help shape me into a non-anxious presence in an anxious age?

• A Prayer for Indifference: Am I moving at a pace that allows me to pay attention to the presence of God? A prayer for indifference helps me pause as I seek to align my life with God’s will.

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

December is here. Christmas lights are glistening all over London. Carol services are in full swing. This is easily one of my favourite seasons in this city. Every storefront is decorated with twinkling lights, draping of colour and glitter, baubles glistening, Christmas trees around every corner – the festive season is all around me.

And although the decorations and parties and carols and glistening lights are lovely, we can easily miss the real point of the season. We are currently in the second week of Advent. In the Christian calendar, Advent covers the four weeks leading up to Christmas day and it’s known as a sombre season of waiting. During this time, we’re invited to reflect on the darkness in the world (and in ourselves) and wait for the light to come. While we look to celebrate the birth of Christ, quite literally light breaking into the darkness, we also reflect honestly on our own experiences of darkness. The places that feel unredeemed. Unresolved. Unfinished. And we wait with expectancy for Jesus’ promised return in glory when everything is made new. This is truly what the season is all about.

This year during Advent, I’ve been focusing on attentiveness. Through the practice of attentiveness, which I’m coming to realise is more of a spiritual discipline than I thought, I’m becoming more aware of God’s presence all around me. You see, in a culture that commands our attention through distraction and materialism, in an age of digital technology addiction and instant gratification, attentiveness is deeply countercultural. A friend recently said, time is no longer our most valuable asset, attention is.

Attentiveness asks you to slow down, to be present to the moment, to pay attention. And as I’m in the midst of my own season of waiting, perhaps there’s nothing more important than this because it’s through attentiveness, an alertness to God, that we learn to wait well and focus our hearts on Him. As Mary Oliver says, “Attention is the beginning of devotion”.

So, today I bring you into my Advent practice of attentiveness in hopes it may encourage you on your own journey of faith, and perhaps in the process, you’ll find yourself eager to pay attention, to practice the presence of God in all the ordinary moments of this season.

Let’s dig in together…

First, a moment of attentiveness that has breathed new life into me in this season.

Last week, I went for a walk in the park outside my flat before work. The grass was stiff and crunchy with frost, crystalized edges separating each blade and giving off just the slightest sparkle as the light hit.

As I turned the corner to walk along the river, I caught the sun’s rays shifting through the barren branches of the old London Plane Trees which line the park’s waterfront path along the Thames. The trunks of the trees are super thick with rough flaky bark and big burls which make the tree appear older, ancient even. These specific trees were likely planted when the park was created in 1901, so for 124 years they’ve remained rooted.

I stared deeply at the light breaking through the trees for a while, wondering about all they’ve witnessed, all they’ve lived through. These trees stood through two world wars and countless cultural moments, living through all seasons, continually budding when the time came, full of lush green leaves in the peak of summer, and then letting go of them gently every autumn, bracing for another long winter – perhaps ‘bracing’ isn’t even the right word because if I’m honest, the trees don’t seem much bothered by the cold or the lack of leaves or the winter ahead. Strong and sturdy, unafraid because their roots go deep, memories of so many seasons come and gone dwelling in each ring that makes up its trunk.

I walk this path nearly every day, but as Advent has started I’ve been practicing attentiveness in the ordinary moments of my life, so on this day, I found myself captivated by the sun shining through the barren branches of these trees. I looked around the park, at the frosty grass, the few plants still growing, resistant to the cold, the birds singing through the winter chill – you see it all keeps moving. The seasons don’t frighten nature. The winter doesn’t bring gloom. It is simply part of it all. The cyclical nature of the world carrying on.

How fixated I get on my own experiences in the different seasons of my life. How tired I get of waiting for something to shift. How easily I get swept up in what’s hard and forget there is so much good always moving in and through this life. Even in the winter seasons.

There was something in this realisation of the steadfast, faithful reality of these trees that breathed fresh breath in my lungs. Like this deep assurance which could only come from the Creator of the trees – the Creator of me – that it’s actually all going to be okay.

All the little things I am worried about. All the unanswered prayer or the unfinished bits of my story. All the uncertainty in the world. I don’t have to hold it all. I can trust that this incredibly beautiful world was designed by an incredibly loving God. A God who is sovereign in all seasons, in all ages, and for all time. And even though this world is broken, I worship a God whose plan to redeem every fragment of light fractured by darkness is already unfolding.

Like the trees, I, too, can remember how I’ve lived through hard seasons many times before. I can remember the God who was faithful then and is faithful now.

This moment of being was the very best gift I could ask for this Christmas season. Suddenly, God was so powerfully close and it was all in a single moment of my attention. A twenty minute walk in the park which taught me more about life than perhaps any other moment this year. I slowed down. I listened to the God who whispers through the trees and the sunlight and the cool of a frosted winter morning. And He told me He was holding it all together.

What is holding your attention today? What could God be inviting you to look deeply at? What might He want to say to you through the sun breaking in or the winter frost or the faithful trees? This is the invitation of Advent. To pay attention to a God who is all around us, who is always speaking, and who longs for us to slow down enough to listen.

Four truths about waiting that God has been shaping in me during this Advent season.

As I navigate my own season of waiting, I’ve been asking God to help me remain open to the work he is doing within me along the way. So often, I fix my attention on the answers to prayer I long to see, rather than on the quiet formation taking place within me through the Spirit’s slow work as the promise unfolds.

Here are four truths which have been grounding me in my own waiting:

1. Waiting is rooted in God’s promises.

Waiting starts with a promise. You cannot wait for what God has not spoken, started, or seeded. We don’t wait for God to begin something, we wait because He already has. Or as Henri Nouwen says,

“Waiting is never a movement from nothing to something; it is always a movement from something to something more.”

Scripture is full of God’s promises to his people – his promises to you and to me. He promises you He will never leave you, love you eternally, forgive you, save and redeem you, give you peace, provide for you, strengthen you, protect you, guide your steps, give you his Spirit, answer when you call, work all things for your good. I could go on and on. But the ultimate promise he gives you is eternal life through Jesus.

Yet, often I find my waiting is rooted in my wishes rather than God’s promises. My prayers so quickly become rattling off a wish list of longings and desires, some really good things, but still things I want to control. My heart so easily gets fixated on a desired outcome that there is little room left for God’s will.

You see, if I’m really honest, there is a piece of me that wants the answered prayer more than the God who holds my story. Left unchecked, my wishes can quickly crowd out my worship. And here’s the reality, wishes are not wrong in and of themselves, many of our deep desires are good, but even good things can so easily become ultimate things – idols we cling to more tightly than God’s presence.

Do you know God’s promises to you? Is your waiting rooted in His promises? Because waiting without promise leads to despair. But waiting rooted in God’s promises leads us back to the Promise-Keeper.

2. Waiting is not passive, it is active.

It can be really easy to think that waiting is passive, but the invitation in our waiting is to be attentive to God’s coming. Psalm 130 is a brilliant Psalm on waiting. Not only does the psalmist express the raw reality of what it’s like waiting for God, but there is an active trust woven into the work of waiting.

The psalmist writes, “Out of the depths, I call to you Lord! Lord, listen to my voice, let your ears be attentive to my cry for help.” This is a prayer out of the depths of despair. This is not someone just casually waiting for God to move, this is someone who is desperate, who is worn down in the waiting, who is begging for God to move.

The psalmist says, “I wait for the Lord, more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” The repetition here is not for fun, it’s purposeful. For oral literature this was hugely important. The phrase is repeated for emphasis. It’s as if the psalmist is saying, “This is how we wait on the Lord, like watchmen wait for the morning… do you get it? This is really important — like watchmen wait for the morning.”

In ancient cultures, watchmen were the first line of defense, they were attentive through the night and into dawn, and they waited with alertness. The watchmen waited for the morning not only because it would be the end of their shift, but because they had spent all night in pure darkness and the morning would finally bring light. They would see the very first sign of light breaking in unlike anyone else.

This feels deeply symbolic for how we wait for God. We wait for light to break into the darkness. We see so much darkness in this world at the moment, it’s overwhelming, and yet we are called to look for the light, to help usher in the light, to be alert to God breaking in. Our waiting is then active and attentive to God. In the darkness we wait because light is coming.

When we wait actively, our waiting cultivates an awareness of God’s presence in the ordinary moments of our life; we see God breaking in. We don’t have the fullness of it just yet, but the promise keeps us rooted, and we stay alert to His coming, active in our waiting.

3. Waiting is transformed by prayer and worship.

Waiting can so easily collapse into striving for control, but worship frees us from the illusion of control and prayer softens our grip. Worship and prayer cultivate hope and hope keeps us open, not to direct or control the outcome, but to perceive God moving in His way and His time.

It’s in prayer and worship where the heart of God settles into my own heart and I’m reminded who and what I am really waiting for.

One of the best examples of waiting well is revealed through the story of Simeon. Simeon appears in Scripture in the early years of Jesus’ life. He is given a promise by God that he would not die before seeing the Messiah, and he waits his whole life for this promise to be fulfilled. Some scholars estimate Simeon was more than a hundred years old when Jesus was born.

When Jesus is brought into the temple as a baby, the Holy Spirit leads Simeon into that same temple, at the right time and in the right place, to encounter the Messiah. When he sees Jesus, though he’s only a baby, Simeon recognizes him immediately, and his response is worship. He begins to sing a prophetic poem back to God, saying:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all people —
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:29–30)

Simeon received a personal promise that he would meet the Messiah before his life was through, and he also carried the ancient promise that the Messiah would come to redeem the world. Yet he does not live to see the fullness of that second promise fulfilled in his lifetime: the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, and Jesus’ promised return in glory. And still, Simeon sings to God with total trust.

His worship reshaped his relationship with waiting. In prayer and praise, his heart had been formed to trust the character of God more than the timing of God. He didn’t need every chapter to unfold, only the certainty of the one writing the story. Simeon could die in peace not because every promise had been fulfilled, but because he had met the Promise-Keeper Himself. And in that encounter, he knew: God will do what He says He will do.

4. Waiting well is only possible through the Spirit in us and the community around us.

It is the Holy Spirit within us that allows us to wait in hope. The Spirit reveals, strengthens, and brings peace even when the story isn’t finished yet. Staying in step with the Spirit keeps us aligned with God’s will and we begin to handle time and desire differently when we walk with him. The Spirit empowers us to remain present long enough to be transformed in the waiting space.

It is also through the community around us that we learn to wait with hope. Although we may be waiting on different personal promises, we all share the same ache – the very real global ache for redemption. Paul reminds us in Romans 8 that “all creation waits and groans,” participating in this cosmic longing for the restoration God has promised. We need others who are watching for the light.

Waiting is sustained when it is shared.

We are strengthened when we look for God’s subtle movement in our lives together. God’s plan for community in the waiting is a loving one where we wait together and our voices echo His promises, our hearts steady one another, our eyes lift each other’s gaze to Jesus, where we remind one another that God has not forgotten us.

We have an unshakable hope which steadies us in the waiting, a hope birthed at Christmas and a promise seeded within us at the cross. Jesus was born into this world and died for our sins, he defeated darkness for ever, defeated death for us all, he ascended to Heaven to the right hand of the Father and one day, one day He will return in glory and all will be restored. Every longing will finally and fully be met in Him. All will be made new.

Pastor Rich Villodas says, “the good news of Advent is not that we are faithful in waiting (often we are not) but that God is faithful in His coming.”

So this Advent season, while we wait, we don’t wait passively, but we are actively attentive and alert to God’s coming. We are looking for His light breaking into the darkness. This is the invitation we are all invited to live out in our own waiting. We don’t have the fullness of God’s redemption just yet, but we can be filled with a hope that trusts God deeply, even if things unfolds differently than we imagined, or beyond what we see in this lifetime.

And I don’t say that lightly. I know the pain of unanswered prayer and waiting.

But I also know this: God has met me in the waiting and taught me to be alert and attentive while the promise is still unfolding. The Holy Spirit within me has taught me to worship as if the promise was fulfilled. Prayer and praise have been my lifeline, not to force God’s hand, but to stay attune to Him while He forms me from the inside out. To let His light into all my own areas of darkness, into my waiting.

And in that place deep within me where the Spirit dwells, hope springs forth, and like those faithful trees, I can stand tall through all seasons knowing God will do what He says He will do. Because though the story is not finished, the promises are still true.

So, I wait. I wait like a watchman. We wait together. I pray. I praise. I pause. And I look for the Light to break into the darkness, and in each sliver of Light, hope takes more ground until one day, Jesus restores it all.

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The Poetry Nook

Waiting for God

Hope.

I think that’s what I feel deep in my body as I watch the sun rise.

Hope that a new day has dawned.

Hope that there’s a good God with a good plan

to redeem and restore light to what darkness has fractured.

Hope that one day,

Light will peel back the darkness forever.

The earth will be made new.

Suffering will be no more.

And every longing will be fully and finally met in the One who created it all.

And we will walk with God in the cool of the early morning like in the Garden before the fall.

It’s hope that dances along the edges of a sunrise for me.

And it’s hope that carries me through the waiting.

There’s a Book on That

Well, it’s back-to-back Rich Villodas book recommendations, but this one was just so fitting! I have only just started this Advent devotional, but it is truly life-giving. I’m so grateful for Pastor Rich’s voice and writing. He is a truth-teller and culture shaper, and it’s so evident in everything I read of him that he cares deeply about formation in the way of Jesus. This devotional is a real treasure. If you’ve not picked up an Advent book yet this season, there’s still time! Can I encourage you to give it a go?

As always, here’s a taster:

“This Advent season, let’s remember the importance of waiting. Though we can’t always see him, God is indeed at work in our lives. In the waiting, he does some of his deepest work inside us. To wait on God is not a passive act; it’s actually a means of positioning ourselves to receive from him in the moment of difficulty. Eugene Peterson wrote, ‘Waiting in prayer is a disciplined refusal to act before God acts.’ And God acts within us as we wait on him.”

Desert Mothers Podcast Update

Karley was here in London for a week in November and we managed to record five episodes! We also had some really rich prayer time and sensed God expand our vision for Desert Mothers, which was truly a gift. Thank you for those who have prayed for us. We still hope to release the first season in early 2026, so stay tuned. We have five more episodes to record, quite a bit of editing to do, and then we’ll be good to go. Please continue to pray for financial provision and God’s wisdom and peace over the process! You’ll be first to know when we have an official release date.

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• The Danger of a Comfortable Gospel: The way of Jesus is narrow and marked by humility, repentance, surrender, and truth, not comfort or compromise. Where are we domesticating God’s Word to fit our own agenda or desires?

• Antidote to an Anxious Age: Again and again, Scripture speaks of dwelling in God. But what does it mean to truly dwell in him, and could this practice help shape me into a non-anxious presence in an anxious age?

• A Prayer for Indifference: Am I moving at a pace that allows me to pay attention to the presence of God? A prayer for indifference helps me pause as I seek to align my life with God’s will.

• Should I stay or should I go?: Discernment is key for decision making, but we can never be 100% certain we’re making the right call. At some point, we just have to make the decision and trust God with the outcome.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Autumn is folding into my days here in London. My walks in the park are filled with the sights and sounds of the season, bursts of orange, yellow, and red set against the lingering green of the grass, the familiar crunch of leaves beneath my feet, the wind swirling them around passing bikes along the river path. Although the sun seems to be hanging around, the air carries cold on its edges. My apartment currently smells of butternut squash and sage soup simmering on the stove. My closet has traded summer’s tank tops for warm, cozy knits. I must say I really do love this season.

I’m just beginning to peak my head out of a very full few months and I’m reflecting a lot on my pace lately because I’ve found myself getting caught up in the hustle culture I long to resist. The other day I was walking briskly to the store to pick up some groceries, checking my watch to see how quickly I could get this uneventful errand done, and for a split second, I shifted my gaze upward only to be swept up in the sun catching the autumn leaves in front of me in the most delicate way. I was suspended for a moment in the beauty of this season.

I turned to my left to cross the street and a sign I’ve probably walked past a hundred times suddenly seemed illuminated — WATCH YOUR SPEED. Immediately I sensed God nudge me around my pace. It seems there are signs all around me to slow down and I’m trying to listen this time, but often my heart is divided, tempted to give into a hurried life or the world’s notions of productivity and success.

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself slipping into doing things my own way, in my own time, according to my own agenda, but God moves differently. He moves slower, wiser, and always according to His will. And boy am I impatient! But in order to live out His truth with the boldness I feel called to, I need to sync up with His pace and His peace. Because He’s in all the ordinary moments of my day, reaching out from the graffiti under the bridge, or through the eyes of a stranger on the tube, or in the playfulness of the neighbourhood cat who leaps onto my lap every time I stop to pet her. He’s in the changing leaves, and the autumn sun, and the not yet finished soup on the stove. You see He’s all around me but I’m just too busy to notice.

So, I’m slowing down and taking stock. And in the process, I’m realising there’s quite a bit I need to wake up to, quite a bit I need to let go of, and quite a bit I need to recalibrate to God’s truth. It’s so easy to forget how divided my own heart is at times. So, this month we’re going in deep, diving into divided hearts and realignment with God’s truth as we cling to hope in a world fixated on chaos.

My hope is that somehow my words both encourage and challenge you, opening you to the love, mercy, and unending grace of God while also encouraging you to look closely at your own formation. I hope you find truth here that helps you recalibrate your own heart. Because there’s only one source for truth, Jesus, and he’s already given us the recipe for a good life. The trouble is, there’s wars raging both around us and within us, division at every turn, yet we’re invited to remain centered on God so we can live a little more like Jesus in this world.

So, let’s dig in together…

First, a story of God’s presence and love among the displaced, and a reflection on a deeper longing I’m wrestling with.

Earlier this month I had the privilege of leading a group of women through a prayer exercise on tuning into God’s voice for identity and calling. The event was run by WELL, an organization very close to my heart whom I love and support. I’ve run this workshop many times, but this time was particularly special for me. It was a 7am Zoom call to Malaysia and I would be speaking to a group of women who were Christian refugees, forced to flee persecution and violence in war torn countries and seeking refuge in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was the first time I would speak alongside an interpreter to a group of women thousands of miles away from me, and I was nervous. I wanted deeply for them to encounter God, to hear His voice, to know how loved and chosen and called they are.

The more I get to create space for people to hear God’s voice, the more I see His kindness and faithfulness. Because He shows up every time. I spoke to this beautiful group of women about identity, God’s love, and His good plans for them; I spoke about their calling to reveal Jesus’ love to a broken world aching for peace and hope — and don’t they know the brokenness of the world deeply, it’s torn them from their homes, ravaged their lives, and stripped away the familiar. Yet through it all, they’ve remained faithful to Jesus amid unimaginable hardship.

And God showed up powerfully. He moved like He always does. Through the words He put on my heart, through the space we cultivated to make room for His presence, through the openness and vulnerability of the women in the room. He poured out His love through His Spirit. He spoke hope. He spoke freedom. He spoke truth.

At the end of the workshop, the women were invited to share their experiences. One woman quickly made her way to the front. She spoke of encountering the Holy Spirit during the exercise, of seeing Jesus, who held her hands tenderly and told her everything was going to be okay. She described feeling His love and peace wash over her. Another woman shared vulnerably about what God revealed to her. Tears welled in my eyes and I thought my heart would simply burst.

I will never get tired of hearing stories of people experiencing the love of God.

These women, refugees fleeing violence and persecution, reflecting the image of God, shared tenderly about His goodness and mercy in the face of a reality many of us will never experience. The facilitator mentioned that this was the first time this group of women opened up so vulnerably since seeking refuge.

I will never stop being amazed by how good God is.

I long to live a life where I see His image in every person I encounter, where I can make space in my heart for the stranger, for the lost, for the broken-hearted, where I can love like Jesus in a way that’s both countercultural and deeply divine.

Yet, I can only live in this truth when I center my heart on God — when I remember that it’s His Spirit within me that calls me beloved and invites me to see others the same way. It’s there that my heart aligns with His, transforming me and shaping me into a person of love.

It’s also there that I feel a deep ache for humanity, an ache for those who feel far from God. An ache over the news of more refugees being displaced all over the world. An ache over the words of hatred and disgust that permeate our news and conversations. An ache over the hatred spewed from the lips of those who claim to serve Jesus but seem to miss his most pressing command — love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself.

My heart aches at the reality that we are really good at justifying our beliefs with words, but really bad at actually loving people like Jesus.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34–35 NIV).

By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.

I’ve been asking myself this question lately: Is it obvious by the way I live my life that I’m a follower of Jesus? If He listened in on my conversations, would He recognize Himself in me? Maybe on my good days. But if I’m really honest, I have a long way to go in my own formation to become more like Him. I’m continually missing the mark. How do I become a person of love? Because that is what I’m called to. That is what you’re called to. Yet so often, my heart can become hardened, caught up in my own desires, my own agenda, my own fears, and my own comfort. I wonder if, at times, it’s the same for you.

God’s Kingdom, revealed and made known through Jesus, is one of humility and grace, but most importantly, it is one of unending, unmerited love. Love is not simply a characteristic of God, it is who He is. God is love.

How do I live in and out of this kind of love? It begins with honesty, admitting where I’ve gotten things wrong and learning to follow Jesus in every moment, not just when it’s comfortable or convenient. It means facing the fears that so often cripple me — the ones stirred up by my own insecurities, by culture, by politicians, by the media, I could go on. Fear of the future. Fear of losing control. Fear of letting go of the things I long to hold too tightly to. There are so many fears woven into our experience, aren’t there?

At the root of so much division around us is fear — fear of the other, fear of what’s next, fear of losing our comfort or convenience. It’s layered, but ultimately it comes down to placing our trust in the things of this world instead of the Creator of all things.

The 24-hour news cycle has made billions off our fear because the more afraid we are, the more locked in we become, and the more we’re formed by the ways of the world instead of Jesus. Again and again, we find ourselves trusting the idols of this age instead of our Heavenly Father, who promises to provide for our every need. We put our faith in flawed people or politicians, sacrificing our values and beliefs at the altar of the gods of culture instead of walking the narrow path of Jesus, trusting fully in a God who is sovereign over all.

Where in your life is fear shaping your opinions or views? If you look closely and honestly beneath the surface, I bet you will find yourself tripping over the tangled roots of fear.

And here’s the tricky thing: fear and love sit in opposition to each other. When we’re weighed down by fear, it becomes impossible to love the way Jesus calls us to. Scripture says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18, ESV). The implication is clear: fear and love cannot coexist. Love drives out fear. So when our lives are rooted in fear, we simply cannot love the way we’re truly called to.

In fact, Scripture takes this a step further a few verses later. 1 John 4:20 says, “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

Our capacity to love one another reveals our capacity to love God, or to say in another way, the extent to which you love your neighbour is the extent to which you love God. Oof. That one hits me hard.

Okay okay, I know this is deep, but there is still so much hope in this. The hope is in Jesus. It’s in a deep surrender to Him (whose perfect love casts out all fear) that we discover a way forward that roots us once again in His truth.

Through a growing intimacy with God — in all His mercy and grace and love — He begins to reveal the deeper work required, gently creating space for repentance and realignment with His truth. A truth that says every single person is created in the image of God and deeply loved by Him. A truth that reaffirms each person as an image bearer carrying a uniqueness of God within them.

A truth that reveals a reality that when we limit ourselves to relationships with those who think, look, or live as we do, we limit our understanding of who God is. In the diversity of God’s people, in different stories, cultures, and perspectives, we actually encounter more of God. Community with those who are different from us doesn’t just challenge us, it expands our vision, allowing us to glimpse a fuller, richer understanding of the God who made us all in His image.

Here are a few helpful questions to ask: Where am I drawing lines that keep my community comfortable and familiar? Have I built an echo chamber around me that only reinforces what I already believe, keeping me from the broader truth God might reveal through others? Where is my own heart hardened or divided?

My prayer is that you don’t read this as a political statement because it isn’t. Nor is it a message of condemnation. My prayer is that as you read, something stirs within you, a burning desire to live fully into the only truth that can actually transform you: the truth found in Jesus.

Living out the Gospel of Jesus will disrupt your comfort and convenience, but it will also usher in a profound and radical transformation of your heart and mind.

Jesus continually confronted the hardened hearts of the Pharisees, revealing how they used Scripture to suit their desires. We, too, can fall into this pattern — professing the gospel we believe, yet failing to live the gospel we proclaim, quietly giving our trust not to God, but to the idols of this age.

Throughout the gospels, we read often of Jesus rebuking the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a group of devout Jewish teachers in Jesus’ time who were meant to help people live faithfully according to God’s law, but often became proud of their own righteousness and used religion to justify themselves. Heavily soaked in religion and tradition, they became less and less focused on centering their hearts on God and more and more concerned with power and status.

The Pharisees focused so much on religious rules that they lost sight of mercy, justice, and humility, and Jesus challenged them often for using Scripture to defend their own authority and status rather than to reveal God’s heart. Their interpretations of Scripture served their control, not God’s truth, and the result of this was hardened hearts and pride.

One of my colleagues, Revd Dr Alex Irving, spoke at a recent residential weekend for our students and he posed a question I’ve been sitting with all month. He asked, “Where are we domesticating the Word of God to suit our purposes?” While reflecting on Luke 16, he says,

“The warning is toward a hardening of hearts. A becoming so enwrapped and warm in our comfortable rationalizations that we become inured to truth. The same hardness of heart that was resident in the Pharisees is resident in us. As Jeremiah puts it ‘the human heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it?’ Where are we fudging the figures? Where are we finding the loopholes? Where are we domesticating the Word of God and making it our pet to suit our purposes? Because we can be sure, the Word of God is not given over to us as a possession to do what we want with it. The Word of God is God himself in self-revealing movement. And God will not be an idol.”

I don’t know about you, but I felt a deep stirring in my heart over these words. What areas in my life am I serving the idols of this age instead of the Creator and King of the Universe? Where am I domesticating the Word of God to suit my desires and comforts? Where do I see my heart hardened? Because when we invoke God’s authority to sanctify our own agenda or manipulate God’s word to validate greed or oppression, this is actually the deepest form of blasphemy.

And here’s the hard truth, we are all susceptible to this.

I recognize it in my own life, in the tension between my desires and God’s heart for humanity, and I see it mirrored everywhere in the culture around me. Christians who highlight the parts of Scripture that affirm their views while ignoring the parts that challenge pride, comfort, or prejudice. It’s actually quite easy to pull out a verse of Scripture to rationalize a behaviour or belief that stands in stark opposition to the teachings of Jesus. But the reality is, the Gospel is not a tool to advance our agendas, it’s a reality that actually dismantles them.

Jesus’s teaching was intended to challenge us, to stretch us, to encourage us to confront our allegiances to the counterfeit gods of our age. His teaching is provocative and radical, so much so the Pharisees killed him for it.

Jesus tells us, “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13–14, NIV). The way of Jesus, which is the way of life, is narrow. It requires humility, repentance, and surrender, and while we live in this world we will find ourselves torn often, needing again and again to be filled afresh with the Spirit so we can be recalibrated to the truth of the Gospel.

When we domesticate God’s Word, we try to widen the narrow path, making faith more comfortable and convenient, justifying our own beliefs and disordered desires. But in doing so, we become trapped in culture wars and shaped by self-serving principles that uphold the very idols Jesus came to tear down.

Do you see this in your life? Have you become so immersed in the 24-hour news cycle that you’re blind to how it’s forming you? Have you placed such allegiance in a political party or leader that you’ve forgotten only Jesus has the power to save? Are you trusting in the idols of money, politics, or comfort instead of your Heavenly Father, who calls you beloved?

In the Gospel, we are called to be peacemakers, to be people of love, witnesses to Jesus, allowing the Kingdom of God to break into the chaos of this world through the way we love people. But the path is narrow because it requires a death to self. Following Jesus means surrendering my desire to be right. It means letting go of control and trusting in God fully. It means choosing forgiveness and gentleness when I would rather be resentful. It means walking in humility when pride is easier, it means living generously when I’d rather live in comfort.

Death to self isn’t a one-time moment; it’s a daily posture of surrender so I can live more like Jesus, who calls me to love my enemies, welcome the stranger to my table, and see each person as an image bearer of God. It is not a comfortable Gospel. It’s certainly not easy. And it is absolutely countercultural.

Yet it is the way to life.

Jesus calls me to love in a way I am only capable of through the power of God’s Spirit living within me. This is the narrow path, and as Jesus says, “only a few find it.”

You see, God is after our hearts. He’s not going to settle for anything less. The most dangerous prayer you can pray is: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23–24). Have you prayed this prayer lately? Each time I do, I am humbly aware of just how far I have to go, but also full of gratitude for a God who meets me exactly where I am and shows me to the way of grace.

God is rich in mercy and grace and compassion, and He is recklessly pursuing you, desiring for you to experience the wholeness that only He can bring, so you can love Him fully, love yourself honestly, and love your neighbour generously. This is the life we’re called to as Christians — a life that we can model to the world as witnesses to the truth. It is incredibly hard, impossible on our own, but luckily we don’t do it on our own, we do it alongside a God who comes close to us, who is quick to forgive, and eager to walk us on the path of righteousness.

We’re living in a time when people are hungry for truth and desperate for hope. And as followers of Jesus, we hold both. What we need most are Christians who stand in the gap and love people well, not those who pick and choose which values of Jesus to live by when it’s convenient. People have had enough of the façade. We’ve seen enough leaders walk away from truth, enough hypocrites and deceit, enough abuse scandals and cover-ups to last a lifetime.

It’s time for a church to rise that is recklessly pursuing God and wholeheartedly loving people into the Kingdom. A church marked by humility and mercy. A church rooted in Scripture and living out God’s Word in both principle and practice, walking the narrow way of Jesus.

This is how revival turns from a trickle to a rushing river, not through hype or noise, but through hearts rightly ordered around the One who calls us beloved. This is the life I’m trying to live out. It takes courage and boldness, but more importantly it takes surrender and trust, knowing that the God who does a deep transformative work in me is more loving and more gracious than I could ever imagine, endlessly forgiving me for my transgressions and relentlessly pursuing my wholeness.

There’s a deeper life we’re all invited into, one that will heal divisions, build bridges, and unify hearts. It’s a narrow path but it’s a good one and it leads to a life rooted in love.

The Poetry Nook

The following is a spoken word poem by which has been breathing inspiration into me since I heard it over the summer. I hope it blesses you as it has me.

CLICK HERE to listen to the poem — I highly recommend listening rather than simply reading it below.

Oh Lord, we have heard you speaking
from the coastal towns to neighbourhood estates,
from city centers to ancient cathedrals.

You’ve reached into the hearts of your people,
depleted and despairing.

You have lifted our heads above the mire,
resurrecting the fire growing cold.
We remember the words of old.

Jeremiah spoke of gardens growing in exile
and Joel prophesied a day when the young
would awake to the reason they were made.

We’ve seen it.
A wave not of water but of wonder.
A quiet revival.
A generation saying yes to the only one
who has never and will never lie to them.
The God who comes beside them,
who stands in the fire with them.

We bear witness to the hunger.
A sound not of superficial thunder,
but a deep secure assurance.
Despite our falling and our failing,
time and again, you are moving in our nation.
And you are faithful to the end.

From the rolling hills of the north
to the harbours of the south,
from the highlands through the midlands,
from the worn pews to inner city youth,
you are raising up leaders and believers,
meeting the cynical and the curious,
asking questions about the truth.

It has always been you
and it will always be you.

We’ve heard the rumours that Aslan is on the move
and we believe it.
Men and women have begun dreaming,
living to see the prayers they once prayed on bent knees
now coming to be.

The hope of restoration,
a strange warming of hearts
towards the scandalous grace of God.

Lord, help us move beyond the melody
until our worship looks like dirty hands, dusty feet,
and arms embracing enemies.
Until our praise transcends the music.
For those who worship in spirit and truth
always have scars to prove it.

Oh Lord, use us. Send us. Hear our prayer.
We are desperate for you to move.
Unqualified, underprepared, but dependent upon you.

This is New Testament.
You have broken every box and bumper sticker sentiment.
Jesus is the evidence.
The four walls have fallen down.
We are the walking temple,
those who represent his temperament.

Oh God, we are on the precipice,
but the revival will not be televised.
We’ll see it in our neighbours’ lives —
the transformation of society
as we wake up and come alive
and bridge the space and break the walls that separate.

Now’s the time to sound the call
and be that change we’re praying for.

Lord, help us remember
we are standing on the prayers of those who came before us,
and we are breaking the soil for those who will come after.

We are a city on a hill,
a beacon that refracts the light of your mercy
and the glory of your splendour.

You are God

and we are the people of your pastures.
So may we hear your voice and not harden our hearts.
For we believe, oh God,
that you are only getting started.

There’s a Book on That

The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls by is a remarkable book. Rich Villodas is the Lead Pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, NY. In The Narrow Path, Rich Villodas re-examines Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, showing how the “narrow path” is a countercultural invitation to true life. He argues that following Jesus means embracing humility, radical love (even for enemies), integrity in money and speech, and a daily dependence on the Spirit to live like Jesus in this current cultural moment.

As always, here’s a taster:

“Our love for our neighbor — especially the neighbor who is very different from us — is proof of our love for God, Our theology, no matter how good, becomes irrelevant and idolatrous when it’s not used in service of loving God and neighbor. No one understands this better than Jesus. In one scene, he is approached by the Pharisees, a group of rigidly devoted religious leaders in Jesus’s day: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ (Matthew 22:36). Jesus sensing a verbal trap, quotes Deuteronomy 6… Then, right after referencing this well-known scripture he adds something to it: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘ Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these’. The question was, “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus cites two. ‘There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31)… We can expect Jesus to say, ‘There is no commandment greater than this.’ It’s grammatically incorrect but spiritually perceptive. In Jesus’s mind, these two commandments are inseparable. It is impossible to separate loving God and loving others. It is impossible to separate our personal relationship with God from our personal relationships with those around us… How you love others is how you love God.”

Woman Alive Podcast Episode:

In “Fasting — Not Just for Lent”, I join along with Joanne O Connor, CEO of Junction 42 (a Christian charity working in prisons and communities across north-east England and central Scotland) as we talk about the spiritual discipline of fasting.

You can listen to this episode wherever you get your podcasts — here’s the link on Spotify and Apple, or stream it directly through Premier Plus. Hope you enjoy!

Desert Mothers Podcast Update

Development is underway for Desert Mothers, a podcast exploring what it means to live a life set apart for Christ in today’s cultural moment. Rooted in building on the legacy of the women of faith who have come before us, especially the early Desert Mothers, this podcast seeks to encourage and equip a new generation of women to rise as modern-day “desert mothers”: spiritual leaders, truth-tellers, and culture shapers whose lives embody the abundant flourishing found in following Jesus.

My dearest friend and co-host, Karley, flies out to London next month and we will be filming and recording several episodes during her visit. Please continue to pray for us as we step out in this new venture and move in faith for God’s provision and promise over this project.

Boldly Rising Update

Boldly Rising, the course I created for women on identity and calling, is stepping into its next stage. God has answered my prayer for provision in the most beautiful way by bringing someone with film production experience who has graciously offered to film the teaching content. We’ll begin filming this winter, with the hope of releasing the course for purchase on a newly updated website this spring/summer.

Please continue to pray for this process. It’s another new venture where I often feel quite out of my depth, but I keep reminding myself: in my weakness, He is strong.

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Antidote to an Anxious Age: Again and again, Scripture speaks of dwelling in God. But what does it mean to truly dwell in him, and could this practice help shape me into a non-anxious presence in an anxious age?

• A Prayer for Indifference: Am I moving at a pace that allows me to pay attention to the presence of God? A prayer for indifference helps me pause as I seek to align my life with God’s will.

• Should I stay or should I go?: Discernment is key for decision making, but we can never be 100% certain we’re making the right call. At some point, we just have to make the decision and trust God with the outcome.

• Reading Scripture: With over 5 billion copies sold, the Bible is consistently the best selling book of all time. What’s so special about this ancient text? How can it possibly be relevant to me today?

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Thanks so much for your patience with this latest post. Summer seems to have come and gone so quickly but I managed to get some time to completely switch off which I’m grateful for.

I spent the last two weeks of August in the U.S. visiting family and friends, which was a beautiful ending to a busy summer season. Soon after returning, I headed up to the Midlands, just north of London, for a staff retreat with work. On the early morning train, jet lag tugging me back toward sleep, I found myself replaying the last four months. So much has happened in such a short time, from losing Poppy and moving through grief to running Boldly Rising in person for the first time to changing roles at work to stepping into a podcast project and restructuring my memoir. So many of these things are part of a larger story of prayer on the journey of calling as I’ve leaned into purpose and learned to trust God with what’s next.

Now, I face important steps in every one of these areas. When I stack it all up, I can easily begin to feel overwhelmed by all there is to do and, if I’m honest, my instinct is to try and control it all as a familiar anxiety wiggles its way into my days. In busier seasons, I find myself slipping so easily into rumination and self-reliance, clinging again to the illusion of control. Can you relate to this?

Yet, when I pause to actually lean into the Lord, I sense his invitation to slow down the pace and make him my dwelling place. And maybe, just maybe, this is an antidote to an anxious age. Because the way forward isn’t in striving; it’s in learning to dwell in God and live in his peace, only then can I walk in his purposes and be a witness to his presence for others.

So, let’s dig in together…

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What is the recipe for a life that abides in God’s presence?

I settled into the coziness of my spiritual director’s couch where we have our monthly meetings. The interior shutters always let just enough light in that the beams dance along the walls and often catch the glimmer of gold leaves on the tree of a painting she has on the wall. Shoes off, I sit cross-legged on the couch with my eyes closed and hands open, slowing myself down for a moment in the stillness of God’s presence.

The room always feels quite holy. Perhaps it is all the prayer and presence of God moving through as she facilitates her sessions. Or maybe God is simply keeping up his side of the deal, showing up in peace as I give way to stillness and make space to hear his voice. It’s the kind of room you could sit in for hours, unaware of the passing of time, completely unplugged from the world and yet somehow still in it.

“What do you want to bring into the session today, Jamie?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to make God my dwelling place. I guess I sense this invitation from him to live in his presence in the whole of my life in such a way that nothing shakes me, nothing offends me, where I can resist fear, where I can live into purpose without worry of what’s next, where I can be a steady, non-anxious presence in the world.”

What’s the recipe for this kind of life?

Because it seems this is the kind of life we’re invited into as Christians. When we accept Jesus, God promises to make his home in us through his Spirit, to dwell in us. As we engage in Christian spiritual formation, seeking to keep Jesus at the center of our lives and live like him in the world, God quite literally transforms us from the inside out, renewing our minds, helping us become the people of love and peace we’re called to be.

Yet, on any given day, there are a thousand distractions vying for my attention and, more often than not, the worries of the world feel weighty, and my tendency in all my humanity is to try and carry it all. In my effort to change the world, I strap on self-sufficiency and pick up the baton as if it’s me alone running the race. I so easily forget it’s never been me doing any of the saving, it’s always been Jesus. And the weightiness of the world and all its worries will absolutely crush me if I bear them alone. It’s Jesus who says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).

What does it mean to make God my dwelling place?

I know this work is lifelong, but what I’ve found to be true so far is that it means actively seeking God’s presence in the whole of my life, building a life on the foundation of his love with prayer and honesty, building rhythms and practices that keep him at the center of my days. It requires me to lay down my worries and fears, surrendering all I so easily want to cling to, and simply following the way of Jesus. It invites me to slow down my pace to make room for more of God, to be interruptible by his presence, to pay attention to his Spirit in the every day.

It beckons me into real love, the kind of love that allows me to be fully myself and the kind of love that encourages me to love my neighbour in a way I’m incapable of on my own. It asks for a death to self: surrendering the hungry, hurried, grasping parts of me that chase worldly gain, and instead lean into the quiet, steadied life the Spirit bears — love, patience, mercy, self-control, grace — made visible in the world through Christ in me. It’s an intentional and present life of prayer.

In doing so, I begin and end each day with the Lord, and try to fill the space between with whispered prayers and the practice of his presence. And the more space I create in my life for God, the more I experience the fruitfulness of making him my dwelling place. Because when I make time for God, I realise he is always there already waiting, ready to pour his love into my days, his wisdom in my decisions, and his grace into my mistakes.

And the reality is, my circumstances still might not look the way I want them to at times. And I’m still often tempted to cling tightly and try to control the outcome. But, as I draw myself back to God in these moments, making him my dwelling place, as I practice noticing his Spirit, something shifts within me. The anxious presence that urges me more, more, more; do, do, do, softens, and I notice a deeper space that whispers, just be with me. Just trust me. I love you.

You see the more I dwell in God’s presence, intentionally seeking him in this way, the more I trust him in the mystery and the more I feel the pressures of anxiety and worry loosen. Within me, I sense a calm and steady presence taking shape, born of the Spirit dwelling within and birthed out of a deeper desire to seek God above all else.

Because when I seek him, I am finally home.

I have always been called to dwell in God’s presence.

This isn’t just experiential, it’s deeply biblical. From the very beginning, God’s desire has been to dwell among his people. And even when in our humanity we turn away, he never stops pursuing us, continually opening a way for us to step into his invitation. An invitation for you and for me to dwell in him all our days.

Biblically speaking, the language of ‘dwelling’ and ‘dwelling place’ is deeply woven into the story of God’s presence with his people.

In the Old Testament, God instructs the Israelites to build the tabernacle, a portable sanctuary so God could dwell among his people through the wilderness and into the promised land. The tabernacle was not just a sacred tent, it was a tangible sign of God’s presence and glory amongst his people. Actually the Hebrew verb shakan (“to dwell”) is at the root of mishkan (“tabernacle”), so right from the beginning these ideas are closely linked. The tabernacle is the place where God dwells.

We see the same theme emerging in the New Testament but in a completely new light. John points to Jesus as the presence of God among his people declaring, “the Word became flesh [Jesus] and dwelt [tabernacled] among us” (John 1:14). Before his crucifixion and resurrection Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper [the Holy Spirit], to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth… You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16–17). And even at the climax of the Biblical story, we read this continued longing for God to be among people as it says in Revelation 21:3, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.”

You see, God’s longing to be our dwelling place, to live amongst us, for us to know him intimately, to dwell in us and us in him — this is one of the most consistent threads in the story of God and his people. This is the life we are called to, the life we are invited into, to make God our dwelling place.

And when I make God my dwelling place, I become a living tabernacle, bearing witness to God’s presence in a world desperate for his peace.

In the very first moment of humanity’s creation, we see God’s desire to be present with them. He creates man and woman in his image and walks with them in the Garden. The language here is fascinating. When the biblical narrative describes the creation of women, it says that God took a rib from Adam and formed the woman from it.

The Hebrew word translated as “rib” (tselaʿ) is the same word used for the side or wall of the tabernacle in other parts of Scripture. Literally from these very first references of the creation of human beings, our bodies are not just physical entities but have a sacred dimension, living tabernacles, our bodies are quite literally a temple for the Lord to dwell in.

This invites me into a relationship with God that is embodied, deeply lived within my body. You see, the creation story isn’t only about origins, it’s about identity. We were made in God’s image, formed as living temples, designed for his Spirit to dwell within us. And the fulfilment of this promise from God to dwell in us came through Jesus, through his sacrifice on the cross which allowed the Holy Spirit to come live within us.

So when I accept Jesus and the Holy Spirit lives in me as promised, God makes his home within me. Making God my dwelling place is recognizing this and living out of this truth, knowing that what God wants for my life is the deepest happiness and fulfilment in who he designed me to be, an image bearer. My calling in its most simplest form is to be a witness to the presence of God in the world, sharing the good news of Jesus.

David Benner says, “St. Ignatius of Loyola notes that sin is unwillingness to trust that what God wants is our deepest happiness. Until I am absolutely convinced of this, I will do everything I can to keep my hands on the controls of my life, because I think I know better than God what I need for fulfilment.”

When I make God my dwelling place, I trust him with my future. I lean into the truth that he will work everything together for my good, that his deepest desire is for my happiness and fulfilment, and in doing so, I loosen my grip on the things I long to control.

But, I have to choose to make God my dwelling place, turning toward him in all life’s unfolding, in sadness and grief, in joy and celebration. It’s in this surrendering and releasing where I experience true freedom. It’s in seeking him above all else that I find his peace that surpasses all understanding, his hope that grounds me in a secure future, and his love that is poured out to me endlessly through grace.

And perhaps in the process, I can learn how to be a non-anxious presence in an anxious age, bearing witness to the presence of a loving God in a world that is desperate for hope and peace.

A simple prayer to close…

Gracious and loving God, make your presence known to me in this very moment and throughout my day. Help me pay attention to your Spirit living within me and show me how to dwell in you in the whole of my life, bearing witness to your goodness and love in this world. In Jesus name, amen.

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The Poetry Nook

One of my favourite poems by Mary Oliver, “The Journey”

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

There’s a Book on That

Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God is a collection of rich conversations and letters written by Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite monk. Throughout the letters, he shares his simple yet profound approach to faith, cultivating an awareness of God’s presence in the every day moments of life. Brother Lawrence shares how true peace and joy are found in constant communion with God, inviting us to dwell in God’s presence in the whole of our lives.

As always, here’s a taster:

“I found myself changed all at once; and my soul, which till that time was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if it had found its centre and place of rest. Ever since that time, I have been and am now walking before God in simple faith, with humility, and with love.”

Podcast Update

Podcast development is underway for Desert Mothers, a podcast exploring what it means to live a life set apart for Christ in today’s cultural moment. Rooted in building on the legacy of the women of faith who have come before us, especially the early Desert Mothers, this podcast seeks to encourage and equip a new generation of women to rise as modern-day “desert mothers”: spiritual leaders, truth-tellers, and culture shapers whose lives embody the abundant flourishing found in following Jesus.

Karley and I will be filming and recording over the next six months, hoping to release the first season of Desert Mothers in early 2026. I’ll continue to update you as our timeline for launch gets clearer. I’d love to ask you to pray for us as we continue to develop the content and record — this is a new venture for us both so we’re moving slowly and intentionally as we keep our hearts and minds focused on Jesus throughout the process.

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• A Prayer for Indifference: Am I moving at a pace that allows me to pay attention to the presence of God? A prayer for indifference helps me pause as I seek to align my life with God's will.

• Should I stay or should I go?: Discernment is key for decision making, but we can never be 100% certain we're making the right call. At some point, we just have to make the decision and trust God with the outcome.

• In Good Company: We are called to build community - imperfect, messy, joyful, real community. We are called to be people of love.

• Reading Scripture: With over 5 billion copies sold, the Bible is consistently the best selling book of all time. What's so special about this ancient text? How can it possibly be relevant to me today?

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

I began writing this post while visiting my parents in the Outer Banks, a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina where they live. It’s beautiful there. Hot and humid this time of year, but unlike my old Victorian flat in London, every indoor space seems to be blessed with the gift of air conditioning. Ah and what a gift air conditioning is.

I love flying in from London because although the time difference has me sleepy in the evenings, it wakes me early in the morning before anyone else is awake in the house. I slip down the stairs with the lightest feet, make a cup of tea (yes, Yorkshire tea which I make sure is regularly stocked at my parent’s home - am I truly English now?), and then I make my way out to the front porch where two rocking chairs sit snugged in the corner.

It’s my favourite spot in the whole house. The sun rises over the ocean which sits in the distance to my left, occasionally its rays make a way through the trees and glisten on my face. I can’t see the ocean, but I can hear the rushing waves crash on the shore and the air smells salty reminding me I’m close. But mostly it's the music of the songbirds and the scampering of the squirrels in the bushes and branches which welcome my morning. I sit in the solitude, listening to the trees shift in the soft wind, the birds chatter away, the waves in the distance, and I pray, ‘Here I am, Lord’.

It’s my most treasured moment of the day.

My pace slows down and the striving slips away in the gentleness of the quiet of those early mornings. God’s creation envelopes me in this blanket of stillness. Somehow he feels more present in the quiet of those mornings, like he’s closer than I ever thought he could be. Sitting with me in the opposite rocking chair, welcoming the day with the sunrise and the birds, showing me his glory, telling me I’m loved.

It’s this kind of pace that I’m seeking these days. After a whirlwind of a few months, the stillness is a real gift. It’s also in the silence and solitude that I can hear more clearly and pay attention to the presence of God more acutely. It’s in the stillness where I’m reminded what it is I really want — to be living within the will of God. A desire that takes me some time to get to, after I wade through all my more superficial and selfish longings, after I sift through the voices within and around me, after I silence the distractions my life is so filled with, there is this deep place, the deepest place within my heart, which holds this desperate desire to do the will of God. When I give it space, I realise just how powerful it is.

In this month’s post, I want to talk about an interesting prayer which has been shaping my thoughts lately, and that’s a prayer for indifference. As I press into some pretty big things on the horizon, this prayer has been at the center of my heart, and I’m quickly becoming aware just how important it really is. And today, the day after my 38th birthday, I’m praying this prayer with more fervency because there’s a lot I’m on the precipice of and I need more of God in order to do any of it.

So let’s dig in together…

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I woke up yesterday morning with worship lyrics on my lips.

Literally, I woke up singing. I’m not sure that’s happened to me before, but if I could choose a way to wake up each day it would be this.

The lyrics of the song I was singing say, “Be still and know, he is in control… Our God is a promise keeper. Our God is a mountain mover. I know I can lay it down. He is working through it all. Through it all all all. He is working through it all.” It’s a song I sang a few times over the weekend alongside 8,000 or so others at a Christian festival here in the UK.

I’ve never heard the song before this weekend and I can’t seem to find it on Spotify or Apple Music or any of the platforms I know, but I woke up singing it. And it felt quite significant really, not only because it was the morning of my birthday, but because there’s quite a bit I’m hoping God is working through in my life. There’s quite a few promises I have yet to see fulfilled. Quite a few mountains that need moving. Quite a few things I need to lay down.

Not only did I wake up with worship on my lips, but I woke up with a fresh eagerness to press in and take hold of the purposes God has for me. I’m beginning to take next steps with Boldly Rising, the course I created for women on identity and calling. I’m working on restructuring my memoir, getting it ready for the next phase in the writing and publishing process. I’m in the midst of planning a podcast with my best friend, Karley, something that has been a long awaited prayer project and feels incredibly timely. I’m also in the early stages of discernment on forming a charity which creates women’s ministry resources for the Church globally. All of this I feel deeply called to, yet none of it I can do on my own. Each next step requires me to pay attention to the presence of God and act while simultaneously laying down and relinquishing control. It sounds counterintuitive, I know, but here’s how I’m doing it.

I’m doing it by beginning with a prayer for indifference.

Because at the heart of all of it is Jesus. I created Boldly Rising to help women discover who God says they are, to see their unique gifts and embrace their calling with confidence. I’m writing the memoir to share my own encounter with Jesus and how his presence has completely transformed my life, to show just how near God is and how deeply he longs to walk with each of us.

The podcast with Karley was born out of a desire to support others on their spiritual formation journey, to create a space where we can talk honestly about faith and calling and leadership and womanhood. And I’m discerning the launch of a charity because it’s clear now more than ever how much the Church needs more resources for women’s ministry, and I feel deeply called to play a part in that.

You see, it’s all for Jesus, and I need to remain rooted in that reality because the temptation is to do all these things my own way, in my own strength and at my own pace, but that just won’t work with the size of my dreams at the moment. So I’m praying the prayer for indifference.

The prayer for indifference says, “God, make me indifferent to anything that is not your will.”

While studying the practice of discernment recently, I came across something I’ve been lingering on. In her podcast, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership (also the title of her book which I’m recommending this week), Ruth Haley Barton says, “Discernment begins in what I would consider to be a very unlikely place. And that is the prayer for indifference”.

“The prayer for indifference” — quite an odd way of putting it because often we're tempted to think of indifference as a negative word linked to apathy or a lack of passion, but really this is a positive word here. In the realm of spiritual discernment, it means being indifferent to anything but the will of God. This is our first step. And it's a prayer because we cannot be indifferent to anything but the will of God on our own. We need his help.

On the surface it seems an easy prayer to pray, but quickly after the words leave my mouth, I’m aware of the weight of this kind of prayer. I realise all the deep desires I have, some good and others quite selfish really, some I’m sure may align with God’s will but others I’m certain will pull me in different directions. I realise just how badly I want things to go the way I envision, the way I plan, the way I think is best. I realise just how badly I want to control how it all unfolds.

Very quickly after praying this prayer, it’s clear just how much I’m not indifferent to.

And it reminds me again how important a prayer like this is in my life. Really it’s a prayer to loosen the grip of control, or should I say lift the veil on the illusion of it. It’s a surrender prayer because in my life right now there is so much I want to control.

I want to control my body and decide when and how Dan and I will be able to start a family.

I want to control what happens next with Boldly Rising as I try to get it into the hands of as many women as possible.

I want to control if, when, and how my first book gets published.

I want to control how the podcast grows.

If I’m really honest, I want to control the outcome of just about everything in my life.

And here’s the reality I'm faced with which we all face — we are all human and in all our humanness, our natural inclination is to lean into what we want, what we desire, what will satisfy our wants or needs. And the culture around us promotes this – ‘you do you’, ‘follow your heart’, etc. This is where the prayer for indifference becomes monumental because the prayer for indifference says, God, help me desire your will for my life above all else. Make me indifferent to anything that is not your will. Help me loosen my grip and trust you.

The truth is when I look back on all my plans and see just how many didn’t go the way I envisioned, I’m reminded how little control I actually have. And when I sit and look at the kinds of prayers I prayed, I see how the ones asking for God’s will to be done brought me the most transformation. Because we don’t pray the prayer for indifference to a God who is disconnected from our life, but to a God who knows us intimately, who has a plan for our lives to be meaningful in a way that is beyond the scope of our understanding, a God who offers us life and life to the fullest, a God who comes up close.

When it’s his will we are praying for, we can trust him with the outcome of our circumstances, even when the outcome seems to look nothing like what we planned. We have to believe in the truth that a larger narrative is being woven together, one that is full of redemption and packed to the brim with goodness even, at times, in the midst of suffering.

And when God answers our prayer for indifference, when we begin to feel within us the reins loosen, when we find ourselves truly seeking and wanting his will above all else, something shifts. The grip of the world loosens, we begin to surrender, a sort of death to self takes place, and it is in this space where God does his best work in us. It is here where we find hope and joy and peace and grace, where we find courage to be bold and faith to step out.

It is here where we see our lives align with his will, and begin to understand how his will for our lives is better than anything we could think, hope or imagine.

We see this type of prayer throughout Scripture, most clearly modelled by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus models that same posture of submission as he prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42, NIV).

This is a prayer for indifference. God, your will above all else. Change my heart to desire your will above all else.

What would it look like for you to approach life in this way? Before you pray a single prayer over your wants, desires, and needs, you ask God to make you indifferent to anything that isn’t his will. And then you wait.

You wait until you feel your attachments loosen, you wait until you feel something shifting within you, you wait until the strongest and deepest desire of your heart is for God's will to be done in your life above all else.

In this way, we begin where it is most important, setting our hearts on God's will above our own, postering ourselves surrendered before him. Then we do the work of discernment and we make a decision confidently knowing God is working through it all. Trusting that he is working all things together for our good. We won’t always get it right, discernment rarely comes with absolute certainty, but we can know God is always at work, gently weaving a redemption story through our lives.

Is there an area of your life right now where you are seeking God’s will? Try beginning with the prayer for indifference as you enter into the process and wait to see how God changes your heart to long for his will above all else. Wait until, like Jesus, you can say, "Not my will, but yours be done".

The Poetry Nook

God is Actually God

Can you find the time to linger in the early mornings

just before the sunrise

and the to-do list

and the clammer of this noisy life?

Can you pause long enough to listen, and see, and wonder?

We plead like Moses, “Show me your glory”,

but our calendars are chock full and distractions are bouncing off the walls

and our clumsy egos circle round and round back to self

taking no notice as the margin for the miraculous shrinks.

We forget his glory is everywhere —

in the songbirds,

in the stillness of a morning still misty with dew,

in the scamper of the squirrels chipping along the outstretched arms of the live oak tree,

in the mystery of the maritime forest and the magic of the moon so eager for evening it slips into the still light sky.

It’s his glory,

again and again.

Signs of his presence pulsing through the ordinary.

You see, God is actually God.

And his glory is everywhere.

We’re just too busy to pay attention.

There’s a Book on That

Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership is an exceptional resource for anyone longing to nurture their inner spiritual life as the foundation for authentic, Christ-centered leadership. Ruth Haley Barton is the founder of the Transforming Center, a ministry devoted to caring for the souls of pastors, Christian leaders, and the communities they serve. She is also an author, speaker, spiritual director, and teacher. Her writing has profoundly shaped my own journey of calling, and this book stands at the very top of my list of essential reads.

As always, here’s a taster:

“Many of us are choosing to live lives that do not set us up to pay attention, to notice those places where God is at work and to ask ourselves what these things mean. We long for a word from the Lord, but somehow we have been suckered into believing that the pace we keep is what leadership requires. We slide inexorably into a way of life that offers little or no opportunity for paying attention and then wonder why we are not hearing from God when we need God most. There are times when a leader’s deepest longing is to hear a word from the Lord. Beyond the muddle of all of our thoughts and ideas and brainstorming sessions, we long for an encounter with God that will penetrate all of that and bring some clarity to our situation. If we are aware of such a longing, a question we might ask ourselves is How much paying attention am I doing—really? Do I have enough give in my schedule to be able turn aside and pay attention when there is something that warrants it? Could it be because I am moving so fast that I do not have time to turn aside and look? Do I even have mechanisms in my life that create space for paying attention, so that I don’t miss the places where God himself is trying to communicate with me?”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Should I stay or should I go?: Discernment is key for decision making, but we can never be 100% certain we're making the right call. At some point, we just have to make the decision and trust God with the outcome.

• In Good Company: We are called to build community - imperfect, messy, joyful, real community. We are called to be people of love.

• Reading Scripture: With over 5 billion copies sold, the Bible is consistently the best selling book of all time. What's so special about this ancient text? How can it possibly be relevant to me today?

• Humble Service in a Status-Driven World: In a culture that sees power and status as the highest goal, what would it look like to see greatness through the eyes of Jesus? Jesus teaches us that the path to fulfilment is one of humble service.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Another heat wave is rolling through London, and I am not complaining. Although lately I do find myself longing for the beaches I grew up with, as if the heat and humidity is awakening a call to the familiar sea of my youth. Long summer days, sandy toes, sun kissed cheeks. The scent of the salty air beckoning me into the deep water, the magic of midday sandbars, perfect waves, swimming until my fingertips wrinkle and my lips taste of salt and sea.

Growing up my grandparents had a little shore house in Beach Haven on Long Beach Island (LBI), a beautiful 18-mile-long island off the coast of New Jersey. I spent summer after summer there with my siblings and cousins, crabbing in the bay, swimming in the sea, leaping off the lifeguard stands, selling painted shells and friendship bracelets on the corner of our street.

When I think of where I grew up, the answer is always LBI. I did most of my growing up there.

But now we’re all older and spread out all over. My parents moved down south to retire and built their own house near the sea. My siblings are scattered in different places. Our family has tried to hold onto the LBI house, but the ties seem to loosen each year. We’re one of the last little beach houses on the street as more and more are knocked down and rebuilt into four floor mansions with roof decks and pools — we would have never used a pool at the beach growing up, all we cared about as kids was avoiding stubbed toes as we ran along the hot asphalt, hopping from shaded sliver to shaded sliver, in order to reach the beach as quick as we could. But now the house repairs are stacking up and its age is showing more each year, and the walls seem to only hold distant memories as the visits become less and less.

It seems this is the last summer we’ll have with the LBI house as my parents and aunt and uncle have decided it’s time to sell. It’s quite sad really. Dan and I will make our way to NJ in August for one last week at the shore. We’ll do all our favorite things, eat at our favorite places, linger on the beach well into the evening, BBQ in the back garden, see some friends we’ve not seen for years, and then I’ll say goodbye to the home which held so much of my life.

It’s a big decision for my parents and a hard one. My mom grew up in that home too, spending every summer at the shore house. I imagine when she thinks of growing up, she thinks of LBI too.

How do we know when it’s time to let go? When we’re faced with decisions in this life, how can we be sure we’ll get it right? In this post, we’re going to dive a bit more into decision making and discernment.

So, let’s dig in together...

Should I stay or should I go?

When Dan and I were thinking about moving to Los Angeles, I wasn’t sure it was the right call. An east coast girl through and through, I had no desire really to live out west. But we were a year into our marriage, still living with my parents in NJ, and it was time to begin a new chapter together. Dan had always dreamed of living on the west coast, and we had been visiting LA quite a bit over the years finding ourselves drawn into the city by the beach.

At the time I wouldn’t have called myself a Christian, but I was privately experimenting with prayer after an encounter with God a few years prior. I wasn’t sure about the move, but it felt like a perfect opportunity to test the waters of prayer.

So, one afternoon, alone in my parent’s house, I prayed for a sign. If we’re meant to move to California, please give me a sign. Later that day, I pulled out of our street and drove into town. The thought of my prayer had almost slipped away when suddenly I noticed the car in front of me had a California license plate. In a split second I began to think of the sign I had asked for but laughed it off as absurd.

Okay, Jamie, one license plate is certainly not the Heavens opening up and God saying “GO, MY CHILD”.

I continued driving. Suddenly, the blinker of another car flashed as it pulled in front of me. Another California plate. I shook it off as a classic case of Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, of course I am seeing what I want to see. But, by the end of the day, I stopped fighting myself. I had seen about ten different cars with California plates in my tiny New Jersey town of Flemington. All within a few hours. All different cars.

I prayed another prayer which seemed like an impossible one to answer. I would need an apartment and job because I couldn’t move across the country without those in place. I knew it was a long shot and assumed the whole saga would end there, but within a few months, I had not one job offer but two and a sublet lined up which led to an apartment lease in the exact time frame I needed. It all fell perfectly into place.

Dan had some work to finish in NJ, so I went out to LA in August of 2018 on my own at first. After moving and settling into my sublet in Venice Beach, I stopped by a church, drawn by a quiet sense of gratitude for all the answered prayers. There, I had a powerful encounter with God’s love that sparked a journey into an Alpha course and ultimately set me on a path of discovering Jesus, a reality that would transform the entire trajectory of my life. Moving to California became the most life changing decision I had made. It changed everything.

When Dan and I began talking about leaving LA to move to London, it seemed completely impractical. Dan was homesick and longing for London, a city he spent most of his life in. He was over LA — the expense, the people, the traffic. But so much about LA was breathing life into me. I had found faith in LA, began to follow Jesus, I was awakened to my identity and walking in my calling. I was also on the precipice of promotion in a teaching career I truly loved, and I wasn’t sure leaving was the right call.

But I decided I would pray through the decision. I was about four years into my walk with Jesus, so I had a bit more practice with this whole discernment thing. This time I followed a discernment practice I had learned which included self-reflection, prayer, listening for the voice of God, and seeking wise counsel.

The more I walked through this discernment process, the more I began to sense God’s guiding hand in a move to London. I was receiving prophetic words about the move, visions and dreams, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this transition would be just as pivotal as our move to California.

In April 2023, Dan and I packed our bags and decided to take the leap. I wouldn’t say the transition was easy. In fact, it would take thirteen months before we finally settled in, before my visa came through, and London started to feel like home. But I was right, things would be awakened in me in this city. It was a monumental move, one that continues to reveal God’s hand in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Two stories of big life decisions. Two stories of big moves. Two stories of doing my best to pray and discern ‘should I stay, or should I go?’ in an attempt to sync up with God’s will.

And this is what discernment is really, it’s discovering and doing the will of God (you can read more here). The work of discernment requires listening for God’s voice through prayer and distinguishing his voice from the many voices within and around us. It is layered and a process, but the more we practice hearing God’s voice, the more familiar it becomes, and the more we walk with God and seek his will, the more our decisions align with his plans for us.

But here’s the reality, we’ll never be 100% certain. The work of discernment is vital when we make decisions, but even with discernment in place, we need faith to step out of the boat and trust Jesus is with us.

In this life there’s a whole lot more choice than we think but even more grace than we can imagine.

In my faith journey, I find myself often worrying about getting things right when it comes to decision making. I want to make the right call. I want to make the right decision; the one God wants me to pick! But even with the practice of discernment, the reality is I won’t always know for certain what God’s will is and at some point, I need to just make the decision and trust him with the outcome.

Because here is the truth, if we get to a fork in the road and we go the wrong way, God will use it for his glory and redirect us when we seek him. If we fail, God will use it to shape our character and prepare us for the next right thing. Nothing is wasted. This truth, for me at least, has helped take the pressure off a bit.

And that’s not to say we shouldn’t use discernment, we absolutely should, but it is to say we can live fearlessly knowing God is in control. Yes, there are decisions to make, big and small, and there are consequences to those decisions, but we have a loving Father whose plan is to turn everything for our good. This doesn’t mean life will be easy or that we will be free from suffering, but it does mean that God is weaving a redemption story and there’s always a larger narrative he knits together. Our choices matter. Our decisions matter. But God’s sovereignty never changes.

Sometimes I think this is one of the most difficult concepts to understand: God’s sovereignty and our free will. In this world, we get to choose the life we live. Our choices have consequences, both good and bad. Running parallel to this is the truth of God’s sovereignty, meaning his plan unfolds and he has complete control over the world and everything in it. How can both exist at the same time? Your plans and choices are your own, meaning you’re responsible for them. However, the outcomes of those plans are ultimately directed by God, the results are in his hands. Both realities coexist.

Though this can be difficult for us to grasp in the limitedness of our humanity, it’s a truth God’s word affirms. As Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man plans his way in his heart, but the Lord directs his steps.” Intellectually, this tension can be hard to reconcile. And in my own wrestling with this, there have often been two false narratives in response, one is of apathy, it doesn’t matter what I do or choose because God is in control, and the other causes a slightly sneakier destruction, I can’t do anything unless I am absolutely certain God is telling me to.

I have swayed between these two thought patterns in my own life, and both have wreaked havoc on the journey of calling, causing me to either live recklessly or too cautiously, both destructive.

So how can we hold the tension between the truth that God is sovereign and the reality that we make our own decisions? We seek God in the whole of our life, living our best in alignment with him, genuinely wanting his will for our lives, and trusting him as we step out.

The late Tim Keller tells the story of planting Redeemer, the church he founded in NYC. In the initial phase of planting and discernment, people often asked him, “Are you certain God is calling you to plant this church?”

His response is so helpful. He says, “No. I think he did. I think it’s a good idea. I think God’s calling me, but I can’t be absolutely sure. I can be absolutely sure I must not lie it’s in the Bible. I can be absolutely sure I must not bow down to an idol it’s in the Bible. I am sure of a lot of things that are God’s will. But as far as I know I won’t be sure that I was called to plant a church until it happens then I’ll know. They say, ‘But don’t you have peace about it?’ No, it was too hard. It was too scary. No, I didn’t have peace about it. But I know this, guidance is as much something God does as something God gives; therefore, I knew… that if I failed to plant a church God was preparing me for something I couldn’t envision.”

Keller did the work of discernment the best he knew how, but he was very clear, even after his discernment process, he could never be 100% certain planting Redeemer was God’s will, but he could be 100% certain that God would use his decision to step out for his good.

You see, God has good plans for you, and you have plenty of choice in your life, both exist at the same time. God is sovereign and you have free will. Desiring his will for your life is the first step, seeking him above all else, but then you simply do your best to walk it out, listening for his voice, and trusting him that he has a plan to work things together for your good in both success and failure. Nothing is wasted.

I’m leaning into this quite a bit this season as I’m navigating decisions in the present that I long to align with God’s will. Like my family and when Dan and I will start trying for a baby again after the heartbreak of losing Poppy. My calling as I seek God’s guidance concerning work, writing and ministry. My time and capacity as I continue to run Boldly Rising, build community, and begin the early stages of planning a podcast.

I suppose in some ways I’ve written this post to remind myself that I can trust God in all these spaces. I can do the work of discernment the best I know how and then I can make decisions to move forward, trusting him with the outcome, knowing he has a plan to work it all together for my good. The same is true for you.

So, I move forward, knowing I won’t always get it right, but also knowing I have a God who walks with me, whose plans for me are good, and whose grace never runs out.

The Poetry Nook

Deciding

by William Stafford

One mine the Indians worked

had gold so good.

they left it there for God to keep.

At night sometimes

you think your way that far,

that deep, or almost.

You hold all things or not,

depending not on greed

but on whether they suit

what life begins to mean.

Like those workers,

you study what moves, what stays

you bow, and then, like them, you know

what’s God, what’s world, what’s gold.

There’s a Book on That

Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life by Henri Nouwen is an inspiring read, unsurprisingly, given that everything I’ve read by Nouwen has profoundly shaped my faith and perspective. This book was assembled by two of Nouwen’s former students, Michael Christensen and Rebecca Laird, drawing from coursework, personal journals, and unpublished writings. It overflows with spiritual wisdom, inviting readers to pay close attention to the rhythms of everyday life as a way of discerning purpose and calling. With a strong emphasis on community and relationships, Nouwen challenges us to see discernment through the lens of daily living.

As always, here’s a taster:

“The purpose of discernment is to know God’s will, that is, to find, accept, affirm the unique way in which God’s love is manifest in our life. To know God’s will is to actively claim an intimate relationship with God, in the context of which we discover our deepest vocation and the desire to live that vocation to the fullest. It has nothing to do with passive submission to an external divine power that imposes itself on us. It has everything to do with active waiting on a God who waits for us.“

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• In Good Company: We are called to build community - imperfect, messy, joyful, real community. We are called to be people of love.

• Reading Scripture: With over 5 billion copies sold, the Bible is consistently the best selling book of all time. What's so special about this ancient text? How can it possibly be relevant to me today?

• Humble Service in a Status-Driven World: In a culture that sees power and status as the highest goal, what would it look like to see greatness through the eyes of Jesus? Jesus teaches us that the path to fulfillment is one of humble service.

• Being a Witness to a World Seeking Truth: What does it mean to be a witness to the transformative power of Jesus? It's quite simple really, let your life speak.

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

May burst in with sunshine here in London that has felt a lot like summer, but it’s been sneaky these last few years. This spring month seems to butter us up with warm summer days only for June and July to storm in with rain clouds or the notorious all seasons in a single day. But, I’m still holding out hope that the sunshine will roll into summer and the warmth will linger longer.

Although the weather has been wonderful, May has actually been an especially hard month for me. I’ve been navigating a difficult season of grief and disappointment, but in the midst of it, God has actually felt especially close. In some ways, I’ve heard his voice more clearly in this painful season than I have in years. C.S. Lewis once said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain."

But it’s not only God I feel held and loved by, it’s my community — my husband and my family, my community of people here in London (friends and my church family) and those whom I love spread out over locations and time zones all over the world. Although it doesn’t take away the heartbreak, this love fills me up so the cracks don’t feel like chasms. And through his graciousness and unending love, God is slowly filling those cracks with gold, a bit like Kintsugi as a friend recently pointed out so beautifully. I know he will make something beautiful out of the brokenness.

I say all this to emphasize that it couldn’t be a more perfect time to finish off this series on the practices of Jesus with the last one on the list — the practice of community. Imperfect, messy, joyful, real community. We land where it all begins. And truthfully, this one brings it all together because much of our spiritual formation occurs within community. We learn how to be people of love in community. We practice the ways of Jesus in community. We grow into who God created us to be in community.

So, let’s dig in together…

First, a reflection on how my community is helping hold me together in this moment.

Before I begin this part of the post, I want to mention that I do speak of pregnancy loss here.

Before publishing this, I deleted it several times, unsure of whether I was ready to share so vulnerably. But more and more I am realizing how important it is to share stories of God’s closeness in the midst of suffering.

Three and a half months ago I found out I was pregnant. It was the best news my husband and I could hope for and immediately I began to dream of all the things our little one would do in this precious life. My pregnancy symptoms were intense, but I was happy to have them because it meant change was taking place — my body was making room for our baby and beginning to care for it.

Just over four weeks ago, my husband and I went in for my 12 week scan. Anxious to see our little one on the screen we waited patiently for our turn. But the excitement quickly turned to fear as we faced a reality neither of us was ready for. Our baby was much smaller than she should have been. Something was wrong.

We were told we had to come back in two weeks to confirm whether the baby was delayed in development or whether it was in fact what they feared, a missed miscarriage. I thought I might just collapse right there on the floor. My cries were so deep they choked me on the way out — you know that kind of cry you hear from a child who can barely catch their breath. I wanted to disappear entirely.

I wanted to be angry at God. I wanted to yell and stomp my feet and scream at how unfair it all was and how cruel it felt. I didn’t want God’s will if it meant our baby died. I wanted to be angry.

But in that moment, a moment of heartbreak and uncertainty, every part of me felt held and loved by God. All I could feel was this deep, intense love which held me. And even though I felt a depth of sadness that I was tempted to just let swallow me whole, it coexisted with this unending, unchanging, relentless love.

Throughout the next two weeks of waiting, I prayed every day for a miracle but I also simultaneously prepared to let go. I held my stomach and felt all the love I had for this baby, and I prayed and felt all the love God had for me, and it seemed ridiculous that this immeasurable love could coexist with such pain. But somehow it did. In this two week period which felt like a lifetime, I have never felt more loved.

And I wasn’t facing any of it alone.

My husband, Dan, swept in and held me every step of the way. My family created space for me, sharing their heart, sending their love from afar. Friends messaged me daily with prayers and words of encouragement from all over the globe. My church family held me in the heartbreak and prayed with me in the hope for a miracle. My community — near and far — showed up.

And although I felt this slight wall between us because I couldn’t quite face leaving the house and stepping out into the world and I often couldn’t shape the words in my mouth to speak about it all, I felt their love deeply. I felt their prayers powerfully. I could actually feel the love and prayers of many holding me together.

Two weeks later, our second scan confirmed the baby didn’t make it. There was no heartbeat, just a tiny little circle on the screen the size of a pea. And just like that, she was gone. Since my body wasn’t miscarrying the pregnancy, I was scheduled for surgery to clear out my womb the following week.

As we left the scan, I felt the presence of God so strongly. He was with me in this horrific nightmare we were living. He wasn’t distant or removed. And even though he could have intervened and didn’t, he was holding me in the pain, making his love and presence known and real to me every second of every day.

And again, the support and love flooded in. The long hugs and encouraging words, the flowers and plant deliveries, the cards in the post, the visits from friends, the meals sent in or dropped off, the playlists, the Bible verses, and the endless amount of prayers prayed.

I felt it all. And it held me together.

You see, they were all trying their best to love me — to serve and to care for me. It’s not comfortable to be around someone who’s grieving and often we don’t know how to act or what to say, or even worse we say the wrong thing and trigger more pain. But they showed up, imperfectly and lovingly, they were present.

My imperfect, messy, joyful, real community.

And a perfect, loving, compassionate God.

My heart still feels broken and the depth of sadness is real, but I also feel held and loved more than I have in my entire life. And I have hope. Hope that coexists with the suffering, and my community helps me hold onto that hope. They remind me that my faith stands on the truth that our God is a God of redemption and restoration, a God who promises wholeness and eternity, a God who comes close to the brokenhearted and near to the suffering. A God who promises this is not the end of the end of the end. Just one small piece of eternity.

As I made my way to the hospital for my surgery last week, I sat on the upper deck of the bus. By some small miracle, the upstairs was completely empty the whole ride. As the bus meandered its way through the streets of Putney and then Fulham and then onto the hospital, I felt Jesus sitting with me the whole way. His presence so palpable. His love so close. And a soft whisper, “I’ll take it from here.”

I knew in my heart what he meant.

“I’ll hold you through this. And I’ll take your baby girl to Heaven with me today.”

He settles me.

He settles my spirit, my heart, and my mind. He settles my anxiety and my fears. He will settle what was stolen from us far too early. He will settle the debt. He will settle it all.

And so I settle into him. In the midst of the heartbreak. In the midst of the uncertainty. In the midst of it all.

And I settle back into the community who will continue to help hold me together. Knowing that there will be days in the future when I hold them together too.

We’re the most connected we’ve ever been in history but we’re also the loneliest - real, intentional community can bridge the gap and Jesus’ vision for community is the best there is.

In 2022, 49.63% of adults (25.99 million people) in the UK reported feeling lonely stretching from occasional loneliness to constant loneliness. Yes, constant loneliness. And the U.S. is not doing much better. According to a 2024 American Psychiatric Association poll, 30% of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely at least once a week, and 10% said they felt lonely every day. Every day. Younger adults aged 18–34 were especially affected, with 30% experiencing loneliness daily or several times a week.

In a time when we’re more digitally connected than ever before, many of us still feel deeply alone. What we’re missing isn’t more interaction—it’s meaningful, intentional relationships and the kind of community Jesus invites us into is the truest and most life-giving kind there is.

In Jesus’ vision for community the dominant narrative to describe it is love. It comes as no surprise that Jesus prioritized community being that his divine nature is communal — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He both taught and modeled a radical vision of community that emphasized love, inclusion, service, and spiritual kinship, and his words and actions consistently reinforced the idea that community is essential to living out God’s will.

When Jesus called his disciples, he intentionally brought together people from very different backgrounds and he included women in key roles within his ministry, something that was unheard of for that time. By doing this, Jesus modeled a community not built on similarity or status, but on a shared purpose: following him and becoming people of love.

In Jesus’ last meeting with his disciples before his crucifixion, he models true community for them by washing their feet. Culturally this carried deep levels of significance. In ancient Israel, people walked on long journeys on dusty roads in sandals so their feet were constantly dirty. Foot washing was a necessary job but it was always reserved for the lowest servant in the household. In this culture, it was the lowest of the low who took on that role. A rabbi would never ever stoop to this level and wash the feet of his followers. This would have been viewed as incredibly undignified.

And yet, Jesus washes their feet, teaching them about the kind of leader he is and the kind of life we’re called to. He tells them, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34). Jesus’ language around the community he is calling his disciples to is not vague in any sense of the word, it is a command to love, to serve selflessly. The Greek word here for love is ‘agape’ — it is a selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love. It is a love that loves without looking for anything in return. It is a type of love that is only possible with God.

Jesus' act of foot washing here encapsulates the heart of the gospel: a call to selfless love and service. He goes on to say, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The way Jesus calls us to love is what marks us as his followers. This is the type of community he is commanding us to live out — a community built on love for love because of love. You see, it’s always been about love.

And yet, somehow, many of us have lost our way. Sadly, when I think of Christians, the first word that comes to mind hasn't always been "love." In fact, love often seems to fall out of focus completely. We pick and choose who is worthy of our love or we evaluate who has earned it, but the love Jesus is speaking of is unmerited and selfless and it cannot be earned or achieved. And this kind of love is not just a nice sentiment, it is a command straight from the mouth of Jesus. But this kind of love is hard, it’s sacrificial, and it can only be produced through intimacy with God and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Growing into people of love is made possible through Jesus. We have to learn how to walk this out and we learn it in community. And we won’t always get it right, but as Christians, this is who we are becoming as followers of Jesus. We have to believe in the transformative work of Christ in us. As we follow the way of Jesus, we are continually moving toward our calling to become people of love, and we work it out in community together.

So what kind of community are we called to build? We have a tendency to surround ourselves with people just like us, but Jesus’ vision for community isn’t found in sameness; it’s found in diversity rooted in love. It’s a fisherman, a tax collector, and a zealot sitting around a table sharing a meal. It’s Jesus eating with sinners. It’s going out of your way to love and serve people around you without expecting anything in return. It’s showing up in the middle of the grief.

It’s family.

Jesus says, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50). We are called to build a family — a community grounded in grace, committed to serving others, and rooted in love. A community that loves one another into who we’re becoming—people shaped by love. A community that embraces those the world rejects. That draws near to those suffering and walks with them through the pain. A community that stands alongside the poor, the marginalized, and the downtrodden, speaking life over the lost.

This is the community Jesus modeled for us.

And if we grow this kind of community in our churches and our neighborhoods, opening the doors wide to others and loving people well, we will see our community grow into the diverse and beautiful family Jesus envisions for us.

But it all starts with love.

A love we’ve been so freely given through Jesus, a love which we’re invited to walk in and give away ourselves — imperfect, messy, joyful, real community.

People of love.

The Poetry Nook

Poppy

“It will be okay,”
he said as he held me, 
“something new will come from this.”

A new me will emerge perhaps. 
One who has more space within her to carry both suffering and joy. 
One who can hold the tension between now and not yet.
One who carries hope along the rocky edges of sadness. 
Yes, a new me will emerge. 

And Poppy? 
My sweet Poppy will be in the arms of her Heavenly Father 
who will protect and provide for her all her days. 

And one day, 
one day we’ll meet. 
And when I hold her I'll say,
“My darling you shine like the dawn, you’re as beautiful as the moon, and as bright as the sun”. 

And she’ll have all the best bits of me and her dad. 
And I’ll have an eternity to figure her out. 

There’s a Book on That

The Good and Beautiful Community by James Bryan Smith is the third book in a powerful four-part series focused on apprenticing under Jesus to live a life shaped by love. While I highly recommend reading the entire series in order, this particular book offers a rich and compelling vision of what it means to live in a Christ-centered community. Smith writes with both depth and clarity, making complex truths accessible and deeply personal. Each chapter is full of rich content, real life examples, and Biblical truth grounded in Jesus’ teaching, and he even adds soul care exercises at the end of each chapter to help you go deeper.

As always, here’s a taster:

“My life is rooted in the eternal and strong kingdom of God; the roots of my life are in the future, safe and secure, which gives me the strength to live unselfishly, to strive for unity in the midst of diversity, to forgive even when it is not easy, to set my standards high, to live generously, to long to be worshipping in the house of the Lord and to be a witness of new life to a dying world. I need to be reminded and I need a community around me to help me remember who and whose I am, and what that means for my daily life.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Reading Scripture: With over 5 billion copies sold, the Bible is consistently the best selling book of all time. What's so special about this ancient text? How can it possibly be relevant to me today?

• Humble Service in a Status-Driven World: In a culture that sees power and status as the highest goal, what would it look like to see greatness through the eyes of Jesus? Jesus teaches us that the path to fulfillment is one of humble service.

• Being a Witness to a World Seeking Truth: What does it mean to be a witness to the transformative power of Jesus? It's quite simple really, let your life speak.

• Revisiting the Sacred Practice of Fasting: The ancient practice of fasting as a spiritual discipline has deep roots in Christianity, stretching back thousands of years. How can revisiting this sacred practice deepen your faith?

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

London is experiencing the hottest days of the year this week and it appears no one is wasting a single moment of daylight. We are emerging from the most sacred time in the Christian calendar, Holy Week and Easter. During Holy Week and Easter, we journey with Jesus in his final days of earthly living, along his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, through betrayal, his torture and death, the silence of Holy Saturday, and then the joy of resurrection Sunday.

It is the most sacred time in the Christian calendar because the entirety of our faith rests on the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Without the resurrection, well it all kind of falls apart. It is the crux that holds it all together. It is the hope we have in the midst of the brokenness of this world, knowing that regardless of the trials we face and the troubles we experience, amidst the heartbreak of violence and the sadness of death, we have an unchanging hope which speaks freedom and restoration — a promised renewed world, free of suffering and pain, reconciled with God. A future that is only possible through the sacrifice of the cross where the great paradox of joy and suffering converge. The stone rolls away and the resurrection life promised blossoms out of what seemed to be the end of it all. New life bursts forth. Hope is restored. Death is defeated.

It’s quite beautiful really. I suppose I’m sitting with this truth as much as I can as I navigate quite a difficult season in my own life, leaning into the hope only God provides. And the best way for me to draw near to God, to hear his voice in how he speaks, is through Scripture.

The Bible is the best selling book year after year because it brings God into close proximity. In the Old Testament we read story after story of God attempting to partner with humanity to bring Heaven to Earth. Through the biographies of Jesus recorded in the Gospels in the New Testament, Jesus is God in human form, and through His life, we see the clearest picture of who God is. As we near the end of the practices of Jesus together, we finally land on one of my favorites, reading Scripture.

So, let’s dig in together…

Reading Scripture is the most common avenue through which we hear God’s voice.

Pete Grieg writes, “When it comes to hearing God, the Bible is the very language of his heart”.

Peter says in Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” Because of this, reading Scripture is our best opportunity to encounter a living God who is both timeless and proximate. Reading an ancient text like the Bible can be challenging, especially if we don't take into account the diverse styles and genres that make up its books. 1

And yet, when we approach the Biblical texts with curiosity, we find hidden in its pages, the very heart of God and his love for humanity. Through the lives and stories in the Biblical narratives, we begin to see ourselves. More importantly, we see God weaving a redemption story, refusing to give up on a humanity who continually rejects him. Through the stories in the Bible, we find a voice which is constant and true. A voice that comes from before time and stretches out into eternity. A voice of love — deep and pure love beyond human capability — pulses through the pages and suddenly a God who seemed distant or removed is in close proximity. This is the power of God’s word.

In my own journey, I’ve encountered God's voice through Scripture in two powerful ways: by reading the Bible and by praying it.

When we read God's word, he speaks directly to our hearts through it. Whenever I read Scripture, I try to place myself within the scenes I’m reading — to imagine the sights, sounds, emotions, and struggles as if I were there. This is especially powerful in the narrative stories of the Bible and in the biographies of Jesus. Stepping into the story in this way helps me connect deeply with the experiences of those I’m reading about, making their encounters with God feel real and personal. It creates a space where God can reveal fresh insight and speak new truths into my own life.

Reading the biographies of Jesus as told through the Gospel narratives shows me God’s character in action through the person of Jesus. In his book, The Gift of Being Yourself, David Benner writes, “Spending time with Jesus in the Gospel meditation has begun to put flesh on the God I have been seeking to know for so many years.” This has certainly been true for me.

I also practice praying the Bible. Lectio Divina is an ancient exercise to help practice praying the Bible and hearing from God through his word. When we pray through the Bible, we use the words written and turn them into prayers. Or, we read small passages slowly and ask God to speak to us through the verses. Usually, you can tell God is speaking through his word when you notice something jump out at you while you read, or you feel a stirring in your heart around a particular word or phrase. This is a powerful way to engage with Scripture, opening space for God to speak into our lives through his word.

Reading and praying Scripture are deeply active practices — they ignite our senses, stir our emotions, and draw us into the lives of God’s people. Though the people in the Bible are culturally different from me in just about every way, it often seems our hearts are set on the same pursuit: knowing God and living in alignment with his will. Through Scripture, we discover that across time and culture, we are part of the same unfolding story of faith. We are all part of God’s story of redemption.

And here’s the truth: every time I open Scripture, God reveals something new to me.

Through the Easter season, I spent time reading and praying through Jesus’ final days of earthly living as recorded in his biographies, specifically focusing on the Gospel of John. I’ve read this section of Scripture countless times and heard these verses at nearly every Easter service, yet God continues to reveal something new to me each time.

This time while reading the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, I couldn’t help but linger on the reality that it is the women who remained near Jesus through his torturous death.

John 19:25 says, “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

As I read this part of Scripture, my heart burned within me, so I lingered on the women. I imagined the indescribable pain of seeing someone you love tortured and murdered, and not turning away, not running to hide, but facing it, standing with him. Refusing to leave. Staying at the cross until Jesus said, “It is finished.” Watching the blood pour out, seeing his anguish, and knowing that in his suffering was also the weight of sin and death.

I sensed God say, it’s so important not to overlook this, Jamie. The women stayed. Scholars say nearly all of the disciples left, apart from John. Most of the disciples fled the scene. Perhaps in fear. Perhaps because they couldn’t bear seeing their Saviour tortured. Perhaps in disappointment. Or frustration. Or sadness.

But, the women remained.

They were strong for him. They stayed at Jesus’ feet and refused to leave. They wept. They cried out to God. They suffered watching him suffer. But they remained. Even though it meant immeasurable pain as they watched someone they love suffer a torturous death. History books list crucifixion as the most brutal and barbaric way to die. Even the Romans stopped doing it because it was so cruel.

The women remained at the cross.

Even though it meant having a lasting memory of seeing Jesus in pain. Even though it must have crushed them in every way. Even though their hearts broke as they witnessed the traumatic scene unfold.

They remained.

They did not flee.

They stayed at the cross.

There is something deeply powerful about that.

As I asked God what he was saying to me through this— why it was so captivating to me this time around, I sensed him revealing how strong women are when confronting painful places. A woman’s ability to hold both pain and hope is astounding — to trust God in the midst of suffering.

You see, I am battling quite a painful situation of my own at the moment and I’ve been wondering how I will make it through. I’ve been seeking God’s guidance as I navigate significant grief and uncertainty. God reminds me through this story that I am also strong. I can also hold both suffering and hope.

I like to think that I would have remained at the cross. That I would have stayed despite the barbarism and violence and suffering. That I wouldn’t have left Jesus.

I don’t think I’ve ever sat in this part of the story before. It is the women who remain. It is the women who return to the graveside before day break and see the stone has been rolled away. It is a woman, Mary Magdalene, who Jesus first reveals himself as the resurrected Christ to. It is this woman who then becomes the first apostle to the apostles, telling them of Jesus’ resurrection.

You see, God has used women powerfully all throughout history. And in the most important story of all, Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is the women who remained faithful to the end.

In my ordinary life, it gives me hope that I, too, can do hard things. It gives me strength that God made me with an ability to carry both suffering and hope.

This is what’s so beautiful about Scripture. Written thousands of years before my life and yet its meaning is incredibly close. Each time I read Scripture that I’ve read a hundred times, God reveals something new to me. It never ceases to amaze me.

God speaks through his living word. He speaks through a collection of books which have stood the test of time. He speaks into my life, my circumstances, my hopes and my fears, my broken world. Through the lives and stories of people who lived so far removed from me, God comes into close proximity. I feel it in the pages as I read. I feel it as I pray the Psalms. I feel it each time I approach God’s word and ask him to speak to me through it. It is the most alive text I’ve ever encountered.

Read Scripture. Read it again and again. It is the breath of God and it will breathe life into you.

‘Boldly Rising’ Course Update

A course I developed called ‘Boldy Rising’ was birthed in 2023, which was a really challenging year for me. In that wilderness season, God was teaching me how to live as his beloved daughter in the whole of my life, not just when things were going well. The journey he led me through became the foundation for this course—created to empower other women to walk rooted in their identity in Christ and boldly in their gifts. ‘Boldly Rising’ officially launches in person tonight. Forty five women will gather for the first session and I’ll speak on the unchanging characteristic of God as a compassionate Father, discussing how a deep knowing of God can lead to a deeper knowing of self.

The whole purpose of this course is to know your identity as beloved and walk boldly in your gifts to help Heaven break into a broken world, and to do this in all life’s seasons. This work is deeply personal, not only because it is a journey very close to my heart, but it feels especially raw as I navigate my own unexpected experience of loss. This week I found out some news which has utterly devastated me. I’m not quite ready to talk about it yet, but it has been the hardest few days of my life. I wrestled with God about whether I should still launch the course tonight, unsure if I could teach on a topic that feels incredibly hard given my circumstances. In some ways, it actually felt quite cruel that this would happen during this particular week.

And yet, as I prayed, I felt the pull of the Spirit to continue. Because here is the reality, this is exactly what the course was designed for — what I am experiencing right now. How can I live as deeply loved in all life’s seasons? How can I live as deeply loved when my heart is broken, when my circumstances are nothing like what I hoped, when it seems like God’s promises are far away? This is the work of identity. This is the work I am called to. It is the most important work I will do in my life. Living as beloved in the midst of a broken world.

In suffering and in joy, I am loved.

In suffering and in joy, you are loved.

So, in tears and with a broken heart, I will teach on God as a compassionate and loving Father. And my heart will still feel broken. And the sadness will still feel fresh and deep. But I will believe every word. God is not distant in our pain, he is actually closest to us in it.

I am not immune from tragedy because I follow Jesus. But I do have a God that walks with me in my sadness and grief. I have a God who comes close to the broken hearted. I have a God who promises redemption even in the mystery of loss. And I can’t see the plan nor can I find a reason for the suffering, but I can hold onto the truth of who God is and believe that he is weaving a redemption story through my life.

So I hold that truth even when it feels distant, and I believe in his promises even when they feel further away than before. And, I feel it all. I move through the grief, the pain, and I let God hold me in the midst of it. And I am loved by him in the pain.

If you are a person who prays, I ask you to pray for me as I step out in this new stage of my calling launching this course tonight. It has been a massive prayer project and bringing it to life has been a real gift. I didn’t imagine myself in the position I’m in now for this first session, but I know God is calling me to continue.

For now, the course is just being offered in person at my local church. Plans are in motion to make it more widely available and you will be first to know as things develop, so stay tuned.

The Poetry Nook

The Wait

In the early mornings before dawn,

sometimes I think about all the people

who will wake up heavy with dreams.

I want to stand on the rooftop and yell,

“Don’t forget them!”

“Don’t let them go!”

How patient we must be sometimes to see a promise fulfilled.

There’s a Book on That

Eugene Peterson is most famous for his translation of the Bible called The Message, which is incredibly beautiful. He is a remarkable writer, thinker, and theologian and just about everything I’ve read of his has moved me deeply and challenged my theologically. This book is one of the best books out there on reading Scripture.

As always, here is a taster:

“Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.”

Bonus Resource

There’s also an amazing resource which has consistently helped me understand the Bible and that is The Bible Project. Do not skip over this as a valuable resource. I have gained so much insight over the years through the work of The Bible Project and I cannot recommend it enough. Particularly for this post, their introduction to reading the Bible series is incredible and will help you understand the various narrative styles at work and context, which is all really essential to reading the Bible well.

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Humble Service in a Status-Driven World: In a culture that sees power and status as the highest goal, what would it look like to see greatness through the eyes of Jesus? Jesus teaches us that the path to fulfillment is one of humble service.

• Being a Witness to a World Seeking Truth: What does it mean to be a witness to the transformative power of Jesus? It's quite simple really, let your life speak.

• Revisiting the Sacred Practice of Fasting: The ancient practice of fasting as a spiritual discipline has deep roots in Christianity, stretching back thousands of years. How can revisiting this sacred practice deepen your faith?

• Into the Quiet: Exploring the spiritual practices of solitude and silence in a noisy world.

Quick Reminders

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If you like what you’re reading, please consider sharing my posts and substack page with your friends and on your socials. You can share this post by clicking the “Share” button or share the newsletter by clicking the “Share Jamie’s Substack” button below!

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Thanks again for reading this month’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

The dreary London grey has broken a bit over this last month and the skies opened up with the brightest sun. Taking early walks in the morning as the sun peeks its way through the clouds has been a real joy this month. Listening to the birds chatter on and the cool spring breeze shift through the only just bloomed daffodils which line the path along the river outside my house has been easing me out of winter. We are certainly still quite a ways away from summer, yet the sun carries hope on its rays. Spring is here - new life is beginning to appear after a long winter.

The tulips in my lounge burst open into full bloom last week and I spent hours looking at them. Somehow they seem to open so slowly and then all of the sudden they are stretched wide in full bloom, holding the whole room suspended in their beauty. You know there are over 400,000 different types of flowers? That alone makes you believe in a loving, creative God. Today I thought about all the little ways God’s love and devotion are woven into creation — all the little magical moments we so easily miss when we’re rushing through life, and all the opportunities we have to be part of it all.

As we continue our journey through the practices of Jesus, today we’ll be looking at the practice of service. I actually think Jesus’ teaching on this practice is one of his more subversive lessons. In a culture that sees affluence and status as the highest goal, what would it look like to view greatness through the eyes of Jesus?

So, let’s dig in together.

Serving is the most tangible expression of loving your neighbor.

As I ran up Ocean Park Blvd toward my house, the same run I did several times a week, I noticed a man sitting on a bench at the top of the hill. His clothes looked worn and dirty, he looked tired, and he was missing several teeth. I may have passed him a hundred times before without a second thought, but this time was different—something burned within me as I ran past.

I had been practicing the ways of Jesus for some time, committed to tuning into God’s voice however and whenever he chose to speak. I was also working on slowing down my life a bit — letting myself be interuptible to others. As I made my way home, I heard this still, small voice whisper with unmistakable clarity: "Go back to him. Bring two pieces of fruit. Sit and eat with him."

It felt a bit ridiculous if I’m honest. I had no idea who this man was, we were in the middle of Los Angeles, and it felt strange to just approach him the way I sensed God was inviting me to. But, I couldn’t shake this invitation to love like Jesus would. So, I grabbed a banana and an apple from my house, and I headed back out to the road. There he was, still sitting in the same spot.

I walked up to him and asked how he was doing. I offered him a piece of fruit, and he smiled as he chose the banana. We sat together, each eating a piece of fruit on the bench on the top of the hill. We chatted about his life, bits of his story. He was living on the streets. Life hadn’t gone as he planned. He told me he had a son who he didn’t see much anymore. How much he missed him. He shared his heart. And I listened.

It was a moment. A single moment in millions of moments throughout both our lives. Nothing crazy happened. We just shared a simple conversation as two human beings living in the same city, sharing a piece of fruit on a bench, on an ordinary sunny day in Los Angeles. When I left to head home, I found myself thinking about how simple it all was.

Since then, through the organizations I’ve volunteered with, I’ve had countless conversations with people experiencing homelessness—and time and time again, I’ve heard the same sentiment expressed in different ways:

“I just feel in invisible.”

“I feel like no one sees me - they just always walk by.”

“I miss talking to people.”

I have no idea if sharing a piece of fruit with this man was significant for him. It could have just been a moment in a million other moments. But what I know is that in that brief window of time, I didn’t just walk by. I let my life be interrupted to be present to a stranger. I listened to his story. I shared my food with him. I made space for him.

This moment has stuck with me for years, always serving as a beautiful reminder of the kind of love our God longs to see awakened in us, the kind of service we are called to.

One of the more radical things Jesus says is that greatness and honor come not from power or status, but from humble service to others.

John 13:12-15 – (Jesus washes the disciples' feet) "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you."

The beautiful thing about Scripture is just how timeless it often feels, and yet, we cannot separate what Jesus is saying from the culture in which he is speaking in. Jesus’ claim that the least shall be the greatest challenged the prevailing social hierarchy at the time in a radical way. In the Greco-Roman world, power and status were highly valued. Social status and hierarchy were everything. In many ways, it’s not so different to the culture we live in now.

And yet, the core of Jesus’ message on greatness emphasizes that true greatness has nothing to do with power and status, but instead has everything to do with humility and service. This is not just a nice sentiment, it’s revealed in flesh and blood through Jesus himself, who completely disrupts the idea of who the Jewish people thought the Messiah would be. His followers assumed his leadership would be one of greatness in their own cultural standards, but Jesus arrives as a humble leader whose teaching prioritizes the vulnerable and marginalized and whose words and actions are humble and sacrificial. Jesus arrives to serve, not to be served.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the image of Jesus arriving on a donkey. The simplicity of this is astounding, but it also had a much deeper meaning in the context of this time. In ancient culture, when a conquering king chose to arrive on a donkey it was meant to represent gentleness, a humble ruler. This was deeply symbolic, not only because it was the fulfillment of an OT prophecy (Zechariah 9:9-10), but because it set the tone of peace and humility. You see when Jesus arrived, he was nothing of what anyone expected. And yet, his selfless and humble leadership, his service to others, sparked the greatest moment in all of human history.

So, what did Jesus actually say about the practice of service?

In Matthew 20:26-28, Jesus says, "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

This statement was radically counter cultural, and it still is! We are called to practice service. The greatest among you must be your servant. This certainly shocked the disciples. In fact we read in Luke’s gospel of their grumbling over greatness. Luke 22:24 says, “A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.” Even Jesus’ disciples struggled to see beyond the pursuit of worldly status and upward mobility they had always known.

And it’s just so human. You see, our whole lives are structured around upward mobility. We’re taught from a young age that moving up the ladder is important and your success is built on hard work and determination. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t value our work or care about doing our jobs well, of course we should, but that if our whole concept of fulfillment is based on success in the sense of upward mobility, we will never live a fulfilling life.

Henri Nouwen writes,

“Somewhere deep in our hearts we already know that success, fame, influence, power, and money do not give us the inner joy and peace we crave. Somewhere we can even sense a certain envy of those who have shed all false ambitions and found a deeper fulfillment in their relationship with God. Yes, somewhere we can even get a taste of that mysterious joy in the smile of those who have nothing to lose. Then we begin to perceive that the downward road is not the road to hell, but the road to heaven. Keeping this in mind can help us accept the fact that in the Reign of God the poor are the messengers of the good news.”

Famously John D Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men in history, was asked, "How much money is enough?" He famously responded, "Just a little bit more." You see, none of the things the world can give us will ever actually satisfy us. We always find ourselves wanting just a little bit more.

Jesus is saying, the road to a fulfilling life is actually not upward, but downward. Fulfillment is found best in serving others. Have you ever spent an afternoon or evening serving at a food kitchen? Or, volunteering your time with a charity you care about?

Do you leave feeling frustrated, stressed, and unsatisfied? No, of course not.

You leave feeling satisfied. You leave feeling good. You leave feeling like you’ve done something that mattered. There is this deep sense of fulfillment that comes from serving others. It is woven into our very being by a deeply relational triune God.

And yet, it can be so difficult to resist the temptation for greatness and status. Like the disciples, we’re prone to these disordered desires and it is only through intentional practice that we can learn to shed the weights of these idols and put on the heart of a humble servant. Incorporating intentional service to those in need, as Jesus did, is an act of resistance against the idols of our age. It is the path of true fulfillment — the real path to greatness.

True service often means being interruptible—willing to set aside your personal agenda to meet others in their moments of need—and this willingness will transform you.

The first time I began incorporating regular volunteer work into my life was much later than I’d like to admit. Prior to becoming a Christian, I considered myself someone who would stand up in the face of injustice, who was eager to help others in need, but my reality didn’t quite match up to this image I had of myself.

It was only after accepting Jesus where I began to feel a deep desire burn within me to serve others. When I think of all the bits of transformation I have experienced in this faith journey, this is one of the most tangible. Out of the practices of Jesus is born a desire to love others well, to serve those in need, and to do so wholeheartedly. There is no secret or magic about it, the more we learn about Jesus and the more we practice his ways, the more our hearts are drawn to serve others.

And here’s the reality of which I have come to know. When I think of the most fulfilling moments I have experienced in my life thus far, they’ve been moments where I have cared for someone else, moments where I have put someone else's needs before my own. It’s the times when I chose to stay a bit longer after church to pray with someone for breakthrough. The times where I’ve cooked a hot meal for others to enjoy. The times where I’ve sat with a student well after class finished to talk over something they were struggling with.

It’s all the moments where I’ve set aside my own agenda and schedule and allowed my life to interruptible to the needs of others.

The practice of service is just that. Seeing the need of another, sacrificing your time to serve them, and in the process co-laboring with God to bring Heaven to earth.

Do you allow yourself to be interruptible?

This question has been one I’ve been sitting with for some time. Here’s the truth: I can fill my life with a schedule full of Godly things—serving my church, doing my job with integrity, loving my family and friends wholeheartedly—yet still be too busy to notice the needs of a stranger, to recognize the interruptible moments where God is inviting me to step out and love my neighbor.

Serving others brings Heaven to earth — it opens the space for God to break into someone’s life through your act of attentiveness and obedience. God could do all of this without us. He doesn’t need us. He chooses to use us to help Heaven break in. He chooses to use us to reveal his heart.

What an incredible gift that is. Certainly not one to be wasted.

Finally, a quick tribute to my mother who has truly lived a life committed to serving others.

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday and I couldn’t possibly talk about the practice of service without mentioning her.

I was maybe four years old when I went with my mom into an upstairs apartment of a woman I had never met. Mom told me she wasn’t well and she needed some help, and how important it was to be there for people when they needed a friend. The woman had been bedridden for quite some time and the apartment had a damp smell and mustiness about it. The second my mom walked in, the woman’s face beamed with a smile that I imagine was quite hard in the difficult circumstances she was facing.

Mom changed her bedpan and helped her shift around a bit in her bed to relieve some pain. She cleaned up around the house and sat with her. She prayed with her. I remember looking at all of this unfolding and thinking how lonely it must have been in that half-lit apartment stuck in your bed for months on end. As a child, I wondered whether she had many visitors like mom. And I felt my heart break a bit for the struggles this woman faced. I was so proud of mom that day.

This was a single moment in a million other moments, but it is one that has stuck with me. I have countless memories just like this of my mom going out of her way to help someone in need, never steering away from the things everyone else avoided — the messiness, the bedpans, washing someone, cleaning up a mess in the bathroom, you know all the things many of us would cringe at. Mom never shows a single look of disgust. She faithfully does the work to make things better than they were before, as best she can.

My mom serves others like Jesus. Her heart posture if one of service and it both fills me with pride that she’s my mom and inspires me to serve others in the same way.

What would it look like for you to love your neighbor well? Are you moving through life slowly enough to allow yourself to be interruptible to the needs of others?

I am always moving too quickly and it takes intentional practice and rhythms of rest for me to slow down. But, every time I do, I’m aware of the many ways God whispers opportunities to co-labor with him, to help Heaven break into the lives of those around me, to serve like Jesus, and with each opportunity, a bit more of the world is chipped away from within me, making room for more of God to dwell in my heart than ever before.

The Poetry Nook

I Am Offering this Poem

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give. 
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you, 
or like a pair of thick socks 
the cold cannot bite through,

 I love you,

I have nothing else to give you, 
so it is a pot full of yellow corn 
to warm your belly in winter, 
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would 
if you were lost, needing direction, 
in the wilderness life becomes when mature; 
and in the corner of your drawer, 
tucked away like a cabin or hogan 
in dense trees, come knocking, 
and I will answer, give you directions, 
and let you warm yourself by this fire, 
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

 I love you,

It’s all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live, 
and to go on living inside, 
when the world outside 
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

 I love you.

There’s a Book on That

Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite Christian writers. He writes beautifully on the spiritual disciplines and authentically on the reality we face as humans as attempt to live like Jesus. This book is both deeply convicting and deeply joyful, introducing us to the downward way of Jesus in order to stand up to the idols of our age and live as image-bearers.

As always, here is a taster:

“When we find ourselves able to continue to serve our fellow human beings even when our lives remain the same, even when few people offer us praise, and even when we have little or no power, we come to know ourselves as God knows us.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Being a Witness to a World Seeking Truth: What does it mean to be a witness to the transformative power of Jesus? It's quite simple really, let your life speak.

• Revisiting the Sacred Practice of Fasting: The ancient practice of fasting as a spiritual discipline has deep roots in Christianity, stretching back thousands of years. How can revisiting this sacred practice deepen your faith?

• Into the Quiet: Exploring the spiritual practices of solitude and silence in a noisy world.

• Living Generously: Generosity is not just a nice idea, it is a practice of Jesus and a way of living which can completely transform us. How can we live generously in regards to our time, talent, and treasure?

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

I’m back! Thanks for being patient with me as I took a little break over Christmas and into January to rest and prepare my heart for the year ahead. I was lucky enough to spend the holidays with my family in the states which was a real joy and blessing.

Whenever I begin a new year, I find myself curiously seeking an inside scoop into what God will do within me over the next 12 months. Yet, no matter how much prayer and contemplation I do, he continually finds a way to surprise me. I think I always feel a bit of anticipation as I lean into a new year, but this year I feel it quite intensely.

I’m not sure why, but this year I feel as if I’m on the edges of breakthrough in areas I’ve longed to see God move. New opportunities to walk in my calling have begun to sprout up in unexpected places, and I’m finally beginning to build community in ways I’ve longed for, feeling deeply rooted in London.

I can feel things shifting all around me. The air is different. The wind feels as if it carries possibilities I have yet to even have vision for. All this happening in the midst of a world which often still looks quite grim. And yet, God is up to something.

There’s so much I want to unpack together this year, but first we begin 2025 by continuing our journey through the practices of Jesus. Although I was saving this one for the end of the series, I felt prompted to jump ahead. You see, each year I ask God for a single word he’s inviting me to live into for the year. It’s a great practice and if you’re curious to try it on your own, comment at the bottom and I’ll send you the prayer exercise I use.

My word for this year is ‘witness,’ so it only makes sense to shape my first post around this word which just so happens to also be a practice of Jesus.

So, let’s dig in together…

First a quick story — God’s invitation for you to bear witness to the transformative power of Jesus can come when you least expect it.

A few months ago, I was wedged in the corner of a packed kitchen chatting with a friend about psychedelic drugs. I know I know, but stay with me here… He was talking about a new drug going around the party scene which seemingly launches you into a different dimension, inviting you into this spiritual realm of ghoulish-looking creatures and chaotic otherness. It all sounded quite menacing and dark, if I’m honest.

As he spoke about the wildness of this drug-induced mirage, he stopped himself midway and paused. Looking at me intently he said, “I suppose this all sounds very weird to you now as I know you’ve become a Christian and all that.”

I knew the way I responded here was important.

You see my story of faith blossomed out of a pretty chaotic past. There was a long season in my young adult years where a conversation about psychedelic drugs would have been paired with a cocktail of stimulants to keep the conversation going well into the night. There was a version of me which would have listened to this story and wanted to sign up as the next guinea pig.

You see, I’ve had similar conversations before, hundreds of times, but not yet as a follower of Jesus. I felt the weightiness of witnessing in this moment. I asked the Holy Spirit to give me the right words to engage in this conversation the way Jesus would — to create a space which suspends judgement, builds bridges, and bears witness to Truth. This all happened in a millisecond of time between his comment and my response, and yet it felt like the pause stretched out for ages.

Saying a quick prayer under my breath that my words would be divinely woven together, I said, “No, to be honest, it doesn’t sound strange to me at all,” I casually shrugged. “I’m actually quite familiar with the reality of the spirit realm. I’ve had some pretty incredible experiences in prayer meditation with God where I felt completely thrust into a different dimension. I’m also super familiar with the ethereal otherness of good and evil, and I totally believe that the walls are much thinner than we think they are.”

He sort of looked at me with this odd recognition. I wasn’t judging him. I also clearly wasn’t uncomfortable talking about any of this. Perhaps a bit shocked, but more curious, he began asking me questions about my own story to faith. I shared my testimony -- how I grew up in a Christian home but walked away from my faith in my teens and never intended to look back. How I experienced a deep longing in my twenties for identity and purpose, searching for meaning in all the places the world told me I would find it yet continually coming up empty. I talked about experimenting with prayer in my mid-twenties, witnessing small miracles, and having an encounter with God’s love and powerful presence. I talked about signing up for an Alpha course and digging into the historical Jesus, realizing there was also an enormous amount of evidence for this faith I thought was fable. I talked about how I am the happiest now than I have ever been, grounded in my identity, living life with purpose and hope. I talked about how my faith in Jesus changed everything.

I was a witness.

In a conversation about psychedelic drugs and ghoulish visions, as the only Christian at a party full of people, I bore witness to the light in which my life is founded on. I was a witness to the indescribable love of God who chased me down and yet patiently waited for me to open the door of my heart. I bore witness to the life of Jesus told through the gospels. I told my story — my testimony–my life was a witness. And I didn’t do it perfectly. In fact, I sort of fumbled my way through, but I was a witness to the truth of the transformative power of Jesus.

We talked a bit about faith, religion, and God. It wasn’t weird or uncomfortable. In fact, it felt really natural and normal. And nothing groundbreaking happened. God didn’t burst through the ceiling, quaking the earth beneath us. I didn’t lead him to Christ. He had no further questions. The conversation fizzled out and we each went our separate ways chatting with others as if nothing changed. The party went on. We had a few drinks. We shared plenty of laughs. And the evening carried itself away as it always does.

And yet, I felt the weightiness of our conversation for the rest of the week.

I felt God’s pride over my witnessing well up inside me. I felt a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit over Jesus’s call for me to be a witness. I felt a new confidence bubbling to the surface of my life.

I felt it all.

My story mattered. My witnessing mattered. I didn’t need to know how to evangelize or say the right words at the right time. I just had to share my story when an opportunity came up and let God do the rest. You see, God has always had a plan to use my story for his glory. He has a plan to use yours as well.

As I press in with the Lord over the word ‘witness,’ eager to see how he will continue to reveal more to me throughout the year, I’ve already uncovered a few simple truths.

When it comes to sharing our faith, witness is a noun, not a verb.

In Acts 1:8, Jesus says, “…you will be my witnesses”. He doesn’t say, you will do some witnessing for me. Or, you can try and witness to people. He says you will be a witness.

We are not called to do witnessing; we are called to be witnesses. This has been an important distinction for me because when I shift my understanding here, my life is a witness. I am a witness. There is something about ‘being’ instead of ‘doing’ that takes the pressure off trying to say the right thing at the right time to help others encounter Jesus. Instead, people encounter Jesus through the way I live my life, the way I love people, and the hope I have.

There is a famous Quaker saying which I love: “Let your life speak.” There is so much in this phrase that has been useful for me, but one is that my life is a witness. I have to let my life speak. The good work God has done in me -- the prayers he’s answered or the peace he’s given me in the waiting. The hope he provides which doesn’t make sense. The peace I feel in uncertainty which is not in my own strength. The shape of my life since saying yes to Jesus. You see, all I have to do is be myself. All I have to do is have the courage to share my story.

God does the rest.

We don’t have to get it just right. We just have to be who God created us to be and live the best we can like Jesus, loving people well, living with integrity, and being honest about our journey.

If you have followed Jesus for any length of time, you know just how transformative life with him is. It changes everything.

I witness through my words and actions. I witness by letting my life speak.

The same goes for you. Your life is a witness too.

We are only able to be good witnesses through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the full verse of Acts 1:8, Jesus says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you and you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.”

It is the Spirit which lives within us that gives us the power to be the witnesses we are called to be -- full of love, non-judgmental, and unscripted. Our witness flows out of us when we are aligned with God and seeking to live like Jesus.

There is something quite freeing about this. I don’t have to ‘work’ at being a good witness. I just have to seek God at the center of my life and ask the Holy Spirit to flow in and through me to love others well.

Being a witness is part of our identity as Christ-followers.

If you are a follower of Jesus, being a witness to the gospel is part of who you are. A witness retells the truth of their experience, and there is so much to tell. There is a reason that Jesus’s invitation to be a witness is the last thing he says to his disciples before ascending to Heaven. This calling is deeply rooted in our identity as followers of Jesus.

We are witnesses simply because our lives have been transformed. Living out this part of our identity, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is essential to being good witnesses.

My witness is how well I love my husband, my friends, my family, and my enemies.

My witness is the patience I practice in my day-to-day, especially on the days when I feel most impatient.

My witness is the slowing down of my life to be present with others instead of being rushed, distracted and tech obsessed.

My witness is my service and care for the poor and marginalized in society.

My witness is living like Jesus, even when (especially when) it is counter-cultural.

My witness is my hope in times of trouble, my peace in times of uncertainty, and my love in times of hardship.

My witness is my testimony.

It is part of who I am. I have to let my life speak.

I can memorize a few lines to evangelize and try to convince people to accept Jesus, or I can live like Jesus as best I can, share my story of how the gospel transformed my life, and let my life speak for itself. In my experience, the latter is more effective.

As a Christian, my job isn’t to convert people but it is my job to share the good news of Jesus, and the best way I’ve found to do this is by being a good witness. John Mark Comer writes that “we must become a people of hospitality in a culture of hostility. We must embody and extend the love, welcome, warmth, and generosity of the inner life of God. We must open our homes, our tables, our lives to ‘the last, the least, and the lost’.”1

Memory can be a witness, offering hope to cling to when days seem to be a bit darker and stretch a bit longer.

I’ve often had seasons where I’m struggling to find my footing. I want to believe in the promises of God in the land of the living, but there seems to be darkness around every corner. Sometimes in our heavier seasons, it is our memory of God’s goodness which becomes a witness. We tell stories of what he’s done in our lives, we cling to the hope that he will do it again, and we wait clinging to the promise with whatever bit of grip we have left in the in between.

Sarah Yardley, Head of Evangelism at Emmaus Road, writes, “Build stones of witness. Let them anchor your heart to truth on the days when you are tired, on the days you might forget.”

In Joshua chapter 4, the Israelites are crossing the Jordan River under Joshua’s leadership heading into the Promised Land. The Israelites were instructed to stack twelve stones in the river as they crossed which serve as a testimony of God’s faithfulness to future generations.

What are your stones of witness?

What marks your life with God — memories of his goodness in the land of the living, memories of the way in which he moved miraculously behind the scenes, memories of his unrelenting love for you. There are seasons where we rely on memory to get us through a misty and dark wilderness, where it feels we are walking blindly forward leaning on the truth that he’s always walking beside you, even when we don’t see him clearly. There are seasons where, as Sarah says, our “stones of witness” carry us through.

You see, it’s never been about the how or when, it’s always been about the who and why.

Who is your hope in?

Why do you have this hope?

As it says in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect."

Have you thought about your story?

Are you living as a witness?

Have you looked back on your life to see how it has been shaped and formed by the inner life of God?

We don’t have to get it just right. All we have to do is pay attention to God’s invitation in the everyday. Ask for the Spirit’s power to be a good witness to a world which is desperate for truth. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a new boldness welling up inside of you.

A Prayer for Those Eager to be a Good Witness

May you feel a fresh boldness in your faith arise. May you be alert to God’s invitation for you to bear witness to the hope you have. May you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit flow in and through you as you share your story. May you let your life speak to the transformative power of Christ. Amen.

The Poetry Nook

When I wrote this poem, I don’t think I quite realised how much it related to being a witness in a broken world. Yet, the more I read it, the more I feel it.

A Lily Among Thorns

They say that lilies grow wherever they are planted.
Even among thorns, a lily will continue to thrive.
Each bulb growing more bulbs and then more bulbs, 
until the thorns themselves become flowers. 

Each flower tells a story;
Each bulb an emblem of hope — 
telling the tale of its resilience, 
how it bloomed in the most unlikely of places. 

What wisdom they carry — 
stretch your roots deep and bloom on. 
Because soon, 
soon the thorns will lose their foothold amidst a garden of a thousand lillies.

Soon, you will see that you’ve grown a garden in the darkest of places.
And there, there in the thick of it all,
tangled in the flowers and the thorns and the bristles and brush,
we see the hands of Love.

Share

There’s a Book on That

There are plenty of amazing books about being a good witness to the transformative power of Jesus, but this one is particularly helpful as were journey through this series on the practices of Jesus. John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way has a huge momentum right now in the Church, as it should. This book is not only a practical guide to living a life like Jesus, it will actually fuel a deep desire within you to do so.

As always, here’s a taster:

“Christlikeness in our inner being is not the result of the right application of spiritual disciplines, finding a “good church,” or a mastering of the right technique of living — it is always a gift of sheer grace. You will never work harder for anything in your life than Christlike character, and nothing else will ever feel like such an unearned gift. This is the paradox you simply have to experience for yourself” (111).

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Revisiting the Sacred Practice of Fasting: The ancient practice of fasting as a spiritual discipline has deep roots in Christianity, stretching back thousands of years. How can revisiting this sacred practice deepen your faith?

• Into the Quiet: Exploring the spiritual practices of solitude and silence in a noisy world.

• Living Generously: Generosity is not just a nice idea, it is a practice of Jesus and a way of living which can completely transform us. How can we live generously in regards to our time, talent, and treasure?

• Recovering the Ancient Practice of Sabbath in a Busy World: What is Sabbath and why does it matter? I've had my own battle with this spiritual discipline but the more I study Sabbath, the more I'm convinced it is crucial for a joyful life.

Quick Reminders

Subscribe

If you’re reading my newsletter for the first time, consider subscribing below! As a subscriber, you will receive this weekly newsletter in your email. You can subscribe by adding your email and clicking “Subscribe” below.

Share

If you like what you’re reading, please consider sharing my posts and substack page with your friends and on your socials. You can share this post by clicking the “Share” button or share the newsletter by clicking the “Share Jamie’s Substack” button below!

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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Autumn is slowly fading away in London and the days are getting colder. The wind was relentless this past week, careening down the streets carrying leaves and debris as it whipped around the rows of old Victorian houses where my flat is wedged within. There’s one tree left in the park outside our home whose leaves have only just begun to change, the vibrant yellow foliage holding on as long as it can before the frosty grip of winter sets in.

There’s something I really love about the changing of seasons. Perhaps it’s the lingering in the in between which feels like home to me. Lately transition has been a place I’ve occupied for longer than I anticipated. As the days of November tick away and December peaks its head around the corner, I am beginning to reflect on the year past as I set my hope on Jesus for what’s to come.

For those new to this space, we’ve been in the middle of a series on the practices of Jesus, and today my hope is that I can continue on with this series while also leaning into Advent which begins on Sunday. Fasting has been deeply intertwined with waiting for me, so I suppose it makes the most sense to follow that trail down with you today. It also feels quite timely since, as an American, tomorrow is a day of feasting.

So, let’s dig in together…

Let me begin by saying, I come from a big Italian-American family where food has always been the center of things — if we’re not eating, we’re talking about eating and if we’re not talking, we’re planning what we’re going to eat next.

Being raised in a family who loves food and treasures meal time has been a great joy and blessing. Growing up, my mom always cooked our dinners, we sat down as a family each night to eat together, and I don’t ever take it for granted what a privilege that was. The gift of hospitality was woven into our upbringing and as adults, my siblings and I all take great joy in hosting dinners, cooking for others, and treasuring the company of people gathered around a table to share a meal.

I am all about food and feasting. If you know me well, you know this is true. There is nothing I enjoy more than a good meal shared between people. When planning a visit to a new place, my first thought is always to find out where the locals eat to try the local food. When I enjoy a good meal, I’m full of gratitude for the creativity of the chef, the blessing that is food, and the gift of God’s goodness in sharing a meal. I mention all this to say that fasting was never a practice I was thrilled to try. I had no grand plan of including fasting in my rule of life and could not have foreseen it becoming one of my most treasured practices.

And yet, here we are.

I am nearly four years into incorporating fasting as a practice in my life and I couldn’t be more grateful for the transformation and great joy this discipline has brought me. For the last two years, I’ve incorporated fasting as a weekly rhythm in my rule of life from sundown on Tuesday night to sundown on Wednesday. I’ve also participated in longer fasts, praying for breakthrough in various areas of my life.

Fasting has unearthed things in me that none of the other practices have. In emptying myself, I am somehow more aware of my disordered desires and the ways in which I attempt to hide them. It is through fasting that I come face-to-face with the things I grip most tightly to. It is through fasting that the locked doors to my messiest rooms swing wide open, allowing God to access all of me. It is through fasting that I’ve experienced breakthrough in some of the areas I’ve longed to see God move. It is through fasting that I’ve felt closest to the Lord, beholding his goodness, aware of myself in his loving presence. It has been a practice that has been both challenging and deeply rewarding for me.

However, before we dive deeper into fasting, it’s important to acknowledge that this practice isn’t suitable for everyone or for every season of life. If you have a history of disordered eating, fasting may not be the right practice for you. Similarly, if you have a medical condition that makes fasting unsafe or harmful, it’s wise to consider other spiritual disciplines instead.

If you fall in one of the categories above, may I suggest having a listen to Dr. Alison Cook speak about knowing when and if fasting is healthy for you in this episode of the Rule of Life podcast. Throughout this post, I will be speaking about the benefits of this practice in my own life, but please know that God can and will meet you powerfully in all the practices of Jesus.

While contemporary secular culture embraces fasting for its health benefits, its ancient roots as a spiritual discipline span thousands of years across nearly every religion.

All the major religions in the world incorporate fasting as a practice. In the Christian tradition, fasting creates sacred space for surrender and closeness to God, feasting on His presence rather than the ways of the world.

For early Christians, this was taken quite seriously. Most people fasted twice a week on Wednesday and Friday and then participated in longer periods of fasting in accordance with the church calendar. Somehow, along the way, fasting has largely faded from practice in much of the contemporary Western Christian tradition. In my own experience, it was rarely mentioned except during Lent, where it was often framed as abstinence—giving something up for the forty days of the season.

When Jesus speaks about fasting he does so under the assumption that everyone fasts because culturally this was a regular practice. Jesus tells his disciples, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” 1

Followers of Jesus fasted weekly. Jesus fasted too. Although it is not a commandment, the emphasis on fasting as an important practice in both the Old Testament and New Testament is clear. We see the radical importance of fasting throughout scripture in the lives of Moses and all the prophets, and even in Jesus’s own life. In fact, Jesus begins his ministry by fasting for forty days in solitude in the wilderness. If fasting is such an important and powerful practice of Jesus, why is it one we so often neglect?

My guess is we neglect fasting because it sits in stark opposition to our desire for comfort, convenience, and instant gratification. You see, prayer and worship are lovely but fasting, fasting is a sacrifice. It requires us to experience physical discomfort, to delay gratification, to confront our worldly desires. Fasting is a huge inconvenience.

And yet, fasting has a pretty remarkable track record for breakthrough. One of my favorite stories of prayer and fasting in history is the story of Dunkirk. Pete Hughes, Lead Pastor of KXC in London, explains it well:

“Let me give you a story, the story of Dunkirk. So we're going back to May 1940 and 338,000 British troops were stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk…they know they are sitting ducks, the choppy waters of the English Channel mean that boats can't get to the soldiers to free them, the German tanks are advancing towards them getting really close, German bombers are overhead that are going to literally drop bombs on the 338,000 soldiers on the beaches. They were absolutely terrified and without hope facing annihilation.

Then three crazy things happen that historians cannot explain… Out of nowhere Hitler commands that the German tanks stop advancing towards Dunkirk…It makes no sense but that command came straight from the top. Secondly, a mist, a fog descends upon Dunkirk, and the region’s meteorologists can't work out how it happened, but a fog descended which means the German bombers couldn't fly overhead and just drop bombs on the British soldiers —that's miracle number two. Miracle number three, the English Channel became incredibly still for three days. Historians basically say for three days the English Channel was like bathwater, literally completely still which meant hundreds and thousands of citizens in the UK got in their boats and started moving across the channel to rescue 338,000 British soldiers that were getting ready for death.

Anyone living during that season…they refer to it as ‘The Miracle of Dunkirk’. It was a miracle, complete miracle, that took place. How did that miracle take place? The answer is we'll never fully know, but I want to suggest a potential link… on the Friday the 24th of May, 1940, the day when these three crazy events took place, King George invited the whole nation to a day of prayer and fasting. Basically he said, get to your Cathedral, your local church, get on your knees and pray to God for mercy. We need to fast not just with our minds, not just with our hearts, but with the entirety of our beings. Pray heart, soul, mind, and strength. We need to pray for a miracle.

Now you could argue that those three events took place because of fate or coincidence — I just don't have enough faith to conclude that. I believe God heard the cries of his people. They were praying not just with their minds and not just with their hearts, they were praying with their bodies. They were fasting and praying for breakthrough and God heard their prayers. You see this is what happens when we fast.”2

Through fasting we offer our whole selves to God in prayer — we pray not only with our hearts and our minds, we pray with our bodies. We sit in the discomfort of hunger, emptying ourselves before God, in order to experience his presence.

Fasting is a practice which can be both a rhythm in order to offer our whole selves to God and a response in order to pray with our whole selves for breakthrough. In both instances, we fast to draw near to God in order to experience his closeness and be filled with his presence.

When we are waiting on God to move in areas of our life, fasting is one of the best practices to sustain us through the waiting. When fasting becomes a regular practice, we open up space weekly for God to move in our lives. We are saying, God, I need you more than food. I need you more than I need the things of this world. We lay ourselves before the Creator, begging for more of his presence in the brokenness of our world.

And, here is the truth. God responds. He is always present with us in our surrender. The reward is always more of his presence within us. And, sometimes, we experience a miracle. Sometimes breakthrough comes crashing in and flows into our lives in ways we could have only hoped for or imagined. And other times, we contend and contend in prayer and fasting and we don’t see the breakthrough we want, but even still, God’s presence in us burns like a wildfire and we shift from desiring our will to contending for his. Fasting shifts things internally and our focus turns towards God powerfully.

Although fasting can open the door to breakthrough in the areas where we long to see God move, it is not a means of forcing his hand or engaging in a divine transaction. Instead, it is an invitation to draw closer to him, humbly emptying ourselves so that we may be filled with his presence.

The first day I fasted, I was counting down the minutes until it was time to eat. I was planning how to break my fast moment by moment with a meal ready the second the sun set. It took me a while to shift my focus onto God instead of my hunger. And I still have days when my fast doesn’t feel quite holy. My focus is scattered. My heart is not in it. My prayer time is eaten up by distraction. My fasting is often a work in progress.

But, there are some days during my fast where the ground shifts beneath my feet and my worries which once swallowed me whole suddenly are held by God. There have been days in fasting where I have found that as my belly emptied, more space within me was filled with God’s joy and grace and endless love. It’s in those days of fasting that I find somehow the space between heaven and earth feels thinner. There is this electricity in the air around me, a magnetism drawing created to Creator, and my prayers feel weightier, more powerful, and raw.

And somehow in the emptying and the filling and the prayer and the surrendering, breakthrough tip toes along the edges of the cliff side. I am suddenly what feels like a breath away from answered prayer. Fasting creates space for me to notice how near God really is, which is the greatest reward.

And yet, none of this is transactional. God doesn’t only answer prayers when I fast nor does he not answer my prayers because I don’t fast.

Fasting cultivates an internal place of emptiness which when I surrender it to God, he fills me. My prayers feel more powerful in fasting at times because I have emptied myself of my desire for what the world can give me. The space between heaven and earth feels thin because it is thin; I’m just not always aware of it.

As Julian of Norwich famously said, "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. And fasting empties us, that we may be filled with this joy."

God honors the emptying by filling me afresh. And with more space for God, there is something powerful that awakens in me which makes me more capable of carrying the title of image-bearer. There is something about fasting that shifts the atmosphere of my life, bending my will toward his.

My fast becomes a simple act of resistance to the world and all it demands of me, slowly changing me. When I fast I am saying, God I am hungry for you more than I am for food. Nothing this world can give me will satisfy the longing I carry for you. It is in fasting where I wrestle with the things that grip me the tightest. I wrestle with God who loves me too much to let me stay unchanged. I wrestle with the reality that I am on a journey to become the person God created me to be — fully Jamie in every space I occupy.

When I fast, I am saying God I need more of you in order to know me fully. I rattle the cages of the parts of me which I long to keep locked up — the shadows I don’t want to face. My fasting loosens the chains and I find myself free in ways only God can orchestrate. And even when the promise I’m waiting on still feels far away, fasting reminds me to lay it down again, faith bubbles up, and I find myself longing for God’s will and trusting that his word will never fail.

There’s a reason this practice has been carried out by millions of Christians for thousands of years. Fasting has the power to shift things, yes, but most importantly, it brings me closer to Jesus. And that is the most important reward of them all.

The Poetry Nook

The following poem has sat collecting dust for some time. I don’t think I ever saw how closely it related to fasting until recently. When I find myself worrying about all the things the world has convinced me are necessary to worry about, I need to empty myself and remember again who God is.

Here I am

Lately the nights have stretched themselves out
longer and later than I’d like.
I wrestle with all the things in my head
the questions 
the silence
the longings 
the tatters of hope which tangle like lost prayer tassels in the wind.

Why is it my mind has become an owl in the night
perched on its ledge,
wide awake and searching. 
My thoughts tick on and on and on
looking for something in the darkness to swoop down and claim.
Instead I’m left bouncing from branch to branch.
Before long the morning comes and there is nothing in my talons.

It’s only when I empty myself
that I find you’ve been waiting to fill me.
There wasn’t much room before, 
all my worries and desires fill me to the brim.
It’s in the emptying
that I find there is actually more of you in me that I ever thought. 
Somehow I forgot where the well was. 
Because you see it’s the living water I need. 
And so I empty myself 
again and again,
giving my whole self to you in prayer,
knowing it was always my whole self you wanted. 

And here you are. 
Here I am. 

There’s a Book on That

The following is one of the most popular books out there on fasting in the Christian tradition. God’s Chosen Fast is not only a helpful resource on fasting and a practical guidebook, it is also a proclamation to the church to pick up this practice again.

As always, here is a taster:

“Fasting is an opportunity to push the pause button and slow down for a brief period of time to draw near to God, to come to Him for critical needs, to discover His wisdom, and to get back in touch with our first love and our life purpose.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Into the Quiet: Exploring the spiritual practices of solitude and silence in a noisy world.

• Living Generously: Generosity is not just a nice idea, it is a practice of Jesus and a way of living which can completely transform us. How can we live generously in regards to our time, talent, and treasure?

• Recovering the Ancient Practice of Sabbath in a Busy World: What is Sabbath and why does it matter? I've had my own battle with this spiritual discipline but the more I study Sabbath, the more I'm convinced it is crucial for a joyful life.

• Building a Rhythm of Prayer: Prayer is the most natural thing we can do as human beings because it is in our very design to communicate with the one who created us. Can a rhythm of prayer lead to transformation?

Quick Reminders

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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

Winter is sneaking its way into what has been a relatively warm autumn here in London. The ground is quickly filling up with fallen leaves, the cool air of the evenings makes warm sweaters and cozy socks a must, Christmas lights in London go up in less than a week, and it seems I’m beginning to see signs that the seasons are changing.

Although I’d love to linger on the autumn colors and crisp November walks, I suppose it’s not possible to begin this post without acknowledging that this week has been joyous for some and devastatingly hard for others as people across the United States live in the aftershocks of another chaotic election. At first I thought it might be best to hold off this week and connect with you all after the dust settles, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that talking with you about the spiritual practices of solitude and silence couldn’t come at a more important time.

Although living in the UK during a U.S. presidential election year has spared me from the relentless flood of campaign ads and uncomfortable conversations, my social media feed is still pulsing with polarizing views. Election season is just about as noisy as it gets.

I suppose my hope is that reading about the practices of solitude and silence this week will be like water springing up in a dry desert. My longing is that this post invites you to look closely at the things that hold your attention, reflecting on what an act of resistance to an age of distraction looks like for you. My prayer is that as we move slowly through this post together, you can feel God’s invitation to a pace that lingers, a pace that welcomes margin and embraces silence, a pace that invites you into the deep, a pace that deposits you in a suspended peace in the midst of a chaotic and noisy world.

So, let’s dig in together…

Solitude is a practice of abstinence — it is a removing, a taking away, a stripping back of sorts — and by doing nothing in the presence of the one who created everything, we find ourselves awakened.

We can’t talk about solitude for a single moment without recognizing that as a society, we are constantly overwhelmed by stimulation and pre-occupations. It is nearly impossible to go through an ordinary day without being overstimulated by the media, our devices, conversations, or a constant flow of distractions. Moreover, we are busy and life is demanding, in some seasons more than others. Often when we find ourselves in a sliver of solitude, we look to fill that silent space with something — social media, TV, podcast, music, reading, the options are endless — and these are not all bad things necessarily, but we’ve conditioned ourselves to a steady beat of stimulation and in the process we can easily dismiss solitude or misunderstand it altogether.

In contemporary culture, we are constantly consuming, and in many ways, we don’t stand a chance. Tech companies have gone to great lengths to exploit any means necessary to harness our brain’s dopamine system. We have more screen time than any generation in history, and the effects on our social interactions, relationships, and children are shocking. In any given moment, there are a million different things vying for our attention and plenty of reasons to give in. All of this, whether we like to admit it or not, is forming us. Although the practices of Jesus are practices in spiritual formation, formation is not just a spiritual thing. We are constantly being formed by what we consume, by others, by society, the list goes on.

Not only are we tech obsessed and distracted, but we are also incredibly productive. Productivity is one of the highest values in a consumer-driven society, especially in the U.S. where 46% of Americans don’t even use all their paid time off. We are so focused on being productive and efficient that anything which asks us to do nothing seems like a waste of time.

This is the world that the practice of solitude enters.

Solitude asks us to do absolutely nothing on our own with God for an extended period of time. In a world that feeds off productivity and noise, it is the most countercultural of all the practices of Jesus. It is also certainly one of the hardest in my own experience. And yet, solitude is extraordinarily transformational and it feeds into all of the other practices in remarkable ways.

Henri Nouwen writes, “Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.”1

Solitude and silence go hand in hand, and together they will transform your life, not only because these practices are a direct resistance to the temptation to produce and consume, but because they require you to confront your whole self alongside the one who created you. There is nowhere to hide or nothing to hide behind — we are found by the Creator in all our nakedness and though it is terrifying, it is also incredibly freeing because we are found in his love.

Maybe the idea of solitude sounds like a gift to you right now in the midst of a busy life, or maybe it sounds like your worst nightmare. Either way, the practice of solitude is one of the most important spiritual disciplines in our culture today, and adding this rhythm into your rule of life will transform you.

Solitude strips everything away, compelling me to just be present, and in the process, through God’s intervention, I somehow become aware of myself—my gifts, my true self, my false selves, my doubts, my longings—alongside God.

Dallas Willard says, “Our aim in solitude is to simply be alone and to do nothing…In solitude, things will happen – you can bet on that. But, you’re not the one who is making them happen. And, you simply are enjoying the freedom of being there, and enjoying your consciousness and your life, and coming to terms with the fact that that really is valuable; it’s good. And, that, I think is the hardest part for people who are driven, like most of us tend to be, to accomplish. So, you’re not going to accomplish anything. So, you say, ‘well, then why do it?’ Well, something will be accomplished, but you won’t do it.”2

I began dipping my toes in the water of silence and solitude about five years ago. I had been following Jesus for just over two years and I was eager to continue to see how his practices could transform me. I had been working my way through Jesus’s rhythms of grace, but solitude and silence were at the bottom of my list, stashed away with Sabbath. As an Enneagram 2, aka ‘the helper’, these practices felt really hard for me. Not only did they require me to be silent and look inward, something I often struggled with, but they required me to do nothing. There was no doing and no ‘other’ for me to focus on but myself. Quite frankly, it terrified me.

Yet, in an effort to move toward Christlikeness, I began to set aside time each morning to just be alone and silent. At first, I couldn’t get through a few seconds without my mind racing and my body eager to do something with my thoughts. But, over time, I was able to still myself longer and then longer.

Some days, I felt completely alone in the stillness. Other times, I felt God’s presence all around me. Occasionally, negative thoughts pervaded my mind and I found myself distracted. But, I kept trying. And what I found in that silence and solitude was that God was always waiting there. Patiently longing for me to pause it all and just be present with him. Out of this solitude came transformation that required nothing of me except my time and a willingness to surrender it.

Dallas Willard is one of my favorite teachers in the way of Jesus. He teaches on solitude in his lecture “Silence and Solitude”, and I encourage you to have a listen to it in its entirety. Willard says,

“What I have tried to help people come to terms with here is that [in solitude] you don’t do any work. So, that means you leave your email, and you leave your undone writing and all of that sort of thing, you just don’t take it with you or you leave it alone. And, you focus just on being alone. Well, what about God? Well, God may come to be with you, along with Satan, and a few wild beasts. So, you accept that but you don’t try to make God show up. This is one of the most troubling things for people who are learning to enter into solitude is their expectations as to what is supposed to happen. You want to start from the idea that what is supposed to happen is nothing. Nothing. You’re learning how to just be there. And, this is a part of the disentanglement that goes into the discipline of abstinence… Solitude is designed to totally take us off of what we do.”

When you begin to disentangle yourself from the productivity and the doing, transformation begins to take place. And, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with God.

So, what did God reveal to me in my first entry into practicing solitude?

My personality has always been ‘other’ focused, and this is not to brag about selflessness because in many cases my doing fed into pride in ways that were hidden and quite selfish. But, I am drawn to work which allows me to help others. During this particular season of life, I was teaching full-time, tutoring outside of my teaching, hosting alpha groups at church, serving on the prayer team, volunteering at charities in LA — I had built my life on helping others and I loved it. And, let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with any of these things, but I had conditioned myself to focus so much on others, in the process I had completely resisted dealing honestly with myself.

It was in solitude where I came face-to-face with my whole self. It was in silence where God’s whispers of identity and calling and love shaped and transformed me. It was in this space, alone and into the quiet, where alongside God, I confronted my own shadows. I faced my false selves, masks I had worn, pain I had hidden, longings I had ignored.

You see, on paper I was doing everything right in my Christian walk. I was attending church regularly, praying daily, seeking to love people well and helping others. I was serving my community through teaching and volunteer work. I was doing all the right things, but I wasn’t going to the deep inward places. I wasn’t confronting my shadows or shattering the false selves which had been built up over decades of living in a broken world. Solitude created the space in my life to face myself before God.

It was in solitude and silence where God brought these things to the surface. In this space, I experienced the “furnace of transformation” Nouwen speaks of. It was out of solitude where I began to gain confidence in my identity, an awareness of my tendencies, and an understanding of God’s calling on my life. But, I had to do nothing in order to see clearly. I had to surrender in solitude and silence to experience God’s deep inner transformation.

Years later I would enter a six month sabbatical and God would meet me powerfully in the longer days of solitude in that season. And here is the truth, I am always tempted to rely on my own self-sufficiency, to get sucked back into upward mobility, and forget the importance of solitude. So, I have to continually bring myself back into the quiet place to center myself around God again. Because it is out of this place of intimacy that I can be fully alive in all God calls me to do.

In Scripture, we see God’s people continually implementing the practice of solitude in order to walk in their identity and calling with confidence, and we certainly see a rhythm of solitude woven into Jesus’s ministry.

In all the gospels, there are countless moments where Jesus retreats to be alone with God. His regular practice of silence and solitude allow him to be fully present with the Father and it is out of this place that he walks in his identity and calling with confidence.

In fact, Jesus only begins his public ministry with forty days of solitude and silence in the wilderness. Before he publicly walks in his calling, Jesus retreats to be alone with God. In this space, he confronts the enemy, he is attended to by angels and nature, and he is strengthened by God. Jesus comes out of the wilderness, out of the solitude, ready to do God’s will.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus retreats to solitude to be alone with the Father constantly.3 He knew the importance of solitude with God in a chaotic world. He wasn’t impervious to the demands the world imposes, in fact, he was constantly being bombarded by the demands of others, everyone vying for his attention. Jesus chose to step away from the crowds to be alone with God because he knew it was only through this space that he could stay aligned with God’s will and be renewed in the Spirit to walk in God’s plans. If practicing solitude was vital for Jesus to do his ministry, how much more is it for us?

Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God”. It is only through solitude that we can allow this truth to move from our head to our heart. Thomas Merton once said, “The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words and beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.”

It is only through solitude that we can truly live in this world in the way God longs for us to. It’s in solitude where we commune with God, and it’s in communion with God that we can know ourselves best and live out that identity in the world.

Curious about going into the quiet of solitude? Here’s a practice you can try.

Begin your day with a few minutes of silence and solitude. Set your alarm for a bit earlier before the rest of your household is up, especially if you have children. In the morning, your body is already rested and this can help you ease into this practice.

Find a quiet place in your home or outside in nature. Turn your phone off, or leave it in another room on silent.

Get comfortable where you are seated and take a few deep breaths. It might be helpful to simply inhale deeply through your nose, and exhale slowly through your mouth. Do this a few times.

As you inhale, welcome God into the solitude. I often use a phrase like, “Here I am, Lord” or “Come Holy Spirit”.

Recognize that in the beginning, your mind may start racing. Thoughts may come pummeling in about your day or your worries. Don’t be too hard on yourself here. Just focus yourself back to those deep breaths and repeat your prayer phrase with each breath. Do this for a minute or two just to settle yourself in.

Do nothing. Now just rest and soak in God’s presence. Perhaps you feel nothing beyond being still. As Willard suggests, let go of any expectations as to what you should be feeling and just be present. Don’t try to control the experience, just sit in the stillness of solitude for as long as you’re able.

Whenever you are done, bring yourself out of this space with a prayer of gratitude. Thank you God for being present with me in this moment. Help me to still myself before you regularly in solitude. Amen.

Try doing this practice each morning for the next few weeks and see what transformation comes out of it. I find it’s helpful to keep a journal and jot down my experience after or note any change in my behavior or demeanor throughout the day.

If you find yourself having longer periods of time to sit in solitude, embrace these moments because not all of our seasons in life allow for this. Although God is always working in and through us, he does so most powerfully when we commune with him in solitude. May this practice be a blessing to you.

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The Poetry Nook

I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I've been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyway I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It's here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself gain.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart--
oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God -- spend them however you want.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (trans. by Barrows and Macy)

There’s a Book on That

Although I can’t talk about silence and solitude without recommending Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Silence and Solitude, I’ve already recommended that one in a previous post. So, I will instead share one of my favorite books on the spiritual disciplines, Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. This is one of those books which will challenge and change you in ways which are hard to articulate. Willard is remarkably gifted and his words have been deeply formative for my walk with Jesus. If you only read one book on the spiritual disciplines, this is it.

I find it nearly impossible to pick just one quote from this book, but here we go. As always, here is a taster:

“It is part of the misguided and whimsical condition of humankind that we so devoutly believe in the power of effort-at-the-moment-of-action alone to accomplish what we want and completely ignore the need for character change in our lives as a whole. The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Living Generously: Generosity is not just a nice idea, it is a practice of Jesus and a way of living which can completely transform us. How can we live generously in regards to our time, talent, and treasure?

• Recovering the Ancient Practice of Sabbath in a Busy World: What is Sabbath and why does it matter? I've had my own battle with this spiritual discipline but the more I study Sabbath, the more I'm convinced it is crucial for a joyful life.

• Building a Rhythm of Prayer: Prayer is the most natural thing we can do as human beings because it is in our very design to communicate with the one who created us. Can a rhythm of prayer lead to transformation?

• Navigating Political Conversations with Grace: There isn't anything quite more divisive these days than politics. So, what does it look like to engage in political conversations with grace?

Quick Reminders

Share

If you like what you’re reading, please consider sharing my posts and substack page with your friends and on your socials. You can share this post by clicking the “Share” button or share the newsletter by clicking the “Share Jamie’s Substack” button below!

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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

Hey friends!

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend five days with my parents, my brother, and my husband in Sicily. It was a dream. We stayed in a house built into the cliff side overlooking both Mount Etna and the sea. Every morning I looked out the window and found myself outside of time, sitting in the clouds alongside the Creator, basking in the glory of his creation, and suspended in the beauty before me. The picture above was the view I got to see each evening from our porch as the sun began to set over Mount Etna. It was truly astounding.

Nature is actually a perfect example of God’s generosity. Take a stroll through the woods in the early afternoon as the sunlight breaks through the trees, hike up a mountain to a vista at sunrise, twirl through a garden of wildflowers in the peak of summer, or float in just about any body of water when the air is warm and the sun is hot, and you will find the Creator weaving his generous love into the fabric of creation. All of this he created for us to enjoy and care for. We serve a generous God.

Generosity is not just a characteristic of God, but it is also a practice of Jesus, which means as Christians, we are called to live generously. What does generosity look like in the lives of ordinary people? How can we cultivate a generous heart in the midst of a culture which prioritizes materialism and wealth? Today we are going to explore generosity through the lens of Jesus. Along the way, I hope you find your own footing as you explore what generosity looks like in your own life.

So, let’s dig in together…

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First, a personal story on generosity because who doesn’t love a good story.

In 2020, Dan and I were living in Los Angeles. He was a little over year into his job as a flight instructor and I was teaching as an adjunct professor across several college campuses. We were living paycheck-to-paycheck as most people do in LA and neither of our incomes were secure as things often fluctuated for us both.

In the spring, I was ready to apply for a full-time position at one of the colleges I was working at and Dan finally had enough hours to apply to the airlines. We were super excited at the prospect of moving up in our careers, getting some pay increases, and having much awaited steady income.

Then, March 2020 stormed in and everything shifted in a matter of days. Within a few weeks, the college retracted the full-time position due to the uncertainty ahead. The airline industry took the worst dive in its history, laying off pilots left and right, so Dan’s hopes for an airline position dissipated before our very eyes. And the worst of it, the flight school Dan was working at suddenly shut down leaving him out of work again.

Everything seemed to fall apart.

As April 1st came quickly, we scraped together just enough money to pay our rent, but it completely tapped us out for the month. We had nothing left over to pay for groceries or our bills and I had no idea how we would manage paying our rent in May. It all seemed pretty hopeless. I had been following Jesus for several years at this point and the only thing I could think to do was pray.

God, thank you that you are a provider. Jesus says that whatever we ask for in his name, you will provide. I don’t know what to do right now. I don’t know what is happening in the world or how long things will be shut down. I don’t know what job Dan or I will get or not get, but I do know that you love us. And, right now, we need help. And I know you are a provider and all that, but we need real money to pay our rent and bills. Please, will you show up for us? Please Lord, help us.

As I prayed that desperate prayer, I felt the peace of God wash over me. I really wanted to trust God to provide, but we needed actual money, not a cure for an ailment or peace from worrying. How could God help us in this situation?

I imagined the college calling me and offering me another class, or another job popping up quickly for Dan, or a bonus check from work that I didn’t expect — I imagined all the tangible and practical ways that God could answer my prayer and I held onto hope. I eventually fell asleep in peace that night, not completely worry-free of course, but I decided that I was going to trust God. It was really my only option.

Over the next few days, I continued to feel peace that God would move on our behalf. I prayed the same prayer each night and morning. God, I trust you that you will provide for us. Thank you that you will provide for us.

A week into the month of April, Dan went into the kitchen to make us both some coffee. While the coffee was brewing he walked toward the lounge and noticed something taped to our front door. As he walked outside and pulled the envelope off the door, cash spilled out into his hands.

Inside was simple card which read:

Jamie,

I’ve been praying for you and felt like God wanted you to have this. He will always provide for you.

—In Christ

P.S. Not sure if the number means anything, but it is $2,330.

I immediately broke down in tears. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t really shared with anyone what was going on with Dan and I financially yet. I felt quite embarrassed by our money troubles and it was something I kept to myself. All I did was pray, asking God to show up for us, and here I was sitting in the most incredible answer to prayer.

A week later, there was a knock on our door. It was around 8pm, so we had settled in to watch a show on TV and it seemed like an odd time for a visitor.

I walked to the door and opened it to find no one outside. I looked around down the driveway and out onto the street and all I could hear was a car driving off in the distance. As I went to go back inside, I looked down only to see an envelope at my feet. As I picked it up, the letter crease opened to display a wad of cash, again. A folded piece of paper rested against the back of the envelope.

Hi Jamie,

God will always provide for you.

— In Christ

Another anonymous note. Another wad of cash, this time over $1,600. I couldn’t believe what was happening. The note was in completely different handwriting as well. These were different people. I sat there in utter disbelief.

The total amount of money may seem random, and I think I thought it was at first, but it ended up being pretty much to the dollar what we needed to carry us through the month and pay the following month’s rent and bills. Our bills were paid fully, our rent was paid on time, and we somehow managed to survive what could have set us back into more debt and more despair at the start of an already difficult season.

One person prayed, asking God for help in their time of need.

Two people prayed and obeyed God’s invitation to be anonymously generous.

And it changed my entire life. I’ve never quite gotten over the blessing of this. It lives deep within my heart and bubbles up in faith in ways I can’t even articulate.

Money is such a touchy subject to talk about, and let’s be real, it’s one of the only things left in the world that we all remain quite private on.

Why do we struggle to talk about our finances? I can tell you just about everything concerning my closest friends, but I couldn’t tell you anything about how much they earn or how much they give. It is this secretive aspect of life that we all feel quite protective over.

Even writing this, I had to fight a little imposter syndrome because at 37 years old I am still trying to figure out how to be a good steward of what I’ve been given. I’ve not always been great at balancing the books. But, everything I write about here is something I, too, am working through so we are on this journey together.

There is this famous line in scripture that always stirs something deep within me: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also".1 You can tell a lot about a person by what they spend their money on. So, if you are curious what is most important to you, look at your bank account or your budget. Aside from life’s necessities (food, water, and shelter), where does the majority of your money go? How much do you give away?

I’ve had a few wake up calls over the years concerning the topic of money and it’s been really important and hard to look closely at my finances and ask God to give me wisdom to help me build healthy patterns of generosity and spending. I’m still on that journey, but it has been one of the most important aspects of growth for me. And, the more I partner with God in this space, the more I realize just how much he cares about freeing us from greed and materialism. And the more I live generously like Jesus, the more joy I seem to access because there is something deeply satisfying about living generously. As scripture says, “‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”2

In the Christian view of stewardship, God owns everything, and he has entrusted us with resources and provision to do good in the world — to care for ourselves, our family, and others, to care for the world, and to steward our resources well.

Healthy teaching on tithing and giving has this idea at the center — everything we have is from God and we are called to live generously because of this. When we tithe, we are investing in God’s kingdom, so in theory we are simply giving back to God what is already his.

This is not to say that as humans we have always gotten this right. There is plenty of toxic theology around giving, particularly in the realm of the prosperity gospel (how much you give determines how much God blesses you). This distorted view of tithing and giving has corrupted many people so it’s worth mentioning. That being said, I don’t plan to talk much about tithing at all in this post. Not because I’m against it because I’m not. I do tithe in my own generosity practice. But, because Jesus doesn’t really talk much about tithing at all.

This is not to say Jesus doesn’t talk about money. In fact, Jesus consistently talks about money throughout scripture. Tyler Staton says, “In the four gospels, Jesus talks about money more than any topic except for the kingdom of God. He talked about money three times more than love and seven times more than prayer. He talked about money more than heaven or hell or eternity. Seventeen of Jesus’ estimated forty or so parables are directly about money.”3 Jesus talks about money. He gives us advice on living generously. He talks about giving to the poor a lot. He warns us about greed and materialism. Why?

Perhaps he knew just how enticing money can be. Perhaps he knew the very human side of us that is blindly lured into greed and wealth while simultaneously feeling like there is never enough. Perhaps he knew the benefits and joys of a giving heart to our health and well being.

Jesus teaches us about money because it is powerful and deceptive, but it can also be used for good in incredible ways. One of the most famous parables concerning money in the gospels is in Luke chapter 12.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

¹⁴ Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” ¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

¹⁶ And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

²¹ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”4

Before Jesus begins the parable, he warns his disciples, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed”. Greed is being described here as a sickness of money and materialism. Jesus is saying ‘watch out’ because he is giving a warning here and the implication is that we can be easily fooled by greed. We can easily be blind to our own greed, often not seeing it play out in our lives. This sly characteristic of greed is something Jesus is warning his disciples about. He’s saying, if you are going to follow me, you must be aware of the sly and deceptive nature of all kinds of greed. As Tim Keller says, “Coming into relationship with Jesus changes your relationship to money and possessions.”5

In the parable, the rich man is storing up all of his grains. In an agrarian society like this, grain surplus and land equated wealth. Basically the rich man has so much excess stored up for himself that he can just sit back and enjoy life. This is actually quite similar to the ideal retirement plan. You earn enough to live comfortably and sit back, stop working, and enjoy life. There’s not anything necessarily bad about longing for a life like this. It’s certainly most people’s goal and is part of the reason we all try to start saving for retirement at a young age. And yet, Jesus is saying, if your goal is to accumulate more to store up for yourself, you are doing it all wrong. None of it can go with you and the greed will consume you quietly and subtly. Jesus is also not saying that greed is a sickness which only affects the wealthy.

Tim Keller has an incredible sermon surrounding this parable, which I encourage you to listen to. Keller explains that through this parable, Jesus highlights six signs that you have the money sickness of greed and I paraphrase Keller’s explanation below:

Two situational signs:

1. Gloating over money. Verse 19 says, “I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’’ The wealthy man gloats over his possessions and wealth.

2. Worrying about money. The man in the parable is worrying about having enough and storing the surplus. Keller says, “Jesus is saying it’s possible to have money and not have the sickness but it is also possible to have the sickness and not have money… to worry is to set your heart. You are just as materialistic.”6

Two psychological signs:

1. You look to money for security and safety. When we see money as our place for safety and security instead of God, when we set our heart on it to feel safe, we are experiencing the deception of greed because money can never give us the security and safety that we long for, only God can.

2. You look to money to feel beautiful, attractive, worthy or important. We see money as a way to achieve status or worthiness, but this is a lie woven into greed, only God makes us worthy.

Two practical signs:

1. You run after money. You are constantly chasing more in some way to accumulate more wealth. You are always looking for a way to earn more and accumulate more. Money becomes your main goal and focus.

2. You obsessively store it up. In the time of Jesus in an agrarian culture, your wealth was your possessions — your fields, your home, etc. There were no banks or savings accounts. But, if there were, Keller says, “Jesus is calling them to be willing to dip into savings and investments to give radically…to lower your net worth to give away to other people — ministry, other people, etc. If you can’t, you have money sickness.”7

I don’t know about you, but I feel quite convicted with all this. I’ve never had a lot of money of my own throughout my adult life, but I think I’ve been quite blinded by the way greed has filtered into my own experience. It has only been through honest self-reflection that I’ve begun to see how money has owned me. So, how am I working toward freedom?

First, I am repenting for the ways I’ve let money control my life, for all the ways I’ve set my heart on money instead of God. Practically, I am praying continually for God’s wisdom and discernment when it comes to money, good stewardship, spending, and giving. And, I intentionally practice generosity. For me, this looks like tithing to my church monthly out of my income, giving financially when I can to charities I care about, and donating my time and talent to organizations that are doing good things in the world. It also looks like being generous with my time — paying attention to people when I talk to them, going out of my way to make time for others who need a friend, and being conscious of materialism in my life. I am continually growing in this area and learning new patterns of behavior to address and new practices to build.

If you’re anything like me and this section of writing stung a bit, perhaps God is inviting you to look closely at your finances and explore how you practice generosity. Perhaps he’s highlighted to you ways money has gripped you. Or, maybe he’s nudging you with ways you can give more than you currently are and explore opportunities to be generous to the people around you. Don’t ignore God’s invitation to go deeper here. Step into the practice of generosity with an open heart to receive what God may want to do in and through your life. I promise, the more you step into generosity, the more joy you will experience because you will find that truly it is better to give than receive.

A quick note on living a generous life.

Although I focused mostly on finances in this post, living generously is not just about money, it’s also about giving your time and talent generously to others. There have been seasons of my life where I have not been able to give as much as I’d like to financially, but I have volunteered my time and shared my talents and skills to help others. Sometimes this looks like cooking a meal for someone, or running an educational workshop, or mentoring others, or even simply volunteering your time to help an organization that is doing good work in the world.

Each of us are born with incredible gifts and over the course of our lives we’ve developed skills and talents. Maybe an invitation to live more generously for you is to look for organizations that are doing good work and volunteer your time or talents with them. Whatever the journey looks like for you, I hope you respond to the invitation to live more generously. I promise, God will do incredible things with whatever you are willing to give.

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The Poetry Nook

Messenger by Mary Oliver8

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - 
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

There’s a Book on That

Randy Alcorn writes an amazing book on generosity that is really helpful in navigating what Jesus models for us. Giving is the Good Life weaves biblical principles of generosity and giving into real life stories and the result is a beautiful examination of what the good life truly is.

As always, here is a taster:

“Here’s the truth that can set us free: ‘living large’ actually makes us smaller. Living ‘the good life’ (as our culture defines it) results in missing the best life. Deep down, we all know it’s true: you can spend every last cent you own on yourself — and, through credit, far more — and still end up miserable. In fact, if you want to be miserable, greed and stinginess are the perfect recipe. Those who hoard their money, like those who spend it all on themselves, are the unhappiest people on the planet. Jesus calls us to do something radical: love others by giving away our money and time. That sounds like loss, not gain. Yet in God’s economy, that’s exactly how we expand and enhance our lives.”9

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Recovering the Ancient Practice of Sabbath in a Busy World: What is Sabbath and why does it matter? I've had my own battle with this spiritual discipline but the more I study Sabbath, the more I'm convinced it is crucial for a joyful life.

• Building a Rhythm of Prayer: Prayer is the most natural thing we can do as human beings because it is in our very design to communicate with the one who created us. Can a rhythm of prayer lead to transformation?

• Navigating Political Conversations with Grace: There isn't anything quite more divisive these days than politics. So, what does it look like to engage in political conversations with grace?

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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie