​Jesus was sent by God to transform the world.

Jesus did that.

At least he has certainly transformed my world.

The key to the kind of transformation that Jesus offered, the key to his example of leadership, Jesus always prioritized the importance of LOVE over the importance of power.

Jesus always prioritized HUMILITY over self-interest.

There's a story in the bible. Jesus had just finished washing his disciples' feet.

And he said:

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them."

Jesus message? Any of us who are carrying out God's call upon our lives to transform the world, any of us who are messengers, well our messages should reflected the one who sent us.

Sometimes the world needs change. Sometimes those changes are hard. God of all people understands that.

He sent his only begotten son to DIE for change.

But his son arrived in a manger, not on a throne. His son came lovingly promoting change, not threatening lives and livelihoods into demand change.

Jesus once had an experience with a woman who had committed adultery. Jesus knew she needed change. So did the rulers who were confronting her transgression.

The rulers wanted to stone her into change.

Jesus encouraged her to change with love and understanding and compassion.

So much of the world gets caught up in WHAT needs to change. I think we sometimes forget just how much emphasis God puts on HOW that change needs to come about.

If you believe that God created this universe, and I do, you certainly have to believe that any changes God wants to see in the universe could happen with the snap of his divine finger.

So why not the snap of that finger?

Maybe God is not as interested in specific changes as he is in seeing what kind of character we demonstrate and develop in the process of changing.

God always did - does - seem to place far more emphasis on transformation than change.

Change can indeed happen with the simple push of an email button.

But transformation?

That quite often requires a willingness to wash the feet of the people receiving them.

Not everyone is willing to be that kind of leader.

Jesus was.

For the world who has little interest in Jesus, that's irrelevant. And I certainly understand.

But for those of us who long to get better each day at being God's messenger, God's hands in transformation, in washing one another's feet, little will ever be more relevant.

​Sometimes we lose a job and get to feeling like this is the end.

Sometimes we get a divorce and get to feeling like this is the end.

Sometimes we have a health scare and get to feeling like this is the end.

Sometimes when we overcome an addiction we get to feeling something may have ended but there's no way anything more meaningful can begin.

A lot of things can happen in life leaving us feeling like this is the end.

There's a story in the bible, a man named Moses got upset when he saw how one of his people, the Israelites, was being treated by an Egyptian. Trying to gain favor with his people, Moses killed the Egyptian.

Moses' plan didn't go as expected. The Israelites actually turned on him for what he'd done. So Moses fled to a place called Midian, where he lived for 40 years.

I have to imagine in Midian Moses got to feeling like this is the end. I have to imagine in Midian Moses spent a lot of time replaying the past; if I had only done this, then that would have turned out better. I have to imagine in Midian Moses was spending a lot of time giving up and imagining a way forward.

I have to imagine this because in the aftermath of poor decisions in my life, in the aftermath of undesirable circumstances or events, in the aftermath of trauma and adversity, in the aftermath of many challenges in my life, I have often sensed the end.

But you know, one day, after 40 years of Moses feeling like this is the end, God showed up in a burning bush. And God called out from the bush, "Moses! Moses!".

I think God knows that we are sometimes so convinced it's the end that he shouts our name twice to assure us that he's about to introduce us to a beginning.

And God said to Moses, "“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

And Moses says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

You just know Moses had spent 40 years convincing himself how unworthy he was of rising up to what God was asking him to do. You just know Moses had spent 40 years living in his mistakes and not for a second mapping out his redemption.

But here's the thing, the thing Moses came to understand and this thing I have come to understand, when we are living in our mistakes and not mapping out our redemption, we are leaving God out of our story.

Because that IS the God story - God IS the map from mistake to redemption, from oppression to freedom, from trauma to resilience.

God is a God who shows up just when we think the story is ending and assures us that no, that is only the middle of the book. I'm about to show you the REAL ending to that story.

Moses was living in the land of Midian fully believing his best was behind him. Just like many of us are doing in the land of this Monday.

But with God, the God of redemption, the God of the cross who proved even a grave is only the middle of the story, with that God our story is never over.

You are not at the end today, my friends.

There's a burning bush waiting to remind you of that.

Listen to it.

​The boys and I went to see Captain America: Brave New World yesterday. I left feeling more uneasy than entertained.

In reflecting on it, I realized it's because there was a time when superhero movies felt like pure entertainment—spectacles of impossible feats, clear lines between good and evil, and crises that could be neatly wrapped up in two hours. But yesterday, sitting in the theater watching Captain America: Brave New World, I felt something different.

I wasn’t just watching a superhero battle villains. I was watching a world where trust is eroded, where power is constantly shifting hands, and where technology and surveillance are used as weapons.

It didn’t feel like science fiction anymore.

It felt like the news.

I realized that the movies of my youth that were once obvious science fiction are more than ever the very real non-fiction worlds my boys are growing up in.

Superhero movies that once borrowed from real-world anxieties are now movies where those anxieties have caught up with the fiction.

Government corruption and political power plays were once exaggerated in movies but now mirror the reality of shifting alliances, deep-state conspiracies, and leaders who manipulate fear.

The idea of governments or corporations monitoring every move used to feel dystopian, but now, it’s just everyday life.

Once upon a time, villains were obvious. Now, the real world—and superhero films—are filled with gray areas where truth is manipulated, and no one is sure who to trust.

I don't know if I felt more comfort or concern that my boys don't see and feel the reality in these movies that I do. That they haven't lived life long enough to see the lines of science fiction blur into the reality of the real world as drastically as I've watched them blur.

I do find myself wondering this morning, as a Christian, if maybe this is a natural and not accidental progression of things?

The best superhero films used to transport us into worlds far from our own. Now, instead of being an escape, they feel like an eerie reflection of the reality we live in. Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t just ask what it means to be a hero—it forces us to wrestle with the uncomfortable question: Can a single hero even save a world like this anymore?

Maybe we are all supposed to get to a place of knowing the answer to that question is no. Maybe it's in a mass recognition of that reality that we all have a mass recognition of the hope that can only be found in Jesus?

That would make sense to me personally, as my own faith journey has been one that could be described as the lines of science fiction blurring into the very truths of the foundations I now stand on.

Still, I do miss the days when science fiction felt more fiction than it felt yesterday.

I miss the days when science fiction felt like escape and not a reminder of the world waiting outside the theatre doors.

​"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" ~Jesus

In his dying moments, Jesus was completely vulnerable with God.

I wrote yesterday about my emotional immaturity, and how that often looked like me using the silent treatment against people in my life. But long before I ever used the silent treatment against people, I used it against God.

I grew up believing that if God ever discovered who I really was, there would be hell to pay.

Literally.

I grew up believing that a relationship with God looked like showing up to church, it looked like honoring sacraments, to include the sacrament of confessing every screw up the moment I screwed up.

I used to confess to made up offenses to church leaders that sounded less damaging than my real offenses. I'm not sure if lying to God or lying to my authority figures came first when it came to my attempts to avoid wrath, but they were connected for sure.

Either way, avoiding wrath certainly made me great at lying.

The reality is the silent treatment is a variation of lying. The silent treatment, at its core, is a form of deception—not in the outright, spoken sense, but in the way it manipulates truth by omission. It distorts reality by withholding the full picture of what’s happening inside us.

When we go silent, we send the message that everything is fine—or at least that the other person should figure out what’s wrong without us naming it. It keeps people in the dark about our emotions, preventing them from responding honestly or helpfully.

"My God, my God, why have your forsaken me."

For most of my life, I never knew THAT God. The God who longed to know when I felt forsaken. The God who longed to enter into my struggles and not see in them a pathway to hell.

You know, just before Jesus was being completely vulnerable with God, "my God my God", he formed a relationship with a man being killed on a cross next to him. A thief who opened his heart to Jesus, who opened his heart to the thief in return.

Quite often our emotional availability to God looks like our emotional availability to those next to us.

Quite often, if we have learned it's a good idea to hide our real selves from God, then we come to believe it's a good idea to hide ourselves from those next to us.

And quite often, the God who can be the most powerful voice inside the deepening silence in a relationship ends up being the one who gets the silent treatment the loudest.

If I am honest, I didn't cry out to God in the midst of my silent marriage. Not really. And if I am honest, a big part of me believed that God wanted to use the pain of that brokenness to inflict penance on me for so many sins of my past.

I have also had to consider that I didn't cry out to God for fear he would actually heal all that was broken, and rob me of my chance for self-inflicted penance.

I have come a long way with this idea of God - in my relationship with Him. I am sure there are some days God wishes I would go back to the silent treatment; I have no hesitation these days to cry out, fully exposed, my God my God.

I have destroyed a lot of relationships along the way because I treated the people in my life like I treated God. But it is my hope that by being less inclined these days to use the silent treatment with God, that I will be less inclined to ever use it with anyone else in my life ever again.

That is a big ask, I know.

But it is also an ask I am no longer afraid to make.

And that is growth.

That is the opposite of silence. 

​In the aftermath of a broken 22-year relationship, a life partner accused me of being emotionally abusive. I am certain in her mind it didn’t sound like an accusation, but in my mind, she might as well have been accusing me of murder.

It's hard to be called an abuser.

But I am here to tell you there’s something even harder than being called an abuser. It’s coming to accept the truth in that accusation. It’s hard to accept that harsh accusations are harsh truths.

On my way to Atlanta earlier this week, I listened to part of Mel Robbins’ book, Let Them. I am stuck on Chapter 7. Chapter 7 of her book may end up being one of the most significant chapters of any book I have ever read. At least as it pertains to my own personal growth.

Chapter 7: When Grown Ups Throw Tantrums.

Robbins started the chapter by suggesting that most of us are walking around with the emotional maturity of 8-year-olds in big people bodies. She suggested that we are to some degree, many of us to a large degree, emotionally immature.

She didn’t say that as belittlement. She actually said it with great compassion.

Robbins said, “growing up, you were probably taught to repeatedly repress what you feel. You know, when you tell a child to get over it or stop crying or calm down, you're training them to suppress how they feel. You're teaching them that you're not supposed to feel or react. You’ve got to distract, avoid, or numb those normal healthy emotions.”

Robbins would go on to share that a therapist told her that this is why so many people live with anxiety and depression and addiction and chronic pain because they have avoided all the emotions over the years that then build up inside of them without any outlet.

Then she went on to address the silent treatment. And I went on to hit that replay button over and over.

About the silent treatment, Robbins said, “silent treatment is what an immature adult does when they're upset, and they don't know how to process their emotions in a healthy and respectful manner. So, what do they do instead?”

They stop talking.

They pretend nothing's wrong.

And often, they ignore you.

Robbins added, “and if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of the silent treatment from a friend or family member or coworker, it’s painful.”

My personal guess is, if you’re on the receiving end of it, it may feel abusive. And if you’re someone coming to realize this while reading chapter 7 of Let Them, you can start feeling like an abuser.

But then comes once again the compassion from Robbins. The compassion that can grow from emotional intelligence and emotional maturity.

She said, “an immature adult uses the silent treatment because they don't know how to process their own emotions. And so, they go silent and just drop this guillotine and cut off all contact because they hope you're gonna come over to them. They want you to ask what's wrong so that they don't have to deal with their emotions by themselves."

In those words, I came to understand me in a way I don’t think I ever had. Because most of my life that’s exactly what I did, use the silent treatment in hopes that someone would ask me what is wrong. I didn’t KNOW that’s what I was doing, but it IS what I was doing.

Somewhere inside of me I always longed to release all of the pain that had built up over the years, but didn’t have it in me, not by a longshot, to say to someone, I’d like to talk about all of this pain I have built up inside me.

I had NEVER seen anyone do anything remotely similar to that, I sure as hell had no idea how to do that myself.

Hearing chapter 7, and these insights from Robbins on the silent treatment, I realized I had spent most of my life using the silent treatment in that manner. Using it to beg people to ask me what is wrong because that felt easier than talking to someone about everything that was wrong.

I used the silent treatment as a kid, and as a teen, and in every relationship I ever had.

Robbins says, “until a person does the work to build the skills of emotional intelligence, they're always going to pull the silent treatment. They will always play the victim, and they will always be passive-aggressive. This isn't a personality trait, it's a pattern.”

Again, not easy to hear. But on the other hand, when you hear the way you’ve handled your emotions isn’t about a broken personality, but instead just the carrying on, over and over, of the patterns of your childhood, there is almost something freeing about that.

Freeing to understand a lot of who you are is who you were patterned to be and not who you decided to be.

Patterns built into you by abuse that was likely just the continuation of someone else’s patterns and not their personality traits.

How much harm is caused not by malicious intent, but by people unknowingly repeating the emotional patterns they inherited? Patterns they never learned to name—let alone break?"

How much abuse is simply carrying out patterns of emotions people have no capacity at all to interpret, let alone interpret as abuse?

I don’t offer any of this up as an excuse. Excuses have no value at this point.

But I do believe there is value in helping people understand themselves and understand the people across from them.

Robbins says to people who may be reading chapter 7 and realizing to some degree this chapter is about them and their own emotional immaturity: “You're not alone. I had that realization about myself too. And it takes a lot of courage to admit that you got work to do. It's so easy to see this immature behavior in other people. But it takes a level of bravery and emotional intelligence to see it in yourself.”

I also want to suggest that when we are on the receiving end of the silent treatment, emotional maturity may help us lean with compassion into the possibility this abuse isn’t at the hands of an abusive personality but rather a continuation of a pattern that goes back decades.

When we are on the receiving end of the silent treatment and receive it as an attack, it’s easy for silent treatments to breed more silent treatments.

Until a relationship becomes nothing BUT silence.

And the one thing that thrives in silence is resentment. Resentment until no one really cares at all about what is going on inside the person across from them. You come to resent the silence more than you have any compassion for the patterns beneath it.

Silence becomes an attack, it becomes abuse, not a call for help.

Not everyone can break the patterns of their life to the point that they can break their dependence on the silent treatment. I never could, at least not until I became painfully aware of my patterns. I am grateful that my emotional age is higher than 8 today, even if I have a long way to go to reach maturity.

I will also acknowledge there are certainly times to realize you are indeed the victim of a silent treatment you can no longer allow yourself to be a victim of. You need to allow for one's emotional immaturity while allowing yourself to no longer be a victim of it.

But there are also times, maybe, that being aware of emotional patterns offers an avenue to helping someone explore their patterns. Patterns they have unknowingly, often, used the silent treatment to hide from.

Patterns that have resulted in them abusing themselves while at the exact same time abusing the people around them.

Breaking generational patterns takes courage. It takes even more courage to enter into another person’s silence—not as a victim or an adversary, but as someone willing to see beyond the silence and into the pain that created it.

That kind of bravery could change everything.

​Maybe it started when I was a kid. I made a list of everything I wanted for Christmas. Some of those gifts showed up under the tree, some didn’t. But because there was a list—an inventory of sorts—I was acutely aware of what was missing.

I don’t remember throwing any ungrateful tantrums. Although I was a kid, so it’s possible. But to this day, decades later, I can still remember certain gifts I asked for but never received.

If we’re not careful, we can develop the same way of thinking when it comes to the gifts inside us. The gifts we’ve been given to become who we were fully made to become. The gifts we’ve been given to fully contribute to the world all we are capable of contributing.

Yet, instead of using the gifts we have, we focus on the ones we think we lack. The ones we believe we need before we can begin. The ones we think would change everything if only we had them.

But what if the real tragedy isn’t missing gifts—it's missing the value in the ones we already have?

A speaker I heard this week said this: our capacity to inspire begins when our passions meet our gifts. But research tells us that we spend more time addressing our weaknesses than building on our strengths. We focus on fixing what we think is broken about us instead of building on the parts of us that work best.

Here’s something worth considering—legacies aren’t built by fixing weaknesses. Legacies are built at the intersection of our gifts and passion. If you think of someone who's made a difference in your life, chances are it came on the other end of them being passionate enough about some gift they had that they ended up being a gift to you.

I lived this truth for years. I always wanted to write. Sometimes I was fully aware of that, sometimes it felt like a writer was just renting an apartment inside me. But one way or another, writing was always whispering to me.

Still, I never wrote. I told myself I’d love to be a writer, but since I didn’t have a job that made me a writer, I figured it just wasn’t an option. I was waiting on the right circumstances.

The gift of time.

The gift of a writing job.

The gift of validation.

Then Elliott was born. His rough start in life meant a week in the NICU, and I began writing hospital updates for friends and family. When he got better, I stopped writing. But then something surprising happened. People reached out and said they missed my updates. They missed my writing.

So, I kept writing. And one way or another, I’ve been writing ever since.

That moment taught me something that has shaped my entire life. God wasn’t waiting to hand me the missing gifts I thought I needed. He was waiting for me to wake up the ones I already had.

And I wonder—how many of us have ‘if only’ gifts inside us? Gifts we’d use if only the right circumstances came along. If only we had more time. If only we had more support. If only we had the right audience, the right opportunity, the right moment.

But legacy? Legacy pushes us to create circumstances to share our gifts instead of waiting on the gift of circumstances to invite us into sharing them.

Because when we do that—when we use what we’ve been given instead of longing for what we haven’t—something powerful happens. We don’t just find purpose. We begin to shape legacy.

We often remember people not because they worked hard to compensate for their weaknesses but because they were wise enough to lean fully into their strengths. (Even as I AM a giant fan of resilience). They gave the world something no one else could because their passion and their gifts met, and something lasting was created in that space.

How many people die with gifts that fell asleep and never woke up? Gifts that might have lived on long after they were gone?

Don’t let your gifts fall asleep waiting on the right conditions. Make a list—not of the gifts you wish you had, but of the ones already inside you. And then give yourself and the world the best gift of all.

Start using them.

Your legacy is waiting at the intersection of your gifts and passion.

Your gifts are waiting for their wake-up call.

​Yesterday, I heard a presenter say, "we are all gifted; the question is: how." She offered that one of our greatest challenges as leaders is to help each other discover exactly what one another's gifts are.

I thought about that. I thought about how I feel like we have leaders who are trying to sort out the gifted from those who have none. Sort out those who are worthy of a space here and those who are not. Leaders bent on determining who are the grand contributors, and who among us don't contribute enough?

Our presenter gave the example of fireflies. Research has proven that fireflies who "light up" together have a much higher survival rate than fireflies who "light up" alone. And because fireflies know this, they put a lot of effort into synchronizing their light patterns.

In terms of the firefly's survival, it makes much more sense to help an out of synch firefly get synchronized than it does to abandon them.

Or evict them.

It's the way of Jesus, you know. Jesus didn't come to sort the valuable from the unvaluable. He came to insist, and to die as proof, that we ALL have value. Jesus held himself personally responsible for helping each of us see our internal value, and upon his departure, made each of us responsible for helping other's find theirs.

He said it in a way that didn't make it sound or feel optional.

I believe we have gone overboard in America with our belief in independence, in this belief that we can go it alone. Go it alone as individuals and as a nation. We have gone overboard in our belief that we have systems capable of sorting out those who have enough worth to help us prosper and those who stand in the way of it.

Maybe because we've come to adopt prosperity as the mission and not a beautiful outcome of fireflies lighting up together?

I fear that many will miss the richness of paradise, even as they stand in the middle of it, for having spent so much of their time while outside of it never coming to understand what the meaning of rich truly is.

I sat with colleagues at dinner last night, so many of us who are SO very different. But everyone was welcome at the table.

And indeed, everyone was NEEDED at the table.

I felt a bit like a firefly.

I have this dream that we will ALL one day feel a little more like the firefly.

We are all gifted, the question is: how?

​Elliott got notification yesterday that he'd been accepted to attend Virginia Tech University. On the surface, college acceptance is an awesome milestone in a kid's life. But I know this milestone reaches far beneath my kid's surface, which makes it all the more meaningful to this dad.

I know Elliott believed getting into the school he most wanted to get into was a longshot. I know he'd already prepared consolation speeches to himself that would allow him to move on to plan B with much feigned excitement. I know he was already playing out his reaction to friends celebrating acceptance while he crawled out from under a nuclear bomb of rejection.

I know Elliott spent a lot of time leading up to yesterday bracing himself for the worst, and not planning for the best.

I know this because of small conversations we had along the way that offered me the kind of clips a dad gets when their kid isn't up for telling him the whole story.

Many times because the kid doesn't even KNOW the whole story.

When I was Elliott's age, I had NO idea that I was much better at pretending to have confidence than actually having it. I was much better at creating an image of being in charge of the world to hide my fear that the world would always be falling apart.

Some stories you don't piece together until many years after you haplessly drank yourself through your own college experience to hide the belief you had no business being there. Its a story you don't piece together until many years later when your story is all about what college wasn't instead of anything that it was.

I am not the kind of dad who tells his kids everything is going to work out okay. I have lived enough life to know that may be one of life's grandest lies. Even if I do believe in a God who makes much more than okay out of everything that doesn't work out okay. I've lived enough of life to discover that as well.

Still, I was sure hoping this one would work out ok for my kid.

I am glad that Elliott really wanted to go to Virginia Tech.

I am glad that Elliott didn't think it would happen.

And I am more than glad that it did.

Because unlike me, Elliott is going off to an experience he truly longs to experience. He is doing so knowing that even in spite of expecting the worst, in spite of believing he wasn't worthy of the experience, someone else saw something very different.

Life works better for you when you believe life is calling you and not rejecting you. And in Elliott's smile yesterday when he was telling me about the acceptance, I felt that for him. I felt my kid being called by life.

And if that college acceptance notice ends up being nothing more than that - a voice calling out on behalf of life - that will be more than enough for this dad.

It would be many decades beyond my teenage years before I would hear that voice. So to celebrate my teen kid hearing it yesterday, well life's gifts don't get much more precious than that.

​"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8)

On this Valentine's Day, a day that celebrates love and affection, I can't help but wonder if we are running out of both.

Not running low, but running out.

We are a world that with rapid acceleration is trading in compassion for power, human touch for screen touch, faith for certainty, conviction for convenience, wisdom for information, wonder for skepticism, joy for distraction, reconciliation for division, and maybe most of all, sacrifice for self-preservation.

God called Himself love—not strategy, not dominance, not efficiency. Love. And in His design, He wove that love into our very biology, creating oxytocin—the chemical that bonds mother to child, friend to friend, spouse to spouse, and even human to God - (research shows our oxytocin levels rise when we pray or mediate or engage in a spiritual practice).

Oxytocin, it's the substance that reminds us we belong to each other. That we need each other.

But are we starving ourselves of it?

When our interactions are reduced to screens, when disagreement turns into division, when leadership prioritizes winning over loving, is it any wonder we feel more isolated, more exhausted, more adrift? Love is not only being abandoned as a guiding principle—it’s being biologically depleted in the way we now live.

In a world that was founded on love, created by a God to promote our capacity to survive and thrive on love, injected within us as a hormone to fuel and spread this love, it is of no small consequence to live in a world running low on love.

When the body runs low on oxytocin, we have higher cortisol levels, meaning higher stress and anxiety. I know there are people feeling this.

Oxytocin is critical for trust, empathy and bonding. Without it the world becomes isolated, connections shatter. I've written extensively about the loneliness epidemic. Here we are.

Low oxytocin levels can make people more guarded and suspicious, leading to increased fear in social situations.

Oxytocin helps lower blood pressure and promote heart health. It is also linked to anti-inflammatory effects. Lack of love is often a quiet killer.

And when oxytocin is low, people may turn to quick-fix dopamine hits (e.g., social media, substance use, or unhealthy habits) to compensate for the lack of connection. We spend a lot of time blaming our borders for our drug crisis; it might be time to look inside our borders at our lack-of-love crisis.

On Valentine's Day, we often spend a lot of time reflecting on a sentimental kind of love, but love runs deeper than sentimentality, it's actually a necessity. We often point to hate as a killer, but what really is the difference between hate and a lack of love and compassion?

Physiologically, it turns out, not much difference at all.

And yet, the beautiful thing about love is that it doesn’t depend on systems or governments. It depends on people who refuse to let it die. Every hug, every act of kindness, every conversation that leans toward understanding instead of judgment—these are not small things.

They are revolutions against the depletion of love.

So today, on a day meant to celebrate love, I don’t just hope for romance or grand gestures. I pray for a return to what God designed us for. That we choose love—not just as a feeling, but as a FORCE. That we create it, share it, and replenish it in a world desperately running low.

Because love, real love, has never been dependent on who holds office. It has always been dependent on who holds space for others. Who FIGHTS for those spaces for and with others. Someone else's unwillingness to do so is not the same as permission for me to do so.

That fight is still within our power. Nothing will dissuade me or discourage me from believing in that fight.

From fighting that fight.

Hug someone today.
Drop your screen long enough today to gaze into the eyes of another human.
Pray.
Meditate.
Worship.
Share joy or laughter with someone.
Thank someone.
Donate to someone.
Take a walk in nature - (love for nature is real and replenishes oxytocin).

Just be someone's Valentine today. Not the sentimental kind, but the God kind.

Love.

​I’ve encountered a mess or two in my life. More than a few, if I’m being honest—and plenty of them were messes of my own making. Either way, in the middle of some of the messiest messes, I’ve found myself asking, God, where the heck are You?

Have you ever asked someone a question, only to realize they aren’t going to answer it? Either they stay silent, or they say something that doesn’t remotely sound like a response to what you asked.

Gideon had this experience with God once.

He was in a mess. And right in the middle of it, God showed up and called Gideon a mighty warrior. Because that’s exactly what you want to hear when you’re losing a battle with your mess, right? Someone calling you a warrior?

Especially when that someone is God.

Gideon responded out loud with a question I’ve often kept to myself: If I’m such a mighty warrior, then why am I in this mess? And while we’re at it, God, why did You wait until my life fell apart before deciding to show up?

God’s answer? Almost dismissive. “Go in the strength you have and save Israel.”

I’ve come to realize something: there are times in life when God doesn’t feel the need to explain His whereabouts in my messes. Not because He’s indifferent, but because He understands better than I do that the answers I long for aren’t found outside the mess. They’re found going through it.

God showed up to remind Gideon that he wasn’t in a mess because he wasn’t a warrior—he was in a mess because he was a warrior who wasn’t acting like one.

How many of our messes come not because we aren’t strong enough to face them, but because we refuse to be strong enough?

How many messes feel overwhelming because we assume God isn’t with us—when, in reality, the mess is the very place He’s calling us to find Him?

We will all face personal messes. We will all face cultural messes. And there is a spiritual enemy that wants us to believe the mess is too big to tackle. Too big for us. Too big for God.

This enemy wants to leave us in a state of shouting, “Where are You, God?”

But in the mess, God wants us to hear: “Go in the strength you have.”

Not as a scolding, but as a reminder.

Because the strength you have? It’s more than enough for the mess when that strength is God.

There are times when our children are begging us to explain ourselves. And there are times when we simply tell them - Go.

We are children who more than ever need to hear - go in the strength you have.

Pastor Robby Hilton says, "sometimes the why isn't understood in a conversation, it's understood in the going."

Go.