There are seasons in life when everything feels like it’s shaking—politically, socially, spiritually, and even internally. Times when the old scaffolding of your life trembles under your feet, and you’re not sure if it’s falling apart or falling away. Times when you wake up with the sense that something inside you is asking to grow, but there’s no clear sense of where that growth will take you or what it might cost.

I’m in one of those seasons now.If you’re honest, you might be too.

What I’m learning—slowly, stubbornly—is that personal growth is not a private hobby. It is not a luxury. It is not self-help for people who have the privilege of spare time. In moments like these, growth becomes a form of resistance. It becomes a political act, a theological act, an act of defiance against every system that told you to shrink, every voice that trained you to survive and never flourish, every fear that taught you to stay small.

When the world tightens, growth becomes rebellion.When the world trembles, growth becomes revelation.When the old self stops fitting, growth becomes salvation.

And if you’re willing, let’s sit with that for a little while.

I. The Old Containers That Cannot Hold Us Anymore

There is a hunger that rises inside us when we’ve outgrown a previous version of ourselves. It’s a spiritual claustrophobia, an inner tightness that whispers, This is too small now. You can’t stay here anymore.

I felt that growing up, long before I had words for it. As a gay kid in church spaces that didn’t have room for me, I learned early that survival meant shrinking. Blending. Editing. Hiding. Constricting myself until I could fit into the expectations handed to me. It was like wearing a suit three sizes too small because someone told you it was “holy.”

But here’s the truth you don’t understand until later:Your soul keeps growing even when your life doesn’t.

You can suppress the voice, silence the desire, numb the ache, but the soul—God’s breath in you—does not stop expanding. And eventually, the container cracks. The costumes tear. The borrowed expectations burst at the seams.

For some people, this happens quietly.For others, it’s an internal earthquake.

But it will come.

And when it does, you have to choose:Will you shrink back into the old self, or will you grow into the new one?

Growth hurts.But shrinking kills.

II. Survival Mode Makes No Room for Becoming

For a long time, survival was my normal. I know what it is to count food, to stretch meals, to watch the pantry with dread. I know the tension of working full-time and still feeling like the math never adds up. If you’ve lived through scarcity—financial, emotional, spiritual—your body remembers. It shapes the way you breathe, the way you hold your shoulders, the way you hope just enough to get by but not so much that disappointment crushes you.

Survival mode teaches you to be grateful for crumbs because you’ve experienced famine.Survival mode teaches you to never ask for more because “more” was never an option.Survival mode teaches you that suffering is normal and wanting joy is suspicious.

But here’s the revelation no one talks about:Survival mode and personal growth do not coexist.

Survival mode doesn’t give you the space to become. It gives you the space to endure.

And yet, enduring is not the same as living.

We often confuse the two because endurance feels holy, sacrificial, admirable. But you weren’t created simply to endure. You weren’t put on this earth to spend your entire life bracing. The God who breathed life into your lungs didn’t design you to spend that breath tightening your chest in fear.

There comes a point when survival strategies start suffocating the soul.What once protected you now limits you.What once kept you alive now keeps you small.

Growth begins the moment we stop worshiping survival.

III. Healing as a Political Act

We are living in a moment when hateful ideologies are disguising themselves as piety—when Christian nationalism, authoritarian rhetoric, and fear-driven religion parade through the streets draped in flags and crosses. When entire systems tell you that your flourishing is selfish, your healing is rebellion, your authenticity is dangerous, and your joy must be policed.

In this climate, becoming whole is not passive.

Healing is subversive.Healing is prophetic.Healing is political.Healing is a declaration:

“I will not let this world convince me that I don’t deserve to be whole.”

When you grow beyond the story they gave you, you resist the systems that benefit from your stagnation. When you confront the traumas you were told to ignore, you break generational cycles. When you unlearn shame handed to you by religion or family or culture, you undermine the structures that rely on shame to control you. When you take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, your boundaries, and your truth, you are actively disrupting the powers that depend on your exhaustion.

This world is loud with fear.Healing is choosing not to worship fear anymore.

And in seasons of political and social uncertainty—times like right now—your healing becomes a form of public theology. A statement of what you believe about yourself, about God, about humanity, about the future.

Choosing to grow in chaos says,“I believe in a world that is possible but not yet visible.I choose to become that world before it arrives.”

IV. When the Earth Shakes, Roots Deepen

There’s something strange about the human soul: it grows deeper when everything on the surface shakes.

Political instability. Social fracture. Economic anxiety. Moral confusion. Religious betrayal. You know the list. I know the list. We’re living it.

And yet, paradoxically, these seasons call something sacred out of us—something ancient, something resilient, something God-shaped.

In Scripture, earthquakes often precede revelation.Storms precede miracles.Trembling precedes transformation.

When the ground moves, you find out what can be shaken and what cannot.

Growth in a season like this is not a forced optimism. It is not pretending the world is fine. It is the decision to anchor yourself in something deeper than the chaos.

To say:“I will not let the noise determine my identity.”“I will not let the storm define my becoming.”“I will not let uncertainty shrink my soul.”

This is the kind of growth that changes people.This is the kind of growth that changes nations.This is the kind of growth that changes faith.

V. The Gratitude That Changes Everything

Let me tell you something surprising:The most radical form of growth I’ve found lately is gratitude.

Not the shallow kind—“be grateful it’s not worse.” That’s not gratitude; that’s gaslighting.

I’m talking about the kind of gratitude that sees clearly.The kind that doesn’t deny pain but recognizes presence.The kind that doesn’t erase struggle but honors resilience.The kind that says:

“I am still here. I am still growing.And I am not who I was—even if I’m not yet who I will be.”

Gratitude doesn’t shrink you.It grounds you.

It becomes a quiet rebellion against despair.

Because when you’re grateful, you are telling your nervous system,We survived that.We are safe here.We can grow now.

Gratitude is how we teach the body that becoming is possible.

And in a political moment where fear is the preferred language of power, choosing gratitude becomes a spiritual counterattack.

Not a denial of reality—but a refusal to surrender hope.

VI. What I’m Learning About Myself (and Maybe You Are Too)

Lately I’ve been realizing that most of my growing edges are found in the places I least want to look:

* the parts of me still shaped by scarcity

* the fears I inherited from childhood

* the instincts that brace instead of breathe

* the places where I still shrink to make others comfortable

* the wounds from systems that demanded survival instead of flourishing

* the remnants of an old self that once served me but no longer fits

And somewhere in the midst of all this, God keeps inviting me deeper.

Not into certainty—but into honesty.Not into perfection—but into presence.Not into performance—but into becoming.

What if growth isn’t about leaving anything behind, but about welcoming more of yourself home?What if healing is not a destination but a widening?What if the soul is already pulling you toward the next version of yourself, and all that’s left is the courage to say yes?

And here’s the grace:You don’t have to be ready.You just have to be willing.

VII. Growth as a Form of Worship

The older I get, the more I understand that spiritual growth is not separate from personal growth. They’re the same river. The same breath. The same unfolding.

To grow is to honor the God who planted something sacred inside you.To heal is to respect the image of God within you.To become is to reflect the One who is always making all things new.

Your growth is not selfish.It is sacred.It is holy.It is worship.

When you stop shrinking, you honor God.When you stop hiding, you honor truth.When you step out of survival mode, you honor your worth.When you heal, you honor your story.When you grow, you honor your future.

And in a world spiraling with fear, division, and control, this kind of becoming is nothing less than prophetic.

VIII. The Invitation

So here’s the invitation—not from me, but from the deep place inside you where God still whispers:

Grow.Even now.Especially now.Grow.

Grow beyond the narrow expectations you inherited.Grow beyond survival mode.Grow beyond fear.Grow beyond the version of yourself that was built to endure.Grow beyond the systems that benefit from your silence.Grow beyond the old containers that cannot hold you anymore.

Grow because the world needs healed people.Grow because the world needs awakened people.Grow because the world needs you—whole, honest, unapologetic, courageous, rooted.

And if all you can manage today is one quiet breath of gratitude, that is enough.That is growth too.

Because gratitude is how we reenter the present.Healing is how we reclaim the future.Growth is how we resist the darkness.

And becoming—becoming is how we survive the shakingand rise transformed.

There is a sickness in the soul of the Church.It wraps itself in the flag and calls it faith.It quotes the Beatitudes and votes against the poor.It preaches “life” while legislating cruelty.

We are watching in real time as the body of Christ becomes a political weapon — a nationalist idol carved in the image of empire, not Jesus. And the result is visible: poverty deepening, healthcare collapsing, social foundations crumbling like the East Wing of a house once meant to stand for liberty and justice.

This is not just politics. This is theology gone rotten.This is what happens when worship is replaced by ideology,and discipleship by dominion.

The Mirror Test

So I ask again: What have you done to be proud?

Not in the ego sense — not pride as arrogance — but pride as participation in redemption.What act today stands as a defiance against despair?What word did you speak that defended the dignity of another?What small miracle of compassion did you perform that said,“I still believe in the Jesus who washed feet, not waved flags”?

Because neutrality, in times like these, is allegiance.Silence is consent.And observation without participation is complicity.

The Flood Is Rising

Fascism always dresses itself in patriotism and prayer.It carries a cross in one hand and a torch in the other.It baptizes cruelty in the name of order.And right now, its floodwaters are rising.

The question is not whether you see it —the question is: what are you doing about it?

Did you feed someone who’s hungry because the system failed them?Did you write your representative?Did you amplify a voice silenced by fear?Did you refuse to normalize the language of hate in your home, your pulpit, your feed?

Because every act of love is a sandbag against the flood.Every prayer embodied in action is a dam against the collapse.Every word of truth, spoken with courage,is one more stone shoring up the democracy that love built.

The Gospel of Resistance

Jesus didn’t build a movement to protect power — He dismantled it.He didn’t command us to defend the temple — He overturned its tables.He didn’t promise political victory — He promised the Kingdom of God breaking through wherever the poor are lifted, the oppressed are freed, and the hungry are fed.

That is the gospel we are called to live.Not a gospel of nationalism,but a gospel of neighborliness.

So before the day ends,ask yourself: What have I done today that love would recognize as its own?And if the answer is nothing yet —then there is still time.

Go.Do something that makes Heaven proud.

I miss and I grieve the worship I once knew.

Not just the songs — I can stream songs. Not just the lyrics — I write words everyday for my various outlets. What I miss is the room.

Timothy Hundley's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I miss the feeling of walking into a space that was already humming with expectancy. I miss when the Spirit felt so near that it started as a quivering somewhere down in my gut and rose up like water, pushing tears to the surface, loosening my throat so that I couldn’t help but sing. I miss a worship that was intimate and outward — where the people around me were not spectators but participants, where you could feel somebody on the other side of the room get their breakthrough and somehow it became yours too.

I miss the way a Spirit-filled room could read the wind of God together. No one said, “Key change here, vamp here, linger here.” We just…knew. The worship leader could feel it, the musicians could feel it, the congregation could feel it. We were in the same river.

That kind of worship, the kind that doesn’t have to be hyped because it’s already holy, is hard to find. And for those of us who came out — came into authenticity, came into being whole, came into telling the truth about who we are and who we love — it’s even harder. Because, if I can tell the truth, that kind of worship often lives in gatekept spaces. Spaces that love the sound of your voice but not the fullness of your life. Spaces that say, “You are welcome here,” but the welcome is conditional, managed, monitored.

I’ve been in churches that say, “You can sit at the table, but you can’t serve the bread.” As if our mere touch will cause mold to grow under our fingertips. As if somehow the God who made us in God’s image would be offended if we dared to minister in that same image.

That kind of half-welcome is its own kind of grief.

So these days, most of the time, I worship in my personal sanctuary — my house. Just me, God, and my dog listening in. And let me say this: that worship is still real. That worship still reaches the ears of God. There’s no lesser glory on it because it’s in a living room instead of a sanctuary. God has visited people in caves, prisons, and wildernesses; a two-bedroom house is not going to block heaven.

But I would be lying if I pretended I didn’t long to walk into a gathered church again — a church that is both affirming and alive, both welcoming and Spirit-sensitive, both inclusive and anointed. I long to walk in as my full self, my whole self, my homosexual self, and worship in spirit and in truth, just like Jesus said:

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23–24)

I’ve done worship before. Before I came out, before I said the quiet parts out loud, before I chose wholeness over hiding — leading worship was one of the most beautiful things I’ve done in my life. To stand before people, to feel the Spirit nudge, go back to that chorus, stay right here, pray for the brokenhearted — there is nothing like that partnership with God. Nothing like watching a room break open and knowing you were obedient to the flow.

But so many of the rooms that once claimed they wanted the Spirit have barred the gates to the very people the Spirit is moving through. They built doctrinal fences around the river and then wondered why the water stopped moving.

I have come to believe — and this will offend the rule-keepers — that many of the things some churches call sin are actually the coloring God put into creation. Queerness is not a stain on the fabric; it is a thread in the tapestry. Our diversity — in gender, race, background, speech, abilities, bodies, orientations — is what makes the cloth beautiful when we are woven together. And I grieve for the space where that could all live together in worship.

So I did what grace-touched people do when there’s no pulpit: I turned to writing. I started authoring books. I shared sermons in closed communities. I opened up this Substack and began saying the things I wish someone would’ve said to me. Because grace will not be contained. If one door doesn’t open, it will find a window. If the institutional church will not lay hands on us, God will lay words in us. If we aren’t “allowed” to preach from the stage, we will preach from the page.

And yet — even with all that — I keep sensing something deeper, something more urgent:

What if the church we are longing for is the church we are meant to build?

Hold that. We’re coming back to it.

When the Gathering Won’t Fit the Glory

For a long time, I thought I was just church-hunting. I thought this was about finding the right affirming church — one that wasn’t dry, one that actually loved Jesus, one that still flowed in the gifts, one that preached grace and justice and the Kingdom, one that didn’t make me feel like a theological project.

I really did pray, “Lord, show me where I belong.”

But somewhere between the silence of that prayer and the scrolling of church websites and trying a service here and there, I heard something else in my spirit. Not a rebuke — God doesn’t talk to me like that — but a re-direction:

“What if it’s not where do you belong… but where do you build?”

That landed in me.

Because when I look at Jesus, I don’t see someone obsessed with buildings. I see someone obsessed with belonging. Jesus never founded a nonprofit, never knocked out a capital campaign. Jesus found people — fishermen, tax collectors, women pushed to the margins, the sick, the poor, the spiritually hungry — and He made a people out of them.

He stood up in His hometown synagogue and read His ordination out loud:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,because he has anointed meto bring good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captivesand recovery of sight to the blind,to let the oppressed go free,to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18–19)

That’s ministry. That’s the model. And it did not start in a cathedral. It started in a small, ordinary worship space in a marginalized town, and it spilled out everywhere.

So I started to wonder: If Jesus’ ministry refused to be contained, why are we so eager to be contained?

I’ve realized that the walls that once kept us out can no longer keep the Spirit in. God has been slipping past stained glass for a long time now. God is moving in coffee shops, in DMs, on Zoom calls, in recovery circles, in book clubs, in Substack comments. I have gotten more “I felt God in this” messages from people reading an online article than some folks get in a year of altar calls. That’s not because I’m special — it’s because God is not waiting on a building to move.

The book of Acts even says it plain:

“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:24–25)

If God does not live in temples made by hands, then God can absolutely meet somebody scrolling on their phone at 2:00 a.m. looking for hope. God can absolutely anoint a Substack post. God can absolutely inhabit a living room with two queer believers holding hands and praying. God can absolutely make an online community into a church.

And here’s where the “we” comes in.

Because it’s not just my ache. A lot of us — LGBTQ+ believers, divorced believers, believers from denominations that didn’t recognize their gifts, disabled believers, believers of color who are tired of ethnocentric church — a lot of us are walking around with this same longing: “Where is the church that is both inclusive and powerful? Where is the church that is both affirming and anointed? Where is the church that will let me bring my whole story and still lay hands on the sick?”

So I want to say this clearly, and I want you to hear it like calling, not condemnation:

What if the church we are longing for is the church we are meant to build?

What if we are not supposed to wait for someone else to grow a backbone and widen a table? What if the Spirit has been placing this ache in us because we are the ones who will make sure the table is long enough for everyone.

What if the church we build is a church that:

* Embodies grace instead of merely talking about it;

* Welcomes every soul, from every creed and color, and actually means it;

* Guides everyone into worship no matter what they did yesterday, what they look like, how they talk, or if they smoked, drank, or cussed on the way to service;

* Lets God do the work of redemption while we do the work of setting the table;

* Opens the door wide because that’s literally what Jesus did.

Why else would Jesus go so far as to wrap Himself in flesh and become human? Why else would He eat with sinners, talk with women alone, touch lepers, cross ethnic lines, and then die the way He died? If salvation is God’s work, then welcome is ours.

Jesus never once said, “Clean up first, then come.” He said, “Come.” Over and over. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” He trusted that encounter with Him would do the transforming.

So what if that’s the church we become? A church that trusts God enough to welcome people before they’ve been edited.

Because here’s the truth: we are children of promise. Paul writes,

“Now you, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac.” (Galatians 4:28)

Children of promise don’t live in scarcity. Children of promise don’t protect the table like there’s not enough bread. Children of promise don’t hoard grace.

We can open the door. We can set the table. We can light the candles. We can bless the meal. We can welcome people to worship in spirit and in truth, just as they are — and trust that the Spirit will do what the Spirit does.

Building Beyond the Walls

Let me say something else that might free somebody: online ministry counts.If the only place you can preach right now is your Instagram story, preach there.If the only place you can sing right now is in your car on TikTok, sing there.If the only place you can share a prophetic word is in a group chat, share it.If the only space that will hear you right now is Substack, write like it’s a sanctuary.

The early church met in homes. The early believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Scripture says:

“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” (Acts 2:42–47)

They met in the temple and at home. So if you are doing “and at home” church right now, you’re not less biblical. You’re right on schedule.

And listen to Hebrews:

“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24–25)

Meeting together is the point — not the address. If we’re encouraging each other, if we’re provoking each other to love and good works, if we are centering Jesus — then we are meeting. We are doing church.

But here’s where this has to grow: we can’t only create safe rooms; we have to create sending rooms.Affirming faith communities can’t only be trauma bays where we come to stop the bleeding from church hurt. They must also be launch pads. Because once we know we are loved, we must go love. Once we know we are welcome, we must go welcome. Once we know we can worship, we must invite others into worship.

Jesus said it straight:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)

That “go” didn’t have a footnote that said “unless you’re queer.” It didn’t say, “unless the denomination disapproves.” It didn’t say, “unless your church board said you can’t lead anymore.” If you belong to Jesus, you are sent by Jesus.

So yes — let’s heal. Let’s exhale. Let’s sit around tables where no one flinches at our testimony. But then let’s ask, “Who hasn’t heard this yet?” Let’s ask, “Whose worship is still locked behind shame?” Let’s ask, “What neighborhood, what online pocket, what family line still thinks God can’t love them?” And let’s go there.

Because grace that stops with us is not grace that looks like Jesus. Grace that flows through us — that’s the Gospel.

The Church We Are Becoming

I started this by saying, “I miss and I grieve the worship I once knew.” And that’s still true. Grief doesn’t go away just because we found purpose. I still miss choirs and Hammond organs and people who knew how to tarry and musicians who could follow the Spirit without a chart. I still miss being able to look out over a congregation and know we were all on one accord.

But I have also come to realize: maybe the new sanctuary is us.

Maybe the church I need is not a building I will one day stumble into, but a community I will spend my life helping to build. Maybe the church we need is one that hasn’t been fully seen yet because we are the generation called to pray it into being.

A church that is:

* unapologetically Christ-centered,

* shamelessly affirming,

* openly egalitarian,

* Spirit-sensitive,

* justice-aware,

* and radically welcoming.

A church that believes the Spirit is still being poured out on all flesh — and doesn’t edit which flesh counts.

A church that doesn’t confuse holiness with homogeneity.

A church that doesn’t police bodies while ignoring broken systems.

A church that can say to the world, “Come in, every last one of you. God will do the cleaning. We’ll do the cooking.”

And I believe you — the one reading this, the one who stayed even after the doors closed, the one who kept worshiping at home, the one who writes sermons no one’s invited you to preach yet, the one who has a song, a testimony, a calling — you are part of that church.

So here’s the call-to-action:

* Stop disqualifying yourself because somebody else did. If God called you, that’s the credential.

* Use what you have, where you are. If your living room is your sanctuary, make it beautiful. If your phone is your pulpit, hit publish. If your story is your sermon, tell it.

* Find two or three and gather. You don’t need 200 to start. You need willing hearts. Pray together. Worship together. Eat together. That’s church.

* Keep the door open. Don’t become the thing that hurt you. If God sends you people you weren’t expecting — welcome them. Let God do the work of transforming.

* Build with the end in mind. We’re not building a social club; we’re building an outpost of the Kingdom.

Because if we don’t build this, someone else will build a lesser version of it — one that says “affirming” but doesn’t let people lead, or one that says “inclusive” but never talks about Jesus, or one that says “spirit-filled” but still shames difference. We can build the real thing.

We can become the church we needed.

We are, as Paul said, “children of promise.” We are allowed to dream this big.

Scripture References

* John 4:23–24

* Galatians 4:28

* Luke 4:18–19

* Acts 17:24–25

* Acts 2:42–47

* Hebrews 10:24–25

* Matthew 28:19

If you’ve read this far, hear this blessing disguised as instruction: don’t wait for permission. The Spirit already said go. The Son already sent you. The Father already loves you.

Let’s build.

Timothy Hundley's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Today, we pause and lift our voices in gratitude, because the Supreme Court of the United States has declined to take up the petition to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges — the landmark 2015 decision that affirmed the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry nationwide.

In a moment when so many of our civil liberties feel under pressure, this is — for now — a win.

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A Win, Not the Finish Line

Let’s be clear: this is not an endpoint.The fight for justice is far from over.

The petition was brought by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, explicitly seeking to challenge Obergefell and rewind marriage equality.

The Court’s decision to pass on the case signals that — at least for now — there is not enough support among the justices to reopen marriage equality. But we know the ideological forces aligned against LGBTQ+ rights, often white-washed under a veneer of “religious freedom” or “traditional values,” are still very much knocking at the gates.

Why This Matters Now

In the midst of a political and cultural climate where we see:

* mounting legislative attacks on queer identity, trans rights, and family recognition

* co-optation of Christian symbols and rhetoric by groups using flag and pulpit to exert control rather than offer love

* rising fear that rights once settled might again be treated as negotiable

This moment stands as affirmation:

You matter. Your love matters. Your marriage matters.

It also says to those who would barter human dignity for political gain: not yet.

A Church, a People Called to Something Better

There are those who claim Christianity yet choose control over compassion — who would rather regulate affection than reflect the God of love.In so doing, they wound the very image of God made visible in our communities.

So yes — we celebrate.We celebrate because love is love is love is love is love is love.Because every time one more couple says “yes,” one more heart breathes a little easier.

What We Still Must Do

* Stay vigilant — legal precedent is fragile.

* Build communities of radical welcome inside and outside the church.

* Support leaders who see marriage equality as a matter of human flourishing.

* Resist apathy and cynicism; love requires courage.

In This Moment, We Rejoice

So for now: we rejoice. We breathe. We hold each other.Because love won this round.Because in the face of fear, light still broke through.

Because love is love is love is love is love is love.

Timothy Hundley's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Some folks are too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.”

It’s an old saying, whispered in pews and passed through generations.Usually it’s said with a sigh — meant to humble those who float so high above the dust of life that they forget what it feels like to have feet on the ground.

But maybe the opposite has become true in our time.Maybe we’ve become so spiritually theoretical that we’ve forgotten how to be spiritually embodied.We speak of saving souls but neglect the body that houses them.We chase transcendence while ignoring the temple through which heaven meets the dirt.

We’ve mistaken holiness for disembodiment — as though our flesh were a distraction instead of a declaration;a problem to escape rather than a place God has chosen to dwell.

The Body as Sacred Architecture

From the very beginning, God tied spirit to substance.“Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” — Genesis 2:7

Dust and breath. Matter and mystery. Neither whole without the other.

Our bodies are sacred architecture — designed to host the divine.They are not rental property for the soul, but dwelling places of presence.The body is the throne of our will, the frame through which God’s image becomes visible.

Even our senses are sermons: the taste of bread, the sound of singing, the feeling of touch — each one is an invitation to experience grace in physical form.We were never meant to ascend away from our bodies; we were meant to inhabit them with reverence.

The Incarnation: Divine Embodiment

And then — as if to silence every notion that flesh is inferior — the Word became flesh.God did not redeem us from a distance. He wrapped Himself in skin and nerve and muscle. He took on hunger, exhaustion, and pain. He touched lepers. He washed feet. He wept.

Every act of redemption was physical: birth, breath, blood, cross.Why a physical sacrifice for a spiritual condition?Because the condition was never just spiritual — it was total, embodied.And so was the cure.

The Incarnation tells us something essential:God does not despise flesh.He enters it.He sanctifies it.He calls it holy ground.

Reverent Stewardship: Caring for the Whole Temple

Reverent stewardship encompasses all the parts of us.Scripture calls us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”But implicit in that command is another truth: if the body is the temple, then the whole of us is sacred space.

To love God fully means to honor the design He gave us.

* The mind must be tended through reflection and renewal — through the humility of therapy and the courage of self-examination. Thought can be an altar or a battleground; we decide which by what we invite to dwell there.

* The soul is nourished through community and worship — through the table of belonging and the song of shared faith. No soul can thrive in isolation; our inner life needs the sound of others praying beside us.

* The heart finds strength in relationship with the Almighty — the pulse of prayer aligning us to the rhythm of divine love.

* And the body — the often-forgotten vessel — houses them all. Our physiology is not incidental; it is the sacred scaffolding that holds spirit and mind and heart together.

To care for it is not vanity; it is obedience.Eating can be worship when done with gratitude and restraint — a recognition that maintenance, not indulgence, sustains the temple.Exercise becomes devotion, the stewardship of strength.

Without movement, the body atrophies;without Eucharist and worship, the soul does the same.Both need participation. Both require rhythm. Both are forms of reverence.

Our flesh is not the enemy of our faith — it is the means through which faith breathes, serves, embraces, and heals.The body, properly cared for, becomes the sermon — a living testimony that grace does not just dwell in heaven; it inhabits us.

The Living Sacrifice

“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship.” — Romans 12:1

Notice the phrasing: not your prayers, not your songs, not your intentions — your bodies.The totality of you.

Worship is not an hour in a sanctuary; it is every breath, every motion, every meal, every rest offered with awareness that this life is borrowed breath wrapped in holy dust.

To honor your body is to proclaim resurrection in real time —to live as though the tomb is still empty and flesh still sacred.

Your heartbeat is not separate from your holiness.Your health is not detached from your discipleship.Your care for yourself is not self-centered — it is God-centered when done in reverence.

A Benediction for the Embodied

To follow Christ is not to escape the flesh but to sanctify it.To breathe deeply, eat gratefully, rest without guilt, and move with mercy — this is worship incarnate.

So this Sunday, may you love God not only with your mind and soul,but with your pulse, your breath, your stride, your appetite, your very skin.

May your body become prayer.May your care become liturgy.And may every beat of your heart preach this truth:God still dwells in flesh — and calls it good.

There are moments when truth doesn’t need to be discovered—it needs to be remembered. 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture isn’t just a film; it’s a reckoning with what happens when theology trades humility for certainty, and language becomes a weapon instead of a bridge.

For nearly eight decades, a single word—homosexual—inserted into the 1946 Revised Standard Version, has carried theological weight it was never meant to bear. It has justified exclusion, codified shame, and given divine backing to cultural fear. What this film does—brilliantly and bravely—is peel back the layers of history and expose how deeply one mistranslation has shaped not only the Church’s treatment of LGBTQ+ people but the moral imagination of an entire culture.

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What makes 1946 essential viewing is not its controversy, but its credibility. The filmmakers handle the material with both scholarly precision and pastoral tenderness. They don’t sensationalize the error; they humanize its cost. Their work stands as a model of what it looks like when research meets repentance—when the pursuit of truth is seen not as rebellion against faith, but as an act of fidelity to it.

The film’s quiet power lies in its courage. It dares to tell the truth where institutions have often chosen silence. It restores integrity to the conversation by grounding its claims in linguistic evidence, historical documentation, and lived experience. It challenges the Church not to abandon Scripture, but to read it more honestly—without the filter of fear or the arrogance of modern moral hierarchy.

What emerges is not a call to rewrite the Bible, but to re-examine how we have read it. 1946 confronts the painful reality that sacred texts have always passed through human hands—hands that tremble, hands that err, and sometimes, hands that harm. But acknowledging that fallibility is not faithlessness; it is the beginning of faith that tells the truth about itself.

This film deserves to be part of every seminary classroom, every Bible translation committee’s conversation, and every congregation that claims to love truth more than tradition. Because 1946 does not destroy the authority of Scripture—it restores its moral credibility. It reminds us that theology, when untethered from love, becomes ideology. And when language is used to condemn rather than to communicate, God’s voice becomes harder to hear.

We live in a moment of spiritual reconstruction—a generation asking not “what do I believe?” but “what was broken in the way belief was taught to me?” In that landscape, 1946 is not merely a film; it is an act of mercy. It does what the best theology has always done: it calls us to return—to humility, to honesty, to the heart of love that was there before mistranslation rewrote it.

If the Church has the courage to listen, 1946 may prove to be one of the most important theological reckonings of our time.

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There’s a strange rewriting of the gospel happening in America—not by skeptics, but by those who claim to defend it. The Trump era didn’t deceive the Church. He said the quiet part out loud. He told us exactly who he was, and millions of professing Christians voted not in spite of his cruelty but because of it. They wanted someone who would make them feel powerful again. In exchange, they traded the moral credibility of the Church for a fleeting illusion of control. Like Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of political stew, they sold their inheritance for the taste of dominance. This isn’t about politics. It’s about theology. Because when pulpits bless corruption, when hatred is baptized and mercy mocked, it isn’t the gospel of Jesus being preached—it’s the gospel of power.

George Orwell warned that totalitarianism thrives when language is emptied of meaning. “Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” The evangelical right has written its own catechism: “Cruelty is courage. Lies are loyalty. Power is righteousness.” They have traded the language of the kingdom for the slogans of empire. And like Orwell’s 1984, we are told not to believe our own eyes. Integrity is weakness. Empathy is compromise. Truth is whatever the Leader says it is. The Church that once claimed to speak truth to power now kneels before it, and calls that idolatry patriotism. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was meant as fiction, not prophecy. Yet as pulpits praise patriarchy and women are told their highest calling is obedience, the fiction begins to sound uncomfortably familiar.

The ministers defending this movement aren’t doing so by accident. They already believe God’s kingdom is a gated community. They preach a gospel where “For God so loved the world” somehow doesn’t include immigrants, queer people, or the poor. But the real Jesus said, “Whatever you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto Me.” The kingdom of God has always been a table, not a throne. It is where the hungry are fed, not where the powerful feast. Yet too many pulpits have confused hierarchy with holiness, and privilege with providence. This alliance with Trumpism has revealed that for many, the faith was never about holiness—it was about hierarchy. Not about the Word, but about weaponizing religion to protect comfort and control.

People aren’t trading democracy because they were tricked; they’re trading it because power feels intoxicating. They are willing to destroy the country if it means they don’t have to share it. That isn’t patriotism—it’s idolatry. When people who claim the name of Christ defend lies, cruelty, and corruption simply because it grants them dominance, they are no longer worshiping God. They are worshiping Caesar. They have turned the cross into a cudgel and the gospel into a campaign slogan. And in doing so, they have betrayed the One who said the meek—not the mighty—shall inherit the earth.

The Church must repent—not for losing power, but for lusting after it. Jesus never promised us control; He promised us a cross. He never told us to dominate; He told us to serve. He never told us to win; He told us to love. When the people of God trade compassion for conquest, they cease to be the people of God. This is not rebellion—it is lament. And like the prophets before us, we must name what has gone wrong, even if our voices tremble while doing it. Silence is complicity, and complicity is consent. Every time the Church chooses silence over truth, it adds another brick to the wall separating it from its own soul.

And yet, even now, God is raising voices that refuse to bow. Voices that remember that Jesus did not die to make America great—He died to make the world whole. The kingdom of God does not arrive on Air Force One. It is born in hearts that choose mercy over might, truth over tribalism, and grace over greed. The power of the gospel is not in how loudly we shout it, but in how faithfully we live it. Perhaps the true awakening won’t thunder from pulpits, but whisper through the lives of those who choose love over power.

This is not a political essay—it is a lament. I write it as one who still believes that the gospel of Jesus is radically inclusive, utterly non-partisan, and deeply subversive to empire. For God so loved the world. All of it. No exceptions. The kingdom belongs to the peacemakers, the merciful, the poor in spirit, and the persecuted. And until the Church remembers that, we will keep mistaking dominance for devotion and mistaking the flag for the cross. Because when faith weds itself to fear, it gives birth to tyranny.

Yet grace is more stubborn than fear. Long after power fades and false gospels crumble, love will still be building what hate tried to destroy. The cross will outlast every empire, still calling us back to mercy.

I spent years trying to convince the Church that I still belonged to God.That sentence alone says everything about the kind of religion I grew up in — one where belonging had a dress code, grace had an expiration date, and love came with a fine print.

When I came out, the invitations stopped coming. People who had once prayed with me now prayed about me. My name became a prayer request instead of a person. And for a while, I believed them. I believed that grace had a gate and that I had wandered too far from it.

But something strange happens when you sit in the silence long enough — you start to hear a different voice. Not the one that shames you into obedience, but the one that reminds you that you were never the problem. The problem was always selective grace — the kind that believes God’s love needs human approval.

The older I get, the more I realize that exclusion is not a sign of holiness; it’s a symptom of fear.Fear that love might reach further than our theology.Fear that God might show up in people we’ve been taught to mistrust.

The Church has become fluent in the language of fear. We disguise it as discernment. We weaponize it as doctrine. But fear can’t host grace — it can only mimic it.

Jesus didn’t create membership tiers. He didn’t hand out badges for conformity. He simply said, “Follow Me.” And somehow, that invitation has survived centuries of religious gatekeeping.

I used to think grace was fragile — something that could be revoked if I questioned too much or loved the wrong person. But grace isn’t fragile. We are.Grace doesn’t break when you touch it. It breaks you open so that love can get in.

The irony is that the ones who shouted the loudest about “biblical truth” were often the least biblical in how they treated people. Jesus never once used someone’s identity as a reason to withhold belonging. If anything, He went looking for the ones who’d been left out — not to fix them, but to sit with them.

That’s what I believe now: that the left out are the theology. They’re the living commentary on what grace actually means when it stops being theoretical.

Selective grace is what happens when we start believing God loves in segments. When we believe there’s a “them” and “us.” But grace doesn’t know how to divide — only multiply.It’s not a reward; it’s the revelation that no one gets left behind, no matter how uncomfortable that makes the gatekeepers.

Grace was never straight. It has always bent toward the broken, the excluded, the misunderstood. It curves toward the people the Church has called disqualified — because that’s where the heart of God still beats the loudest.

Paul wrote it so simply in Romans: “If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you will be saved.” Not if you prove, not if you perform, not if you pretend. Just believe. Just confess.

It’s almost scandalous in its simplicity — because it dismantles every system built to make grace exclusive.Jesus never demanded that Thomas stop doubting before He showed up. He appeared in the very place of uncertainty, offered His hands, and said, “Touch.”That’s what grace does — it sits beside our disbelief and still calls us beloved.

So if belief is the only requirement, and confession is simply the courage to speak it aloud, then maybe salvation has less to do with earning and more to do with being honest. Maybe what Paul was saying was that faith is not about passing inspection — it’s about showing up to the table, doubts and all.

I’ve stopped trying to convince the Church that I belong. I’m too busy becoming the kind of believer who makes other people feel safe to show up.Maybe that’s the whole point.Maybe the new reformation doesn’t start with protest signs but with open tables — the kind where everyone gets a seat, and no one has to translate their humanity to be fed.

If grace still means anything, it means that God keeps showing up where religion refuses to go.And I’ve seen Him there — in the stories of every gay man who still believes, every queer woman who still prays, every trans person who still dares to sing in the pew that once silenced them.They are not outside the Kingdom. They are the Kingdom.

What saves us is not the absence of doubt, but the presence of love — and the God who keeps sitting beside us until we believe it.

I just finished writing Defiant Faith: A Gay Man’s Journey of Holding onto God When the Church Let Go.

It isn’t something I planned. It poured out of me over a few intense weeks — like years of silence finally finding a voice. I’ve been living that story my whole life, but putting it on paper felt like breathing after holding my breath for decades.

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Defiant Faith came from the ache of wanting to believe again after being told I didn’t belong. It began as a rescue mission: could I still love God when the Church no longer loved me?

Every sentence felt like an exhale. Every chapter was a confession and a reclaiming.

And when I reached the final page, I realized I wasn’t finished — I had just begun.

The defiance in Defiant Faith isn’t rebellion. It’s the refusal to let go of love even when love has let go of you. When you’ve been told that who you are disqualifies you from divine affection, holding on becomes a holy protest. Every prayer becomes resistance. Every breath becomes a declaration: I am still here. God is still here.

I didn’t write it to prove the Church wrong. I wrote it to prove that grace can still find us — even when religion cannot.

And that’s what led me straight into The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace.

Because after telling my story of holding on, I had to ask a harder question: What happens when entire communities are pushed out of the story of God?

If Defiant Faith was me wrestling with the absence of belonging, Gatekeepers is me confronting the systems that make belonging conditional.

The first book was personal — a heartbeat.The next one is collective — a diagnosis.But they share the same pulse: a longing for grace wide enough for everyone.

I’m writing these words now, still feeling the rawness of Defiant Faith in my chest. I haven’t stepped out of that story; I’m still standing in its echo. And that’s exactly where Gatekeepers is being born — out of the tension, the tenderness, and the truth that grace is not just something we receive. It’s something we learn to make room for.

So before I go deeper into Gatekeepers, I want to honor what opened it:a gay man who refused to let go of God — and discovered that God had never let go of him.

Timothy Hundley is the author of Positioned for Promise, Defiant Faith: A Gay Man’s Journey of Holding onto God When the Church Let Go, and the forthcoming The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace.He writes about faith, doubt, and belonging — and the grace that still holds when everything else falls away.

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The Question Behind the Question

What if the same forces keeping the gatekeepers at the door of grace are the ones shaping the world we live in?

I used to think the struggle was just inside the church — the tension between faith and doubt, between what we inherited and what we can no longer pretend to believe. But lately, I’m realizing that the same architecture of control that keeps people from belonging inside the sanctuary also builds the walls outside of it.

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Reading Money, Lies and God while writing The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace feels like staring into two mirrors that face each other — one cultural, one spiritual. Both expose the scaffolding beneath our stories.

The Mirror of Two Books

Katherine Stewart traces how money, myth, and manipulation converge into movements that trade democracy for dominion. She shows how religious language can be weaponized to purchase moral authority.

Meanwhile, Gatekeepers explores something quieter but just as dangerous — how the Church’s fear of difference turns faith into performance and belonging into currency.

Both stories ask the same question: Who holds the power to define holiness?

“Deconstruction has become a modern word for lament — believers pulling apart the architecture of inherited faith to find the foundation of Jesus beneath it all.This is not rebellion. It is grief.When the Church creates space for honest doubt, reconstruction becomes possible.When it reacts with fear, demolition becomes final.Doubt, when hosted by love, becomes discipleship.”— The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace

That paragraph from the book still holds me. It’s the axis where lament meets liberation.

The Nervous System of Power

In Gatekeepers, I describe faith communities as a kind of nervous system — sensitive, reactive, easily flooded by fear. Stewart’s book reminded me that nations have nervous systems too. They contract under threat, expand under love, and sometimes mistake adrenaline for conviction.

The same reflex that makes a church exile its doubters can make a culture silence its prophets. Both are built to survive — but not always to heal.

Gatekeeping doesn’t end at the church door. It lives in algorithms, in boardrooms, in the subtle hierarchies that decide who is “in” and who remains perpetually “other.”

The Hallways of Culture

Leaving a rigid faith can feel like freedom — until you realize the world outside worships the same gods in different clothes.

There’s the gate of wealth, where worth is measured by productivity.The gate of information, where truth is bent until it sells.And the gate of power, where faith and nationalism hold hands like a familiar couple that’s forgotten why they fell in love.

Deconstruction isn’t rebellion; it’s the sacred work of untangling these systems. It’s standing in the rubble and asking what deserves to rise again.

A Theology of Reconstruction

If Money, Lies and God reveals how truth can be traded for influence, Gatekeepers is about recovering truth as an act of love.

Reconstruction begins when we stop asking, “How do I fix my faith?” and start asking, “How do I love more honestly?”

It looks like:

* Churches that host doubt without panic.

* Communities that choose presence over performance.

* People who understand that grace is not an escape from conflict but a posture within it.

* A faith that refuses to mirror empire — and instead practices the slow, defiant work of inclusion.

“When the Church creates space for honest doubt, reconstruction becomes possible.”— The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace

The Quiet Invitation

For those reading Money, Lies and God, you’re glimpsing how religion and power intertwine in the public square.For me, writing The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace has been about tracing how those same forces move through the soul — how spiritual exile and political disillusionment sometimes share the same roots.

The book isn’t yet available to the public. But as I write, I’ll keep sharing reflections here — fragments, prayers, and glimpses of what it means to rebuild faith when truth feels like a moving target.

If this intersection of faith, power, and grace resonates with you, stay close.We’ll keep walking this narrow road together — past the gatekeepers, toward the grace that waits on the other side.

Author Note

Timothy Hundley is the author of Positioned for Promise: Finding Hope and Strength When Life Feels Bleak, Defiant Faith: A Gay Man’s Journey of Holding onto God When the Church Let Go, and the forthcoming manuscript The Gatekeepers at the Door of Grace.

His work weaves faith, psychology, and community to explore how believers heal and rebuild after spiritual trauma — creating space where doubt becomes sacred, belonging becomes possible, and love remains the loudest theology.

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