​I believe in Jesus.

I believe that Jesus was born to a virgin.

I believe that Jesus was crucified on a cross and then died and three days later rolled away a stone and walked out of a tomb to briefly walk the earth again.

And then, shortly after that, Jesus ascended into heaven.

I believe that Jesus did all of that so that I too may one day ascend to heaven to live with him.

I believe all of that. Quite strongly. And, at the same time, I acknowledge and totally get that to some that sounds like a really crazy thing to believe.

But do you know what sounds crazier to me personally? It sounds crazier to write that I DO believe all of that, and yet, at the same time, I confess that some days my situation feels so challenging that I don't believe Jesus can do anything with it at all.

Sure, I would never sat that out loud in the moment of my challenging situation, but does it make any difference what I'm not saying out loud if my body is loudly feeling full of fear and panic and grief?

Does it matter that I absolutely believe Jesus came to be my way out of the darkest of places and yet, at times, I find myself feeling trapped in the darkest of places?

How does such belief and reality live together in such tension?

The answer isn't an easy one. But one I continue to know and feel with more faith every day. And that is believing Jesus is the way out of darkness doesn’t mean I will never find myself there again.

It simply means the darkness no longer gets the final word.

Growing in faith isn’t forever outgrowing the feeling of being trapped; its coming to believe there will always be a way through even when I can't see it in the moment. My life is living proof of this, for I wake up this morning on the other side of many things in my life for which I once believed there couldn't possibly be an other side.

I've come to believe—and know—that my belief and reality meet here: Jesus never promised I would never experience darkness. He promised I would never experience it alone.

I think too many days I'm looking for the stone to be rolled away in my life, when instead I need to be looking for the one who has already rolled it away.

​It's Georgia Jewel weekend. Which means I have a lot of memories popping up. It's hard to believe it's been 8 years since I first attempted to conquer that monster.

Attempted I say.

And failed....

In 2018, I signed up to run the 35-mile Georgia Jewel Trail Race course through the mountains of northern Georgia. My friends Donna and Anthony were so sure I'd finish it that they made me a plaque beforehand to honor the completion of my first ultramarathon.

Eighteen miles into the race that day, it became clear they'd given me the award quite prematurely.

At least that's how I looked at it back then.

Two years after that failed attempt, in the year of 2020 (we all remember THAT year), during one of the darkest periods of my life, I returned to Georgia. And I completed that 35-mile race.

There is a scripture from the bible on the plaque my friends made me:

"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith."

I look back on that 2018 race and remember that nothing in me believed I could keep going that day. I had no perseverance.

So, I quit.

To be honest, when I returned to Georgia in 2020, I don't know that I had any more belief that I could keep going then than I did in 2018. But I felt this sense of urgency—this desire and desperate need to keep going—that I didn't have two years prior.

Maybe because my battle to keep going was as intense outside of those woods as it was inside them on that rugged trail. And just maybe my friends' plaque wasn't two years early after all, but right on time.

"Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us...."

We all have a race to run. And sometimes memories that pop up from segments of the race already run aren't memories at all.

They are reminders.

Reminders that the strength that lived within us to do what once felt impossible still lives within us.

And so I feel compelled to remind you. If you are reading this, you have memories of overcoming some hard stories in your life. You have crossed some finish lines—be it in the woods or outside of them—that would make me marvel at your strength and perseverance.

So please, take a moment and YOU marvel at your strength.

You marvel and be reminded you can and will absolutely keep going.

The race is not over.

Together, we must all keep going.

​Several years ago, I met my friend Brenda. And when you get to know Brenda, one of the first things you learn is that she loves horses.

I admit. When I first met her and she'd talk about her relationship with horses, I thought it sounded odd. Mainly because it truly was a relationship she was describing.

As time went on, though, and she'd talk about the healing she experienced through them, and how others experienced it as well, I began to believe her. I began to consider that maybe horses were created for something more than human pleasure.

I think one of the reasons I started to believe this was because she described a peace that came through horses that I myself experienced when I took a walk in the woods. I began to consider that horses and a mountain trail weren't all that different.

Last week, Brenda let me know she'd be showing her two horse friends—Adam and Noble—at a horse show in Lexington, VA this weekend. I knew I'd be traveling past there on my way home from a work event, so I told her I'd like to stop and experience this whole horse show world.

And what an experience it was.

I think the first thing I noticed was a truth: Brenda really did have a relationship with these horses. They REALLY did understand her—and she them. And there is no other way to describe this relationship than love.

Their connection is love.

And when they entered the ring to show, that love showed up as two creatures—woman and horse— willingly (or maybe stubbornly in Noble's case) working together to perform something magical.

For to look at them as simply navigating a course of jumps is to miss the beauty of what is really happening out there. Much like I came to understand the beauty of a walk in the woods was much more beautiful than a man walking among the aesthetic pleasures of nature.

Sometimes my Christian faith get interpreted in a very human-centered way. God loves me. God speaks to me. Creation was made for me.

But my bible paints a much broader picture than this.

Genesis repeatedly describes creation as good before humans ever arrived. The Psalms describe the heavens as shouting out God's glory. Jesus talks about how much God pays attention to the sparrows and the wildflowers. Paul wrote about ALL of creation groaning and longing for God.

The biblical story doesn't portray humans as the only part of creation containing evidence of God. It portrays ALL of creation with God's fingerprints ALL over it.

I'll be be honest, as my long work week drug on, it got harder to think about stopping on my way home. But lately I've been actively reminding myself that my world gets to feeling empty not because the world is empty, but because I do not often enough stop to fill myself with the beauty this world has to offer me.

My emptiness can often be far more laziness that emptiness.

As I left Brenda and Noble and Adam yesterday afternoon, I felt God remind me that his presence is everywhere—it is truly in every created thing. For me to not believe that or feel that is not evidence otherwise, but rather, evidence that my attention might be too focused on me.

Too lazy to look outside of me.

God is wanting to talk to me in far more places than I often stop to listen.

I am so glad I stopped in Lexington, VA.

And I am oh so grateful for all I heard.

​One of the most challenging things to accept in my relationship with God is that not everything God does or allows in my life is about me.

God is others centered—look no further than him allowing his only son to die on a cross for everyone else.

It then begs the question. Is it possible that if God will sacrifice his own son for others, some of MY hardships might be for others as well? Is it possible that my relationship with God is not just about me and God, but about me and God and everyone else in the world?

Many weekends, I meet a friend for a long walk. We meet at a local coffee shop. And there, we've befriended a young barista.

Yesterday, our barista friend was sharing some challenges of being a young twenty-something. And I found myself giving her advice. Not so much by advising, but by sharing some lessons learned from my own twenty-somethings (and beyond). Lessons learned from experiences that most days I wish I'd never experienced.

I won't pretend to know God well enough to suggest that God had this planned all along. That there would be struggles in my twenties that many decades later I'd share with a young barista struggling with her twenties. But I also think it would be totally missing the magnitude of God if I were to believe this is nothing more than coincidence.

This happens way too often in my life for me to believe that.

Many days when my relationship with God feels off kilter, it's because MY LIFE feels off kilter. But what if my life off kilter is some ultimate gift for someone else whose life is feeling off kilter? What if what does not feel in the best interest of me is absolutely in the best interest of someone else? And what if one of the end goals of a relationship with God is to not only to be accepting of that, but to somehow rejoice in it?

I confess, I have some hardships in my life that are hard accepting or even celebrating simply because they might now or one day fulfill a purpose God wants fulfilled in someone's else's life. I can do that today more than I ever have, but I have a long way to go.

Which only makes me admire and love God all the more. The God who watched his son die an agonizing death to fulfill a grander purpose for everyone else.

And not only was God accepting of this, it was his plan all along.

I have a tendency to want to make life about me.

But it is not.

​In the bible, we read about Israel's search for a new king.

God told the prophet Samuel to go to the home of a man named Jesse in Bethlehem because one of Jesse’s sons would be the next king.

So, Samuel went.

When Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab, came before Samuel, Samuel was impressed. Eliab looked like a king. He was apparently tall and strong and Samuel immediately thought, this has to be the guy.

But God basically told Samuel: Don’t be impressed by what he looks like. People look at what’s on the outside. I look at the heart.

So Eliab wasn’t the one.

Jesse brought another son to Samuel.

Not him.

Then another.

Not him either.

One by one, seven of Jesse’s sons stood before Samuel, and every time God said, No. That’s not the one.

Samuel had to be confused at this point. God had specifically told him that the future king was one of Jesse’s sons.

So Samuel asked Jesse: “Are these all the sons you have?”

And Jesse said, Well, there is one more. The youngest. But he’s out in the field taking care of the sheep.

And as it turned out, the one not even invited to the party, the one out in the fields working away without any understanding of this search for a king, this son named David, he was the one.

He was the new king Samuel was sent to find.

This story is uplifting to me. I remember being a kid standing in the middle of open fields. Hiding. Seeking isolation. Somewhere deep inside—and maybe at times, not so deep inside—believing surely there is no grand purpose for this life of mine.

And yet, here I am today. Not a king, for sure, but experiencing a feeling of being called in from those fields for God to say: this is the one.

This is the one to be called in from isolation to promote healing and connection.

This is the one who knows what it feels like to hide, called to help others come out of hiding.

This is the one who knows what it is like to feel unseen, called to help people feel seen, heard, and known.

This is the one who has carried hurt, called to help others discover hope in the middle of theirs.

This is the one who spent years judging himself, called to invited others to release all judgment and adopt curiosity.

This is the one who once went to the fields to disappear, called back into the fields looking for people who still believe disappearing is their safest option.

And all of that leaves me wanting to remind you, remind you that if you feel like you are out alone in the field, out there feeling forgotten in the grander purposes of life—you are the one.

You may feel forgotten in the field, but God knows exactly where you are.

You may feel outside of God's plan in the field, but sometimes, the field IS God's plan.

You may be in the field, but God will always find you there.

​According to an old bible story, it was the end of a long day of teaching when Jesus said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." So, the disciples and Jesus piled into a boat and began to make their way.

Then, a storm came up from out of nowhere. A violent and life-threatening storm.

The disciples were terrified. Jesus was not. In fact, Jesus was sound asleep.

The panicked disciples woke Jesus up and basically asked him, what on earth is wrong with you? Don't you care that we're all about to drown?!?!

Jesus got up. Wiped his eyes. Turned his attention to the storm and told it to be quiet. The storm complied. The weather became completely calm.

The disciples had to be wondering, what's up with this guy? We were all perfectly safe and calm, having a wonderful day at the beach, and He drags us out into a storm that he surely knew was coming.

In a recent sermon, Steven Furtick said, "There's something God is trying to teach you in the storm he couldn't teach you on the shore."

Jesus wanted the disciples to learn that when he says we're headed to the other side, we are going to get to the other side. No storm is going to derail the plan.

It's a hard reality of life. Our best teacher is the teacher we least want to be around: The Storm. In the midst of a storm, we are much more likely to say, "go away, Storm," than we are to say, "thank you for being such a great teacher, Storm."

People have told me I am wise. I don't know how true that is, even if do feel as wise as I've ever felt. But to the degree that it is true, I know the wisdom is a gift from God—and the gift has been delivered through many, many storms.

Discovering this has helped me a lot. It is rare that I panic in the storms these days. Or, at least, it's much rarer than it used to be. In the midst of storms these days, I am much less likely to believe Jesus is asleep at the wheel, and much more likely to believe Jesus is wide awake and taking me somewhere I desperately need to go.

Somewhere I'd likely never go if it weren't for a storm.

Storms can feel like chaotic experiences without direction. But the reality is, the storms are often full of direction.

Full of instruction.

Full of wisdom.

I know it's natural to pray the storms away. I get it. But as hard as it is to accept, sometimes the storms are exactly what we need in our lives.

It can feel like the storm ruins a good day at the beach; maybe we have to start looking at the storm a little differently.

​The things people will praise us for are not always the same things that God will praise us for. And if you're someone who aims to receive the praise of God, that's important to meditate on.

We live in a time when it is easier than ever to seek the approval of people. This very site is willing to pay you if enough people respond to your content.

There's nothing wrong with that. I think people should be able to make money with their messages. But the more one gets paid because people like their messages, the more inclined one can become to create messages they know people will like.

If you're anything like me, and you feel called to put messages into the world that honor God, you eventually discover a quiet competition taking place inside you. It's a competition between the praise of people and the praise of God. And again, the problem is, the things people applaud are not always the same things God delights in.

I believe, to some degree, we all crave praise. We crave to be seen and known and valued. It is written into our being from the moment of birth, when we fight with all our baby might to be accepted by those around us.

It is a fight we never truly relinquish.

For those of us who believe in God, we are asked to find God's praise sufficient. We are asked to find it more than enough to know that God sees us and knows us and values us. We are asked to know this because it protects us from becoming addicted to the praise of man.

But you know what? Personally, I find that difficult. Because the approval of people can sometimes feel more real than the approval of God. And in the moments when I'm just not feeling God's high fives, I can always do something to gain man's high five. Which can make the high fives of man very seductive.

Of course, none of this is challenging if you crave no one's praise more than another's. Praise is simply praise.

But me personally, I long most to receive the praise of God in my life. Which requires me to constantly ask, "I hear the approval of man in this, but do I hear the approval of God?"

And when the answer is no, I must ask, "Am I willing to abandon the approval of man—and all that comes with that approval—to hear the approval of God?"

Those are tough questions to answer, especially living in a day when the approval of man can come with great benefits—to include power and money and fame. But for one like me, seeking to hear the praise of God, they are questions that can not go unasked.

Or unanswered.

"For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?... If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ."
— Galatians 1:10

​I previously wrote about the book Theo of Golden and how it touched my life. Many others have done the same. And I love that even now, people are still describing their own relationship with the book.

Oprah Winfrey recently hosted Allen Levi—author of Theo of Golden—on The Oprah Podcast. As part of their conversation, she invited musician Walker Hayes to share his thoughts on the book. He too shared that the book touched him in a powerful way.

He said, "Theo to me is an adopter, kind of like God is. And it made me want to adopt every single person I meet."

My beliefs about God say this is true, that God has indeed adopted us all. No matter our size, shape, color, flaws, or insecurities—God looks at each of us and proudly declares, oh how I want you to be my child.

It is also true that in the book—Theo of Golden, the main character, Theo, lives a life committed to adopting people. And in many cases, people others might not be as willing to adopt.

What I find myself wondering this morning, after listening to this conversation between Allen Levi and Oprah and Walker Hayes, is how freely do I long to adopt every single person I meet?

How unconditionally?

For it is one thing to call myself an adopter, it is quite another to actually adopt.

It is one thing to adopt the adoptable, it is quite another to show up at a park bench, day after day, to celebrate strangers who often bring with them lives full of hurts and brokenness.

God's greatest call on my life is to adopt all.

This fictional character, Theo, lived out this call in Theo of Golden as faithful as anyone I've read about or witnessed in a very long time.

And it has me wrestling this morning with some heart and soul troubling questions:

Am I an adopter?

And is there anything in my life I need to strive to better be?

​I have recently gone a new direction in my professional life. It's a direction I felt God calling me to go. But there are times when I make this new direction complicated. Very complicated.

Mostly—when I start asking God to give me directions to places he's called someone else to go and not me.

I recently heard Steven Furtick say, "I want to give God the destination and then let him give me the directions because that's what I do on my maps app."

That one hit home.

We live in a world where it's easier than ever to input an end game in life and then have a computer reveal precise instructions on how to get there. This can lead us to wonder why I can't hear God's instructions so precisely.

Well, turns out if our end game is an end game that is someone else's calling and not our own, God isn't much enthused about giving us those directions.

As I've embarked on my community speaking and training and educating journey, it's easy for me to look around at 'more prominent' folks doing this work and start asking God to give me directions to do THEIR work.

Too often we see something others are doing that we'd like to do and we start interpreting that as OUR calling. Then, we get frustrated with God because he's not showing us the way toward a calling that was never his calling on our life at all.

Over the last decade, God has been very intentional about putting people and situations in my life that have made it clear what I'm supposed to be speaking and writing about. Experiences that have made it clear the kind of settings I'm supposed to be teaching in. Only when I start looking around and seeing what others are doing do I start questioning if God has given me enough guidance to do what I'm called to do.

When I find myself longing to go places without ever asking God if that is where he's called me to go, I am at risk for wanting directions to my desires and not God's calling.

When I find myself more obsessed with destination than guidance, I am at risk for placing my desires over God's calling.

It's really quite easy to evaluate, at least for me.

The visions I have in my life, are they visions I am trying to plant in God or visions God has planted in me?

And–do I spend more time talking to God about where I want to go or more time in silence giving God a chance to point me to where he wants me to go?

Those questions lead to convicting answers for me.

But at the same time—they point me to a better place where I can better hear God's perfect directions.

Where I can hear God's call and not someone else's.

​One of the most astonishing statements Jesus ever made is one I think I spend a lot of my life overlooking.

Imagine walking beside Jesus for three years. Watching him heal the sick. Seeing him calm storms. Listening to him teach with authority no one had ever heard before. Watching him forgive people everyone else had written off.

After watching all of that, if someone had asked me, "What's the one thing you would never want to lose?" my answer obviously would have been very simple.

Jesus.

And then Jesus says something almost impossible to believe: "It is for your good that I am going away."

Really? The world needs less men who can make the lame walk and the blind see? How could anything possibly be better than having Jesus physically present with me?

But Jesus wasn't finished. He said he needed to leave because the father would send another Advocate.

I've read those words countless times. I've heard sermons about the Holy Spirit. I've nodded my head in agreement.

Yet, if I'm honest, I don't think I live as though I actually believe what Jesus said. Because if Jesus believed the presence of the Advocate was more helpful than his physical presence beside me, why do I spend so much of my life looking somewhere else for help?

Louie Giglio describes the four roles of the Advocate as follows:

The Advocate is our helper. The one who supplies what I don't have.

The Advocate is our comforter. The one who brings peace even when nothing around me feels peaceful.

The Advocate is our convictor. Not merely exposing where I've wandered, but reminding me who I am in Jesus and calling me back to that identity.

And the Advocate is our empowerer. The one who doesn't simply encourage me to try harder but fills me with the very trying power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Think about that.

When I don't know what to do, I already have a helper. When anxiety convinces me everything is falling apart, I already have a comforter. When shame tells me I'll never change, I already have one reminding me who I am and leading me toward him and away from condemnation. When I feel too weak to keep going, I already have an empowerer.

And yet—how often do I forget? Forget and search.

I look for another podcast. Another book. Another expert. Another productivity system. Another opinion. Another distraction. Another voice telling me what to do.

None of those things are bad. Many of them are gifts. But they make terrible replacements for the Advocate.

It's almost as though I've convinced myself I have to go searching for an advocate, while forgetting Jesus already gave me one.

I think Jesus knew how exhausting our lives would be if we spent them living in constant search of an answer to our struggles. I think he knew it would be exhausting because he knew searching for the answers in THIS world would leave us always coming up empty.

So Jesus said I need to leave. I need to go to another world. And when I get there, I'm going to send you an answer from that world that will forever eliminate your need to search for one.

And yet....

I still spend many days searching. Searching for the answer. Searching for the power to solve what many days feels like unsolvable problems.

All the while, living in me is the very same power that allowed a man to raise himself from the dead.

Unanswerable doesn't always mean there is no answer.

Sometimes it means there are no answers to be found where one is looking.

Jesus left—but told us where to forever find him.

And yet, too many days I find myself living like that's his deepest held secret.

It's not.