“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8, ESVWritings from a dude who's just trying to follow Jesus, orbiting around Jeremiah 17:7-8.
Where I'm at: I'm a proud father of two, who's experienced the goodness of God this year, and started to find my footing in a new church family. Rebuilding, slowly, but beautifully!
Five writings, in reading order, if you want the shape of the whole thing before you wander.
This is where the blog gets its name: a promise that a tree planted by water doesn't panic when the heat comes, written early, hopeful, and in the middle of an ordinary week.
Two years into a cross-country move and a young church, I name a season of spiritual dryness for what it is instead of pretending it isn't there.
Years of never stopping catch up with me here, in a candid list of what burnout actually looks like from the inside.
The fullest telling of the decade: church planting, my father's death, a brain tumor, and a divorce I never wanted, held together by one verse about a bruised reed that doesn't get broken.
Writing again after the hardest years, I ask a simpler question than I used to: not what am I doing for God, but does He actually know me.
A year after writing about the formula that failed me, Jesus has been showing me that He doesn't work in formulas or boxes at all. On unlearning what weighed me down, and why joy and sorrow can live in the same believer.
Elijah asked God to let him die, and God's answer wasn't a rebuke. It was two warm meals and permission to rest. On my own lowest point this year, and what God's kindness actually looks like when you're too tired to keep going.
I never really considered myself a gossiper, until I realized I couldn't actually define the word. A working definition from John Piper, the passages that shape it, and the four things that look like gossip but aren't.
Satan's oldest lie isn't really about us. It's a smear campaign against God's character, one that's been running since Eden. A look at who He actually is, versus the "hard man" we've been sold.
Coffee, sunlight, a good night's sleep: we assume these things just happen. They don't. Twenty-four ordinary and not-so-ordinary gifts, traced back to the one Source behind all of them, and Augustine's centuries-old attempt to put words to a God too big to contain.
I've been a professing Christian for 20 years, and I'm just now learning what it looks like to live out the two greatest commands. Doing religious things turned out to be a lot easier than loving people, and Jesus keeps making that difference impossible to miss.
9 years ago this month, I wrote:On CriticismCriticism: “The expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes.” -Google Definition; “The act of criticizing usually unfavorably.” -Merriam-Webster Definition Criticism has many different contexts and is helpful in some contexts (criticizing literary or artistic works, Biblical criticism, etc). The criticism I am concerned with is under the umbrella of the…
