I’ve recently started listening to K-pop. Like, a lot of it.

It started with a recommendation from our dear friend Katie to give it a shot while I work — just background noise, she said. I knew BTS. I knew BLACKPINK. But then I started pulling on a thread through an Apple Music playlist, and suddenly I was three hours deep into artists I’d never heard of, bopping my head to songs I don’t know the words to, and genuinely, embarrassingly into it.

This isn’t new for me, actually. Last year I started watching a lot of lucha libre and listening to Latin music. There’s something that keeps happening to me where a friend opens a door I didn’t know I wanted to walk through, and then I can’t stop walking.

But here’s the thing: I’m not the target demo. I like bluegrass. I like classic country. I like folk and Americana — the kind of music that smells like woodsmoke and sounds like it was recorded in a barn in 1973. Yet here I find myself bopping my head to Stray Kids and NewJeans and a half-dozen groups whose names I can’t pronounce yet, and something unexpected is happening underneath all of it.

I’m feeling something I can only describe as gratitude.

Let me be clear about something: this music isn’t Christian. Nobody is slipping theology into the bridge. Nobody is trying to point me toward God. And yet.

There is a long tradition of recognizing that truth, beauty, and goodness don’t exclusively live inside explicitly Christian containers. Augustine talked about taking what is genuinely good from the wider world and receiving it as a gift that ultimately traces back to the Giver of all good things. Listen, I’m not trying to over-spiritualize a pop playlist. But I do think that when something genuinely beautiful breaks through and catches you off guard, it’s worth asking what it’s doing to you, what it’s pointing you toward, even accidentally.

What K-pop did to me — accidentally, while I was just trying to get some work done — was remind me that the world is enormous, that human creativity is astonishing in its variety, and that joy travels across languages and oceans and completely foreign cultural contexts and still lands. I can not understand a single lyric and still feel what a song is doing. That does something to you, if you let it.

For me, it did something to my ecclesiology.

I’m a church planter. I spend a lot of my days thinking about one very specific community — a neighborhood on the south side of Newark, Ohio. I think about the people there, what they need, how the gospel might take root in that particular soil. It’s granular, local, and sometimes claustrophobic work. It’s easy to start thinking small. To confuse your corner of the kingdom with the whole kingdom.

But I have been given, without asking for it, a life that keeps bumping me up against the size of the church.

I've been on the ground in Cambodia and Brazil — places where the gospel is alive and moving in ways that look completely different from anything I grew up with, and are no less real for it. I have missionaries I'm regularly in contact with in France, in Phnom Penh, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Canada, in Mexico — people who left comfort and familiarity to carry the same message I believe into places that needed to hear it in a different accent. I get regular email updates from a friend I've known since high school who has given his life to Bible translation in Africa — working alongside local communities to put the full Word of God into languages that have never had it, so that people can hear Scripture for the first time in the language their mother sang to them. I have been shaped — genuinely, durably shaped — by theologians who never once set foot in Ohio. Men and women who wrote in other centuries, other languages, other contexts entirely, whose understanding of Scripture formed mine in ways I'm still discovering.

And here’s the one that gets me most: right now, in my own church building, there is a congregation that meets and worships and preaches the gospel in Nepali — the heart languages of Bhutanese and Nepali families who have found a home in central Ohio. Their pastor is my friend. We share a building and a Lord and almost no common language. I will never fully understand what happens in that room on Sunday mornings. But I know it is real. I know the Spirit is there. And I know that what they are doing and what I am doing are not two different things — they are two expressions of the same impossible, ancient, global project.

The church is local. It has to be. The gospel is always good news for these people in this place, spoken in a language they can understand, embodied in a community they can belong to. You can’t love an abstraction. You have to love your neighbors, and your neighbors have names and addresses.

But the church is also global in a way that should regularly undo us. There are believers in South Korea who have been praying longer than I’ve been alive. There are house churches in places I’ll never visit, led by people who’ve risked things I’ll never be asked to risk, worshipping in languages I’ll never speak. The communion of saints stretches across every continent and every century, and most of them I will never meet this side of eternity, but they are my people. I am bound to them by something deeper than shared taste or shared geography.

Paul knew this. He wrote to churches he’d never seen. He carried in his chest a burden for communities in Colossae and Ephesus and Philippi, and he loved them with a love that clearly exceeded what any normal network of acquaintance could produce. That love had a source. The Spirit makes the body one, and that oneness is not a metaphor: it’s a reality that sometimes catches you off guard in the most ordinary moments.

K-pop caught me off guard.

The gospel has never been the property of any one culture. It doesn’t belong to America. It doesn’t belong to the West, or to English, or to the particular worship style I grew up with and genuinely love. It arrives in every culture and starts asking questions — What here reflects the image of God? What here needs to be redeemed? — and it does that work in Korean and Nepali and Portuguese and French and every other tongue that will one day confess that Jesus is Lord.

I think there’s something healthy about being regularly reminded that you are not the center of the world. That your taste is not universal. That there are whole dimensions of human experience and creativity and joy that you haven’t encountered yet, and that encountering them doesn’t threaten you — it enlarges you.

I want to plant a church in Newark, Ohio, and I want that church to feel the weight of belonging to something that dwarfs it. I want us to pray for believers in places we can’t find on a map. I want us to hold our local, particular expression of the faith with both deep commitment and genuine humility, knowing that we are one small note in a very large song.

A song, it turns out, that sounds good even when you don’t know all the words.

It grows beside the little stream that runs across our property. Most of the time the water moves quietly: slow, easy, minding its own business. You can stand there and just listen to it.

But when the storms come through, everything changes fast. The stream swells. The water turns brown and spreads out into the yard. I’ve learned to watch the sky with that low hum of here we go already starting in my chest before the first drops fall.

Because when the water rises, something always goes.

Usually my fence.

We’ve rebuilt it so many times. Posts lean. Boards split and drift. The current finds the weak places the way water always does. I’ve stood at the window watching whole sections tumble, thinking, well. There it goes again.

But the willow is always there when the water goes down.

It isn’t the biggest tree on the property. It doesn’t command the yard the way the others do. It just stands quietly at the edge of the stream, branches hanging low, some of the leaves brushing the water.

When the wind picks up, it moves. When the stream rises and pushes against its roots, the willow bends with it. But it doesn’t let go. And when the storm is over, it’s still right where it was.

So when the time came to name our daughter, one stuck out above the rest.

We named her Willow.

There’s a psalm that opens with the same kind of image.

Psalm 1 sets up a contrast — two ways a life can go. One drifts with whatever current is running. The other is rooted. Held in place by something deeper than circumstance.

He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither.

Not a tree hoping it gets enough rain. A tree that has put its roots beside the water and keeps drawing life from it no matter what the season looks like.

That’s what I see when I look at the willow.

Not endurance as gritting your teeth. Not strength as never bending. Roots going down into the soil and holding on while the branches move freely in the wind.

That’s what we want for our daughter. Not that she’d never feel the storm. Just that she’d be rooted deeply enough in Jesus that when the water rises — and it will — she’d still be standing when it goes back down.

The willow shows up in other places in Scripture too.

In Leviticus, when God gave the people instructions for the Festival of Shelters, that week of remembering how he’d carried them through the wilderness, he told them to gather branches. Palm fronds, leafy boughs, and willows from the brook.

Trees that grew beside running water, gathered up and brought into the celebration.

I love that detail. The willow — the soft, flexible, water-rooted thing — carried into worship alongside everything else.

I hope her life has some of that shape to it. Not just surviving hard things, but actually rejoicing. Bringing what she has into the celebration of God’s goodness.

And then there’s Isaiah, who describes renewal as people springing up like willows along a stream. God’s Spirit poured out, life returning to dry places, growth that looks almost effortless, not because the soil was perfect but because the water was close.

That image means a lot to me because I’m not naive about the road ahead. She’s going to have hard seasons. Confused ones. Dry ones. That’s just the shape of a human life.

But the story of Scripture is always restoration. Always and yet. The shoots come back up beside the water. Even after the driest years, willows grow again.

So when I say her name, there’s a prayer in it.

We’re asking for roots. Deep ones that draw from something that doesn’t run dry. We want her to know Jesus not just as something she believes, but as the thing she’s actually built her life around.

We’re asking that when the hard rains come and the things that seemed solid start to wash away, she’d hold.

And we’re asking that she’d carry something good into the world: into her friendships, her work, her own family someday. Something that looks like those willows lifted up in the festival. Joyful. Rooted. Honest.

The next storm will come. The stream will do what it always does.

I’ll probably lose another section of fence.

But I’ll look at the willow afterward, the way I always do. Still standing, branches moving a little in the breeze, a few leaves touching the water.

And I’ll think of her name, and say the prayer again.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Good morning, church.

If we haven’t had a chance to meet before, my name is Josh. I’m one of the pastors here, and I’m really glad you decided to spend part of your morning with us.

Something you may not know about me is that before I became a pastor, I had a very different job

I was a journalist. I worked for a newspaper.

And right beside my desk sat a police scanner.

When I first started working there, the scanner was kind of… entertaining.

You’d hear all kinds of strange things come across that radio.

Someone reporting their son got their hand stuck in a vending machine.

Somebody calling the police because their neighbor’s goat had escaped again.

And we’d laugh.

But every now and then…something serious would come across that scanner.

A car accident.

A fire.

A shooting.

One day I asked one of our photographers a question.

“How do you go out and take photos of something tragic like that… and then come back here and just keep working like nothing happened?”

And his answer stuck with me.

He said,

“After a while you just get used to it.”

I didn’t want to believe him.

But after three or four years working in that newsroom…

I realized something.

He was right.

I had gotten used to it.

The things that once shocked me didn’t shock me anymore.

The tragedies that once stopped me in my tracks…

became just another call on the scanner.

I had grown numb.

And I think the same thing happens to a lot of us when we look at the world around us.

The violence.

The suffering.

The injustice.

At first it shocks us.

But over time… we start to treat it like the scanner beside my desk.

Another story.

Another tragedy.

Another headline.

And we just move on.

But here’s what I think we can all agree on.

Something is wrong with the world.

You don’t have to be a Christian to believe that.

You don’t have to read the Bible to know that.

You don’t even have to walk into a church to feel it.

People from all kinds of backgrounds can look around and agree on at least this much:

Something is off.

Something is broken.

Something is not the way it’s supposed to be.

Because underneath everything we see in the world is this deeper ache — this grief — this brutal honesty that says something isn’t right.

The world is dangerous.

People are wounded.

And simply survival doesn’t fix the deeper problem.

Deep down, everyone senses the same thing:

Something is wrong with the world.

You see it in everyday life.

Cancer.

Funerals.

Divorce papers.

Kids who can’t sleep at night wondering if their life even matters.

Parents who don’t know how to hold their family together.

Something is wrong with the world.

You’ve felt it when you watch the news.

You’ve felt it when you get a phone call that changes everything.

You’ve felt it standing in a hospital room.

You’ve felt it at a graveside.

We all know something isn’t right.

And humanity has spent a long time trying to explain it.

Some people say the problem is education.

Others say politics.

Some say bad systems.

Bad parenting.

Trauma.

Oppression.

Some believe if we could just get the right laws, the right leaders, the right technology, the right therapy, the right movement, the right revolution — maybe then we could finally fix what’s broken.

And listen — some of those things matter.

They really do.

But none of them can get all the way down to the root.

Because the problem is deeper than systems.

Deeper than structures.

Deeper than headlines.

Deeper than politics.

Deeper than culture.

And that’s where Genesis 3 begins pressing on us.

Because I believe it tells us something else.

Something is wrong with us, too.

It’s easy to talk about what’s wrong with the world. Easy to point at broken systems, broken politics, broken culture. But the Bible doesn’t let us stay out there very long. Genesis 3 starts pulling the camera closer. Closer than the headlines. Closer than the chaos. Closer than the culture.

All the way to the human heart. I see it in myself.

I see it in the way I look for identity. If I’m being really honest, my sense of value is more fragile than I want to admit. It starts depending on whether people like me, whether they respect me, whether they think I did a good job. If people are happy with me, I feel good. If they’re not, my whole mood shifts. That’s a shaky place to build a life.

I see it in my cynicism. How quickly I assume the worst about people. How easily I critique instead of showing compassion. How tempting it is to comment on everyone else’s brokenness while ignoring my own.

And I see it in the deeper places. Pride. Selfishness. The quiet belief that my way would probably work better than God’s — if I were just left alone to run things.

The fracture running through the world runs through me too.

You know what it’s like to say something and immediately wish you could take it back. To promise yourself you’re going to change, only to find yourself back in the same pattern again.

Maybe it shows up as anxiety that never quite lets you rest. Maybe as jealousy when someone else gets the recognition you feel like you deserved. Maybe as the quiet, exhausting pressure to prove that your life matters.

The Bible’s diagnosis is uncomfortable. But it is unflinchingly honest.

The problem with the world isn’t just around us.

It’s inside us.

And this is exactly where Genesis 3 takes us.

Not just the story of a world going wrong. The story of a human heart choosing something over God. The moment humanity decided life might work better if we ran things ourselves.

The ripple effects of that moment are still shaping everything.

The brokenness we see around us.

The brokenness we feel inside us.

Genesis 3 shows us where it all began.

If you have your Bible, turn with me to Genesis chapter 3 and let’s look at this together.

At this point, we read the passage together and prayed.

There’s a reality I believe this passage is calling us to wrestle with.

And before I say it, let me acknowledge something. I know this is not necessarily what most of us hope to hear when we walk into church on a Sunday morning. Many of us come in looking for something encouraging—something that brings hope, something that brings joy, something that lifts our spirits before we head back out into a world that already feels heavy.

But before we rush there, I think we need to sit with something for a moment.

And it’s this:

Sin costs everything.

Genesis 3 is the moment the whole story of the Bible turns. Just one chapter earlier everything is good. Not barely working. Not mostly fine. Good. Humanity is walking with God. Adam and Eve trust His word. They delight in His world. There is no shame between them. No fear in their hearts. No hiding from God. The world is whole because humanity is living in the presence of the One who made it.

Imagine that world here.

Imagine no fear. No anxiety about the future. No addiction gripping families. No depression stealing joy away. No funerals. No hospital rooms where the doctor walks in with bad news.

Imagine waking up every morning with a heart completely at peace. No shame following you around. No regret whispering in your mind. No fear that if people really knew you, they would walk away. Imagine relationships without suspicion, work without frustration, life without the slow ache of exhaustion that never seems to leave.

That is the world God made.

And then sin happened.

And everything broke.

Shame entered the human heart. Fear entered the human heart. Blame entered human relationships. Death entered the human story.

All of it traces back to this moment.

Sin costs everything.

Now before we go any further, I want to say something out loud because I know how sermons like this can work in our minds.

It’s very easy to hear a message about sin and immediately start thinking about those people out there. The culture out there. The people on the news out there. The people whose lives look more obviously messy than ours.

Please hear me say this, gently, and clearly.

I’m not preaching to those people out there this morning.

I’m preaching to these people in here.

but before that, I’ve had to preach it to myself all week.

And let me say something else that I think we in the church need to wrestle with for a moment.

Sometimes when you’ve been around church long enough… when you’ve been a Christian for years it can become easy to forget just how serious sin actually is.

We start to think of sin as something that belongs mostly to the world out there.

Those people are the sinners.

Those people are the broken ones.

Those people are the problem.

And slowly, without even realizing it, we begin to drift into something dangerous.

We begin to act like we deserve to be here.

Like we deserve God’s grace.

Like we deserve Jesus.

Like somehow we were the kind of people God should save.

But Genesis 3 will not let us believe that lie.

It reminds us that the fracture in the world runs straight through the human heart.

Our hearts.

My heart.

Your heart.

Before Jesus rescued us, we were not the good people.

We were the rebels.

We were the ones who doubted God’s word.

We were the ones who chose our way instead of His.

We were the ones who traded the glory of God for lesser things.

Sin costs everything.

And Genesis 3 shows us exactly how that happens.

I think this passage plays it out in three ways.

The first is this:

Sin doubts God’s word.

Genesis 3 begins with four really important words. “Did God really say?….”

That question is where the fracture begins.

The serpent doesn’t begin with open rebellion. He begins with doubt. He plants a question in Eve’s mind.

“Did God really say…?”

And notice what he does. He subtly twists God’s words. God had given Adam and Eve an entire garden full of abundance. Every tree, every fruit, every good gift they needed to flourish. There was only one boundary.

But Satan reframes it as if God were holding everything back.

“Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree in the garden?”

Do you see the strategy? God’s generosity gets reframed as restriction. God’s protection gets reframed as control. God’s word gets bent just enough to make it look suspicious.

And then the lie grows in verse 4.

“No! You will not die.”

Now the doubt becomes denial.

And underneath that denial is a deeper accusation. Maybe God isn’t telling the truth. Maybe God isn’t good. Maybe life would actually be better if you stopped trusting His word and started trusting your instincts.

That’s how sin begins.

Not first with behavior.

First with doubt.

And church, if we’re honest, that voice still whispers to us today.

Because it’s easy to sit here and nod our heads at Adam and Eve. It’s easy to say, “How could they fall for that?”

But the same question echoes into our lives every single day.

Did God really say we should love our enemies?

That’s Matthew 5:44.

Did God really say we should forgive people who have hurt us?

That’s Colossians 3:13.

Did God really say our lives shouldn’t revolve around money and possessions?

That’s Luke 12:15.

Did God really say we should be generous with what we’ve been given?

That’s 2 Corinthians 9:7.

Did God really say to go and make disciples of all nations?

That’s Matthew 28:19.

And church, here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

Sometimes we don’t outright reject those verses.

We just quietly negotiate with them.

We read them and think, “Surely that doesn’t apply to me in this situation.”

We hear them and think, “Maybe scripture didn’t really mean that literally.”

We see them and think, “I’ll obey that later, when life settles down.”

And every time we do that, we are replaying the same moment that happened in the garden.

“Did God really say…?”

But here’s the tragic irony.

The serpent made it sound like God’s Word was holding Adam and Eve back.

In reality, God’s Word was protecting their joy.

And that’s still true today.

Because the same Bible that confronts our sin is also the Bible that reveals God’s mercy.

God’s Word says our sins can be forgiven.

That’s 1 John 1:9.

God’s Word says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That’s Romans 8:1.

God’s Word says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

That’s Romans 8:38–39.

God’s Word says that through Christ we can be adopted as sons and daughters of God.

That’s Romans 8:15.

Satan wanted them to believe God’s Word was a cage. But God’s Word was always a gift. The voice they doubted was the voice that loved them most.

And once doubt enters the heart…

defiance is never far behind.

Which leads to the second thing sin does in this passage:

Sin defies God’s authority.

Look again at verse 6.

Hear me when I say this.

This story is not about an apple.

Culture loves to reduce Genesis 3 to that. The fall of humanity becomes this strange little story about someone eating the wrong fruit.

But this was never about fruit.

This was about authority.

God had spoken clearly.

God had given Adam and Eve everything they needed to flourish. An entire garden full of abundance. Beauty. Provision. Joy. Life in His presence.

And one command.

One boundary.

One place where they had to decide whether they would trust Him.

And in this moment, they chose something else.

They chose themselves.

Look carefully at the text.

Earlier in the chapter the serpent is talking. He’s whispering doubt. He’s twisting God’s words.

But by the time we reach verse 6, he’s silent.

He doesn’t need to say anything anymore.

The doubt has already taken root.

Now the decision belongs to them.

Eve sees the fruit.

She decides it looks good.

She decides it will give her something she wants.

And she takes it.

And Adam—who the text tells us was with her the whole time—takes it too.

No more questions.

No more temptation.

Just defiance.

And church, if we’re honest, we do the exact same thing.

God speaks with authority in His Word. Not suggestions. Not advice. Authority.

And we defy that authority anyway.

God says our words should build people up.

That’s Ephesians 4:29.

But we will tear down someone in a heartbeat.

God calls us to sexual purity.

That’s 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5.

But we still open tgat website. We linger on the image.

God tells us to be slow to anger.

That’s James 1:19.

But we marinate in outrage—binging on political commentary, feeding our frustration, and letting partisan voices shape our hearts more than the Spirit of God.

God calls His people not to neglect gathering together.

That’s Hebrews 10:25.

But we slowly rearrange our lives in ways that pull us away from the very community God designed to shape our faith.

God calls husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the church.

That’s Ephesians 5:25.

But instead of sacrificial love, we retreat into work, hobbies, scrolling our phones, or emotional distance while the marriage slowly grows cold.

God calls us to walk by His Spirit.

That’s Galatians 5:16.

But we ignore the quiet prompting of the Spirit when we know we should apologize, make something right, or reach out to someone we’ve wronged.

God says you shouldn’t worship anything but Him.

That’s Exodus 20:3.

But we quietly build our lives around other gods—our politics, our careers, our comfort, our reputation, even our kids’ success—and we give them our attention, our loyalty, and our energy as if they deserve the place that belongs to God alone.

And every time we make those choices, we are replaying the same moment that happened in the garden.

God speaks.

And we decide.

God commands.

And we negotiate.

God warns.

And we take the fruit anyway.

Because the deepest problem in the human heart is not just that we break God’s rules.

It’s that we want God’s place.

Genesis 3 is the moment humanity decided it would rather rule itself than trust the God who made it.

And if we’re really honest, the question underneath all of our sin is the same question underneath theirs:

Who is actually in charge of my life?

Is it God?

Or is it me?

Because if Jesus is Lord, then God’s word gets the final say.

His authority outranks my feelings.

His commands outrank my preferences.

His voice outranks every other voice in my life.

But when we knowingly choose our way over His…

we are repeating the same rebellion that began in Genesis 3.

And that’s why what happens next in this chapter is so devastating.

Because once sin defies God’s authority…

Sin forfeits God’s presence.

Church, we need to sit here for a moment. We need to feel the weight of this.

Our sin is not a small mistake.

Our Sin is not a personality flaw.

Our Sin is not just a bad habit.

Our Sin is rebellion against the God who made us.

Sin is cosmic treason.

Sin is humanity looking at the Creator of the universe and saying, “I would rather rule my life than trust You.”

And the Bible does not soften that reality.

Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God.”

James 4:4 says that friendship with the world makes us enemies of God.

Enemies.

Not neutral.

Not distant.

Enemies.

Do you know that? Do you believe that?

That is the seriousness of sin.

And Genesis 3 shows us what sin does.

Sin brings shame.

Sin brings fear.

Sin fractures relationships.

Sin corrupts our hearts.

Sin distorts everything God made good.

The moment Adam and Eve eat the fruit, their eyes are opened and shame floods their hearts. The innocence that once defined their relationship with God is gone.

So they sew fig leaves together to cover themselves.

And then they hear something.

They hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden.

And instead of running toward Him…

they hide.

The presence of God, which once meant joy and life and peace, now terrifies them.

Because that’s what sin does.

Sin makes us run from the God we were created to know.

And then comes one of the most haunting questions in all of Scripture.

Genesis 3:9 says,

“So the LORD God called out to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”

Now church, understand something.

God is not asking for directions.

This question is not about geography.

It is about reality.

“Where are you?”

Where are you now that you have doubted My Word?

Where are you now that you have defied My authority?

Where are you now that sin has entered your heart?

Where are you now that you are hiding from the very God who gave you life?

It is the cry of a holy God confronting a fallen humanity.

And the answer is devastating.

Humanity is no longer walking with God.

Humanity is hiding.

And church, sin always leads there.

Sin always leads away from the presence of God.

Adam and Eve are eventually driven out of the garden.

And from that moment forward, the entire human story unfolds east of Eden.

A world marked by pain.

A world marked by broken families.

A world marked by violence.

A world marked by death.

Because sin spreads like poison through everything God made good.

Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.”

Death in our bodies.

Death in our relationships.

Death in our souls.

And if that separation from God continues into eternity, the Bible says the result is hell — eternal separation from the presence of God.

Sin begins by doubting God’s Word.

It grows by defying God’s authority.

And it ends by forfeiting God’s presence.

That is the cost.

Sin costs everything.

And that is the weight we were meant to feel in this room today.

Because the gospel does not make sense until the problem is devastating enough to need it.

No amount of effort gets us back through that gate. No amount of progress. No amount of religion. No amount of trying harder or being better or cleaning ourselves up.

The exile is still real.

Sin separates us from the presence of the God who made us.

Which means if we are ever going to come home —

God is going to have to come get us.

And church —

that is exactly what He did.

Right in the rubble of everything falling apart — God speaks again.

Not to condemn.

Not to abandon.

To promise.

Verse 15. God turns to the serpent and says:

“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

God is announcing, right here in the wreckage, that this is not the end of the story. That the serpent will not win. That one day, a descendant of the woman will come — and He will deal with the enemy that brought this destruction into the world.

He will crush him.

But the promise has a shadow in it.

The One who comes to crush the serpent will not escape unharmed. He will be wounded in the process. There is a cost embedded in the very first promise of redemption.

The rest of the Bible is the unfolding of that promise. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Only two of them describe the world before sin entered it. The other 1,187 chapters tell the story of God restoring what was broken.

From Abraham to Moses. From the Passover lamb to the Temple sacrifices. From Isaiah crying out “He was pierced for our transgressions” — to the stable in Bethlehem — to the banks of the Jordan — to a garden in Gethsemane — to a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.

And every step of the way, the story is building toward the same moment.

The moment the promise is kept.

Sin costs everything.

Jesus paid everything.

Where Adam failed, Jesus obeyed.

Adam stood in a garden of Eden surrounded by abundance, in the presence of God — and chose himself.

Jesus stood in a garden of Gethsemane — surrounded by darkness, feeling the full weight of what was coming — and chose the Father.

“Not my will, but Yours.”

Where we doubted God’s Word, Jesus trusted it completely.

Where we defied God’s authority, Jesus submitted to it — even to death.

Where our sin drove humanity into exile and shame, Jesus stepped into the exile voluntarily.

He became what we became.

He entered the brokenness we caused.

He took on the flesh that carries the curse.

And He walked it all the way to a cross.

Church, I need you to see the cross in Genesis 3.

Adam and Eve reach for the fruit — trying to become like God, trying to seize what wasn’t theirs, trying to take power that didn’t belong to them.

Jesus — who is God — does the opposite.

Philippians 2 says He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. He emptied Himself. He took on the form of a servant. He humbled himself.

Even to death. Even death on a cross.

Adam and Eve hide behind trees, covered in shame, desperately trying to cover what they had done.

Jesus hangs on a tree — exposed, shamed, uncovered — absorbing everything we tried to hide.

Adam and Eve hear the sound of God walking in the garden and run from Him.

Jesus, in the moment of greatest agony, cries out to Him — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — bearing the full weight of separation from the Father so that we would never have to.

The curse that began in Genesis 3 landed — fully, completely, finally — on the Son of God.

The shame that entered the garden — fell on Him.

The exile we deserved — He entered.

The death our rebellion earned — He died.

For us.

He was pierced because of our rebellion. Crushed because of our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on Him. And by His wounds — we are healed.

Pierced. Crushed. For us.

Church, this is not sentimental love.

This is not a God who looks at your mess from a safe distance and says, “I believe in you.”

This is a God who looks at your mess — your rebellion, your shame, your hiding, your defiance, your exile — and says, “I will go there Myself.”

This is the Son of God taking on your condemnation.

Absorbing your wrath.

Bearing your curse.

Paying the price you could never afford, carrying a weight you were never designed to carry.

Why?

Not because you cleaned yourself up first.

Not because you got your life together.

Not because you were the kind of person God should save.

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners — Christ died for us.”

While we were hiding in the trees.

While we were rebels and enemies and exiles.

He came for us anyway.

Sin costs everything.

Do not let that truth leave you before the next truth lands.

But Jesus paid everything.

Every ounce of shame sin produced — He absorbed.

Every debt our rebellion created — He canceled.

Every wall our sin erected between us and God — He tore down.

The question “Where are you?” — that haunting, echoing question — now has an answer.

You are in Christ.

And in Christ, there is no condemnation.

You are not in exile.

You are not hiding.

You are not covered in shame.

You are adopted.

Brought back into the presence of the God who made you, by the Son of God who paid for you.

That is the gospel.

In the first garden, humanity was cast out.

Driven from the presence of God, east of Eden, with no way back.

But there is another garden in your Bible in John Chapter 20.

It’s early in the morning. The sun hasn’t fully risen. And a woman named Mary is standing outside a tomb, weeping.

Everything she had believed in was gone. The One she had followed, the One she had trusted, the One she had staked her entire life on — was dead.

Hope wasn’t just wounded.

Hope was buried.

And she’s standing there in a garden, alone, with nothing left.

And then someone speaks to her.

“Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

And church — I need you to hear that question.

Because the first time God asked a question in a garden, it was this:

“Where are you?”

It was a question of judgment. A question that exposed the rebellion, the hiding, the shame, the exile.

But this question is different.

“Who is it you are looking for?”

It’s not accusation. It’s invitation.

And then He says her name.

“Mary.”

One word.

And she knows.

This is the One the first promise was always about.

This is the seed of the woman who crushed the serpent’s head.

This is the One who entered the exile, bore the curse, died the death — and walked out of the grave on the other side.

And He is standing in a garden, saying her name, and calling her home.

Church, that is the gospel.

Two gardens.

In the first garden, humanity hid from God — and God asked, “Where are you?”

In the second garden, God came looking — and asked, “Who are you looking for?”

In the first garden, sin cost everything.

In the second garden, Jesus had already paid everything.

And He is still doing the same thing today.

He is walking into the gardens of our hiding — our shame, our exile, our brokenness — and He is saying our names.

Calling us back.

Not because we cleaned ourselves up.

Not because we found our way home on our own.

But because He came to find us.

So here’s the only response that makes sense.

Turn to Jesus.

Turn from trusting yourself and turn toward the One who is trustworthy.

Turn from running and turn toward the God who is already running toward you.

Turn from hiding in the fig leaves of your own making and let Him clothe you — the way He clothed Adam and Eve in the garden, at a cost, with a covering that only He could provide.

The application of Genesis 3 is not try harder.

It is not do better.

It is not be less like them.

It is this:

Turn to Jesus.

Because there is no other way back to God.

No philosophy, no religion, no amount of self-improvement can undo what happened in Genesis 3.

Only Jesus can bring us home.

He is the answer to the oldest problem in the human story.

He is the fulfillment of the oldest promise in the Bible.

He is standing in your garden, saying your name, and asking — not Where are you? — but Who are you looking for?

And the answer, church — the only answer that fixes what is broken, heals what is fractured, and brings us home — is Jesus.

Let’s pray.

I grew up in West Virginia, which meant one thing when it came to sports: there were no hometown professional teams.

No NFL team down the road. No MLB ballpark an hour away. No NBA arena you could point to and say, that’s ours.

So if you loved sports, you had to choose.

Everyone did. Some people adopted Pittsburgh teams. Others leaned toward Washington. A few went all in on Cincinnati. In West Virginia, sports fandom isn’t inherited by geography. It’s chosen.

Somewhere along the way, I chose Boston.

Part of that probably started with video games. As a kid I spent hours playing RBI Baseball on Nintendo, and Wade Boggs was my guy. I had never been to Fenway Park, but I knew Boggs’ swing like I had watched him for years.

Then came Madden 95. Drew Bledsoe’s New England Patriots were the team I always played with. Season after season I picked them. When you’re a kid, those little habits shape your loyalties. Before long I wasn’t just playing as those teams. I was rooting for them.

The Celtics came with the territory. Green jerseys. The parquet floor. The banners hanging from the rafters. Even from far away, that franchise carried a sense of history that drew you in.

By the time I was older, Boston sports had become my teams.

And the greatest sports moment of my life came in the fall of 2004.

If you know baseball, you know exactly what that means.

The Red Sox were down three games to none to the Yankees in the ALCS. No team had ever come back from that deficit in postseason baseball. Everyone assumed the series was over.

And then they did the impossible.

Four straight wins. History rewritten. The curse finally broken.

If you were a Boston fan at that moment, it felt almost surreal. Decades of heartbreak washed away in a single week.

Those teams were my teams.

Cleveland Has Entered The Chat

Then life took a turn.

In 2013 Jen and I started dating, and I moved back to Ohio.

And something unexpected happened.

Cleveland sports caught my attention.

Part of it was the timing. That same year LeBron James returned to Cleveland. The story had a strange symmetry for me. As LeBron came back to Ohio, I was coming back to Ohio too.

So I watched.

Then I started cheering.

Before long I cared.

I followed that Cavaliers team closely. The 2016 Finals run still feels unreal when you look back on it. Down three games to one against the Warriors, and somehow they came back to win it all. Cleveland finally had its championship.

Then there are the Browns.

The Browns are… the Browns.

But I rarely miss a game.

And the Guardians have pulled me in on many summer nights too. There is something about baseball in the evening. A quiet game unfolding inning by inning. Another Cleveland team slowly working its way into your heart.

At some point I realized something had happened.

Cleveland sports had become a love of mine.

But Boston never stopped being one too.

When Your Teams Finally Meet

Most of the time this divided loyalty works just fine.

The seasons don’t always overlap. The leagues are different. The storylines rarely collide.

Boston over here.

Cleveland over there.

No tension.

Until Sunday.

This Sunday the Celtics play the Cavaliers.

And when that game tips off, something becomes immediately clear.

You cannot cheer for both.

Every basket helps one team and hurts the other. Every run swings the game toward one side. At some point the heart has to choose.

What felt comfortable before suddenly feels impossible.

You realize the arrangement only worked because the loyalties had not collided yet.

The Problem of Two Masters

Now, I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t talking about sports fandom in the Sermon on the Mount, but the illustration still works. The tension is real. Here’s what he said:

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

Matthew 6:24

Jesus is speaking specifically about money in that passage, but the principle goes much deeper than finances.

The human heart was never meant for divided allegiance.

We often try to live as if it can work. We keep Jesus somewhere in our lives. Respected. Admired. Occasionally consulted. At the same time other things quietly sit on the throne.

Career.

Comfort.

Reputation.

Control.

Success.

Approval.

For a while it feels like everything can coexist peacefully.

Until the loyalties collide.

Until obedience costs something.

Until following Jesus runs directly against the way the world tells you to live.

That is when the heart reveals who its real master is.

The Better Master

Here is what makes Jesus different from every other master.

Every other master demands everything from you.

Jesus gives everything for you.

The Lord who calls for our allegiance is the same Savior who walked toward the cross. The King who asks for our devotion is the one who laid down His life for people who had spent their lives serving other masters.

Before we ever chose Him, He chose us.

Before we ever loved Him, He loved us.

So when Jesus says we cannot serve two masters, He is not trying to shrink our lives.

He is trying to free them.

Because the other masters always take.

Only Christ saves.

One Throne

Sunday afternoon I will sit down and watch the Celtics play the Cavs.

And once again sports will remind me of something deeper about life.

You can admire many things.

You can appreciate many things.

But your heart can only truly belong to one.

The same is true spiritually.

Many things will compete for the throne of your heart.

But only one King deserves it.

And the beautiful truth of the gospel is that the King who asks for your allegiance is the same King who gave His life to make you His.

You know the kind. The calendar full, the texts answered, the to-do list moving. You are needed in five directions at once and you meet every need, more or less, and you fall into bed at the end of the day feeling like you did something. Like you were there.

But there is a difference between being there and being present. And most of us, if we slow down long enough to feel it, know the difference in our bones.

A newborn has a way of making that difference impossible to ignore.

She does not care about your calendar. She does not know it is Thursday, that you have obligations stacked to the ceiling and a mind already three steps ahead of wherever your body happens to be. She knows warmth and cold. Hunger and fullness. The feeling of being held and the feeling of being set down. Her world is beautifully, ruthlessly simple — and when you enter it, when you lift her and she quiets against your chest, something in you either softens or breaks.

I started softening.

Presence, I am learning, is not proximity.

You can be in the same room with someone and be entirely elsewhere. You can sit across from another person — your spouse, your friend, your child, your neighbor, a member of your congregation in need of counseling — and be managing the conversation rather than inhabiting it. Steering toward resolution. Waiting for your turn. Already composing the response before they have finished the sentence.

You can be looking at a screen while someone who loves you is in the same room, close enough to touch, waiting without saying so for you to come back. You are there, technically. But you are not with them.

That distinction matters more than we usually let ourselves admit. Because what people most often need from us is not our expertise or our answers or our ability to fix what is broken. What they need, at the deepest level, is to feel found. To feel that someone entered their world rather than waiting for them to perform well enough in someone else’s.

A newborn cannot perform. She has nothing to offer in exchange for your attention. She cannot make your presence worth your while. She simply is — small, dependent, entirely herself — and she receives whatever love you bring or she goes without.

Something about that undoes you, if you let it.

The theological word for this kind of presence is incarnation.

In the beginning was the Word. John opens his gospel not with a birth narrative but with a declaration about the nature of God — that before anything was made, the Word already was, already dwelling in perfect, unbroken communion with the Father. Eternal. Sufficient. Glorious.

And then: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Moved in. Took up residence. The Greek word John uses carries the image of pitching a tent, of settling into a neighborhood, of being findable. God did not send a message from a safe distance. He did not communicate His care through a representative. He came Himself, in the full weight of human flesh and weariness and limitation, and He stayed.

That is the pattern at the heart of the gospel. And it reorders everything.

Presence is not a pastoral strategy or a relational technique. It is the shape of love as God has defined it. It is what love does when it is truly free — it moves toward. It draws near. It enters the smallness of another person’s world without requiring that world to be more impressive before it arrives.

There is a scene in John 11 I have turned over in my mind more times than I can count.

Lazarus is dead. Mary comes to Jesus weeping, and those who loved Lazarus are weeping around her, and the text says that Jesus — who already knows what He is about to do, who is minutes away from calling a dead man back to life — was deeply moved. Troubled. And then: Jesus wept.

He did not rush her toward the miracle. He did not reframe her grief with the good news He was already holding in His hands. He entered her sorrow before He moved to heal it. He let it land on Him. He wept with her, in the middle of what He was about to undo, because her grief was real and she was His and that was enough reason.

That moment has always quietly broken me open.

Because it means that presence — real presence, the presence of the Son of God — is not efficient. It does not skip steps. It does not hurry the grieving person toward the resolution because the resolution is coming anyway. It sits down in the ashes first. It weeps first. It stays.

And if that is how God loves — if the Son of God thought weeping with Mary was worth His time when resurrection was already on its way — then it reframes everything about how we are called to love one another. Not from a distance. Not efficiently. Not with one eye on whatever else is waiting.

Bear one another’s burdens, Paul writes to the Galatians, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Not solve one another’s burdens. Not fix or optimize or provide a resource for one another’s burdens. Bear them. Take them up. Let them have some weight in you. The shape of how Jesus loves is fulfilled not in our brilliance but in our willingness to stay close to one another in the hard places.

That is a different kind of ambition than the one most of us carry around. And it is a different kind of cost.

We tend to think of love as something we give from surplus — from the part of ourselves left over after everything else has been attended to. But presence doesn’t work that way. It costs the thing we are most reluctant to spend. Not money. Not effort. Not even energy, exactly.

It costs attention. The full, unhurried, undivided kind. The kind that says, without words, you are not an interruption. You are the point.

A newborn will not accept anything less. And if we are honest, neither will the people we love most.

She sleeps now, soft and entirely unaware of what she is teaching her father.

She is not trying to teach me anything. She is simply being what she is — small, dependent, fully herself — requiring everything and offering nothing back but her existence. And it is enough. More than enough. I find myself wanting to be near her not only because she needs me, but because something in me needs this. The quiet of it. The weight of her in my arms. The way the whole restless world goes still when she settles.

She is teaching me, without a single word, that love has never been efficient. That the most important things cannot be rushed or managed or moved through on the way to something else.

That presence — real presence, the kind that makes another person feel truly found — is not a thing you can give in a hurry.

This is what a newborn has handed me, in the dark and the quiet and the ordinary holiness of an 11:45 pm feeding.

Not a method. Not a principle. Just a slow, repeated invitation to put down whatever I am carrying and be in this moment, with this person, in this unrepeatable ordinary day that will not come again.

To stop performing presence and start practicing it.

To weep with those who weep before rushing them toward resurrection.

To bear the burden long enough to feel its weight.

To stay.

Because the God who spoke the universe into being thought you were worth coming near to. Thought your smallness and your need and your ordinary grief were worth entering. Wrapped Himself in flesh and moved into the neighborhood and stayed for thirty years before He said a word in public, because presence was never a prelude to the real work.

Presence was the work.

It still is.

It’s not heavy in the way that strains your arms, although that surely happens. It’s heavy in the way a truth is heavy. The way something hoped for is heavy once it finally arrives and you realize it has teeth. I hold my daughter in the quiet hours—when the house is dark, the world feels paused, and time narrows down to breath and warmth and the soft hiccup of a life still figuring out how lungs work—and I feel the faithfulness of God like pressure on my chest.

Not crushing. Anchoring.

She fits into the crook of my arm as if God calibrated elbows for this exact purpose. Her fingers curl, unknowing but determined, grabbing at nothing and everything. Her eyes flutter, sometimes open, sometimes closed, always searching, always trusting that someone else will hold her together.

And that’s when it hits me—this is how faith is learned. Not by explanation, but by experience. Not by certainty, but by being held.

I’ve spent years talking about the faithfulness of God. Preaching it. Teaching it. Defending it. Explaining it to skeptics and believers alike. I’ve used good words—big ones, careful ones. Covenant. Providence. Sovereignty. Promise-keeping God.

But none of those words weigh as much as this child.

Because now the faithfulness of God is not an idea. It’s a history. A long, winding, sometimes brutal story that somehow bends toward grace. It’s years of waiting that didn’t feel holy while I was in them. It’s prayers that felt like they bounced off the ceiling. It’s nights when hope felt irresponsible. It’s moments when I wondered—quietly, ashamedly—whether God had simply said no and forgot to tell me.

And yet here she is.

Her breathing is uneven, like a jazz drummer still learning the kit. Her head smells like milk and newness and mystery. She makes faces that feel accidental but somehow personal, as if she’s already reacting to the world with opinions. She startles at nothing. She trusts completely.

And I realize something unsettling and beautiful: God has been faithful the whole time, not just at the ending.

That’s the trick of faithfulness—it rarely announces itself while it’s happening. It only becomes obvious in hindsight, when you’re holding the thing you once thought might never exist. Faithfulness is quiet. It shows up disguised as delay. As silence. As ordinary days where nothing seems to change.

Until suddenly, everything has.

I think about Mary, holding Jesus for the first time. Not the stained-glass version—no halo, no background music—but the real Mary. Tired. Sore. Overwhelmed. Holding God-made-flesh while probably wondering how on earth she was supposed to keep Him alive. I wonder if she felt the same mix of awe and terror I feel now. If she realized that the salvation of the world had once needed to be burped.

Christ came into the world this way—small, dependent, interruptible. He entrusted Himself to human arms. He allowed His existence to hinge on someone else’s faithfulness before He would one day prove God’s faithfulness to everyone.

That matters to me now, in ways it never did before.

Because as I hold my daughter, I understand something about the gospel that theology alone couldn’t teach me: faithfulness always moves toward vulnerability. God didn’t prove His reliability by staying distant. He proved it by coming close enough to be breakable.

And in the soft chaos of these early days—diapers and bottles and half-slept prayers—I feel invited into that same pattern. To be faithful in small things. To show up when I’m tired. To love without understanding. To trust that presence matters more than precision.

There’s levity in this too, of course. She has already peed on Jen with confidence. She has screamed like a prophet in the night. She has humbled me in ways no sermon ever could. Nothing strips away illusion faster than realizing you cannot reason with a human who doesn’t yet know what reason is.

And somehow, that’s grace.

Because the faithfulness of God isn’t sterile. It’s not fragile. It can handle mess and noise and unfinished sleep. It’s steady enough to meet us exactly where we are—unshowered, uncertain, holding a child we already love more than we thought possible.

When I hold my daughter, I feel the echo of every promise God has ever made. Not because she is the fulfillment of them all—but because she reminds me that God keeps promises in ways I could never predict and never control.

She is not proof that life will be easy.

She is proof that God is present.

She is proof that waiting is not wasted.

She is proof that hope, when it finally arrives, feels heavier than despair ever did.

One day she’ll grow. She’ll stop fitting in my arm. She’ll pull away, as all children do. She’ll learn to walk, then to question, then to doubt. And I won’t always be able to hold her the way I do now.

But tonight, I can.

And tonight is enough.

Because the God who has carried me through every long night has once again reminded me—quietly, gently, without explanation—that He is faithful.

And He always has been.

Call to God

O God who dwells outside of time and yet enters it without fear, we come to you tired of watching the clock, weary of the space between promise and fulfillment, aching in the long hallway of not yet.

You see the tremors in our hands. You hear the prayers we whisper and the ones we choke back. Nothing about this waiting is hidden from You.

So we come — not composed, not certain, but honest.

Meet us here.

Confession

Lord Jesus,

we confess that waiting exposes what we love. It reveals how quickly we grasp for control, how easily our hope slips into fear.

We confess that we replay scenarios you have not written, that we borrow trouble from tomorrow, that we demand answers when You offer presence.

We confess our impatience, our suspicion of silence, our quiet belief that if we are anxious enough, we might somehow hurry You along.

Forgive us.

Remembrance

Father you are not late. You are not rushed. You are not wringing Your hands over what unsettles us.

You were faithful to Abraham in the decades before Isaac cried. You were faithful to israel in the centuries before the Messiah arrived. You were faithful to Mary in the months between promise and pain. You were faithful to the Son in the three days between cross and resurrection.

You have never failed to finish what you began.

You are the God who works while we wait.

Meditation

Jesus Christ, you know what it is to wait.

You waited thirty years before your public work began. You waited through misunderstanding, rejection, and betrayal. You waited in the garden as sweat fell like blood. You waited in the tomb while creation held its breath.

You did not escape the ache of waiting, but you redeemed it.

And now, risen and reigning, you are not distant from our anxiety. You intercede for us with scars still visible, proof that waiting is never wasted in the hands of God.

Petition

So in this day — this anxious, tender, unresolved day — teach us how to wait with you. Not numbing ourselves with distraction, not bracing ourselves for disappointment, but opening our clenched hearts to trust.

Give us daily bread, not a full explanation. Give us peace that does not depend on the outcome. Give us the courage to live faithfully before we know how the story turns out.

Anchor us in what is true, when everything feels uncertain.

Prayer

For racing thoughts, be our stillness. For shallow breaths, be our oxygen. For sleepless nights, be our rest. Whyen our bodies carry fear before our minds can name it, be gentle with us.

Hold us when we feel fragile. Speak kindly to us when we are ashamed of our anxieties. Remind us that weakness is not a failure of faith but an invitation to lean more fully on grace.

Declaration

We wait, O Lord, not because we are strong, but because You are faithful. We wait because the same God who kept His word at Bethlehem and kept his promise at the empty tomb will keep his word to us.

This waiting will not have the final word. Fear will not have the final word. Silence will not have the final word.

Jesus Christ — crucified, risen, and returning — you are our final word.

Sending

So send us back into this day still waiting, but not alone. Let us wait with open hands, soft hearts, and steady hope.

Until the answer comes, until the door opens, until the morning breaks we will trust You here.

Amen.

Leader: Lord, You have called me to a work that feels too large for my hands, too heavy for my shoulders.

People: Yet You are the One who builds the house, and we labor not in vain.

Leader: The soil feels stubborn, the ground unbroken. I wonder if roots will take.

People: But You are the Lord of the harvest, and the seed is Yours to grow.

Leader: I confess the pressure I carry—to succeed, to prove, to gather, to multiply.

People: Remind me that the church is not a monument to my name, but a dwelling place for Yours.

Leader: When I fear that I am failing, when I worry about resources, when I question if I am enough—

People: You are the God who provides daily manna, daily mercy, daily strength.

Leader: I am tempted to believe that strategy, branding, or effort will secure the future.

People: Yet it is the Spirit who gives life, the Word that saves, the Gospel that endures.

Leader: O Christ, You planted Your cross in the soil of this world, and from it has sprung a people redeemed.

People: May this new church be another branch on that old, rugged tree.

Leader: So here I stand, weak but willing, weary but hopeful, uncertain yet clinging to Your promise.

People: Build Your church, Lord Jesus. And let the gates of hell not prevail against it.

All: To You be the glory in this place, in this people, and in this weary planter’s heart. Amen.

Logging off—those words sound old-fashioned now, like something from another era of the internet, when you had to physically disconnect a cord. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the soul still longs for the kind of boundary that forces us to admit: I am not endless. I am not infinite. I am not God.

The Illusion of Always Being On

The pull of always being “on” is less about information and more about identity. Social media, emails, Discord chats, endless scrolling—they all promise belonging, validation, a sense that we are in the stream of life. But, like Nebuchadnezzar walking his palace rooftop in Daniel 4, we subtly whisper to ourselves: Look what I’ve built. Look who I’ve connected with. Look who I’ve become.

It’s a fragile pride, easily punctured. One comment can ruin a day. One comparison can undo months of joy. We are not meant to carry the world’s noise in our pocket, yet here we are, shoulders stooped under the weight of it.

Alistair Begg often reminds us that the Christian life begins with God’s voice, not ours. To live in wisdom is to live under the Word, not above it. But how can we hear that voice when our ears are filled with the chatter of ten thousand strangers?

The Gift of Limits

Logging off is not just digital hygiene. It is a confession of faith. It is admitting that God runs the universe just fine without us refreshing the feed. The Sabbath commandment is still the great act of resistance in a world that tells us we must always be producing, always be posting, always be curating an image.

Jesus did not scroll. He withdrew. He walked into the wilderness. He prayed in gardens. He looked his friends in the eye and spoke truth that cut through the noise. To log off is to walk in His steps, to embrace limits as gifts.

A Small Act of Rebellion

In a world where being online feels like survival, maybe the most countercultural act is to choose obscurity for a while. To let the world spin without our commentary. To return to flesh-and-blood friendships, to the pages of Scripture, to the presence of Christ who does not need a “like” button to confirm His affection for us.

And yes, I understand the irony here. You’re reading this on Substack. It may have been shared on social media. It may have landed directly in your inbox, just another notification, another thing to click, another voice vying for your attention. That’s the tension we live in—using the tools of our age while trying not to be consumed by them. The question is not whether we’ll see another ping on our phone. The question is whether we’ll have the courage to sometimes silence it, to carve out moments where God’s voice is the only one we’re listening for.

Logging off may not fix everything. Your life will still carry its own noise, its own burdens. But it creates space—the kind of space where God’s Word can cut through, where prayer isn’t interrupted, where your own soul remembers who it belongs to.

So maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s probably wise to log off. Not forever, not to flee the world, but as an act of doxology—a small hymn of trust sung with your thumb hovering over the power button. A declaration that glory belongs not to the endless scroll but to the Living God. That life is not sustained by pixels, platforms, or posts, but by a Person—the One who still says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

And in that quiet doxology, when the storm of noise finally breaks and the silence settles in, you may discover what your soul has been aching for all along: not another distraction, but rest in Christ Himself.

Let’s be honest—preaching can feel like planting seeds in a windstorm.

You spend hours in prayer and preparation. You labor over every word, every illustration, every point of application. Sunday comes and you deliver the message God laid on your heart. And by the time you hit the parking lot, someone’s asking if you’ve seen their kid’s missing shoe or whether the thermostat can be adjusted next week.

By Monday morning, you’re wondering if anyone heard the most important thing you said. By Tuesday, you’re questioning if you remember it.

Whether you’re preaching to thousands across multiple campuses, shepherding a faithful flock in a town with more cows than people, or setting up folding chairs in a rented school gym—there’s a moment when every pastor asks, Is this really working? Is anyone being changed?

And if you’re sitting in the pews, maybe you’ve felt it too—that subtle drift toward thinking the sermon is just another part of the service. Something to endure or enjoy, but not something that actually shapes your life.

Here’s the truth we all need to remember: Preaching is discipleship.

Not just occasionally. Not just when the sermon “hits different.” But every single week, when God’s Word is opened, Christ is proclaimed, and the Spirit is at work—discipleship is happening. Slowly. Steadily. Powerfully.

In a world chasing the next big strategy for spiritual growth, we risk forgetting that God has already given us one of His primary tools to shape His people: the faithful proclamation of His Word.

Preaching Is Discipleship

Our modern mindset often separates preaching from discipleship. We assume discipleship happens in coffee shops, small groups, or personalized mentorship—and yes, those are beautiful, necessary expressions of Christian growth. But biblically, discipleship begins in a place we often overlook: the pulpit.

When Paul describes his ministry, he doesn’t say, “Him we discuss over lattes.” He says, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28, ESV).

Proclaiming Christ is not a side activity—it’s central to forming mature disciples.

Preaching isn’t a weekly performance or a theological lecture. It’s God’s chosen means to reorient hearts, renew minds, and reform lives around the gospel. It’s where the church, gathered as one body, hears the living voice of God through His Word.

How God Disciples Through Preaching

You might not notice it week to week. Most people don’t walk out of church saying, “Wow, I just took a giant leap in sanctification!” But here’s how preaching consistently disciples God’s people:

It Reshapes Our Story. We live in a culture that constantly tells us who we are—through social media, advertising, politics, and entertainment. Every voice says, “You are the hero of your story.”

Preaching reminds us that we are not the hero—Jesus is. It places us back inside God’s grand narrative, where sinners are rescued by grace and called to live for a kingdom far greater than their own.

Each sermon re-centers us in that story. That’s discipleship.

It Trains Us to Think Biblically. We don’t naturally interpret life through Scripture. We interpret it through feelings, trends, and opinions.

But when pastors faithfully open God’s Word—whether through expository series or topical messages grounded in Scripture—they’re teaching more than content. They’re modeling how to read, understand, and apply the Bible. Over time, congregations begin to think theologically, discern truth from error, and filter life through God’s lens.

That’s discipleship.

It Lifts Our Eyes to Christ Again and Again. Our hearts are prone to wander—not just into sin, but into spiritual forgetfulness. We forget the gospel. We forget grace. We forget that Jesus is better.

Preaching, at its best, doesn’t just tell us what to do—it shows us who Jesus is. It lifts our eyes from our circumstances to our Savior. It exposes idols and invites us to treasure Christ above all.

That’s discipleship.

The Slow Work of God

Here’s where we need encouragement: Preaching is a long game.

We’re conditioned to expect instant feedback and visible results. But preaching isn’t fast food—it’s more like tending a garden. You plant, you water, you wait. And often, God is doing His deepest work beneath the surface.

Isaiah 55:11 promises that God’s Word will not return empty. Every sermon faithfully preached, even the ones you thought fell flat, is being used by the Spirit to form Christ in His people (Galatians 4:19).

So, pastor—when you wonder if it’s worth it, when you feel like no one’s listening, remember this: God is always working through His Word, even when you can’t see it. Whether you preach from a stage with lights or from a wooden pulpit in a drafty chapel, heaven is not measuring your effectiveness by applause, attendance, or social media shares. Faithfulness is the metric.

And church member—when Sunday feels routine, when your mind drifts during point two of a three-point sermon, don’t underestimate what God is doing. Week by week, He’s forming you into someone who knows Him, loves Him, and reflects Him more.

Why This Should Give Us Hope

The beauty of discipleship through preaching is that it doesn’t depend on human brilliance. It depends on God’s design. He has chosen “the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21, NIV).

It’s not flashy, but it’s powerful.

So, let’s recover our confidence in this forgotten power. Not confidence in the preacher, but in the God who speaks through preaching. Let’s remember that every time Christ is proclaimed, the Spirit is at work—calling sinners, strengthening saints, and sending His people into the world.

And when we don’t see immediate fruit, let’s trust the Gardener.

Because one day, when Christ returns, we’ll realize that those ordinary Sundays—the ones where you wondered if anything happened—were the very Sundays God was shaping His people for eternity.

Until then, keep preaching. Keep listening. Keep trusting.

God is making disciples—one sermon at a time.

But the story of scripture ends with a promise still unfolding.

The final verse of the Hebrew Bible is not a benediction. It is a breath held.

“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth… Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him. Let him go up.’”

—2 Chronicles 36:23

And then it ends.

Not with a punctuation mark—because ancient Hebrew didn’t use periods.

Not with a bow wrapped neatly around the narrative—because Israel’s story was not yet resolved.

It ends with what we might call an ellipses.

An open sentence.

A trailing thought.

A holy ache.

In the Hebrew ordering of the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles is the final book. Not Malachi.

And that closing verse, that half-step into hope, becomes the last breath of the canon for the Jewish reader.

Let him go up.

But no one moves.

There is no record of response. No surge of obedience. No final doxology. Just an imperial decree, the echo of exile, and then silence.

It’s not an ending.

It’s an opening.

And it is profoundly theological.

Because in that pause, we hear more than quiet.

We hear longing.

We hear the groaning of a people who know they are not home.

We hear the sorrow of generations shaped by judgment and displacement.

We hear the restless ache for a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and a glory that will not fade.

This is the brilliance of the biblical narrative.

Chronicles retells Israel’s story, from David to exile. It rehearses the covenant hope and the kingdom failure. It’s as if the Chronicler is building a stage for someone greater to step onto. But he never shows up in the final verse.

The curtain falls.

But not on resolution.

It falls on yearning.

And that’s where the story pauses.

For 400 years.

No prophet speaks.

No fire falls.

No new word from heaven.

Just generation after generation carrying the ache. Living in the ellipses. Watching. Waiting.

The covenant remains, but feels distant.

The promises are still spoken of, but whispered now.

And hope begins to wear thin in places.

But not everywhere.

Some still watched the door.

Simeon did.

His hands were wrinkled from time, his back slightly bowed from years of waiting—but his eyes still searched the horizon. He wasn’t waiting for a sign or a spiritual high. He wasn’t chasing revival. He was waiting for a Person. The Consolation of Israel. The One his heart had rehearsed meeting in every whispered Psalm and every flickering lampstand night.

Anna did too.

She knew what it meant to lose early and live long. A widow for decades, she could have vanished quietly into grief. Instead, she made the temple her home, and worship her defiance. Fasting and praying. Day after day. Year after year. Watching the faithful die off one by one, still waiting. Still hoping. Still believing that the silence wouldn’t last forever.

And then—one day—it didn’t.

There were no royal banners. No lightning. No voice from the sky.

Just a poor couple walking in with a baby wrapped in linen. Ordinary. Unnoticed by the crowds. But not by Simeon. Not by Anna.

Because when your soul has been trained by longing, you know Glory when it enters the room.

Simeon reached out with trembling hands and held the Infinite in his arms. And in that moment, every unanswered prayer, every lonely year, every aching sunrise was redeemed.

He whispered what his whole life had been leading to:

“Now I can die.”

Anna came rushing in, tears likely cutting rivers through the wrinkles on her face. Joy, not just bubbling, but bursting. She couldn’t contain it. She didn’t even try. She began to speak—of Him, of hope, of redemption—for everyone who had ever felt forgotten in the dark.

They had waited in the ellipses.

And now, the sentence had a Name.

It’s Jesus

The God who had been silent had not been still.

The silence was not abandonment. It was anticipation.

God was preparing something so glorious that only time could hold the weight.

And when the fullness of time came, He sent forth His Son.

Born of a woman.

Born under the Law.

To redeem.

The long, holy ellipses ends not with human effort, but divine arrival.

God Himself enters the story—not as a prophet carrying the Word, but as the Word made flesh.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the silence.

He is the answer to the ache.

He is the One the Law anticipated, the Prophets foretold, and the Writings longed for.

He is the true temple, the better David, the final Priest, the Lamb without blemish.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

Because Jesus didn’t just come to end the silence of 2 Chronicles.

He came to finish the work of Genesis 3.

To undo the curse.

To crush the serpent.

To ransom the bride.

To bring the prodigals home.

And on the cross, as He bore the wrath of God in our place, He spoke a word more powerful than silence:

“It is finished.”

And the veil tore.

The silence was broken forever.

And yet…

We wait again.

We live in a different kind of ellipses.

Not between promise and first coming—but between cross and crown.

Between resurrection and return.

The tomb is empty, but the skies are not yet torn open.

The Spirit is in us, but the King has not yet returned to reign.

And this waiting is real.

We see the headlines.

We bury our dead.

We walk through valleys of depression, chronic pain, strained marriages, unanswered prayers.

We preach the gospel in dry places and wonder if the rain will ever come.

We know the promises.

But the silence feels familiar.

Friend, if that’s where you are—if you’re living somewhere between ache and arrival—you are not forgotten.

You are not weak for feeling the tension.

You are not failing because the waiting feels long.

You are simply standing in the long, holy ellipses.

And it is not empty.

It is filled with grace.

The same God who spoke the world into being, who stepped into the silence once before, is not pacing nervously in heaven. He is ruling. Reigning. Interceding. Finishing the story.

You are not lost in the pause.

You are being kept.

The time will come. As surely as Jesus came the first time, He will come again.

This time, not in swaddling clothes but in glory.

This time, not in a manger but on a white horse.

This time, not to bear wrath—but to wipe every tear and make all things new.

There will be no more ellipses.

Just an exclamation of joy.

Just the voice of the One who says, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.”

So keep waiting.

Keep watching.

Keep trusting.

The silence is not forever.

The ache is not wasted.

The time is not meaningless.

Jesus is coming.

And until then, the long, holy ellipses is the sacred space where hope endures, where grace sustains, and where the weary are held by nail-scarred hands until the sky breaks open in song.

Not with a whisper this time,

but with a trumpet.

Not with permission,

but with power.

Not with “Let him go up,”

but with “Behold, I am coming soon.”

And the silence will finally break.

Forever.

The line gets tossed around like a joke, but I’ve never heard it and not felt something deep in my bones.

Because I am romantic about baseball.

I always have been—since I was a teenager in the hills of West Virginia, where there were no pro teams to inherit, no ballparks to visit, no city to call “ours.” If you loved baseball there, you had to choose your own team.

You had to choose your own heartbreak.

I chose the Boston Red Sox.

It started around 2000, when we finally got the MLB Extra Innings package. I was just beginning to understand the rhythms of the game—the slow burn, the long season, the way it somehow feels like nothing’s happening and everything’s happening at the same time.

One night I landed on a Sox broadcast.

Fenway under the lights.

Remy and Orsillo in the booth, cracking jokes and calling pitches like they were narrating an old family photo album.

I didn’t understand everything.

But I felt it.

And then came the voice of Joe Castiglione. My parents—knowing how much I loved it—bought me a satellite radio subscription so I could hear him call games from anywhere. I’d sit there in the fading light of a West Virginia evening, listening to Joe’s voice call every pitch like it mattered. And somehow, even though I’d never stepped foot in Boston, Fenway became a kind of home.

That’s the thing about baseball.

It teaches you how to long for something you’ve never fully seen.

And in its own way, it helped me understand faith.

I gave my heart to the Sox years before they broke it in 2003. I was fresh out of high school when Aaron Boone walked us off the field and into another offseason of grief. It was my first taste of sports heartbreak, and strangely, it felt like preparation. Because real life brings real loss. And loving something that lets you down won’t just teach you about baseball—it’ll teach you about being human.

Then 2004 happened. The bloody sock. The steal. Big Papi’s magic. The comeback from 0–3. The curse, undone.

It was resurrection in real time.

I didn’t just watch that season—I lived it. I wept. I laughed. I believed. And when they won it all, I did something ridiculous and completely necessary: I ordered a physical copy of The Boston Globe so I could hold the miracle in my hands.

That year taught me to hope again.

But life doesn’t stop for championship parades.

Time moved forward.

My career took my time.

My heart took me to Ohio.

There have been joys, memories, loss.

I’ve walked through the ache of unanswered prayers.

I’ve cried myself to sleep when the anxiety was too much.

I’ve stood at hospital bedsides praying for healing that never came.

I’ve preached funerals for people I love.

I’ve watched people walk away from the faith.

I’ve felt the sting of betrayal from those I trusted.

I’ve wrestled with my own doubts in quiet hotel rooms after long days of ministry.

And through all of that—I drifted.

From baseball. From simplicity. Maybe even, for a time, from joy.

The MLB package got too expensive. Time too scarce. So I started rooting for the local team—Cleveland. It made sense. They were close, exciting, and scrappy. But it never felt like home. It was like being a foreign exchange student—you learn the customs, cheer sincerely, even speak the language. But deep down, you still dream in your mother tongue.

The Sox never stopped being my team.

They were just…waiting for me to remember.

And about five years ago, I did.

I caught a game. Then another. Then I stayed up late for a West Coast trip. Then I read every beat writer I could find.

And I realized—I wasn’t chasing nostalgia.

I was coming home.

Because baseball has never just been entertainment for me. It’s been formation.

It’s taught me how to wait.

How to grieve.

How to believe in stories that don’t look like they’ll end well.

It’s taught me that even in silence and slow innings, something is happening.

And in that way, baseball has mirrored the gospel.

Because ministry isn’t quick. Faith isn’t clean. And real life—real discipleship—is a grind. It’s full of starts and stops and quiet Tuesdays where no one claps and no one sees.

Sometimes it’s just showing up again.

Sometimes it’s just keeping score and whispering prayers, wondering if breakthrough will ever come.

But like baseball, faith forms you while you wait.

And the gospel never lets you forget:

The story isn’t over.

There is a home waiting. A better one.

One not made by hands.

And maybe that’s why baseball still stirs my soul.

Because I’ve buried dreams and people I love.

Because I’ve questioned my calling.

Because I’ve wondered, many times, if anything I’m doing actually matters.

But somehow, a game that unfolds over 162 days and 27 outs still dares to say:

“Don’t quit yet. You never know what could happen in the ninth.”

That’s resurrection talk.

That’s gospel language.

These days, life looks different. Jen and I are walking the road of adoption and foster care. It’s beautiful. It’s brutal. And in quiet moments, I find myself dreaming—imagining the day I sit with our child, a game on in the background, and say:

“Let me tell you about Cowboy Up. Let me tell you how we came back from 0–3. Let me tell you how Big Papi gave Boston its joy back. Let me tell you why this team matters to your dad.”

Maybe they’ll roll their eyes. Maybe they’ll choose the Yankees out of pure rebellion. That’s fine.

I’ll still tell the stories.

Because the Sox have taught me how to carry stories that are heavy and hopeful all at once.

They’ve reminded me how to love through loss.

How to wait through winter.

And how to believe, against all odds, that joy comes in the morning.

I’m a Red Sox fan.

Still. Again. Always.

And I’ll be here—keeping score, whispering prayers in the bottom of the ninth, and holding tight to the promise that one day the final curse will be broken, and every last one of us will finally be home.

This is a liturgy for letting go.

Before the beach chair unfolds.

Before the top of my bald head gets a little too much sun.

Before I spend too much on a seafood dinner that comes in a plastic basket…

I pause to say: thank You, Lord.

Thank You for the gift of ministry—so fulfilling, so sacred, so exhilarating… and also so completely, entirely exhausting.

Thank You for calling me into the beautiful chaos of shepherding souls, crafting sermons, praying big prayers, and laughing until I cry with teenagers.

But thank You too for commanding rest. Not as a suggestion. Not as a reward. But as a rhythm of trust.

Because I am not You. I am not sovereign. I am not omnipresent. I am not even very good at turning off email notifications.

But You, Lord, are the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps.

You hold all things together—not by my Google Calendar—but by the power of Your word.

So as I slip away for a week of slow mornings and sandy toes, I do so in the confidence that Your Spirit is still at work even when I’m not.

That the gospel keeps advancing even when my feet are propped up.

That the church belongs to Jesus, not to me—and that’s really good news for everyone.

Thank You for vacations that remind me I’m not indispensable.

Thank You for laughter, fresh seafood, and board games with family members.

Thank You for space to breathe.

And most of all, thank You for the gospel that frees me not just to work with passion—but to rest without guilt.

Jesus didn’t rise from the dead to make me more productive.

He rose to make me whole.

He invites the weary to come to Him—not for a few PTO days—but for soul-deep rest that no time clock can give.

So this out-of-office message is a declaration:

I am offline.

But God is not.

The Kingdom is not on pause.

Grace is still flowing.

And my identity is still secure—even if my voicemail is not.

Amen

You made it to the edge of another week.

The sink is still full.

There’s a heap of laundry in the hall.

You changed three diapers in the span of fifteen minutes and said “no” seventeen times to a toddler who keeps climbing things she shouldn’t.

You bit your tongue in that meeting, but not before rolling your eyes.

You swallowed the sting of that text, then gossiped about it to someone else.

You stood at the graveside and tried not to fall apart.

You watched your teenager pull away, and later said something you wish you could unsay.

You worked hard and were misunderstood, but you also spoke too sharply to someone who didn’t deserve it.

You served without thanks, but secretly resented it.

You prayed, and heaven seemed silent.

So you stopped praying by Thursday.

You tried to be faithful. You tried to be kind. You tried to be whole. And you fell short.

In some ways that still sting. In some ways no one even knows about but you.

You showed up again and again—and somehow, still feel like it wasn’t enough.

And now tomorrow is Sunday.

Maybe your clothes are laid out. Maybe nothing is ready.

Maybe you’ve wondered if it would just be easier to stay home.

But friend, Jesus is not asking you to come polished—just present.

He is not looking for performance—only surrender.

Come with your bruises.

Come with your bitterness.

Come with the heavy silence where prayer used to be.

Come with your questions, your guilt, your thin, threadbare hope.

Let the gospel meet you where you are—not where you wish you were. Let the sanctuary become your rest stop. Let the voices around you sing what you can’t.

Let the Scriptures speak louder than your silence. Let the prayers say what your heart has forgotten how to ask.

For the One who welcomes you is gentle and lowly.

He knows what it is to carry the weight of weakness. He knows your frame. He remembers you are dust.

And still—He loves you. Madly.

So exhale.

Close the laptop.

Quiet the noise.

Lay your head on a pillow, not of accomplishment—but of grace.

The Spirit is already moving.

The Father is already watching for you.

And Jesus has never once regretted saving you.

Rest now.

The table is being set.

The tomb is still empty.

And morning is coming.

It’s the ache of driving familiar roads and realizing they’re still not home. The ache of wanting the people around you to know Jesus — not just culturally, not just theologically, but intimately. The ache of believing the gospel really can change everything, even when the evidence seems stacked against it.

That ache is why we’re starting a church in Newark, Ohio.

The Ache and the Calling

It was December 2022 when I felt it most. My wife, Jen, drove me 24.8 miles from our home in Pataskala to the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus for what would become a life-saving operation. I remember the silence in the car. The gravity. The helplessness. But mostly, I remember the unwavering look in her eyes — the kind that said, I would drive you anywhere to save your life.

That same resolve, that same burden, has followed us ever since. Not in the form of another diagnosis, but in the form of a calling. A calling to go — not 24.8 miles west, but less than 20 miles east. To a place that, in many ways, has everything… except gospel hope.

Newark: More Than a Map Dot

Newark isn’t a mission trip destination. It’s not a church planter’s playground. It’s a real place, with real people, and a real need.

With nearly 50,000 residents, Newark is the 16th largest city in Ohio. It has historic roots, a revitalized downtown, and sits at the edge of one of the state’s fastest-growing regions. But for all its growth, Newark carries a deep spiritual weight. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, nearly two-thirds of Newark residents aren’t connected to any local church.

That means tens of thousands of men, women, and children are living without the hope, joy, and beauty that comes from knowing Jesus Christ through His Word and His people.

And that means we can’t stay where we are.

A Hard Place — and Holy Ground

More than one pastor has pulled me aside and said it straight:

“Newark is a church planting graveyard.”

It’s one of the hardest places in Central Ohio to reach with the gospel. If you drive around town, you might see why. There are buildings that used to house churches — now quiet, lifeless, or repurposed. You can almost hear the echoes of what used to be. Ministry here isn’t glamorous. It’s slow. It’s gritty. And often, it feels like sowing seed in dry ground.

But we aren’t going because it’s going to be easy.

We’re going because God is good, Jesus is risen, and the Spirit of God has been at work in Newark long before Newark Grace ever crossed my mind.

This is missionary ground.

And the gospel is still God’s power to save — even in places where hope feels buried.

Not a Strategy—A Story

We’re not planting a church in Newark because it’s strategic.

We’re planting a church because Jesus came for us.

Church planting isn’t a modern innovation; it’s an ancient act of obedience. The gospel spreads through people and churches — not content or charisma. And every church that has ever existed exists because someone, somewhere, believed Jesus was worth following and people were worth reaching.

Acts 1:8 still rings out:

“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

In our case, “Judea and Samaria” isn’t just a theological category. It’s 20 minutes down Route 16.

The Tension of the In-Between

Starting a church in Newark is part of the long obedience of living between here and home.

We’re not going to fix Newark. We’re not bringing Jesus to a place He hasn’t already been pursuing. We’re going to join Him there. To be a faithful outpost. A little lighthouse pointing people to the truer light.

We want to preach the gospel clearly.

We want to make disciples who love God and love people.

We want to raise up new leaders, start new groups, build new rhythms.

But mostly—we want to be present. Fully here. Fully His.

The kingdom of God is coming, but it’s also here. And if Newark is part of God’s creation, then it’s part of His redemptive plan. That means it’s not just worth loving—it’s worth laying down our lives for.

How You Can Join Us

We don’t have all the answers. We don’t know how big it’ll be, how fast it will grow, or what it will cost. But we do know this: Christ is worth it.

If you want to be a part of this work, here’s how:

• Pray. For the soil. For the people. For our family. Church planting is spiritual war—and we need covering.

• Consider Going. Maybe God is nudging you to step into something new. Maybe Newark is closer to your calling than you think.

• Give. Starting something from the ground up takes sacrificial generosity. Every gift to our church plant fund will go directly toward creating a gospel-centered community from day one.

• Spread the Word. Share this. Tell someone. Connect us to others. You never know who might be ready to say “yes.”

The Real Question

The question isn’t “Why Newark?”

The real question is:

If Jesus is alive, and the gospel is true—how could we not?

A place to pay attention.

To grace. To grit. To the slow, quiet work of God.

Of My Sojourn is that place for me.

It’s more field journal than blueprint. More trail map than podium. A space to tell the truth about the sweetness of Christ—and the ache of waiting for all things to be made new.

I’ve walked a lot of roads—some straight, some winding, and a few I wish I’d never taken. I’ve worked as a journalist, chasing truth and trying to make sense of the chaos. I’ve managed bands, helping others find their voice while I was still finding mine. I’ve spent hours on barstools listening to people cry, confess, and search for something solid. And I’ve spent just as many hours in church offices with the grieving, the angry, the burned out, and the proud—trying to remind them (and myself) that Jesus is still enough.

I’ve preached sermons I was still learning to believe. I’ve held the hands of the dying and baptized new believers in the same month. I’ve watched saints fall and skeptics soften. I’ve heard confessions, cried in parking lots, and sat in silence when words would only wound.

Even as a pastor, I still wrestle with fear and doubt. I still forget I’m loved. I still try to impress people instead of resting in the God who already knows me. I still want control. I still want clarity. I still want Christ—but too often I go looking for Him in the rearview instead of the moment I’m in.

And through it all, one truth has haunted and healed me:

Christ really is enough.

Not just for eternity. But for Monday. For the ache in your chest at 2AM. For the shame you can’t shake. For the boredom that numbs you. For the anger that scares you. For the prayers you gave up praying.

I’ve been the prodigal and the older brother. I’ve chased applause and tried to curate a life that would look holy enough to justify myself. But the older I get, the more I’m convinced of this:

If Jesus isn’t full of grace for sinners like me, then I have nothing.

If Jesus doesn’t hold me when I’m weak, then I won’t make it.

If Jesus doesn’t want all of me—the ugly, the tired, the doubting, the trying-too-hard—then I’m not sure I know Him at all.

But He does.

And I do.

That’s why I named this space Of My Sojourn. Because I’m not home yet. I’m still learning how to live like a citizen of heaven while carrying an Ohio driver’s license. Scripture calls us sojourners—temporary residents in a world that doesn’t quite fit. I feel that. Maybe you do too. I wanted a place to write honestly from the tension of this middle ground. Between Eden and the New Earth. Between grace received and glory revealed. Between what I believe and what I still forget when the lights go out. This is my sojourn. These are the dispatches.

And in many ways, it’s Rich Mullins who taught me how to name that tension. I found his music as a teenager in West Virginia who didn’t have the words for what I was feeling—but Rich did. He sang about longing and grace and dirt and love and Jesus like someone who had tasted all of them and still wasn’t done hungering. His honesty gave me permission to stop pretending. His music played like prayer and poetry all at once. It still does.

Now I’m in my forties, and I’ve got the scars and soul stretch marks to show for it—but the soundtrack hasn’t changed. I still want to be a man after God’s own heart, even when I feel like a misfit. I still have some words to write: not just Christian words, but Christ-centered, grace-drenched, wild-eyed words that smell like sheep and dirt and hope.

So no, this space won’t be polished. I won’t always tie the bow at the end. But I promise to tell the truth. About doubt. About desire. About grace that holds when the scaffolding of your life collapses. About Jesus—who didn’t just save me once but keeps saving me daily.

If you’re anything like me—hungry for more, tired of pretending, still limping toward the Light—I hope these dispatches make you feel less alone.

You’re not crazy for loving Jesus and still struggling to trust Him.

You’re not too far gone. You’re not too much.

You’re just right for grace.

Let’s walk together.