Month: May 2026

Staring

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)


Here’s the thing about this passage that I can’t get past, Paul wrote it from prison. Not a rough week at work. Not a frustrating season of life. Prison, and likely heading toward his execution. He had every reason in the world to be anxious, desperate, and focused on what was going wrong. And yet, the word he keeps coming back to throughout this whole letter is “rejoice.” Over and over again. That’s not a man who had an easy life. It’s something that I should really pay attention to.

What Paul is saying to the Philippians isn’t “pretend everything is fine.” He’s not telling them to ignore their problems or paste a smile on top of their pain. He’s telling them where to point their attention. Think about what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and good. Bring your requests to God — but bring them with thanksgiving, not desperation. The difference between those two things is enormous. One comes from a person who has forgotten what God has already done. The other comes from someone who remembers.

That’s the part that gets me personally. I have been genuinely, extravagantly blessed, and way beyond what I have earned or deserved. God has provided for me in unexpected ways more times than I can count, and he has never once failed to come through. I bet he has for you too. Right now, try listing out three things you are thankful for. I made that a part of my daily routine a while back, and it powerfully affected my day.

Yet I have this stubborn habit of staring at the one thing I don’t have instead of the mountain of things I do. It’s honestly a little ridiculous when I say it out loud. The blessings have always been so much greater than the need. Maybe you are a little like that too.

The good news is that Paul isn’t telling us to just try harder to feel grateful. He’s pointing us toward a practice of prayer, petition, thanksgiving. That reorients our focus. When I bring my needs to God wrapped in genuine gratitude for what he has already done, something shifts. That’s what he means by a peace that goes beyond understanding. It doesn’t make logical sense given the circumstances. It just shows up when we stop staring at the waves and remember who is standing on the water.

So this week, every time I feel that familiar pull of discouragement over something I need or lack, I’m going to stop and name something God has blessed me with. Not as a spiritual exercise to check a box, but as a genuine reset, a way of reminding myself that his track record is perfect and the need in front of me is actually pretty small compared to what he has already handled. He’ll take care of it. He always does.

Listen

 “My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me”
-John 10:27 (NASB)

The setting here matters more than it might seem at first glance. Jesus is in Jerusalem, at the temple, during Hanukkah — a festival celebrating a time when God provided miraculously for his people against impossible odds. It’s winter, which means shepherds weren’t out in open fields. They were sheltered with their flocks, up close, personally responsible for every animal making it through the cold season. And the people surrounding Jesus were almost certainly religious leaders, not curious seekers. They were likely trying to get him to say something they could use against him.

Jesus doesn’t take the bait directly. He doesn’t just say “yes, I’m the Messiah” and hand them what they want. Instead he tells them something more pointed. If they had been paying attention to what he’d been doing, they would already know the answer. And if they don’t recognize it, that says something about them, not about him. They don’t know his voice. Not the literal, audible voice of God, but something deeper than that,the way God moves, the way he operates, his character. You only know that through intimacy, not observation from a distance, or even from just following all the rules like some religious robot.

Then he says something that would have been absolutely striking for a person who wasn’t following Jesus to hear inside the temple walls, “I and the Father are one.” That’s not a casual statement. That’s the whole thing.

I mean, think about it. Hear were people who were very serious about following all the religious rules stringently. Jesus was saying that in spite of all of that, they really didn’t know God at all. And he wraps it in this image of a shepherd in winter — sheep sheltered, held close, completely protected. No one snatches them away. Not because the sheep are strong, but because the shepherd is.

That image affects me personally. I want to be the kind of person who knows God’s voice that well — intimately acquainted with how he works, familiar enough with his character that I recognize when he’s speaking. I feel like I’m genuinely trying to get there, especially in this season of my life. But I also know that sin does damage. It gets in the way. It’s like static on a line that used to be clear. My honest prayer is that God heals that and helps me hear him more clearly.

The practical part is pretty straightforward, even if it’s not always easy. I can’t just talk at God like I’m placing an order at a drive-thru and then pulling away. That’s not a relationship. It’s a transaction. What I actually need is real back-and-forth. I need dedicated time to sit and listen, not just speak. Then carrying that conversation through the rest of the day, moment by moment. That’s how you get to know someone’s voice. You spend time with them and listen.