​You were made for another world.

If you're like me, you didn't first encounter this truth in another world, you encountered it in this one.

You encountered it when you discovered that no matter how much you chased the good life here, the fulfilled life here, the more you chased the filling of your cup from all that this world has to offer, the more you came to realize that this world is completely incapable of filling your cup.

You encountered it when you realized the more you addressed your emptiness by chasing something to help you cope with emptiness in this world instead of turning to the one who deeply loves us in another world, the more your emptiness became a darker kind of emptiness.

Paul tells us in the bible, don't turn to wine, where you will only find excess, but be filled instead with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus didn't scold the woman at the well for all the empty ways she was trying to fill her cup, but instead offered to fill her cup with a love that would always leave her feeling filled.

So many of us get left feeling empty not because we aren't trying hard to fill, but because we are trying hard to fill with things that are incapable of filling.

Alcohol can fill a glass, but alcohol also leaves you feeling like I need another drink.

And another one.

It's the nature of most addictions - they lure you in with a promise of filling you before turning on you with their truth, the truth that they never want you to be feeling like you've had enough of them.

We have a lot of systems and institutions that take advantage of this reality.

Churches, politics, even our interpersonal relationships with one another - they often start with the promise that I will fix your world, I will make you feel whole, I will be the one who will always look out for you - only to in the end leave you feeling as incomplete as ever.

Yet, having no other world to turn to, we often double down on the broken promises of this one, why not, we might concede, at least these broken promises look and feel like someone or something fighting to fill me.

I confess, I did not discover another world in my life - I did not discover the Holy Spirit - by first walking through the doors of that spirit and introducing myself. I found it by trying every other door in this world - I don't know that I left any un-knocked on - and becoming exhausted by the emptiness found behind every single one of them.

It is the nature of this another world, I believe, to not be threatened by the places we turn to instead of it in our search for love and fulfillment. It is the nature of this another world to know that it is in our deepest emptiness we often discover our greatest fulfillment.

It is in our deepest thirst that this another world has a chance to show up and leave our thirst forever quenched.

Quenched, that is, with the exception of the thirst we come to have for the love of a God who understands greater than any other world the true nature of the thirsty and often painful lives we have lived.

The God who understands better than any other world what it feels like to be forever lost and then forever found.

The God who loves nothing more than to have his creation overcome with the feeling of never having to chase again.

Never having to feel their worlds toppled by this world.

I discovered that coming through a back door to another world, I am sure.

But I am sure I am no more thankful for any door in my life.

​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.

​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?

​"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.

​I was filling out a financial application yesterday to support one of my kids' dreams. And as the numbers I was crunching refused to crunch, I found myself thinking—this is not where I’m supposed to be. I should be in a place where I can help him more than I am right now.

That tension—between where we think we should be and where God has us—is often our greatest struggle with Him. It’s the battle between our expectations and His plan. The wrestling between this isn’t where I’m supposed to be and this is exactly where God needs me to be.

Isaiah 43:19 says:
"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."

This was a message to the Israelites, a people who had a habit of looking backward—back to the parted Red Sea, back to the miraculous rescues of the past—assuming God would always rescue in the same way.

But God doesn’t just repeat old miracles. He does new things.

Sometimes, He doesn’t part the sea. Sometimes, He leads us through the wilderness. And if we aren’t paying attention, we might miss Him—not because He isn’t there, but because He isn’t showing up the way we expected.

"Do you not perceive it?" Isaiah asks.

It’s easy to stand in the middle of a troubled marriage, a troubled culture, troubled finances, or troubled health and believe we’ve hit an impassable place. But what if we haven’t hit a dead end—what if we’re standing at the beginning of a path?

Because what we perceive as trouble is often God’s way through.

When we don’t see that, we often press harder against the struggle. We follow a path of our own broken spirit and wilted strength instead of leaning into faith—faith in a God whose plan is never broken.

Never wilted.

A God whose plan sometimes skips the parted sea routine in favor of walking us through a wilderness.

Why?

My guess is there are times when God wants to reach the masses in an instant. Moments that call on a God to part a sea. And then there are moments when God wants to reach the masses by changing some parts of me. Moments that require some trouble in my life more than a clear path through a raging sea.

I think many of us might be at some moment in our life that feel impassable. Maybe consider this isn't something impassable but simply something new. Something new God is doing in you to create a passage for the people around you.

Maybe, like me, you sometimes find yourself standing in the middle of a wilderness waiting for a parted sea.

Don’t wait too long, I encourage you, because you just might miss the truth--

The wilderness is the parted sea.

​A good shepherd doesn't leave when the night falls.

Jesus called Himself the Good Shepherd because He never runs from His flock. And if we follow Him, we’re called to stay, too—to be the ones who stand firm, who shine light, who protect, who love, even when it’s hardest.

When the sky darkens and the wolves creep near, the shepherd doesn’t abandon the flock to save himself. He doesn’t run to safety while the sheep scatter in fear. Instead, he stands his ground, staff in hand, eyes scanning the shadows. He listens for the sound of danger, ready to defend, to guide, to protect.

Because that’s what shepherds do.

In the daylight, it’s easy to lead. The path is clear, the dangers are few, and the sheep follow willingly. But the real test comes in the night—when uncertainty grows, when the predators close in, when fear makes the flock restless. It’s in those moments that the shepherd’s calling is proven.

And it’s the same with us.

It’s easy to show up when life is bright, when the culture is calm, when standing for truth and love comes without risk. But what about when darkness falls? What about when division prowls, when the world is restless, when the easy thing is to walk away?

That’s when the real shepherds stay.

The world needs people who don’t flee when the night comes. Who don’t give up when fear spreads. Who don’t retreat when the wolves of hatred, despair, and confusion circle.

Anyone can lead in the daylight.

Shepherds stick around when the night falls.

​There’s a growing branch of 'Christian' thinking that suggests Jesus’ love follows a hierarchy—and that He commands us to do the same. A love that puts family first, then community, then country, and only after all that—the rest of the world.

Everyone is certainly free to embrace their own branch of 'Christianity'—because be sure—there are branches.

Many of them.

There are denominations. And within denominations, there are branches. Even within individual churches of the same denomination there will be wildly different takes on what it means to be 'Christian.'

There are, in fact, so many different branches of 'Christianity' now that I hesitate to call myself a 'Christian'—given that no one could possibly know what I mean by that when I say it. And depending on the particular branch one might associate me with when I call myself that, they might find what I consider the most beautiful part of me—my love for Jesus—to be quite off-putting.

I guess when it comes to love and hierarchies, in line with my particular beliefs—my particular branch—they start and end with a command to love God.

Thousands of years ago, religious leaders—followers of a more legalistic branch of faith—pressed Jesus with a question: “What is the greatest commandment of all?”

And the Jesus I love answered, The greatest commandment is to love God. And the second, by the way, is like that one—it is to love one another.

Jesus would go on to describe what loving God and loving one another actually looks like. It looks like loving the least of His children. His definition of "least" being those who need love the most—His definition of "children" being all the world, not just the small subsets of our little worlds.

In fact, it was Jesus who said, The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Jesus’ love was never about hierarchy—it was about need. It was a command for those of us in positions more comfortable than others to seek out those who need comfort and provide it. Not as an afterthought once we’ve secured our own comfort, but as a mission. A mission we pursue far and wide, even—if not especially—at the expense of our own comfort.

Many of Jesus' own disciples walked away from their families—not to abandon them, but to follow Jesus in making the least first. Jesus spent no time lecturing those disciples about the importance of staying behind to serve their families, their communities, or their countries.

It was Jesus who once said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.”

Was Jesus telling us to hate our families? To hate ourselves? No. But He was making one thing clear: never let your closest circles stand in the way of the kind of love I’ve commanded you to give.

The last shall be first.

Jesus seemed to be intensely serious about this. Mic drop serious. He once told His followers:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

It is risky, I believe, to start drawing hierarchies in the sand when it comes to defining an order in which we love one another. Jesus' order was clear: last to first. No matter where those last are.

Following our own orders—our own structures and rankings—it becomes dangerously easy to start calling waste what Jesus calls love.

And love was never a suggestion from Jesus. It was a command.

God looks down at us, with love, and sees no circles dividing us by importance or significance. No circles that divvy up His love or determine an order in which He distributes it.

God sees only ONE circle:

Us.

And I will never be convinced He wants us to see it any other way:

Us.