Summer at the Movies | Monday Reflection | Week 2

"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 46:4

Sunday you heard about Carl Fredricksen who spent years sitting in a house full of memories, holding onto what was instead of reaching for what could be. His adventure was always supposed to happen. He just kept postponing it until the grief made the postponing feel permanent.

Most of us have something we stopped reaching for after a significant loss. Not just a person. A season. A version of the future that we had pictured clearly and then watched dissolve. A dream that got attached to someone or something that is no longer here. And when they left the dream felt like it left with them.

But Isaiah says God will carry you. Not God carried you through the hard part and now you are on your own. Will carry. Present tense. Active. Still moving. Still sustaining. Still holding someone who thinks the best part of the story is behind them.

The adventure Carl was supposed to have did not die with Ellie. It was waiting for him on the other side of his grief. He just had to be willing to leave the house.

This week, name the dream you attached to something you lost. Not to minimize the loss. The loss was real. But ask honestly whether you buried the dream alongside it when maybe God was not finished with either of you.

He is still carrying you. The house does not have to be the end of the story.

If you have seen the movie Up, you know the scene.

Carl Fredricksen is an old man sitting alone in the house he built a life in. The house where he fell in love. The house where he and Ellie made plans they never got to finish. The house that is now surrounded by construction equipment and developers who want him gone. A foreman walks up and asks him plainly: when are you going to give this place up?

Carl does not flinch. He does not negotiate. He does not ask for more time.

He says: "When I'm dead."

And the audience laughs because it is funny. And then they cry because they understand. Because every one of us has something we are holding onto with everything we have. Something the world keeps pressuring us to release. Something that cost us too much to simply hand over because the culture decided it was inconvenient.
The question the movie never quite answers is whether Carl is holding onto the right thing.

That is the question worth asking today.

And he was miserable.

The Apostle Peter wrote to believers who understood loss in a way most of us have not experienced. They had been scattered. Their communities disrupted. Their stability stripped away. The world had come for everything they had built and taken most of it. And Peter opened his letter not with sympathy or strategy but with something that must have felt almost impossible to receive in the middle of what they were going through.

He told them they had an inheritance.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Master Yeshua the Messiah, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3–5)

Read those three words carefully. Imperishable. Undefiled. Unfading.

Not the kind of inheritance the world gives you. Not a house that can be surrounded by bulldozers. Not a savings account that inflation can hollow out. Not a reputation that circumstances can ruin or a relationship that death can interrupt. Something that cannot perish by any force this world can bring against it. Something that cannot be made unclean by anything the enemy can touch it with. Something that does not fade with time or distance or hardship.

And then Peter says something that should stop every grieving, pressured, worn-down person in their tracks: it is reserved. It has already been set aside. It is not waiting to be earned or discovered or arrived at. It is waiting for you. Your name is already on it. And the power of God Himself is what stands between you and losing it.

Carl Fredricksen was holding onto a house. And it was beautiful that he loved it. It was right that he honored what it meant. But a house is not imperishable. A house can be surrounded. A house can be taken. A house can burn or flood or fall apart with age. The things we build our lives around in this world are real and they matter, but they were never designed to be our ultimate inheritance.

Jesus said it plainly: "I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." (John 10:28–29)

No one. No force. No developer. No diagnosis. No government. No enemy visible or invisible. No grief. No loss. No season of suffering. Nothing that comes against you in this age has the authority to reach into the Father's hand and take what He is holding.

The writer of Hebrews describes the great men and women of faith as people who died without receiving what was promised. They saw it from a distance. They welcomed it from afar. And they confessed something remarkable in the middle of their waiting: they were strangers and exiles on the earth. They were not trying to build a permanent home here because they were looking for a better one. "But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:13–16)

God has prepared a city. Not a metaphor for a nice feeling. A city. A place. A real destination with real residents and a real future that does not end. John saw it in his vision on Patmos: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." (Revelation 21:3–4)

No more mourning. No more pain. No more loss. No more foremen asking when you are going to give it up.

Carl was right to fight for what mattered. He was just fighting for the wrong house.

Here is the honest question this movie puts in front of us: what are you holding onto with everything you have? And is it the kind of thing that can be taken from you?

Because the world is very good at surrounding the things we love and asking us when we are going to give them up. And the answer is not always "when I'm dead." Sometimes the faithful answer is to hold with an open hand. To love deeply while recognizing that what we are gripping is temporary. To build well in this life while leaning forward toward the one that is coming.

The inheritance God has reserved for you cannot be bulldozed. It cannot be surrounded. It cannot be taken by anything this world sends against it.

You do not have to white-knuckle your way through this life terrified of losing what is yours. The Father is holding it. And His grip is stronger than anything coming for you.

Hold loosely to what is temporary. Hold firmly to what is not.

Summer at the Movies | Monday Reflection | Week 1

"They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, 'The LORD is upright; he is my Rock.'" — Psalm 92:14–15

Sunday you heard about Ben Whittaker walking into a startup with a briefcase and a pocket square, surrounded by people half his age, choosing to show up anyway. Not because he had something to prove. Because he still had something to give.

Most of us have been quietly talked out of our own contribution. Not by one dramatic moment but by a thousand small signals from a culture that celebrates the new and tolerates the experienced. We start to believe that the best version of what we had to offer has already passed. That the window closed. That the role we were made for went to someone younger, faster, more current.

But the Psalm says fresh and green in old age. Not in spite of the years. Because of them.

Here is the Monday question. What have you stopped offering because you assumed nobody wanted it anymore? The wisdom you earned the hard way. The steadiness that only comes from having survived something. The perspective that cannot be downloaded or credentialed into existence.

Somewhere in your world this week there is a person who needs exactly what you have been talking yourself out of giving.

You are not overqualified for what is next. You are precisely qualified. The preparation has been the whole point.

Show up. Bring the briefcase. The pocket square is optional.

In the movie The Intern, a 70-year-old widower named Ben Whittaker has done everything the world told him to do. He built a career. He raised a family. He retired. He traveled. He took up golf, tai chi, and cooking classes. He tried every socially acceptable thing a man his age is supposed to do when his working years are behind him.

And he was miserable.

So he applied for a senior internship at a startup company run by a woman half his age, walked in with a briefcase and a pocket square, and refused to believe his best days were behind him. When someone asked him about it he said: "Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. Well, I still have music in me, absolutely positive about that."

That line did not belong in a movie. It belonged in a sermon.
Because the question it raises is not just for 70-year-olds. It is for every person sitting in a chair right now who has quietly started to believe that their most significant contribution is already in the past.

The Psalm writer looked out at the world and described what a life rooted in God actually produces over time. Not what it produces in the early years when energy is high and ambition is fresh. What it produces across an entire lifetime. What it is still producing at the end.
"The righteous will flourish like the palm tree, he will grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still yield fruit in old age; they will be full of sap and very green." (Psalm 92:12–14)

Still yield fruit in old age. Full of sap. Very green.

That is not a description of someone winding down. That is a description of someone who is still fully alive, still producing, still rooted deeply enough in God that the years have not dried them out but deepened them. A palm tree does not stop bearing fruit because it is old. It bears more fruit because its roots have gone deeper.

The ancient Jewish teachings about the last days before the Messiah comes describe a generation characterized by something that should alarm every church: the wisdom of the elders falls silent. No one is left to reprove. The voices of experience and faithfulness get dismissed, ignored, or shamed into quiet. The Mishnah describes the final generation as a time when youth shame their elders and truth becomes scarce. Not because older voices do not exist. Because they stopped speaking.

The music stopped before it was finished.

God's response to that portrait is not resignation. It is Daniel 12:3, "Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever." The people who kept the faith, who kept speaking, who kept leading others toward what is right even when the culture told them to step aside, they shine. Forever. The stars do not dim because they are old. They burn.

Think about Anna. Luke describes her as a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was 84 years old. She had been a widow for most of her adult life. She had lived in the Temple, fasting and praying, night and day, for decades. She had been faithful in hiddenness for longer than some people have been alive. And it was she, not a young rising leader, not a prominent teacher with a following, who recognized the infant Jesus and began speaking about Him to everyone who was looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:36–38)

Eighty-four years old. Still have music in me.

The Apostle Paul wrote from a prison cell, having already lived more of his life than most people will, and said: "Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12–14)

I press on. I reach forward. I have not laid hold of it yet.

That is not the posture of a man finishing. That is the posture of a man still in the middle of something God started in him that God has not finished yet.

The world has a retirement plan for everyone. A designated moment when you have done enough, contributed enough, been present enough, and can now step back and let someone else carry the weight. God does not seem to operate that way. He called Abraham at 75. He called Moses at 80. He used Anna at 84. He wrote letters through Paul from inside a prison. He is not impressed by your age in either direction. He is looking for music. And wherever He finds it, He uses it.

The question Ben Whittaker asked himself is the right question. Not "am I too old?" Not "has my time passed?" But simply: is there still music in me?

If you belong to Jesus, the answer is yes. Because the music is not yours. It is His. And He does not run out.

The righteous flourish like palm trees. They are still bearing fruit when the calendar says they should have stopped. They are full of sap and green because their roots go down into something that does not dry up with age.

You may be in a season of life where the world has quietly suggested you step aside. That your best contribution is behind you. That the younger generation has it from here.

Do not believe it. Not because your experience makes you indispensable. But because God has not told you the music is over. And until He does, the only faithful response is to keep playing.

Press on. Reach forward. Shine like the stars.

What on Earth Is Happening? | Monday Reflection | Week 3

"For 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

Every graduation season somebody reads it. The Dr. Seuss book with the yellow cover and the winding road on the front. Parents cry. Graduates smile. And the words land the way they always do:

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

It is a beautiful thing to say to a young person. And it is true as far as it goes. You do have a choice. The direction is yours. Nobody is going to live your life for you.

But here is what nobody says out loud after the ceremony, after the pictures, after the cake is gone and the graduation balloons have deflated in the corner of the living room:

Not all directions lead somewhere worth going.

And the one standing at the front of the room with the diploma in their hand is about to find that out in ways no commencement speech prepared them for.

Jesus said something that should be required reading at every graduation ceremony in the country. He said: "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7:13–14)

He was not being harsh. He was being honest in a way that actually respects the person He is talking to. He did not say the wide road looks obviously wrong. He said many people are on it. It is the default. It is the path of least resistance. It is the direction you end up going when you are simply following the crowd, following your feelings, following the cultural current that tells you the most important thing in life is to find yourself and be true to yourself and pursue what makes you happy.

That road has an ending. And the ending is not what the graduation speech promised.

The world hands every graduate the same basic message: you are the author of your story. Your dreams are the destination. Your happiness is the compass. Follow your heart and everything will fall into place.
Jesus says something entirely different. He says: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." (Matthew 16:24) Not follow your dreams. Not follow your heart. Follow Me.

That sounds hard until you understand who is saying it. This is not a demand from someone who wants to limit your life. This is an invitation from the only person in history who defeated death, who knows exactly where every road leads, and who is offering to walk the right one with you.

The Apostle Paul stood in Athens at the Areopagus and told the philosophers gathered there something that stopped them in their tracks. He said that God "made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation." (Acts 17:26) In other words: you did not land in this moment of history by accident. The year you were born, the family you were placed in, the generation you belong to was not random. God determined it. He set you here, at this moment, on purpose.

That means the choice you make about which direction to go is not just a personal lifestyle decision. It is a response to a calling that was placed on your life before you drew your first breath. God told Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." (Jeremiah 1:5) Jeremiah was not a special case. That is how God works. He knows the people He makes before He makes them. And He makes them for a reason.

You are living in one of the most consequential moments in human history. The world is shifting in ways that no generation before yours has had to navigate. The choices your generation makes about what to believe, who to follow, and how to live will shape what comes next in ways that are difficult to fully comprehend from where you are standing today.

And Jesus is standing at the narrow gate saying: this way. Not because He wants to take something from you. Because He knows what is on the other side and He wants you to get there.

Dr. Seuss was right that you can steer yourself any direction you choose. He was describing a freedom that is absolutely real. But freedom without wisdom is just the ability to get lost faster. And the wisest thing any graduate can do with all that freedom is hand the steering wheel to the One who can actually see the road ahead.

Graduation is a beginning, not an arrival. The diploma means you finished something. What you do next is the question that actually matters.

The wide road will always be more crowded. It will always feel more reasonable. The people on it will always seem to be having more fun, at least for a while. But Jesus never called you to the comfortable road. He called you to the right one.

So take the brains in your head and think carefully about who you are trusting with your future. Take the feet in your shoes and point them toward something that will still matter in ten years, in fifty years, in eternity.

You have a choice. You have always had a choice.

Choose the One who chose you first.

What on Earth Is Happening? | Monday Reflection | Week 2

"I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die?" — Ezekiel 33:11

There is a seat at your grandmother's table that nobody sits in anymore.

You know the one. The chair that was always his, always hers. The place that still gets set out of habit sometimes because the hands that laid the table for forty years have not quite caught up with the heart that knows that person is gone. The empty chair does not just represent loss. It represents a meal that is not finished yet. A conversation that got interrupted. A table that is still waiting for everyone to be back together.

Every family has a version of that chair. And if you listen closely, the Lord's Supper is the Church's answer to it.

The night before He was crucified, Jesus sat down with His disciples for the Passover meal. It was not a new ritual. Jewish families had been celebrating Passover for over a thousand years, remembering the night God delivered Israel out of Egypt, setting a table in the shadow of death and calling it redemption.

But something new happened at this table. Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said: "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." (Luke 22:19) Then He took the cup of blessing after the meal and said: "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood." (Luke 22:20)

And then He said something that tends to get overlooked in the weight of everything else: "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26:29)

Stop there. Jesus was not just instituting a memorial. He was making a promise. He said: the next time I eat and drink at this table, it will be in the kingdom. We have not finished this meal yet. There is a cup that has not been poured. There is a table that has not been fully set. And I am coming back to sit at it with you.

That is the theology underneath every communion table in every church that has ever broken bread in His name.

The Apostle Paul put it plainly: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26) Three tenses live inside a single act. You remember what He did. You declare He is present now. And you announce that He is coming back. Past, present, and future in one cup. Backward-looking, present-experiencing, and forward-leaning all at the same time.

This is what the prophet Isaiah saw centuries before the night of the Last Supper. He described a day when "the LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, and refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces." (Isaiah 25:6–8)

A banquet. For all peoples. On the mountain where God dwells. Death swallowed up. Tears wiped away. Not a metaphor for a nice church service. A meal. A real table with real seats. And every person who has ever been ransomed by the blood of Jesus has a place reserved.

Every time the Church takes communion, it is practicing for that table. It is saying: we remember where this started. We experience His presence now by the Spirit. And we are leaning forward toward the day when the meal is finally finished and the One who promised to come back takes His seat at the head of the table.

The Church of the Nazarene holds the Lord's Supper as a means of grace, open to all believers present. Not just members. Not just the long-tenured. Not just the ones who have it all together. All who believe. Because the Messianic Banquet Isaiah described was not a table for the qualified. It was a table for the ransomed. And Christ is present by His Spirit in the breaking of the bread, meeting His people right where they are, giving them what they cannot generate on their own.

That empty chair at your grandmother's table tells the truth about grief. The communion table tells the truth about hope. The meal is not over. The guest of honor is still coming. And the table is being set for something that death will not be able to interrupt.

The next time you take communion, do not rush through it. Do not treat it as a quiet moment between the offering and the sermon. Treat it as what it actually is: a declaration that you remember, a confession that He is here, and a promise that you are still watching and waiting for the One who said He would come back and finish what He started at that table in Jerusalem.

The bread is broken. The cup is poured. The meal is not finished yet.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Scripture: Amos 5:18–20 | 1 Thessalonians 5:2–3 | Matthew 24:23–24 | John 10:9

There is a difference between finding safety and feeling safe. One is a reality. The other is a story you tell yourself in the dark, right before everything falls apart.
Most of us have built an entire life around the second one.

Here's something that gets lost in translation when we read the prophet Amos. The people he was warning weren't atheists. They weren't pagans lounging in idol worship. They were religious people who were actually looking forward to the Day of the LORD, expecting it to vindicate them, reward them, prove that God was on their side. They wanted the Day to come.

Amos hit them with some of the coldest water in all of Scripture:
"Alas, you who are longing for the day of the LORD, for what purpose will the day of the LORD be to you? It will be darkness and not light; as when a man flees from a lion and a bear meets him, or goes home, leans his hand against the wall and a snake bites him. Will not the day of the LORD be darkness instead of light, even gloom with no brightness in it?" (Amos 5:18–20)

Read that slowly. A man runs from a lion. He escapes, barely, and stumbles straight into a bear. He gets away from that, staggers home, leans on the wall of his own house trying to catch his breath, and a snake bites him right there. In his own living room. In the one place that was supposed to be safe.

This is not a story about bad luck. This is a prophetic portrait of what happens when a person keeps looking for safety in every direction except the right one. The lion is real. The bear is real. The snake is real. And none of the walls you've built will keep them out, because the problem was never the danger outside. The problem was the foundation underneath.

Now bring that into today.

Watch what we run to when life gets loud. When the economy tightens, we sprint toward money, we hustle harder, stack more, insulate ourselves with success as if a full account can hold back what's coming. When the world feels unstable and out of control, we run toward politicians, we place messianic weight on human beings who have never once defeated death and never will. When the pain gets too loud to sit with, we run to pleasure, to the scroll, the bottle, the high, the numbing, anything that turns the volume down on a reality we were never designed to carry alone.

Here is what nobody tells you: every escape route that bypasses God eventually becomes a cell.

The addiction that started as relief becomes a warden. The money you chased for freedom becomes the thing you're most afraid of losing. The political movement you gave your hope to will one day disappoint you, because it was never built to carry the weight of your eternity. You escaped the lion. The bear is waiting just around the corner.

The ancient Jewish apocalypse of 2 Baruch put it plainly: "Whosoever safely escapes the war shall die in the earthquake, and whosoever safely escapes the earthquake shall be burned by the fire, and whosoever safely escapes the fire shall be destroyed by famine." Calamity doesn't stop chasing you because you found a clever hiding place. It just changes its face.

And now, here is the part that should shake you awake.

The lessons of history show us that when things get desperate enough, people don't just run to money or pleasure or politics. They run to a savior. And the Bible warns that at the end of days, the enemy will be ready for exactly that moment. Jesus Himself said: "If anyone says to you, 'Behold, here is the Christ,' or 'There He is,' do not believe him. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect." (Matthew 24:23–24)

The most dangerous counterfeit isn't the one that looks nothing like Jesus. It's the one that looks exactly like what you've been waiting for. The antichrist, as the early church understood him, is not merely a political villain. He is a counterfeit deliverer — someone who shows up at the moment of deepest crisis and says, "I am the one you've been looking for." And a desperate world, a world that has been running from lion to bear to snake — will believe him. Because when you're exhausted enough, you'll take whatever feels like rescue.

This is why Paul's warning is so urgent: "While they are saying, 'Peace and safety!' then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape." (1 Thessalonians 5:2–3) They won't be saying "peace and safety" with uncertainty. They'll be certain. They will have found their escape. And it will still be a cage.
There is only one door that opens from the inside. Jesus said it Himself, "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved." (John 10:9) Not a door. The door. That word matters. Everything else you're walking through is a wall you haven't hit yet.

You were not designed to numb the pain, you were designed to bring it somewhere that can actually hold it. You were not designed to follow a movement into peace, you were designed to follow a Person into it. You were not made to buy your way out of fear, you were made to be held by the One who has already walked through every darkness and come out the other side with scars to show for it.

Amos's man leaned on a wall that bit him. But there is a wall that holds, an everlasting Rock, a high tower, a refuge that has never once failed the person who ran to it instead of from everything else.

The snake doesn't live there. The lion doesn't follow you in. And the door doesn't lock from the outside.

Stop running in circles. You already know which direction leads home.

If you have spent any time on TikTok lately, you have probably heard it. Someone walks into the room looking right, moving right, completely locked in, and somebody in the comments says it: "You the birthday."

It means you are the one. The main event. The reason everyone showed up. The whole celebration is centered on you.

It is a compliment. A crown in slang form.

But here is the question nobody is asking underneath that phrase: who actually deserves to be the birthday? Because from the very beginning of human history, that has been the most dangerous question on the planet. And we have been getting the answer wrong for a very long time.

The golden calf did not appear out of nowhere. The people of Israel had just watched God split a sea, rain down bread from heaven, and speak from a mountain wrapped in fire. They had seen the real thing. But Moses was on the mountain longer than they expected, and in his absence, they did something that tells you everything about human nature.

They took off their earrings, melted them down, shaped them into a calf, and threw a party. "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt." (Exodus 32:4) They needed something they could see. Something they could put at the center. Something that could be the birthday.

This is not a story about a primitive people doing a primitive thing. This is a portrait of every generation that has ever lived. We cannot stand an empty throne. So we fill it.

Nebuchadnezzar built a statue of gold ninety feet tall on the plain of Dura in Babylon. He gathered peoples, nations, and men of every language and commanded them to fall down and worship at the sound of the music. "Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire." (Daniel 3:6) He made himself the birthday. And he demanded the whole world celebrate accordingly.

Caesar did the same thing. His image was stamped on every coin. His statue stood in every city. Temples were built in his name. You did not just pay taxes to Rome. You worshipped its emperor. And when Jesus held up a coin and asked, "Whose image is on this?" He was not just giving a clever answer about taxes. He was pointing to something deeper. The coin bore Caesar's image. But you, He said, bear the image of God. You were made for a different kind of allegiance altogether.

Now look at the book of Revelation, because this pattern does not stop. It builds toward its most dangerous version. The whole earth follows after the Beast and cries out, "Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?" (Revelation 13:4) That is the world's version of "you the birthday." That is the global standing ovation for the wrong person at the worst possible moment.

Scripture traces this same pattern from the garden to Babel, from Babylon to Rome, and all the way to the end of days. Somebody keeps trying to install a counterfeit at the center of all worship. The face changes. The title changes. The statue changes. But the script never does. Every counterfeit throughout history has asked the same question of the world: "Will you make me the birthday?"

And a world that does not know the real answer will say yes every time.

Because here is what we keep missing. The longing underneath "you the birthday" is not a bad longing. It is actually a holy one. We were made to celebrate. We were made to crown something, to gather around something, to say with everything in us, "This is the one. This is what we showed up for."

We just keep crowning the wrong thing.

Turn to Revelation 5. John is weeping because no one is found worthy to open the scroll of history. And then the elders tell him to look. A Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, steps forward. And what happens next is one of the most stunning moments in all of Scripture:
"And I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.' And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, 'To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.'" (Revelation 5:11–13)

That is the real birthday moment.

Not a golden calf. Not a colossus on the plains of Babylon. Not a Caesar. Not a counterfeit with signs and wonders performing miracles for a desperate crowd. The Lamb who was slain. The One who did not grab the throne but bled for the people who needed one. The One who is not the birthday because He demanded to be, but because He is the only one who actually earned it.

Every false birthday in history has required the world to bow to it. Jesus is the only one who got down on His knees first.

Here is the honest question this blog is really asking: what have you made the birthday in your own life?

Not theoretically. Practically. What sits at the center of your celebration? What do you organize your week around? What gets the best of your attention, your money, your loyalty, your mornings?

Because the antichrist will not show up obviously. He will show up as the thing you have already been rehearsing for. A world that has spent years crowning money, comfort, fame, and self will not recognize the counterfeit when it arrives. They will just think the birthday finally showed up.

But the people who have spent years in the presence of the real One? They will know the difference. Because you can always tell a copy from the original when you have spent enough time with the real thing.

The Lamb is worthy. He always has been. He always will be.

Crown accordingly.

What on Earth Is Happening? | Monday Reflection | Week 1

"The LORD will reign over them in Mount Zion from now on and forever." — Micah 4:7

There is a moment in every swimming lesson that nobody talks about honestly. It is the moment the instructor tells the child to let go of the wall and trust the water. Everything in that child says no. The wall is solid. The water is unpredictable. Letting go feels like the most dangerous thing they have ever been asked to do.

And then they let go. And they float. And something changes in them that the wall could never have taught them.

Going under the water is not the scary part. Coming back up is the whole point.

That is baptism. And it is one of the most prophetically loaded things a believer can do in a world that is desperately afraid of what comes next.

When Jesus stood in the Jordan River and John baptized Him, something more than a ritual was happening. And when the Apostle Paul explained baptism to the church in Rome, he reached for language that should stop every one of us in our tracks.

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection." (Romans 6:3–5)

Read that carefully. Baptism is not primarily about getting clean. It is not a membership ceremony. It is not a box to check on the way to church attendance. Paul says it is a participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Going under the water is burial. Coming up out of the water is resurrection. Every person who has ever been baptized has already rehearsed the most important moment of their future.

This was not a new idea that Paul invented. Long before the New Testament, Jewish immersion rites carried this same meaning. The ancient teachers understood that going down into the water symbolized death and burial, and coming up out of the water symbolized resurrection and new life. The physical act pointed toward a spiritual reality: the old self goes in, a new self comes out. What enters the water is not what emerges from it.

Paul makes the same connection in his letter to the Colossians: "Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead." (Colossians 2:12) The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that is at work in the person who comes up out of the water. That is not a metaphor for feeling refreshed. That is a declaration of identity.

This matters more right now than perhaps any generation before ours has understood. We are living in a moment when the world is more anxious about the future than it has been in a very long time. People are stockpiling, panicking, building walls between themselves and whatever is coming. The fear of death, the fear of loss, the fear of what the next season of history holds is driving people into every kind of false refuge available.

And the Church of Jesus Christ stands up in front of the water and says: we already went through this. We already practiced dying. And we came back up.

Baptism is the believer's declaration to a watching world that death does not have the final word. That the story does not end in the grave. That the same God who raised His Son from the dead has extended that promise to every person who puts their faith in Him. It is an act of prophetic defiance against the fear that is trying to swallow this generation whole.

The Church of the Nazarene practices baptism with open hands. Sprinkling, pouring, or immersion. Believers who choose to be baptized as a declaration of their own faith. Infants whose parents present them to God in covenant dedication. Every mode, every age, every story points to the same truth: God claims His people. And the people He claims are not ultimately subject to the things that frighten everyone else.

Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and said: "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:38) That was not a church growth strategy. That was an invitation to step out of one story and into another. To let go of the wall. To trust the water. To go under as one thing and come up as something entirely different.

If you have been baptized, do not treat it as something that happened to you once and is now in the past. It is a declaration you made with your body that your future is secure in Jesus. On the days when the world feels most threatening, most uncertain, most out of control, go back to that moment. Remember what you declared. Remember what you rehearsed.

You already practiced dying. And you already came up.

If you have never been baptized and you belong to Jesus, consider what you are waiting for. The water is not the scary part. Coming up is the whole point.

Monday Reflection

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." — Psalm 147:3

Someone said it well: a mother is your first friend, your best friend, your forever friend.

Scripture has been telling that story far longer than most people realize.

Long before John ever wrote the book of Revelation, the Hebrew prophets were already using the image of a woman in labor to describe the deepest kind of hope. Not the easy kind. The kind that costs something.

The Prophet Isaiah wrote: "Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons." (Isaiah 66:7–9) Isaiah was describing the nation of Israel under the name Zion, a mother figure in Scripture who carries the weight of God's promises and labors through suffering toward a redemption she cannot yet see.

Micah saw the same picture and named it plainly: "Is there no king among you, or has your counselor perished, that agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth? Writhe and labor to give birth, Daughter of Zion, like a woman in childbirth." (Micah 4:9–10) The Daughter of Zion is in pain. She is not in pain because God has abandoned her. She is in pain because she is about to bring something into the world that will change everything.
This is where Mary enters the story.

Mary was a young Jewish woman living inside that same long tradition of waiting, laboring, and trusting God with what He had promised. When the angel Gabriel appeared to her and told her she would conceive and bear the Son of God, the Savior of the world, she did not have a plan. She did not have the approval of her community. She did not have a way to explain what was happening to the people who would judge her for it. She had nothing but a word from God and the decision of what to do with it.

She said: "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)

That is not passive agreement. That is the bravest sentence a human being has ever spoken. It means: I will trust you with this child even when I cannot see what you are doing with him. Even when it costs me everything. Even when the world does not understand.
Jesus came into the world not for one people or one nation, but for every person who has ever drawn breath. He came as the fulfillment of every promise God had ever made, the answer to every cry of every mother who had ever prayed in the dark over a child she could not fix. And Mary, trusting God with Him, became a picture of every mother who has ever done the same thing.

She said yes at the beginning when the angel came. She stayed at the foot of the cross in the middle when everything looked like it was ending wrong. She was in the upper room at the end when the Spirit fell and the Church was born. She never let go of her faith in God or her love for her son at any point in the story. Even through the parts that looked like loss.

That is what your mother has been doing for you. That is what your wife is doing for your children right now.

Jesus reached back for this same image when He wanted to describe what faithful endurance through dark days ultimately leads to. He said: "Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you." (John 16:21–22)

He was speaking to His disciples about His death and what was coming after it. But in doing so He gave every mother who has ever prayed through suffering a theological anchor. The pain is not the end of the story. The labor is not the destination. There is a joy on the other side that will make the anguish of the waiting feel like a distant memory.

Every mother who has ever prayed over a child walking in the wrong direction knows that labor. Every mother who has fought for her children in the quiet places no one else sees knows that labor. Every mother who has held the faith for a family even when the family was not holding it for themselves knows exactly what the prophets were describing and what Jesus was pointing toward.

The pain is real. The labor is real. And so is the joy that is coming.

If your mother is still living, call her this week. Not just on Sunday. Call her because she has been trusting God with you longer than you have been trusting God with yourself. And she deserves to hear that you know it.

If your mother has gone on ahead of you, carry her forward. Let the faith she planted in you outlast everything else.

And to every mother reading this: the image Scripture keeps returning to is not a woman who had it all figured out. It is a woman in labor, in the unknown, holding onto a promise she could not yet see, trusting that what was coming was worth everything it was costing her.
You are more like that picture than you know.

Isaiah said Zion travailed and brought forth. Mary trusted and brought forth. The promise of God has never once failed the mother who refused to let go of it.

The joy is still coming. And no one will take it away from you.

GracePointe Church | Special Post

"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." — Matthew 6:10

Alive | Monday Reflection | Grace in Action Week

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." — Matthew 25:40

Scripture: 2 Peter 3:3–9 | Habakkuk 2:3 | Hebrews 11:1 | Revelation 22:20

I live with five women. My wife and four daughters. And if you want to know what it feels like to have your credibility questioned on a daily basis, try being the only man in a house full of Gen Z and Gen Alpha girls who have a word for everything.

The word lately is delulu.

Short for delusional. It means you are holding onto something the rest of the room has already decided is not going to happen. You believe it anyway. You talk about it anyway. And the people around you exchange a look and say it. Delulu.

Here is what I did not expect. The longer I sit with that word, the more I realize it is not just something my daughters say about boys who text back too slow. It is what the world says about us. About the Church. About every believer who wakes up on a Tuesday morning and still genuinely expects Jesus to come back.

And I want to be honest with you. There are days when the world makes a convincing case. The news cycles keep cycling. Leaders keep disappointing. Wars keep starting. And the promise that seemed so urgent two thousand years ago starts to feel, if we are not careful, like something we inherited from people who were a little too optimistic.

I have stood in that feeling. And I want to tell you what I found when I did not run from it

Peter saw this coming. Not the slang, but the sentiment underneath it. He wrote that in the last days, mockers would arrive with a very specific argument: "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." (2 Peter 3:4)

Read that slowly. They are not arguing that God does not exist. They are arguing that nothing ever actually changes. That the world just keeps going. That history is a flat line with no destination. That the people who believe something is coming are, well, delulu.

Peter called this willful ignorance. Not confusion. Not honest skepticism. A choice to forget. Because the evidence was always there. God spoke the world into existence out of nothing. He judged it with a flood. He raised His Son from the dead. These are not the actions of a God who lets things drift without a destination. These are the actions of a God who moves deliberately and arrives exactly when He intends to.

The Prophet Habakkuk wrestled with the same feeling long before Peter put it into words. He looked at his world and saw violence, injustice, and a silence from God that felt unbearable. And God answered him with one of the most important sentences in all of Scripture: "Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay." (Habakkuk 2:3)

That is not the language of wishful thinking. That is the language of an appointment. A train that has not pulled into the station yet is not a train that does not exist. It is a train that is still on its way.
The ancient Jewish teacher Maimonides understood this so deeply that he built it into his daily confession of faith: "I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah. Though He may tarry, I await Him every day." Every day. Not every decade when the prophecy conferences happen. Every single day.

Now here is what the world gets wrong about the disciples who carried this expectation. They were not naive. They were not people who had run out of other options and decided to cope with religion. These were people who had watched Jesus walk out of a tomb. They had touched the scars. They had eaten fish on the beach with a man who three days earlier had been publicly executed. Their hope was not built on a feeling. It was built on the most verifiable event in the ancient world.

Paul put it plainly. If the resurrection did not happen, he said, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:19) He was not asking anyone to believe without evidence. He was saying the evidence is the resurrection, and the resurrection demands a conclusion: if He came back once, He is coming back again.

That is not delulu. That is logic with a tomb at the center of it.
Peter also gives us the reason behind the wait. "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) The delay is not doubt. The delay is mercy. Every day the return has not happened is another day someone who was far from God had a chance to find their way home.

The wait is not a malfunction. It is the heartbeat of a God who is not willing to close the door while there is still someone running toward it.
Hebrews calls faith the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Substance. Evidence. These are not soft words. They are legal words. Words that mean there is a case being built. A verdict that is coming. And the people who have been holding that hope are not holding air. They are holding the most reliable promise ever made by the most reliable source in the universe.

The last words in the Bible are not complicated. Jesus says: "Yes, I am coming quickly." (Revelation 22:20) And the Church answers: "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."

That has been the prayer for two thousand years. Every generation that has prayed it has been called something. Naive. Fanatic. Outdated. Delulu.

Every generation has kept praying it anyway.

The world is going to keep telling you that the hope is unrealistic. That nothing is coming. That everything just keeps going the way it always has. And some days that argument is going to sound more reasonable than you are comfortable admitting.

On those days, go back to the tomb. Not metaphorically. Actually think about it. A man who was dead was not dead anymore. If that happened, everything He said about what comes next is worth taking seriously. All of it. Including the return.

You are not holding onto a fantasy. You are holding onto a promise made by someone with a track record that no one in history has matched.

My daughters can call it whatever they want.

The Lord is still coming. And that is the most grounded thing I know.

Alive | Monday Reflection | Week 4

"Jesus said to him a third time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?' ... Jesus said to him, 'Feed my sheep.'" — John 21:17

There is a spring not far from the Dead Sea. The water that feeds it travels a long way before it gets there, and when it arrives, everything around it changes. What was dry becomes green. What was dead starts moving again. Fish appear where there were no fish.

Life shows up uninvited and refuses to leave.

That is not just geography. That is a picture of what God intends to do with every person who carries resurrection life inside them.

The question is whether the river is flowing or whether it stopped at you.

The prophet Ezekiel had a vision that stopped him in his tracks. He saw water trickling out from beneath the threshold of the Temple in Jerusalem. Just a trickle at first. But as the water moved east, it got deeper. Ankle deep. Knee deep. Waist deep. Then deep enough to swim in. A river where there had been no river.

And everywhere that river went, things came back to life.

"Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing." (Ezekiel 47:12)

The Dead Sea, one of the saltiest and most inhospitable bodies of water on earth, became fresh. Fish filled it. Trees lined its banks. Everything the river touched was transformed. And the source of all of it was not rain. It was not a spring from underground. It was the presence of God flowing outward from His dwelling place into a thirsty world.
Now watch what Jesus does with that image.

It is the Festival of Sukkot in Jerusalem. The priests have just performed the water-drawing ceremony at the Temple, pouring water on the altar as a symbolic prayer for rain and a future outpouring of God's Spirit. The whole crowd is watching. And Jesus stands up in the middle of it all and says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" (John 7:37-38)

He is standing at the Temple during the water ceremony and saying: I am the source Ezekiel saw. And everyone who comes to Me becomes part of that river.

Not a pond. Not a reservoir. A river. Something that moves. Something that goes somewhere. Something that brings life to everything along its banks.

This is the part we often miss about resurrection power. We treat it like a personal possession, something that happened to us and lives inside us and benefits us. But Scripture treats it like a current. Paul writes that the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives inside every believer. (Romans 8:11) That is not a private deposit. That is the most powerful force in the universe taking up residence in ordinary people for the purpose of flowing outward into the world around them.

Watch how Jesus demonstrated this during His own ministry. He healed people. Not just to prove He was the Messiah, though that was true. He healed people because healing was the evidence that the future kingdom had drawn near. Every blind eye opened, every leper cleansed, every dead person raised was the river of Ezekiel arriving early. Jesus was, in a sense, borrowing from the healing power of the age to come and releasing it into the suffering of the age at hand.

Then He sent His disciples to do the same thing. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons." (Matthew 10:7-8) He did not say go and feel the power. He said go and release it. Outward. Toward people who are sick and forgotten and unclean and oppressed.

The river does not stay at the source.

This is what love that serves does. It is not sentiment. It is not a warm feeling toward humanity in general. It is resurrection power in motion, specifically directed at the suffering person in front of you. The coworker who is not okay. The neighbor who stopped talking. The family member who is slowly disappearing into something that has a grip on them. The stranger whose name you do not yet know but whose pain you can see from across the room.

That is where the river is supposed to go.

The trees along the banks of Ezekiel's river did not hold their fruit. They gave it away every month without running dry because the source never stopped flowing. That is the promise underneath the resurrection. You cannot give away more than God can replenish. The river runs deeper the farther it goes.

Here is the honest question: where is the river in your life currently going?

Because resurrection power that stays contained is not a blessing. It is a symptom. It means somewhere between receiving the life of God and living your actual week, something dammed up the current. Comfort maybe. Or fear. Or the very reasonable feeling that you have enough going on already without adding someone else's pain to the load.

But the disciples went out two by two into villages they did not know to serve people they had never met, carrying power they did not generate themselves. They were not the source. They were the riverbed. And the water found its way to places that were dying and brought things back to life.

You are not the source either. You are the riverbed.

Let the water move.

There is a character in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew named Uncle Andrew.
He is present at the creation of Narnia. He is standing there when Aslan, the great lion who represents Christ, opens his mouth and sings the world into existence. Stars appear. Mountains rise. Animals are called out of the ground. It is, by every measure, the most magnificent moment in the history of that world.

And Uncle Andrew misses the whole thing.

Not because he wasn't there. Because he decided not to hear it.

Lewis writes that when Aslan's song first began, Uncle Andrew recognized it was a song. But it made him uncomfortable. It made him think and feel things he didn't want to think and feel. So he told himself it wasn't really singing, just a lion roaring. The longer Aslan sang, the harder Uncle Andrew worked to convince himself there was nothing to hear.
And here is the terrifying part.

It worked.

Eventually, Uncle Andrew could no longer hear the song even if he wanted to. What began as a choice became a condition. He had trained himself out of the ability to perceive what was right in front of him. When Aslan finally spoke, Uncle Andrew didn't hear words. He heard only a snarl.

Jesus said something that should disturb every one of us: "He who has ears, let him hear." That's not a description. That's a warning. Because apparently, it is possible to have ears and still not hear. It is possible to be standing in the presence of something glorious and train yourself, slowly, choice by choice, into an inability to perceive it.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't get there overnight. They had spent three years watching Jesus heal the sick, raise the dead, and feed thousands with nothing. But somewhere along the way, the disappointment of the cross created a filter. And by the time the Risen Christ fell into step beside them, their ears heard a stranger's voice and their eyes saw someone else's face.

This is not a first-century problem.

Every time you dismiss a prompting and tell yourself it wasn't real, that's a choice. Every time grief convinces you that God has gone silent and you stop listening, that's a filter being installed. Every time you protect yourself from hope because hope has let you down before, something in your spiritual perception narrows a little more.

Uncle Andrew didn't become deaf in a moment. He became deaf in increments, one small refusal at a time. Until the song that was changing everything around him sounded like nothing but noise.

R.C. Sproul, reflecting on this same passage from Luke 24, said the disciples had two thousand years of prophecy available to them, and they were still "slow of heart to believe." Not slow of intellect. Slow of heart. The barrier wasn't information. It was the willingness to receive it.

The good news, and this is the part I didn't get to say Sunday, is that Uncle Andrew's story is not your only option. The disciples' story ended differently. Their eyes opened. Their hearts burned. And they ran.

The song is still being sung.

The question is whether you are still willing to hear it.

Want to go deeper? This blog expands on the message preached on April 19 at GracePointe. Watch the full message at https://gpnaz.church/media.

"He told them, 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.'"
Mark 4:11–12 (NIV)

I opened this Sunday's message with something I've never told a congregation before.
I am colorblind.

Not completely. I have what's called red-weak colorblindness. Most colors I process just fine. But certain shades; light pink, dark red; my brain literally cannot distinguish them correctly. I'm not guessing wrong. I'm seeing wrong. There is a difference, and that difference matters more than I realized until I was eighteen years old standing in front of a mirror nodding at what I was absolutely certain was a white t-shirt.

It was pink.

Not a subtle pink. A pink.

I walked through an entire day; an entire workday at a summer camp full of kids who could not stop laughing; completely convinced I was wearing something I was not. The camp director told me I was brave for expressing myself. My buddy on his way to the gym barely looked up before he said it. I looked down and still couldn't tell.
I had to take someone else's word for it.

Here is what stayed with me long after that day was over: I was not careless. I was not distracted. I was not refusing to look. I looked directly at that shirt in the mirror that morning and my brain processed the information it received and returned a confident answer.

The answer was wrong.

And I had no idea.

I opened with that story on Sunday because of a tension I found in two passages of Scripture sitting side by side in my preparation this week.

In Mark 4:11–12, Jesus says something that is deeply unsettling if you sit with it long enough. He tells His disciples that the secret of the Kingdom has been given to them; but to those on the outside, everything comes in parables, so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding.
Ever seeing. But never perceiving.

That is not a description of people who aren't looking. That is a description of people who are looking directly at something; and still cannot see it correctly.

Then you get to Luke 24, and something extraordinary happens. Two disciples; people who were on the inside, people who had walked with Jesus, eaten with Jesus, watched Him heal the sick and raise the dead; are walking away from Jerusalem. And the Risen Christ falls into step right beside them.

And they do not recognize Him.

In that moment, the insiders are acting like outsiders. They have the facts. They have the history. They have three years of front-row access to the Son of God. And they look directly at Him and see a stranger.

Ever seeing. Never perceiving.

But here is where Luke 24 does something Mark 4 leaves open. Luke shows us the reversal. The moment the condition is corrected. The moment someone who was seeing wrong — genuinely, completely, confidently wrong; has their eyes opened and sees clearly for the first time.

It doesn't happen because they tried harder. It doesn't happen because they gathered more information or reviewed what they already knew. It happens at a table. Over broken bread. In the most ordinary moment of the evening. And something in their chest said; I know those hands.

Their eyes were opened.

This is what I could not stop thinking about all week.

Colorblindness is not a focus problem. You cannot fix it by paying closer attention. You cannot will your way into seeing colors your eyes were not designed to process. The correction has to come from outside of you. Someone hands you the right lenses, or someone tells you what they see, and you have to decide whether you are willing to trust them.

I had to take my buddy's word for it that the shirt was pink. I could not get there on my own.
The disciples had to take Jesus at His word that the suffering was not the end of the story; that everything they had watched fall apart was actually the thing being built. They could not get there on their own either. Their grief had narrowed what they were able to see. Their shattered expectations had reorganized their perception in ways they were not even aware of.
That is not a character flaw. That is a human condition.

And the resurrection of Jesus is, among everything else that it is, the moment God reaches into that human condition and opens eyes that could not open themselves.

The question I want to leave you with this week is not whether you believe that happened two thousand years ago on a road outside Jerusalem.

The question is whether you are willing to let it happen to you right now.
Because some of us have been seeing wrong for a long time. Confident. Certain. Looking directly at our lives and our circumstances and our relationships and our faith — and processing it all through a lens that grief or disappointment or unmet expectation quietly installed without us noticing.

And Jesus has been walking right beside us the whole time.

You don't need a new life. You need new eyes to see the life God is already in.

The lenses are available. But like my buddy at the gym, somebody has to be willing to say what they see. And you have to be willing to take their word for it.

Want to go deeper? This blog expands on the message preached on April 19 at GracePointe. Watch the full message at https://gpnaz.church/media.

I want to ask you a question I didn't have time to ask Sunday.

Who in your life is currently walking away from Jerusalem?

Because that is what the road to Emmaus actually is. It's not a scenic route. It's a retreat. Two people who had given everything to a hope that collapsed, quietly putting distance between themselves and the place where it all fell apart. They weren't looking for a fight. They were just done.

And Jesus didn't send them a letter. He didn't leave a note at the tomb. He walked with them.
Father Fred Cabras, a Franciscan priest and mental health counselor — writes something I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I read it. He points out that the text doesn't say Jesus led the disciples to Emmaus. It doesn't say they followed Jesus. It says He walked with them. Side by side. Same pace. Same road.

That is a different posture than most of us take with people who are struggling.
Most of us want to fix. We want to explain why it happened. We want to get them back to Jerusalem as fast as possible because watching someone we love walk in the wrong direction is deeply uncomfortable. So we talk at them. We quote Scripture at them. We remind them of what they already know.

But that's not what Jesus did.

He asked questions. He listened. He let them tell the whole story, including the part where they admitted they had stopped hoping. He didn't rush them past their grief to get to the good news. He walked the road with them until they were ready to see.

There are people in your life right now who are on a seven-mile walk away from God. Some of them are in your family. Some of them are sitting in this church. Some of them used to sit in this church and don't anymore. They are not looking for a sermon. They have heard the sermon. They are looking for someone willing to walk beside them in the part that comes before the revelation, the long, dusty, confusing miles in between.

Father Cabras calls this becoming an Emmaus walker. Not a guide. Not a teacher. A companion. Someone who loves people enough to listen. Someone who makes space for the full story, the grief, the confusion, the "we had hoped", without flinching or rushing.
This is what the Resurrection looks like in your ordinary week.

It looks like a conversation at lunch where you don't try to fix your coworker but you also don't pretend not to notice they are not okay. It looks like calling the friend who has pulled away from the church instead of assuming they'll come back on their own. It looks like sitting with your teenager through the part of their story that makes you uncomfortable, instead of jumping straight to the lesson.

Jesus is still walking roads. He is walking them through you.

The disciples said later, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road?" That burning wasn't just theological insight. It was what happens when someone finally feels truly accompanied, truly heard, for the first time in a long time.

Somebody in your life needs their heart to burn again.

You might be the one who walks with them until it does.

For over a century, the Hatfield and McCoy families turned the Appalachian hills into a war zone.

They fought over hogs. Over land. Over a love that crossed the wrong bloodline. They buried children and brothers and kept the ledger running. The feud didn't end because one side won. It ended because both sides grew exhausted from burying people they loved.

On June 14, 2003, more than 100 years after the worst of the violence, descendants of both families gathered and signed a formal truce. Two sides that had defined themselves by hatred of each other chose to share a history instead.

They sat down at the same table.

Jesus said something that should stop us cold: "Many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 8:11)

Not a metaphor. A meal. A real table with real seats, and people from every nation, every background, every history of conflict, seated together. Ancient Jewish teaching describes this as the great Messianic Banquet, a lavish feast prepared by God for all peoples. Isaiah saw it coming: "The Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain." (Isaiah 25:6)

The Hatfields and McCoys got there by exhaustion. God is preparing something better. A table where the wolf and the lamb don't just tolerate each other. They feast together.
And here is what that means for your Monday.

Our salvation isn't just for us. You are not just a recipient of peace. You are an ambassador of the kingdom that is coming. Every act of integrity at work, every moment you extend grace to someone who doesn't deserve it, every Monday you show up carrying something the world can't produce on its own, you are announcing that table. You are sending an invitation.

The feud ends. The table is coming. And right now, in the in-between, you are one of the people holding the invitation out to someone who doesn't yet know they have a seat.
Walk in like you know it.

Monday mornings at the alternative school didn't start with groggy yawns.

They started with armor being buckled on.

Boys who left on Friday afternoons, soft-spoken, helpful, seemingly at peace, came back Monday as different people. They walked through the metal detectors with eyes like flint. The Case of the Mondays for these kids wasn't about needing caffeine. It was a survival reflex.

Over the weekend, the school's controlled sanctuary disappeared. For 48 hours, they navigated home environments where the stakes were higher than any grade. By Monday, the adrenaline hadn't drained. They walked in still vibrating from the conflict, ready for a fight because in their world, being open and caring was a vulnerability they couldn't afford until they knew the perimeter was safe.

Every day I walked into that classroom as a person of peace.

Not because I had it together. Because I understood that peace is not passive. Peace is a presence you carry into a room. It is a decision you make before the door opens.

Isaiah said something that sounds impossible: "The wolf will live with the lamb." (Isaiah 11:6) 

Every nature documentary fan knows what that means in today's world. The lamb is not having a good afternoon. The wolf doesn't negotiate. So when Isaiah says they live together, he is not describing a minor adjustment to the ecosystem. He is describing a peace so complete it rewrites the nature of things themselves.

That is what's coming. But here is what I learned from those kids: the in-between matters.
Jesus did not rise on Sunday and tell His disciples to wait behind the locked door until everything was fixed. He breathed on them, gave them His peace, and said: "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." (John 20:21)

The wolf and the lamb aren't lying down yet. But you are living in the in-between. And the in-between is not empty. It is full of people being sent into rooms where Monday feels like armor, carrying a peace the world cannot manufacture and cannot take away.

Those kids didn't need a better program. They needed someone to walk in first.

That is still the assignment.

I used to be a sneakerhead.

Not casually. Seriously. I would drive to FootAction, not Foot Locker, FootAction, and stand in line for the latest Jordans. And if I'm being honest, half the time the only thing that made them "new" was the colorway. Same shoe. Different box. And I had to have them.
Michael Jordan's brand now generates $7.3 billion a year. He earns a reported $250 to $350 million annually just in royalties. The shoes became an empire. And for a season of my life, that empire had a small outpost in my closet.

But then I learned something that changed everything.

In 1989, a 15-year-old named Michael Eugene Thomas was strangled by his basketball buddy for a pair of two-week-old Air Jordans. Left barefoot in the woods in Maryland. That same year, a 16-year-old named Johnny Bates was shot and killed at a Houston bus stop for his sneakers.

Someone died for the shoes on my feet.

That was the moment I started asking a different question. Not "what do I want?" but "what is this actually worth?"

Paul wrote from a prison cell; not a platform, not a green room, a prison cell, and said this: "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:7)

He wasn't describing a feeling. He was describing a reorientation. A moment when the things you used to chase stop looking like treasure and start looking like weight.
Fame fades. Fortune fades. The shoes you stood in line for end up at a garage sale. But what is eternal will not fade.

Here is what I want you to sit with. The gift of the Holy Spirit that lives inside every believer right now is described in Scripture as a down payment. A pledge. A deposit guaranteeing something greater to come. Paul says God "sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge" (2 Corinthians 1:22). Not the full amount yet. A guarantee of it.

Which means every act of integrity at work, every moment you choose peace over panic, every Monday you show up sent instead of afraid, you are not just surviving the week. You are investing in something that will outlast it.

The shoes weren't worth it. But this is.