Okay, that’s not a sentence I get to write very often, so I’m going to stop for a moment and enjoy it.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to sit down with longtime NFL quarterback Kirk Cousins at an event I was hosting. Kirk had recently signed with the Las Vegas Raiders, and over the course of our conversation we talked about everything from football and family to mentoring, money, pressure, and what it actually looks like to follow Jesus when you don’t know what’s coming next.

I walked away really impressed with Kirk. He’s obviously an incredibly accomplished athlete, but more than that, he’s a thoughtful guy, a devoted husband and father, and a sincere follower of Jesus.

But something else happened during our conversation. Kirk kept dropping these little one-liners.

He’d be answering a question, say something almost in passing, and I’d think, That’s really good. I need to remember that.

Then a few minutes later, he’d do it again.

And again.

Toward the end of the interview, I finally told him I’d stopped trying to keep track of them all.

Recently, I went back through my notes. This time, I did keep track.

Here are five things Kirk Cousins said that I think are worth sitting with.

1. “Don’t be so heavenly-minded that you’re no earthly good.”

We were talking about what it looks like for Kirk to live out his faith in an NFL locker room. He told me there’s a tension he’s constantly trying to navigate.

On one side, he never wants a teammate to someday discover he’s a Christian and think, Really? I never knew that.

But there’s another extreme too. Kirk said his dad calls it being “so heavenly-minded that you’re no earthly good.”

You know the person. Every conversation becomes a sermon. Every relationship becomes a project. People see you coming and start looking for another way out of the room.

Kirk said he’s learned that sharing his faith often starts somewhere much simpler: asking questions. He pointed out how often Jesus did the same. So he tries to know his teammates, listen to them, build genuine relationships, and then recognize the opportunities God gives him to speak truth.

Sometimes our desire to influence people can actually get in the way of influencing them.

Maybe one of the most spiritual things we can do today is ask a good question to someone - and genuinely listen to the answer.

2. “Following God doesn’t mean there’s a red carpet.”

At one point I asked Kirk about the pressure of playing quarterback in the NFL. Millions of people are watching. One bad throw can change a game. A handful of bad games can change a career.

Kirk talked openly about how inadequate he sometimes feels walking into that environment. Football has kept him on his knees because he’s constantly reminded of his dependence on God.

Then he said this:

“Following God doesn’t mean there’s a red carpet. It doesn’t mean everything will be paved. If anything, it means the path will be difficult, but he’ll give you the feet to walk the path.”

I love that.

Sometimes we assume that if God is leading us somewhere, He’ll make the path obvious - and preferably easy.

But that’s not necessarily how following Jesus works.

Sometimes God’s provision isn’t an easier path. Sometimes He gives us the feet to walk a hard one.

3. “God doesn’t give me four steps down the road. He gives me the next step.”

Kirk was talking about his move to Las Vegas. From the outside, there were plenty of reasons to wonder how it would all work out. Kirk admitted he could look two or three steps down the road and imagine scenarios that didn’t look particularly good.

But God hadn’t given him those steps yet.

“God doesn’t give me four steps down the road. He gives me the next step, enough for today.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer four steps.

Actually, I’d like twelve.

I’d like God to show me where this decision leads, what happens next, how He’s going to provide, and preferably how everything eventually works out.

Then I’ll take the first step.

But apparently that’s not the deal.

Maybe you don’t need to figure out the whole path today. Maybe you just need to faithfully take the next step.

4. “Grow what we have shrewdly, give what we have generously, and spend what we have wisely.”

Near the end of our conversation, we started talking about money.

It’s probably worth mentioning that Kirk has a little more experience with this subject than most of us. Over the course of his career, he’s received roughly $339 million in guaranteed salary—an NFL record.

So when Kirk Cousins starts talking about how he thinks about money, I tend to listen.

His answer wasn’t simply, Give more. He talked about how easy it is to get out of balance even with something good like generosity. God has given us things to enjoy too.

Then he rattled off this little framework:

“I’m constantly trying to stay balanced on what it means to grow what we have shrewdly, give what we have generously, and spend what we have wisely.”

And then he added: “Those all compete with each other.”

Of all the things Kirk said that night, this may have been the one that stuck with me the most.

Grow shrewdly. Give generously. Spend wisely.

I love the tension in that.

Every dollar represents a stewardship decision. Some should be grown. Some should be given away. Some should be spent—and enjoyed—with gratitude.

And there’s no tidy formula for how much goes into each category. Which means managing money isn’t simply a math problem. It’s another place where we have to walk with God.

5. “I am just a nobody trying to tell everybody about a somebody who can save anybody.”

Toward the end of the interview, I asked Kirk about his legacy.

He’s played quarterback in the NFL for well over a decade. He’s won playoff games, engineered the largest comeback in NFL history, appeared in a Netflix series, made a lot of money, and influenced millions of people.

So what does he hope people remember about him?

His answer surprised me.

“I don’t need to be remembered.”

He talked about wanting to use the time, talent, resources, and influence God has given him to point people toward Jesus. Then he repeated something a former team chaplain used to tell the players:

“I am just a nobody trying to tell everybody about a somebody who can save anybody.”

There’s something powerful about hearing that from someone who actually will be remembered.

Most of us won’t play quarterback in the NFL. We won’t have Netflix cameras following us around or hear our names announced in stadiums filled with 70,000 people.

But every one of us has been given something to steward—relationships, resources, opportunities, influence. A family. A career. A neighborhood. A handful of people who are watching the way we live.

Maybe a successful life isn’t one that causes the most people to remember our name.

Maybe it’s one that faithfully uses whatever we’ve been given to point people toward His.

That’s something worth remembering.

Before you keep reading, sit with that question for a second.

I’m not asking for the answer you think you’ve learned over the years at church or in Sunday School. I’m asking about your first instinct. When you imagine God thinking about you, what do you assume God feels when you come to mind?

One of the habits I picked up in seminary was learning to read as though I were having a conversation with the author. So I do. I underline sentences I agree with. I mark through sentences that I don’t. I ask questions. I push back. Sometimes I scribble “yes” in the margin. Other times I write “no.” And every now and then, an author asks a question that makes me close the book and simply think.

This was one of those moments.

As I considered my answer, I tried to be brutally honest. The first word that surfaced was disappointment. Sadly, I had to admit that when God thought about me, I assumed He felt…disappointed.

If you’ve followed my story for any length of time, you know I’ve spent much of my adult life in ministry. I’ve had the privilege of preaching, teaching, leading organizations, discipling others, and talking about the grace of God. Intellectually, I know what the Bible says about God’s love. But when I stopped giving the church answer and answered honestly, disappointment is what I found.

As I kept reading, the author, David Benner, wrote something that stopped me again. He said, “When I ask people to do this, a surprising number of people say that the first thing they assume God feels is disappointment.”

I remember thinking, Really? I’m not the only one? Maybe you’re one of those people too.

That question stayed with me, and in many ways it became one of the quiet companions of my sabbatical.

As I slowed down over those months, I began to realize something about myself that I had never fully admitted. Receiving the love of God was much harder for me than believing in the love of God. Those aren’t the same thing.

Somewhere along the way, I had begun spending an enormous amount of time, energy, and attention trying to improve myself. I wanted to become more patient, more disciplined, more prayerful... and less sinful in the process.

None of those desires are bad. In fact, they’re good desires. But underneath them was a subtle assumption that I had rarely questioned: if I could just become a better version of myself, maybe I could finally relax and be pleasing to God. Maybe then God wouldn’t just put up with me, but He would actually like me.

I don’t think I’m the only one who lives that way.

Many of us sincerely believe the gospel, yet we quietly relate to God as though we’re trying to become the kind of person He’ll finally be pleased with. We spend so much of our lives trying to improve ourselves that we rarely stop long enough to simply receive His love. We know we’re saved by grace, but we often live as though God’s love depends more on how we’re doing than on who He is.

Looking back, I think that’s exactly why that question stayed with me.

During my sabbatical, I spent a week alone at a Franciscan retreat center in Scottsdale, Arizona. There were no dramatic spiritual experiences. Most days I wandered the grounds, found a shady place to sit in the 104-degree Arizona heat, read for a while, prayed, and sat in silence. Sometimes I felt distracted. Sometimes I felt emotionally raw. Most of the time I wasn’t “feeling” much of anything at all.

But I kept returning to one simple prayer.

“Father, help me receive Your love.”

Not understand it better.

Not earn it.

Simply receive it.

Looking back, I think something began changing in me that week—not because I discovered a new truth, but because I slowly stopped resisting an old one.

On the flight home, I opened my Bible to Psalm 13. As I read the final two verses, they felt like they were describing the very journey God had been taking me on.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

I wrote the date in the margin of my Bible: March 27, 2026.

David doesn’t begin with rejoicing. He begins with trust. I have trusted in your steadfast love. Somehow that became my prayer as well. Before I could begin resting in God’s love, I had to trust that it was already true. I had to trust that His love was rooted in His character, not in my performance. I had to trust that He wasn’t waiting for a better version of me before offering His affection.

I’ve thought often about the title of David Benner’s book: Surrender to Love.

Maybe that’s the invitation.

Not to surrender for God’s love, as though we could somehow earn it.

But to surrender to God’s love.

To stop trying to make ourselves more lovable. To trust that our Father already loves us with a steadfast love that doesn’t rise and fall with yesterday’s victories or today’s failures.

Maybe today is an invitation to slow down. To breathe. To stop trying for just a little while. To stop hiding. To fall back into His love and simply enjoy it.

Believe it. Receive it.

Live loved. Love well.

I told him the truth.

“I’m tired.”

Not the kind of tired that a weekend fixes. It felt like something deeper. My body was still recovering from surgery, but my soul was tired too. I told him I was looking forward to disappearing for a while—to disconnect, to rest, and to let God meet me in the quiet.

Then Bill said something I’ll never forget.

“Kevin, I want you to know that if you go on sabbatical and you never come back... you’ve done enough.”

His words caught me completely off guard. Before I knew it, tears were filling my eyes. I remember telling him, “I don’t know why that’s making me emotional.”

At first, I assumed it was because I’d always carried this low-grade fear that someday I would disappoint people. If I stepped away, I’d let down the staff, the board, donors, friends. In my mind, there was always someone counting on me.

But over the months that followed, I began to wonder if something even deeper had been exposed.

I loved the mission I had spent thirteen years giving my life to. I believed in it with everything I had. Yet somewhere along the way, I had quietly accepted the idea that there was always one more thing to do before I could finally rest. One more meeting. One more decision. One more problem to solve. One more person to help. One more conversation. One more...

The work itself wasn’t the problem. It was the quiet belief beneath it—that I could rest someday, but not yet.

Bill’s words interrupted something in me. Not because he was telling me the work was finished. The work wasn’t finished. It never is. He was simply reminding me that my soul didn’t have to wait for the work to be finished before it could finally rest.

A few weeks later, Steph and I were walking through downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas, when a young woman walked past us wearing a sweatshirt that simply read, “You are enough.” I noticed it immediately.

Then, later that spring, after another trip, we were standing at DFW Airport waiting for the shuttle back to our car when someone walked by wearing the exact same sweatshirt.

You are enough.

I remember smiling to myself and thinking, Lord, are You trying to tell me something?

I appreciated the sentiment. It was kind. Encouraging, even. But something about it felt incomplete, though at the time I couldn’t have explained why.
….

Not long after that, during my sabbatical, I was reading Genesis 32 and 33 during my normal time with Jesus in the morning.

In that passage, Jacob is preparing to meet the brother he cheated twenty years earlier. He hears Esau is coming with four hundred men, and fear grips him. He prays. He sends extravagant gifts ahead. He divides his family. Then, in the darkness of the night, he wrestles with God.

As I read the story, I found myself relating to Jacob more than I wanted to admit.

Buried in the middle of all his planning is a sentence that stopped me: “Perhaps he will accept me.”

Perhaps.

Perhaps if I do enough.

Perhaps if I humble myself enough.

Perhaps if I make it right.

Perhaps then...

The next morning Jacob limps toward his brother. He bows seven times as he approaches, expecting the worst. But before he can say much of anything, Esau surprises him. It impacted me so much I underlined it in my Bible and put a star next to it:

”But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” Genesis 33:4

What struck me wasn’t simply Esau’s kindness. It was the realization that while Jacob had spent the night wrestling with God and preparing for the meeting, God had apparently already gone before him. Jacob discovered that acceptance wasn’t something he had successfully negotiated. It was something he received.

I’ve thought about that scene often over the last several months.

I wonder how much of my own striving has come from believing that rest is always waiting on the other side of one more accomplishment. If I can just solve one more problem, become a little wiser, work a little harder, help a few more people... then maybe I’ll finally have permission to be still.

But that finish line never seems to stop moving.

Maybe you know what that’s like.

Maybe your “one more thing” has nothing to do with leading a ministry. Maybe it’s your career. Your parenting. Your marriage. Your finances. Maybe you’ve been carrying around the quiet belief that you’ll finally be able to rest once you’ve fixed whatever still feels unfinished.

Or maybe the person you’re trying to fix is you.

Maybe you’ve quietly believed that if you could just improve yourself just a little bit more… then you’d finally be able to rest in God’s acceptance. So you keep striving, hoping that one more victory, one more breakthrough, one more spiritual milestone will finally quiet your soul.

If that’s you, I wonder if God might be inviting you to the same place He’s been inviting me.

Not to stop working.

Not to stop caring.

But to stop believing that His acceptance waits on the other side of your next accomplishment.

Grace isn’t earned. It’s received.

Perhaps that’s why Jacob wept.

Perhaps that’s why the father ran to embrace the prodigal before his son could finish his speech and still smelled of the pigsty.

And perhaps that’s why Bill’s words still come back to me so often.

“Kevin, if you go on sabbatical and you never come back... you’ve done enough.”

Looking back now, I don’t think those words were permission to quit.

I think they were an invitation to rest.

And I’m still learning to accept it. Maybe you can too.

Rest.

At least they do to me.

Over the years, I’ve had a number of people ask why I keep coming back to the phrase Following to Lead. It was the name of a blog I started years ago. Eventually it became the name of a podcast. And now, it finds itself here again.

Before I answer that question, though, let me first say hello.

Some of you and I have known each other for decades. Others found me through the old Following to Lead blog or podcast. Some of you walked alongside me during my years at Mentoring Alliance. And some of you are brand new. However you ended up here, I’m grateful you did.

If you happened to subscribe to my blog ten or fifteen years ago and were surprised to see something from me show up in your inbox this week...welcome back. I’m glad we found each other again.

So...why Following to Lead?

If I remember correctly, the phrase wasn’t even originally mine. Years ago, someone I respected signed an email, “Following to Lead.” I don’t remember anything else about the email. I honestly don’t even remember who sent it. But I remember those three words.

They stayed with me.

The more I reflected on them, the more I realized they captured something I wanted my life to become.

For me, they’ve always pointed back to Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

I’ve noticed that when people hear a verse like that, it’s easy to misunderstand what Jesus is saying. “Deny yourself” can sound like He’s telling us to think less of ourselves, to beat ourselves up, or to constantly remind ourselves how unworthy we are.

I don’t think that’s His invitation at all.

Every morning, I wake up with an agenda. You do too.

There are things I want to accomplish, conversations I want to have, problems I want to solve, and a hundred little preferences about how I’d like my day to unfold. Left to myself, I’ll naturally organize my life around...myself.

Jesus invites us to begin somewhere different.

Before I try to lead my wife, my kids, or even my own heart, He invites me to lay down my own agenda and simply pray,

“Lord, today isn’t ultimately about building my kingdom. It’s about joining Yours. Not my will, but Yours be done.”

Sometime this past year, I even typed out a prayer and tucked it into the front of the journal I use each morning. I don’t read it every day, but I find myself coming back to it often before I begin writing. It’s become a way of reorienting my heart before the day gets away from me.

In one of the first few paragraphs, I pray:

“Today, Jesus, I yield to You. I trust You and rely on You alone—not on what I can achieve or who I can please. I begin this day with You at the center of my mind and long to be aware of Your presence with me throughout this day.”

Toward the end of the prayer, I remind myself:

“I’m choosing to join with You in the work of Your kingdom, not mine. I relinquish control. My heart is willing, Lord. All outcomes are Yours. With a deep breath, I release them to You.”

I wish I could tell you I naturally wake up with that posture. I don’t. That’s exactly why I need the reminder.

One little detail in Luke’s account has always stood out to me. Luke is the only Gospel writer who includes the word daily. That tells me this isn’t a decision I make once. It’s a posture I return to over and over again. Every morning I have another opportunity to surrender my own will before I start chasing it.

Only then does Jesus say, “Follow me.”

Jesus isn’t simply saying, “Walk behind me.” He’s inviting us to learn from Him—to apprentice ourselves to Him, to watch how He loves people, how He responds to interruptions, and perhaps most importantly, how He trusts His Father.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that before I can lead anything well, I first have to learn how to follow. And following means learning to live by faith. It means learning to trust God—not just when life makes sense, but when it doesn’t.

That’s been true in my family. It was true while leading an organization. And it’s true in whatever season God has for me next.

The apostle Paul writes in one of his letters to the church in Corinth,

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1)

To many of us, that sounds incredibly bold.

“Follow me?”

Really?

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve heard someone say, “Well, I’m certainly not perfect. Who am I to mentor someone else?”

I understand that feeling.

But Paul wasn’t claiming to be perfect. He was simply inviting people to walk with him as he was learning to walk with Jesus.

One of God’s greatest gifts is faithful people who are a little farther down the road than we are. People whose lives make us want to know Jesus more. People who have walked through seasons we’ve never faced, who have learned lessons we haven’t learned yet, and whose example quietly encourages us to keep following Christ.

We aren’t claiming they’re perfect. We’re simply recognizing there’s something in their life that we want to learn from.

That’s what Following to Lead has always meant to me. Not a brand or a slogan, but a reminder that before I can lead anything well, I need to keep learning how to follow Jesus.

Over the weeks and months ahead, I look forward to unpacking that idea together.

What does it look like to follow Jesus when our hearts ache? When we’ve been hurt by someone we trusted? When we’re trying to love our spouse well or navigate some of the harder moments of parenting? What does following Jesus look like when we’re in over our heads at work, when we face a decision we don’t know how to make, or when we’re leading in an area we’ve been given?

Those are the kinds of questions I hope we’ll keep exploring together.

Because I have a growing conviction that following Jesus isn’t just something we do in our quiet time. It changes the way we think, the way we love, the way we forgive, the way we parent, the way we work, and yes...the way we lead.

Welcome.

I’m really glad you’re here.