WELCOME

Have you ever noticed that the moment you decide to get serious with God, things don’t suddenly get easier? They get harder. The opposition shows up. The noise gets louder. Your own mind starts working against you in ways it didn’t before.

Most people read that as a sign they did something wrong. Like maybe they misheard God, or went too far, or need to back off.

But what if that’s not what’s happening at all?

THIS IS FOR YOU IF…

The warfare feels targeted right now — against your peace, your confidence, your family, your calling. If you decided to go deeper with God and got hit harder than expected. If you’re starting to wonder whether you’re really cut out for this.

What you’re experiencing might not be a sign you’re losing. It might be confirmation that you’re a threat.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

The enemy doesn’t waste energy on people who aren’t moving. The intensity of the resistance you’re facing may be the clearest sign yet that what God put in you is real.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” — 1 Peter 5:8, ESV

Support

Listen — if you’re in the middle of a fight right now, you don’t need a distraction. You need a reason to keep going. That’s what this ministry is built for. If these conversations are helping you stay grounded and stay standing, consider supporting the work. It’s simple — just buy me a coffee. One cup keeps another episode in your feed, another person reminded that the battle is real and God is stronger.

MAIN MENTORING

Peter wrote that verse to people who were already suffering — not as a theological exercise, but as a battle briefing. And that word prowls matters. The enemy isn’t random. He’s watching. He’s strategic. He targets the ones who are moving.

Think about it this way: the lion doesn’t go after the animal that’s already down. It tracks the one that just started running.

You started moving. You started building something, obeying something, going deeper — and now everything feels like it’s pushing back. That’s not coincidence. That’s opposition. And opposition, spiritually speaking, is a form of confirmation.

The enemy is not threatened by passive faith. He doesn’t spend resources on people who are comfortable and spiritually asleep. But the moment you wake up — the moment you start praying like it matters, leading your family, walking in obedience — you become a problem. And he responds to problems.

What wisdom looks like here is exactly what Peter describes: sober-minded and watchful. Not paranoid. Not panicking. Clear-eyed and aware. You don’t blame a demon for everything, but you don’t pretend the battle isn’t real either. You see it for what it is, you stand your ground, and you trust the One who already won.

DAILY ACTION

Write down the one area where the attack feels most concentrated. Then write next to it: This is where I stand. Present tense. Today.

THE DAILY CHARGE

You’re not losing ground. You’re being tested on ground you’ve already taken. Hold it.

CLOSING WHISPER

God, the battle is real today and I’m not pretending otherwise. But I’m not running either. You called me, You equipped me, and You’re not surprised by what I’m facing. Strengthen me where I’m weak. Clear my mind where the enemy is loudest. Remind me who I am in You. I trust You with this fight. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

You made it through today’s episode. That tells me something about you — you’re not the kind of person who taps out when things get hard. If this ministry is helping you stay in the fight and keep your eyes on God, support it here:

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Based On: Hebrews 6:10 ESV — “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.”

My Dearest…

I see it.

Not just the visible parts. Not just the things that made it onto someone else’s radar or earned you a word of appreciation. I see the full cost. The early mornings and the late nights. The times you served when you were running on empty. The moments you gave generously when you had barely enough for yourself. The prayers you prayed for other people while your own needs were still sitting on the table unanswered.

I see all of it. Every bit of it.

I want you to know that nothing you have done in My name has been overlooked. Not one act of faithfulness. Not one sacrifice that felt too small to matter. Not one moment of quiet obedience that nobody else noticed or acknowledged. I noticed. I have been keeping a record that looks nothing like the one the world keeps. The world measures impact by visibility. I measure it by faithfulness. And by that measure, you have been producing something extraordinary.

I know the serving has been costly lately. I know there have been seasons where you poured out more than you took in and wondered if the deficit was ever going to be addressed. I know you have not always felt appreciated. I know there have been moments where you wondered if any of it was actually making a difference, or if you were just quietly spending yourself on something that nobody was tracking.

I am tracking it. Every single moment of it.

You have not been invisible to Me. You have never been invisible to Me. The work you have done in love, the sacrifices you made without an audience, the consistency you showed up with even when it cost you something real. That is not lost. That is not forgotten. That is stored up with a God who is not capable of injustice and who will not overlook what love has produced in you and through you.

Rest in that today. You do not have to perform for My attention. You already have it. You do not have to earn My approval. You already carry it. What you have given has not been wasted and the one you have given it for sees every single part of what it cost you.

Keep going. Not to be seen. You already are.

I love you more than your service and I see you more clearly than your sacrifice. You are not just what you do for Me. You are Mine.

— Your Father

COFFEE AND CALLING

Every Sunday this letter finds you right where you are because that is exactly what God does too. If these words have been meeting you in places you needed to be reached, support the ministry that delivers them every single week.

My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

WELCOME

Feelings are loud. Anybody who has tried to pray their way through a hard season knows that. You can know what God said, you can have the scripture, you can have the history of His faithfulness behind you, and your emotions can still show up that morning like they did not get the memo. Anxious, discouraged, convinced that something is wrong, certain that the worst case scenario is the most likely one.

And then you have to decide. Do you follow what you feel or do you stand on what you know.

That decision gets made multiple times a day for most people. And it is worth talking about.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

Your emotions have been louder than your faith lately. If you have been making decisions based on how you feel rather than what God said. If anxiety, fear, or discouragement have been driving more of your choices than you are comfortable admitting. If you are tired of feeling controlled by something you know is not telling you the whole truth.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Your feelings are real but they are not always right. Faith is not the absence of hard emotions. It is the decision to act on truth even when your emotions are voting the other way.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” — Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV

REAL TALK

Some days this podcast is the thing that levels you out before the rest of the day gets loud. If that has been your experience, consider supporting the ministry that shows up for you every single morning.

MAIN MENTORING

Solomon wrote that proverb from hard won wisdom. Do not lean on your own understanding. The word lean implies weight, dependence, the thing you put your full body weight on when you need support. And his instruction is clear. Do not put that weight on your own perception of the situation. Because your perception, shaped heavily by your emotions, is working with incomplete information.

God is not working with incomplete information. He sees the full picture. He knows what is ahead, what is behind, what is happening in the unseen. And when He speaks, He speaks from that complete vantage point. Your emotions are responding to what you can see and feel in the moment. That is a much smaller data set.

This does not mean you ignore your feelings. It means you stop letting them make your decisions. There is a significant difference between acknowledging an emotion and being governed by it. You can feel afraid and still obey. You can feel discouraged and still show up. You can feel uncertain and still trust. The feeling does not have to leave before the obedience begins.

The path forward is not around your emotions. It is through them, anchored to truth, leaning on God rather than on your own limited understanding of what is happening.

DAILY ACTION

The next time a strong emotion pushes you toward a decision today, pause before acting. Ask one question. Is this response based on what God said or on what I feel right now. Then choose accordingly.

THE DAILY CHARGE

Your emotions are not your enemy but they are not your guide either. Let truth lead. Let God direct. And let your feelings follow rather than drive.

LET’S PRAY

God, my feelings have been loud lately and I have been listening to them more than I have been listening to You. Today I am choosing to trust what You said over what I feel. Level me out. Quiet the noise. And help me to take my next step from truth rather than from emotion. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

Every day this podcast chooses truth over noise. If that has been exactly what you needed, support the ministry that keeps delivering it.

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WELCOME

It usually starts innocently enough. You see someone else’s progress and for just a moment you hold it up next to yours. Their following, their platform, their marriage, their ministry, their business, their apparent closeness with God. And what started as a glance turns into a measuring stick. And before long you are not running your race anymore. You are watching theirs and falling behind in the process.

If social media has made this worse for you, you are not alone. But the comparison trap is older than Instagram. It is as old as human nature itself.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You have been measuring your progress against someone else’s highlight reel. If someone else’s success has a way of making your own feel smaller than it actually is. If you have been discouraged not by your actual circumstances but by the gap between where you are and where someone else appears to be. If you secretly struggle with celebrating other people’s wins because they shine a light on what you feel you are lacking.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Comparison is a thief. It will steal your joy, distort your progress, and redirect your focus from the lane God put you in to a race He never asked you to run.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.” — 2 Corinthians 10:12, ESV

A WORD FROM THE MINISTRY

This podcast is built for the person who wants to run their own race well. If these daily episodes have been helping you stay focused on your own lane, support the ministry that keeps delivering them.

MAIN MENTORING

Paul’s language there is direct. People who measure themselves against each other are without understanding. That is not a gentle critique. He is saying that comparison as a measuring tool is fundamentally broken because it is using the wrong standard entirely.

Your life, your calling, your pace, your season are all specific to you. God did not design a generic spiritual journey and slot everyone into it. He crafted yours individually, with your specific assignment, your specific strengths, your specific timeline in mind. Which means the person you are comparing yourself to is not running your race. They are running theirs. And their mile markers have nothing to do with where you are supposed to be right now.

Here is what comparison does practically. It takes your eyes off your own assignment and puts them somewhere they were never meant to be. And the moment your eyes shift, your pace changes, your confidence shrinks, and the joy of what God is doing in your own life gets crowded out by frustration over what He appears to be doing in someone else’s.

Stay in your lane. Run your race. God is not grading you on a curve against the person next to you. He is looking at whether you were faithful with what He gave you specifically.

DAILY ACTION

Do a honest social media audit today. Unfollow or mute any account that consistently leaves you feeling less than rather than inspired. Protect your focus.

THE DAILY CHARGE

Nobody else’s progress is evidence of your failure. Stay in your lane, keep your eyes forward, and trust that God is moving in your story even when someone else’s seems to be moving faster.

LET’S PRAY

God, forgive me for the time I have wasted measuring myself against people who are not even running my race. Help me to fix my eyes on You and on the specific assignment You gave me. What You are doing in my life is enough. Help me to actually believe that today. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

Running your own race takes focus. So does building a daily ministry. If this podcast has been helping you stay focused, invest in what keeps it going.

My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

WELCOME

A lot of us have been in a holding pattern that we have labeled waiting on God when the honest truth is that God has already spoken and we just have not moved yet. We are waiting for more confirmation. More clarity. More comfort. A sign that is bigger than the last sign. And meanwhile the thing God told us to do six months ago is still sitting there, undone, while we convince ourselves we are being spiritually patient.

I want to speak honestly into that today because I think it is holding more people back than they want to admit.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You have been waiting for permission that God already gave you. If you keep asking for confirmation on something He already made clear. If you have been using spiritual language to cover what is actually just hesitation. If you know deep down that the next step is not unclear. It is just uncomfortable.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

God is rarely the reason you are not moving. More often the reason is fear dressed up as patience and hesitation dressed up as seeking God.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” — James 4:17, ESV

KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON

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MAIN MENTORING

James does not soften this. If you know the right thing and you do not do it, that is sin. Not a mistake. Not a minor oversight. Sin. Because knowledge without action is not wisdom. It is just information you chose to ignore.

Most of us are comfortable sitting in the learning phase indefinitely. We read, we listen, we attend, we take notes. And all of that is good until it becomes a substitute for actually doing the thing God showed us. At some point learning has to produce movement or it is just accumulation without application.

Here is the honest question worth sitting with today. Is there something God already told you to do that you have not done yet? Not something unclear or uncertain. Something specific. Something you know. And if the answer is yes, the follow up question is why not.

Because in most cases the answer is not that you need more information. You need more courage. And courage is not something you wait to feel. It is something you choose to act on before the feeling arrives.

God has already given you the next step. The permission is not pending. The green light came a while ago. The only thing waiting is your decision to move.

DAILY ACTION

Identify the one thing God has already told you to do that you have been sitting on. Take one concrete step toward it today. Not tomorrow. Today.

THE DAILY CHARGE

The next level of your spiritual life is not on the other side of more information. It is on the other side of obedience to what you already know. Move.

LET’S PRAY

God, I am going to be honest. There is something You already told me to do and I have been stalling. I have been calling it patience but it has really been fear. Today I am choosing to move. Give me the courage to take the next step and trust that You will meet me there. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

Growth is not accidental. Neither is this podcast. It takes daily commitment to build something worth coming back to. If this has been worth coming back to for you, support it today.

My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

WELCOME

There is a version of faith that gets preached a lot that has no room for questions. It is confident, unwavering, and always certain. And for some people, that version creates a quiet shame around the honest moments when they are not sure. When they believe but they also wonder. When they trust God but they also have a question they have never said out loud because it felt like it would disqualify them from the faith conversation altogether.

I want to create some room today for the person carrying one of those questions.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You believe God but you also have doubts you have never told anyone. If you have been pretending to have more certainty than you actually feel. If you are afraid that your questions mean your faith is broken. If you have been sitting in the back of your own spiritual life because you did not think honest doubters were allowed in the front.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Pretending is. God can work with your honest questions. He cannot work with a performance.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe; help my unbelief.” — Mark 9:24, ESV

FROM THE HOST

If this podcast has been the place where you feel like you can be honest about your faith without judgment, that is exactly what it was built to be. Help keep it going by supporting the ministry today.

MAIN MENTORING

That father in Mark 9 said one of the most honest things recorded in all of Scripture. I believe. Help my unbelief. Both sentences true at the same time. Both spoken directly to Jesus without apology or cleanup. And Jesus did not correct him, did not send him away, did not tell him to come back when he had more faith. He healed his son right there in the middle of the tension between belief and doubt.

That is worth sitting with.

God is not intimidated by your questions. He is not surprised by them. He is not waiting for you to arrive at perfect certainty before He engages with you. The father in that story did not have it all together. He had enough to show up and be honest. And that was sufficient.

Doubt becomes dangerous not when it exists but when it is left alone in the dark. Questions you never bring to God tend to grow into conclusions that move you away from Him. But questions you bring honestly, the ones you actually put in front of Him and say I believe but I need help with this part, those are the questions that deepen faith rather than erode it. Honesty with God is not a threat to your relationship with Him. It is the foundation of it.

Bring Him the real version of where you are. He already knows it anyway.

DAILY ACTION

Write down the honest question you have been carrying but have not said out loud. Then pray it directly to God today, exactly as it is. No cleanup. Just honesty.

THE DAILY CHARGE

God is not looking for a polished performance. He is looking for an honest heart. Bring Him what you actually have today and let Him meet you right there.

LET’S PRAY

God, I believe. And I also have questions I have been too afraid to say out loud. So here they are. I am not pretending today. I am just showing up honest and trusting that You are big enough to handle what I am bringing. Meet me here. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

Real faith gets talked about here every single day. No polish, no performance, just honest discipleship. If that has been valuable to you, support the ministry that keeps it real.

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WELCOME

Nobody prays for patience. Not really. We pray for the thing we’re waiting for. We pray for the door to open, the answer to come, the situation to shift. But patience itself? The actual capacity to wait well without losing your mind or your faith? Nobody is lining up for that. And yet it is one of the most transformative things God can develop in a person. The problem is the only way He develops it is by giving you something to wait for.

So here we are.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You are in a waiting season that has gone on longer than you expected. If you have been faithful and obedient and the thing still has not moved. If patience feels less like a virtue right now and more like a sentence. If you are starting to resent the wait instead of learn from it.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Waiting is not the gap between where you are and where God is taking you. Waiting is part of the trip. It is doing something in you that the destination alone never could.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” — Romans 8:28, ESV

HONEST WORDS

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MAIN MENTORING

Romans 8:28 is one of the most quoted and most misapplied verses in the Bible. People reach for it as a quick comfort when things go wrong. But Paul wrote it as a theological anchor. All things work together for good. Not some things. Not the comfortable things. All of it, including the waiting, including the silence, including the seasons that make no sense from where you are standing.

The word together is what most people skip. Paul is not saying every individual thing is good. He is saying that in the hands of God, all of it is being worked toward something good. The waiting season is part of that. It is not good in isolation. But God is using it to build something in you that movement and momentum simply cannot produce.

Waiting reveals what you actually believe about God when there is nothing visible to lean on. It strips away the props and leaves you with either a faith that was always rooted in Him or a faith that was always rooted in circumstances. That is not a comfortable process. But it is one of the most important ones He will ever take you through.

DAILY ACTION

Ask God today to show you one thing He is developing in you through this waiting season. Write it down. Then thank Him for it specifically, even if gratitude is hard to find right now.

THE DAILY CHARGE

The wait is not wasted. Every day you remain faithful in it, something is being built in you that will matter far beyond this season. Stay in it. Trust the process. God is working all of it together.

LET’S PRAY

God, I will be honest. I do not like waiting and I am not good at it. But I trust that You are doing something in this season that I cannot see yet. So today I am choosing to receive the wait as a gift instead of resenting it as a delay. Work in me what only this season can produce. I trust You with the timeline. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

Waiting well is hard. So is building a daily ministry from scratch. If this podcast has been worth the wait in your feed every morning, support the work behind it today.

My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

WELCOME

There are seasons where prayer feels like talking to a ceiling. Where you open your Bible and the words are familiar but nothing is landing. Where the presence of God that once felt so close and so real now feels like a memory you’re trying to hold onto. And the scary part isn’t just the silence. It’s what the silence starts to make you believe.

If you’ve been in one of those seasons lately, I don’t want you to feel alone in it. It is more common than people admit and more survivable than it feels.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You love God but you haven’t felt Him in a while. If your faith is intact but your feelings are lagging behind it. If you’ve been doing all the right things but the connection feels thin. If you’re starting to wonder whether the distance is your fault or whether something has shifted that you can’t quite identify.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

The feeling of God’s distance is real. The fact of God’s distance is not. He has not moved. Your emotions are not a reliable GPS for His location.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9, ESV

A WORD FROM THE MINISTRY

Some days this podcast is the thing that reminds you God is still speaking. If it has been that for you, consider supporting the work that makes it possible. Your generosity keeps this ministry going one episode at a time.

MAIN MENTORING

God said that to Joshua right before one of the most daunting assignments of his life. Moses was dead. The Jordan River was ahead. The Promised Land was on the other side and Joshua was the one who had to lead the people into it. The pressure was real and the weight was enormous.

And God didn’t say you will feel My presence every step of the way. He said I am with you wherever you go. Those are not the same promise. One is about emotion. The other is about fact. God was making a statement about His nature and His commitment, not about how Joshua was going to feel on any given morning.

That distinction matters enormously for where you are right now.

Feelings are real. They are not nothing. But they are also not the most reliable source of information about spiritual reality. Feelings are influenced by sleep, by stress, by unresolved conflict, by physical health, by seasons and cycles that have nothing to do with the state of your relationship with God. You can feel far from someone who is standing right next to you. You can feel alone in a room full of people who love you. Feelings lie sometimes. Not maliciously. Just because they are feelings and not facts.

The fact is this. God is with you. Not was with you. Not will be with you when you get yourself together. Is with you. Right now. In the dry season, in the quiet season, in the season where nothing feels alive and nothing feels close. He is present in it the same way He is present in the breakthrough moments. His presence is not performance based. It does not fluctuate based on how spiritually alive you feel on a Tuesday morning.

What God asks of you in those seasons is not to manufacture a feeling you don’t have. He asks you to choose truth over sensation. To say out loud what you know even when you don’t feel it. To anchor yourself to what He said rather than to what you feel in the moment.

That is not fake faith. That is mature faith. And it is exactly the kind of faith that keeps people standing when the feelings finally catch back up.

DAILY ACTION

Write down one thing you know to be true about God today, regardless of how you feel. Read it out loud before you do anything else. Let truth lead and let your emotions follow.

THE DAILY CHARGE

God has not gone anywhere. He is with you in the dry season the same way He is with you in the fruitful one. Stand on what you know. The feelings will catch up.

LET’S PRAY

God, I am going to be honest. I have not felt You lately and that has scared me more than I wanted to admit. But I am choosing today to believe what You said over what I feel. You are here. You have not moved. Help me to trust that even when I cannot feel it. That is all I am asking for today. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

If this podcast has been the steady voice in a season where everything else felt uncertain, consider supporting the ministry that keeps showing up. Every contribution helps us stay consistent for you.

My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Based On: Jeremiah 1:5 ESV — “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

My Beloved…

I knew you before you knew yourself.

Before the doubt crept in. Before the failures stacked up. Before the voices — yours and everyone else’s — started building a case for why you weren’t enough. Before any of that, I knew you. I saw you completely, without the filter of your insecurity or the noise of your past, and I chose you anyway. Not reluctantly. Not as a backup plan. Deliberately, intentionally, and with full knowledge of everything you would walk through.

I want to talk to the part of you that has forgotten that today.

You have been measuring yourself against a standard I never gave you. Comparing your insides to other people’s outsides. Tallying up your shortcomings like they tell the final story of who you are. But they don’t. They never did. The final word on who you are was spoken before you ever arrived — and it was spoken by Me, not by your failures, not by your critics, not by the narrative you’ve built in your own head on your worst days.

I consecrated you. That word means I set you apart — not because you performed well enough to earn it, but because I decided it before the performance ever began. Your calling is not contingent on your consistency. Your identity is not built on your track record. Those things matter, yes — but they are not the foundation. I am the foundation. And I do not shift.

I know you’ve been doubting yourself lately. I know the internal conversation has been louder than usual — the one that says you’re too much of this and not enough of that, that someone else could do what you’re supposed to do better, that maybe you misheard Me or misunderstood what I put in you. I hear that conversation. And I want to interrupt it today with something true.

I do not make mistakes. I made you on purpose. The gifts I put in you are not accidents waiting to be corrected. The calling I placed on your life did not come with an expiration date tied to your performance. I am not up here reconsidering you every time you fall short. I am a Father who knew exactly what He was getting when He chose you — and I chose you anyway. Completely. Permanently. Gladly.

You are not too late. You are not too broken. You are not too far behind. You are exactly where I can reach you, which means you are exactly where I can use you. Stop waiting until you feel worthy and start walking in what I already declared over you.

I knew you before you doubted yourself. And what I knew then — I still know now.

You are Mine. Walk like it.

— Your Father

COFFEE AND CALLING

Every Sunday this letter finds you right where you are — because that is exactly what God does too. If these words have been reaching you in places you needed to be reached, support the ministry that delivers them.

My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

WELCOME

At some point most of us learned — consciously or not — that making ourselves smaller made life easier. You stopped talking about the vision because people looked at you funny. You dialed back the passion because it made others uncomfortable. You started qualifying everything God put in you so nobody would think you were arrogant or out of touch. And over time, what started as social awareness turned into something much more dangerous — a habit of shrinking that you started calling humility.

I want to challenge that today. Because I don’t think God is impressed by it.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF…

You’ve been holding back who God made you to be because of how it might land with the people around you. If you’ve been editing your calling to fit someone else’s comfort level. If you’ve mistaken smallness for holiness. If deep down you know you’ve been playing it safe in a way that has nothing to do with wisdom and everything to do with fear of what people think.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Shrinking is not the same as humility. Humility says I know who I am and I give God the glory. Shrinking says I know who I am and I’ll hide it so nobody gets uncomfortable. One honors God. The other just protects you.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” — 2 Timothy 1:7, ESV

REAL TALK FROM A FELLOW TRAVELER

It takes something to show up every day and say something worth hearing. This podcast is that attempt — every single day. If it’s been landing for you, if it’s been pushing you in the right direction, support the work behind it. Every contribution keeps this ministry moving.

MAIN MENTORING

Paul wrote that verse to Timothy — a young leader who was genuinely gifted but who had developed a pattern of holding back. He was timid in situations that required boldness. He was hesitant when the moment called for clarity. And Paul didn’t coddle him about it. He reminded him directly that the spirit of timidity he was operating in was not from God.

That is a significant statement. Because a lot of us have spiritualized our shrinking. We call it waiting on God when it’s actually waiting on courage. We call it humility when it’s actually people-pleasing. We call it wisdom when it’s actually the fear of being seen, judged, or rejected dressed up in religious language.

God gave you a spirit of power. That word in the Greek is dunamis — it’s the same root word as dynamite. It is not a quiet, apologetic, just-trying-not-to-bother-anyone kind of power. It is intentional, purposeful, God-given strength designed to move things. And He paired it with love and self-control — which means it’s not reckless, it’s not arrogant, it’s not about drawing attention to yourself. But it is absolutely meant to be used.

Here’s the thing about shrinking that doesn’t get said enough. It feels safe, but it is actually one of the most costly choices you can make. Every time you edit down what God put in you to avoid someone else’s discomfort, you are choosing their momentary ease over your God-given assignment. You are prioritizing the approval of people over the assignment of God. And that trade is never worth it.

True humility doesn’t make you small. It makes you accurately sized. It keeps you from thinking more highly of yourself than you ought — but it also keeps you from thinking less highly of yourself than God does. Both extremes miss the mark. God made you on purpose, gifted you on purpose, and placed you exactly where you are on purpose. Walking fully in that is not arrogance. It is faithfulness.

Stop shrinking. Step into what God built you for — fully, unapologetically, and with the spirit of power He already gave you.

DAILY ACTION

Identify one area where you have been consistently playing small. Take one visible step today toward operating at full capacity in that area — even if it feels uncomfortable.

THE DAILY CHARGE

You were not made to fit quietly into someone else’s comfort zone. You were made to carry something significant. Walk in it fully, give God the glory completely, and stop apologizing for what He deliberately put in you.

LET’S PRAY

God, forgive me for calling my shrinking humility when it was really just fear. I don’t want to stand before You one day having buried what You gave me to protect what people thought of me. Give me the courage to walk fully in what You built me for — not for my own glory, but for Yours. I’m done playing small. Amen.

COFFEE AND CALLING

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