I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, trying to figure out more ways to include you in my life. I really want to sit and hear about your dreams, give you ideas on making them real. I want to listen to you and tell you all the tea.

Tea, meaning: how to give God your boy feelings, how to get rooted and stay tender, what courage takes nowadays, how drinking water and wearing deodorant are game changers, how showering every day changes everything.

There’s a lot of hoarding going on. It’s like a disease, a virus of selfishness. It’s very normal right now to protect yourself in relationships, to stay inside, to allow toxicity without confronting, clarifying, or forgiving — to prioritize comfort over love, convenience over presence. And I get it. Safety is oxygen right now.

But I want to point you to the Bible a lot when we talk. I want to annoy you a little bit, even if I seem religious and out of touch, because I’m still learning how the ancient pathways are still being walked for a reason. You know — old ideas, like love your neighbor and your enemy, guard your heart and your tongue.

There’s something about wrapping the Scriptures around your open and tender brain that gets the Word under your skin and between your teeth, in a way that makes you unrecognizable to you. You become the you Jesus is making you: the whole, free, useful, beloved, rich, consistent, and present you.

Not that He doesn’t — He does love you as you are, because He’s like that. But He’s also committed to winding you down the pathway, on pilgrimage to Him. Because eternal life isn’t just a destination or a duration, but a quality of living. It’s all the little and big holy things that happen when Jesus is in charge — snapshots, appetizers, and snippets of the Glory.

I want you to know that life moves in seasons, and tomorrow you won’t be where you are today, even if you try to stay there. Stagnation isn’t so much staying in the same place, but more like not changing as life changes around you. Changing means living.

And Jesus is good for change. If your life is hidden in Him, then you’re actually, truly gonna be okay — like, for real. So keep dreaming and imagining that future where you’re thriving, connected, and alive. But also apprehend today. Keep praying — don’t stop, not even to come up for air. Take a break from everything else, but not from prayer. It’s like the heart taking a break from pumping. You were made for connection with God. Prayer is connection and conversation, little I thank yous and I need yous. And I want you to know that if I don’t have the answer, we can go find it together.

I can’t do this without you. You take up good space in the world. Your friends, your family — they are blessed to have you, and you are blessed to have them. So live like that.

Oh, and also: no matter what, treat fear like a cancer and unbelief like a leech. Kill them. Don’t coddle them or gently remove them — burn them from your thoughts and replace them with Truth. They are not your friends. They are supplanters, here to destroy everything Christ is building inside you.

And last, last thing — hard doesn’t mean bad. The grace didn’t lift just because the door was too hard to open. Sometimes you have to use the strength He fills you with; sometimes you have to battle and war; sometimes He does it for you. But every time, go to Him before giving up. Always go to Him.

Okay — I do have to go now. But I love you, and I’m thinking and praying for you.

xoxoxox, Eni

watch the women go

up the hill to get water

my mother tried to teach me about the timing

go early in the day to get freshwater, that is the right time

my father tried to show me the path to the river

be sure to bring the bucket, put it on your head

my brother tried to teach me the signs of healthy water

strain the water, boil it, and then it is pure

my sister tried to show me what stronger arms can do

you must lift heavy, so you can sustain the weight

and that is good

because that is how

they get water

but i only drink when it rains

so

i learned about the timing

when the clouds gather

i learned about the path

where ever it chooses to go

i learned about the health

rainwater is the purest

i learned about the strength

all i need is an empty cup

and as

they pull in the drying laundry,

cover the stored grains,

gather beneath a shelter

and i sit outside with my cup,

because

i am only thirsty for the rain

and i only drink when it rains

isn’t that how we got here?

to each his own

that chorus is a fierce gale that sends [self] hateful shards through soft skin

to each his own

sorry to burst your bubble, but:
whether you subscribe 
or not — your life is not your own. 

to each his own?

who bewitched you into thinking
you had anything to own

you breathe, the very breath
of God.

Girl Sewing (1934-1943) | Bernard Schardt (1904-1979)


should He silence the wind,
your very heart beat would
still, the last song will rattle
from your speaker box throat and
you will meet your Maker 
     to be with your Maker
or apart from your Maker
forever

are not the sapphire skies,
the indigo sea, 
the rural hue of the grass,
and gleaming brightness of the sun,
all the colors from His palette?

should he set fire to His canvas,
we would all burn.

He would still be good.
He would still be holy.

He would still be.

But love — lives beyond the firmament
seated in eternity
among dense clouds 
of storm and fire, jewels and color,
surround a celestial throne and 
we bow whether we knew it or not
to the only One who can wear that 
crown

But here — on this earth
in the now
with life coursing through our veins
with words cursing from our mouths 
we move with audacity,
beneath the mercy of God 
and forget what we are made of 

dust and breath

“to each, His own”

we belong to God,
we are for Him.

and there is a violence here 
it cuts close to home:
the truth threatens our autonomy —

we want to own us 

and it doesn’t work that way

to each, His own. 
to each His own. 
to each, His. 

“we are gods”

no. my dear,
we are God’s. 

Is God worth the wait? Is he the treasured pain of longing? Is he a yearning who sings to me? What happens when I wait? I develop a yawning hole filled with the emptiness that breeds hope. Truth becomes an immovable mountain sitting on my inside, and trust becomes a horizon.  I think I am a sum of what I am willing to wait for. Who I am eager to wait for. Is God worth the wait? Is He worth the sleepy eyes, the cold nights, the fading sun, the stiff limbs, the shut door, the tear-stained cheeks, the journaled trash, the secret expectation, the silent love song? Is He worth the daunting questions, the limbo life?

What other treasure treasures you? What other treasure treasures you? What other treasure treasures you? There’s no one else.

No one else is coming. Every other guest is expected.

I don’t want them. Maybe I want them now, but when they leave, I will be left with a ravine more bottomless than the sinkhole of … waiting.

Patience is not a frilly doll-faced sitter that pets me as I whine for desires to be fulfilled. Patience is not a pinch-faced instructor who raps my desk as I look longingly at the clock, waiting for the bell to ring.

Patience is a friend and the fruit that appears the longer we remain. She tells me about the One coming, to the point that I allow my unanswered prayer to slip from our minds while tears flow freely from our wide eyes. She tells me things we couldn’t hear before. 

Eni, He is worth the wait.

Woman and Child (Silence) 1855/60. Jean-Francois Millet French, 1814-1875. Oil on canvas.

Typically, those who share the same space test your commitment to a lifestyle glorifying God. It is rarely the overt troll or cynical tirade on social media.

It is usually the person who lays in the bed next to you who raises their eyebrow when you decide to fast, or the “lol” text when you repent for doing too much in a group chat, or the intervention of “religion” when you pull back to reassess your priorities.

This is the Fiery Furnace. And we are not given the out. We are called to live in the tension where the iron sharpens us and calls us to the mat of our declarations.

Here’s the tea, though: The real war exists between our ears, where our enemies are invisible, and our weapons are mighty. (See 2 Corinthians 10:4)

You are in a school of holiness. You are learning to live in the land of the living. You are learning to yield to the leadership of the Spirit. You are learning to bear His fruits. You are learning to walk worthy of your calling. You are learning obedience by what you suffer. You are learning discipline. You are learning to love. You are learning. You will overcome it, and when you do, you will receive a reward from the One who has been waiting for you at the finish line.

Portrait (1935-1943) | Blanche Grambs (American, 1916-2010)

Mere months after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, white American painter Eastman Johnson, a co-founder of the Met in New York, painted a Black man seated beneath soft light, reading the Bible. He sits on a blue jacket, calm and locked in.1

At a time when literacy among enslaved Black people in the South had been criminalized, Johnson's brush became a subtle act of rebellion. He painted freedom, not only political, but spiritual and intellectual.

This painting was completed the same year President Abraham Lincoln formally recognized the United States Colored Troops. Many scholars believe the jacket beneath the reader is a Union uniform, and that the portion of Scripture he studies is Exodus—the story of a people liberated by God.

But the painting is called “The Lord Is My Shepherd”?

Art historian Eleanor Jones Harvey, writing for the New York Times in 2013, observed2:

“The Lord is My Shepherd” blurs the line between two types of literacy, one in service of faith and the other in political awareness. Literacy was, in its own way, a declaration of independence and humanity for a people long denied both. The idea of wanting to learn—reading, writing, talking, and being heard—was a powerful force in the black community. It embodied the concepts of determination and self-advocacy, of independent thinking and initiative.”

What Harvey realized—and what Johnson emphasized—was this:
When people are free, they read.
What they read on the other side of freedom determines how free they remain.

In Israel’s history, reading the Law of God was central to national identity. The act of reading was never passive.

In Exodus 24:3–8, after the people were liberated from Egypt, Moses read God’s laws to them. They responded in unison: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” This was their declaration of allegiance and distinction: “We are Your people. These are Your ways.”

Before entering the Promised Land, Joshua renewed this covenant by reading the entire Law aloud to a new generation.

Centuries later, King Josiah, upon discovering the forgotten Book of the Law during temple renovations, gathered the people to hear it again. He stood publicly and recommitted himself to the Lord “with all his heart and all his soul.” (2 Chronicles 34:31)

Still later, Ezra did the same after Israel’s return from Babylonian captivity, reading the Word aloud and inviting the people to weep, worship, and renew their vows.

Freedom was marked by reading, sustained by remembering, and sealed by repentance.

Harvey quoted a 19th-century abolitionist who wrote in Harper’s Weekly3:

“The alphabet is an abolitionist. If you would keep a people enslaved, refuse to teach them to read.”

The Scriptures have always been freedom readings.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword… discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable… that the servant of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16–17)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

How many people are enslaved to the fear of the future, to the fallout of world events, to the discomfort with cultural failures, or the lust of their most base desires and appetites?

Our generation is considered the most biblically illiterate generation.4 By generation, I mean anyone alive right now.

Some work to deconstruct the authority, clarity, necessity, and sufficiency of the Scriptures, as people choose their appetites over truth. Even still, there is a rise in hunger for Scripture,5 and access to it is more available than ever.

The Word of God is not just ink on a page—it is a Person, revealed by the Spirit through a living book. This library of nearly 800,000 God-breathed words unfolds identity, wisdom, beauty, and eternity to people who have forgotten who they are and where they come from.

Your freedom came with pages. By them, God can form you into the image you were born to bear. Jesus Christ is the Living Word. And by Him, we can truly be free.

What would happen if you opened the Scriptures? Who are you fully liberated?

Start with Psalm 1, John 1, or Exodus 3 and see where God takes you.

This statement is a balm to the exhausted soul, weary of the haunt of failure. It helps us bat away the thoughts that trickle into our minds through missed marks and mistakes. If we can convince ourselves that God’s emotion towards us is always positive, we don’t have to deal with the onslaught of missing it.

Sadly, it's fake and unhelpful. Believing lies about the reality we live in is the stuff of psychological disorders. Our framework for engaging in an authentic and blooming relationship with God has to be founded on truth—not a truth we come up with but the Truth that He reveals to us.

Our framework of Christianity should be based on the Bible—on the Living Word of God. Theology shouldn’t be an intimidating concept. It is the practice and study of how the different scriptures in the Bible connect to create pillars of our faith that teach us about the world in the way God intended it. By it, we understand how we were created to engage with Him, ourselves, one another, and the world around us.

Without theology, we settle for concepts core to living in a worldly sense, and then the lifestyle we have said yes to, in the Lord, overlaps with it, making for a Frankenstein expression of Christianity.

For example, when making decisions —big or small, minor or major— if I lean on my fear of embarrassment as a factor instead of asking God directly what to do, I live trying to save face instead of in the confident radiance of hearing God’s voice.

4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me
    and delivered me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him are radiant,
    and their faces shall never be ashamed.
6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
    and saved him out of all his troubles.
7 The angel of the Lord encamps
    around those who fear him, and delivers them.

Psalm 34

HERE’S THE THING

God could be angry with you.

We tend to apply our fickleness to God. We think He’s fragile, imbalanced, and as emotionally volatile as we are. So, then, we protect ourselves from Him. Our pain, our life direction, our intentions, anything beyond our said identity: “I am a Christian,” “I love God,” etc. – we keep Him out of those spaces.

Maybe we don’t think He has anything to say about those areas, and it's easier to avoid Him. Or maybe we disagree with what He says about our lives, so we just rebel.

Rebel can be an intense word because we may not see our choice to ignore, avoid, or halfway obey Him as rebellion. Rebellion communicates that someone is in charge, and sometimes, God being in charge doesn’t fly with us. 

So we slide out of accountability and obedience by saying, “I mean, that's all good and well for you, Eniola, and your relationship with God. I feel like God is speaking something different to me. We all have our relationship with God.”

Christianity is not a religion to be engaged in as we see fit. In fact, the Bible says: Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Our religion - yes, our system of faith and worship - demands that we either yield our total allegiance to the one, true living God or we don’t.

There’s no in-between.

There is a case to be made from Genesis to Revelations for God’s unwavering expectation that those who call themselves His should live as fully His.

The language is imperial, familial, structural, and spiritual - some would even say mystical.

The bricks of a building don’t look at each other and decide whether they’ll be connected. They can’t afford to be disconnected.

Royal families, for all their drama, tend to honor the bloodline when deciding who will take the reins next.

Christ is the Head of a Body, the King of the Kingdom, the Cornerstone of a Building, and the Elder Brother in the Family. Each of these descriptions leaves little to no room for personal interpretation.

Why does this matter?

When you follow Jesus, you relinquish the right to live in a way that only concerns you. Your sanctification, while it is yours, is also a communal one. Read 1 Peter 1. The call to a holy life — allowing the purifying work of the Spirit to change you into Christ's image — is a call to corporate yielding.

SO WHAT?

God has laws. He has ways that we, His children, live in His home. We have this interesting idea—especially in America—that once we are free of parental eyes, we are now free of any authority. The gag is that we end up picking a new one.

I am either at the mercy of the prince of the air or the King of Glory. It is easier to live under the lordship of Satan because his number one tactic against humanity is lies. If he can deceive the world into believing that he doesn’t exist, God doesn’t exist, our choices dont matter, all we have is now, and we can do what we want, then he can, without a fight, slip the chains around our wrists, necks, and ankles, leading us to our death – all while screaming: I can do what I want. 

Independence has become a slavemaster. Forcing us to make our choices based on our most base desires and broken longings. Things made for our good have become the poisonous drugs that keep us hazy and our ears muffled. Addictions, hatred, and self-centeredness feed the monster that wants to swallow the world whole. 

All the while,

This can be frustrating because we are waiting to hear, “Go. Be free. Do. What. You. Want.” And it will never be true.

We always do one of two things:

1. what we were made for.

2. what we weren’t.

A plane was made to fly. A car was made to drive.

We were made for God.

We were created in His image and placed in a Garden He had completed making before we arrived. And we made a choice to walk our own way and relinquish what He gave us. (see Genesis 1-3).

SO….

So, is God mad at you?

He might be.

But He is different from us. His anger is a slow burn, and when it comes to our human condition, He made provision for His own wrath by coming as a Man and absorbing the rightful punishment of sin, the rejection of His lordship —- death. 

Is God mad at you?

Have you ever had a friend you avoided telling the truth to because you feared it would change everything?

I have. It sucks.

If you cannot handle anger in a relationship, your relationship will go as deep as that. There will be no intimacy.

God isn’t like that. He is a God of solution. He is a God of connection. He is our God. 

Whether we want Him to be or not – He is the only true One.

We can have a blossoming, vibrant, intimate relationship with Him that isn’t just a system of faith and worship but a river that flows into every part of our lives, flooding us with holiness, love, and peace. The Scriptures become the well and the guide. Refreshing and renewing, we learn a new way to live. Divorced and free from our old master, our old husband, and into the arms we belong in. 

This is a hard truth. But so is gravity. 

Like gravity, this truth grounds me in a world where pain is sometimes user error, and relationships are as strong as roasted seaweed. Trust is foreign and love. Love has ceased from being this solid, honest, living, and true Person to an elusive, up-for-interpretation concept that can fill any idea we have, like water as ice, vapor, or hydration.

Is. God. mad. at. you?

He could be. And just like any other relationship, do you have the ability to make it right? You have the ability to own your mistake.

THE GOSPEL

In 2020, black lives didn’t seem to matter. I remember many conversations, witnessed, and experienced where white loved ones would communicate how they were not perpetrators, so why did they have to apologize? As we conversed, I would outline areas of racism where they were complicit or areas where their intensity wasn’t comparable to a man holding a gun or his knee on a black man’s neck. But their comments about my beauty, presence, ethnicity, and intelligence created wounds in my soul that made relationship difficult. 

We are all sinners. Whether we are aware of it or not, the propensity to sin lives in each of us, and as we grow, whether little lies, petty theft, or vindictive murder, — we have all fallen short of what we were made for. And when we sin, we are not trespassing in a vacuum, making decisions against our original design and Designer. Casting offense and emphasizing our enmity. And God is emotional. He weeps, He laughs, He gets angry – at us. Only now is there a mediator between our brokenness and His holiness, and it is His Son, Christ Jesus. 

God’s holy anger requires the payment of death.

He doesn’t find joy in death. Justice to Him isn’t eradicating those He made, those He loves. Justice is Death, but not ours – His. 

Is God mad at me? Well, He could be, but that isn’t the end of the story. 

Our acceptance and our ownership of our wrongs become the threshold to liberty. An apology that blooms into a life transformed. And we reclaim the life we lost in the Garden, the life we lost to independence, the life we lost – from the Giver of Life, and we become whole as we become whole. God’s anger is a gift. It illustrates the effect we have on Him.

Choosing to repent INTO a new life yielded to leadership - that changes everything. 

Image: Crayer, Gaspar de. Study of the Head of a Young Moor. 1631-1635, Oil on CanvasMuseum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.

Script: By Eniola Abioye

The pain in this world seems to stretch clawed fingers around the throats of us trying to be alive, and gentleness is not an option.

Everything is violent.

We are stretched rubber bands threatening to pop back on, even the One who holds us. 

Agony is the emotion beneath every mask we pass.

Masked disillusionment asks us if we need room for milk in our drip, if we need the store’s credit card to save 5% on our next purchase, and if we want to upgrade to first class through our app.

Masked delirium sends scam texts to our phones, cold-calls the list of exhausted and broke worker bees, and stands on the side of the side road of the freeway with the same sign in different hands.

The prophets speak from mic-’d pulpits, rectangular reels, and street corners, so we don’t know who is really speaking for God. Have they been on holy ground?

We are not all hopeless, but we are all poor. We need God. We need each other.

There is no happy ending.

There is a glorious one.

Here, our King tugs on His children, inviting them to give the world a taste of the Sight to come. And as it cost Him everything – it costs everything. 

We pay because love is the only thing that will remain.

It will unmask, expose, and reveal. It will clean, purify, and sanctify. It will heal, anoint, and comfort. It will renew, revive, and awaken. It will come, and it is here. 

“I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.” (Revelation 3:18)

Lithograph: Helfond, Riva. Sleeping Girl. 1935-1943, In Collection: Works Progress Administration, New York.

Subscribe now