God’s grace—and his desire to seek relationship with us—is the ultimate expression of love. When we do the work He has called us to, we must be careful not to become prideful. Instead, we take comfort in knowing that God desires relationship with all of us.

As Christians, we are to set our hands to the plow, look forward, and live as new creations, bearing the fruit of the Spirit for the sake of God’s kingdom.

For three weeks in June, these youth and campers show uswhat the Kingdom of God looks like. They give us a glimpse of heaven on earth. For those three weeks, we witness what it means to have our identity restored—as beloved children of God, made in His image and created to be in relationship with Him.

That’s the beauty of the Trinity. It’s not a formula to be figured out, but a relationship, a mystery, a presence to be experienced. A God who meets us as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. A God who moves toward us in love, calls us by name, and shows up—sometimes jogging down a city street—right when we need to be found.

“The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it isbeyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers (and sisters), we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our originalunity. What we have to be is what we are.”

As beloved children of God, formed by prayer and shaped by love, we are offered a destiny greater than our darkest prisons—a destiny not defined by our chains, but by ourchoices.  We need only trust that the prayers we offer—day after day, week after week—shape our lives and the lives of those around us.

Ascension Day 2025

The peace that Christ gives is not the world’s kind of peace—but it is the peace we so deeply desire, whether we are lizard-brained, dog-brained, or owl-brained.

Superman may save the day, but Jesus saves souls, hearts, and moments. He saves us—and he stays with us. And I believe that’s what we truly need right now: not just a superhero from above, but a shepherd beside us, with us—walking through this BANI world together.

My fishing skills as a child with my dad and grandfather were much different from those I developed as a young adult out on the Gulf. But those early experiences were necessary building blocks. The story of Jesus is not just a story of the past. We are who we are today because of our successes—and, perhaps more importantly, our failures. In those moments of failure, we often discover liberating grace. That grace propels us toward healing and wholeness—and into the kind of leadership and service Jesus calls us to join. How is Jesus calling you in your particular way to be with and to feed his sheep?