When I was in grade school, I was very extroverted, almost to the point of being obnoxious. But in my teens and twenties and even beyond, God led me through an unwanted journey that I struggled to piece together. After becoming a follower of Christ, after committing to serve Him, God appeared to be hurling one shocking circumstance after another into my life. Finally, I snapped. In my bewilderment, I yelled at God. Only later did I begin to understand that God was dismantling my self-sufficiency for a very good reason.

The Missing Element

I’ve heard and read a lot on Christian leadership, and I’ve learned from what I’ve come across. But I have noticed that one essential leadership trait often gets left out—even by Christian leadership experts. The primary quality that God infuses into His leaders is brokenness. By brokenness, I mean that work of God by which our self-sufficiency is dismantled and we learn to live and lead in humble dependence upon Him.

Most of us would have thought Moses was ready to lead God’s people out of Egypt when he struck down the Egyptian taskmaster, ready to rally the people to revolt. But he wasn’t broken yet. What about Peter, stepping out with raw courage, taking a swing at the high priest’s servant? It only got him a direct rebuke from Jesus. It wasn’t until Peter wept after his denial that brokenness began to do its essential work. And David? Surely he was qualified to lead after his bold encounter with the Philistine giant. Nope. Not broken yet. His years of cave-hopping and running from a mad king would be needed to teach him still deeper lessons in dependence on God.

Many times, brokenness is the result of missed opportunities, of embarrassing mistakes, of blatant failures on our part. We do things we can’t believe we have just done, and it breaks us. We’re not the heroes we thought we were. At other times, it is the result of life’s surprises, of things happening to us that we feel we don’t deserve—a divorce, an estranged adult child, a career cut short. Here, young David, being forced to run from Saul, serves as a good example. Sometimes Scripture even shows God having a direct hand in the circumstances that break His people. Think of Hannah (see 1 Samuel 1) or Naomi (see Ruth 1). But time after time, in the lives of the great people of God, there is brokenness. It is the essential quality of leadership.

Under the Mighty Hand of God

Brokenness eventually confronts us with a choice—not whether difficult circumstances will enter our lives, but how we will respond when they do. Peter describes this choice in unusually forceful language:

“God is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:5–6).

The word translated “opposed” is stronger than our English word may suggest. The Greek term antitassomai means to set oneself against another, to resist actively. It can even carry the picture of arranging oneself in battle array against an opponent. Peter is not merely saying that God disapproves of pride. He actively works against it.

That becomes even clearer when we look at the passage Peter is quoting—Proverbs 3:31–34. This Old Testament passage describes two radically different ways God responds to people. His curse rests on the house of the wicked, while He blesses the dwelling of the righteous. He scoffs at scoffers, but gives grace to the humble. Peter draws the conclusion for us: Don’t put yourself on the side God is actively resisting. Humble yourself under His hand.

And notice what kind of hand it is: the mighty hand of God.

God’s hand is mighty either way. It is mighty when He actively opposes the proud, and it is mighty when He gives undeserved favor to the humble. Any sensible person would want to be on the right side of a hand like that.

This is especially important for leaders because being in a position of leadership constantly tempts us to protect our image, prove ourselves, defend our importance, and secure our own advancement. Peter points us in exactly the opposite direction.

Go low.
Humble yourself.
Submit to what God is doing in you.
Leave the lifting to Him.

That last part is too consequential to ignore: “so that He may exalt you at the proper time.”

The leader who refuses to exalt himself is precisely the person God promises to exalt when He sovereignly opens up that moment.

The mighty hand we’re tempted to resist is the very hand that is capable of lifting us up.

That is why brokenness is not something we should spend our lives fighting. When God uses circumstances to dismantle our pride, expose our limitations, or strip away our self-sufficiency, our task is not to dictate the terms. It is to humble ourselves under His mighty hand and cooperate with what He is doing.

And this raises the practical question:

What does this actually look like?
How do we manage our brokenness well?

How to Manage It

Brokenness calls for some kind of action. Just like a broken fence in the backyard, our brokenness is obvious to others. We can’t really hide it. It has a way of reminding us that it hasn’t gone anywhere. And like a broken fence, people can see through it, into our hearts. Brokenness has a way of exposing what we would rather conceal. Our limitations become visible, our confidence is shaken, and sometimes others see struggles we would rather keep private. So, how should we respond to the circumstances that break us?

We must manage them well. Just like anything else God allows in our lives, we are to steward our brokenness well. If He has given us a family, a talent, or a job, we must steward them all well. In the same way, if He has willed a measure of brokenness in our lives, we are responsible for what we do with it.

Here, Paul’s own example is instructive for us. In 1 Corinthians 2:3, he writes, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” Paul is not hiding his weaknesses from the Corinthian believers. Strikingly, he is not hiding his fear, either. He does not fall prey to the common leadership tendency to conceal his flaws or his emotional state. Quite the opposite. He is remarkably candid about his weakness.

Here is the guiding truth behind Paul’s disposition:

It is when people see us humbly acknowledge that we really don’t have it all together that they can feel more relaxed about their own brokenness, and the more we relax and are real with one another, the more truly one we become.

This does not mean that leaders should indiscriminately disclose every weakness or make their struggles the burden of the people they lead. But neither should they construct an image of invulnerability. Brokenness, properly stewarded, makes us more approachable. It helps us recognize weakness in others without being threatened by it. And because we know what it is like to need grace ourselves, we become better equipped to extend grace to the people God has entrusted to us.

What might this look like in practice? It my mean admitting toyour team that you made a poor decision, receiving criticism without immediately defending yourself, or acknowledging that you need help with woething you cannot hndle alone. It may mean responding to someone else’s failure with the same patience and grace you have needed yourself.

But don’t just look outward—look upward. Block out some time for just you and God. Go before Him, admit your weaknesses, limitations, and failures. Confess that, despite your abilities, training, and qualifications, you are dependent on Him. Focus on a specific situation where you are in deep need of Him, on His ability, and His wisdom.

Then wait.

Linger before Him. Listen well. Receive His love and His peace. Thank Him for the difference He makes in your life. Stay until you are confident it is time to go. Then commit that, for the rest of this day, you will carry yourself before others with the same spirit you have just displayed before God.

This is wlllful brokenness, initiated by you, rather than in response to a specific breaking situation, which brings us back to a truth we have already visited: God responds to this kind of proactive humility with grace—His undeserved favor (Proverbs 3:34; James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5).

Tying it All Together

Here is what I did not understand in my early years: Brokenness is not the interruption of our leadership. It is the formation of it. God is not stripping us of usefulness; He is stripping us of illusions. And as we humble ourselves under His hand, He can make us more fruitful in our brokenness than we ever were in our self-confidence.

So don’t waste the pain. Steward it. Let it soften you, deepen you, and make you the kind of leader who can carry grace without dropping it.

Because in the end, brokenness is not the thing you survive.

It is the very thing God uses.

Of all the issues we as humans face, the matter of forgiveness is perhaps the most difficult. When someone wounds us deeply, two powerful impulses rise at the same time: (1) a cry for justice and (2) an awareness that we need to forgive the offense. These impulses can feel like they are pulling us in opposite directions, and at times it feels like they might tear us apart. And when we add the fact that Scripture itself speaks strongly about both justice and forgiveness, the tension becomes even sharper. Many believers feel caught between these two realities and aren’t sure how to move forward.

This raises an important question: Is there a biblical pathway that makes room for both? If so, what does it look like, and how do we walk in it?

Before we explore that pathway, we need to acknowledge something that often goes unspoken. Many Christians are rushed into forgiveness. Well-meaning pastors and counselors sometimes urge people to “let it go” before they have even had the chance to fully process what has occurred. Perhaps worst of all, we hit them with the parable of the unforgiving servant and remind them that, if they don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive them. While that passage certainly has its place, when this happens, the person is often left with guilt, confusion, and a sense that their pain is somehow illegitimate.

Those of us in ministry are often good at reminding people to forgive, but we are not very good about telling them how.

These moments actually present tremendous opportunities for discipleship. Pain and confusion are often fertile ground for growth. Recognizing this reality is central to providing genuine help for people who are sincerely wrestling with the realities of life. If we begin by listening well to their story, we are in a better position to offer truths related to the discipleship opportunities they often have.

When we look at the broader scope of Scripture, we discover that God doesn’t dismiss our pain. Indeed, His Word gives us space. It honors our experience and suggests a journey that may unfold over time.

That journey begins in a place many Christians might not expect.

1. The Dilemma: Cries in the Moment

The Bible does not hide the rawness of human suffering. Listen to David’s voice while danger is still present, while betrayal is fresh, while fear is real. These are prayers spoken in the moment, when the threat is active and the heart is exposed.

“Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For You strike all my enemies on the cheek.” —Psalm 3:7

“Let the evil of the wicked come to an end… let the violence of the wicked come to an end.” —Psalm 7:9

“Vindicate me, O LORD… You have tested my heart.” —Psalm 17:2–3

“Pour out Your indignation upon them… Let their habitation be desolate.” —Psalm 69:24–25

“May my accusers be clothed with dishonor.” —Psalm 109:29

Other psalms echo this same cry, including Psalms 5, 10, 28, 35, 40, 55, 58, 83, 94, 137, and more.

These prayers are as intense as they are honest. They rise from a heart under pressure. They therefore raise a question that many believers quietly carry: How do these cries fit with forgiveness? If forgiveness is part of the Christian life, what do we do with prayers like these?

The answer begins with a surprising transition.

2. The Turning Point: Entrusting Our Case

Jeremiah 11:20 contains a statement that deserves far more attention than it usually receives.

“O LORD of hosts… let me see Your vengeance on them, for to You I have committed my cause.”

The word “cause” is rîb (pronounced “reeve”)—a Hebrew legal term referring to a dispute or grievance.

Jeremiah is still hurting, feeling the present weight of injustice. He still longs for God to act. But significantly, something shifts. He commits his case to God. He entrusts the matter to the One who judges righteously.

This moment does not erase the pain. Notice that his act of entrusting accompanies a cry for justice. This prayer does not necessarily mark forgiveness, but it does reveal something important: We can acknowledge the wrong committed against us while placing the matter in God’s hands.

It hints that there may be a path that begins with crying out and moves toward something deeper.

Before we explore that path, we need to look at a passage that seems, at first glance, to stand in tension with everything we have just seen.

3. The Command to Release: Mark 11:25

Jesus says: “When you stand praying, forgive.”

Once again, pressure to forgive almost reflexively produces feelings of guilt if we can’t get there immediately. But the word Jesus uses—aphiēmi—carries the sense of releasing, letting go, or sending away. In this context, it points to releasing the offense rather than continuing to hold it against the offender.

While this may help, it does not completely relieve the tension. David cries out for justice. Jeremiah entrusts his grievance. Jesus calls us to release. How do these fit together?

Scripture does not give us a rigid sequence that every wounded person must follow. In fact, it portrays godly people responding to injustice in different ways.

Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, cried out for God to avenge his murder (2 Chronicles 24:22). Stephen, facing death at the hands of his persecutors, prayed that God would not hold their sin against them (Acts 7:60). Paul appealed to God’s judgment concerning Alexander the coppersmith, yet at the same time prayed for mercy toward others who had deserted him (2 Timothy 4:14–16).

These responses differ, but Scripture is unmistakably clear about one response that is forbidden: taking vengeance into our own hands.

Paul writes, “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God.” He then quotes Deuteronomy 32:35: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19).

Consider Edom, the nation descended from Esau. The book of Obadiah describes how Edom responded to Judah’s calamity (verses 10–14). Rather than helping its brother nation, Edom gloated over Judah’s suffering, participated in its plundering, and helped deliver its fugitives to their enemies. God pronounced judgment upon Edom for its violence and treachery.

The warning is sobering. When we take justice into our own hands, we are taking a position that belongs only to God (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19). Vengeance is truly His, and we must believe in His commitment to see our situation through. He has not surrendered His responsibility to judge (Genesis 18:25; 1 Peter 2:23). Whether His judgment comes quickly or slowly, in this life or beyond it, the matter ultimately belongs to Him (Romans 2:5–6; 1 Timothy 5:24).

This does not mean that we abandon legitimate efforts to protect ourselves or seek accountability. Scripture makes room for both. In the book of Esther, God opened a way for His people to defend themselves against those who were seeking their destruction (Esther 8:11; 9:1–5). Jesus teaches us to hold our brother accountable when he wrongs us (Matthew 18:15–17; Luke 17:3). But we must not confuse these qualifications with exacting revenge. God is the avenger (Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30).

And this brings us back to the importance of entrusting.

4. The Full Pivot: Entrusting Ourselves

Peter draws our attention to something remarkable about Jesus: “He kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). While Jeremiah entrusted his cause to God, Jesus entrusted His very self to God, knowing that He would judge righteously.

And notice the timing. Jesus entrusted Himself while suffering, while being wronged. He entrusted Himself while the injustice was still happening.

It is here that we must pause.

While Jesus demonstrated this trust in the midst of His suffering, others may struggle to reach this place. We must give people space, recognizing that entrusting may come early or late, sometimes only after considerable wrestling with what has happened.

For many of us, entrusting becomes the bridge between crying out and releasing. It means placing our confidence in the One who judges righteously.

Here is an axiom that may bring clarity to this entire matter of forgiveness:

We often have a forgiveness problem because we have a trust problem.

And as we learn to entrust our grievances and ourselves to a God of justice, something beautiful becomes possible—something we might not have expected.

5. The Resolution: Praise

In many of David’s psalms, his cries eventually transition into praise. Witness:

“Salvation belongs to the LORD.” —Psalm 3:8a

“I will give thanks to the LORD according to His righteousness.” —Psalm 7:17

“I will praise the name of God with a song… For the LORD hears the needy.” —Psalm 69:30–36

“I will give great thanks to the LORD… For He stands at the right hand of the needy.” —Psalm 109:30–31

David sets an example for us in moving beyond his pain toward renewed confidence in God. This is one way pain can become an occasion for discipleship. As we learn to turn our attention from the wrong we have suffered toward the God who knows and judges all, we may discover a new freedom to praise Him.

Praise is not a requirement that proves forgiveness has been completed. It is one of the beautiful possibilities that can emerge as we learn to trust God with our suffering.

So, while Scripture does not give us a rigid formula for forgiveness, it does reveal several important responses along the way. We see wounded people crying out to God, entrusting their grievances and themselves to Him, releasing offenses, and finding renewed freedom to praise.

These expressions do not necessarily occur in the same order or at the same pace for everyone. Nevertheless, recognizing them can help us understand that forgiveness is often a process, even though it often culminates in a decisive moment of release.

Along the way, Scripture gives us something particularly valuable: intermediate steps that help us move toward forgiveness without pretending that our wounds are insignificant.

If you’re struggling to forgive someone, consider where you are in this journey. Are you still crying out over the injustice? Are you struggling to entrust the matter—or yourself—to God? Begin by honestly acknowledging where you are, then tell God that you are leaning hard into Him to be the kind of person you know you need to be in order to trust Him and His commitment to justice enough to take the next step in regard to what has happened.

If, after all this, you still find yourself stuck, consider one further idea: Share this article with a friend or two, then tell them what you are dealing with and ask them to pray with you. The support of friends can be invaluable. “A three-stranded cord is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

A Pastoral Word

When it comes to the pain of injustice, there is a difference between in the moment and after the moment. When someone is still hurting, still processing, still trying to survive, they need space. As compassionate believers, we must give hurting people room to talk and process their situation. They need patience and understanding. Sometimes they need little more from us initially than a listening ear. They need to voice their pain to a fellow human being and they need permission to cry out to God. Even the martyrs in Revelation cry out for justice (Revelation 6:10).

But compassion and guidance need not be separated. As people begin to find their footing, we can help them see that Scripture offers a way forward. This often involves a willingness to acknowledge their pain while encouraging them to entrust themselves and their grievances to God. Here is the watchword:

Acknowledge the cry for justice, but be ready to point to a way forward and shepherd them through it.

Forgiveness is often a journey, one in which God can use even our deepest wounds to teach us to trust Him more fully. And when we walk that journey with care, we discover that Scripture has been lighting the way for us all along.

What Impacted You?

Which of these biblical responses—crying out, entrusting, releasing, or finding freedom to praise—has most helped you understand forgiveness? Why?

One of my favorite worship songs has a great line that says that God never stops working. While this is a great statement of belief, if we are honest, we would have to admit that there are times when it seems like God is not working at all. It is almost as if He has forgotten us.

The Crash

For my wife and me, it started when I came home from work, opened the kitchen door, and was greeted by a wave of water. Our home had flooded!

Our daughter and two preschool granddaughters were living with us, so all five of us evacuated to a hotel. Then, while we were there, our house flooded a second time—at the opposite end. This time, insurance wouldn’t cover the damage. Altogether, about 75% of our floors and walls would need to be redone.

Then my wife and I both got COVID.

Meanwhile, our new puppy mangled my wife’s glasses beyond repair, I broke mine, and our other dog got sick and made a spectacular mess of the hotel room. I’m leaving out several other near-catastrophes, but you get the idea.

After nine weeks in the hotel, we finally moved home—two days before Christmas. But the chaos wasn’t finished.

An arctic blast arrived, and our SUV developed a flat tire. With a wind chill of -5 degrees, I wasn’t about to change it myself. So I drove a little over a mile to the tire store, only to learn that driving on it had voided the warranty. We had to buy another tire. (Still worth it!)

Then, around 1:00 Christmas morning, our one-year-old granddaughter began struggling to breathe. At times, she stopped breathing altogether. We rushed her to the hospital, where she spent three days in pediatric intensive care.

By the time she came home, everyone in the family was sick. I developed an infection in the back of my mouth that caused excruciating throat pain. I wanted to cry out, but I knew that that would only worsen the pain and lengthen my recovery time. I could only curl into a ball, open my mouth in a silent scream, and beg God for relief. It got better the next day, but then came roaring back, worse than before. Thankfully, antibiotics eventually brought the pain under control.

But what a crazy ten weeks!

Needless to say, Christmas got punted. We finally celebrated on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, the next time the family could get together.

Beginning to Sort Through It All: The Book of Job

So, what do we make of all this?

I began finding answers near the end of the book of Job, when Yahweh finally speaks to Job out of a whirlwind (Job 38–41).

Genesis tells us that God brought order to creation and commissioned human beings to subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28)—in essence, to be agents of furthering the order He had already begun establishing. Similarly, He placed Adam in the garden to cultivate and keep it (Genesis 2:15).

But Job reveals another side of that creation story—a world filled with wildness, unpredictability, and forces beyond human control.

Consider two extraordinary creatures God describes: Behemoth and Leviathan (Job 40:15–41:34). Several scholars hold that Behemoth represents the great chaos monster of the land, while Leviathan represents the chaos monster of the sea. The main point God makes in describing these creatures is that no human being can hope to control them.

This shocks our orderly bent. This is how we are designed. We build homes, establish communities, cultivate the land, and try to make life manageable. But when chaos crashes into our lives, our orderly world suddenly refuses to cooperate. We try to put things back together, only to discover that much of what is happening lies beyond our control. We often find this predicament to be enormously frustrating!

There’s nothing wrong with trying to restore order when chaos crashes into our lives. That’s how we are wired. The problem arises when our bent toward order metastasizes into a demand for complete control.

Job had to discover that distinction. God showed Job a world filled with realities that no human being could fully understand or hope to control. What we need to come to terms with when life spins out of control is that we are not designed to exercise total control. For this reason, we need to remind ourselves that none of the issues we are facing are beyond God’s ultimate authority.

And that prepares us for something remarkable in the Gospels.

Jesus’ Answer to Job

Job isn’t the last word on chaos. Jesus adds something astonishing to the conversation—not merely through His teaching, but through His actions.

In both Mark 4–5 and Luke 8, Jesus and His disciples encounter a violent storm. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus stands and rebukes the wind and the waves, and the sea obeys Him! Think about the connection to Job. There, Leviathan represents a power no human being can hope to tame. Here, Jesus confronts the raging sea and brings it to complete submission with a word.

But the story doesn’t end there. Immediately afterward, in both Gospel accounts, Jesus encounters a man possessed by a legion of demons. This man is beyond anyone’s ability to restrain or control. Yet Jesus speaks, and the demons must obey.

Notice the progression: First, Jesus exercises authority over the chaos of the sea. Then He exercises authority over the destructive forces tormenting a man on land. The parallels are striking.

But there’s an even greater point: What no human being can control, Jesus commands.

Job reminds us how helpless we are before forces greater than ourselves. The Gospels reveal the astonishing authority of Jesus over those forces.

Chaos may overwhelm us. But it does not overwhelm Him.

God’s Design in the Midst of Chaos

As encouraging as this truth is, it leaves us with a question: If God has authority over chaos, why doesn’t He always intervene when we first cry out to Him?

The Exodus story offers an important insight.

When God set out to deliver Israel from Egypt, He could have accomplished it immediately. Instead, He unfolded His plan through a lengthy process.

And initially, things actually got worse!

After Moses confronted Pharaoh, the Israelites were ordered to make the same number of bricks without being supplied with straw (Exodus 5:1–18). Their foremen were beaten, and Moses himself complained to God that His promised deliverance seemed to have accomplished nothing (5:20–23). Then came the ten plagues, followed by the dramatic deliverance at the Red Sea.

Why such a prolonged process? One reason was that God had a broader agenda—bringing honor to Himself in the eyes of others outside of His own people.

Too often, we approach our circumstances with what I call a devotional mindset. We think primarily in terms of “me and God,” as though everyone else is incidental to the story. But God’s purposes can reach far beyond us.

Remember that, while the plagues were occurring, some Egyptians were showing signs of fearing Yahweh, protecting their animals from the plague of hail (Exodus 9:20). They were not merely passive observers. They were responding to God’s revelation concerning Himself. Later, at the Red Sea, God still has the Egyptians in mind, declaring that Pharaoh and his army “will know that I am Yahweh” (Exodus 14:4)—fulfilled at least in part when they exclaim, as their chariots drive with difficulty, “Yahweh is fighting for [Israel]!” (Esodux 14:25)

But the audience extends. A generation later, when Israel’s spies entered Jericho, Rahab told them that the inhabitants had heard what Yahweh had done at the Red Sea—and their hearts had melted with fear (Joshua 2:8–11).

Then, several generations later, when the Philistines learned that Israel had brought the ark of God into battle, they panicked. They remembered the plagues God had inflicted on Egypt (1 Samuel 4:7–8). The story was still circulating!

When God delivered Israel, He had more than one audience in mind. And some of those who would hear about His mighty acts hadn’t even been born when the events took place.

This realization challenged me. When my family was being bombarded by one crisis after another, I naturally wanted God to intervene—and quickly! But the Exodus story reminded me that God’s purposes may extend beyond my immediate circumstances.

It’s not just about me. And it’s not just about now.

A Suggested Strategy

The Exodus story teaches us something important: God is concerned not only with delivering His people, but also with revealing Himself through the way He accomplishes that deliverance.

This doesn’t mean He is indifferent to our pain. Quite the opposite! In Exodus 6:5, God tells Moses that He has heard the groaning of His people.

But His purposes extend beyond our immediate relief.

When we begin to understand this, it can change the way we pray. Instead of asking only for deliverance, we can also ask God to reveal Himself through the way He brings it about. As John reminds us, “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14).

So, what can we do when chaos crashes into our lives and shows no signs of letting up?

Of course, we will pray and ask others to pray for and with us. Further, we will take whatever practical steps we can to address the situation. But I would suggest three additional steps:

(1) Gather your own audience.

You can do this by telling your non-believing friends what you are going through. That’s right—your non-believingfriends. Let’s be honest. Sometimes we Christians give the impression that having faith means having everything under control. But believers experience the same crises, disappointments, and bewildering circumstances as everyone else. It takes humility to acknowledge that we don’t always have it together or know what to do.

But there is a difference for believers. When life falls apart, we have somewhere to run. We can call on God, and we have fellow believers who can come alongside us.

So let your unbelieving friends see you in your hour of weakness. Let them see that you’re struggling, that you don’t have all the answers. But let them also see your confidence in God and the support of His people.

Make them thirsty for what they do not yet have.

(2) Tailor your prayers to God’s design.

Don’t just pray for deliverance. Pray for God to be glorified in the way He brings your deliverance. Pray that His handprint will be so evident that those watching will recognize His work rather than dismissing it as a coincidence. While we cannot dictate how God will answer, we can ask Him to use even our most difficult circumstances to make Himself known.

(3) Watch your audience.

If nothing else, this will divert your attention from your own pressing circumstances. After all, God may be accomplishing something through your circumstances that has as much to do with their lives as with yours. Watch for God to be working in their lives, not just yours. Remember Rahab and the Philistines. God’s work may reach people and generations you will never know.

The worship song I mentioned earlier has another line that is even more profound, stating that, even when we cannot see it or feel it, God is still working—and He never stops. That is a statement of faith. God has not fallen asleep. He has not forgotten. And when chaos crashes into our lives, we can trust that His purposes extend beyond what we can presently see.

Let’s Hear from You Now

The next time chaos crashes into your life, what could you do differently if you remembered that God may have an audience in mind besides you?

The Blessed Life, the Broken Life

When I was younger, as the realities of life began to unfold and difficulties came my way, I assumed my life would eventually divide itself into two distinct phases: a period of brokenness followed by a period of blessing.

The first phase would be difficult. God would use it to teach me whatever I needed to learn. But eventually I would graduate. The brokenness would end, the blessing would begin, and—at least somewhere in the back of my mind—I assumed the blessing phase would pretty much last for the rest of my life.

But my assumptions hit a wall when I discovered:

This isn’t how the Christian life works.

Not Just a Phase

Jesus told His followers to take up their cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Daily doesn’t sound like a phase.

Neither do the lives of the people God used most powerfully in Scripture. Moses had to navigate one rebellion and gripe session after another, from the time he was 80 years old until the day he died. David’s elevation to the throne certainly did not end his suffering. And Paul described himself as “afflicted,” “perplexed,” “persecuted,” and “struck down” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). In fact, God said early on that He would show Paul how much he must suffer for His name’s sake (Acts 9:16).

These weren’t merely unfortunate interruptions in otherwise blessed lives. Breaking and blessing usually coexist. This is why Peter tells believers not to be surprised by the fiery ordeal among them “as though some strange thing were happening” (1 Peter 4:12).

Early in my walk, I didn’t understand any of this. “This isn’t supposed to be happening, and it certainly isn’t supposed to continue to be happening,” I kept telling myself. But after much time receiving biblical truth, I came to understand:

Brokenness is not an event or even a phase.
It is part of a lifetime of following Christ.

God Is Chasing Us

This may sound strange, but I believe that God is chasing us—with a call to brokenness.

And I believe that this is why:

The breaking process does something success alone cannot do. It loosens our grip. It exposes our limitations. It teaches us dependence. And perhaps most importantly, it equips us to recognize and minister to brokenness in other people.

Here is the truth I have learned:

A broken world cannot be fixed by unbroken people.

God does not merely want to accomplish things through us. He intends to accomplish something in us that makes us fit to serve people whose lives have also been shattered.

But knowing that does not mean we will enjoy the process.

In fact, Scripture shows us something surprisingly different.

Sometimes Brokenness Begins With Resistance

Jeremiah knew what it was like to be carried somewhere he never wanted to go.

He had been called by God. He was doing what God told him to do. Yet obedience brought rejection, isolation, humiliation, and pain.

And Jeremiah did not always respond serenely.

At times he complained bitterly. He questioned God. In Jeremiah 20, he reaches the point of cursing the day of his birth. Elsewhere he asks why his pain seems perpetual and his wound incurable.

Jeremiah’s own story crystallizes a present reality many of us can relate to: Sometimes when God is breaking us, our first response is resistance. In this stage, we ask questions like:

Why is this happening?

Why won’t You stop it?

I did what You asked me to do. How did I end up here?

We can be tempted to think that asking those questions means we are failing spiritually. Jeremiah tells us otherwise. His complaints were not evidence that he had abandoned God. In fact, he kept bringing his complaints to God. Mark it down:

There is a profound difference between walking away from God and wrestling with God.

So if you are in a season of breaking and you are confused, angry, disappointed, or exhausted:

Don’t manufacture a response you haven’t reached yet.
Bring God the response you actually have.

Brokenness does not require pretending that we welcome what is breaking us.
But at the same time, Scripture does not leave us there.

Paul Shows Us Where Brokenness Can Lead

Paul had his own breaking experience—a “thorn in the flesh.” Whatever its precise nature, he didn’t want it. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to remove it. Think about that. The man who would eventually write some of Scripture’s greatest words about weakness began by asking God to make the weakness go away.

Then God answered him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). In this case, God answered, “Not this time. I have a higher purpose in mind.”

While Paul’s situation didn’t change, his interpretation of it did.

Had it been me, I would have seen it primarily as something preventing me from doing what God had called me to do. But God showed him that his weakness was actually the setting in which Christ’s power could rest upon him, in order to accomplish what he was called to do.

Realizing this, Paul says something astonishing: “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses.” He has moved from: “Take it away” to “I rejoice in what God is doing through it.”

This is transformative thinking. His whole outlook changed.

Sometimes God changes our circumstances. At other times, He changes our understanding of our circumstances. And sometimes that second miracle is the greater one.

Don’t Rush the Process

This has implications not only for the person being broken but also for those of us walking beside someone who is.

I once met a man as a chaplain at the courthouse. This man was being hit from several directions at once. He said to me, “My wife ran around on me, divorced me, and then I lost my job. I’m an elder in my church, and now I’m questioning everything!”

I told him:“Give yourself permission to be confused. I’ll walk with you through this.”

And that’s what I did.

Over the next several months, we exchanged emails and eventually talked by phone. Along the way, I tried to place signposts where he needed them and drop biblical truth into his life when and where he was ready to receive it.

Over time, something changed.

He softened. His interpretation of what was happening began to change. And eventually he reached a place I would never have demanded from him in our first conversation: He began to rejoice.

My job wasn’t to get him there quickly. My job was to walk with him while God got him there. This experience taught me something important about ministering to broken people:

We must not rush people to the conclusion God is still preparing them to reach.

Jeremiah warns us not to misinterpret the person who is still protesting.
Paul encourages us by illustrating that the phase of resistance is by no means end of the story.

Here is the main principle we must keep in mind when our friends are in the brokenness process:
When people are in Jeremiah’s shoes, we must not quote Paul at them.

There will be a time for Paul.

But first, these people need someone willing to sit with them in the Jeremiah-stage.

A good friend does not abandon us in Jeremiah because we haven’t reached Paul yet.

The Ministry of Walking With

This may be one of the gifts our own brokenness experiences eventually give to us.

Once we have been there ourselves, we become less frightened by another person’s questions. We don’t have to fix every emotion. We don’t have to explain everything God is doing. We don’t have to hurry someone through grief because his confusion makes us uncomfortable.

Instead, we learn to walk.

We listen.

We place signposts.

We offer biblical truth when it can illuminate the next few steps.

And we remain very careful about assuming that we know everything God is doing.

Our task may simply be to remain beside that person long enough for God to reinterpret the experience. That is something broken people are uniquely equipped to do. They recognize the terrain.

A Sower Went Forth to Sow

There is another thing brokenness eventually teaches us: so much is not up to us.

Think about the farmer in Jesus’ parable of the sower. He scatters the seed. Some lands on good soil. Some doesn’t. His assignment is remarkably simple:

A sower went forth to sow—not to grow.

Robert Schumann’s short piece The Happy Farmer captures something of the spirit I have in mind. It’s only one minute long. Just for fun, give it a quick listen!

duck://player/Mvu_r1D8p_E

As I listen, I picture the farmer lightheartedly tossing seed as he goes: “I’ll throw some here, and some over there. Maybe it will grow; maybe it won’t. That’s not up to me. My job is to sow.”

And that is one of the surprising things brokenness can eventually produce in us: we become lighter.

We sow. God determines what happens beneath the soil.
We serve. God determines the results.
We speak when we should speak and remain silent when we should remain silent.
We faithfully do what has been given to us—and loosen our grip on what happens now or next.
In spite of our trials and weaknesses—no, because of them!—He is using us.
We just keep going and sowing.

Broken people can become amazingly cheerful people because they have finally discovered something enormously freeing:

It’s not up to me.

We don’t have to control everything.
We don’t have to understand.
We don’t have to make everything work.
We don’t even have to ensure that every seed we scatter grows.

We just have to sow.

There is enormous freedom in knowing this and living accordingly.

Life Through Death

Paul describes believers in 2 Corinthians 2:14–16 as carrying the fragrance of Christ—an aroma involving both death and life.

That had puzzled me because I had separated those two things.

First comes death.

Then comes life.

First brokenness.

Then blessing.

But Scripture keeps putting them together.

We carry the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested through us.
God brings life through death, strength through weakness, usefulness through brokenness.

The vessel does not become useful because it has finally graduated from being broken.

It becomes useful through the breaking.

And perhaps that is why the process repeats itself throughout our lives.

God is not finished with us.

And there will always be another broken person somewhere along the road who needs someone who recognizes the terrain.

If you’re experiencing a season of brokenness right now, begin by telling God exactly where you are. Don’t pretend to have reached Paul’s perspective if you’re still wrestling with Jeremiah’s questions. Ask God to show you what He wants to accomplish in you through this experience, and look for opportunities to encourage someone else along the way. You may discover that even while you’re being broken, God is already making you useful.

Blessed, Broken, and Useful

So where are you in the process? Perhaps you’re still with Jeremiah. You don’t understand. You don’t like it. Like Jeremiah, you may even be protesting to God.

Keep talking to Him.

You may eventually reach the place Paul reached, but don’t rush yourself there.

And don’t rush someone else there either.

Walk with them.

Listen.

Give biblical truth room to do its work.

And trust God with the timetable.

Because the great surprise of the Christian life is that brokenness and blessing were never two separate phases after all. In fact:

The broken life is the blessed life.

So pick yourself up.
Pick up your bag of seed.
And happy sowing.

What Do You Need to Hold More Loosely?
What is one area of your life where you need to remember, “My job is to sow, not to grow”—and leave the outcome more fully in God’s hands?

There are seasons in almost every life that make absolutely no sense at the time.

We look at our disrupted circumstances and wonder why God would allow such pain, especially when we feel we have been faithful. Sometimes, years later, the fog begins to lift and we see things we could not possibly have seen before.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

God allowed me to walk through several shocking experiences in my teens and early twenties. For years, I couldn’t make sense of them. Eventually, however, I began to see that what looked pointless at the time was shaping something in me that God would use much later.

To make sense of those years, I want to lean especially on the Apostle Paul, along with an eighteenth-century poet named William Cowper, who found remarkable language for describing the hidden work of God.

Paul understood something that took me decades to learn: the details of our affliction matter less than what God is doing through it. He never explained his famous “thorn in the flesh,” because the thorn itself was not the point.

What God was doing through it was.

The Shock That Shaped a Life

Growing up, by all appearances, God removed blessings from my family.

My parents lost land—twenty acres in Mississippi and twenty more in Texas. I still don’t know why. What I do know is that the loss plunged us into years of scarcity.

My mother bought our clothes at garage sales. They didn’t fit. They weren’t in style. And at an age when friendships matter most, I became the kid people avoided.

Some shouted insults. Some simply turned away. Though God gave me a few faithful friends, the overall experience was one of deep rejection.

Anger took root.

Confusion toward God followed.

I remember the moment I crossed a line—when I stopped asking God to change things and began demanding that He do so. I shook my fist in anger. I felt abandoned.

Then adulthood came—marriage, children, career. Those memories faded into the background.

But they never resolved.

I had survived the experience.

I still didn’t understand it.

Paul Asked for the Pain to Go Away

Years later, Paul’s experience in 2 Corinthians 12 began to give me a way of thinking about my own.

Paul had done nothing wrong. He had been faithful to God’s calling. Yet he was given a persistent “thorn in the flesh.” Whatever its precise nature, it was painful enough that Paul pleaded with God three times to remove it.

That is worth noticing.

Paul’s first response to pain was not to celebrate it. He asked God to take it away.

Sometimes Christians can make suffering harder for one another by assuming that mature faith should immediately welcome whatever God sends.

Paul didn’t.

He asked for relief.

And God said no.

But God did not merely leave Paul with a thorn. He gave him something else:

an explanation.

The thorn had been given “to keep me from exalting myself.” And then came God’s word:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

Suddenly Paul could see something he had not seen before.

He had been looking at the pain.

God had been looking at Paul’s future.

That distinction is enormous.

While we are looking around for understanding, God is looking ahead.

Paul saw a thorn that needed to be removed. God saw a danger that needed to be prevented and a servant whose weakness would become the stage on which divine power could be displayed.

The thorn wasn’t meaningless.

It was doing something.

When God Is Looking Ahead

As a boy, I was doing what Paul initially did—looking at my circumstances and feeling completely confused.

But unlike Paul, I became angry.

My family’s period of scarcity began immediately after I had committed my life fully to Christ. It felt almost timed. I couldn’t comprehend why obedience was being met with suffering and rejection.

What I could not see from my limited vantage point was that God was looking at my future.

Looking back, I now realize that had my family remained financially secure, I easily might have grown into a proud, smug, self-sufficient man—someone entirely unable to sympathize with those who are hurting.

While I was bitterly complaining about my circumstances, God was quietly shaping a courthouse chaplain.

Every day now, working in the Family Law Center, I meet people whose lives are blowing apart. They are walking through adult versions of some of what I experienced as a child. Often they tell me they have done nothing to deserve what has happened, and because of my own past, I understand that feeling to my core.

I can now see purposes in some of what happened to me that I could not see then.

But we need to be careful here.

My experience does not mean that every suffering person will eventually be able to look backward and say, “Now I know exactly why God did that.”

Sometimes God gives us an explanation, as He did Paul.

Sometimes years of distance allow us to recognize at least part of what He was accomplishing.

And sometimes the reason remains buried.

What then?

The Unfathomable Mine

William Cowper understood that question.

Cowper—pronounced “Cooper”—wrote the familiar hymn “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” His life also included profound suffering, and he found memorable language for God’s hidden activity in another hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”

He begins:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Cowper doesn’t picture God standing safely outside the storm.

God is in it.

But His presence doesn’t mean we understand what He is doing there.

That is what makes the storm mysterious.

Cowper develops the idea further:

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

The imagery resonates strongly with Job 28, where human beings descend into the earth, cut shafts through rock, expose hidden things, and retrieve treasures buried in darkness.

Human beings are remarkably good at mining the earth.

But Job asks a far more difficult question:

“But where can wisdom be found?”

We can dig into the earth and find treasure.

We cannot dig into God and extract an explanation.

There are depths we cannot reach.

That changes the question.

When pain refuses to explain itself, the question can no longer merely be:

“Why is this happening?”

Eventually we have to ask:

“How do I live faithfully when I don’t know why this is happening?”

Job 28 gives us an answer.

After an entire chapter about wisdom that human beings cannot discover for themselves, the chapter ends:

“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
And to depart from evil is understanding.”

That is profound.

When we cannot find the reason, we can still find the posture.

We may not know what God is doing.

We can still know what faithfulness looks like while He is doing it.

What Do We Do While We Wait?

Paul gives us one answer.

Ask.

Paul asked three times for the thorn to be removed. There is nothing unspiritual about asking God to end our pain. We don’t have to pretend we enjoy suffering in order to trust Him.

But Paul’s experience also teaches us something else:

Leave room for God to answer a different question from the one we are asking.

Paul asked:

Will You remove this?

God answered, in effect:

Let Me tell you what I am doing through it.

And that revelation changed Paul’s interpretation of his pain.

Removal gave way to revelation.

Revelation produced reinterpretation.

And reinterpretation eventually enabled Paul to say something astonishing:

“Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

But Job protects us from turning Paul’s experience into a formula.

God may not tell us why.

If He does, receive the explanation.

If He doesn’t, live faithfully on what He has revealed while entrusting to Him what He has concealed.

That may be one of the hardest disciplines of faith.

We naturally want enough information to make God’s actions reasonable to us.

Sometimes He gives it.

Sometimes He asks us to trust His wisdom before we can trace His reasoning.

The Cloud of Mercy

Cowper captures this beautifully later in the hymn:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

That doesn’t mean pain isn’t painful.

A cloud can be dark precisely because it is carrying something.

And that may be one of the hardest truths to accept when suffering makes no sense: what looks empty of meaning to us may be carrying purposes we cannot yet see.

Paul’s thorn looked like weakness.

God was preparing power.

My childhood looked like rejection and scarcity.

Years later, I could see that at least part of what was being formed was compassion.

The cloud had been carrying something.

But we should resist the temptation to tell every suffering person exactly what their cloud is carrying. We don’t know.

Sometimes even the person suffering doesn’t know.

That is why Cowper’s word mysterious matters.

When the Explanation Never Comes

There is a temptation at this point to make a promise Scripture doesn’t make:

Hang on long enough, and someday God will explain everything that happened to you.

Perhaps He will.

Perhaps, like Paul, you will eventually understand something you couldn’t see before.

Perhaps, like me, decades will pass before pieces begin fitting together.

But some questions may remain unanswered in this life.

And faith must be able to live there too.

Job never receives the kind of explanation we might expect. Instead, he encounters God.

That is an important distinction.

Sometimes God gives us an answer. Sometimes He gives us Himself.

And when the explanation remains buried in the unfathomable mine, God Himself must be enough.

We ask for removal.

We remain open to revelation.

We reinterpret our pain when God gives us light.

And when He doesn’t, we continue to walk in what we already know about Him.

We don’t call evil good.

We don’t pretend pain doesn’t hurt.

We don’t manufacture explanations God hasn’t given us.

And we don’t assume that because we cannot see what God is doing, God isn’t doing anything.

What the Thorn Taught Paul

Paul eventually reached a place he could never have reached when he was simply asking for removal.

He learned that God’s grace was sufficient.

He learned that divine power could operate through human weakness.

And he learned that the thing he most desperately wanted removed could become the very place where Christ’s power rested upon him.

That is why Paul’s story doesn’t end merely with tolerating the thorn.

It ends with a radically different interpretation of it.

The thorn remained.

But its meaning had changed.

That may be one of the deepest works God ever accomplishes in suffering.

Sometimes He changes the circumstance.

Sometimes He explains the circumstance.

Sometimes He changes us while the circumstance remains.

Living With Mystery

So what do we do when pain comes and makes absolutely no sense?

Ask for relief. Paul did.

Listen for what God may be teaching you through it. Paul did that too.

Receive whatever understanding God gives you without pretending to possess understanding He hasn’t given.

And when the reason remains buried, do what Job 28 teaches us:

Fear God. Turn from evil. Keep walking.

Because the fact that God’s purposes are hidden does not mean they are absent.

The mine may be unfathomable.

But it is not empty.

Cowper’s “bright designs” may lie beyond our ability to excavate. Paul’s thorn may remain. The storm may continue longer than we ever imagined.

But we know something Paul did not know when he first begged God for relief:

Pain we cannot explain can still be pain God can use.

And sometimes, many years later, we may look backward and discover that while we were desperately trying to understand what God was doing around us,

God had been quietly doing something within us all along.

Take One Truth With You

If you could choose one truth in this article to carry with you the next time you find yourself under a “frowning providence,” which one would you most want to take, and why?

According to an online journal, in the early 20th century, a man named Frederick Lehman wrote the words to a hymn that is still sung today, called “The Love of God.” The first stanza begins:

“The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell, / It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.”

Encouraging words, to be sure. But just how far does the love of God go? How far can it reach? Does the Bible address this question?

For starters, I want to refer you to the flood story in the book of Genesis. If you grew up in church, you probably saw a picture of Noah on board a boat with a host of animals around him. There is something quaint about that depiction, but in reality, the flood story is one of horrific destruction. According to the Bible, mankind became exceedingly wicked, so wicked that violence filled the land, defiling the earth itself (Genesis 6:5, 11). This wickedness becamse so egregious and pervasive that God’s holiness and justice demanded His response. Though grieved to His heart by how far mankind had fallen (Genesis 6:6), He determined to destroy mankind, and “all flesh,” meaning that the animals and other creatures perished too—except for those on Noah’s ark (Genesis 6:12–13, 17, 19).

When judgment fell, it was horrific, and the destruction was beyond words. But after the flood, something significant happened: God made a covenant—not only with all people, but with “all flesh” (Genesis 9:11–17), so this even included animals. He promised that He would never destroy all flesh again by means of a flood. Then He gave a sign of His covenant—the rainbow.

Years ago, when I was reading the story of the flood in the King James Version of the Bible, I noticed that Genesis 9:13 quotes God as saying, “I set My bow in the cloud.” I remember thinking, “ ‘Bow?’ What’s with that? Most modern translations say ‘rainbow.’ But ‘bow?’ ” Years later, I learned that the Hebrew word means just that—“bow,” as in the kind that we use to shoot an arrow. In essence, God is saying, “I’m hanging My weapon up in the cloud. When you see it, remember that I will never do this again. My bow is in the cloud, not in My hand.”

Many of us can relate. Anyone who has raised a child knows what it is like to express some degree of parental wrath. But when the time for wrath has passed, our compassion returns and we seek to comfort our child, granting reassurance that, while parental wrath is sometimes very real, it is also temporary. What is not temporary is our love, and that is the very message God is communicating through His covenant. Every time we see a rainbow, we are reminded of the love behind that covenant.

A Love That Reaches Everyone

God has a unique love that is designed for those who are in covenant with Him. The Hebrew word for this kind of covenant love is hesed. You can only experience it if you are in covenant with Him. The covenant after the flood is unique, in that it includes everyone, but it is limited in its scope to the preservation of life.

Psalm 136:25 expands on this theme, informing us that preservation of life involves more than not sending another flood. This verse says to “[give thanks to Him] who gives food to all flesh, for His hesed is everlasting.” In His consistent covenant love, God not only restrains Himself from destroying us; He provides for us, and for all flesh.

So, who does God’s love reach? When it comes to basics like existence, everyone.

What Circumstances Are Affected by His Love?

So, when God made this covenant with all His creatures, He cast a wide net. But there is an added layer of covenant love available only to those who enter into a relational covenant with Him, embracing Him as their God exclusively.

King Jehoshaphat relied on this specific expression of covenant love when a host of armies was marching toward Jerusalem, the capital city of God’s people, who were in a relational covenant with Him. In response to this emergency, Jehoshaphat acted in bold faith. He sent a group of unarmed worshipers out in front of the army, proclaiming, in concert with Psalm 136: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His hesed is everlasting.” In the original language that the Old Testament was written in, the word everlasting is emphasized, giving us a strong clue that they were saying, “God’s love is good not only for His people in the past; it is good for us right now, in this very situation.” Miraculously, the invading armies were destroyed without God’s people having to fire one arrow.

So, what kind of situation does the love of God reach down to? To our worst nightmares. How long is His love good for? Forever.

What Kind of Sin is God’s Love Good For?

But it gets even better. Again, for those who have entered into a relational covenant with God, His hesed provides a place for them to run to—even when they sin. Psalm 51 records the prayer of David, as he pleads for mercy after He has committed both adultery and murder. In Psalm 51:1, we read, “Be gracious to me, O God!” But based on what? “ . . . according to Your hesed.”

We all mess up. We all go our own way. But people who are in a relational covenant with God have a refuge, a place where mercy can be found when it is so deeply needed. Unlike the covenant love that we read about after the flood, thishesed is a love that is reserved only for those who are in a relational covenant with God, so the only way to access it is to get into a relational covenant with Him.

So what kind of sin can be met by God’s love? The worst of our worst.

According to the online journal mentioned above, the last stanza of Lehman’s hymn was actually borrowed from a Jewish poet who lived nearly a thousand years ago, named Meir ben Isaac Nehoria. This stanza of the hymn is so profound that it bears repeating:

“Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made, / Were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, / To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, / Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”

What This Means for Us

In short, there is no time limit, there is no depth limit, there is no sin limit to the infinite reach of God’s love. So, what do we do in light of such measureless love? Psalm 136 and 2 Chronicles 20 agree: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His covenant love is everlasting!” We simply give thanks. And the New Testament adds one more response. In 1 John 4:16, the Bible says, “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.” The blessing is not complete until we believe—really believe—in His love, specifically for us.

I want to challenge you to take 30 seconds out of your schedule and give thanks. Take an on-the-spot vacation, and just for a few moments, revel in the love of God. Thank Him that it is everlasting, reaching through history, all the way to your life. Thank Him that His bow is hung in the clouds, that His love is good even when your worst fears materialize, even when you are looking at your own sin, shocked at what you yourself have done. His love is good for that.

Don’t try to earn it. Don’t try to bargain for it. Just give thanks. And believe!

What Landed?

Which truth about the reach of God’s love do you find most helpful: that it reaches into your circumstances, reaches beyond your failures, or simply never runs out? Why?

If there is one thing that characterizes our world today, it is change. We are feeling the tectonic plates shift beneath our feet so often that it is beginning to feel commonplace. As a result, we no longer know what to expect, so the temptation to worry is extremely strong.

Feeling anxious when life becomes uncertain is a natural human response. But worry can take us a step further. We begin rehearsing everything that might go wrong, giving our fears more and more room to grow.

We may not be able to prevent every anxious thought from entering our minds, but we don’t have to surrender to them.

We have other options.

The Battle for Our Minds

Jesus confronts our tendency to worry with a clear command. In Matthew 6, He repeatedly says, “Do not worry.” And in Matthew 13:22, Jesus teaches that worry chokes out the Word of God.

Picture these two forces in direct opposition. God’s Word speaks truth, while worry tempts us to believe what isn’t true. Both compete for our attention, influencing how we interpret our circumstances and what we believe about God.

But what is the lie?

Let’s return to Matthew 6. In verse 31, Jesus says, “Do not worry . . . saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear for clothing?’” Behind these questions lurks a troubling suspicion: God may not be up to meeting my basic needs.

And notice that worry looks toward the future. That’s why Jesus says, “Do not worry about tomorrow” (v. 34). Even if God has faithfully cared for us in the past, worry whispers that He may not come through tomorrow.

In other words, “God is going to drop the ball—and drop me with it.”

Now look at the bigger picture in Matthew 6. In verse 26, Jesus points to the birds and reminds us that our heavenly Father feeds them. In verse 32, He assures us that our Father knows what we need.

Put those two truths together. God is capable of providing for us, and He knows what we need. Now turn them upside down, and you have what I call The Grand Lie:

“God can’t help me, and besides, He doesn’t really care about me!”

There it is. The battle concerns God’s capability and His care. When worry takes over, we can begin living as though God is powerless or uninvolved—even when we know better. Our circumstances start speaking louder than His promises. Worry shrinks God—not in reality, but in the crucial battlefield of the mind. And what happens in our minds often shows up in our lives, whether we realize it or not. It is as if we are carrying around a sign saying, “My God is a puny God.”

But we don’t have to let worry dictate what we believe about God. We have alternatives.

Alternative One: Act

If there’s something you can actually do to improve the situation, by all means do it. Taking action can redirect your attention away from worry—and may well improve your circumstances.

Alternative Two: Seek God

One of my favorite Bible stories is found in 2 Chronicles 20. In the story found there, King Jehoshaphat hears that a huge confederacy of armies is approaching Jerusalem. His response? “He turned his attention to seek the LORD.” (v. 3) This means more than just a quick “help me” prayer. He sought God. Desperate situations call for drastic action, and Jehoshaphat called for a nationwide fast and gathered the people to seek God.

One of the reasons we get so anxious is because we haven’t shut everything else out in order to seek Him. It is a two-phase action: Shut everything else out, then seek Him. Don’t look anxiously about you. Don’t spend all your energy rehearsing your worries with others. You can leverage the entire process by taking that same energy and channeling it toward seeking God. Worriers are so close to having it right; they just need to redirect their energy. But it starts with a shift in focus.

Alternative Three: Look Around

If we’re not careful, we’ll miss a key strategy in countering worry that is found back in Matthew 6. Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air” (v. 26) and “Look at the lilies of the field” (v. 28). Since this was an outdoor sermon, He was probably pointing as He was speaking. Here is what He is saying: “God has placed evidence all around you that He is capable, and that He is caring. Open your eyes, look around, and see for yourself!”

In the narratives of the Bible, the word behold is often a key word. It usually moves the camera angle to something new, to a different vantage point. In many cases, it points to the activity or the provision of God. Example: In Exodus 16, God’s people are complaining about a lack of food, so He provides manna for them so that they can eat in the wilderness. In Exodus 16:14, we read, “when the layer of the dew evaporated, behold! On the surface of the desert there was a fine flake-like thing . . .” So what is happening here? This “behold” moment directs their attention away from their present hunger and toward God’s provision for that very hunger.

And this is just what we need when we are tempted to worry—a diversion, a “behold!” God has put reminders of His care all around you. Think of all the jams you were in before, and you’re still alive! Think of how faithful He has always been to meet your basic needs. How soon we forget. Take just two minutes to survey the scene around you. Lift up your eyes and behold!

Behold the Truth

Perhaps the most important thing to behold when we are worried is the Bible itself. Years ago, I heard a visiting pastor share a story that I will not soon forget. He was making a hospital call, visiting a woman who was frantic with worry before her surgery. He told her what the Bible said. No change in response. He reminded her of certain biblical principles. Still no change. Then he got his Bible out and actually began to read it. All that talk about the Bible had changed nothing, but when she actually heard the Bible, she completely settled down. She needed more than a diversion. She needed the truth.

That is the power of the truth, and it is only the truth that will counteract the lies about God’s capability and His care. If you are overcome with worries right now, pick up the Bible until the truth begins to push back against the lie. Give God’s Word room to redirect your thoughts toward His capability and His care.

Times like this will test us, but we have the truth close by, closer than we know. We don’t have to give in to worry. We don’t have to let lies run our lives.

We have options. Let’s use them.

Which Do You Need Most?

When you are tempted to worry, which of these three alternatives—acting, seeking God, or looking around for evidence of His faithfulness—do you most need to put into practice? Why?

2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is profitable. But not every Scripture profits everyone in the same measure. What greatly helps one person may not help another, but it is still profitable. Here is how this plays out: Sometimes a passage we’ve heard a hundred times leaves us struggling, while another passage suddenly opens our eyes to something we’ve been missing.

I learned this years ago. When I was in my twenties, a friend and I were discussing pornography. I mentioned Jesus’ teaching that lust amounts to adultery in the heart. Yet I confessed that, although I knew His words were true, they hadn’t helped me overcome temptation. My friend agreed.

I proceeded to tell him that I had discovered help—profit!—in an unexpected place. Ecclesiastes 1:8 says that the eye is never satisfied with seeing. That truth struck me: No matter how much I see, I will always want to see more. Pornography is a black hole that consumes without ever satisfying. Why go there?

I’ve discovered that a similar principle applies to unforgiveness. When someone struggles to forgive, we often turn to Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:23–35). It’s a powerful warning, but some people hear it and remain stuck. They desperately want to forgive, but for them, getting there all at once seems to be a bridge too far.

Here is what I want to offer: another way toward forgiveness.

I believe unforgiveness, like other sins, often rests on underlying lies. My goal here is to expose several of the lies that keep us holding on, counter them with biblical truth, and then see how Scripture shows us the way toward release.

Lie #1: I rule.

One of the main reasons we fail in this area is because we envision an ideal world where we are in total control of everything that concerns us. When someone wrongs us, they are getting in the way of our dominion, taking what is “ours” and messing up our ideal world.

We can avoid this trap by genuinely laying everything down before the fact and acknowledging the lordship of the only One who truly is King.

This involves stepping off our throne and humbly acknowledging that we are not the center of the universe. This helps us maintain our equilibrium when—not if—someone crosses over into “our” territory and kicks the props out from under us.

We are not lord.
We are not king.
He is.

Lie #2: I will keep what is mine forever.

We often struggle to forgive because someone has wrongfully taken something from us.

But consider the remarkable example of the believers described in Hebrews 10:34. They “accepted joyfully the seizure of [their] property,” knowing they possessed something better and lasting.

Notice: they weren’t merely resigned to their losses. They accepted them joyfully! Why? Because they trusted God’s promise of something far greater than what had been taken from them.

And consider another truth: Paul reminds us that we brought nothing into this world and can take nothing out of it (1 Timothy 6:7; see also Job 1:21; Ecclesiastes 5:15).

Almost everything we possess is something we will eventually have to release anyway. Our possessions, careers, and even reputations will one day be left behind.

Think of it this way: when someone wrongfully takes what belongs to us, we are experiencing a kind of dress rehearsal for the day when we must release everything.

So, here is an intermediate step toward forgiveness:

If we can release the debt—what someone has taken from us—we often find it easier to release the debtor.

Lie #3: I have to defend myself.

Jeremiah show us another intermediate step toward forgiveness: releasing our case.

In Jeremiah 11:20, the prophet prays:

“O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously,
Who tries the feelings and the heart,
Let me see Your vengeance on them,
For to You have I committed my cause.”

Notice three steps in Jeremiah’s prayer.

First, he asks God for justice. Forgiveness does not require us to abandon justice. If someone commits a crime against us, we can seek appropriate justice. For example, if someone breaks into our home and is apprehended, the police will likely ask whether we want to press charges. Many of us would answer yes. It is possible to say yes to both justice and forgiveness.

Second, Jeremiah openly expresses his anger. He doesn’t pretend that the wrongdoing was insignificant or that his feelings didn’t matter. As the psalmist demonstrates over and over, this is a legitimate expression when channeled through prayer.

But the most important part comes at the end:

“For to You have I committed my cause.”

Jeremiah hands his case over to God. The Hebrew word translated cause is rîb (pronounced “reeve”)—a legal term referring to a dispute or court case.

Forgiveness often becomes difficult because of conversations we never get to finish. Someone attacks us, and we cannot find the words to respond. Someone spreads a false rumor, and we never get the opportunity to set the record straight. We keep rehearsing what we wish we had said, or could have said if only we had been given the chance. We can entrust those unfinished disputes to the One who judges righteously.

Releasing our case is another significant step toward releasing the person.

Lie #4: My life is forever ruined.

Joseph takes us one step deeper. He teaches us to release our story.

Joseph had been deeply wronged by his brothers. He lost years of his life as a result of what they had done to him. Time is one of the most precious gifts God gives us, and when we are robbed of years, we have lost something that can never be replaced.

Joseph had every reason to look backward and say: “My brothers have wrecked my life.” But toward the end of his story, when his brothers feared that Joseph would finally retaliate, he said: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20) Notice that Joseph does not minimize what they did. He calls it evil. Forgiveness does not require us to paper over the harm done to us.

But Joseph learned that the evil intentions of other people do not constitute the final verdict on our lives. While his brothers had certainly written a terrible chapter, they did not get to write the ending. God did.

Over time, Joseph saw God take his suffering and fold it into a much larger plan to preserve multitudes of people—including the very brothers who had wronged him. But it took time.

And therein lies our problem: we judge God’s plan in the moment while His plan is still marinating. Forgiveness comes much more easily when we entrust our life-story to God, even before we get to see the bigger picture.

Lie #5: I can’t trust anyone.

Without a doubt, other people have and will let us down. When that happens repeatedly—and when the pain is especially sharp—we become jaded. The walls go up, and we jealously protect whatever we have left.

The biblical examples we’ve just considered are helpful. Now Jesus takes us deeper still. What did Jesus do when He suffered unjustly? First Peter 2:23 tells us that rather than retaliating or threatening His enemies, He “kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.”

Look carefully at the progression.

Jesus didn’t merely entrust His possessions, His arguments, or His life story to God. He entrusted His very self—His entire being—to the Father.

Earlier, Peter declares, “He who believes in Him will not be disappointed” (1 Peter 2:6). The Greek employs an emphatic negative construction in this verse, meaning that those who trust Him will not, will not, ultimately be put to shame.

Other people may prove unworthy of our trust. God will not. So take the trust that has been misplaced, violated, or abused and place it in the One who is worthy of it.

And now we can see the thread running through all four passages: trust.

Forgiveness becomes more attainable as we transfer our trust away from our own ability to retain our possessions, secure justice, repair our story, and protect ourselves—and place that trust in God.

Letting Go Isn’t Enough

We are often advised to “just let it go.” But Scripture isn’t asking us to drop something into empty space. We’re releasing it to Someone. This is a major distinction. Biblical release is not simply letting go. It is handing over into the care of Another—a significant Other. And that may explain why some of us have struggled so long to forgive.

We’ve been trying to let go when what we really needed to do was hand over.

And now the progression comes into focus. After we acknowledge that He is King and we are not, we:

· Release the debt — Hebrews 10:34. We can surrender what was taken because we trust God’s promise of something better and lasting.

· Release the case — Jeremiah. God can judge this.

· Release the story — Joseph. The person who hurt us does not control how our lives turn out.

· Release yourself — Jesus. We can entrust our entire selves to the Father.

Then, then we release the person.

If you can’t remember all of this, the idea behind these interim steps is to acknowledge His rule and to commit all that you are and have to Him. The guiding principles are humility and trust.

Where Did You Find Treasure?

We began with the reminder that all Scripture is profitable, though different passages may profit us in different measures. Psalm 119:162 captures the joy of discovering a truth we desperately needed: “I rejoice at Your word, as one who finds great spoil.” Sometimes the treasure has been there all along. We simply hadn’t recognized its value.

Did something in this article give you an “aha!” moment? Perhaps a passage of Scripture suddenly became clearer, or you discovered another way to approach forgiveness.

I’d love to hear what you discovered. Share your treasure in the comments. Your discovery may help someone else find theirs.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all done stupid things—really stupid things. So, what do we do after we realize what we’ve done? Ask God for forgiveness, believe we are forgiven, and move on? Often, no. We beat ourselves up. Over and over . . . and believing Christians are among the worst at this. The hardest things for us to get over are the things we have done that hurt others, particularly when we cannot undo the damage.

For many of us, guilt becomes a frequent visitor. We’re minding our own business when guilt personified—the G-Monster—opens the door and invites himself in. Does he abuse us? Of course not. Why should he, when he knows we’ll willingly beat ourselves up?

All he does is remind us. “Have a seat,” he says. “We’ll watch this video I brought.” And there we are, watching ourselves do something stupid—again. Then, much to his delight, we begin to speak: “What kind of a father or mother would . . . ?” “And you call yourself a Christian? Look at what you’ve done!”

The G-Monster laughs hysterically while we lay into ourselves. Eventually, he leaves, promising to return with more videos.

Now, two questions:

· Is God glorified when we treat ourselves this way?

· Are the people we’ve hurt helped by this?

No doubt, guilt can serve a valuable purpose. When we’ve sinned, we need to acknowledge it, seek forgiveness, and make things right wherever possible. But there’s a world of difference between repenting of our sin and continually punishing ourselves for it. The first moves us toward God. The second keeps us trapped in the past.

It’s time we put the torch to the G-Monster’s hideous game. But how?

Countering the G-Monster with Faith

First, if you haven’t asked God for forgiveness, do so. But forgiveness can be tricky. Sometimes we struggle to believe He can forgive what we’ve done. If that’s where you find yourself, let me share a story that rocked my world.

After the Iron Curtain fell, a visiting missionary entered a bar in the former Soviet Union and shared the Good News of God’s forgiveness with a man sitting there. “God could never forgive me,” the man replied. “What have you done?” the visitor asked.

The man began relating his story: “I was a Russian Orthodox priest. When the Communists took over, they forced me to tell my parishioners that everything I’d taught them was a lie—that the Bible was a bunch of fairy tales. I did as I was told. God could never forgive me.”

The visitor replied, “Remember what you used to have people say every Sunday. You had them repeat the Creed: ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins.’ Now you must decide whether you really believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

The missionary later recalled leaving the man staring at his drink, repeating: “I believe in the forgiveness of sins. I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” It’s one thing to believe God forgives sins. It’s another to believe He has forgiven mine.

And that’s where faith comes in.

When the G-Monster returns with his videos, remember Paul’s instruction to take up the shield of faith, extinguishing the flaming arrows of the evil one (Ephesians 6:16). We don’t have to sit through another showing. Why? Because “I believe in the forgiveness of sins!”

What to Say to Our Accusing Conscience

But there’s another enemy: our own conscience. Sometimes it joins forces with the G-Monster.

In Nehemiah 8, God’s people hear Ezra read the Law and recognize how badly they’ve failed Yahweh. Their disobedience has been serious and sustained. They listen and they weep. But the
Levites interrupt their grieving, saying, “Be still, for the day is holy; do not be grieved!” (Nehemiah 8:11, NASB) The Hebrew word translated “Be still” carries the force of “Hush! Be quiet!”

Their sins haven’t become less serious. But they’ve heard God’s Word and responded with sorrow. Now, on this holy day, they’re instructed to rejoice rather than continue mourning.

There’s a lesson here. There comes a point when sorrow over our sin has served its purpose. We’ve acknowledged our wrongdoing, humbled ourselves, and done what we can to make things right. God does not require us to keep punishing ourselves for sins we have stopped defending. In fact, He calls us to rejoice in our freedom!

Yet our consciences sometimes continue replaying the accusations. When that happens, it’s time to speak:

Hush!
Be quiet!
I believe in the forgiveness of sins!

Continuing to condemn ourselves is not repentance. It is refusing to live in the grace God has already given us.

When It Comes to Others, Watch for Traps

We’ve dealt with our relationship with God. But what about people we’ve hurt?

We have another responsibility: pursuing restoration wherever possible. But there are traps along the way.

Trap #1: Hopelessness

The G-Monster would love nothing more than for us to believe that the damage we’ve caused is irreversible. But consider Mary Magdalene. Jesus delivered her from seven demons (Luke 8:2). We are not told what led to her condition, but we know she became one of His devoted followers. Significantly, she was among the first to witness His resurrection (John 20). It is almost as though Jesus made a special point to see her, even saying her name, “Mary,” to which she replied, “Rabboni—my teacher!”

Those who work with deeply wounded people often observe that severe forms of bondage and dysfunction are frequently associated with profound wounds suffered early in life. While we cannot assume that this explains Mary’s condition, we do know what Jesus accomplished for her. Instead of surrendering to hopelessness, we can have confidence in His power to heal and restore. We can:

· Pray for healing.

· Pray for freedom.

· Pray for restoration.

· Above all, pray that they will love Jesus deeply.

That was Mary’s experience. Whatever else we may ask God to do, this is our greatest request for those we have harmed: that their hearts will be knit to His, that they will know Him, love Him, and follow Him. This is the ultimate victory.

But there’s another trap hidden inside hopelessness. It affects our prayers. Sometimes our prayers for those we’ve hurt are so filled with remorse that there’s hardly room for faith. We rehearse the damage, grieve over what cannot be undone, and finish praying more discouraged than when we began.

The reflex of pain is understandable. Wince if you must. But don’t stay there! Lift your eyes from what you’ve done to what God can do. Declare confidently:“I believe in Your ability to restore!”

This is where our shield comes in. It is the shield of faith, not the shield of remorse!

Trap #2: Distance

When we hurt people, they sometimes withdraw, and understandably so. When this happens our biblical strategy is simple: Reach out in humility. Where appropriate, seek an opportunity to acknowledge what you’ve done. Don’t minimize it, defend yourself, or shift responsibility. Words like “wrong,” “sin,” “no excuse,” and “all I know to do is ask you to forgive me” go a long way toward mending relational wounds.

But humility is more than words. It’s our posture toward the person we’ve hurt.

And here is an important caution: An apology is not a demand for reconciliation. The other person may need time or choose to maintain distance. Sometimes restoring the relationship may not be wise or possible.

Our responsibility is to own our wrongdoing, make appropriate amends, respect their response, and entrust the outcome to God.

Trap #3: Expectations

We often expect God to restore relationships and circumstances to exactly what they were before. But perhaps we’re confusing two things God does: restoration and redemption. Consider how often Jesus restored people. He restored sight, mobility, health, and dignity.

But situations are another matter. God doesn’t always put circumstances back the way they were. Instead, He often redeems them, bringing good out of something painful, even sinful.

So, here’s the distinction we need to grasp: God can restore people without restoring the relationship to what it once was.

Consider the Bible’s larger story. Humanity begins in a garden. Sin enters, and Adam and Eve are driven out. But in Revelation, the tree of life reappears and God dwells with His people. Yet the setting is no longer simply a garden. It’s a city!

God’s ultimate work of restoration is not merely a return to what once was.

Even Jesus’ disciples had to expand their expectations. In Acts 1:6, they asked whether Jesus was about to restore the kingdom to Israel. But Jesus redirected their attention toward a mission extending to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:7–8).

They were thinking about restoration. Jesus was directing them toward something much larger.

And that’s our challenge. We may be looking for God to restore what once was, while He’s preparing to accomplish something we haven’t even imagined.

Instead of demanding a reset, we ask God for redemption.

Take Faith to the Next Level

Think about your own life. Haven’t there been times when God used someone else’s mistakes—even their sins—to accomplish something good in you? Joseph certainly understood this. Looking back on his brothers’ betrayal, he told them, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

Now turn that principle around.

If God can use the sins of others for our good, why couldn’t He use even our own sins for the good of those we’ve hurt? We’re not excusing our wrongdoing. In fact, we’ve already acknowledged it and done what we can to make things right. But now we can boldly ask God to take the very damage we’ve caused and, through His astonishing grace, bring good out of it.

So let’s dare to ask Him to bring good out of it—even to use the experience for the ultimate good of those we’ve hurt. That is faith!

In the End

Will God restore every broken relationship? No. Will we always see how He redeems the damage we’ve caused? Not necessarily. But we can refuse to let our failures define the limits of His grace.

The G-Monster will undoubtedly come knocking again, videos in hand. But this time, we have something to say, and we’ve expanded our vocabulary!

I believe in the forgiveness of sins!
I believe in God’s ability to restore!
I believe in God’s ability to redeem!

So lift up your head! There is a way forward, even if there is no way back. People who are convinced they have been forgiven are the best advertisement for the Kingdom.

It’s time we took grace as seriously as we take sin.

Talk it Out

These are the kinds of truths that set people free (John 8:32). If this is your story, I sincerely ask—please, please, share your victory with us. Often, one line stands out as being particularly liberating. Without identifying your mistake or sin, tell us which line seemed to jump off the page. You will doubtlessly encourage the rest of us!

Many people encourage us to dream big, to follow our dreams. You will see challenges like this on social media, hear them at graduation ceremonies, and even encounter them in sermons.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having a dream. Dreams can inspire us to work harder, attempt difficult things, and imagine possibilities we might otherwise overlook. Many remarkable accomplishments began with somebody saying, “I would love to do that someday.”

But for the person of faith, there is a higher question than What do I dream of doing? It is:

What is God calling me to do?

Those two questions may lead to exactly the same place. But they may not.

And sometimes the most difficult plans to surrender are not selfish ones. They are the good ones—the things we sincerely want to do for God.

When a Good Dream Isn’t God’s Assignment

David discovered this.

By 2 Samuel 7, David had become king, his enemies had been subdued, and he was living in a house of cedar. Then something began bothering him. He said to Nathan the prophet: “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains” (2 Samuel 7:2).

David wanted to build a temple for Yahweh. What could possibly be wrong with that? This wasn’t a plan to enlarge his palace or make himself famous. He wanted to honor God. Even Nathan thought it was a good idea: “Go, do all that is in your mind, for the LORD is with you” (7:3).

Look at everything David had going for him. His desire was noble. It centered on God. He had the resources to pursue it. And a respected spiritual adviser told him to move forward.

Then God said no.

David’s experience tells us something we desperately need to understand about discerning God’s direction:

Sometimes the question isn’t whether our dream is good.
The question is whether it is ours to do.

God had something else in mind. David wanted to build a house for God. Instead, God announced that He would build a “house” for David—a dynasty through which His purposes would extend far beyond anything David could accomplish by constructing a building.

David had correctly perceived that God was doing something significant. What he had misunderstood was his role in it.

Sometimes we really are seeing God at work. The harder question is whether we have correctly understood the part He has assigned to us.

How Do We Know?

That raises an obvious problem. How do we distinguish God’s direction from our own ambition?

A good opportunity isn’t enough. David had one. An open door isn’t enough. David possessed the means to do what he envisioned. Even affirmation from godly people isn’t enough. Nathan initially told David to proceed.

Contrary to what many of us have been taught about discerning God’s will, these circumstances, by themselves, do not carry the authority to tell us what God wants.

For more discussion on this topic, see the article Information Is Not King. Revelation Is King. Several principles from that discussion are essential here.

First, we begin with what God has already revealed. Before asking whether God is calling us to pursue something, we should ask whether Scripture weighs in on it in some way. What biblical priorities govern it? What motives are operating in us? Does the direction reflect God’s character and purposes? What kind of person would pursuing it require us to become?

Second, we submit both the plan and ourselves to God.

We aren’t really seeking God’s direction if the only answer we are willing to receive is yes. We can pray, search Scripture, seek wise counsel, watch circumstances, and pay attention to how God may be working around us. But all of that must occur with open hands.

We are not asking, “God, will You help me accomplish this?”
We are asking, “God, is this what You want me to do?”

Understood within that question is the willing response, “If this is not what You want, I’ll lay it down now.”

We must hold our plans loosely before the God who sees what we cannot.

When God Changes the Form

David’s story becomes even more instructive when we keep reading.

God’s refusal did not mean David’s desire to honor Him was worthless. David simply wasn’t the one who would build the temple. That assignment would eventually belong to Solomon.

Notice David’s selfless response. He didn’t respond by saying, “If I can’t build it, then I want nothing to do with it.” Instead, he became deeply involved in preparing for what somebody else would accomplish. He gathered materials, made preparations, and charged Solomon with completing the work (1 Chronicles 22; 28–29).

David’s dream wasn’t destroyed as much as it was redirected.

That leads us to another important question:

If God says no to the form I envisioned, am I still willing to serve His purpose?

Perhaps I envisioned leading the ministry, but God wants me to strengthen the person who will lead it. Perhaps the purpose really did come from God, but I misunderstood my role, the timing, or the form it would take.

If I lose interest as soon as God changes my part, I may discover that I was more attached to my dream than I was to His purpose.

Our Dreams Often Bear the Marks of Myopia

There is another danger here. We can begin thinking of God’s will primarily in negative terms, as though our dreams are expansive while God spends His time shrinking them. As it turns out, the exact opposite may be the truth.

Just before Jesus ascended, the disciples asked Him, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Their expectation wasn’t entirely wrong, but their conception of what God was about to do was far too small. Jesus answered:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (1:8).

They were thinking about Israel. Jesus was thinking about the nations. God’s refusal to conform to our plans does not mean we serve a divine killjoy. His vision simply transcends ours.

Sometimes His “no” protects us from something foolish or corrects an ambition that was never His. But sometimes we are simply looking at one small piece while God sees the whole.

Discerning the Direction

A dream begins with what we want to accomplish. A vision begins by asking what God is doing and where we fit within His purposes.

Henry Blackaby famously encouraged believers to find where God is working and join Him. There is wisdom in that, provided we remember what David teaches us: seeing God at work does not automatically tell us what our role should be.

So we watch. We listen. We search Scripture. We seek counsel from trusted friends who may detect blind spots.

One caution here is especially important: We watch circumstances without treating every open door as God’s endorsement or every closed door as His prohibition. And throughout the process, we remain willing to be redirected.

The objective is not to assemble enough evidence to persuade ourselves that God agrees with us. The objective is to become so completely surrendered that He can change our direction at any time, at any point in the process.

Paul was already carrying out God’s mission when God repeatedly redirected where he would go next (Acts 16:6–10). Philip was in the middle of a remarkably successful ministry when God sent him away from the crowds to a desert road (Acts 8:26–27). Neither man treated yesterday’s direction—or even today’s success—as a guarantee of tomorrow’s assignment. They remained redirectable.

Trusting Him With the Path

Perhaps the best Scripture to carry with us when considering a major plan is Proverbs 3:5–6. I’ll present it literally from the Hebrew, with emphasis included:

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He Himself will make your paths straight.”

Read the passage carefully and an important contrast emerges. We are told not to lean on our own understanding, but that does not mean we stop thinking or planning. It means that our understanding does not have the final word.

Instead, “in all your ways acknowledge Him.” The Hebrew word translated “acknowledge” is yadaʿ, literally “know,” but the word carries an important nuance here. In the language of ancient treaties, conquered peoples were expected to “know” their new overlord—to recognize his sovereignty and acknowledge his prerogative to rule. We see something similar when Yahweh repeatedly declares in Ezekiel, “You shall know that I am Yahweh.” This is far more than intellectual recognition. It is the acknowledgment of lordship.

Read that sense back into Proverbs 3 and the familiar passage becomes considerably more demanding: In every path you contemplate, recognize God’s right to determine where that path goes. We relinquish our own understanding as sovereign and acknowledge His sovereignty instead. And then comes the remarkable promise: He Himself will make our paths straight.

Our responsibility is not to determine the path and ask God to bless it. Our responsibility is to yield the path to Him. His prerogative is to direct it.

Before You Call It a Vision

So the next time someone encourages you to “follow your dream,” go one step farther. Ask yourself:

1. Is this plan emerging primarily from what I want, or from what I understand God to be doing and saying?

2. Does Scripture support its direction—and the kind of person pursuing it would require me to become?

3. Have I listened to wise believers without treating their approval as God’s final word?

4. Am I willing to let God change the timing, my role, or the form of what I envision?

5. If God says no to the form I envisioned, am I still willing to serve His purpose?

That last question may be the most revealing one.

Ultimately, the difference between a dream and a vision isn’t merely how large the idea is, how noble it sounds, or even how much good it might accomplish.

It is a question of whose plan we have decided to follow.

Seek God.
Listen carefully.
Hold the plan with open hands.
Then move forward as He makes the path clear.

And if He changes the path, don’t automatically assume that you’ve lost the vision.

You may finally be finding it.

It Doesn’t Stop Here . . .
Sometimes an article like this will jar our thought processes, bringing thoughts onto our front screen that we would not have otherwise considered. Tell us about the thoughts that are circulating in your head right now . . . .

We live in an age where everyone is speaking and almost no one is listening. The volume of our world keeps rising, but the level of wisdom does not. For believers, this is an ominous signal: a life without listening will always be a life without transformation. The Christian tradition has long insisted that wisdom begins not with activity but with attentiveness—an ancient truth we urgently need to recover.

Some of the most prominent Christian voices in the last century insist that the life
of wisdom begins with listening. Dallas Willard taught that hearing God is the
normal Christian life. Henri Nouwen believed silence is where God reveals reality. A.W. Tozer warned that noise is the enemy of clarity. These prophetic voices from different traditions all testify: wisdom begins when we stop talking long enough to hear God.

Lady Wisdom Calls

Proverbs 8 gives us the biblical picture behind this truth. In this chapter, God’s wisdom is personified at Lady Wisdom. She stands at the crossroads, raising her voice at the city gates, calling out to those making decisions that shape their lives. Her message is aimed at one group: “To you, O naïve ones, I call.”

The fact that Wisdom is featured as a woman is striking. Why does the text present her this way? Likely for several reasons.

First, wisdom is a feminine noun in the Hebrew language. But this is only the most obvious and straightforward answer.

A second reason that wisdom is personified as a woman has to do with the culture of the day. It would have been highly unusual for a woman to be seen crying out in public during biblical times. But the Bible was strikingly countercultural for its day. The resultant message: God’s wisdom will often come to us in ways we would least expect, through people we would not have guessed, or through the most unlikely of circumstances.

A third reason can be found if we keep in mind that, in Proverbs 8, Solomon is writing to his son. Behavioral research—such as that compiled in Catalyst Research Reports on Workplace Influence—shows that when individuals—particularly men—are navigating complex decisions, the perspective and counsel of an influential woman can act as a vital counter-balance, expanding problem-solving capability. While Solomon would not have known formal data like this, he would have known it to be true through observation: Often, men at the point of decision will be positively influenced by a woman.

So, Solomon’s son stands to benefit if he will set aside cultural norms and heed her advice.

Listening Precedes Blessing

Lady Wisdom promises, “Blessed is the man who listens to me” (Prov 8:34). Blessing
does not come to those who merely hear her call—it comes to those who pause, who give her their attention, who ponder her words.

Solomon understood this. When God invited him to ask for anything, Solomon asked for one thing: a listening heart (1 Kings 3:9). Most English translations render the literal Hebrew as “wisdom” or “discernment.” These translations are not far off the mark, for discernment begins with listening—truly listening.

It is not coincidental that, after the narrative relating Solomon’s request, the following passage finds Solomon in an apparently no-win situation. Two women come to him with a live baby, each claiming that the live baby is hers, while the dead baby belongs to the other. Solomon immediately orders that the live baby be cut in half and divided among the women. One of them shrieks, “No! Do not harm the child!” and Solomon judges, “Give the baby to her. This is the real mother.” The whole nation is agog. How did he know what to say right away? Solomon had asked for a listening heart, and now, when he desperately needed wisdom, God supplied it. Listening had preceded blessing.

Listening Precedes Discovery

One reason we need to listen is that we cannot always see ourselves clearly. We are remarkably good at recognizing individual events while missing the patterns that connect them. Listening opens the door to discovery—to seeing something about ourselves or our circumstances that we have not seen before. This is why the psalmist prays:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there is any hurtful way in me” (Psalm 139:23–24).

Notice the progression: heart, thoughts, ways. The psalmist is inviting God to examine not merely isolated actions but the recurring ways of his life. Discovery begins when we invite God to show us what we may have missed in regard to these recurring patterns.

Suppose that, as you are listening, you become aware of patterns, such as:

• Relational distance: “People don’t seem to warm to me.”

• Financial strain: “I’m always short on money.”

• Time scarcity: “I never have enough time.”

Our natural response is to explain each occurrence individually. That person was unfriendly. This month had unusual expenses. This week was unusually busy. And sometimes those explanations are entirely legitimate.

But when the same storyline keeps appearing, wisdom asks a different question:

“Lord, is there something here I am not seeing?”

Now we are listening.

Perhaps nothing needs correction. But perhaps God begins to expose a habit, an assumption, an attitude, or a decision that we have never recognized. Sometimes the most important discoveries are the ones we would never have made on our own, and listening invites God into those spaces where that discovery is most needed.

Samuel gives us the posture required: “Speak, for Your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10). Here is the part of this story that is often overlooked: What Samuel subsequently heard was not pleasant. God gave him a message of judgment. Listening therefore requires openness to hearing not merely what we want to hear, but what we need to hear.

Put simply, it comes down to this:

Patterns give us something to examine.
Listening gives God room to show us what we have missed.
This is the doorway to discovery.

Listening Precedes Obedience

2 Chronicles 20 gives us a vivid picture of listening in motion. Here, King Jehoshaphat finds himself in a crisis. This passage has much to offer, but our emphasis here draws us especially to two actions that serve as a blueprint for us. After calling the nation together to seek God, the king leads the people in a critical exercise—waiting before God. After he prays, the text tells us in verse 13 that “All Judah was standing before the LORD, with their infants, their wives, and their children.” This is the all-important pregnant pause. It is here that we confront the stark reality:

We’re not hearing because we’re not waiting.

Wisdom’s blessing is reserved for those who listen, who watch, and who wait (Proverbs 8:34). So we must take time, make time to do nothing but wait. Waiting puts us in the posture to hear.

But once we hear, the challenge shifts to obedience. In this text, God calls his people to march into a battle they cannot win unless He intervenes. While wisdom is often thought of as something that is internalized, it inevitably leads to action. What we see lived out in 2 Chronicles 20 is radical, God-centered obedience. You won’t get this kind of direction from a self-help guru. AI cannot generate this. Only those who wait long enough to hear step out with this kind of boldness and confidence.

What Listening Looks Like

Remember that Wisdom often speaks in ways we might not expect, or even be looking for. If we have ears to hear, we will notice that she often speaks through:

· Gentle hints from acquaintances

· Direct talk from close friends

· Scripture addressing our patterns

I have found that, when I take any of these sources of input to God, lay them out before Him, and say, “Here is what I’m hearing; what do I really need to hear in all of this?”, then wait, He often reveals something to me I need to know. This is especially true when all or even some of the channels listed above begin to align.

This kind of alignment is the moment Lady Wisdom stops being a concept and becomes a voice.

The more time you spend listening, the more your life comes into alignment.

Here are some more practical ways you can infuse listening into your life:

• Read a short passage slowly, asking, “What am I not seeing?”

• Sit silently for five minutes after prayer rather than immediately moving on.

• Lay one specific decision before God, instead of trying to “hear” about everything.

• Ask a trusted believer, “Is there something about this situation I’m missing?”

• Review recurring patterns in your life—the very “ways” we discussed from Psalm 139.

• Write the options down and ask what Scripture clearly rules in or rules out.

• Wait when necessary. Refuse to manufacture certainty merely because you want an answer now.

Carry it With You

It gets better. When we set aside time to listen, eventually we learn to listen all the time. If we habitually make room to listen to God, that posture begins to follow us into the rest of the day. When we hit a jam, when we need help beyond our own ability, we learn to pause reflexively and wait for God to light the way.

The same principle can carry into our relationships and responsibilities. When leading a meeting, for example, we might say, “Let’s hit the pause button. I want you to speak freely. Is there any angle on this strategy that we’re missing?” We are learning not to rush past what we may not yet see.

We see something like this in Solomon. He had asked God for a listening heart. Then two women suddenly appeared before him with an impossible dispute. There was no time to retreat for a day of prayer. The listening heart he had cultivated was now available when he needed it.

Proverbs 2:7 helps illuminate this dynamic. There we read that God “stores up sound wisdom for the upright.” The Hebrew word translated “sound wisdom,” tushiyyah, describes clear, effective wisdom for determining what to do, particularly in situations of difficulty or crisis. It is the kind of on-the-spot wisdom we need when the answer is not obvious.

Put Proverbs 8 together with Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 3, and a principle emerges: The pauses we practice intentionally can become the posture we carry instinctively. In short:

We learn to wait when we have time so that we know how to listen when we don’t.

Are We Listening?

In the end, everything comes down to whether we will actually make space for Wisdom. Recall that Wisdom wants us at her gates daily—as a settled habit of the heart. Lingering is intentional. It requires slowing down when the world demands speed, yielding when our instincts cry out for control. But this is the crossroads: either we become people who make room for Wisdom every day, or we become people carried along by impulse, noise, and aimless drift.

Our society is already filled with people walking around with no direction. Our culture—including Christian culture—is replete with people who are talking without having listened first, who are acting without any pattern or instruction to guide them. The blind are quite literally leading the blind.

But we can make a choice to live differently. The world needs different people. In truth, the world can only be changed by people living differently, waiting, hearing, and living in radical obedience.

Wisdom is calling above the noise.

Only those who are attentive to God’s voice, who linger before Him, and who respond to His leading will be transformed and then become transformative agents in a mundane, aimless world.

Wait. Hear. Obey. Then watch while God takes it from there.

Your Story Counts!

Please share a time when you decided on a “pregnant pause” before launching forward, and it made a significant difference. Or share how listening at the beginning of the day helped you hear Wisdom’s voice later in the middle of your day.

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There is a worship song that came out some time ago that says that Jesus changes everything. But let’s be honest. Sometimes God leaves our circumstances exactly as they are. Things stay the same, week after week, and even year after year. If nothing changes in spite of your best intentions, you may be in a wilderness.

But here’s the important thing to know about a wilderness: God has put you there for a reason, and more, He has kept you there for a reason. But many times, our first instinct is to get out—the sooner the better. But if we expand our attention past the point of our immediate desire for relief, we may discover something far more valuable: what God intends to accomplish while we’re there.

Psalm 95 recounts part of Israel’s history, and it offers a sobering insight. In verses 9–10 of that psalm, God says of Israel, “they tried Me, though they had seen My work . . . They are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways.” So, even though they had seen His work, they did not understand His ways.

Think about it: If we must walk through a wilderness anyway, wouldn’t it be better to understand what God may be wanting to accomplish there—to understand His ways—and avoid Israel’s mistake?

God Has an Eye For . . .

Deuteronomy 8:2–3 gives us some insight into God’s wilderness design: “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness . . . , that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart . . . . He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, . . . that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.”

There is a lot in this passage that tells us about God’s ways, about His reason for leading us into the wilderness. In particular, we will notice at least three purposes behind Israel’s wilderness experience that will give us insight into how God works in difficult seasons.

Humility

One of God’s purposes was to humble His people. The wilderness stripped away their familiar sources of security and exposed their dependence on Him. At this point in history, Egypt was a land of abundant resources. Egyptologists tell us that Egypt was a land of extraordinary agricultural resources, sustained by the annual flooding of the Nile. People lived in a world of established resources. Food, water, and healthcare were freely available to everyone—even slaves.

Once Israel transitioned from slavery through a glorious deliverance into the wilderness, they suddenly found themselves in a completely different world—one in which they had to depend on God for literally everything.

Our wilderness experiences often have the same effect on us. A job loss, a sudden illness, a drastic change in our stock portfolio can instantly change our world. When circumstances remind us of our limitations, we can either resist the lesson or determine to humble ourselves before God, acknowledging our weaknesses, our sins, and our deep need for Him.

The wilderness can become a place where we stop relying on ourselves and humbly learn to depend more fully on God.

Testing

God also led Israel through the wilderness to test them, revealing what was in their hearts. Deprivation was part of that testing. God allowed His people to experience hunger, exposing how they would respond when their needs were not immediately met. God says in the passage above that He let His people experience hunger. So it was no accident. This was intentional. God was testing His people in the wilderness, revealing what was in their hearts (compare 2 Chronicles 32:31).

Sometimes we pass the test, and sometimes we fail. But even when we fail, if we recognize what is in our hearts, this leads to brokenness and humility which, as we just mentioned, is the first of God’s main purposes for the wilderness experience. So either way, God’s purposes can be served in the testing process.

The important thing in a time of testing is to respond to what God shows us about our hearts.

Teaching

Interestingly, God didn’t merely allow Israel to become hungry. He met their need in a miraculous, remarkable way, raining food for them from heaven. Why? Because God had a deeper purpose in mind: To teach them.

But the lesson went beyond learning that God was their provider. Moses explained that God allowed them to hunger and then fed them with manna “that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Consider this: Manna would not have fallen if God had not commanded it to. Ultimately, it was not the manna itself that sustained God’s people in the wilderness, but the Word of God that caused it to fall.

And here’s the remarkable thing: They had to experience hunger to learn that lesson. There are lessons we simply cannot learn in our normal experience. Some truths only become clear through experiences we never would have chosen.

So while we’re in the wilderness, we should be asking not only, “Lord, when will this end?” but, “Lord, what do You want to teach me while I’m here?”

A Divine Warning

While God may use the wilderness to test us, there is something we must be careful not to do: test Him!

What does it mean to test God? It is not simply asking questions or crying out to Him in distress. Rather, it is putting His faithfulness on trial, demanding that He prove Himself according to our expectations.

Consider Israel’s response when they became thirsty in the wilderness. After witnessing God’s extraordinary deliverance from Egypt, they tested Him by asking, “Is the LORD among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7).

Think about that! God had delivered them from Pharaoh’s army, parted the sea, and led them safely through. Yet their immediate need became the basis for questioning whether He was even with them.

They allowed their present circumstances to eclipse the evidence of God’s past faithfulness.

We face the same danger. When our wilderness becomes prolonged or painful, we may begin judging God’s faithfulness by whether He changes our circumstances. We willfully ignore His works and drill down on our present need in an attitude of self-absorbed doubt. This is what the wilderness can do to us if we let it.

Here is a key distinction to make: There is a crucial difference between honestly bringing our situation and its attendant pain before God, and demanding that He prove Himself on our terms.
So, while God often tests our faith in the wilderness, we must not put His faithfulness on trial.

Our Task: To Focus on . . .

So, how do we avoid Israel’s mistake? What can we do when our circumstances remain unchanged and we are tempted to question God’s faithfulness?

Scripture directs our attention in three directions: backward, inward, and forward.

Past Victories

We get some direction from Psalm 106:7. This verse ties Israel’s wilderness rebellion directly to the fact that “they did not remember Your abundant kindnesses.” Reframing this truth in a positive way, when we are in the middle of a wilderness experience and we deliberately focus on the times when He did step into a previous crisis, this changes our trajectory. But we must consciously choose to do this, or we will default to our rebellious thought patterns.

Here’s a practical exercise: If you’re in a wilderness now, do yourself a favor. Break away from this article and, for five minutes, make a list of all the times you have seen God show up—when He provided for you, guided you, sustained you, or brought you through circumstances you couldn’t resolve yourself. Then confess to Him that you believe you will see His faithfulness displayed once again. When we deliberately remember His past faithfulness, it strengthens our courage and stirs our gratitude toward Him. And a grateful heart is pleasing to God (Psalm 50:23).

Remembering yesterday’s faithfulness can strengthen today’s faith.

Present Consolations

But we don’t have to live entirely on memories. One of my favorite Old Testament verses is Psalm 94:19, which says, “When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul.” Notice that he is not denying the reality of his anxious thoughts. Even so, something else had captured his attention: God’s consolations.

Even in the wilderness, God provides reminders of His care. They may come through Scripture, the encouragement of a friend, an unexpected provision, or a fresh awareness of His presence. The challenge is that our difficulties can become so consuming that we overlook these gifts.

When we deliberately shift our thoughts from our anxious thoughts to the many consolations God has given us, it is amazing how quickly our anxieties shrink down to size.

So ask yourself: Where am I seeing God’s kindness today, even though my larger circumstances haven’t changed?

Future Hope

There is one more direction we need to place our focus on—forward.

The wilderness is not the whole story. Scripture repeatedly directs God’s people toward what lies beyond their present suffering. Two promises deserve our attention.

The Promise of Reward

Thankfully, Scriptre assures us that there is a reward for those who endure well. James 1:12 speaks directly to the matter of testing: “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

Notice that James connects perseverance under trial with God’s promised reward. The promise is as real as the testing. Faithful endurance matters to God, and He does not overlook it.

That doesn’t mean every test will end in material prosperity or an immediate change in circumstances. Some wilderness experiences may leave lasting scars, and some rewards await us beyond this life. But Scripture assures us that our perseverance is never wasted.

God doesn’t merely call us to endure testing. He promises to reward those who persevere in faith.

The Anticipation of Rest

In Psalm 95:11, we learn that, because of Israel’s choice to test God and not believe in Him, He made it clear that they would not enter into His rest. But again, if we flip that statement around, we discover a very encouraging truth: God’s intention is to lead us through the wilderness in order to give us a place of rest—often within this life, but ultimately in the life to come.

In line with this, Hebrews 4:11 says, “Let us be diligent to enter that rest.” This calls for intentionality on our part. If we really believe that there is a reward and a rest for us, our hope will engender courage in our hearts and will advance our faith, which will renew our resolve to faithfully continue our trek through the wilderness to the end.

And there is an end. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the wilderness is permanent. It is not. Every wilderness has a beginning, and every wilderness has an end, whether in this life or the next. Believe it—“There remains a rest for the people of God!” (Hebrews 4:9)

Our wilderness journey will not last forever. There is rest ahead!

God’s Wilderness Design

So, if you are currently in a wilderness, don’t assume that nothing is happening simply because nothing is changing. Don’t waste your experience there simply wishing it were over. There is more to your experience that simply reaching the exit. In reality, God is looking for specific things to happen there. God’s ways may be hidden from you, but that doesn’t mean His purposes are absent. God may be accomplishing something in you that could not be accomplished any other way.

If nothing else, you can become more useful for His Kingdom on the other side. I don’t pretend to know why, but it has been my observation that God often advances His Kingdom much more effectively with those who have been through the discipline of the wilderness. They emerge with greater humility, deeper dependence on Him, and a capacity to minister to others that they did not possess before. And being more useful to Him aligns us with something worth anticipating: hearing our Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Lord!” (Matthew 25:21).

Reward indeed! And then rest—true rest!

Your Comments Will Encourage Someone Else!

What is one thing you learned in your wilderness experience that you could not have learned anywhere else?

Many people deal with habits or addictions that they can’t seem to shake. This is often a source of frustration for Christians who know that they should be living at a different level. For those who find themselves there, the Bible does offer a strategy, but that strategy begins with a particular set of commands. Unfortunately, a lot of believers are not aware of these commands, and if we are, we’re not sure what to do with them.

A Division of Tasks

As I study Scripture, I notice a clear distinction between what God promises to do and what He commands us to do. God has assigned responsibilities to His people, and we cannot neglect those responsibilities while expecting Him to do everything for us.

I have heard people say, “You don’t need to do anything; God has already done everything for you.” My response is simple: If that is true, why are there so many imperatives in the New Testament?

God certainly works within us, giving us both the desire and the ability to obey Him (Philippians 2:12–13). While His work in us makes our obedience possible, that does not absolve us of our responsibility to act.

This brings us to a particular set of commands that many believers have overlooked. The Bible describes sanctification as God’s work of making His people holy. It is His will for us (1 Thessalonians 4:3), but we are not passive spectators in the process. We have an essential role to play.

This is what I call responsible discipleship: actively obeying the commands God has given us, while relying on His power to accomplish what we cannot accomplish on our own.

A Specific Type of Command

The commands I have in mind involve putting off certain vices and putting on corresponding virtues. Paul frequently uses the imagery of removing one garment and putting on another.

For example, Ephesians 4:31 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” Similarly, Hebrews 12:1 instructs us to “lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.”

Notice what these passages require. We are not merely told to regret our sins or ask God to remove them. We are commanded to take action.

Now consider the corresponding commands to put something on:

• “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Romans 13:14).

• “Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12).

• “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11).

These commands call for deliberate obedience. The garment imagery is particularly instructive. We do not merely hope that an old garment will somehow disappear. We take it off and deliberately put on something different.

There are moments when we must decisively reject our old patterns and embrace new ones.

Consider Paul’s instructions concerning the armor of God. We often hear that Christians must put on the full armor every day. But Scripture never commands this.

In Ephesians 6:11–14, Paul commands believers to put on the armor to stand against the devil’s schemes and resist “in the evil day.” His emphasis is on being equipped and standing firm when we come under attack, not on a daily ritual of putting the armor on again.

Certainly, reminding ourselves of God’s provision each morning can be beneficial. But we must not turn a helpful practice into a biblical command.

The central lesson is clear: God has given us commands that require intentional, decisive obedience. We must actually do what He tells us to do.

Our Present Condition

The need for decisive obedience becomes painfully clear when we consider the struggles of believers who genuinely want to honor God. Barna Research reveals that 54% of practicing Christians acknowledge viewing pornography, with 22% doing so weekly or daily.

But the problem extends far beyond our screens. An analysis of the General Social Survey found that 13% of Christians who attend church weekly and have been married reported having been sexually unfaithful during marriage.

And the problem is not limited to sexual sin. According to the American Bible Society’s 2026 research, 24% of practicing Christians acknowledge continuing to think badly of people who have mistreated them. Even among committed believers, resentment can be difficult to release. We are struggling with sexual temptation, marital unfaithfulness, bitterness, and unforgiveness. And these are only a few examples!

But here is something particularly revealing. Lifeway Research found that 80% of Protestant churchgoers say they readily confess their sins to God when convicted.

Think about that. Overall, we are not indifferent to sin. We recognize it. We confess it. We want to change. Yet many of us continue struggling with the same patterns year after year.

Could it be that the problem is not simply that we don’t want to obey God, but that we don’t fully understand how to obey Him?

Perhaps we have been asking Him to remove what He has commanded us to put away.

Fleshing This Command Out

So, what does obedience to these commands actually look like?

In Ephesians 4:22–24, Paul instructs believers to “put off your old self” and “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” I suggest setting aside a specific time to act on these commands. You might begin by praying:

“In the name of Jesus, I put off the works of the flesh. I renounce the sinful patterns that have held me captive. I am done making provision for them.”

Get specific. Name the anger, bitterness, lust, dishonesty, or jealousy you are putting away.

But here is something we dare not overlook: Putting off is only half the command!

We confess our sins, renounce them, and ask God to remove them. But what about what He has commanded us to put on? Perhaps we have struggled to experience consistent victory because we have focused on rejecting the negative without embracing the positive!

So don’t stop with putting off. Continue:

“In the name of Jesus, I put on the Lord Jesus Christ. I put on the new self. In place of anger, I put on patience. In place of bitterness, forgiveness. In place of lust, purity and self-control.”

We are deliberately replacing vices with corresponding virtues, not merely abandoning old habits. These are not magic words, nor does Scripture prescribe a particular formula. They simply express a decisive act of obedience.

We are doing what God has commanded us to do—all of it.

But remember, this is not merely an exercise in willpower. As Paul explains in Romans 8:13, we put sinful practices to death by the Spirit. Our responsibility is to obey; His power enables our obedience.

Handling Setbacks

Here is where many of us get stuck. We genuinely want to obey God. We confess our sins, renounce them, and resolve to do better. But when temptation returns, we find ourselves fighting the same battles all over again.

What are we missing? Perhaps it isn’t a lack of sincerity or determination. Perhaps we simply haven’t understood what God commands us to do when temptation returns. Suppose we have deliberately put off anger and put on patience. But tomorrow someone provokes us, and that familiar anger begins to rise. Was our earlier obedience for nothing? Must we start all over again? No! There is another crucial part of the biblical strategy.

Paul commands us in Romans 6:11: “Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

The word translated consider is an accounting term. Accountants are accustomed to placing figures in distinct categories—assets in one column, liabilities in another. Paul is exhorting us to do something similar: Put sin in the “dead” column and our new life in Christ in the “alive” column. This is how we are to reckon our identity in Christ.

But here is something crucial: In the Greek, Paul uses a present imperative, calling us to “consider” this truth continually!

Notice the distinction. Putting off the old and putting on the new involve decisive acts of obedience. But considering ourselves dead to sin is not something we do merely on one significant occasion. It is something we must keep doing.

Why? Because temptation keeps returning!

When anger rises again, we don’t need to assume that our earlier obedience was meaningless or that we must start the entire process over. Instead, we remind ourselves:

“I am dead to that. I have put it off. That is no longer who I am. I belong to Christ, and I have put on the new self.”

Here is the strategy:

• We decisively put off the old and put on the new.

• When temptation returns, we continually reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

We are not trying to create a new identity each time temptation strikes. We are rehearsing the identity Christ has already given us.

Rehearsing our identity is key to standing firm.

Reaching Out

What if, after putting these principles into practice, we still struggle? Don’t give up! Reach out to a trusted fellow believer and ask them to stand with you in prayer.

But let’s be specific about what we’re asking. Rather than simply saying, “Pray for me,” we might say, “Pray that I will remember who I am in Christ and stand firm.” That is victory: Instead of repeatedly falling to temptation, we are standing firm!

There is another dimension to this that we dare not overlook. In Colossians 3, after commanding believers to put away sinful practices and put on godly virtues, Paul instructs them to teach and admonish one another (v. 16). Evidently, God intends for believers to help one another grow in holiness. Sometimes we need someone who will encourage us, remind us of biblical truth, or lovingly confront us when we begin drifting back into old patterns.

We see another aspect of community life where James exhorts believers to confess their sins to one another and pray for one another (James 5:16). Viewing these passages together, it appears that teaching and admonishing, combined with confession and prayer in response, can provide powerful support in overcoming habitual sin. In many cases, victories that have long eluded us may become attainable when biblical community functions as designed.

That is God’s ultimate goal for us—to make us holy, together!

The Consequence

Consider what could happen if more believers began practicing this biblical strategy. How many longstanding struggles might finally begin to lose their grip? Without a doubt, counseling, medication, and support groups all have their place. We cannot assume that seeking these means of help indicates spiritual failure. However, we cannot neglect the commands we have been given for our own benefit.

When we act on what God has directed us to do, we will likely discover that some of the victories we have long sought begin with an act of obedience we have long overlooked, or have never fully understood.

A Final Exhortation

If these principles are new to you, I encourage you to revisit this article until they become familiar. But don’t stop with understanding them. Put them into practice!

Identify the sinful patterns you need to put away. Deliberately put on the corresponding virtues. Then, whenever temptation returns, remind yourself of who you are in Christ and stand firm.

Remember, even though we have emphasized what we are to do in this article, we are not attempting this in our own strength. The Holy Spirit empowers us to do what God commands.

And imagine the consequences! Lives transformed. Relationships restored. Believers finally experiencing victories that have eluded them for years.

And that is priceless.

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It would be an understatement to say that people in the West are not presently attracted to the Christian faith. According to a 2026 Gallup Honesty and Ethics Survey, public trust in pastors has reached a historic low, with only 27% of American adults rating the honesty and ethics of clergy members as high or very high. Since the early 2000s, when clergy honesty ratings averaged 56%, trust in pastors has suffered a 29-point decline, marking the steepest drop among any of the professions Gallup tracks.

We live in a jaded culture.

Thom Rainer’s research in The Unchurched Next Door divides unchurched people into five categories, U-1 through U-5, based on their openness to matters of faith. The largest group—U-3—is also the hardest to reach, responding to matters of faith with pure indifference.

I want to focus on this group.

If we could sum up their reaction to matters of faith in one word, it would be “whatever.” Either God doesn’t exist or, if He does, He is irrelevant.

Thankfully, Scripture shows us a way forward. The jaded posture of the West has a precedent. Our present culture is actually echoing the nations’ attitude toward Israel’s God before the exile. The nations were watching the Israelites. They saw how God’s people had been living, and were confused, to say the least. Israel actually grew to be more wicked than the nations themselves (Ezekiel 5:6–7; 16:47–52), at one point causing one pagan nation to even be ashamed of Israel’s behavior (Ezekiel 16:27). The surrounding nations could only shake their heads and turn away.

God’s Plan, Phase 1: Judgment (the prophets)

Looking at the big picture of the prophets’ message, we witness a two-phase strategy regarding the restoration of Israel’s role and of Yahweh’s reputation. The message of Phase 1 is: God has no choice but to judge His people. We can trace it through parts of Isaiah, most of Jeremiah, Ezekiel 1–33, and several of the minor prophets.

To a limited extent, we are seeing this unfold before our eyes even now. Every time a pastor has to resign because of hidden sin, every time a law is passed that makes living out the Christian faith more difficult, this is happening. But it is necessary, because God is currently being misrepresented by an unholy church.

Barna Research reveals that over half of practicing Christians admit to viewing pornography, with more than one in five consuming it on a weekly or daily basis. Further, in a Barna study examining the finances of adults, deceitfulness in this area is equally likely to occur among “born again” adults as it is among non-born again individuals.

While judgment is not God’s first resort, when He deems it necessary, it must run its course. Protests involving the infringement of Christians’ rights, laments over declining church attendance, and cries that we must “take this country back” all miss the point. Judgment is how God purifies His people and vindicates the holiness of His name (see Ezekiel 36:23).

God’s Plan, Phase 2a: A Redeemed Nation Witnesses (Isaiah 40–55)

But once judgment has run its course, God sets about on a second phase. Isaiah tells us what it is. In particular, Isaiah 40–55 indicates that God is answering this tragic misrepresentation of Himself with a people that is not only redeemed by re-assigned.

In Isaiah 43:10, God says:

“You are my witnesses.”

In our current Christian culture, we view a witness as someone who articulates a message verbally. But Isaiah is referring to God’s people functioning in the role He intended for them to have from the beginning— serving as a public testimony to their great God. As they commit themselves to serve Him alone, He in turn blesses them, and the nations respond accordingly (Psalm 67:6–7; Ezekiel 36:34–36). More importantly, God Himself is vindicated (Ezekiel 36:36–38). The pattern looks like this:

God acts → God’s people embody → the world sees.

God’s Plan, Phase 2b: A Redeemed Nation Suffers and Serves (Isaiah 40–55)

God’s plan features an additional role for His people—to be a servant to the nations, as well. This particular calling marks a decisive shift in Israel’s identity.

For centuries, Israel’s relationship with the nations was shaped by military resistance. Israel’s story was filled with battles, conquests, and defensive campaigns—an era defined by conflict.

But Isaiah announces a different future.

In Isaiah 40–55, the suffering servant passages outline a new role for Israel. The servant depicted here is one who embodies God’s compassion toward the nations. The servant’s signature is faithful endurance and humble obedience. In contrast to all Israel has ever known, the servant suffers rather than dominates, and shows compassion to the feeble, featured as a “bruised reed” and “a dimly burning wick” (Isaiah 42:3).

These two roles—that of a witness and a servant—constitute a profound reorientation. Emphasis shifts from Israel conquering nations to revealing God to them through service. And this is what the jaded generation is needing.

The Beatitudes: The Servant’s Community Takes Shape

If we step back and look at Jesus’ earthly ministry in full, we will see that He bookends it with these two roles, but in inverse order. When Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount, He is highlighting the servant-shaped people Isaiah foresaw.

The Beatitudes are the character profile of the Suffering Servant community:

· Poor in spirit — like the Servant who is lowly and dependent (Isa 53:2)

· The meek — like the Servant who does not cry out or break the bruised reed (Isa 42).

· The persecuted — like the Servant who suffers unjustly (Isa 50; 53).

This is why He says in Matthew 5:17 that He has come to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets. He is fulfilling the entire covenant storyline, embodying the Servant’s mission, eventually laying down His life for the nations, for the world, as the ultimate Suffering Servant.

In the course of His sermon, Jesus voices a command that perfectly sums up the Servant-shaped witness:

“Do not resist the evil person” (Matthew 5:39).

The Servant’s way of revealing God is to turn the other cheek, give away the cloak, carry the Roman soldier’s pack further than expected — these are revelatory actions. They display the character of God to a world that has stopped listening.

Jesus and the Renewal of Witness

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, He shifts to Isaiah’s role of being a witness. As He is speaking to His disciples just before ascending to heaven, He tells them what their role will be: “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). The terminology is no accident. He is drawing directly from Isaiah. He is placing Israel’s blueprint on His followers.

Keep in mind Isaiah’s understanding of the term “witness.” He saw God’s people as being a public display of the works of God, coursing through them before the watching nations. They were to be a living, walking, breathing revelation of God’s power. This kind of display cannot be easily dismissed. Head-shakes give way to head-turns. “Whatever” changes to “What is this?”

What This Looks Like

Here are some practical ways we can engage the jaded generation:

1. Being a Witness: Highlighting the Hand of God in lived experience.

First, come alongside them. Learn about what is going on in their lives. Then tell them you’re praying for them. Later, ask them how things are going. Then, when the answer comes, rejoice with them!

Further, tell them about God’s activity in your life. Don’t restrict your testimony to just your church friends—tell it to the jaded generation! The same Bible that says “I have proclaimed Your saving acts in the great assembly” (Psalm 40:9) also says, “Tell of His glory among the nations!” (Psalm 96:3). If you make this a habit, over time, they will begin to re-evaluate their disposition toward God.

2. Servanthood: Demonstrating the Compassion of God

The jaded generation is looking for, and deeply needing, genuine Christian compassion.

They need to see it in:

· Our eyes

· Our ears

· Our time

This is what many of them hoped to find in matters of faith in the first place. Everyone needs friendship, but not just any friendship—loving friendship. Pouring compassion into a friend is the fastest way to move a jaded person off of dead center.

The Reachable “Unreachables”

The good news is that the jaded generation is reachable. They are simply waiting for something real. They are waiting for a people who embody a powerful witness and the Servant’s vocation. They are waiting for a community that carries both the death and resurrection of Christ.

Deep down, most of them know what they need. There is an innate longing for God naturally built into us. But disappointment dulls that desire. It can only be re-awakened by a restored, intentional, missional body of genuine believers.

So, we have the blueprint.

The jaded generation is waiting.

Your Turn

Who is one person you know who has essentially said “Whatever” to the Christian faith . . . and what do you think would be your one best move to cause that person to look again?

Tell us in the comments. I suspect we have a lot to learn from one another.

Question: How do most of us respond when we feel we have been wronged? Most of us would have to acknowledge that we at least want to retaliate. I know the feeling well. But did you ever notice how Moses and Aaron responded when their leadership was challenged? Remarkably, they fell on their faces.

And they weren’t “just being wronged.” At times, the congregation came close to stoning them (Exodus 17:4; Numbers 14:10), which was the primary means of execution for the worst possible crimes. So, even though Moses and Aaron were only trying to lead God’s people well, the people often greatly misunderstood them and, in the process, deeply, deeply wronged them. Yet, at the very moment Moses and Aaron received this kind of treatment, they fell on their faces.

Jesus speaks into situations like this when He says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Grandstanding when we have been wronged is a form of exalting ourselves. But, in light of Jesus’ teaching, and of the example we have in the Old Testament, the painful times in our lives are precisely the times when we need to humble ourselves because, as James tells us, God gives grace to the humble.

Another word for “grace” is “favor”—undeserved favor. He gives His favor to those who humble themselves. This favor is one of the primary expressions of His steadfast love, a love the Psalmist recognized is “better than life” itself (Psalm 63:3). If we really believe that His favor is that valuable, we’ll do anything to get it, which means that we will humble ourselves in His presence, especially during the painful episodes of life, for that is when we need His favor the most. This doesn’t mean we deny the pain, but humility has a way of transforming our hurting place into a holy, humble hurting place.

Allow the pain to work for you, embrace it, and take it into your soul. When our pain is surrendered to God, it ceases to be merely a source of bitterness and becomes a place of profound reliance on Him, of deeper fellowship with Him. We say things to Him in our pain that we wouldn’t say at any other time. Pain has a purpose!

Don’t be surprised if you eventually find yourself giving thanks for the situation that brought you to where you are. Think about it: the people who cause us the most pain are often the very instruments God is using to bring His favor into our lives.

Everyone in the human race gets wronged at some point or another. The only thing that divides us is whether or not we choose to follow the example of Moses and Aaron and heed the words of Jesus.

Have you been wronged lately?

You don’t need revenge.
You don’t need justification.
You need favor.

So when someone does you wrong, do the right thing: go to a place where it’s just you and God, close the door, fall down, and stay there for a long, long time.

Before you go . . .
Your story will encourage someone! Share a time in your life when humility changed the outcome for you.

According to a 2018 study, anxiety affects over 18% of the population. Anxiety has in fact replaced depression as the number one mental health challenge people face in the United States. Many of us have bouts with anxiety, and almost every one of us knows someone who regularly struggles in this area.

While I understand that some situations call for a professional’s help, and I don’t claim to have the magic solution to solve the world’s problems in this area, I hope to have something to contribute.

Thankfully, the Bible acknowledges anxiety as a common affliction even in the ancient world. Some of the heroes of the Bible struggled with anxious thoughts. What we are facing is nothing new, even if it appears to be much more prevalent.

So, is there hope for us? Can we live at a different level? How can we deal with such a formidable monster?

When Fear Comes

For some of us, anxiety begins with confusion or perhaps even surprise. Many of us have a template laid out for our lives, and life has a way of shattering that template. When this happens, we are caught off guard, like a sports team that has a great game plan but gets thrown off balance by its opponent and never manages to implement the plan.

The what-has-happened turns into what-ifs, and the what-ifs begin to multiply.

For others, anxiety grows from perfectionism. We have a picture in our minds of how our lives or our conduct ought to go, and we become our own harshest critics when we fall short. Because perfection is an impossible target, we live on edge, waiting for the next failure.

Still others struggle with specific fears—health, loss, catastrophe, the future. And some of us honestly cannot pinpoint the reason at all. Anxiety simply descends on us, and before we know it, it starts to overpower us.

Then comes one of the ugliest traps of all: we become anxious because we are anxious.

“Look at me,” we think. “I’m worrying!”

Now we have two problems instead of one.

David offers us a remarkably different response.

Psalm 56 comes from a frightening period in David’s life. According to the superscription, the psalm concerns the time when the Philistines seized him in Gath. While we don’t know all the circumstances, we can be fairly certain that David was not composing this psalm in a place of safety. He was surrounded by enemies and had legitimate reasons to be afraid.

And yet listen to what he says:

“When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You.” (Psalm 56:3)

Notice what David does not say:

Because I trust God, I am never afraid.

Instead, David essentially says:

When fear comes, I know what to do with it.

That distinction is profound.

Fear is not necessarily evidence that we have failed spiritually. As we have noted, anxiety can arise for many reasons. The first step may simply be to acknowledge what is happening without adding self-condemnation to it.

David names the fear.

Then he redirects himself.

Shrink the Monster Back to Size

David continues:

“In God, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust;
I shall not be afraid.
What can mere man do to me?” (Psalm 56:4)

“In God, whose word I praise” tells us something important about what David is doing: David counters what fear is telling him by deliberately rehearsing what God has said and choosing to treat God’s word as more trustworthy than the threat in front of him. And something begins to happen:

The threat starts shrinking.

One reason anxiety becomes so overwhelming is that the threat grows until it fills our entire field of vision. The medical report. The relationship. The financial problem. The decision we cannot make. The thing that might happen tomorrow. “What if. What if. What if . . . .”

It gets bigger and bigger.

We desperately need a shrinking agent.

David finds his by simply fixing his attention on God.

Notice that David’s enemies have not disappeared. His circumstances haven’t necessarily changed at all. What has changed is their apparent size. Once God fills David’s field of vision, the threat is forced back into proportion.

Now David can look at the very people he fears and ask: “What can mere man do to me?”

Fear magnifies.
Faith puts things back into proportion.

This isn’t denial. David isn’t pretending that the danger isn’t real. He is seeing the danger in relation to something—and Someone—much greater.

But David does something else. Later in the same psalm, he remembers that God has been paying attention all along:

“You have taken account of my wanderings and put my tears in Your bottle.
Are they not in Your book?” (Psalm 56:8)

The God David trusts is not watching his suffering from a distance. He knows his wanderings. He has seen his tears. Nothing has escaped His notice.

David’s fear is real.
But so is God’s attention.

Paul Gives Us a Process

David gives us the posture. Paul helps give us the process.

In Philippians 4:6–8, Paul doesn’t merely tell anxious believers, “Stop worrying.” He gives them somewhere to go with their anxiety.

The movement of the passage is important.

Anxiety arises. → Turn it into prayer.

Bring the specific thing that is troubling you before God. Paul speaks of prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and requests. In other words, don’t merely sit there and replay the problem.

Take the thought that keeps coming back and turn it into a prayer that keeps coming back.

Please lock onto this next thought:

Prayer is not merely therapy.
We pray because we believe God actually hears us and acts.

But something also happens to us in the process: the more we turn toward God, the less the threat controls our attention.

Then Paul introduces something that can easily be overlooked:

Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving forces us to remember that the crisis in front of us is not the entire story of our lives. God has acted before. He has provided before. He has sustained us before. The thing frightening us today does not erase everything God did yesterday.

Then comes the promise:

“The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”(Philippians 4:7)

And then Paul moves directly to the mind.

Whatever is true.
Whatever is honorable.
Whatever is right.
Whatever is pure.
Whatever is lovely.
Whatever is of good repute.
Whatever is excellent.
Whatever is worthy of praise.

Think about these things.

Notice the process, now before us in full:

Anxiety → Prayer → Thanksgiving → Peace → Redirected Thought

Paul is not simply telling us what not to think about.
He is giving our minds somewhere else to go.

It is essential to grasp this step in the process because anxious thoughts thrive on attention. We replay them. We examine them. We turn them around and examine them from a different angle. We project them into the future. Then we retrieve them and start the process all over again.

Paul is instructing us to interrupt this cycle.

We cannot always determine which thought knocks on the door.
But we can become increasingly intentional about which thoughts we invite inside and entertain.

When the Monster Comes at Night

There is one time when anxious thoughts especially assault us: nighttime.

Anxieties thrive at night.

The distractions disappear. The house gets quiet. We wake up at 2:00 in the morning, and suddenly a concern that seemed manageable at two in the afternoon dominates our front screen and commands our full attention.

And the what-ifs start multiplying.

The psalmist knew the experience:

“When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,
Your consolations delight my soul.” (Psalm 94:19)

Notice: He has both.

Anxious thoughts.
Consolations.

When you are assaulted in the middle of the night, keep in mind:

All of us have anxious thoughts, and all of us have consolations.

Even in terrible circumstances, God gives us reminders of His presence and care. The problem is that anxiety is usually louder.

So give God’s consolations a voice.

Before you go to bed, identify several concrete reminders of God’s care for you. Don’t settle for abstractions. Remember something specific:

· A prayer He answered.

· A person He sent.

· A provision you didn’t expect.

· A Scripture you came across exactly when you needed it.

· A door He opened—or perhaps one He mercifully closed.

Then, when the monster starts rehearsing his list: push back with yours.

This is exactly what David did.

Fear spoke.
David rehearsed God’s word.
The threat grew large.
David looked toward God until the threat returned to its proper size.

Don’t Fight Alone

There is one more thing we need to do.

Reach out.

Anxiety often tells us to withdraw. We don’t want to burden anyone. We may be embarrassed that we are struggling. Sometimes we assume that mature Christians shouldn’t need help.

But isolation gives anxious thoughts an enormous room in which to echo.

God does not normally will that we fight our battles alone.
Even Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him to Gethsemane.
Tell a trusted friend or loved one what is happening. Sometimes one good friend can make an enormous difference. Ask that person to pray for you and with you. Sometimes we need another believer to remind us of truths that anxiety has temporarily blocked from our line of sight.

Consider an additional step in this direction: If your circle is small, enlarge it. Go somewhere you haven’t gone before. Join an organization that interests you. Become part of a group. Begin a conversation. Sometimes the support we need begins by taking the initiative to build the relationships we don’t yet have.

Further, keep in mind that, when anxiety is persistent, really severe, or interfering significantly with everyday life, reaching out may also mean talking with a qualified professional. Seeking appropriate help is not a repudiation of prayer or faith. It is simply another way of refusing to fight alone.

A Word From a Friend

Years ago, when I told a friend that my anxious thoughts were morphing into something I couldn’t manage, he said something I have never forgotten:

“You’re a believer. You don’t have to take that.”

He wasn’t telling me that believers never experience anxiety.

David did.

The psalmist did.

Paul knew enough about anxiety to address it directly.

My friend was saying that anxiety did not have to be granted unlimited authority over my life.
We don’t have to surrender that easily.

So when fear comes: Name it.

Then do what David did: Redirect your gaze toward God.

Rehearse what God has said until the threat begins to shrink back into proportion.

Do what Paul tells us:
Turn anxious thoughts into prayer. → Remember God’s goodness with thanksgiving. → Receive His peace. →Deliberately redirect your mind toward what is true.

When anxious thoughts multiply: Answer them with God’s consolations.

And when the battle becomes too heavy to carry alone: Reach out.

Anxiety is real, and Scripture never asks us to deny that. It asks us to confront it with truth, with prayer, with remembrance, with community, with the God who sees every tear and every wandering.

When anxiety comes, we don’t pretend it isn’t real.

We simply refuse to let it have the last word.

Share Your Thoughts
We all have anxious thoughts at times. What is one thing you have learned—perhaps from Scripture, perhaps from experience—that has helped you push back when anxious thoughts begin to take over? Your answer may be exactly what someone else needs to hear.

There is a profound difference between the theology we study and the theology we actually live out.

We live in an era that is drowning in information, navigating shifting cultural frontiers, and constantly pressured by everyday issues. In the middle of all the noise, it is easy to lose our bearings. We often sense the inadequacy of mere surface-level information. We need revelation based on timeless biblical truth.

But more than being relevant, this publication seeks to present fresh truth. The Christian faith is filled with people who are convinced that there is more—more than the same teachings they receive Sunday after Sunday, more than the same podcasts they listen to, than the same books by the same authors they keep consuming. Sometimes, well-meaning friends will tell them that the “more” they are searching for is found in an experience. Where can one turn?

I am convinced that there is more—much more—in God’s Word than we know, and that the Word is the one place to which we can consistently turn in our search for “more.” If you resonate with this conviction, you have come to the right place. Whether by looking at familiar texts in a new way or by exploring lesser-known passages, this publication exists for people like you.

So, in two words: Grounded and Fresh. To be “grounded” means to be firmly tethered to reality—taking high-level biblical truth and bringing it down to where our boots actually hit the ground. And yet, my intention is to skirt around the typical takes on biblical truth and present it from the standpoint of a fresh angle. I have discovered that a new understanding leads to transformation; when the head is challenged, the heart is changed.

What to Expect Expect these articles to tackle the practical realities of such issues as dealing with anxiety, finding a different route to forgiveness than is commonly offered, and actively walking away from devastating experiences. Although we will dive deep at times, you can expect plain English, clear arguments, and ground-level application designed for real life—all from a fresh perspective.

Who I Am I bring a blend of academic rigor from my doctoral work and practical, ground-level experience serving as a chaplain in both the workplace and the local courthouse. This space is where those very real human experiences align with the timeless truth found in Scripture.

The Schedule I respect your inbox and your time. You can expect one to two articles per week to help you navigate your week with clarity and confidence.

Join the Conversation If you are looking for solid biblical exploration rather than short devotional thoughts that rehearse familiar themes, welcome to Grounded Theology. Subscribe below to receive new posts directly in your inbox.

A few years ago, I walked past a seminar at a church I was visiting. On the screen, in bold letters, was the declaration: “Data is king.” I didn’t attend the session, but the phrase lodged in my mind. It captured something about one of our society’s primary driving assumptions: if we can gather enough information, we can master our lives.

If “data is king,” then the throne belongs to the person with the biggest dashboard. But the more I’ve watched our world race toward the online ecosystem, toward AI, and toward information-driven decision-making, the more convinced I’ve become that the church must say something different.

Not because information is bad.
Because information is insufficient.

Information expands human capacity, but it does not necessarily direct it. It cannot sanctify or redeem our souls, and no matter how much data we have at our disposal, it cannot by itself tell us what God wants us to do with it. So here is the counterclaim I believe Christians must recover:

Information is not king.
Revelation is king.

Information vs. Revelation

We live in an age that confuses information with wisdom. We assume that if we can just know more, we will become more. But biblically, information is never the decisive factor in human flourishing.

Information tells us what appears on the surface. Revelation tells us what is really going on. Information can tell us what our options are. Revelation gives us the truths and priorities by which those options must be judged. This distinction is woven through Scripture.

Saul Had Information. David Had Revelation.

One of the clearest examples comes from 1 Samuel 23:9–13. Saul is trying to track David down. He receives information about David’s location. He has the surface data, so he crafts a plan based on that information. David has information too, hearing that Saul is plotting against him. But David does something Saul does not.

He asks God.

David consults the Lord through the ephod. However mysterious that process may seem to us, the point is unmistakable: David does not assume that possessing information means he possesses direction.

He asks whether Saul will come.
God says yes.
Then David asks whether the men of Keilah will surrender him to Saul.
Again, God answers affirmatively.
So David leaves.

Saul has information about where David is.
David receives direction about what to do.
That is the difference.

Information Makes an Excellent Servant

Our age is drowning in information. We can track and quantify practically anything. And now, with AI, we can generate insights, summaries, predictions, and recommendations faster than we can think them. Much of this is useful. AI can summarize information, compare options, expose something we’ve overlooked, or help us ask better questions.

At the same time, we get information from other sources. Doctors explain our health condition. Financial advisers run the numbers and offer advice. Friends give us their perspective on the decisions we face.

Use information, but make it your servant, not your king.

The danger is subtle. When we enthrone information, we begin to believe that the right inputs will guarantee the right outcomes. If we are honest, we will acknowledge that many of us are now tempted to outsource our thinking and discernment to machines and algorithms.

The world we all live in now brings us back to an ancient question:
“Where can wisdom be found?
Where is the place of understanding?” (Job 28:12)

The Magi Had Information. They Still Needed Revelation.

The Magi give us another fascinating picture. Something had appeared in the heavens. They had observed it carefully enough to conclude that the King of the Jews had been born. That information got them moving, taking them all the way to Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem wasn’t their destination.

When Herod gathered the chief priests and scribes and asked where the Messiah was to be born, they turned to Scripture. Micah had already supplied the answer: Bethlehem.

The Magi had information from what they had observed. They still needed God’s revealed Word. Then, remarkably, the star appears again and leads them onward. This narrative, found in Matthew 2, lays out a pattern we must not miss:

The Magi received information, made their observations, and took action. But they did not stop there. They did not confuse what they could observe with everything they needed to know.

Information got them to Jerusalem.
Revelation got them to Bethlehem.

What Do We Mean by Revelation?

At this point, we need to be careful.

The ephod and the Magi’s star both feature means of revelation that are foreign to us today. Therefore, these narratives cannot be made to serve as templates for Christians to reproduce these types of experiences whenever we need to make a decision. As helpful as these passages are, we must be discerning:

Not every decision requires new revelation.
Most of the time, we need to apply revelation God has already given.

And that begins with Scripture.

God has already revealed His character, His purposes, and His commands in His Word. So when we need direction, the first question isn’t necessarily: “Will God give me a new message?” A better question is:

“What has God already said that governs this decision?”

Scripture may rule out an option, expose a motive, or highlight a priority we would have otherwise missed. It may tell us what kind of person we need to be even when it doesn’t tell us which job to take, which house to buy, or which city to live in.

Often, God is more interested in our character than in our precise decisions.

Here is the x-factor that only believers can leverage: When we read the Word and ponder it, the Spirit of God then works through that revealed Word—illuminating it, convicting us through it, shaping our consciences and producing wisdom.

No impression, circumstance, counsel, opportunity, or inner sense gets to outrank or contradict what God has already revealed in Scripture.

Revelation is king.
Everything else must bow.

From Information to Direction

So what does this actually look like? I think Scripture gives us a simple pattern:

(1) Gather, find out what you can—both David and the Magi began with received fact and observable phenomena.

(2) Take an additional, essential step—submit the information and yourself to God.

Our faith is not blind, but it continually calls us to a disposition of submission.
We must take all we know and bring it underneath what God has revealed.

Here is how this takes shape in our experience. We ask:

· Does Scripture rule anything out?

· What biblical priorities govern this decision?

· What motives are operating in me?

· What kind of person is God calling me to be here?

Information will often tell us that one choice is more profitable, more comfortable, more prestigious, or more efficient. Scripture asks different questions entirely:

· Which choice is faithful?

· What adjustments is God calling me to make?

· What assumptions have I been operating out of that God is prompting me to release?

The difference is profound, and it tells us why information cannot be king.

So we must ask God to expose what we’re missing, to correct our motives. We must resolve to ask Him to close doors that should remain closed and give us courage to walk through doors we would not normally enter. This means that, ultimately, we are seeking Him, not just information.

The Essential Disposition

But we must be careful to maintain a posture of humility in the process. There is a world of difference between saying, “I have prayed, searched Scripture, sought wise counsel, and believe this is where God is leading me,” and resorting to the phrase, “God told me.”

The first statement allows for humility. It leaves room for correction, for the possibility that we have misunderstood. And it keeps our impressions beneath the authority of God’s Word rather than placing them alongside it.

So the movement is simple:

Gather the information.
Submit the information to revelation.
Seek God’s wisdom and direction.

Gather.
Submit.
Seek.

AI and the New Babel

It is imperative that we examine these issues as AI becomes increasingly prevalent, as the rush toward AI has echoes of Babel—not because AI is inherently evil, but because the human impulse behind Babel is ancient and refuses to go away.

The motivation for building a tower is stark: “Let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). God therefore says in alarm, “Nothing they plan to do will be impossible to them” (11:6).

Note the progression:
Expanded human capacity mutates into reaching for an ability and status reserved only for God. Eventually we end up thinking that nothing can stop us.

Our achievements can inflate us. Therefore, we cannot give them a place of lordship. This means that we cannot give anything related to technology ultimate sway over our decisions. AI can summarize what Scripture says and even help us see truths in it we might have missed. But it cannot replace the Spirit who illumines Scripture and forms the people who obey it.

While it is well-known that AI can at times hand out false information, there is a greater danger. The true danger is that we might slowly become people who no longer know how to seek God.

Our invention is not our ultimate salvation.

Revelation Changes People

Revelation is not merely information from above. It is the means by which God speaks in a direct way. As a result, people who brush up against it cannot remain the same.

The Magi narrative contains a truth that the one involving David does not. After they find the Baby Jesus, they fall down and worship Him (Matthew 2:11). Similarly, after Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the king falls on his face and praises Daniel’s God (Daniel 2:46–47).

The overarching truth is undeniable: Revelation carries a transformative power that information cannot touch.

This is why we must seek Him—not only so we will know what to do, but so that we will become the people He has called us to be and can serve as agents of change in a world that world that so deeply needs it.

A Different Kind of People

As believers, we must rise above the level of others around us and maintain our distinct calling.

We do not need less information.
What we need is believers who know how to use information without bowing before it.

In an age of infinite information, people shaped by revelation are becoming increasingly rare. This means that, sooner or later, they will also become increasingly recognizable. They will not necessarily know more than everyone else, but they will know where knowledge belongs.

Looking forward into our brave new world, they are the people of value.

So while society rushes headlong toward the next source of information, let God’s people walk calmly.

Gather information.
But don’t crown it; submit it instead.
Seek God.

Because information is not enough.
Only revelation is king.

Weigh in on This One

Where do you think the greatest danger lies for Christians as we increasingly turn to AI and other electronic sources for answers—and how do you keep information from taking the place that belongs to God?

Absalom. Anyone who mentions the name of this Old Testament anti-hero recalls a man who was restless, torn from within. Worse, his inward battles projected outward. But when we read the full story of Absalom in 2 Samuel 13–18, we learn that something happened earlier in his life that set this cause-and-effect in motion. His half-brother had violated his full sister, and a dragon was birthed in Absalom’s soul. To feed the dragon, Absalom devised a plot and killed his half-brother. As a result, his father, King David, cut him off from his presence. Despite a surface reconciliation, the dragon was still alive, and Absalom staged a revolt against his father, and the most dramatic account of civil war found in the Bible unfolded. War within Absalom’s soul spread far and wide. In short, Absalom was a man who was striving, meaning there was strife in his heart that drove him to do things that were harmful to himself and to many others.

In this article, the term “striving” refers to a specific type of heart condition. We often think of striving in a positive way—striving to achieve, striving to improve, striving even to do good for others. However, the word originally comes from the root word “strife,” which derives from the Anglo-French word estri, of Germanic origin, which is similar to the Dutch word striden, to fight. It connotes a tendency toward contention and quarreling. So, to be clear, this article will not use the term “striving” in any positive sense, but will always refer to it in its classic, negative meaning.

Taken this way, striving is deadly. But it is rarely ever addressed by the church today, even though the Bible mentions it often. It’s time to take a look at the subject, and to take an honest look at ourselves. Think about the strivers you know. People who fall into this category are never truly happy. They are either always beating themselves up or beating other people up. The more intense the pain, or the more they are reminded of it, the more they strive.

How This Happens

Strivers are not born that way. Like Absalom, something happened to them earlier, so now they are out to resolve whatever had gone wrong. Every relationship, every situation is affected by this “something.”

You can easily identify strivers because they always have something to prove to themselves or to others or both. They are trying to right a previous wrong. They are out to acquire something or to achieve something or to balance something out by overcompensating.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with applying ourselves and accomplishing great things, this is different. More than productivity is at stake here. Strivers are usually very gifted people who leave a path of destruction alongside their accomplishments.

Strivers and the Bible

So, what does the Bible have to say about striving? First, Proverbs 28:25 identifies pride as the source of strife. Pride indeed stands behind a striving soul, but it is a wounded pride that drives it. Further, the word “striving” is mentioned 10 times in the short book of Ecclesiastes. In fact, two of the most common words in the book are “vanity” and “striving,” and that is the point—strivers are engaging in a vain enterprise. They will never fix what is broken; they will never be content, no matter how much they “succeed.”

The New Testament, for its part, focuses more on the context of strife, placing it in a list of such expressions as jealousy, disputes, slanders, gossip, disturbances (2 Corinthians 12:20), envy, abusive language, evil suspicions (1 Timothy 6:4), enmities, dissensions, and factions (Galatians 5:20). Chaos accompanies strivers wherever they go. Conflict is commonplace. Why? Because my dragon doesn’t like your dragon and vice-versa. Strivers continually over-exert themselves. They are always wanting to achieve more, work later, get up earlier because, after all, they have things to prove. But notice whether they are happy. Strivers are never happy.

Breaking Free

So, how do we find a way out? What is the pathway out for those who are torn by a striving heart?

For that, consider Joseph. If anybody had reason to spend the rest of his life saying, “I’ll show them,” it was Joseph. His brothers hated him, stripped him of his robe, threw him into a pit, and sold him into slavery. In Egypt, he served faithfully only to be falsely accused and thrown into prison, where he was eventually forgotten by someone he had helped while still there. Joseph had accumulated enough wounds to feed a dragon for a lifetime.

Then Pharaoh suddenly recognizes and elevates Joseph. Yet strangely, Joseph’s success does not appear to be a source for revenge for him. As the narrative progresses, we begin to recognize that the old wound is no longer driving the man.

The first indication comes when Joseph names his two sons. He names the first Manasseh—which means to cause to forget—explaining, “God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.” He names the second Ephraim because “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Genesis 41:51–52).

The order is striking:
Manasseh—God has made me forget.
Ephraim—God has made me fruitful.

Obviously, Joseph did not literally forget what happened to him. Years later, he remembers it well enough to talk about it. Nor does he minimize what happened. In Genesis 50:20, he tells his brothers plainly, “You meant evil against me.” Evil is still evil. Forgetfulness does not require us to rename it.

Something else has happened. The wound remains part of Joseph’s story without remaining the engine of his life. He remembers the wound without continuing to live out of the wound.

Biblical forgetfulness is not losing the memory.
It is losing the compulsion to keep answering it.

This is enormously important for a striver. The striver keeps the old injury alive because, consciously or unconsciously, he needs it as fuel: I’ll show them. I’ll prove they were wrong. I’ll make up for what I lost. I’ll become successful enough that what happened to me won’t matter anymore.

Joseph does something radically different. He receives from God the ability to let the past be past.

And notice what Joseph associates with that forgetfulness. He does not name a palace Manasseh. He does not point to his position beside Pharaoh and say, “Now I can forget.” The name belongs to a little boy.

Joseph had received staggering external blessings—authority, wealth, status, influence, vindication of his abilities. But when he explains Manasseh, his attention has been captured by something far more personal. God has placed a blessing in his life that occupies the foreground while the old injuries begin receding into the background.

Joseph memorialized the blessing rather than memorializing the wound.

Absalom did almost the reverse. Something terrible had happened to his sister, and he carried that wrong forward. The wound became part of the unresolved world within him, and eventually it began driving what he did. Joseph had every reason to do the same. But the name Manasseh continually announced what God had done for Joseph, rather than what others had done to Joseph.

The power of the dragon depends on the place we give him in our hearts and in our memory.

If the front screen of our minds continually displays what they did to me, what I lost, how unfair it was, what I should have received, what I still need to prove, we give the dragon enormous room to grow.

Joseph puts something else on the front screen: Look what God has given me.

Most of us are not going to become second-in-command of Egypt. But we can recognize the gifts God has already placed around us—a spouse, a child, a grandchild, a friend, meaningful work, a church community, provision, an opportunity to serve, or simply the ordinary goodness of today.

Then comes Ephraim: “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

Notice those last words. Egypt has not suddenly become the land where nothing bad ever happened. Joseph still calls it “the land of my affliction.” He has not rewritten his past. Instead, God has changed his relationship to it.

Joseph does not have to make his brothers suffer. He does not have to prove himself to his father. He cannot recover his stolen adolescence. He cannot get those years in prison back. But he can become fruitful here. Joseph discovered something strivers desperately need to learn:

Fruitfulness grows more freely when we are no longer using the present to settle past accounts.

Later, when Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, we discover something else that has happened inside him. He can say both, “You sold me here,” and “God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). By Genesis 50:20, his interpretation has become even clearer: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

Joseph has reinterpreted his past under the providence of God. What his brothers did to him no longer gets to define what his life means.

Here, then, is a pathway out of striving:

· Name the wound.

· Recognize what you have been trying to prove or repair.

· Reinterpret the wound within God’s larger story.

· Release the need to make the past come out differently.

· Pursue fruitfulness rather than vindication.

In short, Joseph stopped trying to vindicate the past and became fruitful in the present.

The opposite of striving, then, is not passivity. Joseph was anything but passive. He worked, planned, administered, prepared Egypt for famine, and used his gifts extraordinarily well. The difference was that he no longer needed his accomplishments to repair yesterday.

You do not have to repair the past by succeeding in the present. You can receive the present as a gift from God instead.

One Final Word

Finally, I offer a word of exhortation: Learn contentment. Striving is a learned disposition, and so is contentment. Learn to accept others even when you don’t understand them. Learn to live with situations that are less than ideal. Balance your initiative with a reasoned patience; pace yourself; stop trying to do more than you are designed to do. Learn to lose gracefully; no one wins every time.

Every striver eventually reaches a crossroads: keep feeding the dragon or finally silence it. And the church’s great hymns have long named the moment when the dragon dies — when fears are stilled and strivings cease. Not because the past is rewritten, but because the wound is reinterpreted and God’s present gifts are allowed to become more prominent than yesterday’s injuries.

Learn to let God’s present gifts outweigh yesterday’s injuries. Learn Joseph’s order — forgetfulness before fruitfulness. And learn to trust the God who can turn affliction into abundance.

When fears are stilled and strivings cease, the past loses its power.

And true peace finally takes its place.
Your Story Counts

I’ve shared how I found a way to slay the dragon. What has helped you move from striving toward becoming a person of peace? I’d love to hear what you’ve learned along the way.

Let’s be honest: a body blow changes us—at least for a while. When a profound betrayal, a devastating loss, or a deep personal failure fractures our lives, we need time to process what happened. We have to name the pain, mourn what was lost, and learn whatever lessons the experience has to teach us. Depending on the depth of the wound, this can—and should—take time.

But what happens when processing the past becomes a permanent way of life?

Sometimes we become so absorbed in examining the wreckage that we never begin rebuilding. We revisit conversations, rehearse arguments, reconsider our mistakes, and imagine how differently things might have turned out.

We become experts on a past we cannot change. And somewhere along the way, we may begin to adopt a new identity: The Wounded One.

We reach a threshold where we stop processing our history and start living in it.

But Scripture offers us another way forward, and one of its most compelling examples comes from a man who experienced an almost unimaginable series of body blows—a man named David.

David’s Triple Burden

King David was no stranger to suffering. He had endured years of persecution, betrayal, military conflict, and personal loss. But perhaps the darkest chapter of his life began with his own wrongdoing.

David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his orchestration of Uriah’s death brought devastating consequences. Nathan warned him that the sword would never depart from his house (2 Samuel 12:10). And, as prophesied, the consequences came.

His son Amnon violated his half-sister Tamar. Another of his sons, Absalom, murdered Amnon. Eventually, Absalom launched a rebellion against his own father, forcing David to flee Jerusalem.

Consider the three crushing burdens David carried through this catastrophe.

1. Crushing Guilt

David’s failures did not merely damage his own life. They brought suffering upon people all around him. When Absalom’s rebellion forced David to abandon Jerusalem, his loyal followers fled with him. Second Samuel 15:23 describes the heartbreaking scene: “All the country was weeping with a loud voice as all the people passed over.”

Later, as David ascended the Mount of Olives, he went barefoot, his head covered, weeping. Those accompanying him were weeping, too (2 Samuel 15:30). Think about that. These people had not committed David’s sins. Yet they were being uprooted from their homes, separated from their ordinary lives, and exposed to the dangers of civil war because of the catastrophe engulfing their king.

People who had not committed his sins were suffering alongside him.

And the consequences would become even more devastating. Second Samuel 18:7 reports that 20,000 men died in the battle associated with Absalom’s rebellion. Twenty thousand.

We should not attribute every subsequent evil choice solely to David. Other people were responsible for their own actions. But the biblical narrative unmistakably connects David’s earlier wrongdoing with the calamities that overtook his household as well as his kingdom.

Imagine carrying the weight of that knowledge. David could not simply say, “Look what they did to me.” The terrible reality of what his own failures had helped unleash was strewn all around him.

2. Public Humiliation

David’s suffering was not confined to private guilt. His humiliation was public. The man who had conquered Jerusalem was now fleeing from it. The king who had defeated Israel’s enemies was being driven from his throne by his own son.

And then came Shimei. As David fled, Shimei cursed him, threw stones, and accused him of bloodshed (2 Samuel 16:5–8). One of David’s men wanted to silence Shimei, but David refused. His response was as unexpected as it was extraordinary. He acknowledged the possibility that Yahweh Himself had told Shimei to curse him (2 Samuel 16:10–11).

David was not necessarily agreeing with Shimei’s accusations. But he recognized that God might be allowing this humiliation, and he refused to assume that he was entitled to escape it.

Meanwhile, Absalom publicly violated David’s concubines, fulfilling Nathan’s earlier warning that David’s own household would become the setting for public disgrace (2 Samuel 12:11–12; 16:21–22). The humiliation was staggering. David had lost control of his kingdom, his household, and his reputation.

And the person inflicting much of this humiliation was his own son.

3. The Ultimate Blow

Then came the final blow. Absalom was killed. The rebellion was over. David’s throne had been preserved.

But his son was dead.

When David received the news, he was overcome: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you!” (2 Samuel 18:33). It is one of the most heartbreaking cries in Scripture. David had regained his kingdom, but he had lost his son.

And because his own failures had contributed to the circumstances surrounding this tragedy, we can reasonably imagine that his grief was complicated by profound regret. What a terrible convergence of suffering!

Crushing guilt.
Public humiliation.
Devastating grief.

If anyone had reason to spend the remainder of his life rehearsing the past, David did.

But something remarkable happened.

The Turning Point

David’s grief was so intense that the soldiers who had risked their lives to save him returned from battle feeling ashamed rather than victorious. Their king was mourning the man who had tried to destroy him. Then Joab confronted David. His words were harsh, but his message was unmistakable: David’s people still needed him. The men who had remained loyal to him deserved to be acknowledged.

Then comes one of the most significant sentences in the entire narrative:

“So the king arose and sat in the gate” (2 Samuel 19:8).

Don’t race past those words. David arose. Did he feel like doing it? Almost certainly not. His son was still dead. His family was still shattered. His kingdom was still wounded. Nothing Joab said could undo any of that.

But David got up anyway.
And sometimes that is precisely what we must do.

We cannot always wait until we feel ready to move forward. There are times when the next step is clear, even though everything within us wants to remain where we are.

But we find the strength to get up.
We return to our responsibilities.
We begin serving the people who still need us.

Not because the pain has disappeared or because every question has been answered, but because our lives cannot remain indefinitely suspended around what has happened.

Sometimes we must act before our emotions are ready to follow.

Beyond the Turning Point

Of course, getting up is not the same thing as getting over it.

David’s decision to sit at the gate did not mean his grief had ended. Scripture gives us no reason to think that it had. But it was a beginning.

And something remarkable happens as the biblical record continues. We never again find David dwelling on Absalom’s rebellion. The episode surfaces once more as a historical reference when David recalls the kindness of Barzillai, who had helped him during his flight (1 Kings 2:7). That silence does not prove that David never thought about Absalom or grieved privately. But the tragedy does not dominate the remainder of his recorded story.

David continued living. He continued leading. He attended to the needs of his kingdom. His life did not end with his worst chapter.

And this brings us to something even more important.

The Final Song

Psalm 145 is the final psalm attributed to David in the canonical arrangement of the Psalter.

Scholars who approach the Psalms—Bruce Waltke and others who have followed his lead—have emphasized the theological significance of the book’s arrangement. Rather than reading each psalm only as an isolated composition, this approach considers the message conveyed by the Psalter as a completed collection.

If we accept this approach, something remarkable emerges: after all the triumphs, failures, betrayals, humiliations, and heartbreaks associated with David’s life, the final Davidic song in the Psalter is not about David. It is about God’s Kingdom.

“They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom and talk of Your power ... Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” (Psalm 145:11–13).

Think about that. The final Davidic voice we hear in the Psalter is not defending his reputation, rehearsing his failures, or recounting his victories. Instead, David directs our attention to the everlasting Kingdom of God. And the Psalter then concludes with five magnificent psalms of praise. What a fitting conclusion!

David’s earthly kingdom had been shaken repeatedly. His family had been devastated. His failures had left scars that could never be completely erased. But God’s Kingdom remains. And it will remain forever.

Here, I believe, is the ultimate answer to the body blow.

Lose yourself in the Kingdom.

There comes a time when we must stop making our wounds the organizing center of our lives and become absorbed in something infinitely greater than ourselves.

God’s purposes are greater than our failures.
His Kingdom is greater than our disappointments.
His plan includes us, but it existed before us, and will far outdistance our presence in the story.

Sometimes moving beyond a body blow does not mean recovering the life we once had. It means discovering an entirely different way to serve God. The most fruitful years of our lives may still lie ahead, even if they look nothing like the years behind us.

Three Questions Worth Asking

So how do we begin? David’s experience suggests three questions that can help us move from understanding this truth to actually living it.

1. What is your body blow?

You probably don’t have to think very hard about this one. Perhaps it was something someone did to you. Perhaps it was something you did yourself. Perhaps it was a loss, a betrayal, a failure, or a tragedy you never saw coming.

Name it honestly.
Acknowledge the pain.
Accept whatever responsibility belongs to you.
Learn whatever lessons need to be learned.

But don’t allow that experience to become your permanent identity.

2. Where is your city gate?

Who needs you? What responsibility is waiting for you to rise and fulfill it, even though you may not feel like doing so? Perhaps it’s a relationship that needs attention, a responsibility you’ve neglected, or an opportunity to help someone else.

You may not be able to repair everything that has gone wrong. David certainly couldn’t. But you can identify the next thing you know you should do. And then, like David, you can arise.

3. How is God calling you to lose yourself in His Kingdom?

You may not know the answer right away. But you can begin looking for it. Perhaps God is calling you back to something you’ve neglected. Perhaps He’s opening a completely different avenue of service. Perhaps the future He has for you bears little resemblance to the life you once imagined.

The question is no longer simply, “How can I get my old life back?” It becomes something much greater: “What does God want to do with the life I have left?” And when that question begins to govern our decisions, something profound can happen.

We begin to move beyond the body blow.

A Kingdom Worth Living For

Look again at some of David’s last words recorded in the Psalter: “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” (Psalm 145:13).

There is a greater cause than yourself and all you have been through. There is a different world, a different kingdom to invest your life in. And the entrance into that world awaits you.

So arise. Find your city gate. And lose yourself in the Kingdom.

Who Have You Known Who Moved Beyond a Body Blow?

Think of someone you’ve known who experienced a devastating failure, loss, or disappointment but refused to let it define the rest of their life.

How did that person find their “city gate”—a place to rise and begin serving again? And how did their experience eventually lead them to invest their life more deeply in God’s Kingdom?

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