Few questions are more confusing—or more comforting—than the will of God. We talk about it constantly—when we are choosing a job, deciding whom to date, grieving a loss, interpreting success, or trying to make sense of suffering. We want to know what God is doing and what he wants from us.

But much of our anxiety comes from using the phrase “God’s will” as if it means only one thing. Scripture speaks with far more precision and clarity. God’s will is not a hidden set of clues we must decode before making every decision. It is both simpler and deeper than that—we are called to trust what God decrees, obey what God commands, and make wise decisions without pretending we can see behind the curtain.

The Problem with Reading Providence Too Quickly

Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, once reflected on the collapse of Big Idea Productions after a lawsuit, bankruptcy, and the sale of its copyrights. Looking back, he admitted that the company grew too fast. Because things were going well, he assumed God must be giving him a green light to expand. Later, he saw that some of what he called God’s leading may have been his own excitement, ideas, and ambition.

That’s an easy mistake to make. We often interpret open doors, success, or momentum as if they were direct messages from heaven. But providence is usually clearer in hindsight than in the moment. A blessing is not always an instruction to go bigger. A difficulty is not always a command to stop. God is at work in all things, but we should be slow to claim that we know exactly what he is saying and doing through circumstances.

The Problem with Saying “It’s God’s Will” Too Quickly

John Oliver once described growing up around death and loss and hearing the answer, “It’s God’s will.” His classmates died. His uncle died. The explanation he heard from church did not help him wrestle with pain. It pushed him away. His objection was understandable—if God desired those deaths in the same way he desires righteousness, then something has gone terribly wrong in our view of God.

This is why we need careful distinctions. The Bible teaches that God is sovereign over all things, but it does not teach that everything that happens is morally pleasing to him. God may decree what he does not delight in. The cross is the clearest example. Acts 2:23 says Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, yet he was crucified by lawless men. God’s plan was certain; human evil was still evil.

God’s Will of Decree

One way Scripture speaks about God’s will is his will of decree—his sovereign, hidden, providential plan. God “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Not some things. All things. Jesus says not even a sparrow falls apart from the Father’s care, and even the hairs of our heads are numbered.

That should comfort us. Life is not random chaos. God is not reacting, improvising, or being surprised by tomorrow. He knows what we do not know. He governs what we cannot control. His hidden will should give peace, not analysis paralysis.

But this will is hidden. God has not given us access to the full map of his providence. That means we should not treat it as a puzzle we are responsible to solve. We don’t honor God by anxiously trying to uncover secrets he has not revealed. We honor him by trusting him.

God’s Will of Desire

Scripture also speaks about God’s will of desire—what pleases him, what he commands, what he calls his people to pursue. This is not hidden. It’s revealed in his Word.

First Thessalonians 4:3 says it plainly: “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” If you have ever wondered what God’s will is for your life, start there. God’s will is that you become holy. Not merely religious. Not merely successful. Not merely useful. Holy.

Holiness is not less than moral purity, but it is more. To be holy is to be set apart. A holy God desires a holy people. God wants your obedience, your allegiance, your loves, your habits, your mind, your body, your desires. We can’t tithe our lives, assuming we can give God a tenth of ourselves and keep the rest untouched. His will of desire is not a mystical direction for one isolated decision; it is a whole-life summons to belong to him.

There Is No Secret Will of Direction

Here is where many Christians get stuck. We trust God’s sovereignty. We want to obey his commands. But we still ask: Which class should I take? Which job should I apply for? Should I move? Should I date this person? What is God’s will for this specific decision?

Often, what we are asking for is a third category—a hidden will of direction. We imagine God has one exact path for us, and our job is to discover it before we take a step. If we miss it, we fear we will be outside God’s will.

But that is not how Scripture teaches us to make decisions. God does not ask us to live by decoding secret instructions. He asks us to walk in wisdom. Pray. Search the Scriptures. Seek counsel. Examine your motives. Refuse what is sinful. Pursue what is good. Then move forward in faith.

Paul models this beautifully in 1 Corinthians 16. He says he intends to pass through Macedonia, perhaps stay with the Corinthians, maybe spend the winter, and then adds, “if the Lord permits.” He is not frozen until he receives a private message from heaven. He makes plans, holds them humbly, and trusts God’s providence.

Move Forward in Holiness

That’s so freeing. God’s will of decree is not a bullseye you must hit perfectly every time. It is the sovereign ground beneath your feet. God’s will of desire is not hidden from you. It is revealed in Scripture and aimed at your sanctification.

So stop trying to pry into what God has kept secret. Stop baptizing every success as a command and every suffering as an explanation. Stop waiting for certainty before you obey what is already clear.

Drink deeply from Scripture. Pray without ceasing. Ask for wisdom. Pursue holiness. Make plans with open hands. And move forward with godly confidence, knowing that the God who commands your obedience also governs your steps.

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Friendship is one of those things we want immediately and receive only slowly. The desire for it arrives quickly. Real friendship does not. That gap between desire and reality helps explain why modern life offers so many substitutes for friendship—forms of connection that promise closeness without requiring the patience, honesty, and presence that friendship actually needs.

One of the most obvious examples is social media. We even use the language of friendship there—we “friend” people, follow them, react to them, and keep up with their lives in real time. But everyone knows, at least intuitively, that “friending” is not the same thing as friendship. It can create contact, but it cannot by itself create the kind of bond that carries real weight in a human life.

Joanne Harris once described online relationships as “a…false intimacy,” built largely on trust and information received from people who may still be, in reality, strangers. That phrase captures the problem well—digital connection can simulate closeness without producing it.

That does not make online interaction worthless, but it does mean we should not confuse it with friendship. Quantity is easy to measure online; quality is much harder to build anywhere. Real friendship requires embodied presence, shared history, mutual sacrifice, and trust that has been tested over time. It is a gift, but it is also a discipline.

A well-known story about Shah Abbas the Great makes the point memorably. Though he ruled one of the most powerful empires of his day, the story goes that he felt a profound loneliness. Surrounded by attendants, advisors, and subjects, he still lacked what power could not buy—a friend. So, in disguise, he slipped into the servants’ quarters and began speaking regularly with a worker who tended the palace fires. In time the two became close. When Abbas finally revealed who he was, he offered the man a lavish reward. The servant replied that the king had already given him the most valuable gift possible—his friendship.

Whether every detail of that story is historical or not, its moral insight is hard to miss. Human beings can possess status, wealth, influence, and constant proximity to other people while still remaining deeply unknown. And lonely.

That is why the Bible’s teaching on friendship still feels so realistic. Ecclesiastes 4:9–12 is not sentimental about human relationships; it’s practical. It argues that companionship matters because life is difficult, people are vulnerable, and isolation leaves us exposed.

What Real Friendship Is—and Is Not

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Eccl. 4:9–12)

One of the clearest biblical marks of false friendship is gossip. Scripture is remarkably consistent on this point: the person who reveals secrets, repeats offenses, and traffics in private information is not acting as a friend but as a divider. Gossip destroys trust because it turns another person’s vulnerability into social currency.

Proverbs repeatedly contrasts the gossip with the trustworthy person: one separates close friends, while the other keeps confidence and seeks love. The point is simple but searching. If someone regularly shares what should be protected, that person may be socially connected, but he or she is not spiritually safe. Friendship cannot grow where trust is repeatedly breached.

False friendship also appears in the form of flattery and enabling. Not every pleasant or affirming word is wrong, of course, but friendship becomes distorted when affirmation replaces honesty. Proverbs warns that flattery can become a trap. A friend who only confirms our instincts, excuses our patterns, or shields us from needed correction may feel comforting in the moment while quietly helping us remain stuck.

By contrast, real friendship includes candor. The book of Proverbs says, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love.” That does not mean a friend becomes harsh, intrusive, or self-righteous. It means love is willing to risk discomfort for the sake of another person’s good. Mature friendship is not built on perpetual approval but on the courage to speak truth with humility and affection.

Think of it this way: if gossip and enabling are a stab in the back, real friendship built on truth is a stab in the front.

Receiving that kind of honesty is its own act of maturity. Adults often become skilled at curating environments where they are rarely challenged, but friendship requires a different posture—expect loving correction, examine it seriously, and resist the instinct to resent it simply because it stings. Candor, when joined to grace, is not a threat to friendship but one of the ways friendship deepens.

But truth-telling is only part of the picture. Ecclesiastes emphasizes another feature of real friendship: constancy. The text gives ordinary images—work, falling, cold, danger—to show that friendship is not mainly proven in dramatic moments but in everyday faithfulness. Real friends make life more fruitful, help each other recover after failure, offer comfort in hard seasons, and provide strength when life becomes threatening.

Christ-centered friendship?

For Christians, friendship cannot simply be emotionally intense or socially convenient; it must also be properly ordered. That matters because friendships often fracture when we ask them to carry more weight than they were designed to bear. No friend, no matter how loyal or attentive, can secure our identity, quiet our deepest insecurities, or bear the full burden of our longing to be known and loved. Those are ultimately divine expectations.

The gospel reorders friendship by reminding us that in Christ we already possess what we are most tempted to demand from other people: full approval, secure belonging, and faithful, enduring love. When we stop trying to extract from friends what only God can give, friendship becomes freer, steadier, and less anxious. We are no longer relating from emptiness but from fullness.

That is one reason Christian friendship can be both truthful and tender: it is grounded not in performance but in grace. We do not need friends to justify us. We are free to love them honestly because Christ has already done for us what no human relationship could ever finally do.

Three ways to pursue real friendship

Take inventory of your relationships. Ask yourself where you may be settling for access instead of friendship. Who knows your actual life—not just your updates, opinions, or public persona? Who has permission to tell you the truth?

Become the kind of friend you hope to have. Guard confidences. Refuse gossip. Speak honestly, but do so with gentleness. Show up consistently in ordinary life. Deep friendship rarely appears suddenly; more often it grows through repeated acts of reliability. Put simply, know the kind of friend you can be.

Bring your friendships under the lordship of Christ. Pray for your friends by name. Invite conversation that goes beneath the surface. And wherever possible, move one relationship from casual contact toward meaningful presence—a phone call, a shared meal, an honest question, a needed encouragement.

There are no shortcuts to real friendship. But that is not bad news. It means friendship remains one of the few goods in life that cannot be manufactured, optimized, or instantly scaled. It must be cultivated. And precisely because of that, when it is real, it becomes one of God’s most edifying gifts.

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If you have had the privilege to love and be loved, then you already know one difficult truth: love is hard. Why? Because, as C.S. Lewis famously put it:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

Lewis captures the cost of love in unforgettable language—to love is to become vulnerable, and to become vulnerable is to risk pain. But if that feels too abstract, consider a more concrete example.

In 2000, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto—a married woman and mother of two young boys—received a six-month fellowship to conduct research in Hiroshima, Japan, for what would become later writing projects. During that time, she came to the conclusion that she no longer wanted to be a wife and mother. When she returned to the United States, she divorced her husband and left her children. In a later interview, she explained her decision this way: “I realized I lost myself a bit and I wanted to give myself more priority.”

That explanation sounds honest, but it is still not the deepest truth. Later in the same interview, she said that motherhood required her to do “that thing that I didn’t want to do, which was give up my life for someone else.” That gets much closer to the root. Our instinct may be to distance ourselves from her, to say, “I would never do that.” And perhaps we wouldn’t. But if we let the story do its work, it exposes something uncomfortably familiar: by nature, we resist the kind of love that is costly. To borrow John Piper’s language, we are bent more naturally toward self-satisfaction than self-forgetfulness.

And that is precisely why our understanding of love must be rooted upward before it can move outward. If love is left to our instincts, it will eventually collapse inward. Biblically speaking, love is not mainly a feeling, a vibe, or a vague affirmation. Love is an action. It is a commitment. It’s the choice to seek the good of another person, even at cost to yourself. Biblical love is others-focused. It is the compassionate and righteous pursuit of someone else’s good.

That is why Jesus’ words in John 13 are so important:

“Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Those verses are powerful on their own, but they become even more powerful when read in light of what Jesus has just done. Earlier in John 13, Jesus rises from supper, takes a towel and basin, and washes his disciples’ feet. Peter is bewildered, and rightly so. Foot washing was not the task of a Jewish teacher; it was the work of a Gentile slave. So why does Jesus do it?

The foot washing is more than an example of humility. It is a sign. It points beyond itself to the deeper cleansing that would come through the cross. In other words, the towel and basin are preparing us to understand the nails and the blood. John frames the whole chapter with love for exactly this reason. At the beginning of the chapter, he writes, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Then, near the end, Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

John is bookending the chapter with love so that we do not miss what drives both the foot washing and the cross. Jesus loved his own to the end. The cleansing of filthy feet pointed to the cleansing of sin-stained souls. We were polluted by sin, and what we needed was not mere water but the cleansing blood of Christ. There was nothing we could do to fix our condition. Left to ourselves, we stood under God’s just wrath. But in love, Jesus took that wrath upon himself, absorbed it, and exhausted it for our salvation.

That tells us at least two glorious things.

First, it tells us that God can end evil without ending us. At the cross, justice is not ignored—it is satisfied. Second, it tells us that we never have to search elsewhere for cleansing. Nothing can deal with guilt and shame like the shed blood of Jesus. In Christ, the search is over.

This is gospel love, and it has enormous implications for discipleship. Jesus ties the credibility of our witness to the reality of our love. Love for others is not an optional extra in the Christian life; it is visible evidence that we belong to him. If the heart has been gripped by Christ’s love, that love will begin to show itself in concrete action toward others.

That matters because even something as beautiful as love can be twisted into legalism if it is disconnected from Jesus’ love for us. If love becomes merely a duty we perform, it will eventually harden into resentment or pride. But when love is rooted in Christ—when we remember that we are loved, cleansed, and kept by him—it becomes possible to love others with humility and endurance. Love must be rooted upward if it is going to move outward.

So what does that mean for us?

If you are a disciple of Jesus, remember that there are no only children in God’s family. Jesus’ command is to love one another, and he grounds that command in the love he has already shown us. The world is watching, and according to Jesus, the distinguishing mark of his people is not their platform, their polish, or their vocabulary, but their love. Jesus did not hand out trophies or titles. He handed out towels. That is still the shape of Christian love.

And if you are still on the outside looking in—curious, uncertain, maybe even skeptical—then here is the invitation: do not stop short of Jesus. God has done everything necessary to save you and bring you joy, and the proof is the sending of his Son. So if you are still searching, make this the question you keep pressing into: what does it mean that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin?

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If someone asked me what defines me as a Christian, a pastor, a husband, and a father, I would answer with three words: It is finished. Those words are not merely a line in the biblical story. They are the center of my life. They shape who I am, how I live, and what I believe matters most. More than a phrase to admire, they are a reality to live from. My prayer is that God, by his grace, would drive those words deeper into my heart until the gospel informs every part of me.

That desire does not come from trying to sound theological or from reading the right books, though God has certainly used good writing to help me. It comes from seeing something in myself that I cannot ignore—the deeper I go into the gospel, the smaller I become and the greater God appears. What I mean is this: when grace moves from your head to your heart, it produces what I can only describe as a downward trajectory.

Your view of yourself comes down, while your view of God rises. You begin to see yourself more honestly, and at the same time you begin to see Christ more clearly. That is not despair. That is discipleship.

That is why I want these three words to define me. My love for the gospel is rooted in gratitude, and my gratitude is rooted in grace. I love the gospel because Christ has done for me what I could never do for myself. Grace teaches me that I deserved God’s displeasure, yet in Christ I received his favor. I deserved wrath, yet I was given righteousness. I brought nothing to the table except my need, and even that need was met by Christ’s finished work. Grace makes me a recipient, not a contributor. It reminds me that when Christ hung on the cross, he stood in my place.

And grace does not stop there. As God now looks on me, he sees the righteousness of his Son. That is why “It is finished” must define me. Those words mean that I do not live for acceptance; in Christ, I am already accepted. I do not strive for ultimate approval; in Christ, I am already approved. I do not have to build an identity from performance, because Jesus has already secured my standing before the Father.

In those three words I have everything I need for life and godliness, every spiritual blessing in Christ, and a love deeper than I can fully comprehend.

And yet, if I am honest, I do not always live as though that is true. The evidence is not hard to find. I still sin. I still feel the pull to matter in ways that can be seen, praised, and applauded. I can want to be thought of as effective, insightful, or indispensable, and what sounds innocent on the surface can reveal something darker underneath. When I begin to crave the approval of others more than resting in the approval already won for me by Christ, I have drifted. I have started asking people to give me what only Jesus already has.

That is the nature of idolatry. The heart is always tempted to replace God with something smaller, something easier to manage, something that promises identity, security, or significance. Our idols preach to us constantly: if you just have this, then you will matter; if you can just become that, then you will be at peace. But the gospel tells a better word. In Christ, I already have what my idols can only falsely promise. This is why the three words of the cross are so necessary.

“It is finished” silences the lies that tell us we still need to prove ourselves, save ourselves, or establish our own worth.

We often act as though sin can be managed and grace can be controlled. Neither is true. The issue has never been that sin is merely out there somewhere waiting to be handled; the issue is me and you, the sinner. And grace is not a thing we tame or direct to fit our preferences. Grace takes hold of us. Grace interrupts us. Grace strips us of our self-sufficiency and teaches us to rest in what Christ has accomplished. It is wild in the best sense—free, scandalous, undeserved, and strong enough to pull us out of ourselves and back to Jesus.

So here is the question I keep coming back to: what is defining me today? My success? My failures? The opinions of others? My ministry? My fears? Or the finished work of Christ? The application is simple, even if it is not easy: preach these three words to yourself every day.

When guilt rises, say, “It is finished.” When pride swells, say, “It is finished.” When you are tempted to perform for approval, strive for worth, or hide in shame, say, “It is finished.” Let those words confront your idols, steady your heart, and call you back to the cross. If we belong to Jesus, then we must let these three words define us—not occasionally, but continually.

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Doxology is a word many Christians hear every Sunday, but few stop to define. At its most basic, doxology means giving praise or glory. In Christian worship, that praise belongs to God.

That sounds obvious enough. But if God is the true subject and object of worship, why do so many people experience frustration, confusion, or disappointment in worship? I think much of the problem can be gathered under one heading: doxological reductionism.

When Worship Gets Reduced to Us

Doxological reductionism happens when worship is quietly recentered on the self—my feelings, my preferences, my needs, my sense of significance. Of course, we are active participants in worship. But worship is not ultimately about us.

Worship is our response to the God who has acted for us in Christ. It is our attention turned toward the presence, beauty, and worth of God. The moment worship becomes preoccupied with the self, it begins to collapse under the weight of expectations it was never meant to carry.

C.S. Lewis captures something important here in Reflections on the Psalms: people naturally praise what they love. We praise what delights us, what we value, what we find beautiful or compelling. In that sense, praise is not artificial. It is the overflow of gladness.

Put simply: we glorify what gives us the deepest joy. That insight helps clarify the heart of worship. Worship is about being alive to God in humble, grateful adoration. And when worship becomes centered on me, it is inevitably reduced to me.

Why God-Centered Worship Is Good News

We matter deeply to God, but we are not the center of worship. In fact, worship reminds us that God is God-centered—and this is good news for us, not bad news.

Why? Because if God is to love us fully, he must give us what is best. And what is best for us is not a stronger sense of self-importance, but God himself. The deepest need of the human person is not self-expression but communion with the living God.

That is why Sunday worship matters so much. But Sunday alone is not enough. We are not only Sunday morning people; we live in the long stretch of Monday through Saturday as well. If worship is to shape us fully, we need habits and practices that carry its meaning into the rest of life. I think of these as living liturgies.

The Need for Doxological Retrieval

If doxological disillusion is real, and if doxological reductionism is one of its causes, then what we need is doxological retrieval. We need to recover what doxology looks like not only in gathered worship but in daily life.

A doxological life is, in many ways, a liturgical life.

What Liturgy Actually Means

Today, many people hear the word liturgy and think only of an order of service. But historically, liturgy means “the work of the people.” That definition is much richer than a printed sequence of events.

Liturgy refers to the shared patterns by which the people of God worship, pray, confess, receive, and are sent. It includes what we do together in corporate worship, and it also shapes what we do as Christians in daily life.

In that sense, liturgy is not mere structure for structure’s sake. It is ordered participation in the worship of God. It reminds us that we are a sacred people, gathered in a sacred moment, for a sacred purpose.

How Liturgy Forms Us

We should not allow liturgy, worship, or doxology to be reduced—either corporately or individually. The Lord’s Day is not simply a weekly moment of inspiration. It is meant to form us for the whole week.

Good liturgy places us inside a gospel dialogue. God addresses us, and we respond. He calls; we answer. He convicts; we confess. He assures; we receive. He sends; we go.

That is why the shape of worship matters. A healthy liturgy often includes movements such as: call to worship, adoration and praise, confession of sin, assurance of pardon, offering, the sermon, the Lord’s Supper, final charge and benediction.

This is more than a sequence. It is a gospel pattern. In worship, God is not absent while we perform religious activity. He is meeting with his people, addressing them, and sending them out.

This formative power should also spill over into our spiritual rhythms during the week. Consider Scripture reading. Many Christians approach the Bible primarily for information, and of course Scripture does inform us. But it also does something deeper: it forms us.

Scripture is not merely something we hold in our hands; it is something by which we are held. It is concerned not only with what we know, but with what we become. Liturgy helps us read Scripture this way—not simply for data, but for transformation.

How Liturgy Frees Us

Liturgy does not only form us; it also frees us. It frees us by taking the focus off ourselves and reordering our loves toward God.

Every day we are surrounded by competing liturgies—patterns, messages, and habits that seek our attention and devotion. Over time, these competing liturgies train us to worship lesser things. And when that happens, idolatry follows.

Idols make terrible saviors. They promise fulfillment, control, comfort, or identity, but they cannot deliver what they advertise. Liturgy, rightly understood, frees us from those false centers by returning us again and again to the living God.

It also frees us for mission. The final charge and benediction at the end of worship is not a polite conclusion. It is a commission. We are sent into the world with the gospel in our hearts and on our lips.

Too often mission is treated as something separate from worship, as though liturgy belongs to the sanctuary and mission belongs to the street. But mission begins in worship. We are formed before we are sent, and we are sent because we have encountered God.

Recovering a Doxological Life

If we want worship to be clearer, deeper, and more life-giving, then we need to recover a doxological way of living. That recovery can begin in simple, concrete ways.

Examine your expectations of worship. Ask whether you come to worship primarily to be centered, entertained, or validated—or to encounter and adore God.

See Sunday as formation, not just inspiration. Let gathered worship shape how you pray, repent, read Scripture, and live through the week.

Practice daily liturgies. Build small rhythms of prayer, Scripture reading, confession, and gratitude into ordinary life.

Identify competing liturgies. Pay attention to the habits and messages that are training your loves more than worship is.

Receive the benediction as a sending. Leave worship with a sense of vocation, remembering that praise and mission belong together.

We need a renewed resolve to let doxology, worship, and liturgy form us and free us. When worship is reduced to the self, it cannot bear the weight we put on it. But when worship is restored to God, it becomes what it was always meant to be: the joyful, ordered, life-shaping praise of the One who is worthy.

To recover doxology, then, is not to recover a style. It is to recover a way of life.

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We’re living through an identity frenzy. Everything is a brand. Everyone is a platform. And if you don’t build a self the world can applaud, you start to feel like you don’t exist or matter.

So “Who am I?” becomes a spiritual question—whether you admit it or not. And you don’t answer it in a journal. You answer it with your habits. Achievement will name you. Attraction will name you. Politics will name you. Productivity will name you. Even religious performance will name you. But here’s the catch: every one of those masters makes you earn your worth every morning.

Here’s the deal: when you crown yourself, you also crush yourself. When it’s all about you, it’s also all up to you. So we scroll, compare, cope, and call it normal—while anxiety, anger, and numbness quietly preach their own sermons inside us.

That’s why the church still matters. Not as a weekly add-on, but as a counter-formation. Alone, we get discipled by the loudest voice. Together, we get re-named by the truest One. In Christian community, reality gets said out loud again and again: I am not self-made. I am not self-saved. I have been saved, sanctified, and shaped by Christ.

How identity works

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

We keep asking, “Who am I?” Jesus presses harder: Who’s talking you into being that person? What is the controlling voice? Because whatever names you will eventually rule you.

I once watched an interview with a man who had carried the label “obese” for years. The tragedy wasn’t only physical. It was spiritual. He didn’t speak like someone with a struggle; he spoke like someone with a sentence. The label told him what to attempt, what to avoid, and what kind of future he was allowed to imagine.

This is how identity works. It doesn’t stay in your head—it moves into your body. If you believe you’re on your own, you’ll live guarded, almost walled off from the world. If you believe you’re only as good as your last win, you’ll never rest. If you believe you’re your worst moment, you’ll hide, pretend, or harden.

But if you’re named by grace—if you belong to Jesus—then you don’t have to hustle for a self. You can repent without collapsing. You can be honest without being destroyed. You can serve without needing to be seen.

A favorite example of this comes from a Hall of Fame speech by Art Monk. At a moment when most people would cement their legacy in football, Monk essentially said, “This doesn’t define me.” He spoke openly about Jesus, about Scripture, and about finding his security somewhere deeper than applause.

He put it like this:

“My identity and security are found in the Lord. What defines me—my validation—comes in having accepted His Son, Jesus Christ, as my personal Savior. And what defines me is the Word of God. It’s the Word of God that will continue to shape and mold me into the person that I know He’s called me to be.”

That’s what freedom sounds like—success sitting in its proper place. And it exposes a modern lie we’ve normalized—“Jesus, yes. The church, optional.” But sheep don’t do well alone. They get picked off in isolation. The church isn’t a fan club; it’s the flock where the Shepherd keeps calling you back to your real name.

So go back to John 10. Jesus isn’t handing out motivational tips. He’s drawing a line in the sand: there are thieves, and there is the Shepherd. There are voices that use you, and there is the Voice that saves you.

Who are you? You’re a sheep—and that’s not an insult

Jesus calls you a sheep. That hits our pride. We want to be lions, entrepreneurs, captains of our fate. Not sheep. But Jesus isn’t insulting you—he’s telling the truth so you can finally be safe.

In Jesus’ day, different flocks could share one enclosure overnight. In the morning, each shepherd would call. And the sheep would sort themselves out—not by instinct, but by recognition. They followed the voice that had proven faithful.

That means this isn’t a neutral world. If there’s a Shepherd, there will be strangers. If there’s sheep, there will be wolves. If there’s a true voice, there will be counterfeits. Some voices will flatter you. Some will terrify you. Some will call your sin “self-care.” But test the fruit: do they lead you toward life or do they feed on you?

Jesus says the thief comes “to steal and kill and destroy.” Sometimes the theft is loud. Often it’s respectable. The thief steals your peace with approval. He kills your joy with comparison. He destroys your love with lust. He numbs your soul with comfort. He hardens your heart with outrage.

Anything that offers you a self without surrender will eventually take more than it gives.

Thieves always take. Jesus gives. “I am the door,” he says—meaning access, safety, rescue. “I am the good shepherd,” he says—meaning personal care, real leadership, and a cost. The good shepherd doesn’t outsource the danger. He walks into it. He lays down his life for the sheep.

So who are you? If Jesus is telling the truth, you’re a sheep. Dependent. Prone to wander. Easily distracted. And here’s the good news: the gospel is not “try harder to be a better sheep.” The gospel is that you have a Shepherd who comes looking, calls you by name, and saves you through his own blood.

How to live like you’re named by Jesus

Call the thieves by name. Don’t be mystical; be honest. What’s discipling you right now—approval, money, control, sex, comfort, outrage, image? What is it stealing from you? Name it.

Repent where you’ve made identity into a paycheck. If your worth rises and falls with performance, you’re not free—you’re employed by an idol. It’s time to serve a new master—the Faithful and True One.

Come through the Door. Christianity isn’t “be spiritual.” It’s coming to Jesus. He doesn’t negotiate the price; he pays it. He doesn’t tell you to save yourself; he saves you.

Plant yourself in the flock. Lone-sheep Christianity is a modern myth. Show up. Be known. Join a church. Submit to loving leadership. Learn to hear the Shepherd’s voice through word and sacrament.

The world will keep handing you identities you didn’t know you even wanted. And if you follow those voices long enough, they will take what they promised to give. But Jesus is not a thief. He calls his own by name. He leads them out. He lays down his life to bring them home. Today, don’t just admire the Shepherd—follow him.

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We all like to pretend we’re above it, but most of us are hopeless romantics.

I don’t mean that in the rom-com, cards-and-flowers, love-at-first-sight kind of way—though that’s part of it. I mean the deeper kind. The kind that believes if I just had him, her, or that, everything would finally be okay. The kind that attaches ultimate hope to a person, a relationship, or a future version of ourselves that doesn’t exist yet.

Genesis 29 tells a story for people like us.

At first glance, it reads like a chaotic love story. But if you sit with it long enough, you realize it’s holding up a mirror. This isn’t a sentimental tale—it’s a story filled with lying, lust, and longing. And if we’re honest, none of those things are foreign to us.

Jacob, arguably the Bible’s most hopeless romantic, isn’t just that guy back then. He’s us, now.

And the good news is this: all is not hopeless for the romantic.

A Backstory Worth Remembering

Jacob comes from spiritual royalty. Abraham was his grandfather and Isaac was his father. His name would eventually be spoken alongside theirs as one of the patriarchs. But before Jacob ever became “great,” he was a mess.

Literally from birth.

Jacob was a twin, and when his brother Esau came out first, Jacob grabbed his heel. That moment defined him. His name, Jacob, means “heel-grabber” or “cheater.” And he lived up to it.

As the brothers grew older, Esau became the outdoorsman—hairy, rugged, the kind of guy dads love. Jacob became the quiet, introverted homebody. Scripture tells us Isaac favored Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Dysfunction was baked into the family system early.

One day, Esau comes in from hunting, exhausted and starving, and sees Jacob cooking stew. He asks for some. Jacob agrees—but only if Esau gives up his birthright, his inheritance. Esau, dramatizing his hunger, agrees. Jacob gets the future for a bowl of soup.

Let’s pause here. No soup is that important. A burger, maybe. A pepperoni pizza, possibly. Bacon, absolutely. But never soup.

Later, Jacob goes even further. He disguises himself as Esau and lies to his blind, dying father, stealing the blessing meant for his brother. When Esau finds out, he plans to kill him. Rebekah sends Jacob away—fast. Jacob leaves home and never sees either of his parents again.

Love at First Sight… or Lust?

Jacob ends up in Haran, unsure if he’s even in the right place. He meets some shepherds and asks where they’re from.

“Haran.”

Good. That’s it.

He asks if they know his uncle Laban.

“Yes.”

Even better.

Then they say, “Hey, that’s Laban’s daughter Rachel coming over there.”

And in that moment, everything changes.

Jacob sees Rachel and it’s love at first sight—or at least what he thinks is love. He immediately locks in. They talk, he kisses her (bold move), and afterward tells her they’re related. Strange, but we’ll keep moving.

Jacob meets Laban, and soon enough Laban asks how he wants to be paid for his work. Scripture pauses and gives us a crucial detail: Laban has two daughters—Leah, the older, and Rachel, the younger.

Leah, we’re told, has weak or soft eyes. Rachel? She is “beautiful in form and appearance.” Translation: Rachel had a pretty face and a great body.

And Jacob wanted her.

So he says to Laban, “I’ll work seven years if I can marry Rachel.” Seven years pass like seven days for Jacob. He’s finally at the finish line. Wedding night comes. Laban gets Jacob drunk. Then Laban switches daughters.

The next morning, Jacob wakes up next to Leah.

The deceiver has been deceived.

The Lie Beneath the Romance

This story isn’t dramatic for drama’s sake. It’s diagnostic.

Jacob wasn’t just in love with Rachel—he needed her. Before Rachel, his life felt empty. He never really had his father’s love. He lost his mother’s protection. He was running from his past. And then he sees Rachel and believes:

If I have her, I’ll matter again.
If I have her, I’ll be secure.
If I have her, I’ll be loved.
If I have her, everything will be okay.

That’s not love. That’s desperation.

Whatever love Jacob felt was clouded by lust—not just sexual desire, but the deeper kind of lust that tries to possess outward beauty to heal inward brokenness. Lust is always self-focused. It asks, “What can you give me?”

That’s why lust can masquerade as love so easily. They look similar at first. But lust consumes while love gives. Lust is about need while love is about presence.

Even Kendrick Lamar gets close to this truth. In his song “LUST.,” he exposes the emptiness under lustful desire. The songs begins with an exhausted, end of the road Kendrick on the verge of falling prey to lust. He is aware of his desires but is about to let lust take control, “heartbeat racin’ like a junkie.” And then the big reveal…“I just need you to want ME.” Kendrick understands that lust is all about him—his wants, needs, and desires. Lust can masquerade as love, but it can never be love because it is self-focused and self-interested. Lust doesn’t care about the other person’s feelings, but love, on the other hand is always others-centered.

But in his song “LOVE.” the tone shifts. He raps honestly about his love for his girlfriend. A love that quenches his lust and is satisfied, not by what she can give him, but by her presence. “All feeling go out/this feeling don’t drought/this party won’t end.”

And yet—even Kendrick Lamar gets it only half right.

Why Love Still Isn’t Enough

No human relationship can carry the weight of ultimate expectations.

No one person—no matter how good—can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. When we try to make someone do that, we don’t just set ourselves up for disappointment; we crush them under a burden they were never meant to bear.

That’s what Jacob did.

And Genesis shows us something uncomfortable but true: whatever you place your ultimate hope in—if it isn’t God—will eventually disappoint you. You’ll wake up next to Leah when you were expecting Rachel.

That doesn’t mean relationships are bad. It doesn’t mean romance is sinful. God created us with relational needs, real needs that demand a partner. But God never intended to be replaced by someone else.

To love us, God gives us what is best for us. And what is best for us is God.

The Romance That Actually Heals

Here’s the hope tucked inside this messy story.

We are broken people, often trying to fix ourselves by attaching our hope to other broken people. That never works. But the gospel tells us something better: Jesus was broken for us so we could be healed.

Every day, we’re confronted with competing loves. And every day, we choose where to look for fullness.

Only Jesus—offered to us in the gospel—can actually satisfy the ache underneath our longing. Only Jesus can replace sadness with joy. Only Jesus can address loneliness at its root.

On the cross, Jesus experienced absolute abandonment. It’s the only time he refers to the Father as “God” instead of “Father.”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)

He endured that loneliness so we wouldn’t have to.

A Couple of Ways Forward

So what do we do with all this?

First, guard your heart. Your heart is the center of your emotional life, and everything flows from it—especially in romance.

Second, don’t love the other person less—love God more. When God stays at the center, relationships can be enjoyed instead of worshiped.

As Winnie the Pooh wisely said, “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

All is not hopeless for the romantic. God has done everything necessary to captivate our hearts with what will actually make us happy and whole.

He gave us himself in Christ.

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If you spend any time in conversations about Christianity—online or in person—you’ve likely heard a familiar claim: “The Gospels were chosen by Constantine.”

The accusation usually comes with a knowing look, as if a great secret has just been unveiled. Christianity, we’re told, wasn’t defined by the early church but by imperial politics. Four Gospels won because Constantine said so. Everything else was sidelined.

Let me frame this post as a brief (and fictional) conversation.

Skeptic: Constantine chose the Gospels.
Christian: That’s an interesting claim. What makes you think that?
Skeptic: The Council of Nicaea. Power. Politics. Whoever controlled the empire controlled the Bible.
Christian: What if the four Gospels were already recognized—centuries before Constantine?
Skeptic: I’d need to see evidence of that.

That’s a fair request. So let’s look at the evidence.

To answer the question “Who chose the Gospels?” we have to move backward in time—well before Constantine, well before the Council of Nicaea, and even before the famous fourth-century bishop Athanasius. Along the way, we’ll meet three lesser-known but critical figures: Irenaeus, Tatian, and Papias.

Irenaeus: Four and Only Four

Irenaeus was not an emperor. He wasn’t even particularly powerful by political standards. He was a bishop and theologian in the late second century, writing around A.D. 180—more than 130 years before Constantine would become emperor.

Irenaeus makes a striking claim: the Church has four Gospels, no more and no less. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What’s remarkable is not only what he says, but how he says it. His argument assumes these Gospels are already widely known and long used across Christian communities.

Even more compelling, Irenaeus tells us that this recognition didn’t begin with him. The four-Gospel collection was already well established 60 to 80 years before he wrote. And crucially, his readers didn’t respond as if this were a bizarre innovation. There’s no hint of controversy over the number four—no shock, no debate recorded. It sounds like common knowledge.

That should immediately trouble the Constantine theory. If the Gospels were “chosen” by an emperor in the fourth century, why do we find a settled, unchallenged fourfold Gospel collection in the second?

But Irenaeus wasn’t alone.

Tatian: “Through the Four”

Enter Tatian, a fascinating and sometimes controversial figure. Tatian wavered in orthodoxy later in life, but his contribution to the Gospel canon question is invaluable.

Before A.D. 180—likely earlier than Irenaeus—Tatian composed a work called the Diatessaron. The name itself tells us almost everything we need to know. Diatessaron means “through the four.”

Through which four?

The four Gospels.

Not five. Not six. Not a grab-bag of texts. Tatian created a single, continuous narrative—a harmony—by weaving together Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John alone. He did this because these four were already regarded as uniquely authoritative.

This is a crucial point. You don’t harmonize texts unless those texts already occupy a special status. Tatian didn’t create the fourfold Gospel tradition—he inherited it. And his work shows that this tradition existed prior to the late second century, independently of Irenaeus.

But let’s go even further back into the past.

Papias: A Window Into the First Century

If Irenaeus and Tatian push the four Gospel recognition back into the mid-to-late second century, Papias takes us even closer to the apostolic age.

Papias was writing somewhere between A.D. 110 and 130, nearly 300 years before Constantine. His work, Exposition of the Lord’s Oracles, was a five-volume collection discussing the sayings and accounts of Jesus.

What makes Papias extraordinary is not just when he wrote, but how he gathered his information. Papias tells us that he wasn’t spinning theories from imagination; he was collecting traditions from earlier sources—people who themselves lived very close to the time of the apostles.

One of those sources is known to us by name: John the Elder.

Through this source, Papias demonstrates early awareness of the origins of the Gospels—particularly Matthew and Mark. He reports that Matthew was written by an apostle of Jesus, and that Mark wrote his Gospel as a close companion of Peter. Most modern scholars agree that the apostle in view is indeed Peter.

This matters for two reasons.

First, it shows that authorship was already being discussed and preserved early in the second century. Christians didn’t wait until councils or emperors to ask, “Who wrote these accounts?”

Second, Papias knew all four Gospels. That makes him the earliest identifiable person we can name who was familiar with the fourfold Gospel collection. And even Papias was not the beginning—he relied on sources who go back to around A.D. 100.

Let that sink in.

So Who Did Choose the Gospels?

At this point, the fictional skeptic in our dialogue should be uneasy.

Constantine didn’t choose the Gospels. He inherited them.

By the time Constantine ruled the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, the four Gospels had already been used in churches across the Mediterranean, quoted by theologians, harmonized into a single narrative, attributed to apostolic or near-apostolic sources, and recognized as distinct from other writings

What we see is not an act of top-down political decision-making, but a bottom-up process of recognition. The early church did not create the canon; it received it.

Why This Makes the Case for the Biblical Canon so Compelling

This historical reality strengthens the case for the biblical canon in at least three ways.

First, it shows continuity, not conspiracy. The canon emerges organically and consistently across time and geography, long before imperial pressure could shape it.

Second, it demonstrates early concern for truth and origins. From Papias onward, Christians cared deeply about where these texts came from and who stood behind them.

Third, it undercuts the idea that Christianity’s core documents were malleable or arbitrarily selected. The four Gospels were not victorious because they were politically convenient; they were authoritative because they were already trusted.

So the next time someone claims that Constantine chose the Gospels, you might respond gently:

“That decision had already been made—by generations of Christians—long before Constantine was even born.”

And that is precisely what makes the case for the biblical canon so compelling.

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God alone creates ex nihilo—out of nothing. Everything else that creates does so with material God has already made. That distinction matters. God makes rivers; we dig canals. God creates grapes; we ferment wine. God speaks galaxies into existence; we rearrange what already is.

And yet, that reality doesn’t cheapen human creativity. In fact, it dignifies it. From the very beginning, God made human beings in his image and charged them with cultivating the world—filling it, ordering it, naming it, shaping it, and stewarding it (Gen. 1:26–31). We were created to make culture.

This means that art, farming, technology, cities, music, food, language, and architecture are not accidents. They’re expressions of a God‑given calling. Culture making is baked into what it means to be human. Adam, placed in the garden temple of Eden, was the first gardener and the first culture maker.

But if Genesis 1 tells us why culture exists, Genesis 3 tells us why culture making so often goes wrong.

From Culture Making to Culture Corrupting

Sin didn’t erase humanity’s creative capacity—it distorted it. After the fall, humans still build, invent, and organize, but now with disordered loves and twisted motivations. The problem isn’t that we make culture; it’s how and why we make it.

The Tower of Babel is one of Scripture’s clearest examples of this shift from culture making to culture corrupting (Gen. 11:1–9). At first, nothing seems wrong. One language. A settled people. Bricks fired properly. Bitumen used wisely. This is technological progress. This is ingenuity. Civilization is clearly advancing.

Then come the words that expose the heart: “Let us make a name for ourselves.”

That’s the moment everything turns. Their architecture becomes idolatrous. Their innovation becomes self‑exalting. What began as faithful cultivation becomes rebellion disguised as progress. The tower wasn’t about reaching heaven; it was about replacing God.

And Babel isn’t an ancient anomaly—it’s a recurring human pattern.

How We Corrupt Cultural Goods

We corrupt cultural goods in remarkably predictable ways. Rarely do we destroy them outright. Instead, we twist them—subtly, gradually, and often while insisting we’re improving them.

Take money. It’s a neutral tool designed to facilitate exchange and provision. But sin transforms money into a source of identity and security. What was meant to serve us becomes something we serve. In the worst instances, money possesses us instead of the other way around. Recall the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-31). The rich man remains nameless in the parable—he is a man of substantial means, but that is all. His identity is so bound up in his possessions that if he were to lose them, there would be none of the man left. He is possessed by his possessions.

Take food. God gave it for nourishment and fellowship. We turn it into gluttony, obsession, control, or comfort. The table, once meant to bring people together, becomes a battleground of excess or shame.

Take sex. Scripture presents it as a covenantal good—designed for intimacy, trust, and fruitfulness. Sin rips it from that context and turns it into consumption, recreation, performance, and power. Pleasure is severed from responsibility, and people become products and objects.

And then there’s technology and social media—perhaps the most visible example of modern culture corruption. Social media is, at its core, a cultural good. It enables communication, storytelling, creativity, and connection. But in our hands, it often becomes a marketplace for validation, comparison, addiction, self-promotion, and cruelty.

A British survey of nearly 900 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 found that 80% had used smartphones or websites for some form of sexual contact. Over half had engaged in cybersex, and many with strangers. Statistics like these are disturbing—but they become devastating when they acquire names and faces.

Amanda Todd was one of those names.

When Corruption Costs Lives

Amanda Todd was a 15‑year‑old Canadian cheerleader and aspiring singer who loved sharing her voice on YouTube. When she was in seventh grade, an adult male convinced her to expose herself over webcam. He then used the image to blackmail and torment her for years.

The harassment followed her relentlessly. She transferred schools multiple times. She was beaten by peers while others recorded it on their phones. Her anxiety grew so severe that she became afraid to leave her home. After a failed suicide attempt, the bullying intensified.

Eventually, Amanda posted a silent YouTube video holding handwritten notecards, telling her story. She wasn’t performing anymore—she was pleading. The response was more ridicule. More comments. More cruelty.

Not long after, Amanda Todd took her own life.

This is what culture corruption looks like when it’s fully matured. Tools meant for connection become weapons. Platforms meant to amplify voices become crowds shouting someone into silence and suicide. And sin hides behind anonymity, algorithms, and screens.

Why This Matters and What We Must Do

The lesson of Babel still stands: every cultural good requires wisdom and stewardship. The problem isn’t bricks. It’s pride. The problem isn’t technology. It’s hearts bent inward. Sin doesn’t eliminate creativity—it hijacks it.

So what does faithfulness look like?

It starts with examining our motives. Are we making, posting, building, or sharing to glorify God—or to make a name for ourselves?

It requires limits. Not everything we can do should be done. Constraint is not the enemy of creativity; it’s often its guardrail.

It demands love of neighbor. Cultural engagement that sacrifices people for progress isn’t progress at all. It’s violence.

And it calls for redemption, not retreat. The solution isn’t abandoning cultural goods but submitting them anew to God’s design.

We were created to create—but also to steward. Until the day when Christ restores all things, we will continue to live with the tension: capable of remarkable good and devastating harm. May God grant us the wisdom to cultivate what is good, resist what corrupts, and remember that every cultural tool ultimately answers to its Creator.

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In a world of constant connection, what we inevitably lose first is absence.

That line may sound counterintuitive. Absence is precisely what many of us fear. Silence feels awkward. Being unreachable can feel irresponsible. Solitude is often mistaken for loneliness. And yet absence—the experience of not being immediately stimulated, not constantly available, not perpetually addressed—may be one of the most necessary conditions for a fully human life.

Remembering What We’ve Lost

At the end of his book The End of Absence, Michael Harris describes an experiment he called “Analog August,” a month spent without devices or digital connection of any kind. No smartphone. No email. No social media. No internet.

What results is not a romantic escape into nature, but an honest reckoning with how profoundly our habits have been formed by constant connection. On August 24th, Harris wrote:

“Behavior that seemed normal on the 30th of July now looks compulsive and animalistic. Now when I see teenage girls burrowed into their phones…I think of monkeys picking lice out of each other’s hair.”

It’s a jarring image—not because it exaggerates, but because it reveals something we instinctively recognize. What once felt normal suddenly looks strange when seen from the outside.

The issue Harris uncovers is not technology itself, but the way we have uncritically accepted a posture of perpetual distraction.

The Absence We Need Most

By the end of Analog August, Harris arrives at a deeper realization—one that feels almost spiritual in its clarity:

“I wanted to remember the absences that online life had replaced with constant content, constant connection. I’ve remembered what it is to be free in the world, free from the obliterating demands of five hundred ‘contacts.’ But of all the absences I’ve remembered, there’s one that is the greatest…that is solitude.”

And then this:

“If solitude feels painful it’s only because we don’t know how to be alone…We aren’t lonely because we are alone; we are lonely because we have failed in our solitude.”

Harris names something that directly confronts our cultural moment—and something that often makes us uncomfortable to admit:

We have forgotten how to be alone.

Why Solitude Feels Threatening

Solitude is not simply the absence of people; it is the presence of ourselves before God. And that is precisely why it can feel frightening.

To be alone—truly alone, without a device to buffer experience or distract the mind—is to encounter our thoughts, fears, longings, sins, and unanswered questions without filters. Silence gives no cover. It does not let us scroll past discomfort.

We reach for our phones not merely because they are interesting, but because they protect us from stillness and silence. When we are unpracticed in solitude, the encounter can feel painful. But pain, in this case, is not necessarily a sign of harm. Often, it is a sign of disuse. Muscles ache when they are worked again. So do souls.

Solitude and the Life With God

From a Christian perspective, the loss of solitude carries consequences deeper than reduced attention spans or fragmented thinking. Solitude creates the space in which communion with God becomes possible.

Scripture consistently reveals God meeting people in quiet withdrawal:

• Moses encounters God in the wilderness

• Jesus Himself “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16)

This raises an uncomfortable question:

How can we hear God when our lives are filled with noise?

Put more bluntly, how can we see God when our gaze is continuously fixed on something else—something far less glorious and life‑giving? The truth is that the faint glow from our smartphones is not even a shadow of God’s divine supernatural light. It is a substitute.

And like all substitutes, it promises satisfaction it cannot finally deliver.

The Hidden Cost of Constant Connection

Our devices are not neutral accessories. They form us, disciple us. They intrude on our solitude, interrupt our attention, and fracture our inner lives. They train us to avoid sustained reflection and to remain at the surface of experience.

If the job of smartphones in general—and social media in particular—is to impinge on our solitude, then our responsibility is not necessarily to reject them outright, but to notice what they are doing to us. And yet notice we rarely do. Constant connection dulls spiritual perception. It erodes the margin where prayer naturally rises. It replaces contemplation with reaction.

As someone once said, “Real thinking requires retreat.”

Without intentional withdrawal, we lose the ability to think clearly, pray deeply, or listen attentively—to God or to one another.

From Good Things to God Things

This helps explain why Scripture ends with such a simple exhortation, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

Idols rarely ever start out as bad things. More often, they are good things turned into ultimate things. Smartphones and social media are cultural goods. They connect us, inform us, and serve us in real ways. But we demonstrate a particular proclivity for transforming good things into God things—things we depend on for meaning, comfort, security, or escape.

And when that happens, something essential withers.

Recovering Solitude as a Spiritual Practice

Recovering solitude may be what our souls need most right now. Not as an escape from responsibility, but as a return to reality.

Solitude recalibrates desire. It reminds us that we are creatures, not machines; listeners, not just producers; worshipers, not merely consumers. This doesn’t require abandoning technology altogether. It requires discernment and intentional limits.

It may look like:

• Leaving your phone behind during a walk

• Beginning prayer with silence instead of scrolling

• Choosing boredom over instant entertainment

• Practicing a weekly screen Sabbath

• Experimenting with your own version of “Analog August”

Not as a rule. Not as a badge of spiritual superiority. But as an experiment in freedom. I’ll be the first to admit that I often fail at this. I begin most days by scrolling, take my phone almost everywhere, and choose connection over solitude. Frequently, I fail at tapping into the freedom solitude provides.

Freedom Found in Absence

Harris describes his freedom not as loss, but as recovery—the recovery of absences that online life had replaced with constant content.

Absence creates longing. Silence creates listening. Solitude creates communion.

If solitude feels painful, it may be because it is finally doing its work—exposing our dependency on noise and inviting us into something deeper.

We are not lonely because we are alone. We are lonely because we have failed in our solitude.

Recovering solitude may indeed be the pathway to recovering communion with God—not because God has been absent, but because we have been too distracted to notice.

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Few portions of Scripture unsettle, awe, and bewilder readers like the temple visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Wheels within wheels. Burning seraphim. A throne lifted impossibly high. These are scenes that feel almost too strange to describe, let alone interpret. G. K. Chesterton once quipped that while John saw many strange creatures in Revelation, “he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 9.). The same might be said of Ezekiel and Isaiah.

And yet, for all their strangeness, these visions are not meant to confuse. They are meant to reveal. In both Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1, God graciously pulls back the veil and allows two prophets to experience his presence in an overwhelming, transformative way. These encounters leave both men undone—uncreated, even—before they are restored and sent on mission.

Though Ezekiel’s vision by the Chebar Canal and Isaiah’s vision in the heavenly temple differ in form and imagery, they share deep theological unity. Together they offer a profound witness to the holiness of God, the danger and grace of divine presence, and the pattern of un‑creation and re‑creation that runs from Genesis to the cross of Christ.

Shared Moments of Encounter

At first glance, Ezekiel and Isaiah seem an unlikely pair. Ezekiel was likely a priest by training, carried into exile before he could begin his service. Isaiah, by contrast, appears to have moved in circles of influence and power in Jerusalem, prophesying during the reigns of multiple kings. Their social worlds were different and their callings unfolded in radically different circumstances.

Yet both anchor their visions in history. Isaiah tells us his vision came “in the year that King Uzziah died” (Is. 6:1), a moment of national uncertainty and transition. Ezekiel, with unmistakable precision, dates his experience down to the day—July 31, 593 B.C. (Ezk. 1:1). God’s glory does not appear in mythic time, but in real places and moments of crisis.

Most strikingly, both prophets see a throne—and One seated upon it—“high and lifted up.” Isaiah’s vision takes place in the temple, while Ezekiel’s vision comes to him far from home, in exile. Yet Ezekiel is nevertheless transported, in effect, into the heavenly throne room. Geography cannot limit the presence of Israel’s God. In both visions, physical imagery is pressed to its limit in order to communicate transcendent truth. God is visible, yet not fully describable; near, yet fearsome; exalted, yet personally present. When God grants a genuine sign of his presence, he is not playing with illusions. Isaiah could say, without presumption, “I saw the Lord.”

Guardians at the Throne

No throne room is empty. Surrounding God’s throne in both visions are strange, awe‑inspiring creatures that function as guardians of His holiness. Isaiah sees seraphim—“burning ones”—their wings shielding their faces and feet, their voices shaking the foundations of the temple as they cry, “Holy, holy, holy.” Ezekiel encounters cherubim, composite beings with multiple faces—human, lion, ox, and eagle—symbols of the highest forms of created life. These are not decorative angels or sentimental figures. They are living embodiments of God’s majesty and judgment.

Ezekiel, shaped by the imagery of the ancient Near East, would have recognized these creatures as throne‑bearers and guardians of divine authority. Yet Ezekiel’s vision surpasses cultural borrowing; these creatures serve Yahweh alone.The seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are more enigmatic, appearing only in this passage of Scripture. Their fiery nature is no accident. Fire, throughout the Bible, is the primary symbol of God’s holiness—purifying, illuminating, and deadly. Together, seraphim and cherubim signal the same truth: approaching God is not safe, but it is glorious. In a strange way, caution tape marks the boundaries of the throne, and yet, simultaneously, invites us to behold the sheer beauty and holiness of the God seated on it.

The Holiness That Undoes Us

If there is one theme that dominates both visions, it is holiness. Isaiah hears the seraphim repeat the word holy three times—not merely for emphasis, but to stretch language itself to the breaking point. This is holiness to a superlative degree. God’s holiness is not simply one attribute among others–it is the sum of His moral majesty and utter otherness.

This holiness has an overwhelming effect, such that Isaiah pronounces a curse on himself: “Woe is me! I am undone” (Is. 6:5). Ezekiel collapses face‑down, mute and overwhelmed. Neither prophet emerges untouched. The presence of a holy God dismantles all illusions of moral adequacy. Throughout Scripture, this reaction is consistent. Uzzah dies touching the ark. Manoah fears death after encountering the Angel of the Lord. John falls as though dead when he sees the risen Christ in Revelation. God’s presence comforts the humble—but terrifies the self‑assured.

Yet paradoxically, Scripture insists that God’s coming in judgment is good news. His holiness exposes in order to cover, strips away in order to restore, breaks down in order to build up.

Un‑Creation Before Re‑Creation

Isaiah’s language is especially vivid: “I am undone.” Older translations render it even more forcefully—unraveled, coming apart. This could be described as a sort of moral and spiritual disintegration. Isaiah’s confidence collapses the moment he measures himself not against other people, but against God Himself.

This is un‑creation.

But it is not the end of the story. A seraph takes a coal from the altar and touches Isaiah’s lips. His guilt is removed; his sin is atoned for. Judgment gives way to grace. Un‑creation is followed by re‑creation, and Isaiah emerges not only cleansed, but commissioned: “Here am I. Send me” (Is. 6:8). Ezekiel’s experience follows the same pattern. His vision leaves him shattered, silent, and powerless. Yet this undoing becomes the beginning of his prophetic vocation. God restores him, speaks to him, and sends him to a rebellious people.

Notably, Ezekiel’s vision echoes the opening chapters of Genesis. The rushing wind recalls the Spirit over the waters. The firmament above the creatures mirrors the expanse of creation. Even the rainbow around the throne points back to God’s covenant with Noah. Ezekiel’s call unfolds against the backdrop of creation, de‑creation, and promised renewal.

From Vision to Fulfillment

This biblical pattern does not end with the prophets. In Revelation, John experiences the same collapse before divine glory and the same restorative touch from Christ. Ultimately, however, the fullest expression of un‑creation and re‑creation is found not in a vision, but on a cross.

Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, entered fully into human frailty. At Calvary, He experienced abandonment—not because he was unclean, but because he bore the uncleanness of others. His cry of dereliction echoes Isaiah’s undoing, but on a cosmic scale. And yet, resurrection follows. Death does not win. Un‑creation gives way to new creation. The pattern of Ezekiel and Isaiah finds its fulfillment in Christ, and through him, becomes the story of all who are united to him.

Why These Visions Still Matter & What They Mean For Us

The temple visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel are not theological curiosities. They are spiritual autobiographies—and in many ways, they are ours. When God’s presence truly breaks into our lives, it unsettles us. It strips away pretense. It ruins our self‑confidence. But it does so in order to heal, restore, and send.

We do not encounter God and remain the same. Grace does not leave us intact; it re‑creates us. And in that un‑creation and re‑creation, we find not destruction, but life—grace upon grace. God’s Presence Is not comfortable—but It Is life-giving One of the most striking truths from Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6 is that an encounter with God’s presence is never neutral. It destabilizes.

Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me,” and Ezekiel collapses under the weight of glory. In both cases, God’s holiness exposes illusion, pride, and self-sufficiency. For modern readers, this challenges the assumption that God’s presence primarily exists to soothe or affirm us. Scripture suggests the opposite: God’s nearness dismantles us before it restores us. Yet this undoing is not cruelty—it is mercy. Only what is false is stripped away. True life emerges on the other side of reverent fear.

If our spiritual lives are never unsettling, we may be encountering a god made safe rather than the Holy One who recreates. Spiritual maturity requires space for awe, confession, and surrender—not just encouragement. Neither Isaiah nor Ezekiel volunteers for their calling. Their commissions come only after they are undone and re-made. Isaiah is cleansed before he is sent; Ezekiel is shattered before he speaks.

God’s order matters—presence forms the prophet before proclamation flows through him.
This stands in quiet contrast to productivity-driven spirituality, where clarity, gifting, or efficiency can be mistaken for calling. In Scripture, authority emerges from encounter. God first re-creates a person, then sends that person out as a witness.

Faithfulness in vocation—whether ministry, work, or relationships—flows from who we are becoming in God’s presence, not merely what we are doing for him. Before asking, “What am I called to do?” the better question may be, “What is God, by grace, forming in me?”

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