JANUARY 31, 2026

  The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination. How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like...” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

EXODUS 25-26

1The Lord said to Moses, 2“Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.(25:1-2)

MATTHEW 21:1-22

12Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13“It is written,”he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’^e but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’^f ”

14The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

16“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.

“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,

“ ‘From the lips of children and infants

you, Lord, have called forth your praise’^g ?”

17And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.

JOURNAL 

Today becomes less intimidating when I stop trying to live an entire lifetime at once and instead receive it as an offering, like the one God asked of Israel, given not under pressure but from a heart that is willing. The future stretches far beyond my sight and that is exactly where it belongs, held by God and not by me. What rests in my hands is this single day, this chance to answer the quiet invitation to live truthfully, love generously, and walk in obedience even when it cuts against my comfort.

C.S. Lewis wrote that true surrender to God must sometimes be done in the absence of inclination, even in defiance of it. That exposes how shallow my idea of surrender can be when it is tied only to what feels good or natural. Real obedience may ache. It may look like clearing the tables in my own heart the way Jesus cleared the temple, overturning the places where fear, pride, and self protection have set up profitable little markets. Yet what follows that upheaval is healing and praise. The lame walk, the blind see, and children sing. When what is false is driven out, what is whole is welcomed in.

The temple scene feels like a vision of what a single day can become when it is surrendered. Not a marketplace of anxieties about thirty or forty imagined years, but a house of prayer, alive with restoration and joy. That kind of day is not created by long range control but by present obedience. God asked for offerings from those whose hearts prompted them to give. He still does. The gift is not my projected future. The gift is my willing today.

When I ask what I am aspiring to create, the answer cannot be a distant, polished version of my life that I am trying to force into existence. It must be this day lived fully before God. Jesus had a mission, but he also walked step by step in trust of the Father. Moses built the tabernacle according to a pattern shown to him, piece by piece, not all at once. The path of faith is always walked in present tense. Without a burning yes to today, I drift into comfort and avoidance. With it, even small acts become holy work.

Failures and disappointments try to convince me that my best days are behind me or too far ahead to matter now. Christ’s cleansing of the temple stands against that lie. It is a wakeup call that hope is not stored in some future rescue but activated in present surrender. Each day can be epic in its authenticity when I choose truth over hiding, love over withdrawal, courage over ease.

Working with all my heart as unto the Lord does not require certainty about tomorrow. It requires faithfulness right now. Tomorrow is surrendered to God. Today is entrusted to me. In that trust there is surprising freedom to create, to confront what must be confronted, to rejoice like the children in the courts, and to obey even when obedience costs something.

A lifetime may feel impossible, but a day offered freely is not. When this day is lived as prayer, as offering, as honest service to Christ, it is enough. And somehow, in God’s hands, a string of surrendered todays becomes the very future I was never meant to control.

23Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

COLOSSIANS 3:23-24

JANUARY 30, 2026

  “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave...Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. ” 

― Henry David Thoreau

EXODUS 22-24

21“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

22“Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. 23If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.(22:21-22)

MATTHEW 20:17-34

24When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. 25Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

JOURNAL 

Today is its own life. It is not a waiting room for tomorrow or a shadow of yesterday. What I do with this day is the only place where love can actually move, where goodness can actually spread. When I let worry about the future take over, I drift away from the people and needs right in front of me. Ambition and plans are useful, but they must never replace the simple calling to care, serve, and notice.

The words about protecting the vulnerable and the call of Jesus to choose the place of a servant both pull me back to this moment. Greatness is not somewhere out ahead of me. It is hidden inside ordinary acts of mercy and humility offered now. Every interaction is a chance either to add light to the world or to leave shadows untouched.

I write these things down because I forget how sacred an ordinary day really is. When life is difficult I want to escape it, and when life is easy I am tempted to coast through it. Both steal the same treasure. Today holds the opportunity to connect heart to heart, to encourage someone who is weary, to stand beside someone who feels alone. That is how the spirit of goodness moves outward and the spirit of darkness loses ground.

Freedom is not permission to drift into myself. It is the power to give myself away in love. To love my neighbor is to treat this day as precious and active, to spend it building connection instead of postponing it. If I want to see more light in the world, it begins with fully living the life that is in front of me right now.

13You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh^a ; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”^b 

GALATIANS 5:13-15

JANUARY 29, 2026

  “Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.” 

― William Nicholson, Shadowlands

EXODUS 19-21

2“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

3“You shall have no other gods before^a me.

4“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.(20:2-6)

MATTHEW 20:1-16

13“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

JOURNAL 

When I sit with these commandments and Christ’s words about the workers in the vineyard, I am reminded that the foundation of faith is not about rule keeping for its own sake, but about connection. God calls himself my God before he asks anything of me. He reminds me that he is the one who brought people out of slavery. The first truth is relationship and rescue. Everything else flows from that. When anything else takes his place, even good things like success, comfort, reputation, or control, I drift back toward a kind of slavery of my own making.

Jesus’ parable presses on my sense of comparison and entitlement. If God is truly my God, then whatever he gives me is gift, not wage. The moment I measure my life against someone else’s portion, I reveal that I want God’s blessings more than I want God himself. Gratitude is the evidence that he is first in my heart. Envy is the evidence that something else has taken his throne.

Most days I crave ease. I want success without strain and significance without sacrifice. I want to feel special without having to be stretched. When I am honest, I tend to drift toward either selfish striving or comfortable laziness. Both paths orbit around the same center, which is me. That is exactly why these words from Exodus confront me so directly. Left to myself, I become my own god, and I am a poor one. My vision is too small and my love too conditional.

Faith begins where self sufficiency ends. I need an authority beyond my moods and impulses. I need a God whose generosity is not threatened by mine, whose justice is not warped by my fears, and whose love is not limited by my exhaustion. When I am connected to him, I am no longer trapped inside my own narrow desires. His Spirit begins to reshape what I want and why I want it.

The cornerstone of faith is union with God through his Spirit. That connection does not isolate me from others, it binds me to them. To be filled with his Spirit is to be drawn into his desire to reach every person. Loving God inevitably turns into loving his children. Obedience stops feeling like a burden and starts looking like participation in his life. My purpose becomes larger than personal success. It becomes the work of connection, of carrying the presence of God into ordinary moments and relationships.

When that connection is real, comparison loses its grip. Generosity makes sense. Another person’s blessing no longer diminishes mine because we are drinking from the same endless source. This is how the Kingdom of God takes root here and now. Not through dominance or display, but through people who are alive with his Spirit, joined to him and therefore joined to each other.

Without him I am easily overcome by the world and by myself. With him I have hope that my worst tendencies are not my final story. More than that, I have a calling. To stay connected to God, to invite others into that same life, and to let his Spirit weave us into a community marked by trust, mercy, and joy. This is the victory of faith, not escape from the world but transformation within it, as God’s life flows through us and makes us truly alive together.

1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

1 JOHN 5:1-4

JANUARY 28, 2026

   “In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out." - Mere Christianity” 

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

EXODUS 16-18

13The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. 14When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?”

15Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. 16Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.”

17Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. 18You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. 19Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you.(18:13-19)

MATTHEW 19:16-30

16Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

17“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

18“Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony,19honor your father and mother,’^c and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’^d ”

20“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

21Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

26Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

27Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

28Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife^e or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.30But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

JOURNAL 

I love this interaction with Moses and his Father-in-law. Moses is doing something good. He is serving people, listening, judging fairly, trying to help. Yet even in good work, there is danger. His father-in-law sees what Moses cannot see in himself. He is taking on too much, holding too tightly to control, slowly wearing himself and others down. God uses another human being to redirect him, not through condemnation, but through wisdom and care. That alone is a reminder that growth often comes through humility and listening, not sheer effort.

I see the same pattern in Jesus’ interaction with the rich young man. The question is not really about money. It is about trust. The man has done many good things, yet something still owns him. Jesus puts His finger on the one place where the man’s heart hesitates. Not because giving everything away is a universal command, but because whatever we cling to most tightly is often the thing that limits our freedom to follow God fully. The obstacle is not always what we possess. Sometimes it is what possesses us.

I have often made the mistake of looking for simple fixes. If I could just remove the problem, then faith would be easier. But life does not work that way. Struggles remain, temptations shift, and the heart finds new places to wander. The deeper issue is not the external thing, whether money, success, recognition, or even good pursuits. The issue is always the heart. Anything that quietly steals my attitude, my effort, or my focus away from truth and love becomes a problem, even if it looks harmless or productive on the surface.

That realization reframes each day for me. I may not control circumstances, outcomes, or how others respond, but I can always choose my attitude, my effort, and my focus. God consistently gives me freedom in those three areas. They are also the places where I most clearly see my shortcomings and my need for grace. Repentance, then, is not shame-filled defeat. It is a gift. It is the ability to stop, correct course, and begin again with honesty and humility.

The beauty of this life is not perfection, but renewal. Each day offers another chance to do good, to grow wiser, to repair what I have damaged, and to move my heart back toward what truly matters. It is easy to drift into obsession over things that neither soften my heart nor help another human being. But God keeps inviting me back to what is life-giving.

Thank you, Father, for today. Thank you for another opportunity to choose a good attitude, to give my best effort, and to keep my focus on truth, love, and service. Thank you for meeting me again when I stumble and for offering living water that restores rather than condemns.

37On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”^c

JOHN 7:37-38

JANUARY 27, 2026

 “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.” – Milan Kundera

EXODUS 13-15

13Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 14The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”(14:13-14)

MATTHEW 19:1-15

13Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them.

14Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”15When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

 JOURNAL 

Three years ago yesterday we had to put our dog Freddy to sleep. I'm gonna leave this post as a tribute and as a reminder of what we can learn from our pets.

Yesterday we had to say goodbye to our dog Freddy. While it was absolutely the right decision it is still hard because I just think that a dog (pet's) love is just so pure. I think it is one of the closest things we have in experiencing God's love, much in the way of how Jesus talks about children. A dog doesn't care whether you failed or succeeded today or whether you live in a shack or a mansion. He doesn't care if you betrayed him or forgot about him or talked terrible about him. He just shows up everyday and loves. Dogs accept your love without reservation or doubt and trust you till the very end. 

After we posted...It was amazing how many people commented and communicated sincere heartfelt concern and love to us yesterday and today. It just shows that in the end...what really matters ( at our core ) has nothing to do with possessions, intellect, success or really anything that our modern culture pronounces as important. What is vitally important though is how we handle love. How we accept it and how we give it. I think we can learn a great lesson from our furry companions...I picked this up from and article on "The ways you should be more like your dog".  

• Always trust your instinct
• Love unconditionally without trying to figure out why.
• Learn to forgive even what seems unforgivable.
• Be a loyal and devoted friend.
• Play, play, play, and play some more.
• Live completely and totally in the moment.
• Be aware of the feelings of those around you.
• Let yourself go totally nuts when you see someone you love.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. 6Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6

JANUARY 26, 2026

  “[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” 

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

EXODUS 11-12

12“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.(12:12-13)

MATTHEW 18:21-35

32“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

JOURNAL 

C.S. Lewis helped save me from a lot of doubt. The good kind of doubt that forces you to stop pretending, the kind that makes you wrestle with whether what you believe actually holds up under pressure. Mere Christianity came to me at a time when the Bible felt disconnected, confusing, and sometimes impossible to reconcile with the real world.  His reasoning pulled me out of the trap of thinking faith meant shutting my brain off. It also helped heal some of the toxicity I picked up from conservative Baptist theology, where fear and performance were often dressed up as holiness.

His words hit me again today, especially this idea that trusting Christ means trying to do what He says, not in order to earn salvation, but because salvation has already begun working its way into you. It is the difference between obedience as pressure and obedience as response. The difference between living terrified of failing and living steady because grace is already holding you. Lewis calls it “a less worried way,” and that phrase feels like oxygen to me. I want that kind of faith. Not lazy faith, not careless faith, but confident faith. The kind that obeys because heaven has already started flickering on the inside. 

Reading Exodus 11 and 12 today brings me back to the places where my faith still strains. These are hard passages. The death of the firstborn is not easy for me to sit with, and I cannot pretend it is. It bothers me deeply to think of children suffering because of the rebellion and pride of one man. I have spent years skimming these sections, brushing them aside, telling myself not to think too hard about it. But it is in the text, and if I am going to be honest, it confronts something in me. It confronts my desire to only accept a God who fits neatly inside my expectations of what is fair.

And yet, even in that heaviness, I see the blood on the doorposts and I cannot miss the symbolism. Judgment passing over. Protection given. A rescue that did not come because anyone deserved it, but because God provided a covering. The whole story feels like a shadow that stretches forward to Christ. I do not understand every detail, but I can see the pattern. God is not casual about evil. God is not indifferent to suffering. God is also not obligated to fit inside my limited ability to judge what is right. 

Then I read Matthew 18 and it cuts in a different way. The parable of the unforgiving servant makes perfect sense to me in theory, but it exposes me in practice. I understand canceling a financial debt. I understand that concept. What gets me is the invisible debt I collect from people mentally. The debt of appreciation. The debt of recognition. The debt of them noticing my effort, my kindness, my sacrifice. When I feel unseen, something in me keeps score, and it hardens me slowly. I may not say it out loud, but internally I start thinking, “You owe me.” That kind of debt is poisonous because it does not just affect one relationship, it affects my heart toward life itself.

Jesus is not soft about it. He says forgiveness has to come from the heart. Not performative forgiveness. Not polite forgiveness. Not forgiveness that keeps a weapon hidden behind the back. Real forgiveness. Over and over. Not seven times, but seventy-seven times, meaning it is meant to become a way of living, not a one-time event. The sobering part is that Jesus ties my willingness to forgive to my understanding of what I have been forgiven. If God has canceled my debt, then my grip on everyone else’s debts is completely out of place.

I think all of it circles back to one central question: do I trust the heart of God more than I trust the heart of man? Because people will fail me. That is guaranteed. Some will do it accidentally and some will do it intentionally. Some will disappoint me in small ways and some will wound me in ways that change me. But my identity cannot be built on being treated fairly by other humans. My hope cannot depend on people behaving the way I wish they would. If it does, I will always be unstable, always angry, always hungry for something this world cannot consistently provide.

This is why Lewis matters so much to me. He reminds me that faith is not pretending life is easy or that the Bible makes promises it never actually makes. Faith is not bargaining with God for a protected life. Faith is entrusting myself to Christ and obeying Him from a place of being rescued, not from a place of trying to earn rescue. That is the only kind of Christianity that can survive real suffering and real disappointment. It is the only kind of faith that can stare at hard passages and still say, “God, I do not understand, but I trust You.”

Jesus said it plainly. In this world we will have trouble. He did not hide that. He did not soften it. But He also said to take heart because He has overcome the world. That is what I want today. A faith that is less worried. A faith that does not keep score. A faith that is not built on outcomes. A faith that obeys because heaven has already begun its work in me.

33“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

JOHN 16:33

JANUARY 25, 2026

 “Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace.” 

― Timothy J. Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

EXODUS 9-10

10So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on people and animals. 11The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. 12But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses.(9:10-12)

MATTHEW 18:1-20

10“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. [11]^a

12“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

JOURNAL 

I can’t read Exodus 9–10 without thinking about Moses as a man, not just a prophet. We talk about him like he was some fearless spiritual superhero, but I don’t think it could have felt like that in real time. It had to be heavy. It had to be terrifying at moments. Imagine being the one God uses to confront a ruler like Pharaoh, and then watching plague after plague fall on a nation. Not in theory, not in a story you already know the ending to, but in real life, with real consequences, and real suffering happening all around you.

Moses had to carry the burden of obedience even when obedience looked brutal. He wasn’t just delivering messages. He was standing in the middle of supernatural judgment, knowing that when God moved, things broke. Bodies broke. Livelihoods broke. Pride broke. Systems broke. It makes me wonder how many nights Moses lay awake staring into the dark, wrestling with what it meant to be chosen for something like that.

There is a part of me that wants God’s power, but I only want it if it feels clean and exciting and safe. Moses didn’t get that version. He got the kind of calling that costs you sleep, costs you certainty, and costs you the ability to pretend life is simple. When it says Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, I also think about what that must have felt like for Moses. Doing what God said, watching it get worse, and still having to go back in again. Again and again. That is not just faith, that is endurance.

And yet, when I read Matthew 18, I see the tension of God’s heart in a different way. God is not willing that any should perish. He is a Father who goes after the one. He is not indifferent to people. So I’m forced to accept that God can pursue the lost with perfect love, and still allow people to resist Him with full stubbornness. He does not force relationship. He invites it, calls for it, and makes a way for it, but He does not override the human heart like we are machines.

That is where this hits me personally. There are parts of me that still want control, still want to negotiate with God, still want Him to bless my plan instead of reshape my soul. But Moses’ story reminds me that obedience does not always feel heroic. Sometimes it feels like fear. Sometimes like confusion. Sometimes it's walking straight into conflict with no guarantee it will turn out how I want.

Job’s words echo in the background of all of it. God does not answer every question the way I wish He would. He does not explain Himself on my timeline. He does not ask my permission to be God. What He does offer is something deeper than explanation. He offers His presence. He offers His Spirit. He offers relationship.

And maybe that is what God is really teaching me. God isn’t calling me into performance or control. He is calling me into surrender, into trust, into the kind of faith that keeps walking forward even when it is costly. The peace I’m looking for is not found in understanding everything. It is found in knowing the One who does.

6Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:

7“Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

8“Would you discredit my justice?

Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

9Do you have an arm like God’s,

and can your voice thunder like his?

10Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,

and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.

11Unleash the fury of your wrath,

look at all who are proud and bring them low,

12look at all who are proud and humble them,

crush the wicked where they stand.

13Bury them all in the dust together;

shroud their faces in the grave.

14Then I myself will admit to you

that your own right hand can save you.

JOB 40:6-14