Oct 12 2026
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The Christian Life

Dying, Beautifully

Hiker walking along a leaf-covered trail in a sunlit autumn forest

If I were in charge of decorating Heaven, it would always be Autumn. There’s just something magical about Fall, when God swaps the green and pale gold color palette of Summer for bright reds, oranges, and yellows. I’m sure many of you are raising a Pumpkin Spice Latte in agreement. I’m hardly in the minority here. And beyond the colors and the crisp sweater-weather air, the sports fan in me loves the harmonic convergence of playoff baseball, football season in full-swing, and both hockey and basketball just getting their respective seasons going. People can and do have other favorite seasons, but throw in the smell of bonfires and burning leaves and it’s hard to see how.

With all the beauty and excitement that Autumn brings, it’s easy to forget that it’s actually a time of decay and death. Leaves turn those beautiful hues and then drop off, withering to a crusty brown before being raked into piles, or if you have a mulching mower, ground up into leaflets (which reminds me that Fall also means political campaigns. Okay, so maybe it’s not entirely perfect.) Lawnmowers get winterized as grass goes dormant. Pretty soon the trees are bare, except for the evergreens decked out in their pre-Christmas best. Nature starts settling in for a hopefully-not-too-long Winter’s nap.

Why does God reserve some of the most spectacular displays of His creation for this time of natural winding down? Why not show them off in Spring, when everything is renewing, ripe with life and possibility? Perhaps it’s to give nature a “grand finale” – one last show of vibrant fireworks before things go dark and grey and the smoke drifts on. It certainly is that, but I believe there’s a deeper reason He chose for things dying beautifully in the final months of the year. Perhaps it’s because as His children, we above all other creation have a hope of dying beautifully too.

For those of us who have chosen to follow Jesus, death is, in many ways, a constant. Jesus calls us to constantly die to ourselves. To paraphrase John the Baptizer (Baptist? I can’t see him actually choosing a particular denomination) – we become less so he becomes more. This is hardly a decaying kind of death though. It’s a transformation, and it starts when we begin to let go of our own assumptions and expectations about who we are, and who we are meant to be. As trees let go of dying leaves each Fall, we need to let go of those desires and thoughts that would keep us from becoming everything that God made us to be.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes that case that perhaps the greatest purpose of being a Christian is in becoming more like Christ. While having our sins washed away and being given hope of eternal life with God is great, the true point of everything Jesus did here on earth, including the cross, is to show us what God really intended a human being to be. And not just human beings, but humans being. Jesus often said that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Usually that was preceded by an admonition to “repent.” And while each of us should feel sorry and repent for the sins we may commit each day, I believe there’s something else to His words that runs deeper.

Perhaps true, ultimate repentance is to not only admit our sinfulness and desire to be better. Perhaps it is to enter into a true posture of surrender. Giving everything over to God and His will. No personal agendas. No worries about outcomes, fears about what-ifs, and no striving to “make something of ourselves.” It is to truly follow Jesus example and live each day for God, by the grace of God, trusting Him to lead us to exactly where we need to be to do exactly what He’s calling us to do in that moment. Often, what He’s calling us to do is to show His love to others through kindness, selflessness, and sacrifice. When we do that, we walk more closely in Jesus’ footsteps, becoming more like Him as we live out our mortal lives awaiting His return and the eternal joy that awaits us. And in doing so, we show His grace and mercy to others by dying, beautifully, to ourselves.

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Oct 05 2026
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The Christian Life

One More Cast

Silhouette of fisherman casting a net over calm water at sunset

I pretty much suck at fishing. Sure I know how to tie on lures, bait a hook…Heck, I can even cast left handed, a skill developed while Muskie fishing in northern Wisconsin with a left-handed relative. There was even a period where I’d spend actual money on gear to make my fishing attempts more enjoyable and more productive. But somehow, somewhere under the water’s surface, whatever I was tossing out there just wasn’t very appealing to whatever was swimming by. So I’ve pretty much given up on fishing in favor of a different, equally frustrating pastime – golf. At least when I swing the club, I can see the results of my efforts, good or bad.

The last few months though, I’ve been on a fishing trip of a different kind. Finding employment in today’s job climate, especially trying to shift career paths, is a lot like Muskie fishing up north. It often feels like I’m casting left-handed with the wrong lure on the end of the line. I might get the occasional “follow” – a preliminary HR interview, maybe even a bite with a second interview, but nothing that I can set the hook into. I know I’m not alone in this. I’m sure there are many of you out there in similar situations who can relate right now. It’s frustrating, discouraging, and there are days where the only thing that keeps me from total despair is the random Facebook reel that reminds me that God’s got a plan even when I can’t see it, and that He’s preparing me for something greater by giving me this incredibly difficult season of life. Gee, thanks Facebook!.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my situation in relation to some other fishermen a couple thousand years ago. Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John. These four early disciples of Jesus were all struggling fishermen in Galilee. Jesus comes upon these men in Luke 5, when He hops in Simon Peter’s boat and teaches from the bow. Afterward He instructs Peter to launch out into deeper waters and to let down the nets for a catch. At this point, Peter and Andrew were exhausted. They’d been fishing all night with zero success. The Chosen depicts this circumstance amid the heightened drama of Peter desperately trying to fish his way out of major tax trouble that was going to end up costing him his entire livelihood, his boat, and likely land him in prison.

While Luke’s gospel doesn’t provide that background, thanks to the show, one can imagine the depths of frustration and desperation that must have gripped Peter’s mind in these circumstances. His literal life was hanging in the balance and here was this stranger, this rabbi commandeering his boat and then telling him to get back out on the sea, where he’d just spent an entire exhausting, futile, sleepless night, and fish some more. As worn out as job hunting can make one feel in today’s market, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the exhaustion those soon-to-be disciples felt.

Yet, when Jesus gives Peter this directive, Luke makes it clear in verse 5 that Peter really didn’t hesitate. “Nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.” (Luke 5:5 – KJV) What happens next is something that God seems to always do throughout scripture, namely providing above and beyond any human expectation. Peter’s nets were overloaded with fish – so much so that they would have broken had not James and John been close at hand with their boat to come help take in the multitude of fish. Even then there were so many that both their boats began to sink.

It was a life-changing moment for those four men. And it started with an act of obedience. An act of faith. An act of surrender. Peter was an experienced fisherman. No doubt he could tell when conditions were good for a catch and when they weren’t. And I’m sure that previous night wasn’t the first all-nighter he’d pulled out on the Sea of Galilee that ended up with nothing to show for it. He could have easily told this strange man standing in his boat, “Nope, I’m done.” But he didn’t. He gave it one more cast, and that cast changed his life.

Once again, we see an example of God waiting until someone was totally spent, at rock bottom, out of options. Jesus knew Peter’s struggle before He ever set foot on his boat. God could have easily provided the same miracle earlier in the night, supernaturally bailing Pete out of his mess under cover of darkness. But there was more waiting for Peter and his fellow fishermen than just a boatload of fish. That would have just been a great fishing day. Business as usual, maybe at it’s best. Jesus had so much more in store for Peter and his buddies than just a successful fishing trip. Far beyond their immediate material need, He brought them to a place of spiritual transformation. That life-sucking night gave way to a life-changing day.

Like me right now, you may be feeling a lot like Peter after that night. Nothing’s happening. All effort seems fruitless, and the brink of personal brokenness seems imminent. What do we do? We can give up, citing the lack of any results as proof that the fishing just isn’t going to pan out for us. Or we can set out and try another cast. We can surrender and obey, and most of all, trust. Trust that God is there in the boat with us. That He sees our struggle, our frustration, our exhaustion. And we can set out again into the deep waters of uncertainty, letting our nets down, despite all our lack of anything to show for past efforts. Because just like the disciples, God likely has so much more in store for us too. He knows our material needs. More importantly though, He knows our spiritual needs, and He knows the people He’s created us to become.

So in these challenging seasons, more than ever we need to consider what God is really doing in our lives. Even if we have no idea what His greater purpose is for us, or why our current struggles are necessary, we can make one more cast, in faith. Because with Jesus, the next cast just might bring life-changing results.

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Sep 28 2026
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The Christian Life

Into The River

Jordan River parting at dawn

Most everyone is familiar with the story in Exodus of the parting of the Red Sea, even if it’s only from watching The Ten Commandments – Charlton Heston with arms raised against a backdrop of Cecil B. DeMille’s iconic special effects. And anyone who grew up in church is likely familiar with the battle of Jericho from the book of Joshua. In between those two miraculous events lies the story of a third, much less heralded miracle that the Israelites experienced on their way to the promised land.

In Joshua 3, God tells Joshua to send Israel’s priests ahead of the rest of the group, carrying the Ark of the Covenant (yes, the real-life version of the one Indiana Jones went looking for.) In verse 8, God commands the priests that when they reach the Jordan river, to go and stand in the river. So they carry the Ark to the Jordan’s banks, which, because it was harvest time, were at flood stage, as high as they get. Then, obeying the Lord’s command, they stepped into the river. As soon as they did, God parted the river, just as He had done with the Red Sea at the raising of Moses’ staff.

The difference between those two miracles is a subtle, but critical one in understanding how God often works in human circumstances. They had to get their feet wet. In order to experience God’s miraculous intervention in these particular challenging circumstances, Israel, the priests in particular, had to take a leap, or in this case, a step, of faith. God still did the heavy lifting, but first He needed to see if Israel would obey Him, acting in faith when the situation looked impossible.

Sometimes God calls us to action in order to receive His miracles. What would have happened if the priests had just stood on the shore and not stepped into the river? Probably nothing. The water would have kept flowing, and Israel would have kept waiting. Similarly, as we sit waiting on God for a miracle in our circumstances, we may sense His urging to take some specific action, probably something that we’re scared to do, but that if we do, might just open the door we’re looking for. It’s in these moments that our faith has a chance to leap forward. One small step of faith into the river of uncertainty, trusting that God’s going to show us where the next step leads, might be all we need to experience the breakthrough we’ve been praying for.

Each time we look to God in challenging circumstances, He will push us just a little harder to make our faith grow that much stronger. On Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, God first called on Moses to faithfully raise his staff, and the Red Sea parted. Then He called on the priests to step into the Jordan River, and it too parted. Thus the Red Sea was about the faith of one man, Moses, Israel’s leader. The Jordan was about the faith of the entire nation, or at least, the priests who led them spiritually. God wants us to trust Him in all things, but He wisely works to grow that trust in us with baby steps.

Each circumstance we face that brings His faithful deliverance brings with it a deeper calling for us to walk in faith. Taking Israel’s journey one step further into Jericho, we see Him press them further into action. God’s (literal) marching orders surely made little sense, yet Israel was victorious after following them faithfully. As life brings us to the shore of each new depth to be crossed, or each new battle to be fought, He calls us to take bolder and bolder, and sometimes stranger and stranger, steps of action. It’s never about us solving our own problems. It’s always about us showing that we trust Him with obedience to keep the path clear for us. We may get our feet wet, but we must always rest assured that He’ll never let us drown.

What challenge lies in front of you right now? Will you act in faith, stepping in to the river, and trusting God to clear the way?

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Sep 21 2026
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The Christian Life

Living The Dream – The Joseph Experience

Cloaked figure standing beneath a sunlit opening in a dark stone cavern

One of the more poignant stories in the Old Testament is that of Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Jacob. Joseph was Jacob’s first son of his beloved wife, Rachel, and therefore his favorite. Jacob made no bones about that, either, gifting Joseph a coat of many colors (not sure if it was Technicolor!) And as a youngster, Joseph seemed to make no bones about his standing in the family, which increasingly drew the ire of his older brothers.

Joseph was a dreamer, and often his dreams involved metaphors which seemed to reinforce his favored standing with God and his superior standing to that of his brothers. For instance, he had a dream that he and his brothers were harvesting grain, and all of their bundles of grain bowed down to his bundle. This would prove prophetic as time went on, but at the time, all it did was fuel his brothers’ anger and jealousy towards him. Eventually, they hatched a plot to get rid of their braggadocious bro by throwing him in a well, and then selling him into slavery to a passing traveler.

Young Joe wound up in Egypt and eventually in the service of a man named Potiphar. Joseph served him well and earned his master’s favor, but when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph and he resisted, she lied about the incident and landed Joseph in prison, where he spent several years. Imagine how Joseph must have felt sitting in an Egyptian jail with no real prospect of being set free. Not exactly “living the dream.” Surely he must have questioned God’s plans for him during that rock-bottom experience, maybe even allowing himself doubts about God’s very existence. Even when it seemed his ship had come in after helping Pharaoh’s cupbearer get his job back after he’d found himself in the clink for a spell, the man forgot about him and Joseph remained locked up.

Yet the entire time, God was at work. Perhaps He knew that in order for Joseph to fulfill his true purpose, he needed to be humbled and broken down. Or maybe God was merely testing Joseph’s faithfulness. Sometimes it’s only when we’re at rock bottom that God can finally break through to us fully – like we only realize He’s our best option when He becomes our only option. Whatever God was doing, I’m sure the situation made no sense to Joseph. Only God really knows what He was doing in Joseph’s life at that time, and really, He’s the only one who needed to.

I believe it’s still the same with us today. You may be going through a season in your life that makes zero sense to you. You may have tried everything you can humanly do to make things better and gotten absolutely nowhere. You’re at rock bottom. Feeling lost and forgotten. Hopeless. Living out a true “Joseph experience.” But guess what? God’s still got you.

Eventually, the cupbearer remembered Joseph in a critical moment when Pharaoh had a troubling dream and needed answers. God gave Joseph the interpretation, and Pharaoh gave Joseph the loftiest of positions, overseeing the preparations for all of Egypt to weather the coming famine which God showed him that Pharaoh’s dream had foretold. And as for Joseph’s dreams…well…they came true too. When the famine hit Israel, Jacob sent Joseph’s brothers to Egypt to buy food, and who did they end up bowing down to? You guessed it, their long lost brother. After all the betrayal and suffering and waiting that Joseph had experienced, in the end God gave him a happy family reunion.

I myself am in the midst of a “Joseph experience.” I have no idea what God’s endgame looks like either. But I know that through all of this I need to trust that God has not forgotten me. Whatever testing, sharpening, humbling He’s determined that I need, I know that I need to trust that He’s preparing me for something. Something far beyond anything I could dream of. And if you’re like me, going through your own “Joseph experience,” you too need to believe and trust that God is right there with you, preparing you for something great.

So hold on. Help is coming. You’re getting out of jail, and when you do, it will be like a dream come true. God is good.

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Sep 14 2026
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Sports, The Christian Life

Place at the Table

One of my guilty-pleasure movies is The Program – a 1993 film that chronicles the ESU Wolves, a fictional Division I college football program. As an inside look at big time college football the movie definitely has its flaws. (How does a D-I program only have two – TWO! – assistant coaches?) And as a guy who once upon a time did radio play-by-play for a D-I sport, albeit basketball, the announcing is nails-on-a-chalkboard atrocious. Hard Knocks it is not. More like a collage of cliches of what someone in Hollywood imagined must go on behind closed doors in major college football programs. Still, it’s worth a watch if you like football.

One of the storylines follows Steve Lattimer, a backup linebacker played by Andrew Bryniarski. Determined to crack the starting defense after three seasons on the punt team, Lattimer returns to campus for his final season packing a chemically-enhanced physique and the chemically-overcharged attitude to match. It’s obvious to everyone except James Caan’s Coach Winters that Lattimer has been juicing – using anabolic steroids – to fuel his transformation from a punt team scrub to a starting defense beast. And when even his teammates voice their suspicions, Steve doesn’t deny it. As he puts it “you do what you have to do to play.”

While the players in the story are more caricatures that characters, there’s something honest in Lattimer’s story. Anyone who’s loved a sport but was a marginal athlete has longed for their “place at the table” and would probably trade just about anything to get their shot. It’s easy to imagine many in a similar position considering the shortcut that Steve takes in the movie. There’s only room for 11 players on the field, and everyone on the team should want one of those spots. The end goal is understandable, even though there’s no justifying the means. And for Lattimer, kind of an “anti-Rudy” if you will – another good 1993 football film – without chemical help, we see his own athletic gifts ultimately betray him in a critical moment. Sans-steroids, he wasn’t worthy of his place at the table.

For us as God’s children, there’s no shortcut we can, or need, take to earn our place at the table. Jesus already did everything He had to do so that we can one day play on the fields of the Lord’s kingdom. Beyond accepting the Lord’s grace through Jesus, there’s nothing else we can do that will get us there. It’s all through Him. Just like Lattimer’s inherent football skills weren’t enough, neither are our own human efforts to be spiritual, to do good, to try to live a life of faith on our own. And self-help books, going to church more, seminars, etc. – noble enhancements to our routing unlike Steve’s harmful ones – won’t ultimately get us our place at His table. Just like the Iowa running back does to Lattimer in one of the film’s pivotal moments, life in this imperfect world will ultimately bowl us over at the goal line if we don’t put all our trust in Christ.

Putting our trust in Christ is not easy by any means, nor is it a merely passive pursuit. While steroids fueled Steve’s physical transformation, he still had to spend the time in the weight room. We need to spend our time in the spiritual weight room: reading God’s Word, praying, meditating. It’s just that as we do those things, we need to lean on God and His wisdom to fuel our spiritual growth. Not just mere memorization or repetition. Not our intellect or the intellects of others (yours truly included.) The catalyst for true spiritual growth must always be the Holy Spirit working in and through us.

As we walk with Jesus, seeing our faith growing and maturing, we need to recognize that we’re going to fail sometimes. Life is still going to score on us. Much like Jesus’ disciples, our day-to-day walk with the Lord will be filled with challenges, uncertainty, and even resistance from some who we thought were on our team. There will be plays that don’t go our way, but we need to rest assured as long as we keep looking to Jesus, we’re always in the game, and our place at the table is secure.

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Sep 08 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Lead Us Not Into Temptation

White child safety gate secured across a wooden staircase

 “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” – Matthew 6:13 – RSV

I recently spoke to a father whose child had burnt their hands on a hot grill during a cookout. It all happened so fast that this poor dad couldn’t react quickly enough to stop his little one from rushing up and touching the hot grates. Thankfully the burns were mild and healed quickly. No permanent damage done, but a painful lesson for his child to learn. As parents, I think we all have at least one close-call moment like this with our kids when they’re young. I can still vividly recall the morning when I’d neglected to close the gate at the top of our basement stairs and while I was in the back bedroom, all of a sudden I heard the alarming “clunk clunk clunk” sound of my very fast-on-all-fours daughter tumbling down the stairs. Thankfully she too was okay, but it heightened my vigilance as a parent to always make sure that gate was shut from then on.

As parents we do our best to keep our kids from wandering into dangerous situations. It’s natural for them to want to explore the world around them and often they don’t know any better than to push boundaries when our guard is down. In the spiritual realm, we as God’s children can also be prone to push boundaries, exploring things that aren’t healthy for our faith. I believe that’s what Jesus is addressing in this verse of the Lord’s Prayer. God is always looking out for us and would never intentionally lead us into temptation to sin, but the free will He’s given us means we bear some responsibility to be vigilant for ourselves.

So what is Jesus telling us to pray for here? In a world that serves up a never-ending barrage of images, ideas, and appeals to our pleasure-seeking human nature, it seems the only true way to escape temptation is to live on top of a mountain somewhere in the Himalayas (although they might be working on better wi-fi there, too.) With these words, Jesus seems to be acknowledging our human need for God’s help if we’re to avoid the pitfalls all around us.

What does that help look like? I believe it comes in the form of a deeper awareness of how and when we’re being tempted. Just like internet scams have gotten more refined and harder to spot, so has temptation for the modern believer. This may very well be the most challenging time in history to try to faithfully follow Jesus. I’m not just talking about temptations that target our lust or greed or selfishness, although those are certainly alive and well today. The biggest temptation we need to avoid may be the temptation to give up trying to live a faithful life altogether. The “evil” we most need our Father to deliver us from is the evil that wears down our spirits in difficult times, telling us that it’s too hard to follow Christ, that it’s not worth the struggle, and that God’s not really there to see us through.

Now more than ever, we live in a world that erodes our patience. At the touch of a screen we expect instant answers, constant information, and nonstop entertainment. When we face difficult circumstances, we’re less prepared than ever to be willing to wait things out. God’s timing is always perfect, but it’s rarely quick. True faith involves holding on to His promises, sometimes far longer than we ever think we should have to. God won’t ever lead us into temptation, but he allows us to experience it to challenge and refine our faith, and to deepen our understanding of His working in our lives. When his deliverance from the current “evil” we’re struggling with doesn’t come right away, we need to pray all the more for Him to protect us from the temptation to abandon our trust in Him.

Even for me writing this blog, it’s tempting to question why I’m doing it sometimes. I gave up on it once but restarted it out of a sense of God’s calling. Each time I sit down to write, I view it as an act of faith. So for me the temptation to give up on it is something I need God’s help to guard against. I think God sometimes tests faithfulness by withholding any sense of the fruits of a labor, just to see if the laborer will still faithfully do the work. So whether I have five readers or five-thousand or five-hundred-thousand, I need to keep plugging away.

So as we dig deeper into Jesus’ closing words of his blueprint for prayer, we can sense Him urging us to ask the Father to help us be vigilant against the temptation to lose faith. If we keep our eyes on Him, He will certainly deliver us from the greatest of all evils, one that would rob us of a life lived trusting in Him for all that we need.

Lead us not into temptation – Father, protect me from all temptations, especially the temptation to give up hope, to lose faith, and to mistake your timing for indifference.

But deliver us from evil – Give me grace and strength to withstand all the challenges of this life, knowing that you can be fully trusted to provide everything I need. My strength, safety, and salvation is in You.

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Aug 31 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray – As We Forgive Our Debtors

Two people gently holding hands across a rustic wooden table

“And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors;” – Matthew 6:12 – RSV

When I was in high school, each year the final edition of the school newspaper had a section devoted to Senior Wills. Any graduating Senior could submit their “will” – usually a clever little blurb either offering something material or a bit of wisdom up to one or more underclassmen to help them through their remaining high school career. They made for a fun read and were generally well intended. My Junior year, I’d put my skinny, slow, 6′ 1″, 150 pound body into the meat grinder of varsity football. It was my first and only foray into organized tackle football, and in a fairly large and racially diverse Southern California high school, the results were entirely forgettable. They were not, however, entirely forgotten.

When the paper came out with that year’s Senior Wills, my attention (along with that of all my friends) was drawn to an entry that read: “We the Seniors of the Monrovia High School football team hereby will all our athletic ability to Rob Sheehy.” Ouch. Now, I may have had unrealistic expectations of my abilities. And for various reasons, my insecure, 16-year-old self didn’t always project the humility I should have. But still, it wasn’t a kind thing to do. Thankfully back then there was no internet. That meager dig in a high school newspaper pales in comparison to the cruel and often nonstop cyberbullying that goes on in today’s world. I recall in the moment kind of laughing it off but deep down, it burned. I never knew who submitted that and I didn’t bother trying to find out. Perhaps for that reason, it wasn’t long before I was able to make peace with it, forgive whoever did it, and move on.

Forgiveness. One could argue that no topic in any of Jesus’ teachings is more central, more essential. The very act of Jesus going to the cross to die for us is to secure our ultimate forgiveness from sin. It’s the culmination of His message of the Father’s grace and mercy to our broken world. We have had a debt forgiven that goes beyond our human capacity to measure it, and if we actually could, perhaps we’d spend all day, every day, doing nothing but thanking and praising God for that gift of mercy.

While the gift of the cross is free to all of us who will accept it, it does not come without responsibility. These words of Jesus in the Lord’s prayer hammer home one of His most challenging and most crucial messages: as we have been forgiven, so must we forgive others. In Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unforgiving servant paints a clear picture of what Jesus means with these words. A servant is forgiven by the king from a debt that would equate to millions of dollars in modern times. Shortly after, that same servant has a man thrown in jail over a debt of chump change by comparison. When the king hears of it, he immediately has the servant thrown in jail for the debt that he was originally forgiven.

The message is clear: as God has been merciful to us, so we are to be merciful to those who wrong us, no matter what the wrong was. This is challenging. SO challenging. We can be hurt so badly, often by those who we love the most or who love us the most, or at least claim to. We can live together with someone for years while the hurts pile up and pile up, and we become so overwhelmed by them that we just can’t take it anymore and move on from that person. We vow that we’ll never forgive them for the pain they’ve caused us. Even observing them from a distance over time, we see how the person still behaves and it reinforces our belief in their general badness, further justifying our unforgiving stance. But God calls us to a different path.

One of the books, maybe the book that started my journey towards seeing God as a loving, forgiving, graceful Father is William P. Young’s The Shack. In the story, the protagonist, Mack, is met by the beautiful and wonderful triune being of God, at a place where an unspeakable horror was committed. As the book unfolds, the persons of Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit lead him on a journey in which the ultimate goal is to find a way to forgive the person who committed the horrible act that has left Mack’s spirit scarred and broken. It’s a powerful and beautiful story, and the film does a wonderful job of bringing it to life. While some have criticized its theology and portrayal of God, I believe the message rings true. Painful as it is, and as much as we want to be justified in all our pain over whatever wrongs we’ve endured, we need to forgive.

Sometimes, the hardest “debtor” for us to forgive is ourselves. No one is more aware of our faults and the wrongs we’ve done to ourselves and others than the one staring back at us in the mirror. But we need to forgive ourselves also. The wrongs we suffer from others may cause us to hold a grudge, which has been likened to drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. But regret for the ways we’ve let ourselves down, along with the ways we’ve hurt others lays an even heavier burden on our shoulders. It’s a burden we’re not meant to carry. Certainly not part of the “cross” Jesus urges us to take up as we follow Him. But we’re so acutely aware of having hurt or disappointed someone that we never stop beating ourselves up for it. The other party may have long ago forgiven us, but somehow we can’t bring ourselves to accept it.

Even if the other party is God, we struggle to receive the mercy He so freely gives us. While it’s no bueno to accept His grace too casually and use the cross as an excuse to continue living in an obviously unrighteous manner, the opposite – failing to allow His grace and mercy to wash away our past, is equally self-destructive. In Psalm 103:12 the psalmist assures us our sins are removed from us as far as the East is from the West. What a liberating image that is! But failing to forgive ourselves when forgiveness has already been given denies us that freedom and keeps us locked up. Repentance is necessary, but it shouldn’t be perpetual.

If God’s Kingdom is to come and His will is to be done, it can only be done when His children are willing to be set free, not only from their own sin against others, and themselves, but from the sins of others against them. The first part was all Jesus on the cross. The second part is on us, with the help of the Spirit.

And forgive us our debts – Lord, thank you that you have indeed forgiven my debt, forever washing away my sin with the blood you shed on the cross.

As we also have forgiven our debtors – Holy Spirit, please help me show the same mercy to all those around me that you have shown me, including myself. Please let me not hold anything against my brothers and sisters. And let me not deny mercy to myself when I have already repented and received it from You and others. Help me let go of all hurts, that we may all share in the true joy of Your Kingdom.

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Aug 24 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Our Daily Bread

Fresh loaf of bread beside an open book and coffee on wooden table

“Give us this day our daily bread” – Matthew 6:11 – RSV

One cool thing my dad and I did on our ballpark road trip was read the Our Daily Bread devotional every morning. As we hit the road to our next stop, whoever wasn’t driving would read the day’s entry and the corresponding prayer that follows. It was a great way to set our minds on God, bringing us closer together as father and son, and as Father and sons. It’s a nice, tightly packaged bit of spiritual nourishment for the day.

I doubt Dad and I would have had as easy a time focusing on those devotionals were it not for travel plazas with Dunkin Donuts and a stash of Oreos and Chester’s puffcorn in the back seat. The “bread” in this line of the Lord’s Prayer can take many different forms, but physical food is always necessary. No doubt the disciples in Jesus’ day were focused on that when He first gave them these words. If you’re familiar with the book of Exodus you likely recall God providing the Israelites with heavenly bread – manna – on the ground each morning. And you may recall His clear instructions for them to only gather what they would need for that day. No storing it up or hoarding it. Any manna kept to the next day would immediately spoil and turn bitter, useless for anything. A very in-your-face reminder from God to trust in Him daily for their needs.

In our modern society, we likely think of “bread’ in more financial terms. Money is what we use to obtain our life needs, so our daily bread frames out more as a paycheck or income. Our modern compensation models start to disconnect us pretty quickly from God’s notion of daily bread, and I believe that makes this one of the more challenging lines of the Our Father. Most of us don’t get paid daily, while some of us aren’t getting paid at all. Financial stability and security seem to be the never-ending quest of our modern society. There’s a trillion-dollar industry filled with companies promising to help us plan for a secure and comfortable financial future. Heck, I used to work for one.

So “daily bread” is not really what most of us are looking for. If we’re being totally honest, we’re probably thinking more along the lines of “Give us this day our lifetime bread.” We’re not wired to deal with the notion of not having enough to last us past today, past this present moment and need. Yet I believe that’s exactly what God truly wants of us. Jesus is trying to point out, not just in this verse of the Our Father but many other places in His message, that total dependence on God is perhaps the very foundation of faithfulness.

Trusting in God for our daily bread takes faith to an entirely new, and incredibly uncomfortable level. But in doing so we learn that not only do we need to totally trust Him that what He provides us will always be enough. We also come to understand that there really is such a thing as too much. What would have happened if dad and I had read more than one day’s devotional at a time? Sure we’d have ingested more scripture and more insight, but would we have actually retained as much of it? Probably not. And doing so would have robbed our tomorrows of the joy of diving in fresh each day for a new portion. When we rely on God, our faith grows as we see Him work in exciting new ways to provide for us. Ways far beyond what we ever could have conceived on our own.

But on our own is how we so often want to be. We long for freedom, and we believe that to get there we just need independence, financial stability and security – always making sure we have enough. We chase the “American Dream”, working hard to save up for the life we want to someday be able to live, gambling our present days on a future that might not live up to our expectations. In doing so, we work harder than we have to and we gain less than we think we should have. We push ourselves harder than what God ever does, feeling way more exhausted, and seeing far less progress. Jesus challenges us with these words to shift our perspective from laboring to try to secure our uncertain futures to living each day as it comes, trusting God’s plan and seeking our security in His loving arms. The Christian life is not easy, yet traveling with Jesus means we’re never loaded beyond what we can carry.

What the Lord is calling us to with this verse is to understand that the true path to freedom is one of total dependence on Him: surrendering our desire for control, trading our own faulty, unreliable efforts to build a life of security, and letting go. Falling into the Father’s loving arms and trusting that He’s always going to catch us. He’s always going to feed us. That no matter what each day holds, as long as we have Him, we have enough.

Digging deep we realize how much this verse, along with the one that follows it, challenges us as believers. It gets to the essence of what it truly means to follow Jesus – to not only pray like Him but to live like Him.

Give us this day our daily bread – I’ve got to stop trying to fill my own storehouse and let go of trying to secure my own future. The Father’s always got me, his storehouse is always full, and I already have the key. I just need to ask and to trust.

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Aug 17 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Thy Will Be Done

Hiker walking along a wildflower-lined trail through alpine meadows

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.” – Matthew 6:10 – RSV

Take ten kindergartners outside with some paper and a box of crayons on a sunny day and ask them to draw the sky and you’ll certainly get ten very different pictures. So it is for us when we try to picture God’s Kingdom. From the cartoonish images of heaven as floating on clouds, to the beautiful coastline views on either side of the US, or the majestic mountains out west (my personal favorite) or the rolling, flower covered hills of the Italian countryside, we all have different views of what God’s Kingdom might look like. For some it might be a place of total relaxation, while for others it might mean exploring places beyond our wildest human imaginations. I know a few guys who probably envision endless rounds of golf on courses we’ll probably never get to play in this lifetime (morning round at Augusta followed up with a 4:30 tee time at Pebble Beach? Perfect!) One constant no matter how we picture Heaven is that it is perfect.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus gives many parables that begin with “The Kingdom of God is like…” Whether it’s a wedding banquet or interactions between a master and servants, or a father and his sons, He’s much more focused on what happens there than on the place itself. So in giving us the words “Thy Kingdom come,” I think Jesus is urging us to pray for God’s perfect vision of our relationship with Him, and our relationships with each other. While it’s natural for us to long for Heaven as a place of ultimate peace, joy, and comfort, we shouldn’t spend too much time focusing on that. Rather we should ask Our Father to bring us His Kingdom here in the form of both a closer walk with Him, and better relationships with those around us.

Another thing about God’s Kingdom – it’s a place where the Father’s will is always done, and done perfectly. Jesus teaches us to pray “Thy will be done, On earth as it is in Heaven.” Pondering those words, it seems that He’s urging us to a deeper desire for God’s perfect will to be carried out in our world and our daily lives. The Father has a perfect will for each one of us. Given our human faults and the free will that He gives us, none of us will ever live a life that follows His perfect will step for step. So while His will may not be done here exactly as it is in Heaven, we can still pray for our Father to guide our lives in a way that His perfect will for each of us can still be done in the end.

I struggle in the best of times to trust that God’s will is being done in my day-to-day. The aftermath of losing my job and the daily uncertainty that comes with it has put me on quite a roller coaster. I ride the “ups” believing that God has a purpose for this time of unemployment, leading me to a new calling and a deeper sense of life purpose. Then I careen toward the “downs” thinking that I’ve totally failed as a worker, a partner, a father. That every aspiration I have is just driven by some selfish need for attention or control. That I’ve wandered so far off base from what God intended for me that He’s just left me to twist in the wind, leaving me to my own devices and letting me wander the path of the prodigal until I come to my last end, finally waking up and surrendering myself back to Him.

In those moments, the words of a different prayer bring comfort. In The Living Spirit, Thomas Merton prays: “the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.”

I believe it’s this sentiment that Jesus leads us to with these first true requests we make of Our Father in this blueprint for prayer that He gives us. Hopefully we can see more clearly how we can better trust the Father to guide us on the path to doing His will here on earth, bringing His Kingdom more fully into our daily lives.

Thy Kingdom Come – While I long for the perfect joy and beauty of eternity, let me live my life as the good and faithful servant, the eager and willing wedding guest, the son who overcomes his shame to embrace his Father’s forgiveness and also forgives others.

Thy Will be done, On earth as it is in Heaven – As I take each step this day, help me trust You and surrender to You, to let Your will be done perfectly in my life, overcoming my human imperfections. Help me be the best version of who You made me to be, for the work You’ve given me to help Your Kingdom come.

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Aug 10 2026
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The Christian Life

Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Hallowed Be Thy Name

Open wooden door revealing a star-filled galaxy inside a stone room

“Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” – Matthew 6:9 RSV

In my own faith journey, being able to see God as a truly loving and personally present Father who is pleased with even my most feeble efforts to follow Him and live the life He has made me to live is a relatively recent development. Up until a few years ago, my prevailing image of God the Father was a bit more harsh. Like a detached Ward Cleaver, standing off in the distance shaking his head with a look of resigned disappointment on His face. Or less-than-jolly old Santa Claus making his list and checking it twice, with a “Naughty” column that seemed to be much fuller than the “Nice” one.

Indeed, the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer can be hijacked to paint a picture of the Father cutting a towering figure in a distant realm of Heaven, impersonal and imposing. Growing up Catholic with fairly strict parents, Jesus’ kicking off His blueprint for prayer with these words is a bit problematic on the surface. But while I’m sure the Lord wanted the disciples, and us, to always carry the proper reverence toward the Father, I believe that if we look closer, He’s not so much painting a picture of the Father, but more of the attitude we should always seek to bring when we approach His throne. An attitude of praise. Far from trying to make God seem more distant and unknowable in these opening words, He reminds us that God deeply desires our worship and praise, not from some need for self-gratification or an ego boost, but because He wants us to always be mindful of how good He is and how much He loves us.

Our praise to the Father is a sweet aroma, a New Testament version of the sweet aroma of burnt offerings that His people would offer up in Old Testament times. It says “God, you give us all good things, and so we offer back to you the best we have of that goodness, praising and acknowledging Your perfect love and care for us as Your children.” Jesus teaches us to revere the Father for who He is – merciful, loving, kind, and always working for our good. Keeping that picture of our Father opens our hearts and minds to His name being truly worthy to be hallowed (holy) above all other names. His throne room doors are swung wide open and we can approach with joy and boldness knowing we’ve come to the right place, to the One who truly can and will handle every concern we bring before Him.

God’s name is holy. But what exactly is God’s name? In our Western culture, just capital G “God” seems to be the default. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it does seem to rob us of an opportunity to expand our thinking about who our Father really is. In Moses’ life-changing encounter with God in Exodus 3, He tells Moses that his name is “I AM.” My lack of formal Biblical scholarship notwithstanding, I believe what He’s telling Moses with this name is that beyond and above all time and space and matter, He exists. He’s not just a being. He’s The Being. And that makes His name something that’s far beyond a word, or a label, or even something that can or should be casually spoken at all.

I’m not a Hebrew scholar, but my mom was. During her studies I recall her talking about the unpronounceable name of God – something scholars call the Tetragrammaton – written as YHWH in Hebrew. (Of course, when you don’t use vowels, isn’t everything unpronounceable?) From that we get Yahweh and Jehovah (a Latin derivative) as names for the Almighty. The Israelites had many names for God: Yahweh, Jehovah (names that the Hebrews dared not speak) Elohim, and Adonai to name a few. Adonai seems to be the more favored name and if you’re a fan of The Chosen, that’s how they refer to the Father in the show. Whatever name God might have on his hypothetical drivers license though, Jesus wants us to always be mindful that Our Father and His name are to be kept sacred and holy.

Personally, I think any name we give God which strengthens our image and deepens our relationship with Him as a loving Father is likely pleasing and acceptable to Him. I once had a dream where God seemed to manifest as a big happy smiling Hawaiian man, like a big teddy bear Don Ho type of dude. It was early on in my journey toward a more loving fatherly image of God, and it really resonated with me. I looked up the Hawaiian word for “father” and discovered the term Makua kane. So now when I pray privately, I often use that term to help center my thoughts on a more loving, smiling, teddy bear of a heavenly Father than that 50s sitcom dad waiting to hear what trouble I got into today. (Sorry Ward, just grab your pipe and have a seat. Dinner will be ready in an hour.)

One other challenge I see from the generic capital G God name we tend to use is it can open a door to some judgmental and potentially misguided thinking. I recently had a conversation with someone who had said that they’d started watching a movie but turned it off after 20 minutes or so because of all the times that various characters used the phrase “god damn.” I get the thinking since we’re commanded in Exodus 20:7 not to take the Lord’s name in vain. But similar to the angst in some circles over profanity, I’m not sure we have a great handle on where, or if, we’re the ones who should be worried about drawing that line. There’s probably a whole separate post to be had around what it really means to do that and I’m not going to get into that here. I’m just going to keep an open mind to how we choose to address our Heavenly Father and trust that if we bring the right attitude, it’s all good.

Bottom line, whatever you take from Jesus’ opening words, as you learn to pray more intimately with your Father, may it draw you closer to Him. For me, learning to pray more meaningfully in the way Jesus taught us starts like this:

Our Father – My big smiling, happy, kind Makua kane.

Who art in Heaven – Door wide open to Your throne, waiting to welcome me into Your loving arms to share time with me, Your beloved child.

Hallowed be thy name – May my speaking your beloved, endearing name be the sweetest of aromas to you, filling your presence with joy and praise.

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