One day in ministry, I felt very vulnerable, inadequate, and weak. That was unusual for me. I didn’t feel like the warrior. I felt fragile. I felt the weight of what I was carrying. Insecurity tried to creep in. For a moment, I found myself comparing. Comparing my weakness to someone else’s strength. Comparing my suffering to someone else’s victory. Comparing what I felt in that moment to what I thought prayer was supposed to sound like. Then I remembered something. The Holy

The parable of the talents has been stirring in me. James tells us that faith without works is dead. I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to pray like everything depends on God, yet forget that He also tells us He will bless the work of our hands. Our hands have to find something to do. For years, God has been building character in me. Faithfulness. Self-control. Wisdom. Understanding. Discernment. Those years weren’t wasted. They were preparation. But eventually preparati

As a teenager, one of my favorite says was: “I’m here for the party!” I thought I knew what that meant. Then, years later, I was reading a book when two simple words stopped me in my tracks. Celebration matters. I stopped reading and started thinking. When did I stop celebrating? Not birthdays. Not holidays. Life. So I looked up the word celebrate. Then I started looking through the Bible. God didn’t just command His people to worship. He told them to celebrate. He establishe

Most of what we admire in people was born in places we never witnessed. The faith. The wisdom. The compassion. The joy. The celebration. We see the fruit. We rarely see the roots. We hear someone share a testimony and forget there was a test. We see someone celebrate and assume life has always been light. We admire their faith without realizing how many ordinary days it took to grow. If you only knew. If you only knew how many prayers came before that testimony. If you only k

Yesterday, a devotional challenged me to walk back through my day. I almost wanted to skip the page. In this season of my life, I’m trying so hard to move forward. Looking back almost makes me feel captive. Even yesterday can feel painful to look back on, even when it was good. That alone made me stop and ask myself, why? I always thought it was because I didn’t want to live in the past. Now I’m not so sure. So I started replaying yesterday. I spent time with Jesus. I had a r

Something hit me today. I realized I have spent years managing things I do not have authority over. That one thought brought me freedom. I’ve spent a lot of years learning about authority. Praying about authority. Standing in authority. Teaching authority. But today I found myself asking a different question. What do I actually have authority over? Not what do I care about. Not what affects me. Not what concerns me. What has God actually given me authority over? The answer wa