The keys aren’t yours and you can’t move a single box in yet. But you have worked out where your couch will go, and maybe your kids have even picked their bedrooms.

It’s yours and it isn’t… yet.

I think a lot of us are living in that exact stretch with God right now, somewhere between the word He gave us and actually holding the thing in our hands.

David knew that stretch better than most of us ever will.

Samuel turns up at his father’s house and pours oil over him, a teenage shepherd boy in front of his own brothers, anointing him king right there, confirmed and chosen. And then David goes back to the fields, back to the sheep, back to the exact same life he was living the day before.

It’s years before that promise becomes a throne, years spent running from Saul and hiding in caves.

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A song from our teenage days comes on the radio, and the memories of parties and young love come flooding back. Or when we walk into a thrift shop and the smell of musty fabric takes us right back to the memory of our grandparents’ house where love was overflowing and the smell of freshly baked cookies filled the air.

Maybe for you it’s something physical you’ve kept, a toy, a piece of jewellery or Great Aunt Margaret’s record collection, and as the years go on, they become more priceless and even harder to imagine parting with.

But beneath it all is our connection to a time when life felt simpler, easier and safer than the reality we live in today.

One of my favourite verses in the Bible is Isaiah 43:18-19. I love the ESV translation of this (I’m biased as that’s where God gave me the name for Spring Forth) but the NIV version puts it so perfectly.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

I love this verse because it reminds me that we can so easily cling onto the things of the past, thinking that our best days are behind us, especially when the world feels shaky, and miss what God is doing right here, right now.

This doesn’t only play out in our personal lives. It also plays out in our work.

Technology has a lot to do with this in this century. The time between build and rollout seems to be getting quicker and quicker as companies rush to be the first to the market with the latest innovative software. And as the speed picks up, we feel like we’re falling further and further behind. With many of us succumbing to being “Back in my day” or “I’m not tech-savvy” kind of people.

Now I don’t write this to add to the doom and gloom; I write this to bring some perspective to the traps we may have fallen into and what the Bible really has to say about it.

Let’s unpack the verse in Isaiah.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.”

If we are dwelling on the past or the way things have previously been done, we will miss the new thing that God is doing. In our human-ness and buying into overwhelm, we can boil God down to a one-trick pony. But let’s remember the very God who carved a path through the ocean, turned water into wine and brought a dead man back to life is the SAME God we serve today.

I mean… come on how cool is that?

“See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”

I think one of the reasons why we often miss what God is doing is that we have been subdued by the mundane. We can fall into the trap of treating each day as groundhog day rather than a fresh opportunity to be present and alert to the new things God is doing. And trust me, He’s not out of new things!

On another note, don’t be so scared of the new things that you just pick the safe road. I see this a lot. And of course we want to pick the safe, comfortable option… let’s call this the fluffy slipper option. But God wants us to be maseur sandal people (if you don’t know what these are look them up then the nostalgia will hit, trust me!). Remember those sandals that all of the older generation seemed to own? They were the kind of shoes that weren’t the trendiest to wear and were a little bit uncomfortable, but the benefits far outweighed the negatives. Like a remedial massage, but for your feet. Not always the nicest during the experience, but later, when the pain wears off, you feel much better for it.

So what are you… Are you a fluffy slipper or a maseur sandal person?

And finally, “I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Need I say more? God makes what seems impossible possible. I think this is one of the most rewarding things about having an assignment to build something with Him. The dream feels so big, impossible even, that we couldn’t possibly do it on our own. It’s only through partnering with Him in prayer that it becomes possible, and at every turn we can say, “In my strength this is impossible, but with Him, all things are possible.”

So my challenge to you today is to loosen your grip. Don’t let the way you’ve always done things steal you away from the new thing God wants to do in you and through you today.

Let us not become comfortable, fluffy slipper people, but instead embrace the discomfort of being maseur sandal people, trusting that God’s plans are well… always going to be better than ours.

Want to be encouraged and find community while you walk out your new thing?

Happy is easy to find. Happy is what you feel when your coffee is hot, your launch goes to plan, you make a new sale, or your partner comes home with a sweet treat.

Happy is great. But it’s also fragile because it depends on everything going right.

Joy is different. Joy shows up even when your coffee is cold, your launch flops, the sale falls through, and your partner remembers the sweet treat...

But eats it on the ride home.

Joy survives all of that. That’s what makes it different.

As Christians we know this. We’ve heard it, nodded along in church, maybe even own a mug or a t-shirt that says “The joy of the Lord is my strength.”

Knowing it and actually walking in it are two different things.

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Love - because it does save me a lot of time.
Hate - because I can see it sneaking into our lives in innocent ways that are starting to take us away from the very thing that makes our ideas ours in the first place. The wrestle.

This started a couple of months ago, when a client sent me something that made me question just how far these platforms were sneaking into our lives.

I had asked him for the details of the project he wanted help building. Expecting the messy thoughts, the half-formed brief or the “here’s what’s in my head” version.

What I got instead was a link to his ChatGPT chat.

At first glance, I didn’t think much of it. But as I sat hovering over the link, I felt a little uneasy.

Because what it reflected back to me wasn’t really about him. It was a pattern I’d started noticing in myself too.

I’d started going to ChatGPT or Claude as a way to bypass the brain work. The work it takes to wrestle with an idea.

The kind of wrestle it takes to consider whether what you’re creating is actually what your audience wants and needs. Whether building it is even sustainable. And above all, if it’s what God is asking you to do right now.

If we are outsourcing our thinking to AI, where does that leave God in the conversation?

Steal, Kill and Destroy… What about Confuse?

John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

I don’t know about you, but I tend to picture Satan the way movies do. Red-skinned, horns, an angry little man. But he’s much stealthier than that. If he can’t steal, kill or destroy in the physical sense, he’ll confuse and overwhelm you instead.

Overwhelm is the doorway, and we’re unknowingly leaving it wide open.

Busy calendars. Stacked schedules. Work, life, kids. So when you finally sit down to build, you’re already so depleted that you reach for the path of least resistance. And it’s at that moment you hand your thinking over to a machine.

But that’s usually when it gets harder, not easier. You’ll spend hours, sometimes days, going backwards and forwards with prompts, trying to understand what you’re actually building. Prompt, frustration, walk away, come back, prompt again, without ever really reading what came out or thinking it through.

Some of it sounds good. But the more you prompt it, the more information it gives you and the more overwhelmed you get, until you settle for what it’s given you because you’ve spent so much time feeding it information you’re too fried to tell if it’s even what you were initially hoping for. Sound familiar?

We Were Never Meant to Have It All Figured Out… That’s Half the Fun.

So why do we slip so willingly into the trap? Overwhelm gets us to open the chat window. But something deeper keeps us there, scrolling, prompting, refusing to close the tab.

Somewhere along the way, we bought into the idea that we always have to have our ducks in a row. Especially as Christians. And honestly? Sometimes I feel as Christians we can be a little more judgemental than we care to admit. Not because we mean to but because we start confusing maturity with having everything figured out. Somewhere we started believing that being a good Christian means looking like we have it all together. When really, Jesus only ever asked for our surrender, not our perfection.

When we’re so focused on getting it right, we forget what it feels like to just have a go and learn along the way. Instead of embracing the mess, we get scared of it.

This is where our friends ChatGPT and Claude are doing us a disservice. They let us skip the vulnerable, unfinished, “I don’t actually know what I’m doing yet” stage because they hand us something that looks polished instead of making us sit in our own confusion.

Getting honest and vulnerable with someone about the mess? I think some of us would shudder at the thought.

Bring People Into the Mess

It got me thinking. If we’re spending so much time with our chatbot friends, why weren’t we talking to our real life friends more about our messy, unfinished ideas BEFORE we’ve even opened that chat window? It wouldn’t take away the need to pray or do our own thinking but it would help untangle some threads.

Spaces where we bounce ideas off each other. Where we bring each other into the messy middle of building, not just the highlight reel.

Why did we start believing we had to figure everything out alone, when scripture is full of examples of God speaking through others?

One of the surprising things in my own walk has been the way God has answered some of my prayers through other people. Whether it’s a conversation, a voice note from a friend, or someone sharing a similar challenge they’ve walked through. He has a way of using our individual journeys and weaving them together.

Think about Moses. God sent Aaron alongside him instead of leaving him to figure it out alone.

Or Nehemiah. Before he told anyone else what he was building, he actually went out alone, at night, and surveyed the broken-down wall himself. He needed to see it, sit with it, understand what he was actually dealing with, before he brought anyone else in.

Once he knew what he was building, he rallied the whole city. Families built the section of wall in front of their own house (which honestly sounds like the world’s most chaotic group project) but it worked. And when things got hard, when people got discouraged or threatened, half of them kept building while half of them stood guard, side by side.

That’s the picture. Quiet discernment first, so you actually know what you’re building. Then people, shoulder to shoulder, building something messy and unfinished together.

God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So if He’s called you, why would He not equip you? Why would He not put people in your path to help you? We keep acting like He’d leave us to work it out alone. He never has.

Back to the Email from My Client

For a second, I thought about reading the chat he had sent me. It would have been easy for me to jump into the link and validate his idea from there. But he’d already said it himself “I feel like my imagination has been somewhat tarnished with AI suggestions.”

So instead I replied, “Share with me why this is important to you and why you created it.”

Wearing my marketing hat, I’ve learned an idea only lasts if it’s rooted in a deep, genuine why. Asking this question often starts to unravel what’s at the heart of it.

A little while later, he wrote back. He’d decided to hold off, not because the idea was gone, but because he wanted to go back and actually wrestle with it. To bring God back into a process that had quietly become just him and a chat window.

One honest question brought him back.

And he decided not to run ahead on excitement or borrowed momentum. But instead to come back to the wrestle and let someone else in while he did.

Maybe that’s the whole point. AI isn’t the enemy here. It’s a tool and often a genuinely helpful one. But it was never meant to do the wrestling for us. That’s still ours to do, and we don’t have to figure it all out alone.

If you’re carrying an idea, a project or something you feel called to build, and it’s looking a little messy right now, don’t let that stop you from sharing it with others. Reach out to a friend. Send a voice note. Ask someone for coffee. Say the sentence out loud before you type it into a prompt.

God’s never been short on people to send alongside you. Maybe the clarity we’ve been prompting for was never meant to be handed to us through a screen, but through someone in the room with us.

Here’s what I want you to do. Don’t finish reading this and go back to your tab.

Think of one person right now, the friend, the mentor, the person in your group chat who actually knows what you’re building. Text them. “Hey, I need a sounding board. Can I talk through with you what I’m building and why? I think I need to say it out loud to someone who isn’t a chatbot.”

Send it before you open anything else.

And if you’re sitting there and can’t think of anyone, send it to me instead. And I promise what you’ll get back is a real conversation, not a generated one.

Because just like a dandelion doesn’t show you the root work happening underground, we don’t often see what it’s really like behind the scenes of building something new either. Instead, we see a lot of the mountain top moments. The “I’ve made 100k in 30 days”, the 1000s of followers, the launch that sold out in an hour.

The things that look like success by the world’s metric.

It’s easy to get swept up when everyone else seems to be further along, especially when what you’re building is something God actually called you to do.

What we don’t often see is what that looks like from the inside. The behind-the-scenes of what it really takes to grow something.

The mess before the message.
The wobble before the win.
The faith before the fruit.

That’s the part I find myself in right now.

A message landed in my inbox last week. “Love what you’re building.” It landed on a day I was starting to question whether God was with me on this journey, or if I’d just made the whole thing up.

I replied, “I can’t tell you how much I needed to read this today. It’s tough starting something new.”

She wrote back, “It is tough, so tough, but so worth it when you’re doing what God’s spoken to you about. His plan is to prosper it. We have to keep choosing not to despise small beginnings.”

It felt like a smile from God. That whole week I’d been praying, asking Him why starting something new is this hard. Why it feels like learning, unlearning, then learning it all over again. How to walk it out, but also how to keep handing it back to Him. Over and over again.

In my journal I wrote down “A dandelion grows in the weeds yet it knows who it is.” Didn’t think much of it until He nudged me again, and I actually looked into dandelions. I was surprised by what I found.

What Dandelions and Building with God Have in Common

We all have that nostalgic childhood memory of picking a dandelion and making a wish. Maybe it’s the joy of childhood. Maybe it’s a slower, simpler time. Or maybe it was the chance that your seed would float off and your wish would actually come true.

And yet, dandelions are one of the most detested weeds around. Fast-growing root systems, they survive dry conditions, and they bounce back no matter how many times you try to remove them.

The taproot can grow 15 to 45cm down into the soil, sometimes further, long before there’s ever a flower to show for it.

You’re probably asking, ok Megan, I get it, but what does a weed have to do with building with God?

Honestly, more than I first thought.

Roots that Run Deep Will Survive the Harshest of Conditions

The most surprising thing about a dandelion is how much happens beneath the surface before you ever see a flower. Quietly, without anyone watching, the roots take ground, connecting to whatever they need to survive the conditions they’ve been planted in.

Building with God looks the same. In the early months, from the outside it looks like nothing’s happening. You’re praying over decisions nobody else can see you making. You’re taking faithful steps today, trusting God will keep you in step, or redirect you where needed.

That’s root work. Nobody’s clapping for it. It’s not part of a highlight reel. But it’s what makes everything that comes after able to survive.

The businesses and ministries that last let the root grow deep long before anyone ever saw a flower.

What Happens Beneath the Surface is in its Own Timing

A dandelion doesn’t rush the root to get to the flower faster. It takes exactly as long as it takes, and no amount of watching the ground will speed it up.

That’s the part I find hardest. Wanting to know if this is working, wanting some kind of sign it’s on track, when the honest answer is I can’t see underground any more than anyone else can. But He can. Slow and stalled feel identical from the inside. Slow just means God’s still growing it, and that might be as much as we need to know.

Even in Dry Ground, it Keeps Growing

Dandelions don’t wait for perfect conditions to grow. Cracked footpaths, dry summers, lawns people spray just to keep them out. Doesn’t matter. They keep growing anyway, even when the conditions aren’t on their side.

I think about Jesus a lot when it comes to this one. He had every reason to be discouraged. Misunderstood, rejected by His own people, walking toward a cross He knew was coming, not because it didn’t cost Him anything, but because He knew the why behind the calling.

Some weeks building feels like dry ground. Slow growth, no clear sign it’s working, building in a space where church doesn’t quite get the business and business doesn’t quite get the God part. But discouragement doesn’t have to be the default. It’s a choice, same as growing anyway is.

They Don’t Mind Starting Small

Dandelions are one of the fastest-spreading plants there is. One flower, one puff of wind, and it’s gone from a single plant to dozens more. The size it starts at has nothing to do with how far it goes.

I’m reminded of this verse:

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand. (For the seven lamps represent the eyes of the Lord that search all around the world.)” - Zechariah 4:10, NLT

Not don’t worry about it. It’ll get better soon. Despise. Like God knew we’d be tempted to look at the small, unglamorous, still underground season and decide it didn’t count. The real question isn’t whether God’s in it, or whether it’s working. It’s whether I’ll let myself despise the part I’m in right now, or trust that small isn’t the same as insignificant.

The Wind Decides Where the Seeds Land

Eventually a dandelion stops being a flower and turns into that white seed head, the one we all used to wish on as kids. One breath and it’s gone, scattered wherever the wind decides to take it. It doesn’t get a say in where any of those seeds land.

I think that’s what happens once we’ve actually stayed faithful through the root, the waiting, and the dry ground. Something starts to spread that was never really up to us in the first place. A conversation, a decision, a business, a workbook, and somewhere down the line it’s sown into someone’s life in a way we never planned or saw coming.

But that part is His. Ours is just to keep showing up and building what He’s placed in our hands, trusting He’ll handle the rest.

Strange, but freeing kind of thought.

Starting Small, On Purpose

The humble dandelion has given me a whole new appreciation for starting small. Honestly, I didn’t expect a weed to teach me anything, but here we are.

If you’re starting small too, hear this. Small is never a problem. Small is where the roots start. Every single time.

The verse in Zechariah says God rejoices to see the work begin. It doesn’t say the work finished. He’s not waiting for you to have it all figured out. He’s just glad you started. That’s more than enough for Him, even on the days it doesn’t feel like enough to you.

So here’s my question, and I’d genuinely love to know the answer. What’s your next faithful step today? Not next month’s version or the one you’ll take once it all makes more sense. Just today’s.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, I don’t even know what that step is, that’s exactly the gap the Your Next Step Workbook was built for. I walk you through my framework, map it out, walk it out, to move you from stuck and overwhelmed to one clear priority and a plan you can action this week.

Get the workbook

Take your next step and let Him handle the rest.

May you spring forth,
Megan

In 2024, I felt God ask me to close my business, The Wholistic Collective.

Not in a loud, audible-voice kind of way. Quieter than that. But somehow harder to argue with.

I was sitting with one question. What do I need to lay down to let God use me in this next season? Almost immediately, The Wholistic Collective came to mind. And there was a peace that came with it. A deep knowing I couldn’t explain, but couldn’t ignore either.

I knew what I needed to do. But honestly? I didn’t want to.

I had poured so much into that business. Years of my time, my energy, my money and my heart. I had built it from nothing, watched it grow and cared so deeply about the people it served.

Was God really asking me to walk away from something I’d worked that hard to build?

The hardest part was that I didn’t have a clear picture of what came next. No five-year plan. No backup idea sitting in my notes app. No obvious next business waiting for me.

I had peace, and not much else.

But to understand why that decision was so hard, you need to understand how The Wholistic Collective started in the first place.

The story behind The Wholistic Collective

It began in early 2021.

I stepped out on my own and started a VA business, after leaving a role where I was seeing fourteen clients a day, running on coffee, adrenaline and a pace that was never sustainable long term.

Within the first month, I was booked out. On paper, everything was working. But the reality was, I’d carried the same patterns with me. I’d left corporate, but I hadn’t left the mindset that came with it.

I still struggled to slow down. I still said yes too quickly. I still measured success by how much I could fit into a day. The only difference was that now, my own name was attached to it.

Eventually, the fatigue I’d pushed down for years caught up with me. Some mornings I’d wake up at seven, and by ten I’d already need to go back to bed.

I searched for answers everywhere I could. Naturopathy. Blood work. Kinesiology. Or anything ‘Woo’ I could get my hands on. I was trying to understand what was happening, because I knew something wasn’t right.

Then I found mould all through my apartment, quietly making everything worse.

I still remember sitting in my hotel room in Bali on a trip for my friend’s wedding. Surrounded by so much beauty, in one of the most incredible places I’d ever been, and crying because I felt so exhausted and alone in it.

That season changed how I saw health, business and faith.

Somewhere in the middle of trying to find my own way back to wholeness, I noticed something. There was a gap. I couldn’t find one place that held physical health, mental health and emotional health together, all of it split into different rooms that never talked to each other. But my own experience told me they weren’t separate. They were connected.

That’s where The Wholistic Collective began.

It wasn’t born from a business idea I thought would be profitable. It came from a problem I had personally lived through. I wanted to build the kind of space I wished I’d found when I was searching for answers myself.

Around that same time, I found myself in the back row of a Sunday service I almost talked myself out of going to. Even while I was healing, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something else in my life was missing.

I remember typing notes into my phone as the message went on. Words about shame. Belonging. Not letting go of what God had promised.

At the end of the service, the girl sitting next to me introduced herself. Her name was Grace. I’ve never forgotten the timing of that. He was calling me home.

Looking back, I can see how God was weaving things together before I even realised it. The Wholistic Collective became one of the best things I ever built. I poured more of myself, my money, my time and whatever energy I had left into it. More than I probably cared to admit at the time.

And then came the moment God asked me to release it.

When obedience doesn’t make sense yet

If you’ve never had to lay down something you built with your own hands, it’s hard to explain. From the outside, people assume there must be a strategy behind it. A bigger plan. A next step already mapped out.

But sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes there’s just obedience, and a willingness to say, God, I don’t understand this yet, but I trust You.

I believed God was asking me to close it. So I did.

For months, Spring Forth Co existed only as an idea. I wasn’t rushing to fill the gap or forcing the next thing into existence because I was uncomfortable sitting in the unknown. I was listening.

Then I read Isaiah 43:18-19. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? That’s where the name came from. Not a branding exercise. A verse that met me exactly where I was, a reminder that God is always moving, even when we can’t see it yet.

Maybe your next step isn’t the problem

If you’re reading this and you’re in your own version of this season, I want you to know something.

Maybe you already know what God has asked you to build. Maybe the question isn’t what am I called to do. Maybe the question is what is it costing me to keep carrying it the way I’m carrying it right now.

I know that place. Twenty tabs open. The endless list of things you think you should be doing. Advice from everyone around you about how you should build. The pressure to have the website, the funnel, the content strategy and the perfect offer figured out before you’ve even taken the first step.

I know that overwhelm. I’ve stood in it, and I still find myself drifting back there sometimes.

What helped me move forward wasn’t a better strategy. It was coming back to the reason I said yes in the first place.

Your why matters more than your strategy

Not the vague version of your why. The real one.

Why does this thing matter? Why are you willing to keep showing up on the hard days, the days nobody notices, the days something doesn’t work, the days you wonder if you heard God wrong?

Because those days will come. I’ve had plenty of them, and I’m still building. Some days are easier than others.

Here’s what I’ve learned. Your why has to be bigger than you. If your reason for building is only about proving something, hitting a number or showing people you can do it, eventually that runs out. But when your why is connected to who you’re serving, what you’re stewarding and what God has actually placed in your hands, it carries you differently.

Fear shrinks when the why gets bigger than you. I didn’t understand that until I lived it.

You don’t need the whole staircase

I’m not writing this from years ahead, looking back with everything figured out. I’m still in it. Building this from scratch, out loud, right now.

Some weeks that means sharing something that worked. Other weeks it means admitting something didn’t. I used to think that was the part of my story I needed to hide. Now I think it’s the whole point.

So many people are trying to build something God has placed on their heart, but they feel stuck because they think everyone else knows what they’re doing. They don’t. Most people are just taking the next step too.

You don’t need someone five years ahead of you with the perfect plan. Sometimes you just need someone who remembers what it feels like to be figuring it out. Someone who can remind you, you don’t need the whole staircase. You just need your next faithful step.

I’ve spent years inside other people’s businesses. Marketing. Events. Operations. The practical things that keep ideas moving. I’ve seen what business looks like when God isn’t part of the conversation, and I’ve seen what it looks like when He is.

I’ve made my own faith-led business decisions too, including one of the hardest ones, walking away from something I built.

Here’s what I know now. Being busy isn’t the same as being obedient.

Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is stop and ask, God, what is actually mine to do right now? Not everything. Not forever. Just right now. Maybe that’s the next conversation, the next decision, the next small act of obedience, whatever that looks like for you today.

You don’t have to force what God is growing, and you don’t have to rush into what comes next. Just pay attention.

Because often, the thing God is doing next is already beginning to spring forth. You just have to slow down enough to notice.