A few years ago, I read an interview with a successful entrepreneur, is the PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Someone asked him, "What is the biggest difference between people who succeed and people who don't?" His answer surprised me. He said, "The people who accomplish the most are willing to look foolish longer than everyone else.”

That sentence stayed with me. Because nobody wants to look foolish. We want certainty before obedience. We want guarantees before sacrifice. We want everyone to understand our decisions before we make them.

But almost every meaningful decision in life requires stepping into something that doesn't yet make sense. You propose before you know how marriage will unfold. You have children before you know what they'll become. You plant a church before you know if anyone will come.

Every beautiful life contains moments that looked ridiculous before they looked wise.

Every day we wake up to a world competing for our desire. Every ad, social feed, and marketing campaign tells us the same story: this product, experience, or lifestyle will finally make you happy, beautiful, or fulfilled.

Advertising has changed. A century ago, ads focused on what a product did. Today, they sell an image, an identity, a promise. The product is almost beside the point. What matters is convincing us that it can satisfy our deepest longings.

As Strahan Coleman puts it, "Manufactured desire sells the world now, not reality."

And that's no accident. Our culture has intentionally shifted from meeting needs to creating wants. Human desire has become a commodity.

We don't live in neutral territory. The wealthiest companies in history—and algorithms designed to exploit our attention—are constantly shaping what we love, pursue, and worship. Our God-given desires are captured, monetized, and redirected, discipling us to spend our money, attention, and affection on almost anything except what truly satisfies.

NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS WHEN YOU FIRST BEGIN FOLLOWING JESUS…If you walk with Jesus long enough—if you begin to take prayer seriously, if your relationship with Him becomes more than a Sunday habit and instead becomes the deepest priority of your life—you will almost certainly be led into seasons of silence and hiddenness. Not because God has abandoned you, but because He is forming you. We all imagine the spiritual life moving from one mountaintop to the next, from breakthrough to breakthrough, from answered prayer to answered prayer. But Jesus often leads His closest friends into places where there are no crowds, no applause, no obvious victories—only the quiet work of trust. The path of intimacy inevitably passes through hidden places. There, stripped of noise, recognition, and certainty,

We begin to discover that God's greatest gift is not always what He places in our hands, but what He cultivates in our hearts: a holy dependence on His presence.

"Healing begins where hiding ends"

How does Jesus invite us to come out of the shadows of life and into the light where He is? Confession.

"We become whole when we are fully known."

-Curt Thompson

The Age of Attention

There is a strange paradox about our moment in history. We have more information about God than any generation. Millions of sermons online. Bible apps in our pockets. Podcasts. Books. YouTube channels. Social media theologians.

Never has knowledge been more accessible.

And yet—Never has awe, wonder, inspiration felt more absent.

The fallout of postmoderism is not merely that people doubt truth—it is that we have lost the capacity for wonder. The world has become flattened. Everything is

analyzed, deconstructed, explained, and reduced to its component parts. We know more information than any generation in history, yet we often experience less awe. We can explain a sunset through atmospheric physics, map the neural pathways of love, and measure the age of distant galaxies, but explanation is not the same as amazement. Knowledge has increased, but wonder has diminished.

This has deeply affected our life with God. We have facts about God but rarely stand before Him in holy astonishment. We scroll past beauty. We dissect God

rather than adore Him. And in a distracted culture, the battle for your soul is largely a battle for your attention.

When Jesus teaches us to pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”He is not merely teaching us to say nice things about God.

He is teaching us how to reorder our attention, which will reorder our loves. Because what we worship shapes what we become.

Matthew 6:9:

“Pray then like this:
‘Our Father in heaven…’” 

This is stunning. Because Jesus is teaching ordinary people how to relate to God. And He intentionally begins with intimacy. In first-century Judaism, God was holy, revered, majestic, and transcendent. And He is.

But Jesus introduces something astonishing: closeness. The word Jesus uses carries familial intimacy. This is relational nearness. Jesus is saying: Prayer begins by remembering who you belong to.

Before requests. Before confession. Before intercession. Belonging.

Ruth Haley Barton writes, “The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy.” Many of us have souls that have learned to hide.

Prayer becomes the place where the soul slowly comes out of hiding in the presence of a safe Father.

You belong first. Prayer is that place where true “belonging” begins. 

There is a kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot fix. You know what I mean. You can take the vacation. Turn your phone off. Sleep for eight full hours. Go to therapy. Get healthier. Get organized.

And still feel hollow somewhere beneath the surface. Because not all exhaustion is physical, some exhaustion is spiritual.  Some exhaustion comes from living disconnected from the presence of God while trying to survive on noise, productivity, stimulation, and distraction.

We are constantly consuming: podcasts, reels, news, opinions, entertainment, outrage, information. We fill our schedules, our minds, and our bellies…And yet many of us are starving internally. Not because we are bad people. Definitely not because we do not love Jesus. But because we have forgotten how to be with Him. 

Prayer was not an accessory in the life of Jesus. Prayer was the center.

One of the fascinating things in the Gospels is how often Jesus disappears. Again and again: He withdraws. He leaves crowds. He wakes early. He goes to lonely places. He prays through the night.

Jesus Himself built His life around communion with the Father. And if Jesus needed silence…If Jesus needed solitude…If Jesus needed prayer…How much more do we?

We come into the world through our five senses. We learn by touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell. Then, as we grow older, we are formed into another layer of reality: logic, theory, philosophy, systems, information, and mental frameworks. We are taught to explain things. Categorize things. Control things. We learn to trust what can be measured, studied, and articulated.

Then we form spiritual things, and we form “spiritual things” into concepts: theology, doctrine, apologetics, systems, denominations, frameworks, podcasts, debates, positions.

Again, none of those things is bad. Some are deeply necessary. But something subtle can happen. We can begin mistaking explanation for encounter.

It's like having the ability to describe the ocean beautifully…while never stepping into the water.

This is one of the great dangers of modern Christianity: we become informed about God while remaining distant from Him.

The Scriptures never present God as merely an idea to study. Moses does not merely learn about fire. He stands before a burning bush. Israel does not merely hear theories about deliverance. They walk through the sea. The disciples do not merely study love. They eat with Love Himself.

And often, that awakening begins with disruption. With detachment. With unlearning.

We think formation is about adding more information. More books. More sermons. More theology. But I am experiencing that the way of Jesus is less about learning something brand new…and more about unlearning everything false.

There is a difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing them. You can study a person for years. Memorize their habits. Learn their history. Analyze their words. Predict their behavior. And still never truly know them.

Imagine a man who says, “I know everything about my wife.” He can tell you: her favorite food, where she grew up, what makes her laugh, her Enneagram number, her childhood wounds, and the exact date they met. But then imagine he has never: held her hand, cried with her, sat in silence with her, kissed her, laughed until they couldn’t breathe, carried her grief, or felt the

weight of her presence beside him into the wee hours of the morning. You would say: “You don’t know her. You know information about her.”

And I think this is how we have been formed…what to expect from a relationship with God. We have reduced knowing God to intellectual mastery. To concepts. To theology. To definitions. To podcasts. To debates. To sermons. To “content.” We can explain God…without ever experiencing Him.

“It is not knowing much, but realizing and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.” -Ignatius

We know Greek words but not His nearness. We know doctrines but not communion. We know arguments, but it is without experience…The tragedy of modern Christianity is not that we know too little about God— it may be that we know too much about Him and too little with Him.

Because throughout Scripture, people did not merely analyze God. They encountered Him.

• Moses trembles before a burning bush.

• David pours out tears in the night.

• Isaiah collapses, undone in the temple.

• John leans against Jesus’ chest the night of His passion….

• The early church shakes under the Spirit’s power.

Biblical faith was never merely intellectual assent. It was participation. Communion. Experience. Relationship.

There’s a quiet ache most of us carry. Not loud. Not dramatic.
But persistent. It shows up in small moments…When someone doesn’t text back.
When a conversation feels slightly off.

When you walk away wondering, “Are we good?” It’s subtle—but it’s powerful. It’s the ache of wanting to be loved and the fear that the love we have could disappear. The reason is—most of the love we experience in this world feels… conditional.

A parent only shows pride when a child achieves (grades, sports, behavior)  Friends who are present when life is fun, but disappear when things get hard. Feeling valued only when you’re productive or successful. A spouse or partner withholding emotional closeness after conflict, instead of working through it. 

“I affirm you… as long as we agree.” “I celebrate you… as long as you don’t disrupt things.”

No one has to say it out loud. You just feel it. You feel it in your job. You feel it in friendships. You feel it on social media. Unfortunately… sometimes even in church. And slowly, something begins to form in us. A low-grade anxiety. A subtle striving. A quiet voice that says: “If I’m not enough… I might be left.”

So we adjust. We perform. We manage perception. We shape-shift depending on the room.  Not because we’re fake…but because we’re trying to be loved.

We live in a culture built on performance and perception and we are formed by this.  Likes. Followers. Reviews. Metrics. You are constantly being evaluated. And here’s what that does to the soul: It teaches you that your worth is earned… and fragile.

The sociologist Charles Taylor talks about the “buffered self”—Taylor’s point isn’t just philosophical—it’s deeply human. A person who looks secure on the outside, but underneath is deeply anxious about identity. Because if your identity is built on approval…then your life will be controlled by the fear of losing it. 

You start reading into everything. “Did they mean that?” “Why did they say it like that?” “Are they pulling away?”

And you become emotionally exhausted—because your soul has no anchor.