Category: New Testament

You Literally Cannot Do This, So Stop.

I want you to read this like you’re about to make the worst decision of your life and I’m pleading with you through tear-soaked eyes to talk you off the ledge. That’s literally how important this is.

The room is tense–there’s a feeling in the air that seems to make everyone tight and unable to look anyone in the eye. Nobody’s said much for an hour, except the man leading the group, but he’s about to try and change that, and even though we’ve all seen it coming for the entire time we’ve been here, we’re all dreading it.

Then he asks that question.

“So, how have you been doing this week, dude? How’s your walk with Jesus looking? Anything I can be praying for in your life?”

UGH. Of course. He’s asking me. I spurt out the quickest answer I can think of.

“Yeah man, not really. I mean, I’m going through Romans right now and it’s really good,” God, please don’t let him ask me about specifics; the last time I read was actually a week ago and I honestly don’t even remember what chapter I’m supposed to be on now, “and as for prayer, I guess just a stronger push to stay closer to Him and keep growing in Him, you know? To be the man I’m supposed to be.”

I hate this.

It’s the same bull-crap answer. Every single week. Every single meeting. Every single guy.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever  been on either side of that conversation. Sometimes you’re the guy asking the questions, writing down the prayer requests, and then never praying for them because you lost the list somewhere among all the receipts you saved because you said you were going to use them to balance your checking account but you never organized them so you gave up. Most times, you’re the guy in the hot seat, chucking out some half-baked answer to an honestly serious and potentially life-giving question, scrambling to keep up an image of a Godly man even though you’re putting in a C-rate effort in the rest of your life.

A friend of mine said recently that he’d seen community done freakishly well and had also seen it done terribly, and the more I go through life, the harder it is for me to say I’m seeing it done well like he has.

Men, it’s time to wake up and face the truth: we suck at community and we suck bad.

Outside of the Christian sphere of influence, there are male relationships that appear to be pretty healthy, but are, at their core, centered on selfishness. Bromances usually spring out of times like at least two guys having spent a lot of time together, finding they have things in common, and then acting on those common interests (like hardcore sports fans or literally anything else). On the surface, they look great. But below deck, each guy is only there because the other is providing him with something: shallow companionship (i.e. lack of loneliness, affirmation on their opinions, etc.). Christian men are doing the exact same thing. And it makes me sick.

In our weekly/monthly/semi-annual/whatever Men’s Breakfasts/Men’s Lunches/Men’s Church League Sports/whatever other program you can come up with, we’re all afraid to expose our real lives and be vulnerable with each other. We have to have it all together. We have to have control of our families. We have to have a solid footing in our jobs and be excelling at them. We have to be 100% abstinent from extra-marital sex and pornography, lying, deceit, slander, and any other sin you could list.

I’ll say it again: we have to have it all together.

If you are a man who has trusted in Jesus and His sacrifice/resurrection and you can say you’ve never agreed with that statement for even a millisecond of your entire life, I’ll pay all your kids’ college tuition.

You can’t. That’s just it.

This lie cuts deep. It drives how we interact with each other. It shuts us down when we want to speak to a stranger about Jesus. We don’t want to be rejected. To be rejected means we failed. To fail means we’re inadequate. To be inadequate means we don’t have it all together. To not have it all together means God is displeased. And to have God displeased with you means your chances are done.

STOP IT.

NO THEY’RE NOT.

“There is none that are righteous: not one.” –Romans 3:10

We can all agree we’re messed up. All of us have something that makes us think, “Man, if they heard this part of my story they’d never want anything to do with me again.” We all do. It’s in there somewhere. But check this out:

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” –Romans 5:8

I think a lot of us tend to look at that verse and let the past-tense of the second half of it determine how we think about God and His opinion of us.

We shouldn’t be.

The first part is present indicative.

“What the heck does that mean?” you ask, because the former English major in me just lost you. It means that it’s indicating what’s happening right now.

Present: right now
Indicative: indicating

“God demonstrates His own love for us” is a phrase that means God is doing this every single day. He shows us His love all the time! His love for what? For us.

His love for you is so strong it motivated Him to let Christ die on that cross. Do you know what He went through that day? It’s horrific. It’s beyond that. And He did it all for you. If he thinks enough of you to do that for you, then doesn’t it make sense that there’s not much that can change that opinion?

Yeah, that’s right, it’s literally nothing. He’s not going anywhere.

Dudes, we are so good at sitting around and talking literally all day about the Cowboys alone. Or maybe our wives/girlfriends. Or maybe TV shows like Friday Night Lights, the Flash, House of Cards, or whatever else you like. And do you know how many of those things matter?

Not one of them. Not even one.

So if we can do that, then why can’t we get ourselves to be real with the most important part of our lives: our relationship with Jesus? We’re so afraid of being wrong and being the broken guy that we waste our time doing nothing but performing (and performing really terribly, to be honest).

Stop it.

Quit fighting this alone.

You can’t do it alone.

You are broken.

So am I. But it doesn’t matter because Jesus died for us anyway. That’s how much He loves you. And me. So why would we act like what’s really fiction is true and deceive ourselves? That’s stupid.

We can’t make it on our own. We have to go together. We have to come to the honest conclusion that the only reason other people seem to be able to do good things like we can’t is because they’ve bought in to God and His vision for the world a little more than we have. Simple fix.

Easy fix? Not really. But it is simple:

Spend time with Jesus. Like, a lot of it.

Don’t just read the scripture, engage it. Dive into it. Circle the parts you don’t understand and make your Bible look like a doctoral student got ahold of it because it’s okay to not get it 100%. It’s okay to feel like you came up short in your Bible study time. God wrote it and you’re not God so don’t expect yourself to fully understand it all.

Be. Real. With. Your. Brothers. Stop holding back so you look like you’re not the broken guy. You’re all broken guys, so get over yourself and be real. Say how you’re struggling. Make it real to yourself and to your bros so you can lean on each other and make it through.

Be aggressive, yet purposeful.
Be patient with your progress, yet forward-moving. Don’t sit around and wait for God to magically make everything work out.

You cannot do it alone.

Stop trying to.

32 Quotes that Impacted My Life Big Time

Over the last two months, I’ve read some books and some passages of scripture and some social media posts from friends that have stood out to me as worth remembering, if not memorizing. I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to share those with you.

“It’s the stuff that masquerades as the real thing but it’s not. The perplexing thing is, instead of putting the fake stuff down, our reaction is to usually put more fake stuff on or decide that the fake stuff, while not that good, is good enough.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“‘God forgive me for my sin.’ I could pray this hourly and it would still be just as applicable as the hour before. But so would the cross.” -Renee Shofner

“These days, the view of God I hold onto isn’t Him being mad because I’ve missed the mark. It’s the one of Him seen through a bloody eye, scooping me into his arms, getting blood all over His shirt, and carrying me away to get healed.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“You need people who will step up and step in to call out your foolishness. Don’t despise their rebuke–what they’re doing is they’re watching you set yourself on fire, and they’re offering to be an extinguisher.” -Timothy Ateek, Breakaway

“I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” -Jesus, in John 14:18

“I think satan exists, but I don’t give him a lot of thought. Neither does the Bible, honestly. We talk about satan way more than the Bible talks about satan…Jesus spoke with him for just a few seconds and then sent him away.” -Bob Goff,  Love Does

“There is not a single degree of difference between the strength of God’s love for Christ and Christ’s love for us. Not even a hint.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“Love precedes obedience. If you reverse that order, you lose the gospel. Obedience is not how we obtain Christ’s love–it is a response to it.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“[Speaking of his Jeep that leaked and pulled hard to the left while driving as results of an accident in which an elderly woman t-boned his Jeep and sent him flying through its roof] I want to leak from having been hit by Jesus. From having something crazy happen to me, something that flipped my life upside-down. I’ve met people like that–people who leak Jesus. Whenever you’re around them, Jesus just keeps coming up with words and actions. I don’t suppose everybody gets hit by Jesus, but those of us who have talk about Him differently. We start steering funny; we start leaking where we stand. And it’s because we got thrown from our lives in a terrific collision.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by Whom we cry out ‘Abba, Father!'” -Paul, in Romans 8:15

“If you are in Christ, you have overcome the world because He overcame the world. Nothing shall separate you from Him–from His love or His power.” -J.A. Medders, He Reads Truth

“You don’t need to know everything when you’re with someone you trust. That’s probably why Jesus’s disciples never said they were on a mission trip. I think they knew love already had a name and they didn’t need a program or anything else to define it. We don’t either. The kind of adventure Jesus has invited us on doesn’t require an application or prerequisites. It’s just about deciding to take up the offer made by a Father who wants us to come.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“All of these [scriptures] are good signposts, and they should be enough. Besides, we shouldn’t speak with an assurance we don’t really have like we’re God’s P.R. agent and risk misquoting the God of the universe, Who could turn us into a pile of salt. This all helps me be a little more respectful and humble when I’m attributing something to God.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“Discipline is choosing what you want most over what you want now.” -Abraham Lincoln

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing–to reach the mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from–my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing? All the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” -C.S. Lewis

“Jesus modeled that we don’t need to talk about everything we’ve done. It’s like He was saying, ‘What if we were to just do awesome incredible stuff together while we’re here on earth,’ and the fact that only He knew would be enough? If we did that, we wouldn’t get confused about Who was really making things happen.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“[Jesus’s resurrection] is such an incredible claim that it should have been easy to disprove if it were false. But this is not what has happened.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“The Bible argues. It isn’t a string of pearls but a chain of linked thoughts. A unit of thought has a main point; everything else supports it. Trying to figure out how these supports work is what understanding is.” -John Piper

“John concludes his gospel account with these words: ‘Now there were many other things that Jesus did,” (21:25). I tend to think of those ‘many other things’ as grand displays of power, staggering miracles, and earth-shaking utterances. But I’m beginning to wonder if John is speaking of something else. How many words of love and kindness did Christ utter? How many meals humble prepared? How many quiet stoopings? How many washings of feet? How many wipings of tears from the eyes? How many ordinary, plain, and small glories did He display?” -Caleb Faires, He Reads Truth

“Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the Law.” -Romans 13:10

“A good neighbor makes himself available to those around him. This is who our neighbor is–anyone in our path. Compassion for a person who is suffering injustice or disadvantage breaks the heart of a good neighbor and moves him to act on that neighbor’s behalf. Jesus did this all the time. Do we? Unlike God, we all put up fences in an attempt to segment our responsibilities to love and care for others. Often we build walls around our hearts that prevent us from serving the broken, the victim, the offender, the poor, and the culturally unacceptable. The gospel calls for us to get rid of the fenced-off compounds we live in today, and engage one another in love. Loving this way will cost us resources, time, emotions, and comfort. But this is the way we were loved.” -Jevon Washington

“I am.” -G.K. Chesterton, when asked what is wrong with the world?

“Knowing what something is is not the same as knowing how something feels.” -Lois Lowry, The Giver

“Better is a moment that I spend with You than a million other days away.” -Phil Wickham, The Secret Place

“Nobody took Jesus’s life–He laid it down. And He said, ‘To prove it, I’m gonna pick it back up again.” -Todd Wagner, The Porch

“You can’t carry a cross without suffering.” -Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan

“Every morning, we crawl back on the altar and die to ourselves.” -Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan

“I don’t really know what Peter was thinking when he confessed that Jesus was ‘the Christ.’ Sometimes I read this story straight, like I did as a kid, and think that Peter and the rest of the disciples on this side of the empty tomb can see. But there are times when I read this story and all the unbelief surrounding his confession makes me wonder if he said it with a question mark in his mind. ‘We hope You’re the Messiah. Please be the Messiah.'” -Matthew B. Redmond, He Reads Truth

“The gospel message of grace and acceptance apart from works would turn Paul’s religious achievements into a pile of rubbish, and be the end of all his boasting.” -John Piper

“Sometimes Jesus intentionally frustrates us.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“Jesus is asking [the rich young ruler] to lay down his entire approach to security.” -Russ Ramsey

“God’s breath is the essential characteristic of the human soul. Any time we speak of the human soul, we are speaking of God’s breath. The two are inextricably connected. There was no human soul until God breathed, so God’s breath defines the human soul.” -Judah Smith, How’s Your Soul

The Good Cowboy

This post is password protected due to subject matter of adult themes. If you’d like the password, email me at tyl3rhirsch1@gmail.com

“It’s the stuff that masquerades as the real thing but it’s not. The perplexing thing is, instead of putting the fake stuff down, our reaction is usually to put more fake stuff on or decide that the fake stuff, while not that good, is good enough.” -Bob Goff

When I was probably fourteen or fifteen years old, my dad took me out to the pasture to check on our cows. He had only recently begun raising cattle, so the herd was still small, and most of them were heifers, which means they’d never had a calf before.

A member of our church had land they let dad use to let his cattle graze on, and the easiest way to get to that land from our house back then was straight through the pasture on the neighbor’s property, where he was grazing a herd of his own. As we rolled up to the fence separating the two properties, we noticed something out of the ordinary. The neighbor’s bull was pacing along the fence, snorting and huffing and dripping snot out of his nose like a water faucet. He was heated.

At first I thought he was just mad, but then I figured it out: our heifers were on the other side of the fence, and he wanted them.

And that was a major problem.

You see, it was March, and cows have a gestation period of about nine months. If that bull were to jump the fence and breed our heifers, their babies would be born in the dead of winter, lowering their chance of survival to almost zero.

Immediately my dad jumped into crisis mode. He inched the four-wheeler closer and closer to the bull, coaxing him away from the fence as best he could with his voice and with grain, but it did absolutely nothing. The bull was 110% determined to get over or through that fence, whatever it took.

And eventually he did. Even though the fence was sharp and spiny barbwire, he risked getting tangled and even ending his life to jump the fence and chase the heifers for 30 seconds of pleasure. It didn’t matter what my dad said. Even though he was looking out for not only the bull but for the heifers, their calves, and the bull’s owner, too (because once the calves are born it becomes an issue figuring out who they belong to), even though he was doing all that, the bull couldn’t hear him because he wasn’t my dad’s bull.

“I assure you: Anyone who doesn’t enter the sheep pen by the door but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The doorkeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.”

When my dad has his cattle breed, he’s intentional about it. He keeps the bull separate from the cows until the right time so that when the babies are born, they’re set up for success. It’s not to limit the cows and keep them from pleasure, but to look out for their best interest and well-being, as well as their babies’. The whole thing is incredibly deliberate–no sneakiness, no tricks, no lies, just honesty and openness and care.

I think Jesus thinks of sex the same way.

We want to do it our way, when we want it, where we want it, how we want it, not listening to what he says. But if we’re honest, truly full pleasure, truly fulfilled intimacy is only achieved at the right time, in the right setting. Sex is for marriage. That intimacy is unparalleled, and God knows it. In scriptures like 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 He’s warning us, “Don’t jump that fence! You’ve been given a time and place to experience that pleasure and intimacy, and it’ll be given again in the future! If you jump now, not only will you risk hurting yourself, there are so many others’ lives you’re affecting, too. I love you. I care about you, all of you. Listen to me.”

But if we’re not spending time hearing what His voice sounds like, actually acting like we’re His, how are we going to hear him when we’re ready to risk it all for thirty seconds of pleasure?

It takes time. It takes effort. If we’ve accepted His free gift of grace on the cross and in the empty tomb, we’ll be with Him in paradise but to know Him and to hear His voice in the darkness today, we need to listen in the places He’s already spoken, like His Word.

That bull made it over the fence. He bred something like 15 to 20 of our heifers. Most of their calves died that winter.

The decisions we make when we think we’re in the dark, we think we’re alone, and that no one else will be affected reach much farther than we could ever imagine.

For the millions of people out there who are struggling with lust, pornography, masturbation, premarital sex, and all other kinds of sexual immorality, listen to me:

I get it.

I’ve been there.

Heck, I am there.

It’s not bad that life is stressful and you want a break from it. It’s not bad that since you feel like people don’t like you then all you really want is to feel good about yourself–to feel powerful. It’s not bad that you desire intimacy and pleasure.

All of those desires are good desires. What is not good is when we think that porn, sex with our girlfriend/boyfriend, or anything else that isn’t Jesus will meet those needs.

They won’t.

Like, ever.

Think about the shame and humiliation that always follows. We can’t escape it.

But when we fix our eyes on Jesus by waking up every single morning and deciding every single hour to commit all over again to fight for Him, filling our minds with His promises by memorizing scripture, and being real, open, and honest with those who are closest to us and that we know will tell us the absolute truth when we mess up, we will hear His voice when He calls us away from the fence and leads us right through the door to the real stuff. The good stuff. The best stuff.

Psalm 16 says “In His presence, there is fullness of joy, at His right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Who is at God’s right hand?

That’s right–Jesus.

In His presence, walking daily, hourly, heck, by the minute, with Him showers pleasure and joy like we could never imagine.

I fell on the Rock, and He broke me to pieces.

What goes through your mind when your foot slips on wet rock and sends you flying through the air off a 30-foot cliff? Surprisingly, a lot.

I never thought that would be a sentence I could write in retrospect of my own life but I can. A week ago it would’ve been a sentence of fiction. Today, it’s an autobiography. A week ago, I slipped and fell 30 feet and honestly should not be here right now to write this story. But I’m here, and I remember a lot.

So what does go through your mind while you fall to the bottom of a waterfall with more fall than water? The exact opposite of what I just told you.

The whole thing maybe took half a second, but being the over-expander that I am, my mind naturally shoved as many words into my brain in that half second as it could, but none of them made me think like what I wrote above. My first thought was that it wasn’t even real–a phenomenon my mind judged to be its way of warning me what would happen if I weren’t more careful. But my mind was wrong. It wasn’t warning me of anything potential–it was processing something that was actually happening.

So my next thought was, “Holy crap, I really am falling.” Naturally, I’m a fixer. When there’s a problem, I look immediately for what I can do to fix it. But I couldn’t find anything. I was going to hit the bottom, and judging from the distance I’d spent about 5 minutes inspecting beforehand, I was going to die.

This is the part where most people’s stories would start changing directions. Some would scream. Some would panic. Some would call on their deity to save them and let them survive. But my reaction was unnatural even to me.

Scary things do a number on me. The very preview for Insidious 2 put me on the floor of the theater shaking like a leaf, and it was laughable. So, you know, you’d think the thought of dying would make me scream like a Roman Candle.

But I was peaceful.

“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7 NLT)

You don’t know how much it exceeds what you can understand until panic is the only thing that makes sense.

I can’t explain it. It flooded me. It comforted me, it took me to the ground just letting Him hold me and carry me all the way home.

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And then I woke up. Except I was still at the bottom of that waterfall, on a rock, broken to pieces but breathing. Drenched in my own blood but crying out with a strength that didn’t make sense. I should’ve woken up with Him and my grandma and great grandma and my loved ones who’d already done the same surrounding me but I was surrounded by living friends, and strangers whose hearts were so huge and so beautiful that I could see them even though my mind was loopy and my short-term memory sucked. Thirty of them, volunteers who didn’t have to be there, surrounded me, got me on a stretcher, made me so comfortable, and carried me two and a half miles off that mountainside in Northwest Arkansas like I was their own son, or brother. Then they loaded me into a helicopter, and I had time to sleep.

Except I didn’t sleep. My mind just wouldn’t stop thinking. All I could focus on was that crazy peace. I was ready to go. Not that I wanted to, but that I saw no other option, and I was okay with the one that I saw. Jesus held me, all the way down.

You might be raising your hands, saying, “Wow, another Jesus story. Big deal. Miracles like that happen, it wouldn’t be the first time.” To which I would say, “Yeah, you’re right–they do.” But honestly, my own faith, though a part of my life for pretty much ever, wasn’t much of anything before that fall.

I let my life take over. Crazy schedules and workaholic-ness dominated my time. I was secretly addicted to pornography and didn’t want anyone to know. I spent no time with Jesus on my own outside of church services and the occasional sermon podcast. I wasn’t giving Him my whole heart the way I said I had, so this fall and my reaction therein didn’t have anything to do with my own faith being strong or anything like that. It sucked.

I had peace because He gave it to me.

And I learned something huge at the bottom of that waterfall:

“Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whoever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” (Matthew 21:44 HCSB)

Jesus used that fall to break me, literally, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, whatever–He literally used that cliff to make this verse come to life in my story, and I’ve got months ahead to see what that looks like.

For now, it means resting in Him–remembering His grace and goodness, His sovereignty, His blessing, and His beauty. It means thanking Him night and day for not only sparing me on that mountain but surrounding me by such incredible, beautiful, people. It means remembering every single day that no matter how much just sitting on the couch watching Friends and House of Cards can eventually suck, I’m alive, and I’m going to walk on my own again. I’m going to get use of my arm back, and I’m going to recover 100%. None of that should be what I’m typing but it is, and He is merciful.

So falling off a 30-foot cliff can teach you a lot. Mainly, how small you are. I’d do wrong if I didn’t listen to it.

Wisdom & Revelation

It’s surprising to me how easy it is to forget what Jesus has done for me.

That sounds ridiculous, right? The perfect, holy, glorified God of the universe became a man and lived sinlessly only to die in my place and be raised from the dead so that I could live with Him forever. How on earth could I forget that? That’s like, the most profound thing to ever happen since like, ever, and to forget that would be virtually impossible.

Except it’s totally possible.

My life has been a constant roller-coaster–twisting around in every direction, while at the same time soaring up or crashing down or completely flipping upside-down–it’s been crazy. But two things that have been constant since the very beginning are that I am a sinner, feeling like the big shot in my life and being able to tell God how I’m gonna do things even though the themes of that attitude are totally false, and that in spite of that, God loves me enough to have sent His Son to nullify the crazy high payment that attitude costs me. It doesn’t matter what ridiculousness happens around me, good or bad–what will never change is that those two statements are 100% true. But my mind likes to fool me and tell me the opposite.

Paul knew the Ephesians were going through the same thing. Most of his letters were to specific people or churches who were dealing with a very particular problem that was plaguing them or the people around them and were attempts at correcting that behavior/solving that problem. Ephesians? Not so much. Ephesians isn’t a letter that addresses a specific problem. Instead, it’s a letter that attempts to avoid future problems by restating to the Ephesians what Christ has done for them through His sacrifice and the Holy Spirit and laying out for them what applying those truths to their lives would look like.

So Paul writes this letter, and he wastes absolutely zero time getting to the punch. Verse one just says who the letter is to, but verse two starts a 3-chapter-long exhortation of Jesus and what he has done for us. Three. Whole. Chapters. And the coolest part is, he tells the whole story under the context of glorifying the Father (i.e. God is the subject of the whole deal) rather than focusing on us. He constantly uses phrases like, “God…has blessed us,” “He chose us,” “He made known to us,” etc. etc. etc. It’s everywhere. God really wants us to know that this story does not focus on us, but rather, it focuses on Him and what He has done for us.

In verses 15-17 of chapter 1, Paul says this:

“For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease
giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit
of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”

Paul says, “I know you’ve chosen to follow Jesus–I get that. And because I get that, this is what I’m praying for you: that God would give you wisdom to know what He wants and revelation to know who He is. Neither of these are possible if you don’t know Jesus. So because you do, that’s what I want in your life.” And consequently, it’s what God wants in our lives, too.

Now the coolest part is, these two ideas point back to one specific place, and it’s amazing. If God wants His children to know Him and to know what He wants in their lives, where do they need to look to find those two things?

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Scripture. God loves His children enough to allow us to choose for ourselves what we will do in many areas of our lives, but if we’re not following His will in those choices, things are going to get scrappy real fast. The Gorilla Glue that fixes everything though is that His word is stuffed full with constant reminders and reiterations of what His will is for our lives: to bring glory to His name and to do so both within our hearts and outside our hearts to those around us. Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

How can we do that without first knowing Who exactly He is? How can I speak to my roommate of a God who is sovereign if I haven’t first looked to scripture to see where He has been sovereign in my own life? How can I accurately portray His love if I first haven’t let Him love me like He wants to?

Paul wants the Lord to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation. God wants us to have a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Jesus supplies us with what we need to live not just physically, but spiritually as well. The Ephesians, at that time, didn’t have 100% of the scripture we have today. They just had the Old Testament. But now, scripture has come full circle. The Word of God is complete, perfect, and just waiting to show you and me who God is through Jesus and His life here among us.

We just have to let Him.