What if you’re not really waiting until you’re ready? What if you’re waiting until you’re certain?

If I woke up tomorrow with an idea for an Instagram reel and somehow KNEW it would get 1 million views, I’d make it.

If the perfect location were three hours away, I’d drive there. If filming took all day, I’d do it.

Why?

Because I’d already know how the story ends.

But life doesn’t give us that guarantee.

Nobody tells you the business will succeed before you start it. Nobody guarantees the job before you apply. Nobody gives you the sales numbers before you write the book.

And God didn’t give Joshua certainty either.

He gave him something better:

“Be strong and courageous… for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9

In Episode 185 of Summit After the Storm, we talk about the difference between preparation and waiting for guarantees that may never come.

Faith isn’t knowing how the story ends. Faith is taking the next step because you trust the One who’s going with you.

This weekend, ask yourself:

What am I waiting to feel certain about?

Prepare. Pray. Seek wise counsel.

Then move.

🎙️ Summit After the Storm Podcast
📖 Summit After the Storm releases November 10
🌐 SummitAfterStorm.com

#Faith #ChristianPodcast #ChristianLiving #TrustGod #TakeTheLeap #Courage #FaithOverFear #GodsPlan #Joshua19 #Purpose #Motivation #PersonalGrowth #Leadership #LifeLessons #SummitAfterTheStorm

Who gets the best of you... and who gets the rest of you? You know—the part that's left over.

We can be patient with customers, available to our bosses, responsive to coworkers—and then come home and give the people we love whatever energy remains.

I've done it.

Years ago, I took my kids on vacation to Gatlinburg. The morning we left, a crisis erupted at work. I spent much of that vacation taking calls and managing the problem. I was physically with my children, but part of me was still at work.

Today, I regret those moments of being present without really being present.

In Episode 184 of Summit After the Storm, I share the memories I hope my family carries instead: throwing a football with Noah, coaching Rhys, coming through for Molly, visiting Ole Miss with Reagan, lunches with Jackson—and the kind of husband I hope Amanda remembers someday.

Because eventually the career ends. The calls stop. The emails don't matter.

But your family will have memories.

Put down the phone. Throw the football. Coach the team. Take the lunch. Make the campus visit.

Be there.

🎙️ Summit After the Storm Podcast
📖 Summit After the Storm releases November 10
🌐 SummitAfterStorm.com

#FamilyFirst #BePresent #Parenting #Fatherhood #Faith #ChristianPodcast #ChristianLiving #WorkLifeBalance #FamilyTime #DadLife #Marriage #Leadership #LifeLessons #NoRegrets #SummitAfterTheStorm

There are three words I hate saying, especially when I need to say them most: “I need help.”

Why is asking for help so difficult?

For me, it forces me to confront something I don't like admitting: sometimes I'm not enough on my own.

In Episode 183 of Summit After the Storm, I share what traveling through Europe with six people, overloaded suitcases, backpacks and endless subway stairs taught me about carrying each other's weight—and how Kilimanjaro taught me that pretending you don't need anyone isn't always strength.

Then we turn to Exodus 17.

Moses had what sounded like a simple assignment: keep his hands raised with the staff of God.

But eventually, even Moses' arms got tired.

Aaron and Hur didn't criticize him. They stood beside him and held his hands up.

Sometimes God doesn't give you stronger arms. Sometimes He sends someone to help hold them up.

Where are you struggling right now—and who knows?

🎙️ Summit After the Storm Podcast
📖 Summit After the Storm releases November 10
🌐 SummitAfterStorm.com

#ChristianPodcast #Faith #ChristianLiving #Jesus #Bible #Moses #Leadership #PersonalGrowth #MentalStrength #LifeLessons #AskForHelp #FaithOverFear #Exodus17 #Kilimanjaro #SummitAfterTheStorm

You can be making incredible progress and still feel like a failure if you keep looking at somebody else’s mountain.

Open LinkedIn. Somebody got promoted.

Open Instagram. Somebody bought a house, took an incredible vacation, grew their business or seems to have the perfect family.

Five minutes ago, you were perfectly happy with your life.

Nothing changed.

You just looked at somebody else’s.

I've done it too. I've compared careers, income, success, recognition—even the growth of this podcast.

But comparison has a dangerous ability to make someone else's blessing feel like your failure.

Traveling through Europe reminded me how ridiculous that can become. Rome doesn't need to be Paris. Athens doesn't need to be London. Imagine standing in front of the Colosseum thinking, “Yeah, but it's not the Eiffel Tower.”

We do the same thing with our lives.

And Kilimanjaro taught me another lesson: everyone climbs at a different pace. The goal wasn't to keep up with somebody else.

The goal was to keep climbing. Pole pole.

In Episode 182, we unpack Galatians 6:4, comparison in the social-media age, ambition, gratitude and the freedom that comes when you stop measuring your life against someone else's.

Someone else's success doesn't mean you're failing.
Someone else's blessing doesn't mean God forgot you.
Someone else's pace doesn't determine yours.

Stop climbing someone else's mountain.

Climb yours.

📖 Summit After the Storm releases in less than two months. Learn more and preorder at SummitAfterStorm.com

#Comparison #StopComparing #Faith #ChristianPodcast #ChristianLiving #Purpose #Gratitude #PersonalGrowth #Leadership #SocialMedia #FaithOverFear #Galatians6 #LifeLessons #Kilimanjaro #SummitAfterTheStorm

You don't get to choose when your moment comes. You choose whether you'll be ready when it does.

My 12-year-old stepson Noah has been asking me to talk about his football season on the podcast.

So Noah... this one's for you.

Noah plays linebacker and sometimes free safety. A few weeks ago, I watched him make a great tackle. But that's not the play I keep thinking about.

Late in the game, his team needed one more defensive stop.

The ball was snapped.

The play developed.

Fumble.

Noah was there.

He recovered it.

Game over. His team won.

Noah couldn't have known before the snap that the ball would end up near him. He couldn't schedule the opportunity.

He just had to be ready when the ball came his way.

That's life too.

The unexpected opportunity. The phone call. The crisis at work. The conversation with your child. The moment when somebody suddenly needs you.

We don't always get advance warning.

Episode 181 is about football, fatherhood, Kilimanjaro, preparation, and why the work you do before your moment arrives matters.

Because when the ball finally comes your way, you probably won't have time to get ready.

You'll discover whether you already are.

And Noah, I'm proud of you.

📖 Summit After the Storm releases in less than two months. Learn more and preorder at SummitAfterStorm.com

Keep climbing. Pole pole.

#Football #YouthFootball #FootballLife #Faith #ChristianPodcast #ChristianLiving #Parenting #Fatherhood #ProudDad #Preparation #Opportunity #Leadership #LifeLessons #Motivation #SummitAfterTheStorm

Sometimes God takes you the long way home on purpose.

When God led the Israelites out of Egypt toward the Promised Land, there was a shorter route.

God didn't take it.

Instead, He led His people the long way around toward the Red Sea.

And from where they were standing, the Red Sea probably looked a whole lot more like a dead end.

An army behind them.

Water in front of them.

No apparent way through.

They could have easily wondered, “God, did we go the wrong way?”

But they weren't lost.

They were being led.

And the place that looked like a dead end became the place where God delivered them from the enemy chasing them.

In Episode 180 of Summit After the Storm, we connect that story to Kilimanjaro, traveling through Europe, our obsession with taking the fastest route, and those seasons when life seems to be taking much longer than we planned.

The long way led to what looked like a dead end.
The dead end became a doorway.
And the doorway became their deliverance.

If your life feels like the long way right now, this episode is for you.

Don't confuse a dead end with a wrong turn when God is the One leading you.

📖 Summit After the Storm releases in less than two months. Learn more and preorder at SummitAfterStorm.com

And have a great weekend. Keep climbing. Pole pole.

#Faith #God #ChristianPodcast #Jesus #Bible #ChristianLiving #TrustGod #GodsPlan #RedSea #Exodus #FaithOverFear #ChristianEncouragement #LifeLessons #Purpose #SummitAfterTheStorm

More is a strange word. No matter how much you have, it always asks for something else.

More money. More success. More followers. A bigger house. A better car. The next promotion.

But when is more finally enough?

In Tanzania, I saw families living in homes made from straw, mud and dung. Then one day, I saw a young Maasai boy running alongside us with a staff in his hand.

He was smiling and waving.

He wasn't trying to sell us anything. He wasn't asking us for anything.

He just wanted us to wave back.

Here was a child with dramatically less materially than my children had back home, yet he seemed completely full of joy.

That moment challenged something I'd spent much of my life believing: that happiness was waiting somewhere on the other side of more.

In Episode 179, we talk about ambition, success, contentment, the constantly moving finish line and Paul's words in Philippians 4:11:

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”

You don't have to stop climbing to appreciate where you are.

Maybe sometimes wealth is measured by how little you need in order to smile.

📖 My book, Summit After the Storm, releases in less than two months. Learn more and preorder at SummitAfterStorm.com

#Contentment #Gratitude #Faith #ChristianPodcast #ChristianLiving #Happiness #Purpose #LifeLessons #PersonalGrowth #Success #Leadership #Philippians4 #Tanzania #Kilimanjaro #SummitAfterTheStorm

What if God isn't being silent? What if we just haven't hit mute?

We fill almost every empty moment with something: our phones, television, music, podcasts, notifications, work and endless scrolling. But sometimes the noise we're surrounded by keeps us from hearing what matters most.

In Episode 178, I share two moments when silence became powerful: walking through the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, where people seemed to become quiet without anyone telling them to, and waking around 4 a.m. in Tanzania with tears in my eyes and something on my heart I knew I needed to write.

I turned on my flashlight, reached beside my sleeping bag, grabbed my journal and started writing.

What came out wasn't comfortable.

God was showing me the man I had become and the man I still wanted to be.

Prayer matters. But prayer is often us talking to God. Sometimes we also need to stop talking, turn down everything else and listen.

Not because God isn't talking. Maybe because we aren't listening.

🎧 Episode 178 of Summit After the Storm Podcast

📖 And my book, Summit After the Storm, releases in less than two months. Learn more and preorder at SummitAfterStorm.com

#ChristianPodcast #Faith #God #ChristianLiving #Prayer #Bible #Jesus #ListenToGod #FaithJourney #ChristianEncouragement #PersonalGrowth #LifeLessons #Kilimanjaro #AnneFrankHouse #SummitAfterTheStorm

Maybe the problem isn't that we're too easily offended. Maybe we're offended by the wrong things.

Nearly 30 years ago, I held a door open for a man and respectfully called him “sir.” His response stunned me: “Don't you call me sir! I can open the door for myself!”

I learned that day that what one person intends as respect, another can receive as an insult.

But today I'm asking a bigger question: Have we become more sensitive without becoming more discerning?

Jesus wasn't afraid to get angry when something sacred was being dishonored. He overturned tables in the Temple. Scripture tells us to be slow to anger, but it also calls us to speak truth in love and stand for what is right.

So how do we know the difference between something that's merely different, something that personally offends us, and something that's actually wrong?

In Episode 177, we explore culture, faith, leadership, Europe, Kilimanjaro, and why Christians shouldn't waste their outrage on every disagreement—or become so afraid of offending someone that we stop standing for truth.

Not everything that offends me is wrong. And not everything that's wrong offends me enough.

🎙️ Summit After the Storm Podcast with Bart Wilbanks

#Faith #ChristianPodcast #Jesus #ChristianLiving #SpeakTruth #StandForTruth #FaithOverFear #BiblicalTruth #ChristianEncouragement #Leadership #Courage #James1 #PersonalGrowth #LifeLessons #SummitAfterTheStorm

What if one conversation with a stranger changed the rest of your life?

Years ago, I boarded an airplane and started talking with the stranger sitting beside me. We talked about life, where they were from, where they had been, and where they were going.

I had no idea that stranger would eventually become my wife, Amanda.

Years later on Kilimanjaro, Amanda and I would meet another group of strangers. Those men became our team, and when our tent ripped loose in a violent storm, they ran toward us.

Hebrews 13:2 reminds us not to forget to show hospitality to strangers. In a world of headphones, phones, and eyes constantly looking down, maybe it's time to look up again.

A spouse was once a stranger. A best friend was once a stranger. A mentor was once a stranger. Every meaningful relationship has a first moment.

You never know who God may place beside you.

🎙️ Summit After the Storm Podcast with Bart Wilbanks

#Relationships #Faith #LoveStory #Marriage #ChristianPodcast #ChristianLiving #GodsPlan #DivineAppointments #Hebrews13 #FaithJourney #LifeLessons #HumanConnection #Kilimanjaro #KeepClimbing #SummitAfterTheStorm