Why Real Christian Community Will Cost You Your Secrets
The Transformed Life, Part 5 | Ben Markham

Ben Markham • Lead Pastor
October 27, 2026

6 Minute Read

Real Christian community is the kind of community where we love one another so unmistakably that the watching world can tell we are His disciples by the way we love each other (John 13:35). It is the most meaningful place a person can be. It is also not free, not easy, and not simple. It will cost you something.

Before we get to that cost, there is a question worth asking first. How do these practices of gathering and belonging actually transform our hearts? What does that even mean? There are several answers, and they are worth walking through one by one.

What Real Community Does to Your Heart

Your faith gets built up. Get around other people who are doing things for God, and something shifts in you. You start to look at yourself, then look at them, and you think, if that guy can do it, if she can do it, surely the Lord can use me. Their faith begins to inspire yours.

Billy Graham said that when one person steps out and acts with courage, it stiffens the spines of those around them. That is exactly what happens here. When you are in community with people, and you see courage and faith, your own faith is built.

You also experience the joy of carrying somebody else's burden, and the joy of God's presence where two or three are gathered together (Matthew 18:20). And you experience the peace of practicing confession, which is the one that took me the longest to learn.


What Happens When You Stop Hiding Your Sin

Years ago something happened that genuinely changed my life. I started getting to know another youth pastor. I think it is healthy for pastors to know other pastors because there is a shared experience between us, and if you find the right relationship, you can go deep with those people. The two of us clicked right away.

It was maybe our second or third time meeting when he started to share some of his struggles with me. He felt he could trust me; he did not feel he had many people at his own church he could talk to, and he was already in an accountability relationship he wanted to build with me as well. I was shocked.

I got into ministry at a very young age, well before much of my character had been formed, and I was in a very public ministry in front of many people. The expectation was that I had my act together. At 21, I did not have my act together. Some of you who have lived through that know that at 21 you can have some of your act together, but there are things you do not even know about yourself yet. So when I stepped into ministry that young, I became afraid of telling people I had flaws and afraid of sharing sin. I really believed that if there was sin in my life, it was between God and me; it was to be kept hidden, and nobody was ever to know about it. That is how I lived.

Now I was sitting across from this man while he laid out his struggles, and I almost stopped him to ask what he thought he was doing. When he finished, he told me he could not describe how much better it felt, and that it was a powerful thing to look me in the eye and say what he was struggling with. He thanked me. I said he was welcome, and I walked away thinking that what he had just done was crazy.

But I also knew he had experienced something in confession that I knew nothing about. So the next time we got together, I asked him if I could try it. Could I do the same thing he had done? Could I trust him with that? He said yes, of course I could.

That became a practice in my life. I keep another man close who I can confess sin to, someone who will ask me hard questions about my spiritual life, finances, marriage, and sexual life, the areas where men get tripped up the most. I have one of those relationships right now. We meet every other Friday, and it is genuinely helpful to me. I would encourage you to have one.


The Joy of Watching Someone Else Reach Their Purpose

Community also gives you the fulfillment of helping others achieve their purpose. Several times, I have been in small groups with unemployed men, and that was tough. These guys had lost their jobs or were still searching. If you have ever walked through a season of unemployment, you know it is not easy. It is a very difficult season.

So we rallied around them, helped them prayerfully discern what they were supposed to be doing, and then we rooted for them. When they got jobs, it was like Christmas morning in that small group. We were that excited because we were experiencing the joy of seeing them fulfill their purpose.


Being Known and Accepted Is Like Encountering Jesus

Finally, there is the grace and mercy of being known and accepted. Being in a space where people know what you are like, accept you, and love you shapes and forms your heart. It is really like encountering Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the power of confession in exactly this way. He had set up a community of pastors that was essentially hidden in Germany, and they kept daily offices, practices that all the pastors would observe together. One of those practices, as I understand it, was a weekly time of confession. One pastor would take on the role of receiving the confessions, and then everyone else would have their chance.

Bonhoeffer writes that in that practice you experience the cross. You experience the cross and the love of Jesus in a way you cannot any other way, because in that moment the one confessing would say what he had done, and the one listening would look at him and say, "In the name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven." As Bonhoeffer describes it, God's presence would enter that room, and both men would experience a sense of God's grace.


Real Christian Community Cannot Happen Alone

That cannot happen in isolation; it cannot happen in an artificial community, and it does not happen in a pseudo-community. It happens when you pay the price of becoming part of true community.

The price is the version of yourself you have been presenting to everyone. It is the secrets. What you receive in exchange is a faith built up by other people's courage, burdens that are no longer yours to carry alone, the presence of God where two or three gather, the joy of watching someone else step into their purpose, and the experience of being fully known and accepted anyway. Real Christian community is the most meaningful place you can be, and it is worth what it costs.

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October 27, 2026 • 6 Minute Read
Why Real Christian Community Will Cost You Your Secrets
Real Christian community is the kind of community where we love one another so unmistakably that the watching world can tell we are His disciples by the way we love each other (John 13:35). It is the most meaningful place a person can be. It is also not free, not easy, and not simple. It will cost you something. Before we get to that cost, there is a question worth asking first. How do these practices of gathering and belonging actually transform our hearts? What does that even mean? There are several answers, and they are worth walking through one by one. What Real Community Does to Your Heart Your faith gets built up. Get around other people who are doing things for God, and something shifts in you. You start to look at yourself, then look at them, and you think, if that guy can do it, if she can do it, surely the Lord can use me. Their faith begins to inspire yours. Billy Graham said that when one person steps out and acts with courage, it stiffens the spines of those around them. That is exactly what happens here. When you are in community with people, and you see courage and faith, your own faith is built. You also experience the joy of carrying somebody else's burden, and the joy of God's presence where two or three are gathered together (Matthew 18:20). And you experience the peace of practicing confession, which is the one that took me the longest to learn. What Happens When You Stop Hiding Your Sin Years ago something happened that genuinely changed my life. I started getting to know another youth pastor. I think it is healthy for pastors to know other pastors because there is a shared experience between us, and if you find the right relationship, you can go deep with those people. The two of us clicked right away. It was maybe our second or third time meeting when he started to share some of his struggles with me. He felt he could trust me; he did not feel he had many people at his own church he could talk to, and he was already in an accountability relationship he wanted to build with me as well. I was shocked. I got into ministry at a very young age, well before much of my character had been formed, and I was in a very public ministry in front of many people. The expectation was that I had my act together. At 21, I did not have my act together. Some of you who have lived through that know that at 21 you can have some of your act together, but there are things you do not even know about yourself yet. So when I stepped into ministry that young, I became afraid of telling people I had flaws and afraid of sharing sin. I really believed that if there was sin in my life, it was between God and me; it was to be kept hidden, and nobody was ever to know about it. That is how I lived. Now I was sitting across from this man while he laid out his struggles, and I almost stopped him to ask what he thought he was doing. When he finished, he told me he could not describe how much better it felt, and that it was a powerful thing to look me in the eye and say what he was struggling with. He thanked me. I said he was welcome, and I walked away thinking that what he had just done was crazy. But I also knew he had experienced something in confession that I knew nothing about. So the next time we got together, I asked him if I could try it. Could I do the same thing he had done? Could I trust him with that? He said yes, of course I could. That became a practice in my life. I keep another man close who I can confess sin to, someone who will ask me hard questions about my spiritual life, finances, marriage, and sexual life, the areas where men get tripped up the most. I have one of those relationships right now. We meet every other Friday, and it is genuinely helpful to me. I would encourage you to have one. The Joy of Watching Someone Else Reach Their Purpose Community also gives you the fulfillment of helping others achieve their purpose. Several times, I have been in small groups with unemployed men, and that was tough. These guys had lost their jobs or were still searching. If you have ever walked through a season of unemployment, you know it is not easy. It is a very difficult season. So we rallied around them, helped them prayerfully discern what they were supposed to be doing, and then we rooted for them. When they got jobs, it was like Christmas morning in that small group. We were that excited because we were experiencing the joy of seeing them fulfill their purpose. Being Known and Accepted Is Like Encountering Jesus Finally, there is the grace and mercy of being known and accepted. Being in a space where people know what you are like, accept you, and love you shapes and forms your heart. It is really like encountering Jesus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the power of confession in exactly this way. He had set up a community of pastors that was essentially hidden in Germany, and they kept daily offices, practices that all the pastors would observe together. One of those practices, as I understand it, was a weekly time of confession. One pastor would take on the role of receiving the confessions, and then everyone else would have their chance. Bonhoeffer writes that in that practice you experience the cross. You experience the cross and the love of Jesus in a way you cannot any other way, because in that moment the one confessing would say what he had done, and the one listening would look at him and say, "In the name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven." As Bonhoeffer describes it, God's presence would enter that room, and both men would experience a sense of God's grace. Real Christian Community Cannot Happen Alone That cannot happen in isolation; it cannot happen in an artificial community, and it does not happen in a pseudo-community. It happens when you pay the price of becoming part of true community. The price is the version of yourself you have been presenting to everyone. It is the secrets. What you receive in exchange is a faith built up by other people's courage, burdens that are no longer yours to carry alone, the presence of God where two or three gather, the joy of watching someone else step into their purpose, and the experience of being fully known and accepted anyway. Real Christian community is the most meaningful place you can be, and it is worth what it costs.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

October 19, 2026 • 10 Minute Read
Why God Says No to a Good Prayer
God always answers prayer. He simply does not always answer with yes. Scripture shows four responses He gives when we bring Him our requests: no, slow, grow, and go. Learning how God answers prayer changes the way you pray and the way you wait. Most of us have prayed something sincere and then heard nothing back. The job did not come. The healing did not happen. The door stayed shut. In that silence it is easy to assume either that God is not listening or that you prayed it wrong. Neither is usually true. Before we get to the four answers, there are two things worth settling first: why we pray at all, and what actually spoils a prayer. Prayer Starts With the Example of Jesus When we pray, we are following the example of Jesus. Luke 5:16 records that "Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray." He spent an entire night in prayer before choosing His disciples. He prayed often, and He prayed in the hardest moments of His life. Matthew 26:39 places us in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the crucifixion on the horizon. "And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.'" Facing the worst night of His life, Jesus went to His Father. He also prayed for the people He loved. In Luke 22:32, just before Peter would deny Him, Jesus says, "But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." Imagine someone walking into the room and telling you they have been praying for you. That sentence likely stayed with Peter the rest of his life. In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus spending time praying for His disciples near the end of His earthly life, before He went to the cross. There is variety in how Jesus prayed, but the pattern is unmistakable. He practiced both kinds of prayer: the ongoing, running conversation and the set-apart times of prayer. He even said He did nothing unless the Father showed Him to do it, which is another way of saying that nothing happened until it was revealed to Him in prayer. Can You Pray the Wrong Way? Yes, though probably not in the way you fear. In Matthew 6:5-8, Jesus confronts two groups over how they pray, and neither problem has anything to do with vocabulary. First, the performers. "And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they will be seen by people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But as for you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." This is prayer as a spiritual badge of honor, a gold star handed out in public for how often and how impressively someone prays. Second, the manipulators. "And when you are praying, do not use thoughtless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." The Gentiles prayed to a pantheon of gods, and their chants functioned more like incantations than prayers. The belief underneath was that enough repetition would force the gods to act. That heart is manipulation, the same impulse behind any spell or act of witchcraft, where the goal is to gain control or power over someone else. So what spoils prayer is the heart behind it. What does not spoil prayer is how eloquent you sound. Some people I grew up with were intimidated into silence because our church had people who prayed beautifully, quoting Scripture from memory and moving from one passage to the next without pausing. A newer believer would listen to that and think, I do not even know those verses. I cannot pray like that. Memorizing Scripture and praying it back to God is a wonderful practice. But if you are starting out, pray in short, simple, clear sentences. That is all you need. God does not need an essay from you. When we gather for nights of prayer and worship and get into circles to pray together, I encourage people to pray in sentences, not paragraphs, because the Father already knows what you need. What About Praying for the Same Thing Over and Over? There is a practice called intercession, and I believe God calls every one of us to it at some point. Intercession is standing in the presence of God, usually for a longer stretch of time, going before Him again and again about the same thing. That is not the manipulation Jesus warned against, because we are not doing it to increase our odds. We do it because God burdens us to do it and calls us to it. It is an act of faith to ask for the same thing for a long time with your hands still open, leaving Him free to answer however He wants. I can remember sitting in a hospital with a friend who had been in a horrific car accident with her daughters and had suffered severe brain trauma. My wife and I took turns with some other friends, and I would sit there and read Scripture over her. I prayed every verse in the Bible about healing over her, and when I finished, I started over. That was a good thing to do. It was a God honoring thing to do. That is intercession. How Does God Answer Prayer? He answers. We see it all through Scripture. Reading the Old Testament account of Solomon dedicating the temple, you watch as Solomon prays over that building, and then God meets with him and tells him plainly that He has heard the prayer and will answer it. That is one example among many. The real question is not whether God answers. It is what His answers look like. There are four of them. When God Says No Sometimes the request itself is off. What you are asking for can simply be wrong. I am not someone with a long list of enemies, but when I have perceived someone as one, I have been tempted to pray some of the things David prayed in the Psalms. Those prayers are descriptive, not prescriptive. When David prays against his enemies, Scripture is showing us what he did, not instructing us to copy it. So there were times I prayed, Lord, smite them, and the answer was no. Here is the part that should settle any doubt about whether a no means God is distant. God the Father said no to His own Son. In Matthew 26:39, Jesus asked that the cup pass from Him, and the answer was no. That cup could not pass. Notice the heart posture underneath the request: "Yet not as I will, but as You will." Jesus asked, and He left the Father calling the shots. When God Says Slow or Grow Sometimes the request is right, but the timing is wrong, and the answer is slow. Sometimes the request and the timing are fine, but the spiritual condition of your heart is not ready, and the answer is grow. There have been times in my life, and there will be in yours, where you ask for a genuinely good thing, and the Lord says, not yet. Other times, you ask for a good thing, and the Lord raises questions about your motives and your maturity. This happened to me directly. I was praying about what God had next for me when I was offered a promotion. More money, more authority, more influence. As I looked at it, I sensed the Lord saying it was neither the right thing nor the right time. The role included no teaching, and when I was sixteen years old, I had a calling moment where the first thing the Lord told me about my calling was that I would teach and speak for Him. I have let that word direct my steps ever since. So I turned down the promotion and told them there was another role that better aligned with my gifts and skills. That is the track I stayed on for the next ten years, and it was the right one. I have also prayed for promotions I was not ready for, and God put up a brick wall. He withholds things when the timing is wrong or when something in us needs to change first. Hurdles and Brick Walls Here is a way to tell the difference. When God calls you to something and you start moving, you will face hurdles. Jumping hurdles is fine, and it actually gives Him glory, because He gets a chance to be the one who carried you over. Occasionally you hit a brick wall instead. The question to ask then is who put it there, because it might be Him. It might be the Lord saying He does not want you going any further in this direction, either for your safety, or for your good, or simply because it is not according to His will. Our church leadership team worked through this when we began praying about our next step. I felt directed by the Lord that renovating our worship center was the move that would make the biggest impact the soonest, and we had the opportunity in front of us. As we talked it through, I told the team exactly what we were watching for: hurdles and walls. If God threw up a brick wall, we would know not to go further. Until then, we would keep walking the path He gave us peace to walk. So we took one conversation and one step at a time with our hands open, telling the Lord He could shut it down whenever He wanted. If we were not ready as a church, or if He wanted to do something in us first, that would be completely fine. When God Says Go This is the favorite answer, and it means yes. At this point, God is saying that your request, your timing, and your spiritual condition are all where they need to be, so move forward. Our responsibility in that moment is to act in faith and obey. That matters just as much as the waiting did. Not My Will, but Yours No, slow, grow, and go. Once you know how God answers prayer, silence stops feeling like rejection and starts looking like one of four responses from a Father who already knows what you need before you ask Him. The posture that holds all four together is the one Jesus took in the garden: not my will, but Your will be done. Ask boldly, keep your hands open, and let Him call the shots. Start today with one short, simple sentence. That is all He is asking for.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

October 12, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Bible Reading Feels Like a Chore? Try This Instead
If Bible reading feels like a chore, the problem may not be your discipline. It may be your approach. Scripture was never meant to be one more box to check before bed. It was meant to be a place where you meet God, and there is more than one way to get there. Abiding with Jesus through the word is a journey with the Holy Spirit, and that journey has room in it for variety. Why Bible Reading Starts to Feel Like an Obligation I was raised in the church. I heard the Bible from the time I was small, and yet for a very long time reading it felt like such a chore. There was a long season as a young person when I thought, "I have to do this every day." So I asked the obvious question: what happens if I don't? In my setting, the answer was that bad things would happen if I did not read my Bible every day. What I eventually realized was that I had been approaching the Word with fear. Being faithful to read the Bible daily is what showed me the difference. This practice has shaped my character. It carries what I actually need. Abiding with Jesus Is a Journey with the Holy Spirit You are going to hear me talk about the Holy Spirit a lot here, and there is a reason for that. Jesus told His disciples it was better for them that He go, because He was going to send a counselor. He is a comforter. He reminds us of everything Jesus said. He leads and guides us into all truth. So the Holy Spirit is something like our coach. He illuminates Scripture. He helps it connect. This means that opening your Bible is not merely an intellectual exercise. It is a supernatural one. You are not reading alone, and you were never meant to. Why Variety Matters in How You Approach Scripture It is really, really good to practice variety in your spiritual life. Things can get stuck when you do the same thing over and over again. I have seen that in my own marriage and in my friendships, and the same dynamic shows up in our time with God. Some personalities love waking up and doing exactly the same thing every day, and they find real comfort in it. Others get bored. That is why it helps to have more than one way to come to the word. An organization called the Navigators created a simple way to remember five ways to connect with God through the word, using the five fingers of a hand: hear, read, study, memorize, and meditate. You do not have to practice all of them all the time. There may be one in particular that God says is yours for this season, and the invitation is to lean into that one. The question worth asking is simple. Lord, as I come to the word, what do You want me to do with it today? Hear the Word The first way is to hear it. Romans 10:17 says that faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God. I grew up hearing the Bible read. My parents read it to me. My mom liked to play it in the house on the cassette players we had back then, so I was exposed to hearing it early. A Sunday gathering does the same thing. When Scripture is read aloud, you are hearing the word of God. This is something I still do every day. I listen to at least one chapter of the Bible read to me, and I enjoy it. I use a Bible app with a narrator whose voice I do not get tired of, and there are plenty of good options out there. If you have a commute, listen to the Bible on your commute. I do not think hearing replaces the other ways, but it is one way I practice variety in my time with the Lord. What Did the First Christians Do Without Printed Bibles? They listened. The early church primarily engaged with the Bible by hearing it, because there was no printing press and paper was expensive. So they gathered, and much of the time they spent together was someone reading the Word of God over them. Hearing Scripture read aloud in a room full of people is one of the oldest Christian traditions. That same need still exists. A translation effort underway in Malawi, in partnership with Wycliffe Bible Translators, is producing three languages in spoken form first rather than written form. There are not enough people literate in those languages for a written translation to serve them well, so the Bible is being translated into an audible form they can download onto the phones they already have and onto devices being distributed there. People will hear Scripture for the first time in their heart language, the language they learned on their mother's knee, the same way the first church heard it. Read the Word Daily, Read It All, and Read to Connect The second way is the one most of us are familiar with. Revelation 1:3 says, "Blessed is the one who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things which are written in it, for the time is near." Reading the Word is a big deal. Three thoughts help here. Read it daily, read it all, and read to connect. Read it daily. Right now I am mostly reading one chapter a day. Sometimes I come across parts of the Bible that are harder to get through. I just finished 1 Chronicles, and the first ten chapters are genealogies. Ten chapters. They are in there for a reason, and I did a little digging to learn something about them, but I was not going to read one genealogy after another for ten days straight. That was not going to be good for my soul. So I moved through those a bit more quickly, then slowed back down and took the narrative chapters one at a time. I do this with a friend, and we encourage each other. Read it all. It is not strictly commanded, but it is a wonderful thing to start in Genesis and finish in Revelation. You see the narrative of Scripture in its entirety. You see the thread of Jesus running from the Garden of Eden all the way through to the New Jerusalem, which comes down at the very end of time. You see Him in all of it, and you simply do not get that experience unless you commit to it. Read to connect. Read with purpose and intention to actually connect with God. That is what it is for. Does God Reward How Much Bible You Read? No. There are no prizes for how much Bible you read. When you get to heaven, there is not a separate, special place reserved for people who read more Scripture than the next person. That is not how it works. Volume is not rewarded. What is rewarded is connection, and the reward we experience in this life and the next is that our character is shaped and we are genuinely changed. Where to Start This Week Pick one of the two. If your reading has gone dry, let someone read it to you this week. Put a chapter on in the car and simply receive it. If you have been listening but not sitting with the text, open it yourself and read slowly enough to notice what is actually there. Either way, start here, in John 15:4-5: "Abide in Me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, and you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without Me you can do nothing." Read it with your own inner voice. Then read it again. If Bible reading has felt like a chore, the way back runs through connection rather than pressure, with the Holy Spirit as your guide and you doing the one thing a branch has ever had to do: stay attached to the vine.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

October 5, 2026 • 10 Minute Read
Why Saying Sorry to God Isn't Working
You confessed it. You meant it. And a week later, you are doing the same thing again. The reason saying sorry to God is not working is usually that confession was treated as the finish line, when Scripture presents it as the first of two steps. The second step is repentance, and that is the one that changes anything. Every one of us aligns our lives with some standard, and the question is which one. To align your life with God's Word, Scripture does four things: it carries authority, sets the standard, convicts, and corrects. The Apostle Paul lays all of this out in a single verse, beginning with a claim about the origin of the Bible. What Does It Mean That Scripture Is God-Breathed? Paul's first claim is the foundation for everything else. All Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). The literal translation from the Greek means it is breathed out by God, all 66 books of it. It is called God-breathed because the Holy Spirit inspired human writers to communicate divine truth, which we read about in 2 Peter 1:20-21. God used approximately 40 authors over approximately 1,500 years to construct this book. God went to great lengths to provide this way of life, so that we can know God and His ways, and partner with Him in representing who He is to the world. There is an overarching narrative running from the first page to the last: God's redemption of His beloved creation. Since Genesis 1, God has desired to dwell among His people and partner with us so that we can rule and reign with Him over the creation He made good. But men and women have a choice. Will I follow God, or will I reject God? Time and time again, people fall away, choose other things, and come out of alignment. But God, in His grace and mercy, never stopped pursuing us and ultimately went to the greatest lengths by sending Jesus to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, to bring us back into alignment with Him. Why a Book This Old Still Speaks to You Today Scripture is not only inspired by God but also living and active. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way: "For the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). The Bible lives because its Author lives, which means there is always something more to be gleaned from it. You may have read Proverbs 3:5-6, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." But you can read that verse for the 150th time, and God illuminates something you never saw before. The Word of God knows you better than you know yourself. The old adage says that when we read the Word of God, the Word of God reads us. God knows exactly where you are today and exactly what you need. He is aware of the job situation, the bills that need to be paid, the addiction you are wrestling with, and the confusion you are up against, whether you are standing on the mountaintop or sitting in the valley. God communicates in a multitude of ways, but one of the primary ways is through His God-breathed, living and active Word. He wants to give you a perspective outside your circumstances, and the only way we gain it is by being in this book. What Standard Are You Aligning Your Life With? If God's Word has authority, the next question follows naturally: what exactly are we to align our lives to? Paul says all Scripture is useful for teaching, and because of its authority, God's Word establishes the standard for what is right. As a follower of Jesus, I believe there is an absolute, objective truth, despite what the world tells you about truth being relative. And God set that standard not to incarcerate us but to liberate us, because He knows best how we are to live according to how He created life to be lived. There is a standard in Scripture for how we align our lives. It teaches men how to love and respect their wives and serve them as Christ did the church, and wives how to love and respect their husbands as unto the Lord. There is a standard for how parents raise their children, for how we steward our time, our treasures, and our talents, for how we steward our sexuality, for how we handle the temptations and desires of our flesh, and for how we treat other people, especially the people we do not like. So here is the question. What standard are you aligning your life with when it comes to your finances, your sexuality, your home, and your job? What we have to be honest about is whether it accords with God's Word, or with what the world tells us is right. I am almost 50 years old, and I have been doing this for a long time. This may feel a little heavy-handed, and maybe it should be. I believe there is a standard that leads to life, and I believe there is a standard that leads to death. I have watched people try to figure out a standard on their own, or take the way of the world, and it has led them to some very dark places. God has a way for us to do life, a life that is abundant, flourishing, free, and liberated in Christ Jesus. But God will not force Himself on you. He will never stop pursuing you, but He has given us the freedom of will to choose, because you cannot have true love without it. God desires that we choose to love Him and walk in His ways because He first loved us. God always moves first, and His motivation is always that of love. Is Conviction the Same as Condemnation? No, and the distinction matters. Once we accept that God's Word holds authority and sets the standard, we begin to see where our lives do not align with it. Scripture teaches us what is right, but it also teaches us what is wrong. Paul says it is useful for rebuking. Rebuking is a heavy word, and the original language carries other connotations. Another way to say it is that the Word of God exposes, bringing into the light the things in our lives that are out of alignment. As you come to Scripture sincerely asking God to speak, He will bring conviction at times. You know you are supposed to forgive, but you keep harboring bitterness toward this person, and really, the only person still in the prison is you. But please hear this. Jesus did not come to condemn us. "For God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him" (John 3:17). The Word of God and the Spirit of God do convict us, because God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to keep us that way. Conviction brings about transformation; the more technical term for it is sanctification. God is always shaping us more into the likeness of Jesus, and at times conviction is what causes that. How God's Word Corrects What Is Out of Alignment Thankfully, God does not expose what is wrong and leave us there. Because of His love for us, He shows us how to come back. Paul says Scripture is useful for correcting, which means to make straight, to make right, to restore something broken or out of alignment. The psalmist models the posture: "Search me and know me, O God. See if there is anything wicked or offensive in me"(Psalm 139:23-24). That is what we do when we come to Scripture and ask God to reveal anything that needs to change. Correction follows in two steps, and the first is confession. Confession is an admission of misalignment. I acknowledge where I am out of alignment and confess it because I trust that God is good, kind, gracious, and merciful, and that He will not condemn me. With God, it is okay to say you are not okay. It is just not okay to stay that way. So we confess. I confess that I lied here, that I am harboring bitterness, that I sinned in my anger, that I said I would do this and did something else instead. We come trusting that He is gracious, merciful, and kind, and He is. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). The last thing our loving Savior wants is for us to carry around guilt and shame. That is what the enemy wants, and shame takes us into hiding. When we confess and receive His forgiveness, our conscience clears, and we feel free because we have been set free by Jesus and what He came to do for us. What's the Difference Between Confession and Repentance? Confession is an admission of misalignment. Repentance is returning to alignment. That is the difference, and it is where a great many sincere people stop short. You recognize you are heading in a direction. The Holy Spirit and the Word of God convict you, you confess it, and then you turn from it to come back into alignment. You can have confession without repentance, but I do not believe you can have repentance without confession. I say this in love. Many people stop at confession and continue to do the same things over and over again, consciously and habitually, and I would say to you that this is an abuse of grace. It is an abuse of grace to ask for forgiveness, receive it, and then willingly continue in the very same pattern. Does this mean we confess, repent, and never fall short again? No. We fall short, and we confess again. But there is a desire in us to walk in the ways of God. Cheap grace is confessing and changing nothing. Does Your Sin Grieve You? When we mess up and the Holy Spirit convicts, something distinguishes the response of someone who truly wants to walk in God's ways. There is a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow says, "I'm sorry I got caught." Godly sorrow says, "God, I'm sorry I sinned against You." The Word of God says it is godly sorrow that brings us to repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). When I recognize the grace, mercy, and love shown to my life that I do not deserve, and grace is getting something you do not deserve- unmerited favor- why would I willingly continue to sin against this amazing grace? One more question worth sitting with. Does your sin grieve you? And if it does, why? Is it worldly sorrow, or godly sorrow? Where to Go From Here To align your life with God's Word is not a single decision. It is a pattern of returning. Scripture carries the authority, because it was breathed out by God and remains living and active. It sets the standard, because God knows best how life was designed to be lived. It convicts, not to condemn you but to expose what keeps you from the life God intends. And it corrects, walking you back into alignment through confession and then repentance. Open the book. Ask God to speak. When He exposes something, confess it honestly, then turn from it, because the turning is what makes the apology real. And it is this loving kindness that draws us back every time, because God always moves first.

John Parrott

September 28, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
3 Marks of a Disciple You Can Actually See
A disciple is someone who knows and follows Jesus. That is the simplest, honest answer to the question, and it holds up for a lifetime. The harder part is what happens when somebody actually asks you. Imagine your daughter or your granddaughter, or any curious kid, walking up and asking what a disciple is. The answer is on you. Some people could rattle something off without blinking, and most of us would rather not be put on the spot. Either way, we are called to have an answer to that question, and one that goes deeper than a dictionary definition. So here is the fuller picture. A disciple has a certain kind of character, and that character shows up in a certain set of practices. Three marks in particular show up in anyone genuinely following Jesus, and all three are visible enough that other people notice them without being told. What Is a Disciple of Jesus? Start with the word itself. The Greek word for disciple describes one who follows in another's footsteps, making a disciple a student, a pupil, an apprentice, a follower, or an adherent. Warren Wiersbe sharpens it. A disciple is more than a student who learns lessons by lectures and books. A disciple is one who learns by living and working with the teacher in daily hands-on experience. That is a clearer picture of what happened when Jesus looked at a handful of ordinary men and said, "Follow Me." He was not enrolling them in a course. He was inviting them into His daily experience, into His daily life, so they could watch what He would do with it. Scripture puts the same standard plainly in 1 John 2:6: "Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did." If you want one definition to keep in your back pocket for the rest of your life, someone who knows and follows Jesus will serve you well. What "Covered in the Dust of Your Rabbi" Means There was a saying among Jewish people in Jesus' time about being covered in the dust of your rabbi. If you followed a rabbi and he accepted you as his disciple, you walked so closely behind him that the dust his feet kicked up settled all over you. Disciples of rabbis in that era wanted to mirror everything their rabbis did. They asked questions all day long and took on his mannerisms, phrases, and teachings to the letter, trying to look as much like him as possible. That is a picture of proximity rather than agreement. You cannot get covered in someone's dust from across the street, which is why discipleship has never been a matter of admiring Jesus from a comfortable distance. Does God Care More About Who You Are or What You Do? Both, and that is not a dodge. If you asked a rabbi, or asked Jesus, which one matters more, the honest answer is yes. The philosophy behind discipleship is simple. Who you are shapes what you do, and what you do shapes who you will become. Your identity, the way you view and perceive yourself on the inside, shapes how you actually respond in life. And what you begin to do in your daily life shapes who you become. There is a cyclical nature to it. Ultimately, we believe God cares more about who we are becoming than about what we do for Him, and what we do still informs who we are. Character, who you are on the inside, shapes practices, the way you functionally live. I use the word practices intentionally. It may not be a word you reach for often, but when I think of discipleship, I think of practices rather than disciplines. Luke 6:45 gives the principle: "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good. The evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil, for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart." Jesus spent a lot of time questioning the hearts of the religious leaders of His day, as seen in Matthew 6:1. They had plenty of practices in place, but they had not surrendered their hearts to the Lord. You can run every practice without the help of the Holy Spirit or a sincere heart, and it will not fully shape who you become. What Jesus cares about is that your heart is reflected in the way you live, because He knows that once it is, the living will go back and transform the heart. That is the transformed life. Can You Be a Disciple Without Practicing It? Take gratitude as a test case. You may think of yourself as a grateful person, and from the inside it feels true. But do you say thank you? Do you practice gratefulness toward the Lord on a daily basis? When someone does something kind for you, do you tell them? Do you say grateful things to the people who mean something to you, and show appreciation where it can actually be seen? You can hold all that gratitude inside and still leave it unexpressed. If it never comes out, are you in fact grateful? A little, maybe, though probably not as much as you think you are. It runs the other direction too. Research has followed people who were asked to keep a daily gratitude journal for 30 days, with follow-up around 60 days and around 1,000 participants. People who started practicing gratitude every day began to be shaped by it. They became happier. They became less consumerist. They reported lower levels of anxiety and depression in their lives. They put into practice what they hoped would be true of their character, and their character followed. Call it faith and effort, or call it trust and obey, but that is what it means to actually grow. 3 Marks of a Disciple You Can Actually See Google the characteristics of a disciple, and you will get all sorts of lists. Some say 12, some say 7, and some say 5. I have studied this for a long time, and I think every one of those qualities falls under three main characteristics: real faith, real hope, and real love. The word real sits in front of each one on purpose, because the question is never whether you would claim them. The question is whether they are operating in you. 1 Corinthians 13:13 names all three: "But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love." Paul puts them together again in Colossians 1:3-5: "We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints, because of the hope reserved for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel." Notice what reached Paul from a distance. He had heard about their faith, their love for the saints, and the hope underneath both. Those three were visible enough to travel, which is exactly what makes them useful as marks. Real faith, real hope, and real love are not private interior states. They are things other people end up hearing about. Where to Go From Here So what is a disciple of Jesus? Someone who knows and follows Jesus closely enough to be covered in the dust. Someone whose character is being formed into real faith, real hope, and real love, and whose daily practices keep pressing that character deeper. If a kid asked you today, you would have an answer ready. The better question is the one that comes next. Which of those three is genuinely real in you right now, and which one is mostly claimed? Pick whichever feels thinnest and give it a practice this week, something small and repeatable that puts the character you want into motion. Who you are will shape what you do, and what you do will shape who you become.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

September 21, 2026 • 10 Minute Read
Why Does the Church Exist? The Answer Isn't Sunday
The church exists to glorify God and help people become more like Jesus. Almost everything else a church does is downstream of those two things. If you have ever sat through a service and quietly wondered what the point of all this is, that question deserves a straight answer rather than a shrug. So what is the purpose of the church? A helpful way to picture it is a triangle with three directions: up, in, and out. Those three directions describe the primary relationships of your life, and they also describe the purposes the church was created to serve. Your upward relationship is your relationship to God. Your inward relationships are the people closest to you, your family, your friends, the people you are discipling, and the people who are discipling you. Your outward relationships are the ones that point beyond yourself, toward people who do not know Jesus, people you cross paths with, and people who are hurting in ways you have the capacity to help address. Two of those purposes are worth slowing down on, because they shape everything else. The First Purpose: To Glorify God and Worship Him The first reason the church exists is upward in its trajectory. You were made for it. I was made for it. When the ekklesia, the gathered people of God, comes together, we are called to do this: worship and glorify God. Paul says it about as clearly as it can be said in Ephesians 3:20-21: "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever." He widens it further in 1 Corinthians 10:31: "Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all things for the glory of God." That is not a command limited to some things, but a command that covers all of them. What Does Glory Actually Mean? Glory is not a word most of us use in ordinary conversation. Nobody texts a friend, "I'm really glorying today." So it is worth defining. In both our culture and in Scripture, glory means something close to recognition. One of the clearest examples is an actor or actress winning an Oscar or an Emmy. Everyone in the field and every critic who watches is essentially saying, you are the best. They walk onto a stage, hold up a gold trophy, thank everybody, and give a speech. What they are experiencing in that moment is glory. Or a football team wins a big game and the players hoist someone onto their shoulders and carry him off the field. That is glory too. What the church is called to do is take all of that recognition and put Jesus on the stage, making sure He is the only one holding a trophy. One of the best openings to any book is the first chapter of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, which begins with a simple line: "It's not about you." That is a good phrase, and it is the right starting point. The Christian life, your purpose, your existence, and the church's reason for being are all oriented toward Him. When a life is oriented that way, that life gets better. We are at our best when we are not putting ourselves on the stage and not chasing recognition. Is Worship Just Singing? Worship is most commonly defined as singing, but that definition is too narrow. Worship is a lifestyle. The way you go about your life either brings glory, honor, and worship to the Lord, or it directs all of that back toward yourself. That conviction even shapes the songs a church chooses. Our worship pastor and I talk about this regularly, because we prefer songs that are consistently vertical in nature. Most of what we sing should be about how great God is and how loving God is, songs that speak to His goodness and His power. The goodness seen in the cross. The power seen in the empty tomb. The goodness seen in His creation of all things, and the power seen in the fact that He will bring creation to an end one day, when we will all stand before Him. Honestly, this is something of a pet peeve. About twenty-five years ago, as part of the modern worship movement, a certain kind of song started to emerge that I would describe as a "Jesus is my boyfriend" song. There is no better way to say it. The lyrics turned very me-centric. Jesus, You make me feel like this. Some of them drifted toward wanting to look into His eyes, as though Jesus were a dreamy romantic figure, and at some point it is fair to pause and say, hold on a second. To be clear, singing to Jesus is good. It should evoke emotion, and it does evoke emotion in me. When you read the Psalms, you find a great deal of emotion, and there are moments where David and others sing in ways that are deeply personal. Songs like that have their place. But on the whole, when we worship, the attention should be going to Him, to who He is and what He did. The Second Purpose: To Equip and Mature Believers The second reason the church exists is to equip and mature believers. Another word for that is simply to disciple. We are called to be in discipleship relationships and to disciple other people. This is not a modern program. It is a function Jesus directed the church toward from the very beginning, and one the first disciples lived out. In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." That is a clear directive. The church goes out, shares the gospel, and then teaches those who follow to obey everything Jesus commanded. Paul puts it this way in Colossians 1:28: "We proclaim Him, admonishing every person and teaching every person with all wisdom, so that we may present every person complete in Christ." He writes about it again in Ephesians 4:11-12: "And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ." That shapes how a church staff and its ministries should be evaluated. The questions worth asking are simple ones. Are people growing? Are they becoming more like Jesus? We were made to be discipled, and I believe we were made to help disciple other people. Who Is Supposed to Do the Teaching? Teaching runs throughout Scripture. Jesus taught. The disciples taught. The apostle Paul taught everywhere he went. Having someone who has studied the Scriptures explain those Scriptures to other people, so that those people can go explain them to others, is clearly a significant deal. Sometimes, though, the teaching role narrows to the point where a church is viewed as having one primary teacher. It is fine for someone to lead in teaching. But a healthy church is full of teachers teaching all the time. What are they teaching? They are teaching what they have learned in their own relationship with God and sharing it with others. You Are Probably Already a Disciple Maker Here is what that looks like in ordinary life. I talked recently with a good friend of mine who is going through a situation I have been through myself. He is a pastor and currently unemployed. I have been there. I have been an unemployed pastor. As we were talking, I started sharing some of what I learned in that season, because he was asking a very practical question: how do I even spend my time now? So I told him a few things. Spend time with the Lord in the morning. Put in the work for your family, and put in the work to find a job. The honest truth is that the resources for a job search in ministry are limited. There are a few websites, some phone calls you can make, and some networking you can do, but you really cannot do more than a couple of hours of that a day without simply trying too hard. Put enough time in that you know you did it, and then let yourself enjoy the afternoon and do something that fills your cup. In the evenings, make sure you are spending time with your family. Do not feel bad about not looking for a job for 10 hours a day, because ultimately you are not the one who is going to find it. God is going to be the one who brings it your way. He told me he really needed to hear that, and thanked me for it. What immediately came to mind, which I said out loud to him, was that the advice was not originally mine. A mutual friend of ours, another pastor, a great guy, had once sat me down and said, here is how I would spend my time if I were you. He said it because he had been unemployed himself at one point. Look at what was actually happening there. A friend gave me advice that helped me in a hard season. It helped me become more like Jesus in that season. It gave me confidence. It comforted me. And when I found myself talking with another friend walking through something similar, I passed that same wisdom along. Wisdom does not have to originate with you. Most of mine does not originate with me. I have been around good people, and I have the Word of God, and that is where most of it comes from. So I pass it along. Where to Go From Here If you have been trying to work out the purpose of the church, the answer is less complicated than it can feel from the outside. The church exists to point every bit of recognition toward God and to help people grow into the likeness of Jesus so they can help others do the same. Both of those are available to you this week without any title or platform. You can orient your ordinary life upward, letting the way you work, eat, speak, and spend your time bring glory to God rather than to yourself. And you can pass along the wisdom that was passed along to you to a friend who is walking through something you have already survived. None of that requires a program, because it is simply the church doing what it exists to do.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

September 13, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Why You Keep Losing to the Same Sin
The problem may not be your willpower. It may be your aim. The most effective way to stop struggling with the same sin is not to fight it harder; it is to run toward something better, and Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us exactly what that something is. Most of us have tried the other approach. We identify the habit, the attitude, or the distraction that keeps dragging us down, and we set our jaw and decide this is finally the time we beat it. We think about it constantly. How do I get rid of this sin? How do I stop making this mistake? And the longer we stare at it, the heavier it gets. Scripture offers a different starting point. Hebrews 12 describes a great crowd of witnesses, a weight and a sin to throw off, and then it directs our eyes to a specific place: Jesus, the originator and perfecter of our faith. The order matters. The weights come off as the eyes move. Church Should Be Where You Stop Managing Your Image Before we talk about how the weights come off, we have to be honest about why so many of us never admit they are there. I have been in ministry long enough to make a statement that is probably not literally true, but it certainly feels true. I think I am the most lied to person I know. My friends ask what I mean by that, and here is what I mean. Because I am a pastor, everybody wants to be perfect in front of me, and I have never understood it. I am a pastor's kid. I knew my dad was not perfect. Pastors do not impress me, and I do not think they should impress you. I hope you see me as a real person who also happens to be a pastor. What I have noticed is that people manage their image even around the pastor. They feel like they cannot be real and true and honest. And here is the deal. I already know you are not perfect. I am under no illusions. You get up every morning like I do. You put your pants on one leg at a time. You are a real person, and you have real flaws. Church is meant to be a space where we do not have to manage our image all the time. Yet in many places it has become the place where we manage our image the most carefully. That is worth sitting with. If God is speaking to you about this, ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the moments this week where you have been managing your own image. You cannot throw off a weight you are still pretending not to carry. The Real Reason the Same Sin Keeps Winning Here is what I believe to be true. The most effective way to leave sin and distraction behind is to run toward something better. This is really a question of motivation. If your motivation is not to make mistakes, that is not as good, not as powerful, and not nearly as life-giving as the alternative. A motivation built on avoiding failure keeps your attention fixed on the very thing you are trying to escape. Every day becomes an audit of everything you got wrong. The better motivation is simple. Chase Jesus. Do your best, under the power of the Holy Spirit, to fall more in love with Him year by year, month by month, week by week. Because as you do that, the weights start to fall off. You are no longer spending all your energy asking how to get rid of this sin, this mistake you keep making, these distractions that keep holding you down. I would not spend your time focusing on that. I would spend your time focusing on Jesus. What It Means to Fix Your Eyes on Jesus Fixing your eyes on Jesus is not a mood you work yourself into. It is a set of ordinary, repeatable practices that build a real relationship with Him: a life of prayer, devotion, study, and fellowship with other believers. If you are focused on those things, the weights start to fall off. In fact, you will look back one day and not be entirely certain when a particular weight dropped. You will only know that it does not matter to you anymore. That is a very different experience from white-knuckling your way through another attempt at self-improvement. Jesus Starts Your Faith, Grows It, and Completes It Hebrews 12:2 calls Jesus the originator and the perfecter of the faith. What that means is that Jesus gives us faith, He grows our faith, and He will complete our faith. He is the beginning, the middle, and the end of it. You have faith because of Jesus. Your faith will grow because of Jesus. Eventually, Jesus will complete your faith. It really is all in Him. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, this is what we are signing up for. One of my life verses makes the same promise. In Philippians 1:6, Paul writes, "He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." He began it. He is going to finish it. Hebrews is saying the same thing. That should take an enormous amount of pressure off you. The finishing of your faith was never your job. Every Season Brings a New Invitation to Faith In every season of life, there is an invitation to faith. Getting more specific, in every circumstance there is one. I do not believe we arrive at complete faith in this lifetime, but I do believe every season brings a fresh invitation. Here is what that has looked like for me. I have been walking with the Lord a very long time, basically my whole life. I grew up in church, but at about 15 I decided this was my faith and committed myself to following Jesus. At 16, I was called into ministry. At 18 I started in ministry, and the story goes on from there. Through different seasons, God has built these testimonies of faith. Then my wife and I found ourselves in a season we had never been in before. We had moved before. We had started new jobs before. But we had never both started a new job at the same time in our marriage. That had never happened. It was a brand new thing for us. It had always been that I started a new job and could come home to a stable situation where she was doing well and could be a support. Or she would start a new job while I had been consistent in mine for a while, and we could talk it through. Now we were both coming home exhausted, both processing new things, and both trying to support each other. New season, new invitation to faith. This is why I want to challenge people who have walked with God for 40 years and have started to think they have arrived. You have not arrived, because you have never been in this season before. And in every season there is a new invitation of faith, because He is working to perfect your faith and inviting you further into it. We cannot do this by white-knuckled effort. It happens because of the Holy Spirit's work in and through us, and that is a powerful truth. Where to Go From Here If you are tired of struggling with the same sin, take three questions with you. Do you have a crowd of witnesses? Is there a weight or a sin you need to throw off? And is there an invitation in this season, right now, that the Lord wants to make to you, because He wants to bring you into that perfect faith? He started your faith. He is continuing to grow it. At some point He is going to complete it. So the question for today is simpler and more immediate than beating your sin into submission. What is your therefore? What is your application? What is your invitation?

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

September 6, 2026 • 9 Minute Read
What to Do When God Doesn't Give You the Miracle
When God doesn't give you the miracle you asked Him for, faith does not disappear. It changes shape. It stops saying only that God is big enough to fix this, and it starts saying that God is better than the fix. That second kind of faith is what Hebrews 11 puts on display, and it is the faith that carries people through the prayers that never get the answer they wanted. All of us go through difficulty and pain at certain points in our lives. The question is not whether the hard season arrives. The question is what our faith says when it does. What Hebrews 11:35-38 Says About Faith That Never Got Rescued Hebrews 11 is the chapter that lists the heroes of the faith. But halfway through verse 35, the tone shifts, and the writer introduces a second group of people whose faith looked nothing like a rescue. Hebrews 11:35-38 says that "other people were tortured, not accepting release, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Others experienced mockings and scourgings, as well as bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned."That last one happened to both Jeremiah and Zechariah, two of the prophets. The passage continues, "They were sawn in two." Jewish history records this as a reference to the prophet Isaiah, who was captured by King Manasseh, placed inside a hollow tree, and killed when the king ordered the tree sawn in half. Others "died by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated." Of that group, the writer says, "The world was not worthy of them." They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and in holes in the ground. That is the half of the chapter we rarely quote. But it sits in the same chapter, counted as the very same faith. God Is Bigger, and God Is Better Faith speaks two languages. The first one says God is bigger. Faith says God can overcome this, God can heal this, God can restore this. The second one says God is better. Faith says that even if He doesn't, God is still better than the miracle would have been. Those first heroes of the chapter proved that God is bigger. The ones in verses 35 through 38 proved that God is better. Is There a Difference Between Joy and Happiness? Yes, and the difference matters enormously when the pain arrives. Happiness depends on whether your circumstances are going your way, which you already know doesn't always happen. Joy is an abiding peace that comes from God no matter what you are facing. When the pain comes, God gave us something sturdier than happiness to hold on to. Joy does not mean putting a smile on your face and pretending there is no pain. That is not what it means. It means that in the middle of your pain, in the middle of your heartache, you choose to trust God's plan over your feelings. Nobody should stand up and pretend that is easy, because it isn't. But with God's help, it is possible. What That Kind of Faith Looks Like in Real Life A young woman in our church was recently baptized. When she first reached out about it, she said she wanted to explain why, and she told her story in her own words. "A year ago this September, I walked into what I thought was just another pregnancy appointment. I was five months pregnant with a sweet baby girl we had already named. I never imagined I would leave the doctor that day hearing the words that changed my life forever. There's no heartbeat. In that moment, it felt like my world stopped. I was heartbroken in a way I didn't know was possible. I felt empty, lost, angry, and confused. I didn't know how I was supposed to wake up the next day, let alone keep living. But I had my son, who still needed his mom, so somehow I kept putting one foot in front of the other, even when every step hurt. I realized pretty quickly that I had a choice. I could let this pain swallow me whole, or I could run to the only One who could carry me through it. I won't pretend it was easy. There were days I questioned everything. Days I cried until I had nothing left. Days I didn't understand why this had to be my story. It would have been so easy to turn away from God. Instead, I chose to chase Him. John 1:5 became my lifeline. It says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." That verse reminded me that even when all I could see was darkness, God was still there. Even when I couldn't feel Him, He never left me. As strange as it sounds, my daughter brought me to Jesus. I would give anything to have her here, but I can also see how God has used her little life to completely change mine. Because of her, I found a faith that isn't just something I say. It's something I live. She brought me closer to the Lord than I ever thought possible. This past year has been messy. I've wrestled with grief, fear, and questions I'll probably never have answers to. I have cried more tears than I knew I could, but I've also experienced God's peace in ways I never had before. He has carried me when I couldn't carry myself. I'm still healing. I still miss my little girl every single day, and I always will. But today I know who has been holding me through it all. Getting baptized isn't the end of my story. It's my way of telling the world that even in the darkest season of my life, Jesus found me there. He met me in my brokenness, loved me through it, and never let go. My daughter changed my life forever. She also led me to the One who saved it." Why Peace in Pain Convinces People More Than an Answered Prayer What Hebrews 11 shows us is that sometimes God does not give the miracle, and in the middle of our pain He demonstrates that knowing Him is more valuable and more joy-giving than anything else we might experience here on earth. A miraculous answer to prayer is a wonderful thing. All of us want that, and it can be a powerful testimony to someone who is not yet a believer. But what tends to be even more convincing to an unbeliever is a believer who has peace in the middle of pain, because that does not make sense in our world. When a believer holds an abiding and unshakable hope in the middle of tragedy, it shows the people watching something greater than this temporary and decaying world has to offer. In a culture where everyone is chasing happiness and never quite catching it, that kind of steadiness reaches something deep in a person's heart and makes them say, I want that kind of hope. I want that kind of joy. Sometimes God is glorified when sick people get well. Sometimes He is glorified when sick people suffer well, or even die well. The Prayer That Says "I Don't Understand, but I Trust You" We want God to give us the miracle, and it is right to have faith for it. The harder question is whether you are ready to show the faith that glorifies God if the miracle never comes, the faith that says, God, You are better than anything else life can give me, and better than anything death could take away. Here is the statement of faith you are declaring when the answer doesn't come. God, I don't understand, but I trust You. I don't understand why the healing hasn't come. I don't understand why the miracle didn't happen. I don't understand why the marriage fell apart. But I know that You are good, and I trust You to see me through. That is faith that God is better. Two Steps to Take When the Answer Is No So when you find yourself in a situation and it does not look like God is going to deliver the way you asked Him to, what do you actually do? Redefine Success Do not read your trials and difficulties as a sign of God's displeasure, or as evidence that you lack faith. If you are walking through a difficulty that is not the result of your own choices, you are in good company. Look at the list of heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. Trials are not necessarily an attack against you. Sometimes they are tools to build you. In God's eyes, success is faithfulness to Him no matter what. Choose Eternal Gain Over Temporary Relief When you feel the pull to abandon your faith because life just got hard, and when you feel the temptation to compromise your integrity for some temporary relief, don't do it. Prioritize God's eternal reward over immediate comfort. Where to Go From Here Sometimes we show faith by believing what God can do. Other times we show faith by resting in who God is. At times our faith declares that God is bigger as we overcome whatever obstacle is in front of us. At other times our faith declares that God is better as we face a hardship that is not going away. If you are in that second season right now, praying for something that has not come, you are not outside the story of faith. You are standing squarely inside it, in the company of people the world was not worthy of. The invitation is not to pretend the pain away. It is to say honestly, God, I don't understand, but I trust You.

Clint Rhoney

Executive Pastor

August 31, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Why You Need Friends Who Will Tell You the Truth
Christians need community because faith was never designed to be carried alone, and because you need at least one person who will tell you the truth about yourself. There are seasons when your faith is strong, and you carry somebody else. There are also seasons when your faith is weak, and someone else has to carry you. Both are normal. Both are grace. If you have ever assumed that a personal relationship with God is enough on its own, one of the strangest scenes in the Gospels pushes back. A group of friends heard that Jesus was teaching in a crowded house, and they could not get their paralyzed friend anywhere near Him. So they climbed up, tore open the roof, and lowered him down on a mat right in front of Jesus. It was reckless. It was a little crazy. And when Jesus looked up, the thing He responded to was their faith. Not just the faith of the man on the mat. Their faith. Their Faith Had Hands and Feet Sometimes we picture that man's helpers as reluctant participants, but he was clearly on board. Who else would let you lower them through a roof? I remember back in my days as a youth pastor, we used to do something called sermon in the box. I would write Bible verses on slips of paper, put them in a box, and a small group would draw one and act it out. It was a way for students to put themselves inside the text. This passage came up one day, and the students found a rope and a blanket and decided to lower one of the guys from the balcony. Just before they did it, I said we should probably put a mattress underneath, because this might not go well. It did not go well. I will stop the story there. It is funny now. It was not funny then. That is the point. These men did something costly and disruptive to bring their friend to Jesus. They were not just talking about faith. They put their faith into action. Their faith had hands. Their faith had feet. Their faith picked up the mat and carried the man. Their faith ripped off a roof and lowered him down. Their faith carried. Does Your Faith Carry Anybody? Maybe that is the question God wants to ask some of us. Does your faith carry anybody? It is entirely possible to build a faith that is only about you. We can become so focused on ourselves that we forget how clearly Jesus said your faith is never just about Jesus in you. He calls us into a family. He calls us into a community. He calls us into a body. He calls us into a tribe. A tribe means you are walking together. You are journeying together. You are protecting one another and picking one another up. Those men on the roof knew something simple and urgent: their friend needed to get in front of Jesus, and he was not going to get there on his own. Why Christians Need Community in Both Seasons Here is what makes this more than a nice idea. There are seasons in our faith when we are strong, and we carry someone else, and there are seasons when our faith is weak, and someone else needs to carry us. That is life group theology. Think about your own life. Who are the people who carried you? Maybe it was a parent or a grandparent. Maybe a pastor, a friend, or your spouse. Maybe it was someone who showed up at the right moment with the right word. Maybe it was simply someone who said, "I am not leaving. I am here." That is a gift. You Do Not Have to Pretend You Are Okay Some of us need to hear this plainly. You do not have to pretend you are okay. You do not have to pretend you are strong. You do not have to pretend you have all the answers. There are going to be times when we are the one on the mat, and that is okay. Many of us have quietly decided we will just carry ourselves. If there is a rope to hold, we will hold it for ourselves. We imagine we can rig a pulley system and hoist ourselves up whenever things get hard. But when you are genuinely weak, you cannot hoist yourself up. You need somebody. The Christian life was never designed to run on "I've got this." It was designed to run on "We've got you." There will be seasons when you are holding the rope, and seasons when you are hanging onto it. Who Is Holding Your Rope? So let me ask you directly. Who is holding your rope? Who knows you well enough to know when you are not okay? Who can tell when you are struggling? Who will pray for you? Who will look honestly at your life and say, "You're drifting"? Friends are great, but I want someone holding my rope who loves God more than they love me. Here is why. If they love me more than they love God, they will be afraid of hurting the friendship, and they will not tell me the truth. I need the truth. The Friend Who Loved God Enough to Offend Me This started to click for me early in ministry. My wife and I were part of a small group with a wonderful godly couple. We all went out to dinner one night and had a great time. The next morning the husband called me and asked if we could talk for a second. He said, "Hey, I love you enough to tell you this." What he meant was that he loved God enough to offend me. Then he said, "You were a jerk last night." My first reaction was to push back. Hang on, buddy. You do not get to tell me that. He explained that I had been making jokes at my wife's expense. I told him I did not believe him. We talked for a minute, and I hung up the phone, but it started to bother me. When I got home, I never mentioned the phone call. I just went to my wife and said, "Hey sweetie, last night I made some jokes that were a little out of pocket. I should not have said them. I am sorry." She said, "You did." Then she said, "I forgive you. Thank you so much for telling me that." That was the moment it hit me. This is what biblical community looks like. This is what it means to have someone who says, "I love you, and I love God more, and I will tell you the truth even if it hurts." What a Life Group Is Actually For That is why I believe so strongly in life groups. A life group is not just getting together for a study and a meal. It is taking the study and applying it. A life group is a group of people who decide together to follow Jesus, to pray for one another, to love one another, to encourage one another, and to challenge one another. We will know one another's stories. We will do this together. If one person is weak, we will carry them. If I am weak, you will carry me. That is why Christians need community. Not as a program to attend, but as a rope held by people who will not let go. So find your people, and be the kind of friend who tears open a roof to get someone in front of Jesus.

DJay Akers

Discipleship Pastor

August 24, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
Can God Use Someone With a Past Like Mine?
The short answer is yes, and the Bible makes the case through a woman most of her neighbors would have written off entirely. Rahab in the Bible is remembered as the Canaanite woman who hid two Israelite spies in Jericho and was spared when the city fell. What usually gets skipped is why she did it. She had never met an Israelite, never read Scripture, and never heard it read aloud. She acted because of a story she had been hearing her entire life, and she decided the story was true. If you have ever wondered whether your past puts you outside the reach of God, or whether faith is even possible when you have had no religious upbringing at all, Rahab's story is worth slowing down for. She had every reason to be written off. She ends up in the family line of Jesus. Who Was Rahab in the Bible? Joshua sends two spies to Jericho ahead of Israel's advance, and they are rescued from capture by a Canaanite prostitute named Rahab. Joshua had been one of the original twelve spies himself, so he knew what that assignment cost. This time he does not send ten or twelve. He sends two, in secret, because he already knows Jericho is where Israel is supposed to go first. God had ordered it, and Joshua had been instructed. These two may not have been especially good at spying. Word gets out that they are in town. We do not know how. We only know that word spreads, and that it spreads specifically that they have gone to the house of Rahab. Some scholars think that if you were a spy looking for information, Rahab would have been an intelligent person to approach. In her particular trade, a lot of secrets were shared, and in that era, prostitutes may have been some of the best informed people in a city about what was happening around them. Rahab Had to Choose Between Her Life and Theirs Once word reaches the king of Jericho, he sends his men to Rahab's door, and she is forced into a decision. She can turn the spies over, or she can commit treason. One of those options can get her killed. She chooses treason. She tells the men at the door that they have just missed the spies, that if they hurry down the road they will overtake them, and that if they do not leave that instant they will never find them. The men take her at her word and go. She had already taken the spies up to the roof of her house and hidden them there. We do not know exactly what her home looked like, though we understand it was built into the city wall and she had some access to a rooftop. She goes up to them and tells them they will need to leave that night, before the search party returns, and that they should travel the opposite direction from the one she sent their pursuers. Wait three days, she says, then return to your people. And remember me. What Made Rahab Believe in a God She Had Never Met? When the spies ask her what this kindness is and why she would do it, she answers with one of the more remarkable confessions in the Old Testament. She tells them she knows the Lord has given them the land, that the terror of them has fallen on Jericho, and that everyone living there has despaired. She recounts how the Lord dried up the Red Sea when Israel came out of Egypt, and what Israel did to the kings of the Amorites beyond the Jordan. When those reports reached the city, she says, their hearts melted, and no courage remained in anyone. Then comes the line that explains everything: the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below (Joshua 2:11). Rahab possessed faith in the awesome power of God. Had she ever met an Israelite before? Probably not. Had she read Scripture? No. Had she heard it? No. And she still chose a crime punishable by death over self-preservation, because she believed. Notice what she believed specifically. Most of the gods of her time were regional and specialized: gods of agriculture, of the sun, of hunting, of sustenance. She is saying that the God of Israel holds heaven and earth together. He has everything. That would make Him a larger God than any she had ever heard of. And she was living in the most fortified city in her country. She knew Jericho did not stand a chance against Him. That is absolutely incredible. Faith Can Grow From a Testimony You Only Heard About Do the math on the timeline. The Red Sea had been parted roughly forty years before these spies walked into Jericho. For four decades, that word had been going out across the region. God was working through the testimony of Israel long before Israel ever arrived. That is what shifted Rahab's heart. Not a sermon, not a scroll, and not a personal encounter. A testimony that had been traveling for forty years finally landed on someone who decided to put her life on the line for it. I have to be honest here. Outside of what you read in the book of Acts, I have not run into many people like that. I have never had the experience of meeting someone who said, I have heard about Jesus my whole life, and I have just been waiting for someone to tell me how to receive Him. I would love to have that experience. I never have. But when the spies ask Rahab why she is helping them, she essentially says, I have been hearing about your God my whole life, and I believe He is who the stories say He is. Your Life Is Someone Else's Evidence Here is where this lands in ordinary life. People are watching how you live. They notice your acts of faith, your ability to suffer well, and your willingness to trust God with uncertainty. Whether you intend it or not, that becomes a testimony in someone else's life. It certainly works that way among believers. I have had conversations with friends where I watched them walk through something hard, and then God walked me into the same thing, and I was able to tell them, I believe God is going to bring me through this because of the way I saw Him do it for you. And I have been in the other seat. People have called me and said, " Your courage gave me courage.” There is a testimony at work, and it is usually older and wider than you realize. What Does the Scarlet Cord in Rahab's Story Mean? Before the spies escape, they give her terms. They promise to take care of her and everyone inside her household, but she has to tie a scarlet cord in her window. No cord, no protection. Keep the cord in the window, and they will remember her kindness. Fast-forward to the assault on the city, and Joshua tells the entire army to remember Rahab, look for the scarlet cord, and leave her and her family untouched. God is about to do a miracle at Jericho, but first, take care of Rahab. That cord is not coincidental by any means. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He told them to take the blood of a lamb and paint their doorposts (Exodus 12). A scarlet cord hanging above a window in a doomed city is the same picture. And further down the line, we see the blood of Jesus on a cross. He is tying it all together. There are threads running throughout Old Testament Scripture into New Testament Scripture that say this is one story and that a redemption story is taking place. Why Rahab Appears in the Genealogy of Jesus Read the lineage of Jesus in Matthew 1, and Rahab shows up in it. Four women are named there, and one of them is a woman who was not an Israelite and who worked in a profession her culture considered shameful. Because of her faith in God, she was not only rescued from the fall of Jericho. She was restored to a position of value and dignity; she was married, and she ended up in the lineage of Jesus Christ our Savior. Who can do that? Only God can do that. Where This Leaves You Rahab in the Bible is more than a story about a resourceful woman who picked the winning side. She is evidence that God moves toward people who have no religious background, no heritage, and no clean record, and that He does not merely tolerate them once they arrive. He gives them a place in the story. Whatever you have heard about God secondhand, from a friend, a family member, or a stranger whose steadiness you could not quite explain, that testimony is doing more work than you think. Rahab acted on far less. And whatever you assume disqualifies you, hers was worse by every standard her culture had, and it did not hold.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

August 16, 2026 • 9 Minute Read
Standing Up for Your Values: What It Actually Costs You
Standing up for your values will require something of you every single time. That is not a warning meant to discourage you. It is simply the math. If holding a value never cost you anything, it was never really a value, just a preference you kept because it was convenient. The moment a value becomes expensive is the moment you find out whether you actually hold it. The book of Hebrews tells the story of a man who did the math and walked away from everything. In Hebrews 11:24-26, we read that by faith Moses, once he had grown up, "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." He chose instead to endure mistreatment alongside the people of God rather than enjoy "the temporary pleasures of sin," because he considered "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." He was looking to the reward. That is defiance. Not the defiance of law, but the defiance of culture and privilege. What Moses Actually Walked Away From It is easy to read that passage quickly and miss the size of the decision. Moses was raised inside Pharaoh's household. He could have had anything he wanted. The women, the money, the access to any room he cared to walk into. The hedonistic lifestyle that came with living in the palace was his for the taking, and he was willing to say that it was not for him. Moses made a choice based on his values. That is the whole of it. He valued connection with the people of God and with who he really was more than he valued privilege and wealth. At some point he said, in effect, I am Hebrew, and I would rather live as a Hebrew with my people and the values they hold than live as an Egyptian with the values they hold and the way they practice what they do. Why the Hebrews Account Reads Differently Than Exodus If you go back and read the Exodus account, you will notice it does not say any of this. All it tells us is that Moses went out from Pharaoh's house, saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and acted. He committed murder, which was not the right thing to do, and he buried the body. The next day he came out and saw two Hebrews arguing. When he asked what they were doing, they answered with a question of their own: "What are you going to do about it?" Kill us like you did the Egyptian? Moses ran away in fear and spent a long stretch in Midian before God revealed Himself to him. So where does the language of choosing and refusing come from? Often what you see in the New Testament are things emerging from what is known as oral tradition, material passed along through the rabbis or preserved in other Hebrew texts and then brought into the letter. We believe that the material is informed by the Holy Spirit and gives us further wisdom and insight into the Old Testament Scriptures. What we see in Hebrews 11 is more insight into Moses than the Exodus narrative provides on its own. Who This Was Written For The writer of Hebrews had a specific audience in mind. He was writing to a group of people who had come out of Judaism, people who said We are ethnically still Jewish, but religiously we are Christians now; we follow Jesus. And there was a persistent temptation for them to return to what was comfortable. His message to them was simple. You do not have to go back to that. What you have here is better. Jesus is the better option. You are not the first person to leave something comfortable for something uncomfortable. You are not the first person to turn your back on something with real allure for something that does not carry as much of what the world values. Yes, you are leaving something that looks good. But you are leaving it for something so much better. That is the case he is making, and it is the same case being made to us. Standing Up for Your Values When There Is No Law to Defy Does this resonate more with our culture than the defiance of laws? It should. There are not many laws we have to defy today. But based on our values, we are called to live by faith, to defy culture, and to say plainly: I understand what culture values. I value something different. It is simply not the same for me. Why? Because my values come from the Word of God. Know this. Living by faith, which is to say living by your values, will require faith every single time. If you want to hold your values, it will require something of you. When My Son Had to Choose Between His Friends and His Values Here is a small example, but a real one. A value in our home, taught to our sons from the time they were very young, was this: be friendly to everyone, but choose your friends wisely. We said it almost every night before bed. One of our sons was a little antisocial, which is why we added the first half. He would come to church, someone would say hi, and he would barely respond. We needed to work on the friendly part. But we also did not want him to be friends with everyone. We wanted our sons to choose their friends wisely. My son started at a new school in fifth grade, which meant he was showing up late to the party. A lot of kids had already established their friendships, and he was really worried about making friends. The first group that genuinely accepted him was a group of guys he would come home ambivalent about. I would ask if they were okay, and he would say he did not want to talk about it. Probably a year later, after he entered middle school, he finally came to me and said, I cannot do it anymore. Do what? I cannot sit with them. Why? I keep asking them not to cuss, and they keep cussing. I keep asking them not to talk about vulgar things, but they keep doing it. Sometimes they will be good for a while, and then they will not be anymore. I just do not want to be around these people anymore. I told him I understood. Then I asked him two questions. Do you feel like you have tried to be a witness to them? I have. Have you tried to be an example? I have. Okay. What are you going to do? He said, I am sitting alone tomorrow. That is what you need to do, I told him. That is what you should do. What was playing out in real time was a value he had heard since he was four or five years old finally meeting the road. Choose your friends wisely. He had reached the point where he had to choose his values, and he chose his values. Did he make that decision quickly? Not at all. He tried for a long time to make it work. It just did not work anymore. The shoe did not fit, so he chose to sit somewhere else. What Happens After You Sit Alone He spent a couple of weeks sitting by himself, and I asked him what we were going to do about it. He did not know. So I said, son, you like to gather people; you like to invite people to things. What if you started a club during lunch, invited friends, and just saw who showed up? Maybe you will make some new friends. Perfect, he said. That is exactly what I am going to do. We brainstormed, and I assumed that the next day he would go to his Baptist Christian school and ask to start a board game club. Instead, he went to that same school, secured a host room, and collected 35 signatures for a Texas Hold'em poker club. Among the signatures were the principal and two teachers. The principal called me. Texas Hold'em poker was not valued in that school's culture, and my son had already told his mom about it in the car on the way home, in front of another teacher. We knew immediately we were going to tell that story forever. He pivoted, especially after I spoke with the principal, who laughed it off and was very good-natured. He started a board game club instead, and 45 kids showed up to the first meeting. He found his table. He found people to sit with. God provided in that way. It is a small, simple example. But there are simply going to be times when we have to choose our friends differently, and we make those choices differently than the culture does, because we base them on the values we draw from Scripture. What About the People You Cannot Choose? We can choose our friends. We cannot choose our coworkers. Do you ever wish you could? We do not have that option. But here is what we can choose. We can choose the type of person we will be around those coworkers. We can choose the kind of invitations we will accept from them. We can choose to be who we are in front of them, consistently, without apology and without announcement. There is an opportunity in defying culture, and it is an important one. You do not have to defy a law to live by faith. You only have to be willing to pay what your values cost, the same way Moses was, and trust that what you are choosing is so much better than what you are leaving.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor

August 2, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
What God Reveals When He Doesn't Make Sense
You can know God, love God, and still look at your life and think, this doesn't add up. Faith doesn't require you to understand everything God is doing, but it does require a level of trust in who He is. And when God doesn't make sense, it's likely He is revealing something in that moment: either more of Himself to you, or something about you that you couldn't have seen any other way. That truth sits inside one of the hardest stories in Scripture. In Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to take his son Isaac up Mount Moriah and offer him there. Every promise God had made to Abraham depended on Isaac living. Now God appears to be asking for the opposite. Why God Sometimes Asks for the Blessing and Not the Sin God wasn't asking Abraham to give up something bad. If He had been, this story would be easy. Everyone can get on board with surrendering something evil. God was asking Abraham to surrender something beautiful: the son he loved, the miracle he prayed for, and the future he dreamed about. That's what makes this story so difficult. God wasn't asking Abraham to put sin on the altar. He was asking him to put the blessing on the altar. Sometimes the greatest test of faith is not giving up something evil but trusting God with something wonderful. Four Crises Abraham Carried Up the Mountain There was more than one crisis unfolding on that trail. At least four are worth naming. The Theological Crisis God asked for one thing, and now it seemed He was doing another. The promises required Isaac to live, and Abraham was being asked to make an offering of him. It simply wasn't adding up theologically. The Family Crisis One study makes an interesting observation: nowhere does Scripture record Abraham telling Sarah where he was going or what he was going to do. Imagine that conversation. Where are you going? Up the trail with Isaac. Where? Mount Moriah. And what will you be doing there? It's hard to believe that exchange ever happened, and the part that isn't funny at all is the weight of carrying something like that entirely by yourself. The Social Crisis Abraham goes up the mountain with his son and comes back down alone. Everyone is going to ask where his boy is. What is he supposed to say? That God told him to? Some people are going to start to think he's a psychopath. How does a man explain that? The Emotional Crisis This may be the hardest one in the scene, because Abraham looks at his life and has nothing left but a single question: God, why? What Do You Do When God's Plan Doesn't Make Sense? Let's be transparent. Have you ever found yourself in a season where the only honest prayer was, God, sometimes Your plans just don't make sense to me? Where you felt Him leading you one direction, and everything you were actually experiencing was taking you another? Maybe it was a health concern. Maybe it was a broken relationship, an unexpected job loss, a son or daughter who has wandered from the Lord, or a prayer that has gone on and on without an answer. Maybe you have looked at your life and whispered, God, I know You, and I love You, and this doesn't make sense to me. I just don't understand. There is good news in that moment. When you're wrestling, when you're asking why me, why this, and why now, it's likely God is revealing Himself to you, or revealing something about you. When I Couldn't Understand What God Was Doing In May of 2019, I was living in Michigan when I felt the Lord call me away from the ministry I was serving. I took a job in California, moved my family across the country, and trusted God's leading. His calling felt clear, and it very much seemed this was what the Lord had for me. We became part of an incredible church, and a fruitful season hit almost immediately in the student ministry where I was serving as a teaching pastor. Several months later, my mom called to tell me she had stage four cancer. Here is where the tension of the story sits. My parents divorced when I was two. I'm an only child. My mom's siblings had already passed away, and so had her parents. There was no one there to take care of her, and I was on the other side of the country following God's leading and trusting God's provision, unable to fly back all the time. I started to get angry with the Lord, asking Him who was going to take care of her. So my wife and I told her to move in with us and come out to California. She said she couldn't, because of her dog, Pebbles. Bring the dog, Mom. Well, what about Bob, her boyfriend? Bring Bob. There is plenty to do out here. She just said no. In November of 2020, my mom died. What I Prayed When I Was Angry With God I felt so much anger toward the Lord in that season, and I brought it straight to Him. God, I trust You. I love You. I know that You are sovereign, and sovereign means You know all things. That means You knew this was going to happen. So why did You move me? Why couldn't this have happened sooner, or why couldn't I have stayed longer? That's where I wrestled. I didn't get a tidy answer to any of those questions. What God Reveals When You Don't Understand Looking back now, I still don't understand everything God was doing. What I can say is that I discovered so much about the Lord in that season that I would never have learned any other way. There are details I can't go into, but I can share the biggest one. God loves my mom more than I ever could, and I didn't think anyone could love their mom more than I did. I flew home after doing her funeral, and somewhere in the air, with tears in my eyes, it came out: it is well with my soul. Lord, I was okay with You taking my mom. I just wasn't okay with how it happened, that I wasn't there. He began to minister to me right there, and all I could say was, God, You are good all the time, and all the time God is good. Faith Doesn't Require Understanding, Only Trust When God doesn't make sense, faith isn't the thing you're losing. It's the thing being tested, and the test is rarely about handing over something evil. More often it's about trusting Him with something wonderful: the child, the health, the relationship, or the future you had already started to picture. Faith doesn't require us to understand everything God is doing. It does require a level of trust in who He is. So if you're in a season where the pieces aren't adding up, you don't have to pretend you understand. You can keep talking to the God you know, saying out loud that you trust Him, that you love Him, and that this doesn't make sense yet, while you keep watching for what He is revealing about Himself and about you.

Ben Markham

Lead Pastor