“Steadfast love” shows up multiple times in the Psalm.

The Hebrew word behind this is HESED.

Most Bibles translate it “steadfast love” or “constant love.” Scholar John Goldingay calls it something simpler.

Commitment.

Not commitment like “I have lunch plans” commitment or “we told someone else we’d come over.”

This is the kind of commitment that the God-who-is-Love makes.

The Scripture uses this language of Steadfast-Love-Commitment with two powerful realities behind it.

First, this is Commitment made for no reason–an act of generosity not reciprocity.

Second, this is Commitment kept in spite of every good reason to walk away.

We’re not talking about love that “makes sense.”

God’s love keeps going when it stops making sense.

Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Not after we cleaned up. Not because we earned a shot at it.

God’s love comes to us with no observable benefit or contribution to Him.

God’s love continues against every good reason to quit on us.

What comfort is found in the commitment of God!

I prayed God would help me display His love.

The Spirit rebuked me before I received encouragement.

I’ve protected–even treasured?–good reasons to not my love for my church.

My life is marked by many places where my love is not steadfast but sporadic.

Worse, I haven’t been randomly unreliable–there are many times I’ve lessened my love for “good reasons.”

I can see this in how I’ve pastored.

It’s been a hard year. Many challenges were bigger than I could handle alone. Even if I tried to walk with others, the weight of some trials had me feeling lonely.

Subtly, I let something other than God’s steadfast love begin directing my heart.

I kept “doing the right thing.” I kept acting lovingly.

It wasn’t constant, but real resentment was popping up with people I’m called to shepherd.

That’s not Steadfast-Love-Commitment (HESED). That’s performance wearing commitment’s clothes.

This wasn’t easy to admit, but it brought fresh joy to my Sunday morning.

Yesterday morning, I told God His love is better than the substitute I’d been running on.

I asked His Spirit to help me love the way He does–for no reason, and against every reason to stop.

The situations in front of me haven’t magically disappeared.

But the reservoir of God’s love provides real power to love others like Him!

If you’re tired today–tired of people, tired of circumstances, tired of doing the right thing while your heart quietly checks out–ask yourself the same question I had to ask:

Are you relying on the Lord’s love for you to love those around you?

God’s love for you was never about your reasons. It won’t run out because your reasons ran out either.

His Spirit strengthens us with His love so that we can display His beauty in the world.

¹ Praise the Lord, my soul;

all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

² Praise the Lord, my soul,

and forget not all his benefits—

³ who forgives all your sins

and heals all your diseases,

⁴ who redeems your life from the pit

and crowns you with love and compassion,

⁵ who satisfies your desires with good things

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Psalm 103:1-5

By twenty, thousands of people packed in to hear him.

He wrote more words in his lifetime than almost any Christian in history.

Sounds like a beast, right? A genuine Gospel hero.

Here’s what most people don’t know: the same man who filled stadiums also battled depression so dark he told his own church he wondered if he’d survive the week.

Wildly Successful Spurgeon and Wallowing in Sorrow Spurgeon were the same man.

How could that be?

Everything Spurgeon was was grace.

We want the gift of greatness, but God is interested in giving grace.

Grace for sorrows and grace for successes.

Spurgeon knew this. It’s why he leaned on a verse across his ministry.

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

1 Corinthians 15:10

• By the grace of God–Paul mentions his grind but not because it was the key to his work– the grace of God was. Paul doesn’t open with his resume. He starts with a gift he didn’t earn.

• I am what I am–Paul was not “what he built.” Whatever Paul is, God’s grace made him that.

• His grace... was not in vain–grace didn’t just save Paul once and walk away. It kept working. Kept producing. Kept energizing on the hard Tuesdays, not just the good Sundays.

Gifting cannot get the glory. Grace must.

We look at someone gifted–a preacher, an athlete, a parent who has it together–and we assume the gap between us and them is effort or talent.

If I just worked harder. If I just had more discipline. If I just had what they have. If it clicked for me like it clicks for them.

Paul says the gap isn’t effort. It’s grace. And grace isn’t something you muster up.

Grace is given and received.

This will terrify you if your confidence is built on your accomplishment.

If grace didn’t hold Spurgeon together, his own performance sure wouldn’t have.

The man who preached to thousands wrote his darkest words in his darkest seasons.

With all of the success He saw in preaching, he missed nearly a third of the Sundays in his final twenty years because of illness.

Grace held him anyway.

Best Sunday. Worst Tuesday. Same grace. Same God.

If you’re in the middle of success–you need Spurgeon’s grace-giving God.

Where are you relying on or boasting in what has been given to you as if you had accomplished it?

As 1 Corinthians 4 says, “What do you have that you did not receive?”

If you’re in the darkness of sorrow–you need Spurgeon’s grace-giving God.

God had grace to carry you through today, and He’ll be generous again tomorrow.

Spurgeon is not the hero of his own story.

Grace was his story, not strength that built success. Grace was his stronghold, not weakness that threatened to take it all away.

With so much internet immorality bombarding us, I could write endless warnings against dating apps, pornography, and the rising tide of filth normalized on Reels and Shorts. Stay vigilant there.

But along with online vigilance, I want you to watch your life carefully in another way.

Someone (who is not your spouse) is going to catch your eye.

Not someone offering a brief distraction through physical attraction. You’re going to bump into a person in life who interests you.

An Other.

This Other comes along liking things you and your spouse have never connected over.

The Other enjoys what’s new and intriguing.

The Other speaks and acts in ways that are unexpected–and those unexpected ways highlight just how familiar you and your spouse have become.

As your fascination with this Other grows, your enjoyment of your spouse dims.

You’re being groomed for adultery. Perhaps by the Other. But most definitely by your flesh.

Marriages go through seasons and face real struggles. Others never do.

Marriages die under the pressure of constant consumption. But Others can be drained of their intrigue and traded for another Other without anyone blinking an eye.

An Other intrigues you because consumerism still lingers in your heart and in your marriage.

Maybe after seven years, you’ve heard all the stories and learned all the quirks.

The discovery is over, but the grind of the day-to-day is not.

The excitement of knowing your spouse is gone, but the knowledge of their flaws is excruciatingly clear.

Do you recognize that you are consuming your spouse?

You might be telling yourself you’re loving them in spite of their flaws. I’m sure that’s true, to some degree. But you’re probably loving them with eyes on change.

Will you love them if nothing changes?

I’m not saying nothing needs to change. But I want to be straight with you about two mistakes that fuel the power of the Others.

1. Your timeline for when change needs to happen is likely very different from God’s.

Believers have real hope for change in sin patterns and struggles.

But we don’t have a scheduled delivery date on sanctification.

Glorification is sure–we just don’t know the day or the hour.

You need more patience with your spouse’s growth than you currently have.

2. Your definition of what needs to change is likely very different from God’s.

Have you considered how much you might be describing Christian maturity–your spouse’s destination–in light of your own personal preferences and personality?

Is it true that mature Christians verbally process, or that they don’t?

Does the Bible say maturity looks spontaneous and zealous, or careful and considerate?

Where does God say in His Word that your spouse needs to talk about their emotions the way you expect them to?

Let me be honest with you as you sit with these questions. I can speak from experience.

I put Abi in a box early in our marriage.

She wasn’t free to grow into the woman God was calling her to be.

Her growth had to look more like me and my preferences.

Some of our conflicts were good–sanctifying, sin-exposing, meant for our growth.

But many other times, I was chiseling her into the idol of my own appetites and personality.

Aren’t we playing god when we think that our spouse should end up being all we hoped and dreamed?

Have you ever stopped and repented of trying to shape your spouse into your own image?

I want to remind you of two things about your love in an enduring marriage that an Other can never offer.

1. The Spirit is calling you into an opportunity to love your spouse more deeply.

Real love isn’t consumption.

Consumption always wants a fresher, more interesting product next.

Love is sacrificial commitment to the eternal best interest of another. Love is giving to, not taking from.

Love chooses the same person, on purpose, again.

The Spirit is inviting you to see your spouse’s familiarity not as a flaw to escape but as a field to cultivate.

The “boring” parts of your marriage are exactly where Christlike love takes its shape: patient, kind, not easily provoked, bearing and believing and hoping all things (1 Corinthians 13).

You don’t need an Other to feel alive.

You need to stop treating your spouse like a product and start loving them like a person–flawed, familiar, and still becoming who God is making them to be.

That’s a deeper love than any Other could offer, because it’s a love like Christ’s.

2. The Spirit is calling you into an opportunity to love Christ more deeply.

That restlessness you feel–the hunger for something new, something more interesting than what you already have–didn’t start with your spouse, and it won’t end with an Other.

It’s a God-shaped longing.

No person, new or old, was ever built to satisfy your longings completely.

Our hearts are restless until they rest in God–as Augustine said.

When you demand your spouse be endlessly fascinating, always growing on your timetable, always fitting your definition of maturity, you’re asking them to be your savior.

Only Christ can carry that weight.

He is the only One who is genuinely inexhaustible–new mercies every morning, deeper than you could explore in a lifetime.

The pull toward an Other is often worship pointed in the wrong direction.

Let it point you back to the One who can satisfy you, so you’re freed from asking your spouse to be who only Jesus can be.

“Why, my son, be intoxicated with another...” Proverbs 5:20

Don’t let your flesh groom you into trading a real marriage for an Other who was never real to begin with.

Run to Christ by running home to your spouse.

The sunset was almost gone.

It was dark enough to enjoy the show, but light enough to see bats beginning their bug-hunting.

I slapped a mosquito off my arm as soon as the tingle alerted me to the bite.

It’s easy to despise those little bugs.

But today, I choose delight.

I prayed through Psalm 65 this morning, and it reframed last night.

First, let’s start where Psalm 65 does… not with sunsets or mountains.

But with mercy.

Praise awaits you, our God, in Zion; to you our vows will be fulfilled. You who answer prayer, to you all people will come. When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions. Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts! We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple. (Psalm 65:1–4)

Before David ever mentions a mountain range or an ocean tide, he mentions forgiveness.

The God who rules from Everest to the Mariana Trench is the God who answers prayers and forgives sins.

Celebration of Creation isn’t where Psalm 65 starts–it’s the overflow of what already happened in the first four verses for God’s people.

Once you’ve been forgiven and brought near, the whole world begins to look like a call to worship.

In the rest of the Psalm the greatness of God is displayed in His daily orchestration of creation–massive mountain peaks and ocean depths, and also fields and streams.

The meadows are covered with flocks, and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing. (Psalm 65:13)

Every single day, God proclaims His power and goodness–from the very start in a sunrise to the very end at sunset.

The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. (Psalm 65:8)

I was more interested in things that were blowing up last night than I was in the sunset fading behind them.

Sadly, that’s been true all year–I’ve given more attention to humans blowing something up on screen than to sunrises and sunsets.

Romans 1 tells us that creation makes God’s glory plain to everyone, every day.

The mountains preach. The sky at dusk is a sermon.

Field and Stream isn’t just a magazine- they’re a message to the world!

Tragically in sin we suppress it.

It’s no surprise that a culture which has lost the capacity to marvel struggles to find joy.

We weren’t designed to scroll past glory all day.

Imagine if scientists found that exact mosquito I slapped off my arm–on Mars.

The fanfare would be worldwide. Headlines. Press conferences.

“A Miracle! A Marvel!”

Scientists would run, jump, and rejoice over the smallest discovery of life.

Influencers would post about how it moved them to tears.

News broadcasts would poll the public for their reactions.

We live in a world absolutely drenched in the power and goodness of God–mosquitoes included–and most days it doesn’t move us an inch.

The whole earth is the Lord’s, and the whole earth sings of Him in joy.

Will you?

Tonight, before you check your phone one more time–Step outside for five minutes and watch the sky change.

Stroll over Scroll.

You don’t need fireworks. You’re already standing inside the miracle.

Of all the people on this planet, the redeemed have the most reason to rejoice–at every mountain, every sea, every field, even every mosquito.

The hauling of my dirt-filled catcher’s gear and cleats into the bat bag at the end of a practice or a game was once where the hard work paused, and a sigh of satisfaction (and rest) followed. This time, the cleats came off, but the glove went back to work for a few throws with Eli once Remi’s diaper was changed and Mila’s persistent Gatorade requests were fulfilled. The work didn’t stop, and if we’re being honest, the rest didn’t come until the last bottle was given and the lights were out for the night.

It’s usually after opportunities like an alumni game where my heart wrestles deeply with the lie that my joy and identity have been stripped by the demands of being a teammate alongside my husband and mom to my babies. Now, I am well aware that most other moms are not dying to get out and suit up for an alumni softball game. I know. Get over the glory days, Rach.

But, I am sure you’ve heard culture pushing for us women to “get your pink back”, especially if you’re in the throes of nighttime feedings and twenty snack requests by 10:00am.

Rediscover yourself.

Reclaim what was lost.

The color and the vibrancy of life have faded - get your pink back.

It has been interesting to watch the impact of those statements. Social media has made room for marriage mockery and we have become desensitized to its danger.

Marital tension and motherhood woes flattened and commodified into overused, negative reel content.

Real life becomes stripped of power and personality to gain algorithm points. Talk of marriage and motherhood that takes stabs at the essence of what God created those roles to be.

Is it worth questioning whether the emphasis on all that feels lost is exactly where Satan wants our focus?

Is it worth calling to mind that God deems this work that is often draining and difficult, also deeply valuable and honorable?

1 Peter 5:8 warns the church to be on high alert, aware and watching for the enemy who “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Perhaps the lion prowls most effectively when he convinces us to mourn what God has called meaningful.

My heart is prone to wander and forget.

I have been stretched and challenged by these two realities in my life existing together:

1. My natural bent does not lean towards nurturing, and my skillset has never proven itself abundant in regard to all that caring for home and family involves.

2. God has given me a home to care for in a way that is honorable and a family to nurture joyfully.

What do I do when the roles God has laid out for me feel unnatural at best?

The kitchen is a place of discomfort.

Productivity in my home is not an outlet for me and is rarely a source of satisfaction.

Life is far easier (and more fun) for me to manage when I am gallivanting around town.

To be home, historically, is to be exactly where loneliness masked in “fear of missing out” is loudest.

YET

Proverbs 31:10-31 describes a wife of noble character as one who works with eager hands.

Who provides food for her family, who “works vigorously” and “does not eat the bread of idleness.”

What is brought to her husband in word, thought and in the help she provides is good.

The chapter ends by noting that the efforts put into building up and sustaining her home are worthy of praise; her work is honorable.

The Spirit has convicted me recently that though the roles often feel unnatural and out of my wheelhouse, and my desires to fulfill them aren’t always there, God desires that I embrace them well.

You could argue that “well” looks different for everyone. We are all gifted and hard-wired differently, and praise God that “wife” and “mother” weren’t created to be externally uniform.

My preferences for social spontaneity and sports over being your stereotypical “Susie Homemaker” were not accidental. But, I often need to be reminded that God has both creatively made me and sovereignly called me into roles that stretch me far beyond those preferences. Roles that were created to be embraced, knowing they draw me needier and nearer towards a deeper holiness. A holiness that does not bow to culture’s whispers of lost identities and a need for new and more exciting. Oh, that He would silence those daily (often hourly) whispers.

When we are on tantrum number 6 and it is not noon yet.

When the cries of the newborn who needs to be fed are happening at the same time as that 6th tantrum before noon.

When Isaac is at work past his usual arrival time and I ache for nothing more than to bolt the moment he walks in the door.

When I can watch the tone I am speaking to my children in discourage their hearts because it is harsh and hurried.

When my instagram algorithm is full of content that trivializes the hurting points of others’ marriages that have been painful points in ours too.

Would the Enemy’s whispers be silenced by a steady leaning in, where the hard is met with the Spirit’s help to give joy, and the mundane is treasured as honorable?

Rachel Baird is a sister in Christ, wife, mother of 3, and fellow member at Resurrection Church. I’m thankful she took the time to minister to others by working on this!

Some are thrilled to have late nights of summer sun.

Some are exhausted from keeping kids moving who thrive in their school schedule.

Whether you’re going to the lake to take a breath or finding it hard to come up for air with all that’s going on…

You need to pray for summer.

Prayer is the breath of the Spirit in the lungs of the believer.

You need the breath of the Spirit in the sails of your summer.

In prayer we fit together the Word of God with our spot and season in the world. We enjoy this communion conversation by the Spirit as loved children of the Father in Christ.

How does your summer fit together with what God says and values?

This summer depends on the Lord. The question is, will you depend on the Lord this summer?

Here are some questions to encourage your prayerful reflection as the summer heats up:

Praise

• What are the main traits of creation in the summertime? What do these traits say about the Creator?

• What special blessings does summertime bring? How can you thank the Giver throughout them?

Repentance

• Where are your hopes too high for summer? Where can summertime be a gift that outshines the Giver?

• Where are you inclined to complain about summer?

• Do you face any particularly seasonal temptations in summertime?

Ask

Intercession–

• Who faces vulnerability and frailty that summertime exposes?

• Who has unique challenges for their work during the summertime?

Mission-

• What unique opportunities does summertime present?

• What challenges does the summer time bring to faithfulness in your calling?

Supplication–

• What would you like to see God do in you this summer?

• What do you need God to provide physically this summer?

• What do you need God to provide spiritually this summer?

Yield

Take a breath, give the Lord your summer. Unless the Lord plans your summer, the plans are in vain. Unless the Lord protects your summer, the rest will not come. Unless the Lord provides this summer, you will not find what you need. Entrust your summer to Him and trust Him with your summer.

There is a window up through the trees from the campfire by the cabin that lets crystal clear stars shine down against blackest night.

I loved catching a satellite streak across or a shooting star.

The trees have changed their frame of the heavens over the years, but I can’t really tell how.

The fire pit has gone through changes, and so has the cabin.

Camping chairs have come and gone, even old stumps we sat on have run their course.

Loved ones have raised me, grown old, and passed on.

The only things I can think of that haven’t been impacted by the passing of time are those stars.

The stars will be the same the next time I look up through that forest frame…

Won’t they?

Don’t count on them. Count on the Creator of the stars.

The prophet Isaiah rebukes the world powers and promises that any and everything they believe is secure will unravel before the justice of God.

⁴ All the stars in the sky will be dissolved

and the heavens rolled up like a scroll;

all the starry host will fall

like withered leaves from the vine,

like shriveled figs from the fig tree.

Isaiah 34:4

I’ve sat around that fire with people who felt crushed by things that had no end in sight.

Jobs that owned them.

Diagnoses with no good answers.

Leaders who seemed untouchable.

The stars looked down on all of it.

Isaiah says–not even the stars get to stay.

Nothing that seems immovable will stand against the Judge of all the earth.

No one will stand on the backs of others for long.

This also calls us to something hard–honest humility before the Lord.

I’ve caught myself building plans on things I’ve never actually examined.

As if my health is a given and my mind will never weaken.

As if certain relationships are permanent and people live forever.

As if this country is a fixture of international and economic power.

I haven’t been counting on those things consciously. But I’ve been counting on them.

What is temporary that you have been regarding as permanent?

That question has stirred conviction and worship over the last week or so.

There are too many things I treat as reliable that are not my God.

There are too many fears that seem more tangible than my God.

Nothing stands on its own but the Lord Almighty.

Nothing will withstand His justice that is not strengthened by Him.

Not even the stars will stand forever. Everlasting life is found only in our Creator.

What does a sister need when she is hurting?

When marriage is hard. When her children grind her down. When anxiety wraps a hand around her throat.

What does she look for?

She wants someone who will listen to her.

She wants someone to be there with her.

Someone who will let her pour out her heart.

Maybe you’ve heard the compliment, “She’s such a good listener. She just lets me vent.”

Sisters, a listening ear is not enough.

Your soul is in danger when you settle for a listening ear, or even worse, when you push away those who speak truth.

If your friendships only echo your own thoughts back to you, you are on the road to death.

Do you have the words of life? How could you survive on your words alone?

You do not need a therapist-friend who reflects your feelings back to you in a softer tone.

You need a sister who speaks the words of Christ into your life.

Someone who loves you enough to say, “What you are telling yourself is not true,” and to open a Bible and show you what is true.

Do you have friends willing to compare what you say with what the Word of God says?

Sisters who preach to you are worth far more than listening ears alone.

Every believer must learn to take her thoughts captive–to catch what she thinks and turn it back to God’s Word.

Paul describes our spiritual battle, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Every thought.

The ones you whisper to yourself at 2 a.m.

The story you have been rehearsing about your husband.

The verdict you have passed on yourself.

These are not sacred because they are yours. They are not true because they feel true. Every one of them must come under the authority of Christ.

There is no such thing as “my truth,” only Christ’s truth.

A friend who only listens leaves you alone with your thoughts.

A sister in Christ takes those thoughts captive with you.

A timeless warning that lands hard on our culture

Listen to Paul warn Timothy.

False teachers “creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:6-7).

Creep. Capture. Led astray. Always learning, never arriving.

That is not a verse about silly women. That is a verse about women who are forever receiving input–books, podcasts, group chats, therapists, Instagram theologians, listening friends–and never landing on what is true.

Every voice gets a hearing. Christ’s voice never gets the last word.

The pattern is not new.

It goes back to Eden. “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim. 2:14).

The serpent did not approach Adam directly. He came to Eve through conversation–through a question that seemed worth considering.

Paul taught the church about this pattern on purpose. The pattern in 2 Timothy 3 is the same pattern of the Fall in a new generation.

Sister, the question is not whether the serpent still works this way. The question is whether you have friends who will help you spot him.

What sisters in Christ are actually for

Look at what Paul calls older women to do for younger women in Titus 2. Not to listen them into wholeness. To train them.

“Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled” (Titus 2:3-5).

Teach. Train. Form. Shape. Correct. Direct.

The Greek word behind train means to bring someone to a sound mind. To instill sober, ordered thinking where chaos was running the show.

Sister, the Scripture says you need other sisters who will help bring you back to your senses.

That is what older women owe younger women in this church. Not a soft place to land and stay.

A faithful voice that says, “Sister, here is what is true. Here is what you must do.”

And younger women–you cannot simply want to be heard.

You must want to be helped. Seek out women who will speak truth to you.

Then receive it when they do.

A necessary caveat

I am not telling you to stop listening to each other. I am not telling you to interrupt a weeping friend with three verses and a sermon outline.

“Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). Patient listening is a holy skill. The friend who rushes to preach before she understands is foolish (Prov. 18:13). The friend who corrects before she cares is unkind. There is a time to sit with a sister, to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15), to bear her burden in silence before you open your mouth.

This kind of listening is a ministry.

What I am warning against is a culture of listening that never moves toward speaking. A friendship that endlessly receives but never refines.

A small group where every woman shares, and no woman is sharpened.

A pattern where the goal of every hard conversation is to feel heard and never to be changed.

That is not Christian friendship. That is prayer-request-therapy.

Preach to yourself. Preach to each other.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said the great battle of the Christian life is to stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself–preaching to your own soul the truths you know in Christ.

The psalmist did this. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Ps. 42:11).

He hears his own discouragement. He preaches to it.

This is what you need, sister.

This is what we owe each other. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Col. 3:16).

Teach. Admonish. One another.

Not “let her feelings dwell in you richly.” Not “validate one another in all things.”

The word of Christ.

Where to begin

Sisters, here is what I am asking.

Look at your closest Christian friendships.

When you are anxious, do your sisters tell you what is true? Or only that your anxiety is understandable?

When you are angry at your husband, do they call you to repentance? Or do they catalog his faults with you?

When you are spiraling, do they hand you Scripture? Or a tissue and a “that’s so hard”?

You need both. But if you only have the tissue, you are starving.

Then the harder question. Are you willing to be that kind of friend?

Will you listen well and speak truth, even when it would be easier to nod?

Will you love your sister enough to be the voice of Christ in her life, and not only a soft ear?

Listen well, sisters. And then preach.

God’s plan is that through the church his wisdom would be shown to the rulers and authorities in the heavens.

The church is God’s exhibit. The stage where spiritual powers watch his wisdom on display.

What is the church in that verse?

Not a building. We’ve learned that lesson. But we’ve swung too far.

Is “the church” just the people?

No, the church is the people together.

The word is ekklesia. It means assembly. A gathered people. A convened body.

As Mark Dever has said, “The church is much more than an assembly, though never less.”

The assembly is not made up of scattered individuals. My private walk with Jesus is not an assembly.

You can’t “do church,” WE have to be the church.

The church displays God’s wisdom when it gathers.

When people who would never share a meal sit together under one Lord.

When the rich and the poor sing the same song.

When the lonely are pulled into a family.

When sinners confess and saints encourage.

When the Word is preached.

When the bread and cup are shared.

That assembly declares Christ’s power to fallen spiritual powers. We are the exhibit.

You cannot display Christ’s victory in an assembly of one.

If you are not gathering with God’s people for worship, you are not fully displaying the victory of Christ.

You may love Jesus. You may read your Bible. You may pray. Praise God!

But the announcement Paul describes does not happen through scattered believers doing private devotion.

It happens through a gathered worshipping assembly, the church.

We need this message as the Michigan summer weather approaches.

A mutated vision of Christianity gives permission to many consciences to spend their summer Sundays up north.

Every Lord’s Day you stay home or linger up north, you pull yourself out of the exhibit God is staging for the watching world.

Discipleship is personal. But it is never only personal. Christ did not die to save us into private faith. He died to gather a people.

So come to church. Not because it is a nice habit.

Come because the rulers of the fallen world are watching, and your seat in the assembly is part of the sermon about Jesus’ victory.

When Solomon sat his son down to give a 9 chapter foundation to his wisdom instruction–he spent 30% of the time warning about the seductive lies of the wayward woman.

In 2026, we’re so concerned that our kids don’t miss the youth group text we will put the wayward woman in his pocket.

Solomon devotes the largest portion of Proverbs 1-9 to this singular topic: Stay away from her.

Solomon knew a woman didn’t need a filter to entice a young man off the path of life.

Her attraction is timelessly vivid–lips drip honey, whose words are smoother than oil. So is her destruction–whose house is the road to Sheol.

Solomon didn’t mention her once or twice. Nearly 30% of Proverbs 1–9–almost a third of his entire fatherly instruction–is devoted to warnings about this one threat.

That’s not a footnote. That’s clear focus from reasonable fear.

Solomon understood something we’ve somehow forgotten: the most dangerous enemy of a young man’s wisdom isn’t ignorance. It’s seduction.

It’s the voice that sounds sweet, that flatters, that promises pleasure without consequence.

The voice that finds him when he’s alone, when it’s late, when no one’s watching.

With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. Proverbs 7:21

Solomon’s son had to leave the house to find her.

Yours doesn’t.

She’s already in his room. In his pocket.

Firing notifications at 11pm or 9:43am.

She has an algorithm behind her now, one that has studied exactly what makes him look twice, linger longer, click deeper.

She has billions of dollars of engineering designed to do precisely what Proverbs 7 describes–find the young man, flatter him, and lead him somewhere his father never intended him to go.

And we handed it to him. Wrapped it up. Paid the monthly bill.

I’m not only talking about pornography, though that’s real and that’s obvious.

I’m also talking about something subtle and dangerous–the formation of the imagination and desires.

What a young man’s eyes feast on shapes what he desires. What he desires shapes who he becomes.

Who he becomes determines whether he ends up at Wisdom’s table or in Folly’s bed (his death bed).

Proverbs 1–9 is not a list of rules. It’s a father trying to shape his son’s imagination before the world gets to it first.

We are losing that race badly because of the devices we’re giving our children.

The two great female figures of Proverbs 1–9 stand on opposite corners and call out to the same young man.

• Lady Wisdom cries from the heights, from the marketplace, from the gates of the city.

• Lady Folly sits at the door of her house and targets “those who are passing by, who are going straight on their way”… the ones who weren’t even looking for trouble (9:15).

That’s your kid scrolling Instagram on the way to do his homework.

He wasn’t looking for trouble. But she found him anyway.

The question isn’t whether your son will hear the voice of the wayward woman.

He will.

Solomon knew his son would. That’s why he wrote nine chapters about it. Do we assume ours will not?

The question is whether he has a father’s voice louder in his heart than hers is in his ear.

That voice doesn’t get loud by accident.

It gets loud by intention–by years of sitting together, naming what’s happening, calling things what they are, and making Wisdom compelling so that Folly loses her appeal.

It takes years to cultivate a young heart into wisdom. We won’t succeed simply by dealing with the digital devils.

But I believe we’re neglecting one of the first steps on the journey to wisdom–which is to keep them out of the path of the wicked.

Student loans are looking over your shoulder.

A credit card’s interest is snowballing on you quickly.

The numbers are discouraging. Not to mention the sense of betrayal you feel.

Everyone told you college was the only path to success. No one told you how credit cards can eat you alive.

You find yourself stuck between frustration with yourself and anger at the way the world is.

No matter what you’re feeling, you are definitely feeling trapped.

What might be different if someone had taught you?

Friend, you can’t go back in time. But you can start listening to God’s Word today.

But before you read on, ask yourself, “Am I truly ready to listen even if God says something hard to hear? Am I eager to receive God’s instructions for my finances?”

Proverbs 6 invites a young man trapped by a debt to the path of wisdom.

6 My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor,

if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,

² you have been trapped by what you said,

ensnared by the words of your mouth.

³ So do this, my son, to free yourself,

since you have fallen into your neighbor’s hands:

Here’s the invitation– are you ready for the instruction?

God’s principle: your debt and your work-life balance cannot coexist.

God’s calling you to get after it!

Go—to the point of exhaustion—

and give your neighbor no rest!

⁴ Allow no sleep to your eyes,

no slumber to your eyelids.

⁵ Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter,

like a bird from the snare of the fowler.

If you’ve been trapped by a promise to pay, you need to push past it.

An animal in a trap does not wait till tomorrow or casually escape.

Likewise, you need to abandon patience and embrace urgency in escaping the debt.

What would escape-from-a-trap-urgency look like for you?

What does it mean that the Scriptures encourage working to exhaustion in the age of the forty-hour workweek?

The passage calls you to be more intense about your repayment than your debtor: “Give your neighbor no rest!”

God’s Word tells you that wisdom involves urgency in eliminating debt.

Urgency–not leniency, not complacency, and definitely not luxury!

There are many lies that arise in our hearts when we consider cutting our spending and increasing our hustling.

You decide–will you listen to the wisdom of God or the lies of a debt addicted culture?

When you owe someone money–it’s time for hustle, not paying for streaming services.

When you owe on your car–it’s time to work, not to vacation.

We can’t afford to go out to eat when we owe someone else’s money.

You can’t afford to wait.

Poverty is breathing down your neck even if you haven’t realized it yet.

You don’t need to be a financial expert. You don’t have to figure it out the whole financial system.

The simplest principles observed in nature will dramatically change your position:

1) work hard, 2) consume less, so you can save, because 3) you know the window of opportunity can close.

⁶ Go to the ant, you sluggard;

consider its ways and be wise!

⁷ It has no commander,

no overseer or ruler,

⁸ yet it stores its provisions in summer

and gathers its food at harvest.

⁹ How long will you lie there, you sluggard?

When will you get up from your sleep?

¹⁰ A little sleep, a little slumber,

a little folding of the hands to rest—

¹¹ and poverty will come on you like a thief

and scarcity like an armed man.

You don’t have to escape from this trap alone!

Find friends in our church who want to leave the reckless spending of our indulgent culture behind and will help each other through the hard work and hustle season.1

I struggle with packing. I live in under 5 shirts and alternate between two pairs of jeans.

Still, clothes I haven’t worn in months make it into my luggage when it’s time to pack.

“Who knows? Maybe I will need the water shoes after all–Seattle in March can be so unpredictable!”

Hustling through the airport is usually when I recognize I’ve overpacked and overburdened myself.

When you pack, everything seems necessary.

When you travel, everything is heavy.

Overpacking fascinates me because, paradoxically, planning for every contingency makes the journey more frustrating.

The temptation of future safety brings a burden.

This is how idolatry works, not just packing.

We want to be sure we are ready, confident we will be safe, consoled that the future will go our way– so we look for something that can deliver.

This isn’t new.

Isaiah mocked the false gods Bel and Nebo in Isaiah 46.

Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low;

their idols are borne by beasts of burden.

The images that are carried about are burdensome,

a burden for the weary.

² They stoop and bow down together;

unable to rescue the burden,

they themselves go off into captivity.

Isaiah 46:1–2

The safety of these idols is an illusion, but their weight is real.

Our God is so wonderfully different! He carries and sustains…

³ “Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,

all the remnant of the people of Israel,

you whom I have upheld since your birth,

and have carried since you were born.

⁴ Even to your old age and gray hairs

I am he, I am he who will sustain you.

I have made you and I will carry you;

I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Isaiah 46:3-4

While false gods break your back, the God of the Bible carries His people from birth through old age.

The Lord carries his people, while people must carry their idols. The contrast should move us to praise!

False gods must be carried and cannot accomplish anything except tiring you out.

With all we have–why are we so hopeless and worried?

Could it be that our souls are being crushed by carrying around so many idols?

We have more of everything, and our souls are breaking under the weight.

Perhaps it is time that we decided to pack less.

How many marriages have to break under the burden of debt before we put down the idols?

How many wonderful little babies could be carried by backs with fewer financial burdens?

What songs might come from people who pack light, choosing full hearts?

After all, our Lord Jesus did warn us, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).

There is One God who can protect you in the future. He will carry you, which frees you to carry far less!

⁸ “Remember this, keep it in mind,

take it to heart, you rebels.

⁹ Remember the former things, those of long ago;

I am God, and there is no other;

I am God, and there is none like me.

¹⁰ I make known the end from the beginning,

from ancient times, what is still to come.

I say, ‘My purpose will stand,

and I will do all that I please.’

Isaiah 46:8-10

Many people use hope to mean wishful thinking:

“I hope it doesn’t rain.”

“I hope this works out.”

The modern concept of hope ranges from passive piety to foolish fingers-crossed.

This kind of hope will not sustain a Christian.

Biblical hope is something else.

Hope is an optimism and anticipation that arises from confidence in God’s promise-keeping nature.

Hopeful Christians are sure God does what He promised. This hope is Spirit-powered fuel for long obedience.

Hope isn’t passive–it’s power.

Hope flows from two deep confidences: God will keep his promises, and those promises are good in Christ.

The hopeful believer isn’t just waiting for the future.

He’s running toward it–sustained by the promises he’s already received in the gift of the Spirit.

1. Hope is Promise-Confident

Hopeful believers are confident that God will keep his word.

Isaiah declares, “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear” (Isaiah 59:1). When results are slow, when the labor feels fruitless, when we feel insufficient–the hopeful believer remembers: God’s arm is not too short.

This confidence rests not in our strength but in God’s sovereignty.

God’s plan will not fail.

God’s timing is perfect. God’s purposes cannot be thwarted.

The full fruit of our labor may not be seen until the Last Day–but it will be seen.

The hopeful believer plants and waters with confidence, knowing that God gives the growth.

When believers forget this, we grasp for control.

We try to manipulate outcomes. We despair as dark circumstances arise.

But the promise-confident believer can endure setbacks and delays because his hope is anchored in the One who rules all things and finishes what he starts.

2. Hope is Glory-Captivated

Hopeful believers are captivated by the beauty of what’s coming.

Paul writes, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).

This is why hope energizes–God promises that future glory trounces present suffering.

The hopeful believer longs for what lasts.

He ministers as an investment in eternal reward. The temptations of immediate pleasure or gain lose their grip when the heart is captured by something better.

Hope is threatened by devotion to the temporal and material.

Jesus warned of seed sown among thorns–”the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word” (Mark 4:19).

Distraction. Deceitful desires. The cares of this life. These don’t usually announce themselves as enemies of hope. They just quietly crowd out glory until we forget what we were living for.

Is it any wonder that the wealthiest people in history have the most depression (hopelessness)?

The battle for hope is often a battle to recalibrate by remembering eternity.

The glory-captivated believer rehearses the promises. He meditates on what’s coming. He refuses to let the thorns choke out his vision of the inheritance.

3. Hope is Spirit-Assured

Hopeful leaders live in the present reality of the Spirit.

Paul reminds us that God has “sealed us with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:13-14).

We are not waiting blindly for a distant promise.

We have the Spirit of God now. The Spirit is the downpayment–the firstfruits of what’s coming.

This is why “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).

The same Spirit who will raise us from the dead is already at work in us.

God’s future broke into our present.

We know the inheritance is real, we’ve begun experiencing it already.

This transforms how we endure. James writes, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2-3).

Joy in trials isn’t grit or denial. It’s confidence that the Spirit who is with us now will bring us all the way home.

• Where are you tempted to lose confidence in God’s timing or plan?

• What “cares of this life” or “desires for other things” are crowding out your vision of glory?

• How often do you rehearse the promises–or have you let them grow dim through neglect?

• Are you living as one who has already tasted the inheritance, or as one still waiting to see if it’s real?

• What would change in your service to others if you truly believed the Spirit in you is the guarantee of everything to come?

“Pastor, am I wrong to see the State of Israel and the Jewish people as two different things? The State seems basically secular — no different than any other country, except it sits on the promised land. But I believe God’s promises to Abraham still stand. I just don’t know how to talk about this with my family without saying something unbiblical.”

I appreciated the question. It was honest, careful, and came from someone who actually wants to get this right–not just win an argument at the dinner table.

Here’s what I told them. I think it might help some of you too.

The instinct to separate the Jewish people from the modern political State of Israel is a good one.

They are not the same thing, and much of the confusion–and the heat–in these conversations comes from treating them as if they are.

When you read Romans 9–11, Paul is actually holding three things in mind at once:

1. The ethnic Jewish people— the descendants of Abraham, the people to whom the covenant promises were made

2. The believing remnant— Jewish people who have come to faith in Jesus (Paul himself, the apostles, and many today)

3. A future restored Israel— the Spirit-led, believing Jewish community Paul anticipates in Romans 11

The modern State of Israel doesn’t map neatly onto any of these three. It’s largely secular, as was said–and that’s okay to acknowledge.

It doesn’t mean God has forgotten his people. It just means we shouldn’t read the evening news as the fulfillment of Romans 11.

What does the Bible Promise?

Paul is clear in Romans 11 that Israel’s current spiritual hardening is temporary and purposeful. God has not abandoned his covenant people (v. 1–2). A future turning of ethnic Jews to their Messiah is coming (v. 26). Paul is certain of this.

But notice–he describes it as a future, Spirit-wrought event. It’s not something we can look at a map and verify today.

The fullness of what God has promised almost certainly waits for the consummation of all things, not a geopolitical moment.

That means two things practically:

First, we don’t need to treat the current State as the fulfillment of the promise in order to believe God is faithful. God’s faithfulness doesn’t depend on us recognizing any government as his instrument.

Second, we don’t need to treat the State as an impostor either. God has preserved the Jewish people through centuries of exile, persecution, and attempted extermination. That’s worth sitting with. The fact that many ethnic Jews now live in the promised land is not nothing, but if it ceases for a time, your faith should not waver.

The Jews should be fundamentally understood as people still in the midst of spiritual and physical exile.

Think of Cyrus, the Persian king God used to restore Israel from Babylon (Isaiah 45). God called him “my anointed”–and Cyrus didn’t even know the Lord. God can use what he has not fully blessed.

Two Ditches to Avoid

Most of the tension in these conversations comes from people pulling toward one of two errors:

The first ditch is treating whatever the State of Israel does as automatically God-approved–beyond question, beyond critique, wrapped in prophetic significance. This puts more weight on a secular government than Scripture warrants.

The second ditch is treating the modern state and people with hostility or suspicion. History has had many believers sucked into anti-semitism as they encounter spiritual hardness among the Jews. The Jewish people have not been discarded by God.

The biblical path is narrower than either. Hold the promises firmly. Assess the politics soberly. Don’t let your theology of Israel get hijacked by cable news in either direction.

What to Say When It Gets Tense

If you’re navigating hard conversations with family or friends, here are a few things you can honestly say:

• ”I don’t have to approve of every Israeli government decision to believe God will keep his promises to the Jewish people.”

• ”The future Paul describes in Romans 11 is a believing, Spirit-filled Jewish remnant–we’re not there yet. But that’s okay. It doesn’t make God unfaithful.”

• ”The most faithful thing I can do for Israel right now is pray for Jewish people to know their Messiah.”

That last one is worth sitting with. Praying for the peace of Jerusalem, at its deepest, is a prayer for the gospel. It’s a prayer that the Jewish people would come home– to the Lord.

You don’t have to choose between loving the Jewish people and thinking clearly about a secular state.

You don’t have to baptize every political decision to trust that God is faithful.

And you don’t have to feel like you’re betraying Scripture just because you’re not sure the evening news is prophecy being fulfilled.

Hold the distinction. Keep the hope. Pray for Jewish people to know Jesus.

That’s the most faithful posture I know–and it’s one you can hold with both conviction and humility, even at a tense family dinner.

A holy person, in my mind, was someone who avoided things–a life defined by “no.”

I had an unattractive, unattainable understanding of what “holy” meant.

Holy people paid someone else to fart for them.

I was one of those Christians who still occasionally had gas and… *GASP* sometimes thought a fart was funny.

The biblical picture of holiness is beautiful, not backbreaking or browbeating.

Holiness isn’t about freezing in place.

God’s holiness will bring a sinner to his knees, no doubt. But the unique wonder and worthiness of God is the fountain of all God’s creative and redemptive work.

God created us to enjoy His holiness. Christ redeems us to enjoy God’s holiness.

Because of Christ’s cross, we don’t have to run from the power of God’s holiness in fear of the penalty of sin.

In Christ, we do keep running, though.

Holiness is about running–running with the Spirit toward love.

The holy believer isn’t standing still, white-knuckling his way through temptation. He’s in motion, becoming like the God who gave himself for others.

Holiness isn’t static. It’s dynamic. And it ends in sacrifice for the people around you.

1. Holiness is Set Apart FROM

Holiness begins with departure. Paul commands believers to no longer live “as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts” (Ephesians 4:17-18).

The world has a way of doing things. It has a definition of success, a vision of leadership, and a set of values that seem obvious to everyone shaped by it.

But the leader set apart for God must see this clearly: the world’s wisdom is futile. Its understanding is darkened. Its heart is hard.

Set apart FROM means we refuse to influence others by the world’s playbook and value system.

We don’t measure success the way the culture does. We don’t pursue influence through manipulation. We don’t tolerate sin in ourselves to keep the peace or maintain an image.

The old self–with its deceitful desires–has been put off. We don’t go back, no matter how practical the worldly wisdom appears.

2. Holiness is Set Apart TO

But holiness is not merely leaving. It’s becoming. Paul continues: “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

The goal is not emptiness–it’s likeness.

We are being renewed in the image of our Creator. Holiness means becoming like God. Receiving Christ’s righteousness, then his character becomes our standard and our pursuit. His heart becomes our aim.

This is why holiness cannot be reduced to rule-keeping.

Rules tell you what to avoid. Holiness calls you to become. The holy leader isn’t simply the one who doesn’t fall.

He’s the one being transformed–growing in the character of God himself.

3. Holiness is Set Apart FOR

And what does God’s character look like in action? Paul answers immediately: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

Holiness aims at love. To be like God is to walk in sacrificial love.

The holy leader puts God first–and then spends himself for the good of others.

He is not set apart to be above but to serve.

He imitates the Lord Jesus, who gave himself up.

The surprising end of holiness is that it looks like a cross.

Set apart FROM the world’s selfishness. Set apart TO God’s character. Set apart FOR the kind of love that costs you something.

It’s worth reflecting:

• Where am I still influencing others by the world’s playbook rather than God’s?

• Am I pursuing holiness as rule-keeping, or am I being transformed into God’s likeness?

• Does my leadership cost me anything for the sake of others?

• Where is God calling me to walk in sacrificial love this week?

Politicians spin. The politician calculates what people want to hear.

They speak this way because they are serving themselves.

Claiming to be public servants, they posture and self-promote with their speech.

Christians have been called to be different. I wish the difference were more obvious.

The speech in many congregations is more politician than Christian.

We must fight for the honest speech of an ambassador of Christ!

The ambassador delivers the message he was given. Believers in Christ's church are not politicians managing constituencies.

We are ambassadors–servants of Christ for others' sake–entrusted with a Word we did not write and cannot edit.

Ambassadors speak plainly.

Honesty is central to a leader’s character and habits. We are people of the Word, accountable to the All-Knowing God.

We are committed to live in truth–not because it’s safe, but because it’s right.

Honest leaders trust God’s Word enough to speak boldly and trust God’s Spirit enough to speak plainly.

1. Honesty is God-Accountable

Honest leadership begins with knowing who we answer to.

Paul writes, “It is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself... It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4:2-4).

The leader anchored in eternity is free.

Free from flattery–because God’s approval matters more than applause.

Free from spin–because reputation management is exhausting and God sees through it anyway.

Free from fear of punishment–because the audience of One has already rendered the verdict that matters: justified in Christ.

Forgetting that we answer to God leads to answering the crowd. And crowds demand what makes them comfortable, not what serves them eternally.

2. Honesty is Word-Confident

Honest leaders trust the Word enough to speak plainly.

Paul describes his ministry this way: “We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Corinthians 4:2).

No tricks. No edits. No filters.

No softening the hard parts to protect ourselves or please others. The Lord Jesus spoke with clarity because he knew the Word would bear fruit in those with ears to hear.

Leaders confident in God’s Word enjoy freedom to communicate it clearly–even when clarity costs something.

This doesn’t mean we speak without wisdom or love. But it does mean we speak.

The servant who buries the talent out of fear is not commended. Neither is the leader who buries the truth.

3. Honesty is Spirit-Trusting

Honest leaders trust the Spirit to work through truth in others’ lives.

Paul commands, “Having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25). We are to speak “the truth in love” so that we “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

This kind of honesty is risky.

It means admitting weakness, confessing sin, and asking for help.

It means bringing hard words to people who may not receive them well.

The truth is, we don’t always experience relational maturity in our congregation.

People misunderstand. People get defensive. People disappoint us.

But our confidence isn’t in the maturity of the people–it’s in the faithfulness of the Spirit.

We speak truth because we believe God uses truth to transform his people. We are vulnerable because the Spirit can use our honesty for others’ good, even when they don’t respond perfectly.

We bring hard conversations to the right person–not because we’re guaranteed a good outcome, but because we trust God to work in them as he works in us.

Gossip is often “honesty” aimed at the wrong audience.

The honest leader brings concerns to the person who can address them, trusting the Spirit to do what only the Spirit can do.

We don’t control outcomes. We speak faithfully and trust God with the results.

• Where are you tempted to spin or soften truth to protect your reputation?

• What hard conversation have you been avoiding because you fear the response?

• Are you hiding any struggle that needs to be brought into the light with a trusted brother or sister?

• When you share concerns about someone, are you talking to the right person–or just venting to someone safer?

• Are you trusting the Spirit to work through truth, or are you waiting for perfect relational conditions before you speak?

Pride doesn’t always look like arrogance.

It looks like competence that stopped praying.

It looks like experience that stopped listening.

It looks like a leader who builds for God without bowing before Him.

Humility is the Christ-confronted, Spirit-dependent posture that makes every other virtue possible in a life of others-oriented service.

At Resurrection Church, we don’t treat humility as a soft skill or a personality trait you can develop later.

Humility is the foundation. Everything else we build in life rests on humility because in humility we rest on the Lord.

Without humility, everything collapses.

Why? Because work that matters and lasts will be done in the strength of the Lord. “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble” (James 4:6).

That’s not just a warning–it’s a promise.

You don’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of that equation.

Our humility at Resurrection has three characteristics.

1. Christ-confronted. Humility begins at the cross. The Pharisee in Luke 18 tithed, fasted, and followed the rules—but he stood before God listing credentials instead of falling before God in acknowledgment of need. The tax collector couldn’t lift his eyes to heaven. He went home justified. A leader who leans on his own righteousness is already lost. Before leading, a leader must fall to his knees in need of mercy. While leading, a leader stays there. The Christian life begins by bowing to Christ and never leaves that position.

2. Spirit-dependent. Ezekiel stood in a valley of dry bones, asking, “Can these bones live?” The answer wasn’t a better strategy or more resources. It was the breath of God. “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). Jesus was direct: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Not “you’ll struggle.” Not “you’ll be less effective.” Nothing. That’s the most humbling and liberating truth in leadership. When you embrace your powerlessness, you discover God’s power.

3. Others-oriented. Jesus redefined greatness: “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Mark 10:43). His path to glory took the form of a servant to the point of death. If that’s the pattern for Jesus, what makes us think ours should be different? Paul commended Timothy for showing “genuine concern” for others’ welfare–not strategic relationship-building, but authentic care that put others’ interests above his own.

Pride rarely announces itself.

It hides in defensiveness when questioned.

It shows up in the need to be right.

It whispers that your experience qualifies you to trust your own judgment. It lingers in the sting you feel when someone else gets credit.

Ask yourself: Where am I currently relying on my own strength instead of acknowledging dependence on God?

Is it in how I handle conflict? Make decisions? Respond to criticism?

How do I react when things go well under my watch—do I quietly take credit? When someone challenges my idea, does something rise in me?

The proud person protects himself. The humble person has already died in Christ. And the person who has died to himself is fully free to serve.

Humility isn’t weakness or passivity. It’s not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less. Humility orients us toward the agenda of God and keeps us dependent on His strength.

Many speak from sincerity and many howl from injury.

Some of these platforms are not centered on proclaiming Christ but on exposing other Christians, dissecting political figures, or positioning themselves as the voice of insider knowledge that the rest of us supposedly can’t see clearly.

The niche varies. The spiritual danger does not.

Some of this work is necessary. The church has real scandals. Civic engagement is a real responsibility.

But somewhere between righteous concern and the dopamine of a growing subscriber count, a person stops being a faithful believer who uses their voice and becomes a talking head.

A talking head finds identity, audience, and income on a steady supply of other people's situations or thin speculations.

Not long ago, I became concerned about someone I cared about who was building exactly this kind of platform.

He had real experience and legitimate concerns. But his content had drifted from conviction into something else: a growing archive of critique, insider analysis, and speculation that was becoming the center of his public identity–pulling him away from the Christ-oriented voice he had been called to have.

I wrote him a letter. I share it here, with identifying details removed, because the concerns apply far beyond one person.

Friend, I hope you are doing well. That’s actually why I’m writing.

I’m reaching out because I’m concerned that the content you’re creating has become disjointed from the rest of your celebration of Christ. I’m thrilled for the growth you’ve experienced–and as someone who cares about your soul, I’m also concerned that the market demands for viewers and attention are steering you off course as a follower of Christ. I don’t need a response, but I’d love for you to prayerfully consider three things:

1. The project you are undertaking is dangerous for your soul.

Fame is a variation of the drug of power, it seems. Scripture warns of both, and we ought to be serious about the dangers of living for the eyes and praise of men. Building a platform must be done with a serious commitment to live in view of God and directed by the fear of the Lord alone. When paychecks are connected to viewership and approval, this will be a regular challenge you must consider.

Our Lord was very clear about the dangers of focusing on the sins and flaws of others (Matthew 7:3–5). The log in our own eye must be addressed before the speck elsewhere. The measure we use must be the measure we’re prepared to receive (Luke 6:38). A project that requires volumes of content evaluating others is incredibly dangerous for the soul and should only be undertaken with the most serious reflection.

2. Even if you navigate this stewardship well, this project may still be destructive for the souls of others.

The Lord does call some to special dangers (James 3:1). If this task is one you still desire to pursue, I think the rule of love may slow or change your direction profoundly (1 Corinthians 16:14). Recent years have shown how divisive this kind of content can be for the church, especially when it operates on partial information.

The content you create needs to be more than true; it should be masterfully crafted as words that build up to fit the occasion (Ephesians 4:29). Not many areas of the church are dealing with this type of content well, and your impact on the Lord’s church should be a chief concern in your stewardship.

3. Beyond the dangers, there is cause for real concern–the project itself shows traits that match New Testament warnings about false teachers.

The New Testament is full of warnings about false teachers and divisions in the body (Romans 16:17–18; 2 Peter 2:3). But the warnings against speculations and the allure of deeper insights may be the most relevant here (1 Timothy 1:3–4).

You have more access than most to people and situations with real impact. However, I think you should be careful not to build a following on special insight and speculation (Colossians 2:8). You want your voice to be centered on–and continually amplify–Christ (Colossians 1:28) throughout your life. Your work may focus on many things, as a doctor talks mostly of medicine. But the way a doctor talks of medicine will impact his ability to speak of Christ.

I hope these words are received from brother to brother, with the goal of our Lord’s glory and the flourishing of His Church.

Jesus Over Everything.

The letter raises three concerns, but beneath all of them is a single insight: sustained critique is spiritually influential–and it forms you in a direction you didn’t choose.

We tend to think of formation in positive terms: prayer, Bible reading, worship, and fasting.

But we become what we behold.

We are formed by fixation on failures and speculations.

The person who spends hours each week researching, scripting, and publishing content about other people’s failures is being shaped by that practice.

The person who spends hours consuming it is being shaped by that diet.

Jesus didn’t warn about the speck and the log because He was soft on sin. He warned that fixation on another’s sin is one of the most effective ways to become blind to your own.

When platform growth depends on finding the next failure or suspicion to discuss, the mutation accelerates.

You don’t notice the log growing because the audience keeps applauding your eye for specks.

The letter also names something the church has been slow to recognize: “insider knowledge” is one of the oldest traps in Scripture.

Paul warned Timothy about those drawn to speculations rather than the stewardship of faith (1 Timothy 1:3–4). The modern talking head–regardless of niche–functions in this exact pattern: I was there. I have access. Let me show you what they don’t want you to see.

This builds audiences quickly. It also builds audiences whose loyalty is anchored to the insider rather than to Christ.

Two questions are worth sitting with:

If you create or share content: Is my celebration of Christ growing or shrinking in proportion to my influence?

As you consume content: Is this making me more like Jesus by helping me see and treasure Him, or just informing me about other people’s failures?

Whether you’re the one creating this content or the one consuming it, the deeper question is the same: How is this shaping me?

Every platform is built by two parties–the voice and the audience. Both are doing spiritual work.

Discernment is valuable. An appetite for controversy dressed up as discernment is not.

If you dare build a platform–make sure it builds–the good of others and the glory of Christ.

As you’re hearing voices–think about what it builds–beware of a spirit of critique and a cult following.

These words are a closing door as a counselor.

When someone doesn’t believe you understand them, they don’t understand how you can help them.

Have you felt that no one understands you or your struggle?

Does your spouse seem distracted from what sits heavy on your heart?

Do your friends prefer polite and pleasant over the pains you face?

How could your pastor understand in an hour what you’ve experienced over a season, even a lifetime?

I am sorry for the loneliness you feel in the heaviness of your heart.

I’ve been there too, more often than I want to admit, and I want you to know something important.

There is One who understands. Don’t close the door on Him.

Jesus Christ intercedes for you, Christian, as One who understands you.

Jesus prays for you, not from professional distance, but from personal experience.

“He ever lives above, for me to intercede,” the old hymn, Arise, My Soul, Arise, reminds us.

Jesus is in heaven, in fellowship with the Father and the Spirit, and is able to sympathize with our frailty in the midst of the unfolding plans of history.

He knows how hard life lands on the hands and heart.

Christ’s prayers for us are not abstractions–He has the scars to prove it!

The hymn continues,

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
received on Calvary,
they pour effectual prayers,
they strongly plead for me,
‘Forgive him, oh, forgive, they cry,
nor let that ransomed sinner die.’

You are not misunderstood. Few may understand, but One surely does.

The Enemy wants you to forget that Jesus understands.

When someone does not believe you understand them, they don’t understand how you can then help them, after all.

Will you take up the bold faith of talking with Jesus in prayer about what you are going through?

Talk to Him as a friend who knows your frame and knows your weakness… a friend who has shared in weakness.

Jesus is acquainted with weakness, temptation, sorrow, and fatigue.

“Remaining what He was, He became what He was not.” Is how Gregory of Nazianzus put it.

God is not weak, but Jesus understands weakness and pleads for us.

God is not tempted, but Jesus resisted the Devil.

God is never oppressed or downtrodden, but Jesus was broken for us.

God is never tired, faint, sleepy, or distracted, but Jesus knew the challenge of watching and praying and persevering.

Where are you misunderstood? Where are you alone?

Will you name one burden you believe you carry alone, and boldly embrace the comfort that this is on Jesus’ prayer list, and that He understands as He intercedes.

Below is my attempt. This is, of course, not Scripture and not Paul.

I thought it might encourage our congregation.

It was stretching as a writer to attempt to use Paul’s voice, but it was encouraging as a believer to reflect on what Paul would emphasize to our congregation.

Paul,

To the saints in Lincoln Park and the whole region of Downriver,

Grace and Peace to you in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I praise God that your faith is firm in the midst of fiery trials. We know that the refining of your faith through the suffering of this life will produce reward that will never fade. I am praying that the Spirit who seals you for your eternal inheritance provides greater assurance in this moment of testing than temporary resources can provide.

In the midst of my own sufferings, I glory in building the Lord’s church. This is not a structure made of stone and wood, but a people built by the Spirit with a foundation on the Gospel of Christ. You are the beams and trusses built on the foundation of Christ. Do not waver amidst the fire.

I praise God that David reported your faith is standing firm and your joy is fixed on Christ rather than on things that pass away. Watch out for the deception of the Devil during these times of distress–grumbling can be close at hand. Discouragement presses on those who are displaced–do not let it move you from Christ. Guard your tongues, do not tear each other down. In trial, do not become distracted or doubtful, but trust the Spirit and focus on the Gospel. Build each other up with words of truth as the Spirit of Christ directs. The church of Christ is in need of constant edification. Through your encouragement, the young and weak are made strong so that the church will stand firm till the final day.

Your gathering, your prayer, and your singing are important for your endurance and for your faithful witness. While many things have changed for you, let the foundations be most clear–your faith in Christ, your love for God’s people, and the hope of God’s calling.

I deeply long to hear that you are pressing forward with the Gospel, not merely surviving this ordeal. Do not let discouragement dampen your bold testimony of Christ. We have sure hope that will outlast momentary suffering. In the midst of smoke and fire, I pray that the aroma of Christ is the clearest smell in your community.

Nothing we built or own brought us into the mercy and grace of our God. The broken body and poured out blood of Christ brought us into eternal treasure and the Spirit’s power. In your time of loss, cling to Him–for He holds lasting treasure that will never spoil, fade, or burn. The Word of God will stand, though all things are reserved for fire. Build your life together on Christ’s Word and you will stand through all these things, to the praise of His glorious Grace.