It has been a while since I’ve posted anything. Safe to say that life has been busy and challenging as we’ve welcomed Tyger Tonkavich into the world. He arrived ten days early in July, and as if he didn’t occupy my every waking thought prior to birth, I now find my world completely upended by this sub-10-pound dictator who looks vaguely like me and identical to my husband.

We are not sharing any pictures of his face online, so I’ll just leave this small collection below.

I hope to get back to writing soon. Maybe a bit more disjointed. Maybe a bit wiser, or even recognizing that I have no wisdom at all, depending on the day. Still, there is much to share and many adventures ahead to show Tyger God’s glory in Creation.

Until next time…

My goodness, has it really been two months since I’ve posted anything? It’s not for lack of wanting to write, nor things to write about. It’s more that I have had far too little time and far too much to write, the most important reason for that being that Zebulon and I found out in November that we are expecting our first child, a son.

Tyger will make his way on the scene in July. “Expecting” was perhaps a little misleading at the outset, as Baby T was entirely unplanned by us, but of course a good plan from God. And though he weights just about 1 lb right now, he has already upended our world in delightful and terrifying ways.

Our thoughts flit from “How do we make this work financially?” to “What exactly is a swaddle?” to “Are our dreams on hold, or even dead, or just seriously altered?” to “Should we even bother stocking newborn diapers, since the average baby in my family has been like 9 lbs at birth?” And of course, wondering what he will look like, what his personality will be, if he will love the things we love to do, how his faith will unfold over a lifetime, and much more.

I’ve beens assured that all of our fears are normal, and we’ve been reassured even more by the fact that no one, upon telling us that we are expecting, has said, “Oh, my deepest condolences,” and instead greeted us with, “I am so happy for you! You’re going to be wonderful parents! This is the best news ever!” Rather than any fears that life as we know it is ending, we are encouraged that a sweeter life is just beginning.

I normally write here about the places I see that make me wonder about God in Creation, but this is one of those times that we see ourselves as a divine work of Creation, made by God’s Hands with purpose and beauty, through which He speaks and commends us to His Image, in which we alone have been made.

Today I want to share some reflections from pregnancy as part of a grander journey into His Image which God has taken me on in the last 18 months, and then some thoughts on sifting through the confusion of “God, what are You doing? This just flipped the table entirely on our plans.”

Reflection 1: Bearing His Image

“So God created mankind in His own Image,
in the image of God He created them;
male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

I’ve been praying about this verse for the last year-and-a-half or so. There’s something about the way it’s written that grabbed my attention. The writer first says that God created mankind in His own Image, meaning the whole human race. But then he distinguishes between the sexes. He repeats that God created mankind in His Image, male and female.

I am by no means a feminist type, but when I read this, I can’t help but feel like I only know what it means to be a man created in God’s Image. I hear His masculine qualities preached and lifted up. I see men in all of the ways they beautifully encapsulate what it is to be a provider, protector, priest, and prophet made in His Image. A married man bears the Image of Christ to the Church.

When it comes to women, though, we often look to passages that involve other humans. The many wonderful women of the Bible to emulate, like the proverbial (meaning she is an ideal, not a person) Proverbs 31 woman or Mary the mother of Jesus or Ruth or Esther or many others. We look to their faithfulness, meekness, courage, humility, etc.

That’s all great, but they were women made in the Image of God. What does that mean? What do we see in them that bears His Image the way we look to Abraham or Moses as leaders who bear it? Or we’re called to submit to our husbands as the Church does to Christ. That’s great, but still not the Mark of His Image as much as His Divine Order.

What is it that God speaks into the heart of woman: I made you in My Image, and this inclination, this depth, this desire is My Mark on your DNA; it has been bestowed upon women alone; and it belongs to Me Alone….?

Well, I don’t have the whole answer just yet, but as I spend time pondering the absolutely wonderful mystery of reproduction, pregnancy, labor, and birth, I cannot feel like I at least have a partial theology to propose, and it’s going to be a messy proposal because of that whole limited-time thing I’ve got going on.

The Curse

If you’re a Christian woman, one of the first things that comes to mind when you find out you’re pregnant is the Curse in Genesis 3. Obviously, I’ve thought about this many times before, but for whatever reason the other day, I just could not stop pondering it.

Here is God’s curse over mankind in its entirety:

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:16-19)

OK, lets’s do this proposal in three parts. I don’t even know if “proposal” is the right word yet, or if I am simply wondering if this thought has any teeth…

1. First, I am proposing/wondering if the Curse was another impartation of God’s Image on Man that we were never supposed to experience in the Garden of Eden. Essentially, that God never let His Image depart from our being, but that we would bear it more fully in knowing our sin, and in knowing good and evil. The attributes of wrath, jealousy (His righteous jealousy), justice, forbearance, mercy, sacrificial love, etc. would not have been necessary in a sinless Garden, and they were revealed only after sin arrived. What this would mean is that part of the Curse we each bear is also a share in the Image of God over a fallen world. Therefore, we know pain, frustration, sacrifice, a desire for justice, even righteous anger, etc. Attributes that hurt. Attributes that we won’t know in Heaven when everything is Right.

2. I am proposing/wondering if the pain of labor for women is the Image of Christ that we uniquely bear as women to witness to the pain and sacrifice it took Christ to bring about our rebirth, and therefore we point to the Goodness and Sacrificial Love of God in our bodies, and have done so for millennia. This is probably the easiest case to make. Romans 8:22 says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” Christ also expressed the suffering He would endure and the disciples would share in as the pain of child labor that would bring about joy when the child arrives (John 16:20-22). This is reference to both the death and resurrection He would endure, as well as the persecution and deliverance into Heaven at the end of the age. Uncomfortable with a feminine Image of Christ? Well, Christ Himself expressed His motherly qualities as He wept over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37 when He cried that He longed to gather the Israelites like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. It doesn’t mean that Christ was a woman or a mother. It means that this part of His Image is beared by women. Christ carried our sins — our flesh, our mortality — in His body, and it was by the breaking of His Body and the shedding of His Blood that we were given eternal life. He carried a hope for each of us, each of us unborn, long before we were even knit together by His Hand in our own mothers’ wombs. How can we deny or ignore that Image? Why don’t we talk about that more? With this weight, would it be any wonder that the station of a woman is so attacked and undermined by the feminist movement today?

3. I am proposing/wondering if the labor that men endure in their work is the Image of God furthered in the toilsome labor He put forth to bring about our salvation, with only a remnant saved of the billions who have walked the earth. This pondering came about much more because of the toil I see my husband endure on a daily basis. Just far greater than mine. I have talked to many women with upstanding husbands like mine who see that their men work with energy and stamina that we could never endure, and the injustices they face can be great and burdensome to their spirits, and the output seems meager for the work put in. We have so few Bible stories that do not point to this pattern in men. Abraham in all of his work, travel, and faith produced just one viable heir. Moses faithfully dragged a bunch of dead-weight grumblers out of Egypt and never entered the Promised Land himself. The prophets spend their lives working in service to the Lord to be listened to by very few. By the time Christ was on the Cross, He had very few followers left for the way He had labored, and the Apostles and early church would face extreme trials in their work for the Lord. The plentiful harvest that Christ had referred to in Matthew 9:37 would cost them their lives to reap.

Even if this never makes it into mainstream theology, I think we can take cues here to draw nearer to God in these ways. I have been encouraging Zeb to see his work as a share in God’s Image and the way He toiled for us, and I have taken many opportunities to reflect on the mystery of Christ saving us by the sacrifice of His Body on the Cross, and how God sees our deliverance and growth as a loving Father.

Reflection 2: Beautiful in its Time

I had a moment of grief this week when Z and I were sitting on the sofa together. That our time spent as two has been so beautiful, so sweet. In all the years I spent single, the life I had dreamed for myself seems so basic and silly now. It hit me that our days of just being the two of us are coming to a rapid end, and the time has gone so quickly. It was already four years ago that we discovered our treasured friendship was the beginning of something deeper, and already three-and-a-half years ago that he asked me to be his wife. It all went by so quickly.

I told Zeb that I felt the way I did about childhood memories too. It’s good to move forward, to grow and to embrace the continuation of life, but there is a grief that comes from leaving beautiful times in the past. Nightly dinners around the table as a family, playing with my siblings in the yard and living room, our weekend journeys to Michigan Stadium. It was all so beautiful, and it’s time we can never revisit.

I was reminded of the wise words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

⁹ What do workers gain from their toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

That 11th verse stuck out to me — He has made everything beautiful in its time. There is time for everything Good to have its share of beauty. Zeb’s and my time just the two of us has been beautiful, but it is no longer that time.

And likewise, though I still feel the uncertainty of what will happen in my career and to the work I’ve put into this midlife crisis so far and as I wrestle with the question of what the next year looks like, I find a certain peace in this verse.

The time for parenthood, for motherhood, has come. For bringing a little life into this world and caring for him. For becoming a family of three. Maybe someday, God will have a time when He makes my career beautiful, and the work I’ve put for more than a year to change it will make a little more sense then. But for now, it’s time for a new stage of life to be made beautiful, and it is for us to embrace it.

I work in education, and I know what it looks like for something to no longer be beautiful in its time. A mother treating her teenager’s life as if he is still five years old is no longer beautiful, because the time of having a five-year-old has passed. Beauty comes from embracing the 17-year-old, because that’s the time.

And perhaps this is reason so many people are so miserable, though they have more material wealth than ever before, is that they do not embrace what is meant to be beautiful now, and they spend far too much time trying to hang onto what was beautiful in the past or grab for what has not yet come. Isn’t the latter the lifestyle so many are living? We see people drive cars they can’t afford to park in driveways they can’t afford, they take vacations they can’t afford, and they wonder why they still aren’t happy. Well, because it wasn’t the time for any of those things, and they’re so far ahead of themselves it’s impossible to see what is meant to be beautiful in this time.

I think it is our job and our benefit to pay close attention to what God is making beautiful in this time. We leave the beautiful things of the past in their time, and we pray for the beauty we want to see in the future, but we free ourselves from the bonds of being held by either as embrace what He is doing today and let go of what He is not.

So that’s it. That most of what we’ve been up to. Weighing decisions regarding bassinets and diaper bags, trying to figure out if/when/how we need to move. Things of that nature, while Zeb continues to build beautiful rods. He’s getting ready to release a batch that are truly stunning craftsmanship.

We did leave our church in November and still have not settled anywhere, and I’ve been at a loss for how articulate my processing of that departure. I still have far, far too much to say, some of which will be said and some of which doesn’t need to be, and sometimes discernment just takes time.

After listening to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, particularly Episode 15, while simultaneously reading Josh Nadeau’s “Room for Good Things to Run Wild”, I find myself less buried in the futility of finding a “good church” and more like we’re trying to find a diamond in the rough. But maybe, particularly in the absence of true direction from God despite our prayerful inquiries, it’s something else He will make beautiful in the future.

In the meantime, we have studies and prayers and Tozer and many others, as well as a nice round of Sunday golf.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I told Zeb this past Saturday, “I have to get outside tomorrow. Even if it’s just to walk around a park.” Sunday rolled around and it was the same story as the previous 45 days – clouds, sleet, a layer of something that resembles frozen snot coating the sidewalks, and the kind of cold that’s so wet it reaches your bones in three seconds flat.

“It’s not our day, Glen,” I told the golden house bear that was looking forward to a little hike.

To be honest, I’ve grown to realize that I don’t love this time of year. As much as I’m a “grit it out” and “find the bright side” kind of person, the mild-to-radically awful winters in western PA get me down, especially when I can’t seem to catch one of those mild days when I’m not working. Instead, I get the kind that are so cold and dreary it makes you lose track of time. The light never seems to be fully “on”, and my body never seems to be fully awake.

I have tried to find a source of good encouragement in nature, y’all. I have.

But darn it if most of the outdoor bears are all, “Screw it. We’re going to sleep through this crap.” And the trees are like, “It’s so dreary we’re going to shed our beauty and play dead until March.” Even if I look up “plants that survive in the winter”, I get a list of plants that merely survive the winters. (There are very few that truly thrive.)

I suppose that resonates for many of us. Winter doesn’t feel like a time of thriving for many. Sure, as a skier I’m invigorated by the cold air and snow. When I have fun winter activities to do, I definitely feel a little brighter. But when it’s just dreary, cloudy, no-good-thing-to-do-outside winter, it feels more like I’m simply existing. Thus, Glen and I stayed in, took a nap, worked out, washed ALL of the bedding, cooked some things, and waited for Zeb to come home from work.

That’s fine. I can survive the winter like the trees and hibernating bears. But where does that leave me as a writer who uses inspiration from trips into natural surroundings as inspiration for faith-based encouragement? (For the record, that is not really a niche.)

When I look back at my dad’s old publication –The Quiet Rodman – he often commented on the state of the world, things happening in his life, and other musings, always coming back, in the end, to a fly rod on a river boat in the Manistee. In those days, he transitioned from a life on the water and in the shop to one in the office and on the computer. He knew in his heart that the outdoors were better, but he made that sacrifice to better provide for our family. It was the right thing in that season of life.

I don’t know if it felt like a winter for my dad, or if it felt like he’d switched climates altogether. We all know he did the right thing, and at this juncture in life, I have peace in not trying to be outside every second of the day the way I did for the last several years. Right now, I find meaning in the days I spend sweeping up dog hair and washing sheets, listening to my husband’s stories and interests, and connecting with women about Jesus.

While my heart will always be somewhere by a stream, my feet are only there occasionally, and it seems to be winter in the proverbial outdoor climate of my life right now.

So where does that leave this publication? I have some options…

1. I could try to make things up, fabricating outdoor experiences or pulling in more information about life in the natural world that is interesting and seems spiritually significant, but that I am not experiencing directly. I’ve done that a couple of times, and it’s pretty lackluster.

2. I could bag it for now and come back to this someday when I am ready and able to get outside more again. That feels more confusing than anything. Didn’t God call me to write, as an expression of His bigger call on my life to encourage others in the Word? That certainly predates my dedication to the wilderness. It doesn’t feel right to stop.

3. I could recognize that my spiritual growth and desire to share is not dependent on taking bi-weekly walks in the woods or meeting new brown trout each week, and God is still moving in my heart, mind, and theology, regardless of where my feet are. In this season of winter (both physical and metaphorical), He may be leading me to write some different things. Perhaps this is the time to write about things that have been on my heart since the start of this publication, but aren’t necessarily related to the outdoors, and so I’ve held back.

The third option feels most viable here, friends. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to fabricate content for the sake of producing content. I certainly don’t want to try to push Zeb and I to a place God does not have us right now by insisting we go outside more. (He will again someday, I am sure.)

So going forward, you’ll see some different content here:

• Topics I’ve been studying

• Theological debates and my thoughts on them

• Where we see God today and how to stand strong as Christians

• Questions – both common and deep – to spiritual problems and conundrums

• Resources I find indispensable

• Maybe even a video here and there of some free-flowing thoughts

I may or may not post on Sundays, may with some Sunday Soaks mixed in if I do get to get outside. Some posts may be shorter thoughts, and some may be multi-part deep-dives. We’ll see where the Spirit leads!

Regardless, I want you to know that the heart of SBAS will remain – authentic encouragement grounded in Scripture. After all, the Stream has always been the Living Water of Jesus.

Is there anything you want to see? Questions you want answered? Let me know in the comments, or by replying to this email!

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I’ve been feeling kind of lost lately.

There’s a lot going on that’s led to feeling this way, but it’s mostly around where I am in my career. I’m trying hard to transition into a new field, and I have made exactly zero progress, despite quite a bit of progress toward building new credentials, advancing my education, and adding new skillsets. Not only does it have me wondering what I am doing wrong, but also if I was a total idiot for trying to embark on this effort in the first place. Has it all just been one wrong turn after another this past year?

Not to mention that I feel like I just don’t have a sense of direction. It feels like I started this journey with God, but I’ve lost a sense of where He’s taking me.

This has been intensified by our recent decision to leave our church. I am never a fan of leaving a local church, but as we prayed about many things this year, we felt most strongly that this is how God was leading us. But we sit in this interim period of not having another home church yet, and since we’d like to move in 2026, we’re not sure what finding a new church looks like yet.

I’ve been praying about all of this, and I realized that I feel like I just don’t have a lot of wisdom to move forward right now, and so I’ve decided not to take any more steps in my career change until I have wisdom from God. That includes looking for and applying for positions, which is honestly painfully hard to do with FOMO breathing down my neck. But I just don’t think there’s any point in attempting to do something without God’s wisdom. Either I will continue to make absolutely no progress, or I’ll get myself into a mess and wish I had patiently waited for His wisdom.

I think this space became most evidently needed when I began to look back at the last 20 years and question whether I had actually ruined my life with the college and career choices I made when I started my adult life. It’s very easy to wish I had gone into business or engineering, or that I had just pursued a lucrative career, whatever it may have been, instead of…

But then I pause, and I have to ask: Instead of what? Instead of following the calling that God laid on my heart, which I knew then and still believe without a doubt was from Him? Instead of trusting that He had a good plan all along in all of this, even if the path ahead is unknown?

God Doesn’t Give Out Paper Maps

I think stories like The Pilgrim’s Progress and Hinds Feet on High Places are some of the most accurate portrayals of what it looks like to follow Christ. They each depict this following as a long journey full of adventures, stages, and trials, sometimes stunningly beautiful and sometimes dark and terrifying. Each stage signifies a new level of sanctification and a deeper intimacy with Christ and our salvation.

What the characters do not get, though, is a map. Despite traversing treacherous terrain and territory, having no clue where they are going, they must trust in the Lord to lead them.

Not many of us journey that way. Unless it’s a very well-worn public trail, I think most of us at least glance at a map to see where we’re going. There are some helpful apps available today that not only provide a map, but also other hikers’ commentary on trail conditions and landmarks to help others navigate it. Even GPS can be useful when we’re lost or trying to get a sense of what’s ahead, provided we have a signal.

Even with a map, though, there are so many times I’ve gone out on a trail of varied terrain and found myself wondering if I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. The trail will disappear in front of me, or the terrain will get far steeper or more dangerous than the trail rating suggested, and I’ll look back at the map and check to see where I made a mistake. Sometimes I’ll see that I went the wrong way, or I’ll conclude that the trail has experienced some damage since the rating was last updated, or I’ll see that this part is more challenging, but it’s still on the right track.

I always like the discovery that I am on the right track, even if it’s hard. There’s something reassuring about looking back and seeing that I didn’t misread things and I hadn’t taken the wrong steps. I’m on the right path. This is all part of the plan.

Does that resonate with anyone? Let’s come back to that in a minute.

Every once in a while, I’ll hike with a friend that we might refer to as map-averse. They’ve got the map out in front of them, but when they look around, they decide they know better and start leading us on a wild goose chase. I’m a really laid back hiking companion, so I usually just roll with it. But my favorite thing is encountering someone who has never been on the trail that I know really well, and they start asking questions about where they should go and argue with the answer. Those people end up lost a lot.

For hiking where we live, it’s really not a big deal. Going off course means you see some more mountain laurel and cross an extra stream. It’s not like when I lived in Colorado and a wrong turn could drop you off a cliff.

I think following God is a lot like that too. Some decisions are far more lofty than others. Navigating some basic decisions like Friday night plans, what color sweater to buy, or whether or not you should get a second dog aren’t really cliff-dropping decisions. But decisions like who you should marry, whose spiritual authority you should fall under, and how you should spend the majority of your time in a career are all cliff-droppers. I’m sure we can think of many in many categories.

James 1:5-8 says:

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

I love passages like this, because it covers so many aspects of the human condition.

First, it recognizes that we face a lot of times in life when we don’t know what the right thing to do is. Sometimes that’s a sense of feeling lost, like I do right now, and sometimes that’s facing a huge decision like what we want to do with our lives. Sometimes it’s that rock-hard-place conundrum of which in-laws to visit for which holiday. Sometimes it’s the feeling that something is just not right, maybe in a relationship or a friendship or a decision you’ve already made.

As Christians, we can often feel this pressure like we should have all the answers all the time because we have Jesus, but that’s sort of like assuming your house will be clean because you own a vacuum. At some point, you have to plug in the vacuum and run it around the house to clean the floors. It’s also not enough to simply co-habitate with my husband and assume that we’ll have a great marriage. There is a movement required on our part to actually engage our relationships, whether they be with a Swiffer Wet Jet or our Lord and Savior. We don’t have the answers, so we need to actively pray for wisdom.

Second, it recognizes that we will often feel like we’re excluded from God’s wisdom because we’re not good enough. James reassures us that God will give us His wisdom freely and without finding fault in us, which means even someone in the deepest throes of sin can cry out for God’s wisdom and it’ll be given. As Christ says, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” (Mark 2:17), and likewise here, as much as we feel disqualified in our foolishness and our ignorance, that is actually the time that we are most qualified to ask Him for wisdom. He does not want us to continue in that wretched state. He wants us to turn from our lostness and find our feet on solid ground.

Third, it recognizes that we have a great propensity to do a lot of second-guessing, and James reminds us that we need to trust the Lord when He gives us His wisdom. There are so many times that God will give us an answer that could only be from Him, because it’s not an option that we would have ever chosen or thought of ourselves. Or He will bring peace to an idea or solution about which we felt uncertain. These moments are a sign that they are truly from the Holy Spirit.

I can think of several scenarios that this was recently the case in my experience. For one, Zeb and I were set on staying at our church, but as we prayed for many months, God made it clear that was not where He wanted us. And just a few months ago, the wisdom God gave me was very different from the path I had planned to take through a challenging situation at work, and it led to a far more productive and peaceful outcome. A little further back, He led me to model humility in an ugly dispute that another believer had instigated. The immediate outcome was cringe-level awful, but it also provided clarity not to get into a situation where I would have to submit to that person’s authority.

Fourth, it recognizes how entitled we can be in expecting good things from God when we’re not willing to trust Him. So often, I can cloud my judgment with my own good ideas, then act really shocked when God doesn’t bless the outcome. Isn’t that so true when our best intentions are at play? “God, I followed all the right steps. I did what the experts told me to do. I did what the research says.” It feels like we work so hard that God should bless our efforts.

I used to have this conversation with kids when they were studying or writing papers for my classes. They would spend a ton of time working, but they wouldn’t follow my instructions, and in the end they’d get a much lower grade than expected. They’d say, “But I worked so hard!” I’d give them the same analogy I used in class when talking about the importance of following instructions. We’re all going to China, I’d say. I really want you to take an airplane to get there. A lot of you are going to make this more complicated though. You’re going to try to walk the whole way. Or you’re going to walk to the coast of California and get on a boat. Or you’re going to try to swim. All of the other ways are going to take a ton of time and effort, but they’re not going to get you there as quickly, effectively, or safely as getting on that airplane.

I think that’s so often the conversation God has with us. We think we have a better idea than the wisdom He gives us, and then we’re shocked that the outcome was not His outcome. So essentially, we take our lostness, foolishness, and ignorance that drove us to ask God for wisdom in the first place, and then we just multiply it until we drop off the cliff. Like morons. The whole point of needing His wisdom in the first place is that we didn’t have any. Why should we expect that it will suddenly appear when we reject His?

So James breaks all of this humanness down into these key steps: ask for God’s wisdom, receive God’s wisdom, believe God’s wisdom.

Looking Back

I’ve become really comfortable with that pattern. I typically don’t dispute God’s wisdom when I ask for it, and I just act on it with a strong degree of trust, because He’s never led me wrong. But recently, I’ve been really struggling with believing that wisdom in a different way.

Rather than struggling to trust God in a forward-facing way, where my next step is to do whatever He’s told me to do, I’m struggling to trust the wisdom I received in the past. I look back at my past choices and think, “How stupid was I to get a Masters in Education? I should have gotten an MBA!” or “Why didn’t I take that opportunity when it came? I could have been in a completely different place now!”

It’s mostly a human response to the unknown ahead. I’m absolutely positive that God called me explicitly into education. I’m also positive that He provided each of my job opportunities for me, led me out of boarding school, put me in marketing for a minute, and now has me where I am. If I really break it down to just explicit facts, I know without a doubt that He’s had His Hand on this plan the entire time.

So here’s this added layer of trusting and not doubting the wisdom we’ve received. It’s maybe easier to do in the moment when the immediate outcome is something that feels like providence, but what happens with that wisdom leads to something that feels far less providential down the road? What if that turn leading to a beautiful meadow we were walking through suddenly leads to a 400-foot cliff we need to scale around the next bend? Suddenly, that first turn doesn’t seem so wise anymore. We still have to double-down on this passage and say, “God, I trust the wisdom You have given me.”

More recently, I have to remind myself that God led me to get my PMP this year, as well as my CSM. But as much as I accomplished this year, nothing has come of it yet. In other words, I got my passport, bought the tickets, and drove to the airport, but the airplane is delayed. So now, I am starting to look at alternative transportation and options to get to my destination. Whatever it takes to get out of this city and feel like I’m making some sort of progress.

I’ve been so discouraged by the job market and what feels like an impossible wall to scale that I started filling my head with my own good ideas again, including elaborate backup plans, complete with things I know He’s not leading me to pursue. This has led to is a lot of stress, confusion, and lostness, causing me question if I took all the wrong turns for the past 20 years, rather than believing that He had a good, clear, mapped-out plan all along.

Ugh, it’s ugly!

That is exactly the kind of double-mindedness to which James refers, and it’s not what we want.

Moving Forward Again

So how, when we get to this place, do we move forward and return to God’s wisdom?

First, stop. Whatever you’re doing, just stop for a minute. Stop the overthinking. Stop the planning. Stop the scrolling. Stop texting your mom to tell her how distressed you are. Lay it all down.

In Exodus 14, when God was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, but the Egyptian army turned and pursued them, the Israelites went from doing everything God had said to a world-class freakout (which becomes a theme in Exodus). But Moses said to them, “Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.’”

Moses essentially told them to calm down, stop giving way to fear, trust God, and shut up. That could be a whole four-step life plan in itself. Sometimes we just need to stop freaking out and remember that God is in control.

For me, as soon as I realized I didn’t have any wisdom, I knew I needed to stop everything I was doing. Again, there is no point in trying to move forward without God’s wisdom. So I stepped away from LinkedIn and Indeed, stopped all job posting notifications, and stopped applying for positions. This was really hard, because it made me feel like I was losing my control over the outcome, and that illusion can seem like a really powerful life raft when we feel vulnerable.

Second, pray for wisdom. We need to listen to what God has to say, which sometimes involves waiting for the answer.

For the Israelites, God gave them decisive instructions:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.” (Exodus 14:15-18)

Heck, He even gave them to bigger picture of the plan! He was about to use this moment for His glory. It wasn’t just about the Israelites, but what He would do through this trial. But the instruction He gives them in that moment is to move their feet forward. He’s got the rest and they can trust Him, but all they need to do is move.

Right now, God is not telling me to move. He’s telling me to wait. I’ve done everything I was supposed to do up to this time, but the next step isn’t here yet.

Maybe it’s just me, but with this job change, I have wanted it to just be over with. I don’t like the vulnerable things. I do not like feeling unresolved or in limbo. But since God’s plan is not for me to have resolution right now, my own efforts are making everything worse and exponentially more vulnerable with the added discouragement and frustration.

Third, receive that wisdom and act on it. This is where James comes back to say we need to believe the wisdom and take it to the bank,

For our Exodus friends, they moved their feet forward, and God put Himself between them and the Egyptian army to protect them. Moses then parted the Red Sea, they walked through it on dry ground, and then God drowned the Egyptian army, fulfilling His demonstration of glory to the Egyptians back home.

As I’ve taken this December to step back and wait, I’ve found a lot of relief I’ve needed. I’ve gained a much-needed reminder that it’s all in God’s Hands, as well as a sense of His actual timing. Too, I’ve been more able to look at certain attitudes I’ve developed toward my current workplace and seen how I have let ingratitude overshadow my calling to be an encouragement to those around me. That’s something I need to address in the now. Furthermore, I’ve had the added perk of being able to slow down this month. It’s been a nice change of pace from what has been a head-down, charge-forward kind of year.

Finally, I’ve had the time and space to look back and remind myself that the wisdom I received in the past was good, all part of a good plan of God’s, and that He’s just not going to let me deviate from it readily. From that place of trust, I’ll be ready to receive and act on the wisdom God gives me when He’s ready for me to take the next step.

So friends, I hope today you will trust the wisdom you receive from God. I know it can feel so vulnerable and frustrating at times when we’re not the ones holding the map, but the One who is has the whole plan. Not just the map for that trail, but the map for every trail in every time and space in the whole course of existence. If we really stop to think about Who He is, it’s absolute idiocy not to trust Him.

But that’s the start of a rant for another day.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I don’t love the modern renaming of Thanksgiving gatherings to “Friendsgiving”.

I get it. It’s to distinguish gathering with friends on a different date from gathering on Thanksgiving. But if the purpose is still to set aside time to give thanks in community, why take the thanks out of the title? Probably because giving thanks is only the side show of Thanksgiving anymore. If you ask your neighbor why they love Thanksgiving — and believe me, I’ve been asking — they’ll inevitably talk about food and people, because it’s become a time to gorge ourselves on feast and family, with only a passing thought to the reason we gather, the reason this day was set aside, and the reason we need it.

That’s probably pretty legalistic of me, but I think it speaks more to my deeper concern that we’ve lost the sacredness and solemnity of this holiday.

When you think of Thanksgiving, do you think of the solemnity of it?

Most of us know the “first” Thanksgiving in 1621 was a gathering of English pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe. The English began by gathering to give thanks to God for helping them endure a harsh first winter in the Americas, in large part due to the help of the Wampanoag. The feast lasted several days.

It sounds like good fun until you take into account that only 53 of the 102 Puritans who had first arrived survived that first winter, even with the help of the Wampanoag. It was here in on the other side of their hardships, but no doubt still filled with grief, that they celebrated their first harvest.

But it was actually two years later that a separate feast emerged and was named “Thanksgiving”. This event was far less celebratory. Harshness had returned in the form of a drought, and the colonists feared their harvest would be destroyed if rain did not come. The governor then called for a day of prayer and humiliation, which they observed from time to time to go before God in corporate prayer and fasting, repenting of their sins and begging for His mercy to come. It was the turning of their hearts to Him.

When the rains did come, the governor called for a second gathering, the true first Thanksgiving:

It pleased God, for our further chastisement, to send a great drought … now were our hopes overthrown, and we discouraged, our joy being turned into mourning… a day was appointed by public authority, and set apart from all other employments; hoping that the same God, which had stirred us up hereunto would be moved hereby in mercy to look down upon us, and grant the request of our dejected souls…before our departure, the weather was overcast, the clouds gathered together on all sides, and on the next morning distilled such soft, sweet, and moderate showers of rain…and therefore another solem day was set apart and appointed for that end; wherein we returned glory, honor, and praise, with all thankfulness, to our good God, which death do graciously with us.1

Years later, Abraham Lincoln would follow this pattern amidst hardships faced during the early days of the Civil War, calling on a day of national repentance:

August 12, 1861

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Whereas a joint committee of both Houses of Congress has waited on the President of the United States and requested him to “recommend a day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities and the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of these States, His blessings on their arms, and a speedy restoration of peace;” and

Whereas it is fit and becoming in all people at all times to acknowledge and revere the supreme government of God, to bow in humble submission to His chastisements, to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon of their past offenses and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action; and

Whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous, and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy--to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the reestablishment of law, order, and peace throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence:

Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint the last Thursday in September next as a day of humiliation, prayer, and fasting for all the people of the nation. And I do earnestly recommend to all the people, and especially to all ministers and teachers of religion of all denominations and to all heads of families, to observe and keep that day according to their several creeds and modes of worship in all humility and with all religious solemnity, to the end that the united prayer of the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace and bring down plentiful blessings upon our country.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed, this 12th day of August, A.D. 1861, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLIN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State2

And later, still deeper into the Civil War, he declared another day — a day of giving thanks:

Washington DC, October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State3

Today, we have lost that practice of humble repentance and solemnity, of setting a day apart to worship and praise God, but also to ask for His mercy, not only for our wretched selves, but for those whose fortunes have been so disrupted by tragedy, hardship, and loss.

Acts 3:19-21 says, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”

While we gather to gorge, do we really take time to think about why we’re thankful at all? Surely, it is because our blessings contrast with the hardships we’ve faced. But perhaps we don’t have enough trials and hardships to truly recognize how blessed we are in times of plenty. Do we weigh the gravity of our sin against the incredible mercy of God? Do we recognize the tragedies of a fallen world and desire for God’s grace to move globally, knowing that is the only hope to which we can truly cling? How far away from “Thanks”-giving can we get until it’s just a day off to eat a large meal with a group of people?

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

“I want to find myself”

I first encountered it on one of my earliest trips to Colorado. I’ve shared about this trip before, when in grad school a friend and I took a road trip to explore the mountains from Estes Park down to Telluride, using a route we made up as we drove. Before we headed up to Estes, we stopped in Boulder to grab some lunch and explore Pearl Street, which is a lively little walking street with many entertainers and people milling about, while many others enjoy the great selection of stores and restaurants.

The day we went was particularly bustling with street performers and shoppers, but one quiet man in the center of it all caught my eye. He was just a little older than I was at the time, wearing a very expensive pair of jeans and t-shirt, some flip flops, and a bright red sunburn and bleach-blonde hair that said he’d been in the region quite a bit longer than we had. But it was the sorrowful look on his face that caught my eye as he slumped against a park bench, holding a cardboard sign in his lap, asking passersby for monetary help so that he could get home.

If there ever was a modern picture of a prodigal son, this was him, but he was also a representation of a certain group of people I would encounter a lot on that trip and once I moved there myself. He had come to the wilderness to “find himself” in the mountains, but now found himself broke, depressed, and desperate, begging for help in this little college town.

There was this alluring idea among many millennials at the time — catalyzed by the release of the book Into the Wild by John Krakauer in 1997 and the movie in 2007 followed by Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild in 2012 – that if you only went out into the wilderness, climbed mountains, and had adventures, you would find yourself. So a lot of people, having apparently not made it to the end of Krakauer’s book, set out after college to do just that.

The thing is that finding yourself this way can get pretty expensive. There’s the price of gear, such as backpacks, boots, tent, sleeping bag, cookware, etc. if you’re a backpacker. It’s game over if you climb or want to mountain bike, and skiing Out West is practically unaffordable unless you work for someone who provides your pass. Not to mention, there’s the added cost of renting an apartment – or in many cases, a twin bed in a room in a house with ten other people – in towns with very high costs of living, where even groceries face a premium to cover the extra fuel and effort it takes to ship them into the mountains.

They would typically find themselves working as lift operators or in some series of seasonal mountain jobs, because even the local outfitters, which provided more respectable retail work, wanted people who have actually put on wool socks or held a fly rod before, and the local restaurants wanted someone who had at least some waiting experience to cover the busy months.

Thus, a lot of the time, these guys crowded into resort-provided dorms that were far below the caliber of their college dorms, bled money for months, barely made it into the outdoors, and ended up drinking heavily and experimenting with psychedelics. You may think I’m being blunt here, but there aren’t many other ways to say it; I saw it all the time when I lived there, and there are plenty of sources from the era that confirm the trend (too many to list here). This was coupled with the challenging job markets, high student loan debt, and a sense of impending doom that there was no future to be had for so many of us.

It turned into a mental health crisis. The year I moved to the Yampa Valley, the winter was particularly dark and brutal, and it seemed like every day brought news of someone who had decided that life was not possible anymore. Our region’s suicide rate was significantly higher than the rest of the state, and it had been an ongoing topic of concern before I even got there, especially for newcomers who were not prepared for the harsh winters and tended to isolate themselves in the dark months. Researchers even thought there might be a link to depression and high altitude, since it is so common in the mountains.1

The thing these young people did not understand was that life in the mountains was grueling. I actually didn’t want to move out there. On that trip to Colorado, I turned to my friend and said, “I am never moving here.” That was during the high summer months when the sun set late in the evening and cast a magical glow over the red rocks of the Telluride mountains. We played soccer on some high field with 20 other people our age and did yoga in the park. We hiked and explored and ate good food, and yet I still knew it wasn’t for me.

A year later, almost to the date, I was baptized in my little Bible church in Northern Michigan, and that’s where it all went south…or I should say west.

The quickest way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plan.

Looking back, I can’t help but laugh at the situation. I was so disillusioned after grad school. Over the last two years, I had been broken up with by the guy I thought was “forever”, given my life to Jesus, faced the realities of having a history degree in the job market, gone to grad school for a degree that could get me a job, faced the realities of the Great Recession’s effects on even usable degrees in the job market, gotten baptized, and finally, finally had a little breakthrough and landed my first teaching job. In Colorado. In the mountains. At a boarding school.

People say, “Oh, how cool! That must have been so fun!” They are ignorant.

That first year was miserable. I was so out of my element in the culture and environment. Everyone had 80 times the outdoor skills I had, which we needed to use in regular daily life, and the people tended to be a little more ruggedly individualistic than I was accustomed to. Not a lot of them extended warmth or help in the Midwestern way I’d known as a kid, and I found myself completely alone with God, asking, “What are we doing here?” on a near-daily basis. The winter, which began before I arrived, brought more than 500 inches of snow, and it was genuinely difficult to drive anywhere, much less get out of the mountains where I could see the sun for the first time in months.

I learned about mud boots and wore gaiters everywhere. I was taught how to make a fire in the snow if I got caught in and survived an avalanche overnight. I learned what to do if a bear charges, a moose chases, or a mountain lion jumps out of a tree in front of you, and my neighbor told me how to properly layer for -60 degree temperatures. Most of all, I learned how to be dreadfully lonely, how to go months without a hug, and how to be grateful for even a hint of a smile from a stranger in a grocery store.

I knew that God had brought me out there. It was too soon after my baptism for that not to be the case, and the isolation afforded me many hours to read my Bible, which had become my most prolific side-hobby since the summer before when we visited Colorado on the trip when I said I would never move to Colorado, and a total stranger/atheist convicted me that I should learn what I believe in the Scriptures…

It was certainly a time of much growth, but it was grueling. I was far from home, my family, my friends, and everything that was familiar to me. I was no longer confident and sure-footed in the world, but starting from scratch in a place that daunted me and caused me to learn how to rely on God for my every need.

This is a long introduction, but to me, it’s a picture of one of the most terrible trends today in modern American Christianity.

—---

The Hidden Prosperity Gospel

We all know about the Prosperity Gospel that says if we give enough money to guys like Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen that God will bless us abundantly with wealth, a good American life, and even a nice sports car. But there is another form of this Gospel that has penetrated the church, spoken to us by the people sitting in our pews, the friend walking with us through a trial, or the deep, dark belief lurking inside of our own hearts. It goes:

If you are a good enough, faith-filled enough, faith-full enough follower of Jesus, your life will be filled with ease and comfort.

These guys in the 2000s went Out West thinking that if they only made it there and climbed some mountains, they’d find purpose and meaning in life; they’d be able to transcend the hardships of growing up, facing setbacks, and doing the grueling work of becoming a full-blown adult.

But they did not take into account that climbing mountains isn’t as easy as it seems. Life in the West is hard, laborious, and isolating. Very few people get to go out and just climb mountains or ski all day, and the ones who do had worked very hard to make that their full-time career. The rest have to work menial, miserable day jobs for low wages to hopefully get a day off during the week to enjoy some recreation. And even when they do get out, it is still work to climb a mountain.

And likewise, the Christian life is not one of ease. Jesus called us to think about what we were committing to before we followed Him in Luke 14:28-33:

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

I remember when I first shared the Gospel with Zeb on that stream while fishing my first blue line. I told him, “I need you to know that your life may not get better if you follow Jesus. Your life may get significantly worse. He may take every last shred of your worldly security, prosperity, and purpose,” and I told him what God did with my life following my baptism.

Zeb took a long time to count the cost of following Jesus. He looked at it from every angle for months, trying to decide if this was something He could truly give His life to. I will spare you the details of what happened after he got baptized, suffice to say that I was right.

Not My Gospel

A few years ago, I went through a pretty big crisis at work. Since I worked at a boarding school during COVID, the lockdowns hit us differently than it did others, and I found myself trapped on a campus where I simultaneous (and inexplicably) faced ongoing hostility from a supervisor.

I turned to my friends from church for support and encouragement, and I began to face a different crisis, a far more spiritual one, because it seemed like everywhere I turned in my hardship, I was told some combination of the following:

• All I needed to do was look at the Cross and my struggles would go away.

• If I just had more faith, I wouldn’t be going through this trial.

• If I just had more joy, then I wouldn’t go through hardships.

• If I just worshipped more, all my troubles would melt away.

• If I just believed Jesus more, then I wouldn’t be hurt by the things I’d been going through.

• Depression is a result of not having enough faith.

• Dark times had come because I wasn’t following Jesus closely enough.

• What I was going through was in my head, because I didn’t have enough faith or look at Jesus enough.

Instead of encouraging me to endure through the trials, they indicate that the trials were my fault because of my sin, attitude, lack of faith, doubt, and focus. It was far worse than being persecuted by a rogue administrator. This was far deeper and more personal, and I felt both unseen and abandoned by the people I called friends.

I don’t want to diminish the power of the Cross. Truly, things like faith, joy, worship, and Jesus-gazing are all Scripture-driven ways to confront adversity and endure trials. We see this from Apostles who had been imprisoned, the encouragement of Peter, James, and Paul’s epistles, and even Jesus telling us to take heart, because He had overcome the world (John 16:33).

But so often, we forget the first part of that verse. “In this world, you will have trouble,” Jesus told the disciples. Following Him did not eliminate the trials, but actually invited them to a greater extent. I’m not going to get into the persecution of the early church today, because I wrote more about that last time, but certainly those who followed Jesus were certain that doing so would bring persecution and even martyrdom.

We in America don’t think about this much. Charlie Kirk was our first martyr in many years, and some may argue his death was more political than religious. (I don’t, incidentally.) But for our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, Sudan, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, and other nations where it is literally life-or-death to profess faith in Jesus Christ, this is their daily reality.

We aren’t just promised persecution, though. We are promised many trials in this life for the purpose of our spiritual growth, and even the demonstration of God’s sovereign will. Psalm 17:3 says, “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.”

Take the book of Job for example. Job was put through an unfathomable trial that both tested his faithfulness to God and demonstrated God’s divine sovereignty and surpassing wisdom to him. His friends did not agree, though. They said that he must have sinned to incur such a misfortune. They believed a version of some prosperity gospel that said, “If you have a bad life, it’s because you sinned.” But in the end, they found themselves in far greater shame and embarrassment than Job, and God tells them that Job will have to pray for them because they did not speak the truth about Him (Job 42:7-8). Their prosperity gospel was not the truth about God!

You see, trials have a great purpose in our lives. Trials refine us. They cause us to put obedience to God to the test. As God tests us, we test His ways. That is why it says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). These are not idle words from the Apostles, either. I love in Acts 5:40-41when the Sanhedrin had them flogged for spreading the news of the Gospel, and it says left “rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.”

Obviously, the Apostles themselves did not believe that obedience and faithful service to the Lord exempted them from suffering, but that it was actually an honor from God to face the persecution they did!

In fact, when we look at the Word, I am not sure how we get the idea that even perfect obedience should give us a good life, by our own standards. Hebrews 5:5-9 says plainly:

So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him:

“You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You.”

As He also says in another place:

“You are a priest forever

According to the order of Melchizedek”;

who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him…

Did you catch that? Jesus learned obedience to the Father by the things that He suffered. We are called to follow Him, to share in the fellowship of His sufferings to become like Him in death (Philippians 3:10), or rejoice in the sharing of His sufferings (1 Peter 4:13), and to share abundantly in His sufferings and His comfort (2 Corinthians 1:5).

Why would Jesus call us to this? Why wouldn’t a life of ease and comfort demonstrate His love and faithfulness to the world? Why are we called to suffer trials in His Name?

I think it’s because suffering tests us in ways that comfort cannot. When we face a fiery trial, a response is in order. Take for example my hostile supervisor. I had to make a choice every single day about how I would show up to work, the way I would speak about her, and how much I was willing to put God’s Word to the test in my difficult circumstances. Was I willing to die to myself, or would I respond in pride and anger at the unjust treatment? I faced the same decisions during my divorce.

In each case, the Lord invited me to do things His way, and by doing so, I demonstrated to the people around me the power of obeying Him. I don’t mean that as a brag. In so many circumstances in life, I have not known what to do. Especially when my first husband left me, I was completely lost and wanted someone to just come in and tell me what to do, so I went to the Bible as a playbook and just ran God’s plays over and over and over.

In each trial, though, I found this beautiful invitation to experience the goodness of God’s mercies and methods. I didn’t just find the blessing on the other side of obedience, but actually through obedience itself. I have this metaphor in my mind that it was like I spent my whole life cutting up pomegranates this one way, and that way was messy and slow. But then someone came along and said, “Try this instead,” and I could suddenly see that my way had been just about the worst way possible to cut up a pomegranate, and I couldn’t imagine going back to it.2

I’m going through another trial right now. I won’t give the specifics, but it’s a tough one. I have a lot of choices to make, and sometimes I can’t even see a way through it and feel the temptation to throw my hands in the air and walk away. In one hand, I hold this frustration and anger, deeply convictions, and passion about the things I’ve seen and experienced. But in the other hand, I hold this invitation from God to experience the gift of His humility through adversity. There is more for me to learn by staying and enduring than by walking away.

It’s a painful invitation, though. The RSVP requires a pound of my flesh each day, and each day, I am faced with the choice of what I will see in the trial. This week, the Lord drew my attention to 2 Peter 3:10-13:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

It reminded me that all of our fleshly ways are temporal, but the ways of the Lord are eternal, and the question we must ask ourselves in each trial is what kind of people ought we to be? Will we be temporal, carnal people who act out of pride and flesh? Those things are going to be destroyed, and we will find them no more when Christ comes again. Or will we be eternal, Christ-minded people who act in humility and spirit?

Galatians 6:8 says that those who sow to please the Spirit will reap eternal life, while those who sow to please the flesh will reap their own ruin. James 3:18 reiterates,“Peacemakers who sow in peace will reap a harvest of righteousness.” Jesus said not to store up treasure for ourselves here on earth where moths and vermin destroy, but to store up eternal treasure that cannot be destroyed (Matthew 6:19-21). He was talking about money and possessions, of course, but also the ways we store up reputation, ego, and other things that this world values that are all going to fade away. We must choose, then, at each moment, the humility – literally, the humiliation of our flesh – of Christ, joining in the fellowship of His sufferings, that bring us just a little bit more eternity with each act of obedience.

A little more grace sown. A little more peace and patience. A little more forgiveness. A little more Jesus. A lot less us. It all hurts, and sometimes obedience in our suffering is another level of suffering altogether. But we are assured that we will reap a harvest of righteousness if we don’t give up (Galatians 6:9).

Comfort and the “good life” just can’t do this work, and there’s no amount of obedience or faith that exempts us from the opportunities God gives to test His Word in our own stories.

Over time, I have come to realize that God did not take me Out West to find myself, but to find Him and to be found in Him. It’s a piece of my testimony I would not trade for all the comfort in the world.

What did you expect?

I highlight trials of adversity for the sake of time here, but there are many kinds we go through. Grief, loneliness, job loss and financial crises, the division pulsing through the West. I know many of these very well, and the choices are the same. Will we choose to see the goodness of God through our trials and to follow Him, or will we fall into the despair of thinking that this trial must belong to someone else, someone less righteous, someone who sins more? Will we choose to believe that He is faithful to us, or will we begin to doubt and tell ourselves something must have gone wrong for us to experience trials?

I think one of the most poignant moments in the ministry of Christ is in Matthew 11, when John the Baptist sends a message to Jesus from his prison cell, where he suffered under Herod Antipas:

Now it came to pass, when Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples, that He departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities.

And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”

Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”

As they departed, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Indeed, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written:

‘Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,

Who will prepare Your way before You.’

“Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist…

I love the relationship this reveals between the suffering human and Jesus. John the Baptist, in his pain and hardship, double-checks with Jesus, asking, “Are you for real?” It was not that he was saying he shouldn’t have to suffering, but making sure he was suffering to this extent for the right guy. Jesus answers John by reaffirming the Scriptural/prophetic signs he would have known by heart. Sometimes, in our suffering, we ask God if we’re on the right track. God can handle that. He gets it. Even Jesus suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and asked if there was any other way to save us.

But then He answers the crowd – the crowd that heard the hidden prosperity gospel we’re talking about. What did they, the onlookers who saw John in his suffering, expect to see? Did they expect to see someone blown around by every popular feeling? Someone made rich and lavished with worldly blessings for his faithfulness? No, they went out to see a prophet in that wilderness, and not just a prophet, but a faithful worker in the kingdom of God, who faced trials and hardships like the prophets who came before him and unlike anyone who had come before him. John surpassed them all in faithfulness, and yet he endured the sufferings of Christ.

John the Baptist was born to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 40:1-8 – the voice of the one crying in the wilderness for those to make the path straight for Christ. He called people to repentance, baptized them, and told them to prepare their hearts and lives to receive the Messiah. And he went first. He went before Christ in birth. He went before Christ in ministry. He went before Christ in political and religious trouble. He went before Christ in death. His entire life prophesied the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and in seeing him, people saw a forerunner to Him who was greater and yet to come.

Here Jesus affirms John’s faithfulness in his trials, that his doubt had not disqualified him, nor was his suffering a sign of his own failures, nor a sign of God’s failures. This is the life that we are called to in His Name, and no one did it better than John.

If He didn’t spare John the GOAT and He didn’t spare His own Son, why on earth do we think that He will somehow spare us as a sign of His favor? The people went out to see a prophet the wilderness and found a prophet in the wilderness, Jesus reiterated. What are we expecting to find in a suffering Savior when we go out to find a suffering Savior?

Why should we expect that climbing mountains is somehow a deliverance from climbing mountains?

So what did those guys find on that mountain? Themselves? Perhaps. Perhaps they discovered their weaknesses, dependencies, failures, shortcomings, and desperations, like many of us do when faced with great expectations that do not pan out. Or perhaps they discovered that life is hard, no matter if you’re climbing mountains or trying to find a job in the aftermath of an economic crisis.

Friends, if you’re someone facing hardships that you cannot explain, I just want to encourage you that God is right there in all of it, strengthening you, developing your spiritual muscles, and giving you countless opportunities to look more like Him each minute.

And if you’re someone walking through a trial with someone else, don’t be a jagoff. Get yourself some theology in the book sitting right in front of you, and learn to minister from the heart of Jesus, not the futile thoughts of man. Remember always that our promised prosperity will see its fullness in our eternal dwellings, and the deposit on that now is the Holy Spirit, giving us glimpses of that treasure through peace, joy, and love in our stories here on earth.

And for all of us, I pray that we choose each day what kind of people we ought to be – eternally focused, sowing seeds that lead to righteous harvests, and emptied of ourselves to receive the mind and humility of Christ.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I don’t know who out there needs to hear this right now, but He did not get you wrong, friend. Yes, we have sinful flesh, but at the core of who He made us is in His own Image, and He still says that is “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Keep going, keep believing that He has made you fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139:14), and that He has good plans for your life (Jeremiah 29:11).1

This will be a shorter post than usual, but hopefully an encouragement for everyone. If it blesses you, please share it with a friend and help me grow to reach more with Gospel encouragement!

When I was young, my parents took the family to a beach called “North Bar Lake Beach”. It was basically a small lake that sat on Lake Michigan and even had a channel into the big lake. My parents liked it for the entertainment it provided for our family and the friends who came along. The littles (including myself) could play in the inlet and the small lake, while the adults and older kids could play in the open water.

I remember it was one of the first times I had really beheld Lake Michigan, and it seemed absolutely magical to my young eyes, like many places of my youth. Every once in a while, one of these places would stick with me, like North Bar did, and I would go back as a teenager or young adult. But when I visited this beach again through older eyes, the places always seemed smaller than I remembered, childish instead of full of wonders, just kind of overrun and crowded, and certainly devoid of any magical properties. Like so many places in our childhood memories, they just don’t stand the test of time and may be better left to our youthful imaginations.

That’s how growing up works in the physical world. The books we read in Kindergarten are not the ones we read over and over again as adults. We don’t keep going back to the playground after a certain age. We one day realize that the carousel horses aren’t that fun.

Maybe this seems a little odd to talk about, but I really think that if we’re not careful, these kinds of experiences can stain our faith, because this is not the pattern of God’s Kingdom, but it’s a pattern that comes out from time to time in our walks, if we’re not careful.

Do you remember what it was like to discover that Jesus loves you? Maybe you’re new to all this and still basking in that incredible miracle. Or maybe you’ve been at this a while and need to think back a ways. I know I do. I have to think back at the life I led up to that night that I pleaded with God at the stoplight on the corner of Saline and Main in Ann Arbor, Michigan to save my life. What a ride it’s been since then.

Oftentimes, when I look back at my journey with God, I see these other really pivotal moments, and I wonder, “Wow, was I even a real believer up to that point? Was I really following Him before He did that or led me through that?”

However, sometimes we can fall into the trap of believing that the places of our spiritual youth are places we’ve outgrown. We think we don’t need to return to the Gospel, to passages like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” because they don’t touch our hearts the way they used to. It seems like Bible 101, but it probably more so comes from the Great Should.

The Great Should, which I just made up while writing this, is that feeling that we always need to be doing more, pursuing more, leading more, or pouring out more for Christ. Sure, we reason that we’re saved, but are we really if there isn’t more evidence of producing more fruit? We should be doing more. We shouldn’t need to go back to the Gospel to remind ourselves we’re saved. We should be able to live from the gift of salvation. We shouldn’t need to go drink from those old passages anymore. We should be pouring out the Gospel. We shouldn’t need it ourselves after a certain point. We should be older and more mature by now. We shouldn’t need the things that served us in our spiritual youth.

But how are we supposed to live from a place we no longer return? If you’ve read anything I released in October, the concept of returning is so important. We return to the Word that we have been given, and it fills us up, and then we can pour out.

We do not return in shame or in some belief that we have been disqualified for the mission of Christ, but for the refueling of our souls and the reminder that we are sealed by the Blood of Christ for salvation and eternal life with Him (1 Peter 1:3-5). We return to the belief that He is the one who multiplies the pitiful loaves and fishes that we bring, not the other way around.

One of my favorite illustrations of how this pour-out works is when Jesus commissioned Peter to begin leading the way He had in His time on earth (John 21). He basically gave Him the road map of His ministry, boiling it down to three simple steps:

¹⁵ When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Here we see the first step. When a shepherd rises, he first feeds his young lambs. If we love Jesus, we feed His lambs. They are the young believers who need the most sustenance and attention, because they are growing and don’t know how to feed themselves yet.

Who are the young lambs in your life? How does your continued connection to the miracle that Jesus died for you help you feed them?

¹⁶ Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

Once the lambs had been fed, the shepherd would turn his attention to the general herd and inspect them to see if there were any pressing needs. He would pick out the ones who were injured or sick, and he would tend to them. So we, in whatever shepherding capacity we have, should look to tend the wounds of Christians around us and make them well again.

Who is struggling in your life? How does returning to the foundation of the Gospel help us tend to those in their suffering, trials, and losses?

¹⁷ The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep…”

Last, the shepherd turns his attention to the sheep, who were capable of grazing on their own while he tended to the others. They could eat and nourish themselves before he gave them the food he had to offer. And so we we mature believers should be feeding ourselves — a steady diet of the Gospel truth — and feeding other mature believers with Gospel encouragement.

How does returning to those early places where the Gospel first spoke to you help you feed the sheep around you?

^{18 “}Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” ¹⁹ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

And finally, we see Jesus teach Peter to lay down his own life for the sheep, just as He did for us. In accounts of Peter throughout Acts, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter, we see this pattern repeated by him again and again, but each time with a richer fulness of the Gospel to encourage others. It is evident in his writing that he was far more devastated by the truth of Gospel in his later years than he was when Jesus commissioned him. (You know, because in the next couple of verses in John 21, Peter’s like, “What about John? Doesn’t he have to die for you?” And Jesus has to be like, “Bro, eyes on your own paper.”)

This pattern was what Peter followed in 1 Peter when he wrote to the dispersed Christian facing persecution in Rome under Nero. He was tending (the second step) to the wounded sheep of the Body. He nourished them with encouragement and reassurance about their salvation. Look at the words he wrote to open this letter (1:1-5):

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

These are not the words of a man who has outgrown the places of his youth, but a man who has been grown up in and by those places. Because in God’s Kingdom, those places are not smaller than we remembered, but bigger than we ever imagined. They are not less beautiful, but more glorious than we ever thought possible. They are not less magical, but more laden with treasure than we ever knew in our wildest discoveries before. The Word of the Lord concerning our salvation will continue to produce more and more and more eternal treasure as we continue to return and pursue it in the earnestness of being desperate sinners in need of a Savior.

I know I am. I need His salvation every day. It’s been 18 years since that night I asked Him to save me, and I need it no less right now than I needed it then. I think I am more away right now of how much I need it than I could even fathom then.

This summer, I returned to a beach I hadn’t been to in a while. The first time I hiked to Esch Beach was under some mildly harsh conditions. I was with a friend wandering in the woods during the winter, and we realized we weren’t familiar enough with where the path was taking us to know if we would be back by nightfall, or if the path would actually continue on after dark. We made the decision to veer west and hike through the woods, off the path, until we reached the beach, because we knew we could follow the beach back to the road where we had parked.

We trudged a long way in knee-deep snow, arriving at dusk and found the water we knew would surely save our behinds. I had never been more relieved to see Lake Michigan, which we followed for about three freezing miles back to the car by moonlight.

Thankfully, I found myself walking in much warmer weather and brighter sun this past July. Zeb had just called to give me some bad news, and my heart was very heavy as I made my way. I walked the same woods and cut through some of the same grasses leading toward the beach, and I expected the beach to be underwhelming, just like North Bar. “Probably just loaded with tourists and old diapers,” I told myself, trying to keep my expectations low.

But what I found was something far more beautiful than I expected.

It was a radiant, beautiful, peaceful beach. A handful of people were walking along the shore, and a couple of families played in the little river that led out to the lake. I took my shoes off and walked the warm water to take a long walk toward the bluffs at the other end of the beach.

The water was so pristine, it was like a picture of clarity that my mind needed to just receive the goodness of God in all things. Zeb had told me, “This is a keep-going moment for us, Brit.” It was a time to persevere:

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Looking at the beauty around me was not quite enough. I needed it to wash over me. Despite not having a towel to dry off with, I took off my shoes and socks and waded in to where I could float in the water, where the sound of it could drown out the noise in my head and just bring me peace.

Earlier that day, I had been to another part of the park, where I hiked a section I’d never seen before. It had also astonished and taken my breath away. It was a day of not being able to get my eyes full enough of the wonders around me, and it is because I continually return to this one place that I continue to find treasure there. And so it is with the Gospel of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who saves wretches like you and me.

This week, when I returned to the Gospel, I found a treasure I’d never seen before. I’ve been slowly making my way through Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm, which is an incredible book about the elohim (gods), or angels and demons that we cannot see. I highly recommend it. So I had been thinking about angels and demons quite a bit as I was reading in 1 Peter 1 and in Hebrews 1-2, where I found a common theme of angels and salvation:

^“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.” (1 Peter 1:10-12).

^:Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:14-17)

Hebrews 1-2 really dives into the angels element, as the author was trying to discredit claims from some Hebrew sects that angels were superior to the Messiah. But in both cases, we see this relationship that the angels have with the work of salvation for sinners, and I’ve always wondered why either author really took so much care, even beyond the supremacy argument, to bring angels into the equation.

Heiser’s book opened my eyes to something that the angels could see, which they had never seen before Jesus came to us as Emmanuel. In all of the story of the fall, we see angels fall from their places of Godly appointment on earth.2 That is, when they descended from their places in heaven to take their position on earth, particularly as Watchers looking after humans, there were some who left their divine appointments and pursued sin with humans, rather their God-given positions.

Thus, we have a league of fallen angels we now call “demons”, some of whom are bound by God, and some of whom still roam about the earth. None of them will ever be redeemed. Jesus did not come for their redemptions, but for ours.

It occurred to me in connecting these things that the angels long to look into the mystery of the Gospel because they had never once seen someone leave their divine appointment, as Christ did, and return to it in glory. Look at what Philippians 2:6-11 says about this:

Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Christ left His own position of equality with God to descend to earth in human form, even down to being born as a human, lived a perfectly obedient life, and ascended again to His original place at the right Hand of God.

And not only that, friends. He brought us with Him. He brought us with Him!!!!

John 3:16, once again, says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” We are the ones who believe in Him and shall not perish. We are the ones He has given eternal life. This is why He came as He did and did what He did.

Look at verse 17 in Hebrews 1 again: “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” We are the ones for whom He became human. We are the ones for whom He is merciful and faithful. We are the ones for whom He made atonement, buying us with His own Blood so that we could be raised to life with Him forever.

This is the most glorious and mysterious and magical and wonderful and perfect thing that has ever happened, and we need to keep our eyes fixed on this Truth all our lives, constantly allowing God to take us deeper and deeper into the beauty of our salvation, never growing prideful that we’ve outgrown it and never growing weary that we’ve heard it too many times.

Listen, many people are afraid right now. There is so much going on in the world, so much fear being peddled in our media, so many whispers of takeovers and threats to our futures. But the real enemy — the puppet master, Satan himself — lives in the unseen realm (Ephesians 6:12), and we are called of put on the armor of God, which is made up, piece-by-piece, of our secure salvation in Christ.

Jesus said, “In this life, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He gave us the plan for salvation so that we would believe in Him, that it would strengthen Him.

There will be crises and traumatic events and major tragedies in this life, and we are called again and again to let the Word of our salvation wash over us anew, and to keep returning to those places where at first we thought they were so big, but now they are so much bigger and bigger. We have been through trials and found that there is more rest for us.We have been through wars and found that there is more peace.We have been hurt and maimed and traumatized, and these places are more soothing and restoring than we ever knew before.

You know, the funny thing about the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore is that North Bar Lake Beach, Esch Beach, and that other hike I did this summer are all nestled in its shores. North Bar was a place of small wonder when I was very small, and returning to it did not excite me very much as an adult. But the lakeshore is so much more than just that one little park, and it was when I allowed myself to be shown that there was more there beyond that one place that I could see how expansive and beautiful and incredible the whole area was.

Friends, I pray this for you from Ephesians 3:16-21:

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Until then, may all that is created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I am excited to share the third throwback with you guys today. It was honestly a post I needed to re-read this week, and it ties in well with some thoughts I had this morning about times when we’re feeling frustrated and stuck.

We’ve covered a lot of fly fishing topics here — everything from tippet to flies to the drift to proper preparation. Those are topics that come up normally among fishermen, since it’s the majority of our thoughts. But there’s another subject that comes up every once in a while, especially if you fish with other people, and that’s about how you approach a stream of water.

I fish with a group of women who range from beginner to very experienced. Once we get everyone squared away with gear, casting, knots, line management, etc., there’s on more step we often have to encourage: don’t stand in the same spot all day.

For whatever reason, when we first start fishing, we develop this deep and unrelenting belief that we can fish the same six-inch-deep riffle for four hours and eventually pull a fish out of it. We have to learn how to discern the proper number of casts for one spot and the grit to move up when it doesn’t produce, and that may changed each day for the same stream.

I think there is a good spiritual lesson here for many of us, as well as a Biblical one. I think we can get into the habit of standing on one spot and waiting for fish. Maybe it looks like waiting to be called up within our churches, rather than serving the person next to us through genuine relationship. Maybe it looks like waiting for God to put a specific calling on our life, rather than jumping into whatever action we can right now. Maybe you’ve told the Gospel to someone 10 times and they still won’t hear it from you, and it’s time to move on.

I think these moments can really hinder us mentally, because we feel like the stream has dried up in some sense, but it’s that we just need to move.

The Bible makes it clear to us that this is all an endurance race and that we have to keep going, rather than break down in despair. Here is one of my favorite sets of verses in all the Bible:

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. (Exodus 14:14-15)

Wait. Be still, but then move on?

Boy do we love to take verse 14 on its own, especially in the NIV translation! I wonder if it would be as popular if we took the Literal Standard Version, which reads, “YHWH fights for you, and you keep silent.”

It just doesn’t have the same feel-good vibes when we realize God is telling us to shut up and stop whining. But verse 15 makes perfect sense if we understand verse 14. The very basic, frank meaning here is, “Shut up and get moving.”

How often are we paralyzed by our insecurities, doubts, uncertainties, despair, and other negative thoughts that creep in? We look at the overwhelming situations in front of us and behind us and realize there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. The Israelites had every reason fear in this situation. They had Pharaoh’s military bearing down on them from behind and nowhere to escape. They needed a God-sized miracle, but God’s miracle wasn’t for the spot where they were standing. They had to move.

And friend, I get it. You might be in that season where you are moving. You keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, and still nothing produces. You’ve applied for 100 jobs. Tried to stop drinking for the umpteenth time. Developed a new attitude and approach to your marriage yet again. It feels like the more you move, the more empty fishing holes you find.

But do not be discouraged. Do not despair. The Israelites actually had to travel quite a few more hours to get down to the water, where the Lord would use Moses to part the Red Sea and allow them to move to safety. They had to move and keep moving in order for this miracle to be realized. There was no salvation in the place where they stood still and cried.

Joshua 1:9 says, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” It may be that you just haven’t reached the water where God will part the sea. Just keep going, and take every thought captive that stands against this truth. Don’t allow yourself to be trapped into thinking you can’t go any farther. Don’t allow yourself to be paralyzed by your own thoughts that are not from the Lord. Find the Bible verses that keep you going, and move in obedience to Christ.

I really think this ties in well with the third post I did on this Substack, so please read on for more encouragement, and please share with someone who needs this encouragement today!

I heard myself say, “Yeah, I’ll go.” I was saying yes to a lot those days, and here amidst the computers in a graduate school lab at the University of Michigan in 2009, my classmate had turned to me and asked, “Do you want to drive to Colorado next week?” We had about a month off between our summer courses and the fall semester, so it seemed like a great use of time to me.

So it went like this. We got in my Honda Element (named Coleman, because it looked like a cooler) with few preparations and a plan to drive all night, saw a veritable junkie for the first time in our lives in Iowa (he ran straight into a window and smacked against it like a bird), and made it to Estes Park, Colorado in time to pitch our tent. The ranger came by to welcome us and graciously warn us that a few nuisance bears had been riling up peoples tents, and to please lock up our food. As the sky grew dim and we nestled into our sleeping bags, Lauren posed a new question. “Do you want to pray?” she asked, the fear of those menace bears evident in her trembling voice.

And that’s how two relative strangers in grad school held hands tightly for many hours, didn’t sleep a wink that night, and drove straight to Telluride the next day, rather than chance those Estes Park bears ruining a perfectly good road trip by eating us.1

Upon arrival to the cliff-flanked town, we met up with Janie, Lauren’s bestie from high school, and I slept safely free of bears on the floor of her room for the next nine nights. We climbed mountains up to beautiful lakes, rode the gondola, ate the best bagels, played drop-in soccer, did yoga, hiked, and otherwise enjoyed the outdoors in ways we never had before.

The climax of the trip was on the second-to-last day when we did the Via Ferrata. This phrase is Italian for “Iron Way”, and it is a type of traversing where you climb across a rock face, and wherever it drops out is where someone has bolted either a cable to hold onto, iron rungs to stand on, or both, if you’re really lucky. I was vaguely aware of the danger when they handed me a climbing harness and some carabiners for our “hike”, but again, I was in the habit of saying yes to a lot of things.

What began as a beautiful little hike through the woods leading up to a mine shaft eventually gave way to a path that got narrower and narrower (or disappeared altogether) over the next three miles. We held onto rocks and cables where we could. Janie showed me how to lean into the wall and trust it. But there were several times I had to leap over canyons because there was simply nothing to hold onto or stand on. (For context, take a look at the video below, starting at around 1:43.)

There are so many spiritual pictures from this trip, but I want to zoom in on one in particular in relation to John 21, where we’ve been reading the last couple of weeks, and that one picture is of the relationship between that rock face, the iron structures, and God. You see, as I saw the extreme conditions of the hike, I began praying immediately. It was exhilarating, yes, but it was also downright terrifying to be suspended 600 feet up a cliff with my best case scenario being that whatever guy had bolted the cables and rungs into the wall had done a good job. There aren’t exactly federal regulations for these things.

In those moments when I was praying, though, I wasn’t really trusting the rungs and bolts, which were honestly very securely fastened, but God Himself, whom I trusted to sustain my life in those two hours.

So let’s jump in again to our Scripture one last time:

Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.

He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”

“No,” they answered.

He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. (John 21:1-14)

Like I said last week, I really spent some time praying about this unbroken net. I mean, it is very simply a fisherman’s tool turned into a Miracle Worker’s tool. But I think in a spiritual sense, it can mean so many things, and there are some wonderful articles written about it being the Gospel Truth, the unity of the Spirit we all share, the Holy Spirit, faith, hope, and more. All really beautiful answers that I agree with completely. What I want to propose, though, deals more with Simon Peter and what’s going on around this passage.

Full disclosure, I was debating writing an entire brazen discourse about the “reinstatement” of Peter, posing the argument that you cannot re-instate someone who was never un-instated. And while that’s very much the argument I’m going to make, I’m going to leave the other theologians alone this week, except to say that the original canonization of the Bible did not include the subheadings we see today, nor do all of them agree with each other, and they often guide (or misguide) perceptions of things happening that are based on interpretive consensus of the text within those producing a specific translation, not general consensus among a body of scholars or careful consideration of the early church. These subheadings were added much later, many of them being less than a century old, and while their intent is to make the Word more digestible, they can also give us a misunderstanding of the text and suspend our questioning of what is and is not there. Such is the case, I believe, in the “reinstatement” of Peter, which would indicate that at some point Peter was ousted. But in fact, there is no such moment.

Nevertheless, whether ousted or not, Jesus has His moment with Simon, who requires instruction. You see, God made Simon to be very bold, even to the point of impulsive. We can see the double-edge sword here. He is a man of great faith and conviction. He is the one who first proclaimed that Jesus is the Christ. He seems to have spoken most boldly to Jesus at various times and received the harshest rebukes. He later proclaimed his intention to follow Jesus into death, but denied him three times. This is the man who got out of the boat and walked on water before he began to sink. He physically assaulted one of the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus, even though Jesus healed the ear cut off by Simon’s sword. He was one of only two disciples who followed Jesus to the home of Caiaphus, but failed miserably in his fear when he got there. We see through his life that greater boldness means greater risk of failure.

Most importantly, he is also the one Jesus chose to lead the others, not as Simon, but as Peter, the name Jesus gives to him as an immovable, rock solid foundation for the Church.

But we see this identity conflict play out in the Gospels. Peter is so passionate to follow Jesus, but Simon is set in his own plans and what he can see. That’s why Jesus could tell him several times he was going to die for them, and Simon denounced this plan. Simon was bold enough to look the Messiah in the eye and tell him that he would never die, never wash his feet, never….carry out His plans the way He had planned!

Simon, Simon, what did you think was going to happen in the house of Caiaphus? Did you think Jesus would escape? Start a war? Bring down fire from heaven from to smite your enemies?

That’s not at all what happened. Instead, he denied Jesus so swiftly and strongly that he called down curses on himself to defend his dissociation with Him. And at some point, we know things had progressed far enough that Jesus had been brought out to be beaten in front of Simon, because He looked him in the eye on the third denial as the rooster crowed.

We see his constant fear of death break his resolve to follow Jesus, because he wants to follow Him according to his own standards. “Simon” is the name given in Hebrew for someone who listens to or hears God, but Jesus had to give him a new name - Peter - to be unmoved by the threat of death. Simon’s design was of this world. And even though he walked with Jesus and interacted with him and was part of his inner circle - remember he had seen him baptized, transfigured, perform miracles, etc. - he hard an incredibly difficult time relinquishing this idea of what he thought Jesus was there to do. As he wept bitterly, we see the grappling of this moment: his greatest desire to follow Christ absolutely warring with his notion of how he thought things should have gone.

So in His Death and Resurrection, Jesus demonstrated to Simon that his worst fear - death - had been overcome so that Peter could one day follow Him into that same death, in type and motive, dying on a Roman cross for the multitude to see and believe. Here is the transformation. Simon thinks Jesus needs him - his good ideas, his defense, his approval. But Peter knows Jesus chose him to carry out God’s will.

So let’s go a little further in this passage, to vs.15-19:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

There is so much in here that we could unpack, but let’s focus on just a couple of things.

First, nowhere does it indicate, aside from the pattern of threes (affirmation of his love vs. his denials) that he was un-instated by Jesus. This point will be important in a minute. But what we do see is that Jesus uses “Simon, son of John”, Peter’s given name. Why does He do that? Didn’t He rename Him Peter? Absolutely. But here at the place where He first called Simon out of his fishing boat to follow Him, He makes the call again to Simon.

To me, this passage is the transformation of Simon into Peter.2 Because second, what this moment really comes down to is this: take care of the Church, and then die for it. This is what Simon Peter is called to do in Jesus’s Name. That’s the plan, the whole plan, and nothing but the plan. There’s no war for Simon Peter, no averting death and being carried into heaven like Enoch, no great overthrow of Rome in a single instant.

Instead, Jesus is reaffirming the calling He gave Simon Peter three years prior and all through His ministry. This is the plan. Pour out, suffer, and die. (Don’t worry, Peter’s all about it once he receives the Holy Spirit.)

So what about that unbroken fishing net?

To me, in this context of Jesus sending Peter out post-denial, it symbolizes the unbroken calling of Christ on our lives, that we don’t get to choose to be un-chosen. The Bible says that God chose us from the beginning of the world. He chose us to do good works since before Creation.

Do you know what that means? That means your sin is no surprise to Him. He accounted for that in His plans. The mess you’ve made, the selfish choices, the words that have come out of your mouth that bring shame to your heart. If He could choose you that far in advance, then He already knew it all. God does not condemn you, and your calling is not canceled. Far from it!

Instead, Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30)

Let me frame this a different way. Jesus did not call Peter. He called Simon and transformed him into Peter. Jesus did not call the sanctified you. He called you - the sin-stained you, covered-in-the-mud-of-shame-and-condemnation you, the you who messes up again and again. He is transforming you into the man or woman He intended you to be.

I know, I know. That’s hard to accept. I have seen those moments in my own life. I’ve prayed, “God, I don’t know why You chose me. I’m worthless. I think You chose wrong.” And at other times, the plan doesn’t look like I’m so chosen after all. I’ll be honest that when I was waiting for a husband in my mid-30s and all the other women at church were going to the “married couples” small group, I felt pretty un-instated. (That was a lie then, and it’s a lie now that I am married.)

Or let’s take a harder example. Would we say Jesus un-instated Peter by sending him to die on a cross? Would the circumstances of prison, beatings, poverty, and a multitude of hardships for His Name look like the early church body being un-instated to us today? Look at the following passage.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 3-7)

The same Simon who avoided death and told Jesus He would never die penned these very words, because he saw the Truth of the Resurrection, and he was sanctified by what he suffered. The Biblical authors rejoiced in their sufferings! The endurance of hardships was evidence of their calling and refinement in Christ.

The precious things are not those here on earth - the Insta-perfect skin, marriage, home, car, life, etc. - but those we store up in Heaven, knowing that what awaits us there far surpasses what we have here. There is nothing here, that if it doesn’t go according to our plans, that can indicate to us that we are un-chosen in Christ.

And it wasn’t that Peter received the Holy Spirit and was never in trouble again; he was rebuked by both God and man along his ministry. God’s expectation of us is not that we don’t mess up, but that we follow Him and continue to be sanctified by Him!

Honestly, so many more of us face that struggle than we know. I was at a women’s retreat one time, doing all the polite-church-lady things and talking about all the typical church-lady-approved topics. But in a room full of women hiding behind their masks of “I’ve got it all together” perfectionism, the voice of one woman rose up and began to declare the goodness of God in her testimony. She is a recovered heroine addict from a difficult upbringing who had reached a rock bottom when she stole her boyfriend’s car to go buy heroine and crashed it. She proclaimed to us her victory in Christ, who had freed her from all of those chains of bondage. Her life was not without struggle. She didn’t get saved and suddenly have a ton of money, a perfect marriage, or all of the things she desired, and she certainly faces trials of sin like anyone else. But she knows she has a far greater reward - the hope of Jesus for eternity, knowing that He is doing far more than she can see in each moment.

My response was, Yes, finally, someone real! Someone ready to claim their story and tell me it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies. Something I can chew on when I’m hanging off the cliff or hauling in another empty net.

We may not see the fruit of our labors in this lifetime. Success may not look how we had hoped. I know I was called to write, but maybe that doesn’t look like a huge Insta following or a multitude of subscribers. Maybe it means that my future children will read what I publish now and the harvest will come in their lives, while my name remains unknown. None of that matters, because that part is up to God.

We know that God fulfilled the promise to Abraham to give him a son through Sarah, but we also know that Abraham died living in tents, not an established civilization. He had no idea how God planned to bring about the fulfillment of His promises in the steps of obedience that he took, only the faith that He would.

So we obey. We cast the net on the other side. We take one more step on the iron run, hanging 600 feet over a cliff, and we trust that it won’t break. We don’t ask how this could possibly turn out for good. We don’t question our calling because it looks different than we thought. We take every little step of obedience and trust that God will bring the harvest. We step out and believe that nothing in this life lasts forever, and our work and endurance is for an eternal purpose.

What it comes down to is this. It’s not tools - the net or the rungs or anything else - that complete the job. Without the will of God to sustain us, those things will prove unreliable. Instead, we trust His call on our lives. This net is the unbroken call on our lives. We may be stretched to the max, exhausted, enduring grueling labor and conditions. We may mess up in ways we think disqualify us from the ministry we’d dreamed of, but that net will not break. Everything may fly in the face of our comfort and expectations, but that net will not break!

I love the words of the Apostle Paul:

I thank my God every time I remember you. In every prayer for all of you, I always pray with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:3-6).

Friend, if He first called you, He is still calling you. If He began a work, it is good, and He will finish it. You may be afraid, frustrated, discouraged, daunted, but that doesn’t mean that rung is going to give way. You are not un-instated.

This evening, I invite you to reflect on your own testimony, where God has been faithful through trials, regardless of your own success in them, or where you’ve found yourself questioning if you’re really all that chosen. Cover your doubts with the truth you’ve read here, and soak in the love of our sweet Jesus.

If this publication blessed you, go ahead and share it with a friend you think need some encouragement about their calling. And go ahead and subscribe if you haven’t already.

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I’ll see you back here next week with another Sunday Soak. Until then, may all that is created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

If your fall weather has been as warm and beautiful as ours has been, you may also be experiencing the grief of all of your streams being dried up and unsuitable for fishing. I keep telling myself that it can’t last forever, but boy, it can sure last a while.

I did get out a couple of weeks ago to fish the Savage River in Maryland with my women’s group. It is so rare that I actually get to go on a camping trip, and I very much enjoyed all the sounds of the night from my tent as the critters roamed, scavenged, and hunted around me.

The fishing didn’t go very well for any of us. I think those fish get too pressured on the weekend to respond with any level of cordiality. Like celebrities refusing to sign autographs, they stayed hidden beneath the rocks. But even these trips can be a blessing if we let them.

Between getting skunked by the fish and getting beaten up by some of the most challenging wading in the region, I found myself taking more breaks to look around and enjoy the environment. The heat of our Indian summer soaked through the trees, and I remembered the verse on which I often reflect on such occasions:

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21)

There is a heaviness that comes with knowing that our sin and fallenness also led to the rest of God’s creation being limited in life and breadth. The ground that was supposed to bring forth abundance is subjected to futility, never reaching the full glory in which it was created. I looked at the trees and rocks and water and wondered, if this scene was already so breathtaking that I could hardly take it all in, how much more glorious was it made to be in the beginning? How much more vibrant the colors? How much purer the water? How much greater the size?

It says that it waits in eager anticipation for us to be revealed - for that day that the Lord will make everything new and return His plans to their fullness, that we will walk the earth in the radiance of His Presence. But in that little moment in the stream, I just sat there thinking that maybe the Lord would let the trees experience a little bit of that hope and glory right there in me. So I sang a little worship song to the creation around me, prayed a bit, and moved on.

A few days later, a woman from the group I workout with told us something profound. She said, “For the unbeliever, this is the closest to heaven they’ll ever be, and for the believer, this is the closest to hell we’ll ever get.” I reflect on how I carry myself into the world. Do I look a little more like heaven or a little more like hell when I interact with people?

It’s something that has given me new perspective about putting away offense, selfishness, judgment, and other things the Bible tells us are no longer part of the Christian life. I sometimes find those things easier or harder in different seasons. It’s been harder lately, but her note helped me break through some of that hardness, and I wanted to share it in case anyone else needed to hear it.

Today, I’m re-sharing my second-ever post on this Substack for the many new subscribers I’ve gotten since then. It is a continuation of the post I shared last week, and I hope it blesses you as we break down some bad theology and rebuild it with the truth found in God’s Word.

And remember — if the interpretation of Scripture doesn’t align with God’s character throughout the entire story of the Bible, it’s probably a bad interpretation.

My mentor in euro nymphing always told me, “It’s not the fly; it’s the drift,” and I have a rule that I won’t change a fly out until I know I’ve got my drift right, because no matter how hatch-matched or enticing that fly is to the fish, they’re not biting if it doesn’t look natural in the water. So this past weekend, as I realized just how many months it had been since I had my euro rod out, I fished for probably a good 90 minutes before changing a fly.

It was frustrating and somewhat embarrassing, because sometimes I feel like I’m relearning things I already learned and did well before, and I just want to get out and catch a fish on the first cast. I don’t really want to spend time getting back to the fundamentals.

With that in mind, let’s get back to our fishermen in John 21 this evening. Here’s a refresher:

Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.

5 He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”

“No,” they answered.

6 He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. 8 The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. 9 When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

---

Why, after Jesus had risen, were the disciples out fishing that night?

Some modern writers are in the habit of looking back in disgust at the disciples for fishing for fish instead of for men,1 like Jesus had said He would teach them in Matthew 4:19. They look at this as if they were prodigal sons returning to the pig sty. They cast shame on these men as if they had something to repent of by doing anything but evangelizing during this period.

But is that really what we see in the text?

First, let’s consider who these men are and what they’ve been through. These were seven disciples who knew Jesus, who walked with Him in life, and who went through something traumatic and difficult to understand in his death and resurrection. We don’t know all that Jesus told them when He appeared to them twice before this, nor the exact instructions they were given on where to go and what to do during the time between the Resurrection and Ascension. (Acts 1:3 would indicate that there were many interactions not recorded in the synoptic gospels.)

But we do know that they didn’t know the rest of the plan yet. They had not received the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-17), nor instructions on the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4), and the Spirit wasn’t yet received (Acts 2:1-13). Their paths were still unknown (John 21:18-19).

On one occasion in Bethany, before He ascended into Heaven, Jesus actually said, “You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city [of Jerusalem] until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:48-49)

This third appearance at the Sea of Galilee while they’re fishing was before this command, so it clearly was not His plan for them to go around evangelizing in this interperiod. Instead, this was a time of waiting and a time of major change and uncertainty, even if filled with incredulous joy.

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So where did they go? Fishing!

Yes, fishing. This is where Jesus first found Peter, John, Andrew, and James at the start of His ministry. This is where they waited for the Messiah all their lives, and this is where the Messiah first appeared and told them to follow Him when He said they would fish for men. He gave a miraculous catch then, too.

Do you see this? The disciples returned to the place Jesus first found them. Where He first called them. Where they first knew the sound of His voice and the power of His Word. Where they first knew that obedience to Him produces a harvest we cannot imagine.

Why are we so against this? I’m not just talking about scholars, but we as humans.

Let me give you an example. I’ve had a really hard couple of years in general. They’ve been riddled with change and hardships. There have been many joys, such as getting married (and we all know how easy wedding and the first year of marriage can be). But hardships have come one after another - making a major career shift, leaving my church, and watching my dad suffer and pass away.

I went from a high in ministry - feeling like I poured out my heart and soul for Jesus every day - to going through spiritual dryness where I struggled to pray or worship at all. This produced in me feelings of doubt that I was really saved at all and guilt that I wasn’t doing more for the Kingdom. At times that I knew I had missed an opportunity to share the love of Christ with someone, I felt simultaneously like a failure and a fraud, and completely disconnected from who I thought I was as a Christian. “I should be fishing for men,” I would tell myself, which compounded my inability to face God and walk through the hard things with Him.

This came to a head as I faced dark lows in my struggle with grief and depression. I knew I was believing lies about myself, but I feared sliding backwards in my walk with Christ. I didn’t want to have to battle for the truth. I mean, a woman who has been an active member of the body, a passionate Bible lover, and a fervent pray-er for 15 years should have it together and be able to move forward confidently, right? I was a “mature” Christian. I shouldn’t have to go back to the basics. Again, the problem compounded.

But where I wanted to be wasn’t where I was, and it was in a critical series of weeks when all felt lost that I finally began to return to some fundamental truths. I returned to the building blocks of my testimony - just me and the Bible. I made it a daily practice to rise before the sun, open my Bible, and, as I study a chapter, write out everything that is true about God and everything that is true about me, verse-by-verse. I started in Galatians and moved through some of Paul’s shorter epistles, then to James, now Hebrews.

And do you know what I discovered? That God - the same God I avoided in prayer and worship - was waiting there for me, right where He found me at first as a desperate young woman 15 years ago who didn’t know where to turn. He showed me that my faith was not lost, not backpedaled, and not downgraded, but in need of renewal to bring me to new heights, new depths, new distances.

Miraculously filled with joy I could not explain, I soon realized that what seemed horrifyingly basic to me was actually the food that I need to eat every day for sustenance. That food is the Gospel truth that I am saved by faith alone through the saving grace of Jesus Christ alone alone. I need to remember my testimony and proclaim the Good News to myself as I seek the Lord in prayer - desperately, humbly, and joyfully each and every day.

So let’s return to the Scripture.

My imagination plays it like this. After a night of fishing with no catch, the weary crew isn’t that bothered. They were just passing time anyway as they lived in a state of uncertainty and waiting, longing to see Him. He had risen from the dead, just as He had said, so there was no reason to doubt that He would appear again and direct them. They missed Him, though. They hungered and thirsted for His Presence.

Suddenly from ashore, a Voice filled with laughter rings out, “Cast again on the other side!” People knew the story from three years prior, so maybe it was just someone playing around. They couldn’t quite see, but still they threw the net out, just in case. And the result was the miracle we talked about last week - the 153 large fish. “It’s the Lord,” John said, and Peter hurled himself into the sea, unable to contain his excitement for Jesus.

Do you want to know what’s not in this passage? The idea that Jesus shamed them for going back to fishing. That is a man-made shame narrative that they should have been fishing for men at that moment. That was not Jesus’s response.

Far from shaming them, Jesus called to them. He greeted them with a miracle. He had breakfast cooking over a warm fire, inviting them to share a meal after a long night of work. He nourished them, body and soul. He was there, right where He had found them at first.

We know this is Jesus’s response, because not only does the text say so, but we have a God who calls us to return and receives us with open arms. He called Jacob to return to Bethel. He returned Moses to his people. He returned the Israelites to the Promised Land. He returned them again after the exile. God told them, “Return to the stronghold, You prisoners of hope. Even today I declare That I will restore double to you..” (Zechariah 9:12) Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son, returning to the father who ran out to receive him (Luke 15:11-32). And the book of Revelation stirs us with those words to the church at Ephesus, “Return to your first love.”

And do not miss this here with the disciples. He returned them, too. In Matthew 28:10, when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, He sent her to the disciples to tell them to go to Galilee, where they would see Him.

Return, return, return. It absolutely echoes through these holy pages. For the disciples, it’s as simple as a miracle followed by a meal shared with their precious Teacher.

You, my friend, may have felt that you “should” be somewhere you’re not in your relationship with God or your ministry. You may have heard this passage preached and feel that same shame of that narrative echoing, “I should be fishing for men”, not going back to the basics. You watch others share the Word boldly and go on mission trips, and you think, “That’s where I should be”, and it may not be where God has you right now or where you thought He would have you at this point. But the Gospel is daily food that we all need to eat, no matter where we are in our faith journeys. Yes, it’s important to grow and to feed others, but we also need to return to it again and again and again ourselves, right where Jesus found us in our desperation, so that we do not forget that we need Him as much today as we did when we first cried out His Name.

Do not listen to the lies of shame. When you feel distant from the Lord, uncertain of your next steps, and weary from the waiting, return to your first love. Let Him be the one to call you out of the boat and into mission. Feast on the love of Jesus, who died for you to save you and to be with you eternally, and He will renew your strength for this journey.

Let’s bring this full circle, back to that drift. I implore you - because many of us have the habit of making life changes before we make heart changes - to resist the urge to change your fly before you examine your drift. Before you switch small groups, second-guess your calling, buy another book from the latest Christian author, switch churches, change your social media strategy, mission strategy, or marketing strategy - make sure you’ve got your drift right. Make sure you remember the Gospel, where you came from, and who you are in Christ: chosen, holy, and loved, and made for great purpose.

There’s a detail in this passage I still want to cover next week. Have you been praying about that unbroken net, friends? I have, and I cannot wait to share with you and hear what God revealed to you.

Until then, may all that is created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I really hope it is a happy Sunday for you, too. Following Charlie Kirk’s memorial, I felt a heavy spiritual darkness settle over God’s people. You guys know I don’t normally say that kind of stuff, but I mean it. Everyone I have talked to has alluded to trials, battles, and darkness they’re walking through this past week, even if they’re yet unaware. I know I have certainly felt that darkness and was helped by the prayers and wise counsel of a friend, so I encourage you that if you’ve also felt that heaviness to be in the Word, seek support within the Church (you’re welcome to reach out to me), and don’t give in to the enemy’s schemes.

Today’s post is broken up into two parts for that reason. First, I am going to go through Ephesians 6:10-20, arguably the most well-known section of the Bible for engaging everyday spiritual warfare, with some of my own notes mixed in. Second, I am releasing my very first post from Substack. It’s grown since then, and I wanted to share it for a very specific reason I’ll talk about when I get there.

Finally friends, please share the Substack to encourage a friend who needs that darkness to lift this week. I don’t hustle or try gimmicks to grow this ministry, but your shares mean the world to me.

Please note while this is a great scripture for tangible steps we can take in spiritual preparation, the Bible talks so much more about spiritual warfare throughout. If there is one plea I could make with everyone here, even if it means reading this Substack less, it would be to read the Bible more and more and more. The only weapon we’re given in the spiritual armor is a sword, which is the Word of God. How can you wield it if you don’t know what it is?

Ephesians 6:10-20 + my commentary (as lay theologian and ancient history teacher)

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

• Our strength comes from the Lord. One of my lines in the Bible comes from Nehemiah 8:10, which says, “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” In Psalm 51:12, David pleads with God, “Return to me the joy of your salvation,” and joy is listed as a fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. So this is not a solemn call, but one that recognizes that the Lord has saved us from sin and death, and from this, we derive our strength, which He has granted us in the Holy Spirit. We are strong because He has saved us and marked us with eternal hope. His salvation is our strength.

¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

• This is a perspective-changing passage. We are often overwhelmed by the physical evil that we see around us, especially in positions of power and authority in the world. But Romans 13:1 reminds, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God,” which is to say that God is the one who put every ruler in their position for His plans. An excellent example is the Pharaoh in Egypt. Exodus 9:16 says, “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” God raised up an evil ruler to demonstrate His power to all the earth.

• So if our enemies are not truly of the world — and we should be praying for those worldly enemies — then our true battle is against Satan and the spiritual forces of evil that we cannot see right in front of us. So we need a battle plan, because the requirements to fight in this war are pretty specific.

¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,

• Paul is illustrates spiritual armor using Roman military armor.

• The belt would have held the breastplate in place, and it also held the metal studded straps that protected the groin. The breastplate protected all of the vital organs in the chest and abdomen.

• The belt of truth is everything that Jesus has told us. He is the exact imprint of God’s character (Hebrews 1:3), and He said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). That truth is that we are all sinners saved by the grace of God through the death of Jesus Christ. This truth, then, holds that breastplate of righteousness firmly in place.

• The breastplate of righteousness protects our hearts and core so that we can stand tall and confident. Jesus, by His death on the Cross, has justified us and thereby imputed to us His righteousness. We are now considered entirely righteous by God because Jesus has washed away our sins and given us His righteousness where there was once nothing but iniquity (Romans 4-5). This protects our hearts, because we no longer have to live as the world lives in sin that stems from fear and pride. We have His righteousness, so we have the freedom from sin and fear that allows us to live righteously and trust in God’s ways.

¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

• Roman soldiers wore sandals that were strapped securely to their feet, ready to stand and ready to go. The gospel of peace is the assurance that we have peace with God through Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1-2). The enemy will try to tell us that we are not saved because of our past sins and sin natures, but these shoes allow us to stand on the firm foundation that we are indeed forgiven and saved. Not only that, but we are ready to go tell others how they can be saved as well.

¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

• In ancient times, flaming arrows were not necessarily a weapon used to kill individuals. They were instead used to set fires and distract advancing militaries so that they would break rank and become vulnerable to a more targeted attack. The enemy uses this tactic on us all the time. If he can get us to take our eyes off of God, then he can fill us with all sorts of lies and worries. That is why Christ warned against this kind of distraction in Matthew 6, concluding, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (31-34).

• The shield of faith extinguishes these fiery arrows. All of his accusations, lies, distractions, and tactics are meant to take our eyes off of God and get us to question our faith and the Lord’s goodness and salvation. It is essential that we learn to recognize the fiery arrows of distraction and say in faith, “The Lord has provided all that I need. He will continue to do so for all of my life, because I am saved and preserved for eternity with Him.”

¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

• The helmet obviously protects the brain. Second Corinthians 10:5 says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” The enemy will try to set himself up against the knowledge of God, sowing seeds of doubt that God is really for us and good. But we capture those thoughts. Those thoughts that sometimes sound like, “I’m not good enough to be chosen,” “I’m too far gone to be saved,” or “God won’t forgive me this time….” And sometimes they sound like, “This is pointless. Why should I keep going. I will never make an impact…”, “My marriage is beyond saving,” or, “I’ll never be as good as him or her.”

• The helmet of salvation protects us from those lies and doubts that seek to destroy our God-given ministries, callings, and institutions. The enemy would love nothing more than to stop the advancement of the Kingdom, but we keep going because we have the helmet of salvation, the sure and protective knowledge that we are truly saved and gifted and preserved for the work of the Kingdom, which God determined before He made us (Ephesians 2:10). No lie of the enemy can stand against the Lord’s will!

• And finally, after all these defensive measures, we receive a weapon. The sword of truth is the Word of God. When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness (Matthew 4), He did not argue or reason. He secured a decisive victory by the simple deployment of the Word of God. Satan issued three challenges to Jesus, and He rebuked them all by reciting Scripture. This is exactly what we are called to do here in this verse. You’ll notice that I have employed a lot of Scripture above in my explanations of this armor, because rather than arguing and crying and beating our breasts to fight with Satan, we cut him to pieces with the Word.

  • When he says, “You’re too far gone, dirty sinner,” we say, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

  • When he says, “You’ll never amount to anything,” we say, “I am God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

  • When he says, “There is no hope for your future,” we say, “The Lord Jesus said, ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’” (John 10:10).

  • I think it’s essential that we think of as many lies and schemes as we can before they get stated so that we have a ready answer when the enemy comes. So for the love of God, read your Bibles and be prepared.

• Jude is an important reference for not engaging in direct arguments with Satan. We need to make sure that when we fight him, we are employing the word of God by the power of Jesus Christ. Even the Archangel Michael — the highest angel in the heavens — did not fight with Satan directly, but said, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan” (Jude 1:9). The Lord has rebuked Satan, and in our case, He has done so by saving us from sin and death and giving us a hope and a future.

¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. ¹⁹ Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰ for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

• Finally, we pray and pray and pray. About anything and everything. All kinds of prayer and requests, always alert, always interceding for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayers does not need to be a grandiose practice, but it should be a consistent, constant, and serious one. Do not be flippant about the power of God and the will of Him who can do all things.

The last thing I want to say in this section is that we can often feel like we are rolling a boulder of faith up hill (see comically bad drawings below), as if the spiritual forces of evil have the power to keep us from God. But God has given us the victory of Christ Jesus, and we are not coming from behind. 1 John 5:4 says, “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” He has set us on the high ground, on victory.

As we face the attacks of the enemy, it is exactly that — facing him. That is why all of our armor is on the front of the body, because this battle is head-on. He is not coming from a place of being ahead. Jesus defeated that on the cross when He declared victory over sin and darkness, when He declared that He has all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), when He hid our lives with His (Colossians 3:3). Do not be fooled by the enemy into thinking that we’re coming from behind. There’s no way.

Don’t get arrogant about this. Remember the warning from Jude, because you and I have not overcome the enemy. The enemy overcame our flesh in chapter 3 of the Bible when he launched his first and most basic, most benign attack, so we don’t do so well against his schemes. But the power and love of God for us has overcome the enemy, and it is by His power that we are victorious, by His Word that we fight, by His salvation that we are protected.

Now, here is the post that started us off here at Somewhere by a Stream. I wasn’t that good at introductions then, so I just jumped in. But I will say now that I hope you are encouraged by God’s very specific, very attentive love for each of you. Yes, we are MORE than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:31-39)!

John 21:

1 After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

4 Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” 6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. 7 That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. 8 The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off.

9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

John 21:11 is such a peculiar verse.

Why did John use such a precise number here?

A precise number is not mentioned in Luke 5 when there is another miraculous catch, nor when Jesus feeds the 4000 and 5000, not the number of people He healed on any given day. A good argument could be made that Luke received his information secondhand, while that specific number stuck in John’s memory strongly since he witnessed it all himself. But Matthew was also a firsthand witness who documented the miracles of a single meal being multiplied to feed the thousands.

Regardless, I think scholars do a good job of answering why John, the author, included it. Many say that it’s because they were fishermen and would have counted their catch. I like to think that as they ate and talked about counting the fish, Jesus offhandedly said, “Oh, there are 153.”

But I don’t think that satisfies our curiosity for why the Author included it. That is, why is in the Word of God?

We see across the Word a pattern of precise language among many Biblical authors. From measurements for an ark in Genesis to those for the Temple in 1 Kings to the years of Babylonian Captivity across prophet accounts. Censuses taken, ages noted, militaries sized. Significance is given to numbers like three, seven, 12, and 40, among others. Truly, we have a God who is exact, precise, intentional, the very opposite of flippant in regard to His Creation.

And consider these verses:

• I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore… (Genesis 21:17)

• He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. (Psalm 147:4)

• Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered... (Luke 12:7)

Even the numbers He does not tell us, He knows perfectly and completely, even to the extent that He can tell Abraham that his offspring will be more plentiful than that which we humans cannot count. He makes it even clearer to us in Job when He says, ““Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7)

And doubtless, by Revelation, He demonstrates that He has ordered exactly how this whole story turns out, and Jesus told us in Matthew 24:36 that the Father alone knows the hour that Christ will return. Not only does He know all, but He is sovereign over all, even to command everything where to go and how to be.

It’s a discomfort we live in as those with free will. How can God be so in control and so good, and yet so often things seem out of control and very bad? In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis argues that part of being a creature with free will is that we must exist in an environment that we cannot control and does not control us. It’s absolutely uncomfortable, but it’s also absolutely beautiful.

And here’s why. If we live in a world that we cannot control, but that God can, then we can recognize His work in everything around us.

When it works perfectly, like a tree sprouting bright green leaves each season, we can see His precision and the intentional building blocks with which He laid the earth’s foundation. When it is so beautiful to behold, like a newborn baby or the morning dew over a pristine meadow, our eyes cannot get full enough of His incredible artistry. When it is too great and powerful, like standing next to a great waterfall or canyon, we are stirred to the knowledge of how finite we are in such an unknowable universe.

And when we have cast our nets and cast our nets and cast them again to absolutely no avail - not even a single minnow - and just one more try at His Word we haul in 153 large fish, we recognize the miraculous Hand of God in the world that we cannot control.

The 153 is a reminder that nothing is unaccounted for in Him. Advanced scholars and experts in their fields often agree with Albert Einstein, who said, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” Yet God knows all. There is nothing outside of His notice or plans.

He made and counted every one of those fish. He watched them emerge from their eggs, from the place where their mothers spawned. They became frys and then smolts. He saw them grow strong, eating and darting about, traveling together and roaming the waters. He willed and watched them move to the space where they would be gathered for this moment, fully accounted for, where they would take part in His glory in this incredible moment. I wonder if those 153 rejoiced!

And you, friend, are the masterpiece of His Creation, far greater than a catch of fish.

Let’s head back to Luke 12 for a moment. Jesus said, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (vs 6-7)

It seems like everyone I talk to right now is going through a difficult time. We’re facing challenges at work, uncertainty without clear answers of what’s next or where He wants us to go, loss and seasons of grief, struggles with family dynamics, and prolonged seasons of waiting for relief. We’ve all seen the statistics that depression, stress, and anxiety are increasing at alarming rates, and many are feeling like there is no light in the darkness of existing.

If you are reading this and you are walking through a season of difficulty where you’re looking around the world thinking that it is hopeless because of all the things you cannot control, I want you to know that God has not left a single detail out of His plans regarding you. You, and I mean YOU precisely, are His masterpiece, whom He created anew in Christ Jesus, so that you can do the good things He planned for you long before the Creation of the world (Ephesians 2:10).

I want you to take hold of the truth that God sees you. That’s what the Bible says over and over. Hagar the slave girl, driven to the wilderness by abuse, called Him “El Roi” when He came to comfort her in her desperation (Genesis 16:13).

Whatever you are going through right now is not a surprise to Him. Trials may come, but He will never abandon you. He has a plan for your life, for your specific circumstances, and for your heart.

I have many, many, many stories, scriptures, and pictures I want to encourage you with, no matter the season you’re in, so that you can be strong in your faith and joyful in any trial. I promise that the light has shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it, and I promise that Jesus Christ is our light and hope in all things.

If you are not going through a challenging season, I hope you’ll find this weekly publication a refreshing way to worship the Lord each week and give joyful thanks for His goodness and purpose in all things.

Again, if this blessed you today, please share with a friend and help me reach more people with the wonder of the Gospel in creation!

Until then, may all that is created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I hope you are all getting to enjoy the cooler weather we’ve had recently. I take a walk every day on my lunch break, and it has been such a blessing to feel the cool breeze and not get trapped in oppressive heat like we’ve had all summer in Pennsylvania. I’m looking forward to getting out a bit more this fall, especially on some hikes and maybe even long bike rides with some friends. And of course fly fishing.

You know, if you had asked me 20 years ago at age 18 what I thought my life would look like, I would have told you I would be living in a New York City high rise and working in finance or law. I was dead set that I, having been born and raised in a rural farm town, would be a Big City Girl. I didn’t have any particular thoughts about a husband or family then, except that I did want a boyfriend pretty badly. But if I did get married, I wanted to be part of a “power couple”. (Hey, 18-year-olds are dumb, and I was no exception.) So how did I become an outdoorswoman longing to move from the city to the middle of nowhere instead?

My first introduction to the outdoors was in college at Planet Rock, a climbing gym in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had a boyfriend who introduced me to rock climbing. I actually had a knack for it, made some connections at the gym, and started going on trips to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. I found that I also loved camping, hiking, and being outdoors. I liked getting dirty, and I discovered that there was no finer meal than the one you ate after a long day of sweating and subsisting on PowerBars.

In grad school, a classmate asked me to go to Colorado with her on a road trip. We camped, hiked, did yoga in the mountains, and even traversed the Via Ferrata in Telluride. As soon as I got back from that trip, I set off to California to visit Yosemite with a friend and hike the Half Dome together. Grad school eventually gave way to my first teaching gig, and far from the job in the Bronx I was hoping to get, I ended up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which meant a lot of big mountain skiing, camping, and rock climbing as part of my daily life there.

At this point, most of my outdoor experiences were pretty much against my better judgement, or perhaps opportunities to have fun adventures so I would have a good story to tell. But after Steamboat came a boarding school that sat in the Sleeping Bear National Sand Dunes on Lake Michigan, a special wilderness of its own. And at some point after I moved to a third boarding school in Raleigh, NC, I started to realize there was an emptiness in my heart where the outdoors belonged. People would tell me, “Oh, you can hike here or there,” but they had never seen wilderness and couldn’t have known any better. To put it as a metaphor, they took my desire to devour a decadent chocolate cake and told me to simply rinse with mouth wash to satisfy the sweet tooth.

When I moved to Pittsburgh in 2016, it was in large part due to how rural it got so quickly around the city, and I found myself having a sense that I found a good compromise between the two worlds of city and country. Plus, true rural boarding schools pay terribly, so I had to find an income balance somewhere, and this boarding school sat in a sprawling country-day setting that I could stomach much better than the one in Raleigh or the job offer I also had in Detroit.

It was during COVID that I became a true outdoorswoman, though–that I finally realized it was not just an interest, but a deep need and calling. My boarding school had become a pressure cooker of other people’s fears that drove all decisions. I was no longer interacting with my incredibly talented and wonderful colleagues, but only their most anxious thoughts converted to words and actions. I had to get out. As in outside. (Where else could we go when everything else was shut down?)

Thus, my city leanings have given way to the desire for quiet, natural surroundings. And now that I finally live in the city, I want more than anything to get out of it.

You know, for a lot of the time I moved around and experienced all of these life changes, I felt this constant whiplash, like the rug was always being pulled out from under me. I would think I was going in one direction, and then everything would change and I’d find myself going another. I’d often feel like I was just waiting for life to begin. With every move, I hoped that I could settle down and stay a while. But I was wrong, and I remember crying out on a number of occasions, “God, I don’t want to go a single step further. I want to be settled, married, have a place to call home.”

It’s funny that in those days, especially when I lived out west, I found myself living in the world of switchbacks. If you’re not familiar, a switchback is a type of path that weaves back and forth across a steep embankment. It can be a hiking trail, like the first few miles of the Half Dome trail in Yosemite. Or can be a mountain road, like those leading from the Front Range up to Frasier, Colorado. They just go back and forth and back and forth up the steep terrain.

It’s a great picture for what I endured in my 20s and some of my early 30s, especially when I think of that trip to Telluride in grad school. Our host woke us up early one morning and asked if we wanted to hike up to a beautiful lake in the San Juan mountains.

The hike began beautifully in a quiet pine forest. We climbed a bit of elevation from around 10,000 feet and made our way across a field of scree running down the side of a mountain. We traversed streams and valleys, and a couple of minor switchbacks here and there, and found ourselves in a gorgeous meadow with outstanding views of the rust-colored 14er, San Miguel Peak.

It was one of the most beautiful hikes I’d ever been on, but it wasn’t long before it abruptly turned to a series of switchbacks as we found ourselves on steep, rocky terrain, navigable only by the switchbacks the trail had become. We weren’t far from the lake, but it felt like we climbed them all day. We wove back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The path was well worn, and since it was on a steep grade, much of the dirt had worn away and become rocky, uneven ground that could catch your ankles off guard if you weren’t careful.

The trail that had been so inviting now had me fooled. Since the tree-lined switchbacks traversed not only up, but across the mountain face, we couldn’t tell where they ended. I kept wondering when this section would end and we’d be back to the real hike and our real adventure would begin again. But they didn’t. They just kept going. I had my mind and hopes set on seeing this lake, which was named–no joke– Hope Lake, while all I could see in front of me was the brown, green, and gray blur of switchbacks, switchbacks, switchbacks.

As we continued to slog on through miles of grueling, tedious terrain, I began to wonder if this was the whole hike. Maybe it was all switchbacks that just led to some obscure lake in the mountains. Maybe this girl, who had been so adamant that this was a spectacular hike, was working from a different set of definitions than I was. I hated the switchbacks. I suddenly hated the whole hike. It was going nowhere, and as our “guide” led, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I’ve felt that very strongly in my walk with Christ. God miraculously saved this wretched soul one night, and while I had no idea how that would shape my future, the setting out felt very much like embarking on a new and beautiful journey into the most beautiful terrain of life. But the anticipatory beginning gave way years of metaphorical switchbacks as I moved from one place to another, often wondering when my real life would begin.

You see, I went through a period in my early walk with Christ when I wanted freedom from my old life, but I didn’t necessarily know what was all head and I still had a lot of desires I wanted Him to fulfill. I had in mind where I wanted this faith thing to go, and I wanted God to bless my journey, not necessarily take me on His. I think that’s probably pretty normal for many of us.

I wrestled with this post for a while, the Lord unfold an image of the Israelites walking through the Red Sea. They were reluctant to be saved at first, especially as Pharaoh came against Moses and Aaron by punishing the Israelites with harder labor. They may have wondered—if God was really with them, why He didn’t just wipe out Pharaoh. Why did it have to go this way? But as He brought the first couple of plagues, He said to Pharaoh. “Let My people go so that they may worship Me” (Exodus 9:1).

Maybe this is just me, but I have to wonder if the Israelites worshipped Him very much after 400 years of enslavement in Egypt. They really only had a few stories to go on at that point. No laws. No feasts. Those all came later. They had the Abrahamic Covenant, but how was it observed?

I don’t know, but God once again utters the command to Pharaoh to let His people go so they could worship Him, and He adds, “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (9:15-16). This can easily sound like He’s doing it so that everyone in the world would know and talk about what He had done for the Israelites, but it was also the Israelites themselves who needed this demonstration so that they would go out from there and worship Him. Not just to be freed, but to be freed in His Name and for His plans and glory.

He could have raised His Hand and wiped the Egyptians off the earth. But when He puts His Name on a people, salvation is the beginning of the story, not the end. He had an intricately woven plan for all of this, one that they and we could not have written ourselves.

So God led them out of Egypt through Moses’s leadership. Eventually, the plagues got so bad that the Egyptians had to almost push the Israelites out because the fear for their own lives had become so great after the tenth plague (Ex. 10:33). When they did go out, He immediately instituted the Feast of the Unleavened Bread and the consecration and Law of the Firstborns, giving them a piece of the Law to observe now that they were free.

God then took them through the wilderness, not Philistine territory, which would have been shorter. He didn’t want them to see war, become fearful, and want to turn back. Instead, He led them through the wilderness by way of the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Pharaoh regretted his decision to let them go and led his army out to stop them, pushing them to the edge of the Red Sea, but God parted the sea, the Israelites walked through on dry ground, and then He un-parted the sea, drowning Pharaoh and his army with the simple stretching out of Moses’s hand.

It’s really an incredible picture of salvation and baptism. God comes and says, “You’re mine. You’re free.” We respond by turning from the sin that once enslaved us (Romans 6:6). He leads us out of the land of condemnation by way of His glory—Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. But our past sin continues to pursue us. Satan does not easily let go of that which was once under his domain, and so we pray, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). God delivered us from that sin by washing it away in the waters of salvation and continues to do so now that we are in Christ.

On the other side of our salvation is the expectant hope of having beheld and experienced God’s glory. We cannot wait to see what He does in our lives and are overcome with joy when He saves us! So the Israelites, immediately after being delivered from their captors, worshipped and sang songs to God.

But the journey for them was just beginning. They got a little ways down the road and began to worry about where their provisions would come from, so He provided food and water. He gave them the Ten Commandments and made THE Covenant with them, and He forgave their sin when they turned to idol worship under Aaron’s leadership, even though they had beheld an incomprehensible portion of His glory by this point.

You know, if we’re on a trail where we can see the acme of our climb up ahead, it’s not so bad. It gives us some semblance that our hope is real. There is an end in sight, we may even have some control over how fast we get there, and even if we go slow, we at least get to enjoy the miles leading to our goal. It’s a far more comfortable place to be on a long journey. But there aren’t a whole lot of trails that go that way.

Instead, we get stuck in periods of our lives when the trail we’re on causes us to lose sight of the hope that we have in where we’re going, to forget how we got on this trail in the first place, and to question Who we’re following. The greatest agony of our journeys is not in the grueling steps that we take, but when the path turns and the end result of one switchback is not the open field of glory we had made up in our own minds, but another switchback in God’s plans.

The switchbacks to Hope Lake were deceiving. There was one area where we thought we were getting out of them as we approached another gorgeous meadow, but about 50 yards later, we realized we were right back into them. I can’t tell you how many times I went through that spiritual disappointment as I moved around from one boarding school to another, thinking that the new opportunity was actually going to be the fulfillment of some desire I had, usually to be married.

That’s what made my personal journey so laborious at times–that I often made up what that hope looked like. I had built up an image in my mind of what it meant to step into God’s blessings and calling, and I always had this sense that if I could just get to ____ step, then life could really begin.

It’s funny though. It’s been almost ten years since I called off my first wedding. I don’t know if I’ve actually talked about being engaged in my 20s. After so much moving around and so many switchbacks, I met someone I thought might lead to that meadow I was looking for. (All of us married people are laughing right now.) After months of planning a wedding and a life, I ended things because he wasn’t a believer, and, not only was God clearly telling me “NO!”, I knew that if I really believed in my Biblical role as a wife, then I could not submit to an unbeliever.

I didn’t really know what that turn would look like. To me, it was like I chose to follow another switchback instead of dropping off a cliff. But the instant that I ended that relationship, my whole future opened up. Peace, hope, and a deep, abiding belief that God’s plans for me were good washed over my whole soul.

That moment I relinquished my own plans to the unknown future God had for me, my whole future changed, and the journey I was on suddenly seemed so much brighter. I could see the trees and the wildflowers between the paths. I could smell the fresh air. Rather than feeling like the journey was just a bunch of slogging miles, I felt exhilarated with the curiosity of what could lie ahead.

But what if instead of believing that God had a good path for me, I had dug in my heels and said, “I’m going my own direction.” What if I had married that man? I don’t know the answer to that, but we know what happened to the Israelites when they failed to place their trust in God.

It was nearly two years after God delivered the Israelites from Egypt that He allowed them to set their faces toward Canaan, the land He promised Abraham’s descendants. Why two years?

This is because switchbacks have a real purpose, which is to navigate steep terrain, and God had them wandering for a while before entering the Promised Land, because there was a steep learning curve. Deuteronomy 1:2 tells us that the journey should have only taken 11 days, and it’s true that “as the crow flies” directions have a technical validity. But the spiritual space between Egypt and Canaan was not as simple as just walking from one place to another. It was walking from one life to another. One set of beliefs to another. From slavery to freedom, blessing, and stewardship. It took time and preparation for them to enter into their new life. (Incidentally, that’s also why we don’t let recent high school graduates cut people open in an operating room. Go figure.)

God’s plans for the Israelites - the ten plagues, the wilderness way, the Red Sea, the two years of wandering - these were all a series of intentional switchbacks He designed so that they could climb from their spiritual state of slavery into their identity as His chosen people.

So in the second year of their wandering after they were led out of Egypt, Moses sent out 12 spies to scout Canaan for 40 days. The purpose of this mission was to prepare to go into the Promised Land, but ten of them came back with a bad report, saying it was impossible. Two of them–Caleb and Joshua–were adamant that it was entirely possible because the Lord was on their side. But the Israelites deferred to God. Their rebellion against God’s plans resulted in their wandering the desert for 40 years until that generation died off, never to enter the Promised Land. Caleb and Joshua alone were preserved for their faith and obedience and later led the Israelites to take Canaan.

I often imagine our lives of faith as a great mountain climb with varied terrain. As I began writing this, I had it in my mind that Zeb and I are at a fork in the path, looking at a map and asking God for direction, which we pray for every evening together. Much to my dismay, the writing of this has instead revealed to me that we are on another damn switchback, and there’s absolutely no point in stopping to look at that stupid map.

It makes sense, since the word I heard from God regarding this year was simply, “Trust. Keep going.” As much as I feel tempted to be a little bitter about it, there’s actually a lot of relief, too. There’s not much we can do on a switchback except go forward or backward. There’s no sense in trying to go straight up, since the switchbacks were put there to help navigate the steepness. There’s no sense in trying to find a different route, since this was clearly carved out by the One who knows the mountain best. And so there’s a peace in the going forward and not worrying if you’re on the right path. You just are, even if it’s hard.

And let me tell you, it is genuinely hard some days. I look around at where we are, and I think, “This is so far from where I wanted to be.” Neither of us imagined we’d spend another year in the city, on another switchback. Neither of us has a clue what’s next, and I fight the fear that it’s another switchback or a lifetime of switchbacks here in this area, and, if we’re not careful, that can give way to worrying that there’s no hope up ahead at all.

I think that’s pretty normal to feel. The writers of the New Testament often highlighted the trials that we’ll face and provided encouragement:

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5, authored by the Apostle Paul).

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4).

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:6-9).

When I was younger, I often thought that these trials only referred to persecution in the early church, that they didn’t have a lot of relevance to our lives today. But both James and Peter talk about many kinds of trials. Trials of waiting, trials of injustice, trials of unmet desires, trials of tragedy, trials of discord. Sometimes the trial is just the painfully mundane and untenable act of going back-and-forth, wondering what it’s all for.

But we keep going because the switchbacks carry us and prepare us for what is ahead. They somehow refine us and ascend us to what is glorious, not only to behold it, but to become part of it. While actual switchbacks make us sweaty, dusty, and dirty to match the final destination on the hike, the switchbacks of God’s plans, according to the apostles, purify our faith, our character, and our hope. And so we persevere. One step, then another, then another, then another.

It can be tempting to believe while we’re enduring them that they are entirely meaningless. But in times like these, I look back at the story of the Israelites and see that every part of that plan was to prepare and refine them to enter the Promised Land. And likewise, in my own journey, I can now see that He had me on those switchbacks with great purpose.

In Steamboat Springs, He taught me how to read the Bible, pray, and rely on Him for my every need as I faced a completely new culture and life in the mountains. This is also where He made me an artist. In Leelanau, He built my faith up as I listened to the wisdom of others, and I learned how to invite Him into daily life of running, exploring, tending to the dorm boys, playing with my dog, and beholding the beauty of Lake Michigan. This is where He made me a writer. In Raleigh, He taught me obedience to Him and the worth of sacrificing my own desires to follow Him. This is where He made me a speaker. And in Pittsburgh, He has built me up in His truth through the intense trials of abuse, divorce, COVID, and PTSD, allowing nothing to shake my identity as His chosen daughter, beloved, forgiven, and whole in Him. And it’s here that He has made me Zebulon’s wife.

How could I not believe that the switchback we’re on has incredible purpose? In this testimonial meditation is the ability to keep going in the hope of the Gospel. It’s why we take ten thousand steps of obedience each day, ten thousand opportunities to believe that this is not a mistake. There is a purpose to all of this. We are sent, and God has provided the strength we need to keep going.

To my fellow wives out there, I want to say this especially to you. We women know that in marriage, we get really caught up fretting about what’s up ahead. We are just natural worriers, it seems. It’s much harder to stay right here in this place and be where we are, especially if it’s not really where we want to be. But we are called to keep a gentle and quiet spirit, not a fretful one (1 Peter 3:2-4), and rather than quarrel with our husbands over our unmet desires, to ask God for our needs out of the purity of our hearts (James 4:1-3).

Men, you have a different set of obligations, and you better be leading the charge to keep up with your Guide, who is the Lord. Your family will follow you, whether you are ascending or descending or wandering off of a cliff, because you, and not some other, are God’s chosen vessel to lead your family, and so you will, no matter your intentions. Choose today which way you will lead.

Eventually, the trail outside of Telluride opened up to spectacular views of neighboring mountains via a gorgeous wildflower-filled meadow and down to Hope Lake. I could say something about how it was all worth the climb, but that would really take away from the fact that the climb had so much worth in and of itself. We laughed, took pictures, told stories, learned about new plants (including cowboy toilet paper) and ate columbine flowers, and it taught me the value of slowing down a bit to enjoy the route and not just get to the end goal.

I kind of wonder, if Zeb and I were hiking on a set of switchbacks with Jesus physically there with us, would we worry too much about what was up ahead? We’d probably just chatter away with Him and arrive at our goal in what felt like a much shorter time than we expected. And though we don’t see Him physically right now, and we’re not actually on a set of mountain switchbacks, He is with us at all times and we can talk to Him constantly. It doesn’t have to be so grueling as it seems. His grace in our current state gives us joy, peace, and much laughter along the way.

Truthfully, I don’t think He’s told Zeb and I which way we’re going. People often ask us when we’ll start having kids, move, change careers, and other normal life things. I’m never really sure how to respond. I don’t actually know which trail we’re on or how it winds, but it certainly looks very different from others. I only know that my hope for where we are right now is the promise that we’ll all arrive in due time in God’s glory.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

Before we jump in, I first want to share that this is kind of an unusual post. I’m not much of a fan girl of anyone, but I want to share through this lens because it is helping me through a time of uncertainty/change and producing good fruit in my life right now.

Second, I say some things about my future here and what I’m trying to accomplish, but I am still working in education. The necessity of a career change is not necessarily unhappiness with where I am, but the reality that Zeb and I will move from this immediate area eventually, and the job I have will not be as accessible, the position I hold doesn’t exist many other places, and it’s not where God is calling me longterm. So while I am going to faithfully work where I am as long as He has me there, I am also submitting to the ways He is leading me to prepare for the future.

Last week, we meditated on the questions:

• Why did He make you?

• Why did He save you?

• What would it look like to maintain the purity of your making in the building of your life?

• What would make that cast so pure that a fish would want to come up gulp your fly?

Today, I want to reflect on a few of the things that came up for me, with a hard right turn to golf.

Golf.

Here’s a disclaimer. Never in my entire life did I think that golf would become a big part of my life, nor did I think I would ever hear myself say things like, “Let’s go golfing on Saturday,” or, “Do you golf? Zeb and I love to golf. You should come with us sometime.”

For a long time, I was devoted to the belief that golf is a terrible sport. And it still is. At its very core, the goal is to hit a small ball with a long stick to get it into a small hole 400 yards away. It’s frustrating, exhausting, takes a long time, and it leaves me with my thoughts instead of the usual busyness that occupies my hands and mind, and some of those thoughts are shockingly ugly. I never knew I thought I was stupid, worthless, ugly, and had no future…but then came golf.

Yet somehow, golf is also a great sport. It’s hard, but most people can still do it. If you look at professional golfers across the PGA, LIV, and YouTube, just about every body type is represented from Bryson DeChambeau’s scientific athleticism to Jon Rahm’s dad bod to Fat Perez’s self-explanatory build to the spindly Sahith Theegala. Women’s golf is the same. And don’t forget about Tommy Morrisey, the one-armed 14-year-old golf prodigy. Almost anyone can be a golfer.

Golf is also a lifelong sport, and since it’s hard, we all have to work at it for a lifetime. Parts of the game come and go. I may be good at driving and putting, but I have no mid-game right now, whereas last year I had a stronger approach. As we watch the pros, I see them struggle with the same things that I do. I think struggling is good for our brains, so there may be something to spending an afternoon each week trying to hit a ball with a stick.

The greatest value I have derived has been from the many disciplines it has brought. It takes a lot of patience and resilience. The conversation that goes on in my head has had to change drastically as I take thoughts captive. Am I really stupid because I hit a bad shot? No, it’s a hard game. But also, where to I derive my own value? Is it in a golf shot? How much weight am I giving this game? Is it enough to ruin my attitude or my day? Enough to make me angry? Enough to make me throw my putter? Enough to make me feel bad? Enough to make me a less enjoyable person to my husband?

One of the things I realized about golf this year is that you can’t always classify it as beginner, intermediate, advanced, or expert the way you can fishing, because you don’t necessarily get better with experience. I am not a beginner golfer; I am an experienced golfer. I’ve been golfing on and off since I was 10 years old. I started working on my swing intentionally in 2018, and I’ve been going consistently since Zeb and I started dating. But I’m still not a good golfer. My biggest improvements have come far more in the way of attitude, thought process, and how many times I cry on the course.

In fact, I set a goal last year of not crying when I golf, and I only cried around 5% of the times we went! That’s tremendous improvement from the year before, when I cried around 85% of the times we went. I’ve also improved on things like not throwing clubs and not starting fights with Zeb on the course. (If you think I’m alone in that, ask Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, and Wyndam Clark how hard it is to keep the club in your hand after a devastatingly bad golf shot. They’ve all thrown clubs this year. Clark also beat up a set of lockers at Oakmont, and McIlroy savagely chopped a tee marker with his driver. I’m telling you, it’s a hard, frustrating, terrible game.)

Anyway, it’s not only embarrassing to admit that I am now a golfer, but I’ve also become an avid golf watcher. If you’re anyone in the modern Western world, you have probably at least heard of Scottie Scheffler, the world #1 golfer for 150 weeks and counting. If you haven’t seen him play, you may have seen him on Happy Gilmore 2 in what was quite literally the funniest role, especially if you get the jail reference. Most notably, he is a vocal and faithful Christian, a man who truly lives by the faith that he professes. Zeb and I have become avid fans.

My PMP exam just happened to fall a couple of days after the British Open this summer. I wish I could say that in all my studying I went into that weekend fully confident about my Tuesday test, but my stress reached a boiling point instead, and my coping techniques were abysmal—mindlessly scrolling on X while my mind raced with a thousand undefined worries. The images I saw of happy families and American ideals singed my frayed nerves, and Saturday night saw a pretty epic meltdown.

But through the stress broke a post worth watching, when Scheffler baffled reporters in a press conference amidst the British Open bustle. “This is not a fulfilling life,” he told them. “It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.” He noted that the excitement of winning lasted about two minutes before going, “OK, now what?”

This was not the first time he had said things like this, so the reporters knew the other fulfillment to which he referred. One look at his Instagram bio—“Christ Follower | Professional Golfer”—tells us that Scottie makes no effort to hide what drives him. On his first “Full Swing” episode on Netflix, he admitted that he could typically be found reading his Bible at the kitchen counter in his spare time, demonstrated by the worn and stuffed pages of a leather study Bible at his typical kitchen seat. He also leads a Bible study on tour with his best friend, Sam Burns, and they also co-lead a College Golf Fellowship retreat in the off season.

I kept watching and listening through the rest of Sunday and Monday, because Scottie wasn’t done. He pulled off a decisive Open victory, affording him a longer opportunity to speak to the press about his win.

And the press kept pressing. There was something in his first “sermon” they still didn’t understand.

It took no time for a reporter to quip, “Surely it lasted more than two minutes…” referring to the excitement of his victory walk. Scottie laughed and acknowledged it was a special moment to walk up to the 18th hole with the tournament in hand.

Shortly after, another reporter wanted to go back to the two-minute comment, and Scottie acknowledged that in the age of click-bait, it was easy for his comments to be misunderstood, and he took an opportunity to preach a second sermon.

He is certainly grateful to win majors, and it’s a great joy of his life. He worked his entire life to be a professional golfer. But he encouraged others to go back and listen to his his original comments in their entirety, because at the end of the day, golfing and winning do not fulfill the deepest desires of your heart. Yes, it’s OK to celebrate the wins and exciting to do so, but winning doesn’t make you happy and there’s more to life than playing golf.

Later, as he was asked about comparisons between himself and Tiger Woods, who both had 1097 days between their first and fourth majors, he spoke not just about Woods being in a lone category in the game, but that when he does not dedicate his thoughts to winning. Rather, he acknowledged that he has been called [by God] to play golf, and so he does it to the best of his ability. Scottie knows this: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Colossians 3:23-24).

Another reporter prodded more about his records, his standing as world #1, and how much better he can get. But no, Scottie does not live in the excitement of how far his career can go either; it’s more important to live in the present and remind himself of the preparatory work he put in.

I really needed to hear all this. So often, I am consumed with thoughts about the future. I waver between the extremes of where I dream I could go and the thoughts that tell me, “How dare you even think yourself worthy of going that far?” And I forget to live in the present moment and do my best where I am called. That is certainly true at work, and especially true as I approach a career change. Midlife crises are not easy to navigate, and even admitting out loud that I would, at age 38 and with a Masters in teaching and 16 years in education, like to shift to being project manager in an area like construction, transportation logistics, and/or systems development makes me immediately question what the hearer must be thinking:

Wow, that’s never going to happen. That’s downright delusional.You’re going nowhere without an MBA and/or engineering degree. There’s no way you can make up that gap at this point with so many more qualified applicants out there.

I am very adept at discouraging myself when I think about the future. And yet when I look at this very moment, I know I have prayed that God would lead me and sort out the conflicting feelings I’ve had come up. He has provided wise counsel through my brother and a deacon at my church, and the wisdom and support of my husband. When we ask God for wisdom and He provides it, we best better believe it (James 1:4).

He has also provided next steps, one of them being the PMP, which I knew about only by God’s design. I was in a consulting club (BOND) at the University of Michigan, and my working group took on a client who was starting up a CAPM/PMP training center in Ann Arbor, so we got to write his business plan. That was 20 years ago. Remember when I said God plants seeds in our youth that come to fruition in our midlife crises?

Indeed, even my current role in education is a project management role, even though it took me three years to realize it. The Project Management Institute certainly didn’t waste time in accepting my application and allowing me to take the exam. God had done all the preparation for me, before I even knew that’s where I wanted to go.

So if God had this mapped out all along, He revealed it to me just in time to qualify for the three years of PM experience needed to take the PMP exam, and He aligned all of these wonderful people around me for support, why am I so inclined to believe He doesn’t have a plan for the future and this is just me being ridiculous? Why the Saturday night meltdown?

Scottie’s comments were a burst of reality. We’re not called to fuss and guess about the future. We’re called to live here today (I have linked this post 10 times over, but here it is again) and obey God where He has us and pouring out our full effort where He has called us. For Scottie, that’s time analyzing his swing and hitting the driving range. Right now for me, that’s pursuing certifications to which He has clearly led me. I don’t need to know where the certifications are going. I need to calm down and obey. It’s not my job to plot out the future; God knows the desires of my heart and He’s pretty good at planning.

In fact, as we prayed about the future earlier this year, God gave us this Proverbs 16:3 to guide us, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”

Why do we worry? Why do we fret so much, friends? Am I living for a future here on earth, or am I living to serve the Lord Himself and bring glory to His Name?

The next reporter probably asked the most intelligent question. He noted that Scottie placed a lot of emphasis on maintaining a normal life, despite his fame and fortune, and that he seemed to have prioritized that intentionally from the start and if he could speak to that.

At this point, only 2-3 questions had been asked about the tournament itself, despite the press conference being more than half over, and I want to just recognize how much the world is mesmerized by the mystery of a genuine Christian worldview. He just pulled off one of the greatest golf wins in recent history, and yet this room of mass-media reporters could not stop asking him about his enigmatic personal approach.

It reminds me of Romans 8:16, which reads “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.” In a suffering world, full of trials and the consequences of sin and fallenness, all creation - every last creature and blade of grass and party animal - has this longing, whether known or unknown, for God’s truth to shine through those who call Jesus Christ their Lord. When you go out in the world, Christian, you are evidence that the hope of Jesus Christ for eternal salvation is real and true. You are an answer to a call that many do not even know is on their hearts.

Scottie answered the reporter, acknowledging they were finally getting down to it. Yes, his faith and his family are most important to him. Everything else comes after. Golf, being famous, being successful, and winning are not how he identifies himself, and he doesn’t think he’s “someone special” just because he shot a lower score than other guys.

It’s important to note that Scottie didn’t actually say how he does identify himself. In a world that continually beats the drum of “Christian AND ______”, he very importantly notes that there is no “and” here. When your identity is in Christ, everything else is an appointment or an assault. Appointments are things like becoming a spouse, becoming a parent, our work, our hobbies, our gifts, our positions in church—things to which God has called us in this life. Assaults are the things to which God has certainly called no one - drugs, sexual immorality, pride and idolatry, scheming, lies, strongholds, and many more.

A couple more family and golf questions and the press conference wrapped up.

Honestly, I was pretty floored. Scheffler always seemed so quiet on the golf course that he came off as kind of a reserved guy. While I knew he was a professing Christian and had said as much to the world, I really didn’t expect this kind of candidness with the press, so I took some more time to read watch Scottie’s press conference from his first Masters Championship win in 2021, and it gave further insight to his 2025 mindset.

Scottie admitted being so stressed that he “cried like a baby” the morning of the final round in 2021. His to loose that day was the opportunity to win his first Major, an accomplishment that most professional golfers do not reach. It wasn’t he who had the wisdom to get through the morning, but rather his wife, Meredith.

He told her, “I’m not ready for this,” that he didn’t feel ready to face the magnitude of this day.

She asked, “Who are you to say that you’re not ready?” That is, who is Scottie to say what is best for his life?

He went on to tell the press that God is the one in control and the one leading him, and his times are in God’s hands. If he failed, it would be for God’s glory. If he succeeded, it would be for God’s glory. And he acknowledged that human nature tends to make things bigger than they are, and so we tend to make things much bigger than they will seem in the future.1

He talked about never expecting what has come to him, never expecting things to him come in this life, but just doing the best with what he was given. And he went on to say that his identity isn’t a golf score, and all he is trying to do is glorify God, which gives him the freedom to just play the best he can.

Zeb and I spent some time discussing the things Scottie said before we called it a night and went to sleep in the happy glow of our favorite golfer winning his fourth Major.

The next morning, I got up and prepared my materials for the final day of studying before the exam. I had a must-review list written on a leaf of paper, but I grabbed a second and jotted the following:

I realized I also needed a steady strategy to get through the 180-question exam, where the multiple choice questions were certain to be rather vague and have multiple answers that seemed correct. So I took another page from the golf book and developed this strategy:

1. Check your identity. I have to do this every time I golf. What magnitude am I giving this game to tell me who I am? This was clutch, because the PMP was most important in that 210 minutes. I was given a white board to write notes on, and I wrote far more scripture than PMP notes, because my future is not in the hands of the PMI or an employer or anyone else. My future is only in the hands of God. Why should I try to hijack it as if it’s my own plan to fulfill or botch?

2. Play one shot at a time. I treated every question like it’s own exam, not thinking at all about the last or the next. In golf, this is essential. You can plan for the next shot and where you need to put the ball, but once you start swinging, you can’t think about anything else. Do what you came to do and move on.

3. Play the three-foot hole. Zeb taught me this one. When I am faced with a tough putt, just try to get it within a 3-ft radius of the hole, so when I was faced with a tough question, I tried to choose the one that got me in the vicinity of the answer. When I felt uncertain, I prayed for clarity and moved on.

4. Don’t think about the 18th green. This one was the hardest. My mind kept trying to skip ahead, wondering “What if I fail? What am I going to tell Zeb, my mom, my brother?” And then, “What if I pass? What new opportunities are possible?” But none of those things helped in the moment, so I kept my head down and continually redirected my thoughts to the exam in front of me.

In the end, I passed the exam with highest scores—AT/AT/AT—and this experience was a tremendous segue into my trip to Michigan. I called Zeb from the car to tell him I had passed, and I drove up to Michigan that afternoon, where I began to contemplate what it meant to lead a quiet life.

Still, that overwhelming turmoil continues to rumble inside me, and far from the quiet life I desire, I often feel confused and distraught about the future. I am not sure where I am and where I am going. Every path seems impossible and every idea hair-brained. No directly seems quite right to me, and it’s that restless stirring we can often feel when we’re trying to figure things out faster than God is dealing the cards, and He’s not letting us succeed in our own ways.

I told Zeb, “I think I’m going through a midlife crisis.”

He responded, “In times like these [when it feels like a lot isn’t working], it’s probably best to figure out what IS working.”

That was incredibly wise advice, so I went for a walk on Saturday and prayed about it. I came to the conclusion that the things that are working are Zeb, my morning Bible study, my car (I recently replaced the Navigator with a Subaru Outback), and walking for exercise.

That’s it.

Nothing else is really working! But as I prayed more, I had a sense of peace that God is working on a lot of those things that aren’t working, and I don’t need to go in with a scalpel and start cutting anything out. I can trust Him that He’s got the future worked out. The restlessness He’s giving me right now is just a readiness to move when He gives the instruction.

Friends, I’m writing a bit differently today because I agree with Scottie so much that these big moments in our lives seems so much bigger than they really are, and I think what makes them seem so much bigger is our belief that it’s up to us to fulfill them. Everyone goes through turmoil, no matter how good their LinkedIn page looks. My brother, who is a highly-regarded physician, spoke to me about the turmoil he’s faced in things like moving, switching groups, and getting into ministry in a greater capacity through his work.

When we follow Jesus, turmoil is part of the deal. Just about everything we are called to do, even if it looks normal to the world, comes with the greater weight of God’s glory attached. Making more money carries the weight of greater stewardship. Having a bigger following comes with the weight of greater accountability. Making a decision about a career or move or home comes with the weight of greater faithfulness to God.

This life is guaranteed to have turmoil of all kinds, and yet the Lord says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it’” (Isaiah 30:21).

I think my PMP-golf test strategy is really apt for times of testing like these. And so if you’re in a time of turmoil or confusion, or perhaps looking at a trajectory you did not imagine was possible, consider this mindset:

1. Check your ID. Ask yourself, “Who am I to say I’m ready or not?” Who really has control of the future? Does this decision or this boss or this spouse? Or is it the sovereign and almighty God Himself who planned it all before He even created you? We are not in the position of God, and our choice each moment is to die to ourselves or not, to pick up our crosses or not. We cannot serve two masters, which means we cannot be Christian AND ______. There is only room for one cross to carry in this life, and we must choose—am I going to stand in the place of God, or am I going to stand in my place as a sinner saved by grace? “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

2. Play one shot at a time. God gives us steps to take, and He doesn’t often let us skip ahead. When we get too far ahead of ourselves in our thinking and planning, we miss the shot in front of us. A struggle many golfers has is keeping their head down while they swing, because their natural inclination is to see where the shot will go. They end up hitting it off the bottom or toe of the club and botch the shot. When we live life that way as Christians, there is a root of distrust. We want to make sure that what we’re doing is really good, really going to go the way we want it to, but that only leads to greater turmoil. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He shall establish your path (Proverbs 3:5-6).

3. Go for the 3-foot putt. In this life, we’re not going to get it perfectly right. The best thing we can do is do our very best with what we’re given by being obedient to God’s Word, listening to Him in prayer, seeking wise counsel, and being part of a grounding church community. The greens are fast and for whatever reason, the cup is sometimes placed right above a ridge. Try to get close and not add anything to God’s plans, or you’ll overshoot it and miss by a mile. “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

4. Don’t worry about the 18th green. When we follow the Lord, it’s really not up to use to decide the trajectory of our lives. We are certainly called to work faithfully at the path He’s given us, like Scheffler working to be the best golfer he can be because it’s the work God has given him to do. But at the end of the day, it’s not ours to decide how He wants to use us. We were bought at a price, and with that comes submission to His will, His path, and His ways. “Lord, I know that people’s lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps” (Jeremiah10:23).

5. For Heaven’s sake, have fun! OK, I added an extra here, because life is a lot more beautiful than sitting for an exam. PGA Pro Max Homa recently tweeted, “This game sucks and is impossible. Just have fun.” And certainly, God calls us to live a joyful life in light of what Christ did for us on the cross. If “choose joy” doesn’t necessarily resonate with you with ease, think of it this way—every day comes with the opportunity to die to our attitudes, thoughts, and pride that compete with the joy of living in the reality that Jesus died for us on the Cross for the eternal salvation of our souls, and that He has supplied all of our needs—even allowing hardships that grow us. Are we really going to let a bad golf shot, an offensive word, or even a traumatic (yet temporary) event tell God that what we’ve got going on is bigger than His salvation? No way! Suck it up and enjoy the fact that God is in control of all of this, and our futures are entirely in His Hands! I for one find much relief that I don’t have to plan it all. As much as I am a PM, I am not the PM of my life—thank the Lord!!! “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4).

Life is a messy game. Terrible and wonderful. It’s something few of us are particularly good at, and even if we are, we still take bad shots. But little by little, the refining love of the Lord sanctifies us and helps us relax, gives us peace in trials and turmoil, and we can calm down and enjoy the course, no matter what comes.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I just got back from my vacation to Michigan! You might remember that right before I left, I took the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. I am pleased to report that I passed with the highest scores across all areas! I have no idea what’s next, but that’s a nice step to have done. I really want to share about something spiritually significant that took place before I took that exam, but today I am jumping ahead to another spiritually significant moment from the middle of my trip.

Michigan was more incredible than normal. It was 10 days of mostly beautiful weather, time with family, and getting to do things I don’t get to do here in Pennsylvania. But something about this summer hit different. I hiked trails I’ve never seen that made me feel like I was in another world. I hiked one that ended here:

My mom and I explored the little town of Manistee, which sits on Lake Michigan. We took a nice stroll along their river walk and did some shopping, and then I hopped in a Cessna and took a little flying tour of the area.

And of course, I got to fish. We spent one morning on the bass boat, where the most exciting thing that happened was that a duck followed us for quite some time. But the next day, we took out Contagious, the AuSable river boat my dad built in the 80s, on the Manistee River. It was once again an adventure for my brother and me, this time with my nephew in the middle on his first fly fishing expedition. 1

My brother brought his own rod, and I selected one from Dad’s collection for my nephew. I, of course, went for the McFarland 4 wt Tailwind that my husband built and presented to my dad when he asked for my hand.

I have cast a lot of fly rods in my short time fly fishing. Certainly every rod from my dad’s collection, many that the Snowman (Zeb) has built, and just about any rod in any fly shop I've ever been in. But beyond that, I was raised by a finish carpenter and a Type-A perfectionist. It’s an understatement to say that fit and finish were regular topics of discussion and teaching in our house growing up. Imagine learning how to dust a stereo cabinet under those conditions. Thoughts and prayers to my eight-year-old self!

Zeb is quite the same, and I’m going to put something in writing here that I say all the time because I believe it is just plain true: my husband is the finest fly rod builder in the world.

I lifted the Tailwind for the first cast and it came over me once again. A great rod can feel like an extension of your arm. The finest fly rod in the world feels like an extension of your unspoken desires. Every intention I have with this rod comes to fruition in the cast as it shoots line powerfully and effortlessly, and yet gently enough for a spooky brook trout to see the fly come down and want to eat upon contact with the water.

Unfortunately, a rod does not set the hook for you, no matter how well it is built, so I missed every last one of the bites I had. Even the really big ones. Even the ones that ate yesterday…

Oh well. I’m just flattered to know they liked my flies and presentation! Missing fish means we’re doing something right, but I just need a little more finish in the fit, I suppose.

But something else took place on that river.

I felt rushed. I didn’t look around or take it in or appreciate it. I was sort of agitated and on edge. By the time we finished the four-hour float, I could hardly fathom that it had begun.

I was struggling to be present for the first half of the trip, actually. Getting my PMP the morning that I left gave me this sense of urgency like I should be doing more than I am right now. I should be making more money, doing something more “grown up” and important, and catching up to my siblings, a competitive inclination which I have come to loathe. But at the same time, I’d been wrestling with something God had been laying on my heart and repeatedly drawing to my attention - this idea of a quiet life.

1 Thessalonians 4:10-12 says, “But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.”

There are a number of things from this vacation that really built this verse up under my skin and changed my perspective about my approach to the future, something God is still shaping and speaking to both Zeb and me. I came back from Michigan holding quietness in my sights - that’s the future I want. That’s the life I want to work for. Not a house or career or some bucket list of places I want to see before I die. No, a life of peace for us, a clear intent that God had for man from the Beginning.

I kept thinking about that rod and how it cast, and I had this inkling last night that I should ask Zeb about how he made it - something so perfect - so I finally asked him, “Walk me through your process. What makes my dad’s rod so special?”

And so here it is, the anatomy of the perfect fly rod.

It starts with the blank, he said. The McFarland Tailwind taper is the most perfect blank available today, and before Zeb began building the rod, he knew what the maker of this taper set out to do.

Here’s a little diagram for some of the components I’m going to reference:

Did you catch that? Before he added anything to it. Before he began designing all the components that would make it perfect, he first studied and considered the intent of the rod. What did Mike McFarland want to accomplish with this taper?

Have you ever stopped to consider what our Maker’s intent for our making was? I’m not talking about just right now in the post-fall-post-Resurrection course of events. But what did He set out to do in the first place? And when Jesus saved us, what was His ultimate intent for our lives and souls?

We have so many cultural expectations that we believe go into the build for our lives. Education, career, marriage and family, income potential, a home, a neighborhood, a set of friends, a certain wardrobe, a social media platform, what we drink and eat, how we view our bodies. But do we stop to strip it down to the bare bones and examine the blank itself?

Why did He make us? Why did He save us?

From that place of knowing what Mike designed the rod to do, Zeb begins to build.

Before he adds any components, he does a technique unique to his rods that most builders will not take the time to do. He frequency aligns the rod so that the line throws straight through the guides every time. He builds it so that the pure energy of the rod can be aligned without extra vibration and chatter. All the energy leads down the same line from piece to piece, the components serving to preserve the purity of the blank.

Frequency alignment is hard to explain without seeing him do it, but it’s the painstaking process of taking the blank’s pieces, putting them together, and attaching them to a vice so that he can see where the rod flexes most purely. He tweaks and turns them all repeatedly until he can flick the rod and, instead of the tip creating a circle, it creates a perfect up-and-down motion. Not as close as possible. Perfect. This allows him to build the rod as perfectly aligned with the intent of the maker as possible.

Then come the components. Zeb uses only top-quality guides from Snake brand, but he made this Tailwind’s stripping guide himself. In fact, the guides are the only “store-bought” component of the rod. Everything else is hand-tailored to each build. He machines the ferrule rings, metal slide components for the reel seat, and the cap for the butt of the rod. He mills and sands each reel seat. He also stacks, glues, and turns the cork into a handle, and he wraps the rod with fine thread before coating them with his proprietary finishes.

When he builds something, he does not add additional weight, because Mike’s blanks are not built with modern characteristics, meaning that he designs the raw blank to do the job without additional help from weights and other added features. So for example, when Zeb hand-turns ferrule rings on his metal lathe, they are just enough to keep the rod from ovaling over time and keeps energy channeled through the blank from tail to tip, losing nothing in connection points. The ferrule rings preserve and protect the rod without adding a lot of weight.

In each step, minimalism is his goal. Stay true to that blank. Make sure the blank is able to do what it was meant to do, purely and perfectly. The cork grip is shaped to what the taper needs, an artistic casting rod capable of throwing 80’ of line, powerful and still unfathomably versatile, a balance which traditional half wells maintain. The rear of the handle is tapered toward the seat and relief wells are cut in on the front, allowing the power of the cast to be driven up through the handle.

He builds a small back end for this 4 weight, because it’s not a bomber, and it’s not a blue liner. It’s a puritan dry fly rod. Long belly lines, long front tapers perfectly suited for the man who would receive it. It is a rod so perfectly integrated, so powerful, precise, and gentle that the caster can present the fly in a way that the fish seeks the fly coming and rises to meet it.

Every Snowman rod is built so true that the fisherman feels as though he is casting the pure, raw blank. As a result of all of this intentional integration of the components with the blank, the rod is what we would call quiet. There’s no additional resonance or movement beyond the cast. It’s just pure.

Again, spiritually, this causes me to wonder. My natural inclination is to look everything in my life as if it’s meant to enhance or advance what I have. But what if that’s just culture talking? What if instead I need to seek and maintain the purity of my making and salvation? What would my life look like?

Surely, it would be quiet. Sure it would be this:

“But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.” (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12)

I told Zeb, “You don’t even know the sermon you just preached.”

He replied with another sermon for another day, “Well, the rod is nothing without the line.”

I have no intention of finishing this post to any definitive conclusion today. I want to leave us to think about this more and hope to return to it next week or when it becomes more fully baked in my own resolve.

Instead, I want us look at these questions and contemplate them together this week. Below, I’m including a little meditation to work through this week. But before we jump into that, I want to be clear that I am not asking you modern questions. We are not looking at ourselves, our talents, our current choices, our current desires, or even our spiritual gifts or the journey God has led us on so far. I want you to check all that at the door for now.

Imagine you were to strip away everything in your life. Take away your hobbies, your family and friends, job, home, clothes, and 401k. Take it all down to the blank. Just imagine yourself standing bare and pure in the Garden of Eden before God, before the One who made you.

Then ask yourself:

• Why did He make you?

• Why did He save you?

• What would it look like to maintain the purity of your making in the building of your life?

• What would make that cast so pure that a fish would want to come up gulp your fly?

Until next time, may all that God created - including YOU - testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

My PMP exam is Tuesday, so I haven’t had time to prepare anything for this week. But I will get back to it either right after the exam or next weekend. Please pray for success on this exam!

You know, I’ve been feeling a little stale this week. My PMP exam is on July 22 and I’ve been so focused studying for it since I haven’t really had a lot of time to do so yet. (What a summer, right?) I don’t know if anyone else gets this way, but when I’m hyper-focused on something, I have a really hard time connecting with anything else outside of that until I see it to completion.

This week, I’ve found myself easily studying double or triple the amount of time beyond my planned three-hour sessions. I’ve had a hard time peeling myself away to go for a run or do anything else. There’s always something else to look up, five more practice questions, or ten more minutes of drilling concepts. I still sit down for quiet time in my Bible, but even this has felt stale the last few days. And I’m pretty sure that if anyone asked me for any kind of profound spiritual advice, I’d simply tell them, “Trust God. And drink more water.”

Zeb and I embarked on a little adventure yesterday to our local conservatory. The idea was a welcome break from all the studying, but the stifling heat inside the venue was perhaps a bit unexpected, and I found myself approaching the experience the same way I have been the exam - take note, try to remember it all, move quickly.

We explored room after room after room of gorgeous plants from all over the world. Jungles scenes, a Japanese garden, tropical flora, a room full of cacti I never knew existed, one room dedicated just to orchids - some being so rare and delicate that they had to keep them in a controlled cabinet - and of course, a butterfly room.

While I could see that I should enjoy it and would on just about any other day, I felt indifferent to it all. There was no wonder inside me.

Later on, Zeb prayed over our dinner and remarked how wonderful God’s creation is. I again felt indifferent. At bedtime, he reiterated his earlier prayer, thanking God for an opportunity to marvel at all the many things He has created, and I fell asleep thinking of Sherlock Holmes saying to me, “You see, but do not observe.”

Now, of course this will not last forever. There will come a day when I will again desire to linger among the flowers and glorify the Lord for the beauty as I experience it. There will come a day when a creek is a soul keeper, not a puzzle to solve, as it was last Friday when I tried streamer fishing for bass on a local stream. Wonder at the Lord’s Hand will return as I observe a butterfly upon a flower petal.

Even now there is a stirring toward Michigan and the adventures of summer that will come when I have finished my exam and headed north for a few days. There is a sort of summer’s eve welling up in me as I think about the lakes and the rivers, as if they run so clean and clear that they run through my very body, and I know that Christ is speaking to me that it is all waiting up ahead.

And therein is the beauty of nature. It is perhaps a sign of God’s eternal attributes that rock formations and ancient trees and life cycles of butterflies and flowers continue on, even when we can’t see them. There are times these stale moments feel like we are missing out on the most important things in life, and yet, we never miss out on God. As Paul said to the Athenians:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”

You see, God never leaves us nor forsakes us (Deuteronomy 31:6). We humans are ever seeing Him, even when we do not observe Him. But He is ever-present in our lives, whether we reach for Him or not. As children, we needed only to cry out in the night for our parents to come running to our bedrooms and sooth us after a nightmare. They had not gone anywhere. They were there the whole time. These temporal moments when we cannot seem to reach out at all do not mean that He has gone away or that we have gotten lost. Sometimes, they are just the gritty moments of life, and God is there too.

I do not mean to diminish the disciplines of meditating on God’s Word, fasting to be near to Him, or any other spiritual practice that draws our attention away from the world and onto eternal things. These are incredibly important disciplines to continue throughout our lives, especially when we realize that a few days has turned into many weeks or months.

I just mean that I think God has built in a lot more grace for the state of being a human than we realize. My temporary foray into studying for the PMP exam is by no means a disqualification or a setback from the things of God or my eternal hope in Him. In fact, even as I study, I constantly pray for His presence and direction in all of this matter, because I know very well, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

And I believe God works in a way that even when we cannot experience the fullness of His Presence in real time, He recalls these experiences to our memory, which is why we can look back and see His Hand upon us in times of trouble and turmoil, and especially in pivotal moments when things didn’t go our way but we can see that God had intervened on our behalf to deliver us from catastrophe, as in the case of so many missed opportunities, rejections, and breakups.

In my 20s and early 30s, I did not observe God’s goodness in the plan to have me wait so long to get married, even though I trusted in it over time. But today, I look back and see that it couldn’t have happened any other way. Tim Keller used to say, “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything He knows.”

And similarly, I believe we can look back on experiences like drifting detachedly through a conservatory and observe much later that God’s Hand was in every wonder we could only see at the time. And ever we are comforted that the beauty and endurance of God’s creation is not sustained by our observance of it. It is sustained by the One who is never far from it.

Ever the trees grow. Ever the seeds open. Ever the flowers continue to bud. All things in their time, no less for us than for all of creation.

I don’t really have a lot of encouragement for you today, my friends. I could tie this back to the many times in life when we feel like we have missed out or lost time that we can never get back, or perhaps to moments that you too might be more prone to feeling stale. But as I’ve said already, this is the best I have for today:

Trust God. Drink more water.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I wish I could say I’m praying for their families, but every time I try, I find myself asking, “Why God? Why children? Why Christian children? You have power over everything? Why did You allow this to happen?”

Today’s post will look a lot more like wrestling than any definitive thoughts, so please hang in there until the end.

A Little Context

Here is a brief timeline of my weekend studies:

• Thursday morning - I read Luke 22:39-46

• Friday morning - I read Luke 22:47-53

• Friday evening - Something has been nagging at me all day. I read the accounts of Jesus in the storm on the lake (Matthew 8, Mark 4, John 8, Psalm 107:29) and the accounts of His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, John 22, Isaiah 50:5) and begin to draw a comparison.

• Saturday morning - I read Luke 22:54-62 and text a friend and my family about the juxtaposition between the storm and the garden.

• Saturday evening - I see a post about the Texas floods and begin to wrestle with the storm, the garden, and the flooding.

  ---

The Garden and the Storm

Luke 9:22-25

22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.

24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”

He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.

In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”

Luke 22:39-46:

39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

45 When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

Do you see the incredible juxtaposition here?

In the storm on the sea, Jesus is sleeping, exhausted from a day of ministering. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples are sleeping, exhausted from grief at the things Jesus had said.

In the storm, Jesus is sleeping soundly and unconcerned about the storm. In the garden, Jesus expresses his anguish, which is to the point of death (Matthew 26:38).

In the storm, the disciples plead for Jesus to wake up because they’re going to drown in the sea. In the garden, Jesus pleads with the disciples to wake up so they don’t drown in temptation. (He had revealed to them in vs. 31 that Satan had asked to sift them like wheat.)

In the storm, the disciples accuse Jesus of not caring about them (Mark 4:38). In the garden, Jesus asks them why they can’t keep watch with Him for an hour (Matthew 26:40).

In the storm, Jesus stands and calms the storm with a word, asking them where their faith is. In the garden, He pleads with the disciples to pray, watch, and stay alert to the temptations ahead.

But the disciples just kept falling asleep until Judas arrived to betray Jesus, and then their temptation came. Peter found himself in the agony of his failures as he denied Jesus three times. The others had scattered and hidden.

Initial Takeaways

My take-away yesterday (Saturday) morning was the strong reminder that Jesus has told us to watch and pray throughout this lifetime - to stay vigilant because we do not know when He will return, and we need to be on guard against the schemes of the enemy, who seeks to destroy us.

Jesus teaches us that we do not need to despair over our worldly troubles. They are guaranteed to come, but He has overcome them (16:33), like the storm He commanded to be quiet.

He’s only told us to watch and pray so that we don’t fall into the temptation to sin, worry about the temporary things of this world, abandon the Great Commission, or fall into distraction as we forget He’s coming again.

Our worldliness can take many forms, as we all know. Many fall prey to worry. As an educator, I know well the season of fretting over college applications and admissions. Students despair, “What if I don’t get into college?” (A preposterous notion, even from a worldly stance, because believe me, some institution wants your money.) We worry about jobs and finances and vacation plans and tariffs and the economy and wars. Often, we have good reasons to worry about these things - they’re as terrifying as being caught in a storm on the sea in a sinking boat with a sleeping Savior.

See what I did there?

Even the massive things that seem to threaten us are still the worldly troubles that Jesus spoke of. When He returns, do we want to be found giving all of our energy, thoughts, devotion, Twitter posts, voices, and sympathetic nervous system to our feelings on tariffs and Medicaid?

I know some of you may find that to be a very charged question, and I don’t want you to misunderstand me here. It’s OK to care about those things. It’s OK to make wise decisions to prepare for different outcomes, and especially to pray for wisdom to navigate tumultuous times. It’s OK to take our stands on them, to use our citizenship to direct our next votes toward the end we feel is right, and to even direct some of our lives or careers to taking action in the direction we believe is right.

But it’s not OK to be consumed by them and elevate them higher than our devotion to Christ Himself. If it’s when our thoughts begin to sound like, “Not now, Jesus. Don’t You know there are more important things here? What are you going to do about this? Can’t You see we’re drowning here? Can’t You see the world is ending? Can’t You see we’re in despair?” That’s when we need a reality check, because there is nothing more important than Christ, the mission, and the fact that He’s returning.

Scary, uncertain, big things need to be acknowledged, and they need to be taken to Christ for answers in faith that He has them and willingly gives them, praying, “Jesus, we need Your help. The boat is filling with water and none of us know what to do, but we know You do.”

I went into Saturday afternoon feeling a sense of calm anchoring over this matter. Faith that the Word of God is true and trustworthy at all times has led me to find solace in difficult times.

But they did perish. And didn’t He care?

On Saturday evening, I sneaked a peak on Facebook to watch for a certain event update I’ve been waiting for. That’s when I saw the messages about praying for Texas and began to read about the unimaginable floods.

Friends, I have a notion that the things I studied in the Word over the weekend connect somehow to the devastation we’ve been witnessing on the news, but I do not see entirely how. The rain came, and Jesus did not calm the storm, nor hold back the flood, and only He knows where many of the dead are in the waters that have not given them up.

What are we to make of times like these?

It is tempting for many to wrestle with another juxtaposition - that God’s goodness is in conflict with His greatness. One might say, if God is all-powerful, then He can’t be good, or He would have prevented this catastrophe. And on the other hand, if He is good, then He must not be all-powerful or He would have stopped the flood.

We know the truth is that God is all-powerful and perfectly good, and so our understanding must be flawed. We can only see this in part. I sometimes pray, “God, I know You are both, but I don’t see how in this instance. I don’t see Your goodness or Your power, but I know You are both.”

I think of the parents of those little girls. I sometimes wonder and lament that God has given me no children, but today I am perplexed that He could give these parents so great a gift and then rip it away. I am reminded of Job and the horrors he endured in the loss of his children, his health, and his reputation. It’s not a story anyone wants to identify with, and yet I am sure these parents now do.

Our only hope is that which is eternal.

The death of my father changed my life and my faith forever. As he lay dying, I was comforted by his salvation and the hope that I would one day see him again in heaven, and we would never have to say goodbye again. I became a firm believer that he was treasure stored up in heaven along with the other saints, and the last two years have marked a time of growing in an eternity-based theology.

That may seem ridiculous to some, because that’s the whole point of Christ, right? He died for the forgiveness of sins and we have eternal life with Him now. But honestly, I haven’t heard that second part preached that much. I haven’t heard the hope of heaven offered to grievers and worriers and those walking through crisis or tragedy.

I remember the day someone fiercely told me she hated the book of Job. “How could God think He could just replace Job’s children with new ones?”

What an honest and respectable question that was, truly. But I remembered that Job’s life was only for a moment, and then he too died, and his children after him died as well. And now, Job is living eternally in heaven with all of his children - both those who were killed as collateral damage in Satan’s schemes and those who were given by God later.

Job, while enduring the grief of loss for the rest of his life on earth, has now had eternal fellowship with all of his children for the last ~4200 years and will continue to do so for all eternity. Am I alone in being comforted by that? It didn’t make it better in this life, but hope is all about the faith we have in what we cannot yet see (Hebrews 11:1).

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 says, “And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.”

Revelations 21 promises:

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.”

Hope is in the faith that Christ’s salvation is real, not just for this life to feel at peace as we mill about our days, but for the eternal life to come.

Keep watching

I stopped writing this morning as I became stumped about how to bring all these disjointed thoughts together. Sometimes, we need to stop trying to speak and go listen, and I knew church was that place for me this morning.

My pastor preached on the unnamed saints listed in Hebrews 11:35-40. The passage ends, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (39 & 40).

Hebrews 12 goes on:

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Friends, all of us - even Jesus - are looking forward to the time that He will come again and that the promises of Revelations 21 will be made our eternally present reality. All of us. There are no saints who have received what God has promised in full. We have all received in part, and we will continue to receive more, but we will receive the fullness of His glory in a day we still await.

I don’t know what that day will look like, and I do not know what it will all entail. I just know that I have put the Word of God to the test and found it true and trustworthy at all times, even in my deepest tragedies and hardships when nothing seemed to make any sense. I believe that if Christ told us to stay awake, keep watch, and pray so many times in the Gospels - not only to the disciples in the garden - then that is an instruction we must examine, be changed by, and let drive our lives here and now.

A new song

We sang a song in church today many of you may be familiar with called “Same God”. The lyrics lift up stories of the faith where God has come through, giving great understanding to the saints and to us through their telling. Jacob, Moses, Mary, David are all mentioned explicitly, and the author draws upon God’s intervention in their circumstances as hope for us now.

But not every story ends in hope for this lifetime. Our loved ones will all die, and there is no bringing them back. Even if we could, the ultimate end for each human body is to perish. What will be our comfort? And I began to think of rewriting these lyrics for the tragedy that befalls all of our lives, and I added a few lines of my own:

I’m calling on the God of Job

Whose works are too wonderful to know.

I do not know why You’ve allowed this horror.

I’m calling on the Father of Jesus

Who shined His light into the darkness.

Lord, I need to see your hope in this now.

I’m calling on the high priest, the Son of Man

Who stepped into everything that I am.

I need your grace and mercy

In this grievous time of need.

I’m calling on the God of Anna

Whose grief was met with pure Hosanna

Oh help me endure as long as I live.

I’m calling on the God of Peter,

who’s faithful still to those who waiver.

Your love and plans don’t rest on my emotions.

I’m calling on the Son of suffering

Who bore my sins and share my worst grief

I may not understand this

But I have faith You’re in it.

I’m calling on the Risen Savior

Who defeated death once and forever

I know this body doesn’t have the last word.

I’m calling on the God eternal

Who makes these wretched things temporal.

So many of them consume my heart and mind now.

I’m calling on the Christ who’s returning to us

Who calls for our constant vigilance.

Keep my eyes on You Lord.

Keep my eyes on You Lord.

And here I am back to eternity and to watching.

There are moments in life that make the “big things” seem small. Arguing over dinner plans gives way to news that your grandmother fell. Decisions about where to live gives way to a terminal diagnosis. Arguments about the economy give way to the thought that the bodies of little children have been carried away in the flood waters, and only Jesus knows where they are.

Where else can we turn but to Him? Where else could we possibly put our hope?

New policies and better protocols or infrastructure won’t bring those girls back. Understanding the causes of ALS won’t raise my dad to life again. Eating the cleanest diet in the world won’t prevent my body from aging out of this world. When a beloved member of our family passed away at the age of 105, we understood that living a long and happy life did not comfort us in our sorrow that we were separated from her for the rest of ours.

There is no comfort in death, because we were not made to die. We were made to eat from the tree of life and live with each other for eternity. That we no longer live eternally in these bodies is a measure of mercy so that we do not live eternally in sin and decay. But in our sin came separation from God in spiritual death, and in His mercy came the painful separation from each other in bodily death.

Therefore, our only hope after this life is the next one, and that the security of that life is found in Jesus Christ alone. And where there was once no comfort in death, there is now hope that the Lord will set all things right and there will come a time, after we endure this life a little while, when we will never have to say goodbye to our loved ones who are in Christ again.1

And as we go about this life with that hope in our hands, we also bear each other’s sorrow and suffering. We grieve with these families and those like them who face unimaginable tragedies. We lift them up to endure in this lifetime, and we hold this hope on their behalf, standing on this firm foundation when their hearts and strength have collapsed within them.

Friends, have you considered eternity? I know many of you follow Jesus and are professing Christians. If you are not, have you ever spend time contemplating what happens when our bodies die? And if you are, have you really contemplated what it means that Jesus was given so that we would have everlasting life (John 3:16)? And why it is so important that we stay awake, keep watch, and pray?

I encourage you, if you have not, to let this weight settle on your heart, and let God give you new hope in this life. And if you have, I encourage you to share with someone what that eternal weight means to you and why you’re watching for Jesus.

Can you imagine if He comes tonight? Then all this sorrow will have been for a moment. And someday when we see Him, we will agree fully that it was all light and momentary suffering, though it feels unending right now.

When Jesus prepared His disciples for the grief they would endure, He said, “Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy” (John 16:20-22)

Friends, that is true for us too. There will come a day when there will be no more sorrow or pain or tears. I promise. But more importantly, God promises.

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

Did you know….

The fastest-growing tree in the world is the moluccan albizia, which grows over 32 ft per year - or one inch per day. The white cedar, on the other hand, is one of the slowest growing trees. One of them only grew 4 inches in 155 years, but others grow 10-24” per year.

The talipot palm is one of the largest palms, and its flowers only bloom once in a lifetime - 24 million tiny flowers rise up in a big plume over the tree, which eventually bear fruit after a year of ripening before the whole tree dies. But muskogee crapemyrtle blooms for more than three months every year.

One of the oldest trees in the world - the Olive Tree of Vouves - still produces olives today! Olive trees not only grow old, but they also grow in some of the harshest conditions of dry soil and extreme heat. But the wollemi pine likes only particular conditions and only grows in a tiny area of Australia.

The storied boabab tree is argued to be the strongest and most resilient in the world, enduring harsh conditions with its fire-retardant bark and storing water in its trunk, as well as providing shelter for many species and medicinal uses for humans. The tree of heaven, on the other hand, is a noxious weed-like tree that smells horrible, breeds prolifically, damages infrastructure, introduces invasive species (the lantern fly), and dies off quickly.

This one may be surprising, but trees only produce 28% of the world’s oxygen.Plants in the ocean actually account for 72% of the oxygen production in our atmosphere. The small-but-mighty phytoplankton produce 50% of the earth’s oxygen alone.

Citrus and fig trees produce fruit in the first 1-2 years of growing, while sweet cherry and pawpaw trees may take up to 7 years.

The eastern hemlock reaches maturity after 300 years, while the pacific dogwood reaches maturity after 10.

The red maple is the most common tree in North America, while the maple-leaf oak has only 600 left.

The pecan tree is our most prolific nut producer, but the coco de mer nut takes 10 years to ripen.

And every tree in between has its little quirks and treasurers, all of them being created for and in the environment where we find them.

As a big talker, social butterfly (or at least dragonfly), small-talk-cut-through-er, and member of a sizable family, along with a church and several different networks, it’s safe to say that I am exposed to a lot of people over the course of any given year.1

Every person that I know has different circumstances, ways of looking at things, gifts from God, personality traits, careers, family makeup, and a zillion other differences that construct the human experience. And yet I’ve had countless conversations over the last couple of years that all beg the same questions:

• Am I doing this right?

• Does my path look too different from everyone else?

• Is this absurd for me to pursue?

• Am I making the right decisions?

• Why doesn’t my life look like theirs?

• Did I hear God wrong?

• What is my purpose here?

Sometimes, I am the person asking myself these questions. Honestly, they’re questions I just have to bring to the Cross and lay them at His feet, unanswered, because they’re not worth considering most of the time. Let me give you some backstory…

When my siblings and I reached adulthood, they all got married within the same year. I also had a boyfriend I thought I would marry at that time, but we broke up instead, and my life began a trajectory I couldn’t have planned if I tried. They began having children who are close in age, launched longterm careers, and purchased homes, and even second homes. Our cousins mostly did the same.

Meanwhile, I moved around the country as a boarding school teacher, all the while asking God to bring me a husband, a sense of direction, and some semblance of financial stability. Zeb and I eventually married late, still don’t have children (or know if we will), haven’t purchased a home, and haven’t really figured out anything about what the future looks like. I’m working on my PMP certification, and who knows what I’ll do with that. Honestly, we’re just following God day-by-day. We’ve stopped asking for a big future plan and just ask Him for the next steps instead.

Some days, I feel like a vibrant, thriving, valued member of my church. Lately, I’ve wondered if anyone there still remembers me. Some days, I wake up with the Gospel so strongly etched in my heart I can’t imagine that I could believe anything less. The next day, I may wake up fighting those old Christian battles about the extent of God’s grace and closeness to sinners.

Many days, I feel like my day gets in the way of the spiritual life I crave, as if my time at work, in particular, not just detracts from the time that I wish I could study, write, and speak more, but also the time I could be growing. I get stuck in the mindset that the vocation the Lord has led me to has less spiritual value than my own good ideas.

My path may look different from yours, but I don’t think I’m alone in any of these wrestlings.

We call social media the comparison trap, but I think there’s a deeper one that lurks here, one that mingles the culture and our faith, causing us to wonder if God’s view of us or our spiritual failure or our sin has kept us from the advancement of money, property, influence, relationships, achievements, health, etc. It’s one that tells us the American dream is somehow evidence of God’s favor in our lives and that we’re on the right track spiritually, with money and free time being the strongest evidence of getting it all right.

Certainly that is not true. Anyone who’s read a chapter out of any Gospel account could tell you that’s incomplete disagreement with the Scriptures. But it’s still a hard battle to fight in our minds because these lies are all around us, being reinforced by many of the things we see and hear on a daily basis.

The thing is that we can’t escape culture anymore than a tree can escape where it is planted. Some of these questions and challenges just have to be faced again and again and again, like thorns in our side (2 Corinthians 12:7). We have to seek God’s sufficient grace to overcome the lies, grit through the pain, and receive His joy in all circumstances.

So for these times, I want to offer some thoughts that help me break these thought habits and set my heart and mind where they need to be.

1. There are many trees, and all have a purpose.

“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:43-45)

Where I grew up in Northern Michigan, there are countless types of trees that bear fruit, nuts, and flowers. In our yard alone, we had walnut trees, tulip trees, a towering Chinese elm, a beautiful birch, several varieties of maple, a hickory, weeping cherries, crabapples, apples, pears, several types of evergreens, and a bunch more I can’t name. All of them contribute to a thriving ecosystem that made our yard beautiful year round. The foliage, flowers, and fruit delighted us. We climbed the birch, hung a huge swing from the old black walnut, and took naps in the hammock between the pines.

Each tree had abundance, and each tree lacked. That is essential to understand in life. A weeping cherry will never provide the shade of the maples, and a walnut tree will never possess the imposing leaves of the tulip tree. An apple tree will never grow as tall as the hickory, and the hickory will never produce apples. They all have distinct jobs, which means they all possess the ability to bear a specific purpose in good time, and they do not have the ability to bear the purpose that another tree possesses.

I can spend my time as a cherry tree in God’s kingdom wishing I had the size and purpose of a black walnut so that a family could use me as a giant swing set, but then I neglect the purpose for which God has given me to bear fruit that nourishes others.

Does wishing I were some other tree in His garden get me any closer to being that tree? Does wishing I had someone else’s life or gifting or circumstances get me any closer to fulfilling my purpose in Christ? Absolutely not! Only fulfilling the role that God has given us can do that.

God has not rendered any of us useless. He has created us each uniquely and for a specific purpose in serving Him (Ephesians 2:10). Of course we still lack - we lack everything that we don’t have, which is just part of existing. I have green eyes, which means I lack blue eyes. The harder reality to face, though, is when it involves the choices we make or when finances or status are linked to our differences. I am doing great in my career right now, but my public school paycheck doesn’t necessarily reflect that the same way it would for someone who had the ability to negotiate their salary based on their performance and qualifications. Does that mean God has less purpose for me? No! But can it feel that way sometimes? Absolutely.

But we have to remember that we’re all part of this garden together, purposed to each fulfill the role God has given us. The Apostle Paul used the analogy of the human body to demonstrate this:

“Suppose the foot says, ‘I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.’ By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. And suppose the ear says, ‘I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.’ By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body? As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body. (1 Corinthians 12:15-20)

Therefore, each of us is incredibly gifted by God for great purpose in His kingdom. We may lack what another tree has, but we will never lack what we need to do the job that He has given us (Psalm 23:1 & 84:11, James 1:4).

2. There is one tree that binds us together.

We must also remember that Jesus did not just compare us to stand-alone trees. He said this:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15:1-8)

No matter what kind of tree to which we find ourselves metaphorically connected, we are all truly branches of Christ, and we cannot do anything in the kingdom apart from Him. Throughout my time in boarding schools, for example, I met countless extremely wealthy people who were spiritually destitute and lost in this world, like massive weeping willows without any branches to provide shade.

And sure there are times that we feel like we may be that branchless willow, because God is so lovingly pruning us. Isn’t pruning so painful? It seems like when we feel we have the greatest need, God prunes more of it away to demonstrate that it is our constant connection to Him that feeds our purpose and our fruit-bearing. We may be tempted to think it is other factors - perhaps the soil, sunlight, or watering needs we think we have. I am often tempted to think that if only I had _____, then I would be _____. But in fact, the only thing we need to flourish in abundant fruitfulness is to remain connected to Him.2

Paul also wrote in Ephesians 4:1-13:

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,
he took many captives
and gave gifts to his people.”

(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Therefore, we are all servants of Christ from the same Spirit. Our gifts and fruit do not come from our own efforts, but from Him. He rose to Heaven so that He could fill the whole earth with His Spirit - including you and me. So we have become living temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), not entities unto ourselves to carry out what we believe a good life is made of, but vessels that He has set apart for a purpose and through which He accomplishes His work. The same Spirit that has called my brother to do international missions is the same Spirit that has called me to write this Substack.

Will you receive the calling you have been given? Will you live your life worthy of the calling that you have received?

3. We must choose our tree wisely.

“The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:9)

The more I mature in Christ, the more I think about the Garden of Eden in its perfection, and those two trees that God planted at the center of it all: a tree that led to life and the tree that led to death.

I do not think there was anything particularly special about the tree of knowledge of good and evil. My personal take on this is that God gave mankind a law to follow, and man would inevitably break that law, exposing his sinful nature (Romans 5:20). The knowledge of good and evil was the knowledge that God is good and we sinners are evil, and it came through the act of disobeying His command.

These trees are all around us today. They are the temptations we have to do things our own way, seeking a lucrative end to a sinful means that we think justifies our disobedience. In essence, our hearts say, “God doesn’t really get it. He’s outdated, and He lacks understanding of my circumstances or goals.” It comes in the form of pursuing goals without prayer, believing a different spouse would lead to a better life, believing more money or nicer possessions will lead to joy, or that more leisure time will lead to peace. But it’s all a lie.

The Tree of Life, however, sustains us for eternal life, and that life was given to us in Christ. We don’t have access to the tree here on earth anymore. God blocked the way back to it so that we would not live eternally in our sin. But Christ died for us, that our sin would be completely removed from us, and we will eat the fruit of the Tree of Life in heaven. This tree, we are told, will produce fruit every month of the year and heal the nations (Revelation 22:2) eternally.

We can spend our lives staring at the trees around us that we do not resemble, spend our days coveting their attributes and wishing we had their size, bark, flower, soil, fruit, medicinal properties, colors, leaves, or whatever else, or we can turn our eyes to the tree that awaits us in heaven - a true treasure, limitless for those who put their trust in Christ. There is no other tree we should desire but this one. All the other trees are going to fall away and be forgotten. Everything we have and do in this life will be behind us one day. Only this one will remain, and only for us if we choose to keep our eyes on it and pursue that heavenly end of eternal life.

What kind of tree are you, friend?

I am a cherry tree, weathered and made better by the trials of wind, cold, and storms. It took me a few years to get here, and I am certainly a woman of four distinct seasons - desolate winters, hopeful springs, thriving summers, and thrilling autumns. I may never be very stately, and I have to protect my branches from frost that threatens to steal the fruit before it can produce. But when the proper season comes, I bear fruit from the Spirit that nourishes, encourages, and delights others through what I write and speak over them.

Maybe you’re like that talipot palm, waiting a lifetime to bear fruit, but it will all come at once in a wild display of unmatched production. I think my dad was a bit like that. And maybe you’re the hydrangeas that bloom for many weeks, or maybe you’re a maple that isn’t anything particularly special all summer, but brings vibrant, long-lasting colors throughout the fall. And maybe you’re a fruit tree that’s taken a few years to bring forth fruit. Many of you likely provide protection and shade. Maybe you share a root system with the trees around you to create a thriving community. No matter what you are, each of us is important in God’s garden, and He has set us here with great purpose.

Friends, I think this is worth the time to contemplate and ask God to give us each an image of a tree we’re like. Maybe that’s silly, but hey, around this Stack, we believe that all creation reflects His glory and truth, and that it encourages us in our faith journeys. They say that things that trouble our hearts the most are the things most common to man, and I have to believe that the vast majority of you have wrestled with these problems and questions at some point or another. So why not give it a try?

Until next time, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

Today, I want to jump back into some Bible study tools that I love and methods I use - this time for those of you craving that deeper connection to and interpretation of the Word. I love sharing this kind of stuff, because this is where I really come to life in my faith personally. There is something that takes place in my soul - like a spiritual leaping and summersalting and cartwheeling - that I know that the reason God put me here has everything to do with the way He speaks to me through His Word.

I get asked a lot, “How do you know all this stuff?” Some of my knowledge comes from an ancient-history-teaching background, but a lot of it has just come from really trying to make the most out of my time in the Word.

So today, I am going to share some of my favorite practices and resources for going deeper in relationship with God through the study of His Word. This will be a mix of things I’m currently doing and using, as well as things that helped me get here. If you are new to the Bible and missed last week’s post, make sure you check it out here for a really practical guide to reading the Bible when you’re just starting out.

Honestly, this is the first time in a while I’ve systematically written these things down, so bear with me if things seem a little out of order. I’m going to try to make it all flow and make sense, but these are things I also tend to edit over the years.

And just one last note before we jump in, I want to give the context that before I started really getting into the deep studying I’m talking about today, I spent a long time reading the Bible over and over and over, especially in the format I shared in the last post. I’ve read through it in its entirety several times, I’ve read commentaries and studies on specific books, and I’ve taken part in a lot of Bible studies. I’m not saying this is required for anyone, but just what I did, and I think it really helped me make connections and build understanding between books, events, prophecies, promises, characters, etc.

Foundational Heart Posture

I think it’s most important that we start with our heart posture and motivation for reading the Word. I know this seems like it could be so straight forward, but I find all the time that I have hidden motivations for reading the Bible that are not righteous. Some of them include:

• Knowing a lot to impress people.

• Checking the box so I can say I do read the Bible every day.

• I feel guilty and fear that I won’t go to heaven if I don’t.

• Because it enhances my life.

All of these expose such ugly, bigger internal problems - pride, fear, works-based gospel. And I know if I can identify those, then I can also pray through them with God as I study and ask Him to set my heart right.

I think one of the most important things we need to keep in mind when we read is that the Bible is about God and His plans to redeem us through Jesus Christ. It’s not a self-help book, although it will help us tremendously in life. It’s not a “best life” manual, although obeying God will surely bring about a richer life than we ever could have imagined. And it’s not something we need to do out of guilt or shame, but rather a relationship we get to have with God Himself. It’s like a date with the Lord we get to experience every day, except that it so often feels like falling in love all over again as we get to know the object of our deepest affections and know that He is enjoying His too.

Time

Deeper study is consistent study. I make time every single day to spend in God’s Word - at least 30 minutes of just Scripture time beyond prayer and journaling. My best mornings are when I have a free morning and a couple of hours or more to soak it in.

As I prioritize this time, I try to choose a chunk of the day that I know will be quiet, unrushed, and uninterrupted. This looks different for everyone. Before I got married, that time was in the evening, from about 8-10pm. Well, now that I’m married, that time doesn’t really belong to me anymore. But I know without a doubt that I can set aside time from 5-6am every morning, so now I get up earlier. I was so adverse to doing this at first, though, that I actually had to pray that God would help me find that time and He actually gave me the desire to get up earlier.

Part of this, too, is that I really look forward to that time with God. I try to keep my mind and heart in that in-love place where I feel more excited to read His Word than any other part of the day. And I try to savor, soak in, and treasure each moment. Like falling in love, I cannot believe how quickly 30 minutes goes by when I just want to be in the company of the one I love.

Daily Resources

My study rarely involves just a simple paper Bible. There may be mixed feelings about this, but remember that I’m telling you what I do. You can choose to take everything with the grain of salt and do what draws you closest to God. A lot of people don’t want their phone nearby while they’re studying because of the distraction, while mine is in my hand and I have to consciously fight that distraction as I use various resources, because those resources are invaluable to me. Pray about it, and do what is best for your walk.

Bibles

I almost always have two paper study Bibles going:

• The first is one that provides scriptural insights. For example, it might say, “This is a reference to Isaiah 9:6” and explain a little of what’s going on in terms of theological meaning. I am not going to tell you which one I’m reading for that right now, because I would not recommend it, but Zeb loves his, which is Thomas Nelson’s NKJV Study Bible. I also read this type of study Bible in the NKJV translation currently.

• The second is the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. This is one of two must-have resources I am recommending. There is so little that we understand in the Bible due to not having the context for customs, references, and common knowledge of ancient times. As an ancient history teacher, I have more background knowledge the most, but this translation provides nuances that explain so many things to us. Mine is in the NIV, and I like having the two translations open so I can compare different words for interpretations. (I’ll talk more about translations in a minute.)

  

Concordance & Lexicon

I also always have a great concordance/Bible dictionary handy. This is the second of two must-have resource I am recommending. I have Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s a classification/organization system (index) for the Hebrew and Greek words in the Bible found in the KJV. It provides scriptural references across the Bible so that we can see how everything connects to other passages and uses, giving us a richer understanding of each word. Further, it is often accompanied by another lexicon, which is more like a dictionary, but it provides the meaning of the use of the word, rather than just a straight definition. For example, the word “grace” would be given one or more meanings as applied in the Bible, rather than a cut-and-dry definition.

I use Thayer’s Lexicon quite often, but I say that with some caution. Because it was written pre-1900s, it is considered outdated for scholarly use. There have been many linguistic discoveries made in the modern era, especially due to archaeological finds and more globalized sharing of information. That said, Thayer did his best with what he had, providing contextual meaning to many words by drawing meaning from different passages. His definitions tend to come from a rich theological understanding of God’s character and the power of the Gospel throughout the Bible. It is still considered suitable for personal study today, and it is often the lexicon accompanying Strong’s, so easy to access. (Incidentally, both are readily available as free/open sources.)

Having a richer lexicon is so important to my understanding of who God is. Let me demonstrate why this is a must-have for me…

Let’s look at the word “life” in John 10:10, which says, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

On the surface in our limited English vernacular, I might say that in Christ, we have a life that is meant to be lived to the fullest, rising above temptations and schemes of the Enemy. Not a bad definition, but kind of vague.

The definition of “life” according to Thayer’s Lexicon gives us a richer meaning of the Greek word for life “zoë”. It lends itself to enjoying real life, true and worthy of the Name of God, active, blessed, and eternal in God’s kingdom. It is the “absolute fullness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God”, both by our being made by Christ and by Christ being made man. It is, “life real and genuine, a life active and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed, in the portion even in this world of those who put their trust in Christ, but after the resurrection to be consummated by new accessions (among them a more perfect body), and to last forever.”

Holy cow. When I read the words “even in this world”, my whole view of salvation in my current life radically changed. I no longer felt like I just had to exist until I died, and then could have a good eternity, but looked forward to the words Christ spoke - that maybe He had more for me right now, and I hadn’t completely mucked it all up beyond salvaging. And maybe it wasn’t a salvage job at all, but had been a truly wonderful plan all along.

Thayer translated the New Testament, but the Old Testament is translated by Brown-Driver-Briggs, a widely-accepted resource for Hebrew translation. Both will appear in a Strong’s Concordance more often than not. Like Thayer, it is considered somewhat outdated, but still reliable for personal use.

One thing to note is that the physical Strong’s Concordance is pretty hefty to lug around, so I more often have the Life Bible app open on my phone. It has many translations and study Bibles (some free, some not). It has a public (free) translation called Strong’s Concordance w/ KJV. I do not read the KJV, but I love a free resource, so I use this one as a reference. You can tap on the words and the Strong’s definition will come up.

Translations:

I am not going into detail about all of these, because I don’t think it really matters in the way I study. I read several translations at once and use a concordance, so I am not glued to the specific nuanced phrasing of any one translation. But here are a few to look for:

• New King James Version (NKJV) - Zeb and I both prefer it for daily reading.

• Christian Standard Bible (CSB) - If it was good enough for Elisabeth Elliot, it’s good enough for me. I’m using this one more and more.

• New Living Translation (NLT) - Great, accurate translation with easy-to-read language. I especially use this when I listen to the Bible.

• New International Version (NIV) - Solid, accurate translation.

• English Standard Version (ESV) - Your church may use this, and the language can be more poetic.

• New American Standard Bible (NASB) - A lot of my Bible study friends use this, and it’s sold.

• Amplified Bible (AMP) - Such a strong resource for adding just a little more explanation within the text. It’s a bit like having a lexicon and reference manual right in the text.

I avoid these:

• The Message (MSG) - This consists of summaries of passages and includes a lot of modern language. It’s OK for overview-type understanding, but not reliable as a study Bible or primary reader. If you want a translation that is easier to read and understand, I recommend the NLT.

• The Passion Translation (TPT) - This is a combination of summary and additions by one individual in the modern era who “received a vision” that led to rewriting the Bible, rather than translating it. For more info, check out this explanation. If you want some more context/expansion, I recommend the AMP

  

Websites

Study Bibles have their limits due to space, so I have found a couple of really great online resources when I need more explanation. I shared the Got Questions? website last time. Where I go to find much deeper and in-depth explanations on more nuanced topics is in the Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange. This is like Reddit for Biblical scholars, and it is full of really outstanding theological explanations. Some not so much, but I really enjoy reading the back-and-forth conversations, arguments, and ah-ha moments on each question.1

I also use Bible Gateway for lots of different translations, side-by-side comparisons, and the ability to focus on a singular verse, passage, or set of non-sequential verses.

Study

Now that we have our resources, we can really dig into the actual studying part.

I still follow a lot of the pattern I outlined in the last post, and here is generally what my mornings look like:

• Clear2 - I journal and pray about things on my mind briefly just to clear it enough to focus.

• Pray - I pray for God to give me wisdom and revelation, and that He would speak to me in His Word. I ask Him to meet me here in the deepest part of my soul, where no one else has ever been, and that we can be there together and enjoy the time.

• Soak - I read and write out Scripture, making connections as I go and taking time to contemplate the meaning of each passage. I write out questions, answers, possible understandings that I’m exploring, random connections, etc. It is messy, ugly, fun, sometimes frustrating. It probably looks more like grappling with the Word than studying it.

• Respond - I journal a response and thank God for His goodness.

It’s really not complicated at all, but I want to walk through what that middle part looks like from a recent study I did.

The Soak

I really based my study method off of Anne Graham Lotz’s method for studying the Bible. In it, she asks three questions: What does God’s Word say? What does God’s Word mean? What does God’s Word mean to me? The third question, you answer with a question. Here’s a sample sheet. I used this for a while, and it helped me develop my own study time in a more fruitful and meaningful way. I highly recommend giving this method a try.

So before I can soak something up, I first want to choose the text. Right now, I am studying the entire book of Luke. A very deep explanation of how this came about is that my church was studying it, so I decided to as well. But my next study will be Romans because so much in Luke has made me want to go there next. Makes sense. Luke is a Gospel, and Romans is a strong defense of the Gospel. If you’re new to deeper study, start with a book like Ruth or 1 Peter, which are shorter and you can get a lot out of it all at once.

Before I study a passage or book, I make sure to read it in its entirety, preferably all at once, but sometimes over the course of a week if it’s a long book. I may jot down some overarching notes, and I make sure to read any introductory materials in my study Bible to put it in context and help me pick out themes. I then do the deep study I will explain below, and then I re-read the entire thing again.

Summarize-Wrestle-Contemplate

On a very basic level, what I do to really soak in my study is this:

• Summarize - I write out a summary of each verse I read.

• Wrestle - When I get to a verse or the end of a section that I feel calls for deeper study, I begin to ask questions, make connections, write out translations, look at the study Bible info, pray through texts. This part looks a lot like flipping pages, looking back-and-forth from text to phone to text to phone, muttering to God, and writing a bunch of stuff down.

• Contemplate - Inevitably, I reach a point that I just want to sit back and pray about it for a while. I’ve reached some new connection, understanding, or door to a whole new world of scripture, and it’s time to just soak that in and let God speak into it for a while.

Let me take you through an example of what this looks like, as transcribed from June 9 and 10 in my study of Luke 19

31 - If anyone asks why they’re taking the colt, say that You3 have need of it.

• Just that word would be enough.

• You knew the heart of the owner - that he would gladly offer his colt to You. We don’t know the reason for his gladness, but You know, and You know the willingness of every heart that You call and touch. His role in Your story at this time was determined before You laid the foundation of the earth.

• I also just read that animals that were unyoked and unridden were often dedicated to You.

32-34 - The disciples went and found it and the owners asked about it, and the disciples said You needed it.

35 - They brought the colt to You and threw their own clothes on it for You to ride.

• I wonder how they felt as they did this. I wonder what they were thinking.

36 - As You went, people spread their clothes out on the path in front of You, indicating Your Kingship.

• I think I always feel a little heartbroken here because by Friday, no one would be left except Your mother and a few friends and John next to the Cross. These people hailing You [as] King here would not do so later, and I wonder in what ways I call You King in one place and scatter in the next.

• And what did it take for the people to scatter or turn on You?

  • Was it that You turned over tables in the Temple?

  • That You did not march in to overthrow Rome?

  • That You increasingly and more radically challenged those who scared them - the religious leaders?

  • Was it when You were arrested? or questioned? or handed to the Romans? or scourged? or crucified?

  • What was the breaking point for the masses, and what is mine? At this moment, is it that You are quiet and not offering clarity and blueprints for what You’re doing? Is it in the anxiety that I’ve been an idiot all along and fear that I have made up my own way, second-guessing if it’s really from you and Your leading?

37 - Once You began Your descent down the Mount of Olives, everyone began rejoicing and praising God for all the incredible works they had seen.

• Mighty works

• Power-of-God works - raising Lazarus, healing, driving out demons

38 - They recited “Blessed is the King who come sin the Name of the Lord!”

• Quote from Psalm 118:26.

• They recognize Your Kingship and the One from Whom it comes.

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

• Not a quote, just what they were shouting.

• The angel in Luke 2:14 had said, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests!”

• So this cry echoes that earlier passage.

• Jesus, it seems like they’re receiving the peace on earth and now echoing that back in recognition of the mission You came to fulfill. They perhaps indicate that they receive Your peace and send it back - heavenly peace because You have fulfilled Your Kingship.

  • There therein lies the whole point - within days, all these people would scatter in fear and disillusionment. The people could not “send peace” in heaven anymore than we could save our ourselves, even if what they say is true. The call of peace on earth from God would be fulfilled by You, and the call for peace in Heaven would also be fulfilled by You. You do it all. You alone are worth of glory and honor and praise. Not by a single work of ours, but by Your Blood alone do we find our salvation, and by the Presence and sanctification of the Spirit alone do we become like You - the Spirit given because you died for us.

39 - The Pharisees told You to rebuke Your disciples.

• This is also a moment that the crowd was calling You “King” and You would be held responsible for their words if You didn’t correct them. Since You did not, You were later accused of calling Yourself King. The falseness of the accusations is that 1) You did not say it, and it was overblown by the Pharisees, and 2) that You are not King. You are [King], and You cannot deny it.

• Someone cannot falsely accuse You of being King, and You cannot deny who You are. you can only ask those around You to be quiet at first [that is, at the start of Your ministry three years prior] because Your power and deity were so evident in Your works.

40 - But Your glory cannot be silenced. There’s no point in telling anyone to be silent, because this is the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy, and it will be fulfilled. All the people could be silent, and Your glory would still be known because the fulfillment would be drawn out from Creation, and even the rocks would cry out if [the people] were silent. They would do so immediately!

So you can see this process is messy and imperfect. I ask a lot of questions and freely share my thoughts with God as I contemplate the meaning of the Scriptures. I think this is so important. We’re not going into the text to gain a perfect understanding, but to have our eyes opened to the story God has woven in the ways He wants to reveal it. If I come back and do this same thing in Luke ten years from now, my study and thoughts might look completely different, but the meaning of the Word is going to stay the same.

I find that very comforting. This is the same Word that spoke to my heart 17 years ago, and God is still speaking to me through it today, teaching more each year about the depth of all of it. It’s incredible to me how new it still feels all the time.

So that’s where I am right now, friends. I’ve shared this guide with people in the past, and I still hold true to a lot of that, but what I’ve written above is what is really producing some incredible fruit right now that I can carry with me each day and makes a tangible difference in my life.

I wish I had a little more time and space to share the next few days out of my journal, because they regarded a question I’ve been researching and praying about for several months now. It reminded me that God even cares about our smallest interests. My question is not particularly theological - just a practical curiosity. But God hasn’t forgotten about it.

As He did when I was young and seeking to understand why Christ had to come the way He did and that it all had to logistically work out that way, He led me to the answer in His Word. And actually, He led me to an even deeper understanding of all the logistics of the time and place at the same time last week! He is still speaking into these questions - the deep, the brief, the small. There is no question I have ever asked Him that He hasn’t answered in the Word. Not one.

Friends, this is the most incredible duality we get to experience. We get to come before God Almighty, the Lord who created all things and sustains all things. The One who saved us. The One who holds our eternity. We approach Him with such sacred knowledge that He’s not our "homeboy” or someone we’re just “cool with”. He’s our sacred and holy Everything, to an extent we cannot fathom. And yet, He cares about these silly little moments when I wonder what His how his toenails were shaped…

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4)

This duality is not a contrasting one, but a richness we have in Christ to come before God as our Father and we as His children, in this confidence that He somehow cares for and loves us so immeasurably. Doesn’t that just make you want to spend this time with Him and read what He has to say?

I would love to hear how you study the Word and where you are with your Bible study time. What obstacles do you face? When do you feel closest to God? When do feel farthest? Let me know in the comments or reply to this post in your inbox and we can chat!

Next week, I want to start sharing some more outdoor stories and studies again, including a truly disastrous fishing trip. But until then, may all that God created testify to His power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

Next week, I’m going to share part 2 of studying the Bible, which will focus on how I go deeper with my study time. This week, though, I want to share an essay I wrote for The Storied Outdoors on Father’s Day in 2022. If you’re not familiar with this podcast, the hosts are Bryan Gill and Brad Hill, and they describe it as being “somewhere between Lewis and Tolkien and Lewis and Clark”, highlighting stories that have shaped the lives and faith of outdoorsmen and women. The podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, and other major platforms, and you can follow them on Instagram at @thestoriedoutdoors.

If you want to listen to the essay I’m sharing today, you can check out the link here, or search up episode 50 on any platform.

This essay highlights how my dad’s storytelling shaped my childhood, hardships we faced with his health and how that affected our relationship, how I learned to become a deep listener and revive the storytelling traditions of our youth, and how storytelling ties in our faith and relationships today.

As we jump in, I want to acknowledge that a lot of my stories about my dad and childhood seem perhaps over-romanticized. All I can say to that end is…

You should have been there in person.

Father’s Day 2022

As a child, I loved to hear my father’s stories. He told them with piercing blue eyes, waving hands, and passion as if he was reliving it again. To me, he seemed like a man of the greatest adventures. He had hunted antelope and flown a plane. He had gotten into plenty of trouble in his youth, and he was always traveling and coming back with gifts from wherever he’d been. He had a way of telling stories from his youth growing up in Detroit, visiting grandparents in West Virginia and Iowa, that drew us in and painted a picture of a blonde little boy full of piss and vinegar in all the nostalgic Americana a childhood could possess. Stories like these keep us connected to our origins - where we came from and God’s Hand providentially guiding us to where we came to be.

And our childhood was very much shaped by those stories. There’s an old side-by-side 12 ga. shotgun that hangs over his office door. It’s from his grandfather’s farm in Iowa, where for Christmas one year he received his first BB gun. Gramps had told him he had to wait to shoot it, but my dad had been so excited that he took it upstairs to his bedroom, propped an old pie tin up against his wall, and quietly pumped BBs into that tin. When he was finished, he realized the BBs had gone through the tin and into the wall, so he grabbed a rocking chair and moved it in front of the wall. When his mother came upstairs, she noticed the chair was moved and quickly discovered what he had done. Without saying much to my dad, she left and told her own father - Gramps. Winter in Iowa means grueling cold wind ripping across the Great Plains, but Gramps took this pathetic little boy outside and put his side-by-side 12ga. shotgun in his hands and told him to shoot. My father did, and after he picked himself up off the ground, Gramps told him to fire the other round. What followed was a talk about respect and power - and yes, very layered meanings when we’re talking about grandfathers and guns.

So when it came time for us to start begging for BB guns, the rule in our house was that we had to shoot the 12 ga and get a similar talk. This rite of passage is how we learned that guns had terrifying power, and that they were a tool for hunting, sport, protection, and even some monetary appreciation. (I first shot it when I was eight, and, being the runt of the 4-kid litter, my dad held me up so the kick didn’t blast me over.)

Every experience we had came with a story from Dad, and we absolutely ate them up.

But somewhere between being an eight-year-old tomboy who wished I could be a ninja turtle and becoming a 32-year-old divorcee trying to figure out life, the stories had become fewer and fewer.. As my siblings and I became more involved in school, sports, music, and social lives, our time sitting around the living room talking became more scarce. We still ate dinner as a family every night, but as things go for most American households, things get busier as kids get older, and we outnumbered my parents 2-1. It was always go, go, go.

By the time my siblings had grown and left the house, I was spending most of my time training at the ski resort or off on some backroad cruising around with my friends, drenched in the blissful utopic nonsense of growing up in the northern Michigan summertime. It was exciting, heavenly, independent.

And then it was over. I went to college. I made bad choices. I made good choices. I began to follow Jesus. By the time I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life, it meant going through my entire Master’s degree in a year and then moving to Colorado. By that time, I was 24, and my father’s health had begun a slow decline. There were hospital stays, doctor’s appointments, and much to worry about from afar. He had quit smoking permanently, but when I moved back to Michigan in 2012, he immediately needed a quadruple bypass surgery, which was scary for the whole family.

For me, the heart surgery began the serious realization that my dad was not, in fact, invincible. I think many of us reach that point with our parents when worry becomes our readiest feeling toward our parents. But it wasn’t just this dynamic in our relationship that had changed. As the years went by, I felt a strain in our relationship that I couldn’t quite figure out. I was getting older, gaining more knowledge and leadership, becoming more of an expert in my field. The urge to lead conversations the way I did in other circles of my life dominated many of my interactions with both of my parents, but I often felt like my dad and I were mutually frustrated with each other by the time we were done talking.

Don’t get me wrong. He was always there for me. He and my mother celebrated my marriage with all their hearts in 2017, and they grieved with me, defended me, and supported me when my husband had a tragic mental breakdown and decided to leave in 2018. He has always been so proud of my accomplishments in my education and career, always one to brag to random strangers about where I live and what I’m doing. I’ve never doubted for a moment that we are truly kindred hearts as the youngest of our siblings - the daring ones, the rogues.

There just seemed to be this disconnect.

In the summer of 2019, I attended a week-long professional development seminar in Colorado. The topic: deep listening. It was a deplorable conference made worse by being trapped within the confines of a boarding school, forced to stare at mountains I could not touch, much less climb. But I remember on the way back to Pittsburgh, I kept thinking I just really needed to call my dad. The last few conversations I’d had with him before the conference had been rough and frustrating for both of us.

But I’ll never forget that I had this epiphany in a Denver airport bathroom on the way home. I finally had a moment to catch my breath amidst a chaotic travel itinerary, and that disconnect was heavy on my heart. So I uttered a little prayer, and it suddenly dawned on me that my relationship with my dad seemed to revolved around two things: his health and my desire to be heard.

Over time, as I delved further into adulthood, my desire to speak and for others to listen had intensified. It was an honest desire. I was eager to prove to my parents and older siblings how much I had grown, matured, become wiser and more knowledgeable. I wanted to speak the Truth of the Gospel over them and teach them more abou the things of God.

Simultaneously, my father’s health had declined over that same time period. I was worried about him, and every conversation became frustrated by that worry. I wanted him to follow the prescribed protocols, change his attitude, change his habits. I wanted to talk to him about Jesus. I wanted to talk to him about his heart. I wanted to talk to him about his joints. I wanted to…talk.

Every time he tried to speak, I was frustrated because I didn’t want to hear anything else. I had little patience for any other topic, and it dawned on me in then that probably a lot of his relationships were starting to look that way. Far from being my dad, he had become my patient. Furthermore, I remembered what I had taught as a psych teacher about a stage in life that men in particular reach when they want their life to have counted for something, and they want to share their stories with the younger generations. To bestow their wisdom.

I began to sob as I realized that my dad had been trying to talk, trying to tell, trying to bestow, but no one was listening. The dad I loved so much, whose stories were at the very heart of my childhood, must have felt so unheard, because I had not been listening.

I resolved in that pathetic little bathroom stall to be nothing more than his daughter. Not a doctor or a nurse, not a teacher, nor an historian, a grown woman, or an independent anything. I resolved to sit in humility at my dad’s proverbial feet and just be his daughter and to listen when he spoke.

So I started to call him and practice listening.

It began with just listening to his political frustrations with whatever was going on currently. But soon, those frustrations led to stories about how it was in his younger day, his teen years, his childhood. While I initially started listening intentionally to serve my dad better and bring more peace to our relationship, I discovered that his stories fed my soul in ways I never anticipated. I learned that he had so many more incredible stories that I ever knew, and he had os many more to share with me as an adult than he had when I was a child. The Iowa farm house, the hot West Virginia summers. Beyond family lore - it was the stories that grew him, shaped him, and drove him over time. I started calling more frequently just to hear more.

In November, he drove me around his old neighborhood in Detroit and told me stories, like being a boy on a bicycle trying to impress a pretty girl by racing her father’s car to the next block. I was as exhausted from traveling, but it was one of the best days we’ve gotten to spend together.

We as a society have really lost our sense of honor and fear. Think about the last time you heard a mainstream pastor preach about the fear of God. Think about the last time one of them preached about that sticky fifth commandment that says in no uncertain terms to honor your parents.

Maybe we think that’s just for children. When we grow up, we get to make our own decisions about whether or not our parents are worthy of such deference. Surely God can see we’re more educated and informed. We have more struggles than our parents did. How could they have wisdom that we don’t already possess?

Maybe it’s the way our culture treats elders. We even set a specific age when we can retire them into an oblivion where they can choose to become full time grandparents, or maybe part time grandparents and part time gardeners. As if the end of a career is the end of meaningful contribution. Sadder is how many look forward to the days of playing golf or chasing warm weather instead of using these sage years to pour into the lives of others.

These are generalizations, I understand, but do you have a better explanation?

However, that honor shines in the Word as a God-given commission that children have to lift our parents up. And to parents, particularly fathers, He commissioned them to teach their children explicitly. “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

In other words, our fathers were made to tell stories, and we were made to listen.

But this is not age-depending, and I do not see any boundaries on age in the commandment either. In fact, Solomon was not a young man when he penned the words, “Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck” (Proverbs 1:8-9).

We need the stories, and we have a generation that needs to be heard. Instead, we live in this culture that listens to reply or listens to repost or listens to correct. It takes humility to sit and listen. That awful H-word we all hate. But I urge you to love it instead - to be slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to listen.

Through this experience, I have learned to honor my parents by deferring to their wisdom and, yes, storytelling. My life has been abundantly blessed by this, as God promises when we do what is right (Psalm 84:11).

In August of 2020, I found myself in a highly stressful situation at work, where I lived as a boarding school dorm mother and teacher. But as much as I prayed to be delivered and for justice to come, the Lord’s will was for me to stay there. So I began looking for a way to get away and breathe, a place to be unmasked and far from everyone I saw both day and night.

Some of my dad’s most alluring stories were about his days fishing the Au Sable and Manistee Rivers in Grayling, Michigan. These were the stories I grew up with, knowing he had been a great fly fisherman. I’d heard his daily stories when he came off the river as a guide when I was still very young, and I’d heard many more about his adventures with my Uncle Ford, Skip and Gail Madsen, and Bob Summers - institutions for a moment in that backwoods haven for trout chasers.

I’d always known I wanted to try, and I became motivated by an even more urgent drive than just the stress of my work place - that if I wanted to pursue those stories to make them my own, I wanted to do it while my dad could still tell me more and to share that connection together.

At first, it began with frustrations of trying to find someone to teach me here in Western PA, and then it was the difficulties of learning how to tie all of the knots, stop tying wind knots, cast properly, and then roll cast properly when I realized that there’s nowhere to backcast in PA. Those early days had far more failures than successes, and my dad had a story for all of them.

Lost flies. Lost fish. Snagged on a log. Snagged in a tree. Snagged on my own jacket. Hooking my first steelhead and having absolutely no clue how to reel in a fish that size or with that kind of fight. “Dad, I’m losing more fish than I land.”

“It’s OK, Brit. That’s how you learn. Heck, you know how many fish I lost? I was so frustrated when I first started, but I let it drive me to do better. I went to my mentors and I let them teach me how to do it right.”

Even later, he told me, you will lose fish. “I had to pole the boat, cast the rod, guide my clients, smoke my cigarette, and drink my bloody Mary at the same time!”

I learned that he similarly threw himself into the sport the way I did. Uncle Ford, Skip, and Gail mentored him the way a friend mentored me. He learned to cut through the lies of fishing quickly. No, you don’t need Orvis anything. You can catch big fish on short, light rods. One top water fish is always better than the twenty you nymphed. Drug store nail clippers are a suitable alternative to $130 nippers. It’s not actually cheaper to tie your own flies.

The last year has been nonstop stories - his from 30 years ago, mine from 30 minutes ago - connecting us in a brand new way. I call him after the majority of my fishing trips. My mom has gotten so used to it that when I call on Saturday afternoons, she asks, “Are you just getting off the water? OK, I’ll put Dad on.” Or I’ll hear her pick up the phone and simply yell, “Jon, it’s for you! It’s your youngest!”

Last summer, I had an amazing opportunity to fish my dad’s home waters on those storied rivers - Au Sable and Manistee. My dad’s body was not up to going, but I stayed with my parents for about three weeks in total, and I fished seemingly round the clock. In what was already the most mystical place I had fished, I got to go back in time and walk in my father’s footsteps in those days that he, as a younger man, chased wild brown trout and wilder days. Some days I did really well, and some days I got bested. I tried and succeeded and failed. I would come back to my childhood home, to his office all decked out in fly fishing gear with the summer breeze coming through the screen door, and I would tell him how I did. He shared more stories of trials and successes and failures. Funny stories, heartfelt stories, stories with great advice. He showed me rods, flies, and maps. I showed him pictures of ridiculous baby trout with their squishy little bellies. I never wanted to leave.

In a 2021 mid-summer Instagram post, I wrote the following:

“Three and a half weeks home, and I’m still not quite ready to go. There’s a call of the heart to cast one more line, dip in the fresh water one more time, tie on one more streamer. I’ve fished the [Au Sable], Manistee, Pine, and Boardman Rivers, plus Mud Lake and Green Lake. I’ve caught [brown trout, brook trout, rainbow trout, sunfish, blue gills, and bass] on the fly. I got to fish with my dad and every one of my siblings. It’s been 30 degrees, and it’s been 90 degrees. I’ve waded in fast water and smooth water, in sand and gravel and rocks, and I’ve thrown line from the deck of a BassTracker and cast from the water along a warm sandy beach. Most of all, I learned a ton about equipment, conditions, weather effects, species, environments, flies, and habitats…It’s so hard not to stay and keep exploring the water here.”

I did go back for more at the end of the summer. In fact I had a pretty wild year in fly fishing in general. While I have spent most of my time learning in PA and the bulk of last summer exploring Northern Michigan, and I’ve since fished in Maryland, West Virginia, and Wyoming. I’ve euronymphed, blue lined, and hucked big streamers. Been on every kind of fresh water boat you can think of and fished more than 50 streams and 10 lakes, as well as witnessing the breathtaking craftsmanship of building bamboo, fiberglass, and carbon fly rods from scratch.

But I, like my dad, know that it’s not the fish, but the stories that matter the most. The bass I lost because I was laughing so hard with my older brother. My sister and I getting skunked in our first hex adventure. The random act of kindness when two guys tried to brighten my day by handing me a couple of Miller High Lifes as they passed me on the stream. Meeting up with my friend Trevor, falling in the Potomac over my waders, and needing a full wardrobe change within the first five minutes of our trip. Even just listening to the stories of two outstanding rod builders as they crafted a 3-weight bamboo rod from culm to cast near the banks of the Big Horn River. All these stories, they shape our hearts and experiences going forward.

As I travel and meet people, I’ve taken the lesson of listening with me, and I think that’s part of the reason I’ve been blessed to have so many opportunities like these. Whenever I go somewhere and meet people - particularly in that Baby Boomer age range - I try to be intentional about stopping to listen to their stories. Like the trucker in Thermopolis, Wyoming who told me about his first shotgun, which his father had rescued from the dump where he worked, and for which, at age nine, had completely rebuilt the stock in order to shoot it. He hunted with it for years and still had it in his late 60s. What an honor to hear that story. Or the woman in my women’s fishing club who found her dad’s old gear and decided to give it a try late in life.

People are hungry to share, and we’re in an age that we all desire to be heard amidst the chaos of technology and social media that are advancing at an exponential rate. That’s not going to get any better, and so we have to make these daily choices to slow down, cultivate the humility to lend an ear, ask questions that invite another person to share what’s on their heart, even if it’s just “How long have you been fishing this stream?” or “How did you start fly fishing?” Everyone has a story. Everyone has something to share that will enrich your life and fill your heart if you can take the time.

I think many of us Storied Outdoor lovers have grown up with a father or a father-figure who influenced us deeply by sharing their passions and stories with us, who have inspired us to chase adventure and grow our own stories. I hope you have some time this Father’s Day to reflect on those memories and how they have shaped you.

As for my dad, he’s currently on a grueling upward trajectory of repairing his body. It has not been an easy road, but we’re closer to days on the water together than we have been in a long time. I know our mutual storytelling about a life on water has become an additional motivation for him to face certain mountains he’s now climbing.1

While he was in the hospital recently, he took on the role of the listener and began to glean stories from the staff and other patients around him. He tearfully told me how God had orchestrated the complications he was facing to encounter these people, and how he was grateful for his own suffering knowing that.

And he was faithful to share the most important story that any of us could ever tell–the story of the God Who loves us enough to die for us, Who wants our repentance more than our works or good ideas, Who hears our every word, and Who is woven into our every story.

You know, friends, your stories are so important. God gives us each a testimony to share, and there are times of hardship that may seem like that story isn’t a very good one. But everything He does and allows has great purpose. He made you on purpose, with great purpose, and for great purpose. So I hope two things for anyone who reads this:.

1. I hope you have the humility, curiosity, and discernment to invite others to share their stories with you.

2. I hope you have the humility, courage, and discernment to share your own.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad! For the record, Mom told what you said to the barber about me, and you’ve got me wrapped, too. I love you so much. Thank you for being my dad and sharing your stories with me. Keep them coming!

You know, as we reflect on this weekend’s events - stories of devastating floods in Wheeling, protests and celebrations across the nation, political murders in Minneapolis, and even the observance of Father’s Day in our own homes, it is now more important than ever that we make a concerted effort to listen to each other’s stories, and to share the most important story of all: that God became man and dwelled among us and died for the forgiveness of our sins, that we would have eternal life with Him. Let not the airwaves drown out our neighbors, as we continually live in community and let the world know us just as Jesus said it would - by the way we love each other (John 13:35).

Until next time, friends, may all that God created testify to His wisdom and power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.

I’m continuing with some shorter posts during this busy season, and today I wanted to share a really practical little guide I developed to help read the Bible with more depth and understanding. This post is geared more toward those who are just starting out, and I will do another that is more for those who have been reading for a while and want to get more out of it.

Before I jump into it, I just want to reiterate how important it is to read the Bible. I could quote you statistics about how much it transforms our lives. But I think what is most important here is to look to Creation, which is the core of this Substack.

There are many ways God set apart human life. We’re intelligent, bipedal, and quite bald compared to much of nature. But one thing that has always stuck out to me is that we’re literate. We’re literate! Nothing else in all of Creation is literate, and not only do we have a monopoly on this particular characteristic, but we’ve exploited it to the nth degree, creating countless volumes of writings and works over time to communicate our ideas and pleasures. From the 5th grade boy writing a note to his crush asked her to be his girlfriend - “check yes or no” - to the text messages we send to say hello to the calendars on our desks, the labels on our cereal boxes, the “Chaco” brand label on my dog’s collar, and even this Substack. Words are everywhere for the human race and nowhere for the rest of Creation.

What this tells me is that God made us to know His Word. This is one of the most consistent, enduring, and concrete ways He has revealed Himself to us. So the Bible is not just a book to read if you’re a good Christian. It’s an invitation to know His heart, that He is the same God now as He was in the beginning, and that his faithfulness endures even today.

He gave us the gift of writing and literacy so that He could communicate His love and good plans to us. So don’t be intimidated to approach this book! He wrote it for you! Especially in these times, when the chaos of the world surrounds us. We have so many messages. We have so many opinions. So much “truth”. Go to the book that holds the real Gospel Truth that endures through every generation from the beginning.

With that said, I want to share a very simply pattern I’ve used to study the Bible since I began reading it about 17 years ago. As I share these, I want to mix in some personal stories about my own journey learning how to read and come to love the Bible.

1. Pray.

I’m someone who always has about 10,000 things on my mind from the moment I wake up. I found really early on when I began to spend daily time studying that I wasn’t able to just jump in and start reading. I needed to clear my mind and get myself focused on being fully present in my study time, or none of the words on the page would get into my brain.

So I always begin with prayer. I think that a Bible study that does not begin with talking to God is not as effective or relational. I think of it more as reading the Bible with God vs. just reading the Bible. And I usually take a deep breath and try to tune into His Presence by saying, “God I am here, and You are here.”

Second, I tell God all of the things that are on my mind - busyness, anxieties, pressing schedules - either on paper or out loud. I give those things to Him so that I can focus on the Word without getting distracted.

Third, I give thanks to God for His Word and affirm that it is true, and how amazing it is that He gave us this book so we could know Him.

And finally - and this is so important - I ask Him to give me wisdom and revelation in the passage as I read and study. That could be for daily study or just wanting to know Him more, or it can be for when I have a problem I’m wrestling with and want to understand His response.

2. Read!

Oh my gosh, the best part of my morning is opening that big study Bible on my end table. It’s something about the feel of the gilded pages against my fingertips and the feathery pages that add to the anticipation of what God will reveal today.

I did not always feel that way. I really thought for the longest time that it wasn’t important to read the Bible, and I actually look back at so many instances of pushback I got from believers and unbelievers alike that I can now see that God was leading me for a very long time to read the Bible.

The last straw for me was when I was on a road trip through Colorado with a girlfriend from grad school. We were staying at a house in Telluride with a friend of hers, and I had just become a Christian, but I never read the Bible. I thought I could follow God from my own understanding.

The thing about reading was that I had all of these questions. I didn’t understand Jesus or why He had to die or why God couldn’t just declare us saved and forgiven without “that guy”, as I thought of Him in my mind. I didn’t really want to read the Bible, because I was comfortable with where my understanding of God was, and I was not just overwhelmed by all the text and words that I didn’t understand, but I was also afraid that what I would find might derail my newfound faith, rather than strengthen it.

But I was standing in the living room of that Telluride house talking to one of the roommates who was agnostic, but he had read the Bible and knew it so much better than me. He kept grilling me about what I believed and how I knew it was true, and I kept saying, “It’s just faith. I just know it’s true.” And to a very real extent, that was true on my part. But he kept pushing back to say that he didn’t believe what was in the Bible, and I began to feel this fire rise up in my heart - that I needed to read the Bible so I could defend it against this guy.

I went home from Colorado and immediately got out the student study Bible my mother had given me in hopes that I would one day start reading it. (Go Mom!)

Over the next couple of years, I spent time cultivating my study habits, but it wasn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes it was downright boring. So I tried to find ways to make it interesting. When I lived in Colorado after grad school, every night, I would put on my headlamp and duck under my bed covers with my Bible, calling it “Bible Exploration Time!” Seems silly, but it got me excited to read, even if it was a little fabricated.

But ultimately, practice made perfect. I started to look forward to my study time each evening, and I was very much driven by the questions that I still had lingering. “God, I know that Jesus is real and true, but I just don’t understand it all conceptually. I want to be able to explain it. Will You show me?” I asked Him. And then He answered. He showed me the answer in His Word in a way that made my spirit come to life. I could not believe it. God answered me. He told me the answer.

Little did I know, this was the very beginning of my journey into apologetics, praying for others effectively, and seeking answers from Him. I discovered that I could have a conversation with Him, and He would use His Word to talk to me. Think about this. He knew me before the creation of time, and He had written all of the answers to all of the questions my heart would have thousands of years before I was born, and today He continually shows me those answers, simply because I asked.

I share this to say that when we approach the Word, I think it should be with the expectation that God wants us to know Him, and He wants us to have the understanding we seek. Getting started is the hardest part, but I don’t know anyone who has begun who has not found a delight in it, even if it’s a little awkward at first, because the willingness for God to share His heart with us is so evident in each passage.

This is a long-winded introduction to reading the Word, but I want to give a few key tips:

• Just read. Don’t worry about trying to understand every nuance and intricacy right now. There’s a ton of cultural context you might not get right away. It’s OK. Start by just getting in the habit of reading and getting used to the flow and language. (Think of it like when you first read Shakespeare in school. It got easier over time, even it if it was really annoying at first.)

• Set aside a specific amount of time to read. Start with five minutes a day. You do not have to go hard to get a lot out of it. It’s the Word of God. He can pack a lot of power and love into five minutes. And that will give you enough to mull over throughout the day. You can always read longer if you want!

• Get a good translation. I love the NLT. It is easy to read and very accurate. Try to avoid the KJV if you’re starting out, because the language is difficult, so it’s hard to figure out what each word is, much less string them together.

• Find a good study Bible. These can be expensive, but you can get them in used book stores pretty easily. I like the Life Application Study Bible for new believers/new Bible readers.

• Try “The Bible Recap” with Tara Leigh Cobble. I actually did not have this when I started out, but I love it on the YouVersion Bible App, because 1) it allows you to read through scripture, and then Tara Leigh explains it in an 8-minute summary video, and 2) if I don’t have a ton of time to read, I can listen to it instead.. Since the majority of Bible texts were originally written to be rehearsed out loud, I think there’s something really special about listening to it.

• Keep in mind that you don’t have to agree with everything you read. Keep your mind open and curious. I hated a lot of what I read at first. I thought, “Who could do this? God, I am not doing that.” It’s important to just keep reading, and let God do His work in your heart over time.

This is definitely enough to get you started. If you’re a veteran reader, let us know in the comments if you would add anything!

3. Journal

I know. Not all of us are journalers. But this is such a good practice. Try to respond in some way to what you read so that you spend time thinking about it and it can stick a little more in your mind. I always like to note which passage I read that day (Luke 3:1-9, for example) and a brief response below.

Here are some prompts that could help get you started:

• What stood out to you most as you read?

• What was weird/foreign/hard to understand?

• What questions do you have about the passage?

• What do you want to know more about?

• What did you dislike the most?

• What did you learn about God in the passage?

Your journal doesn’t need to be anything earth-shattering. It could be a couple of sentences just saying, “God, I didn’t really understand why the Pharisees kept questioning the blind guy if they could see he was healed. I found this passage really frustrating for that reason.”

It also doesn’t have to be a paper journal. A phone memo works just fine. I know others will disagree that we should be all-paper during our Bible study time, but I think you should decide for yourself what works. I can often read just fine on my phone without distraction, but I like to write with a pen more than I like to text. Others can’t read on the phone because it’s too distracting. Fiddle around and see what works for you.

4. Bonus - Resources for Beginners

As you read and have questions about the text - like who the Pharisees are, what happened to Jesus’s father Joseph, or why the word selah keeps showing up in the Psalms, a great resources is Got Questions. This organization takes questions asked by Bible readers and gives a Biblically-sound answer. I do not agree with every interpretation they give, and maybe you won’t either, but I do think they do a really solid job of answering most of what they get, and always earnestly.

BibleProject is another good resource that puts out videos that recap the books/passages of the Bible and Biblical topics in an engaging way. I am not much of a video-watcher, but I really like these guys. They are earnest, humble, and accurate, which I think is a sweet spot when we’re teaching others the Word.

OK, so that’s my ground-breaking method - Pray, Read, Journal, and look some stuff up.

There are other methods out there for reading the Bible, like “SOAP” (Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer), but I am sharing my own because this is what has produced fruit in my life. It’s relationship-based, not works-based or me-based. I read the Bible because I want to spend time with God and know Him better, and I do so in a way that really cultivates that deep relationship with Him, rather than simply reading the Word on my own. So give it a try and see what you think!

I’m going to put a disclaimer here, too. I know that you can do a million studies on the Bible app, or you can buy some daily devotionals off Amazon, but I think of devotionals as an addition to a daily study practice, not a replacement. That’s because a devotional is written by an author who is offering their thoughts, which can prevent us from forming our own or hearing what God wants us to know about the passage. Each of us have been given a unique relationship with God, and He will use the Word to grow us in dynamic and mysterious ways. Don’t let someone else’s thoughts become a substitute for that.

Next time, I will share some of my thoughts about going deeper if you’ve been reading the Bible for a long time and how I’m reading the Bible a little more uniquely right now, even though I still follow the same outline as above. I’m also going to make further recommendations for apps, study Bibles, websites, and supplementary resources, and I would really love to hear yours.

If you have any specific questions you’d like me to address - whether for beginners or veterans - please either drop them in the comments, send me a message on Substack, or reply to this post via email.

Until next time, friends, may all that God created testify to His wisdom and power and divine nature, that you may be encouraged by His love all around you.