Chapter 1: When the Room Is Quiet but Your Mind Is Loud It is late enough that the house has gone still, but you are not sleeping. The light from your phone is the brightest thing in the room. You have already checked the same account balance twice, reread the same message, and looked again…

Chapter 1: When One Day Starts Acting Like a Verdict It is late enough that the house has finally gone quiet, but your mind has not. The kitchen light is still on. Your phone is face down on the table because you are tired of looking at it, yet you keep reaching for it anyway.…

Chapter 1: When You Realize You Cannot Make Someone Stay There is a moment in some relationships when you finally realize that effort is no longer the same thing as progress. You may be sitting at the kitchen table with your phone beside you, thinking through the last conversation for the tenth time. Maybe you…

Chapter 1: The Morning After Another Year Yesterday morning, before the birthday messages had really started and before the day had decided what kind of day it would be, I sat for a few minutes with the strange awareness that comes when the date on the calendar belongs to you. The room looked ordinary. My…

Chapter 1: The Moment I Realized the Shirt Wasn’t the Point A message came in about one of my band T-shirts, and at first I almost laughed. I have spent years talking about faith, purpose, pain, courage, Jesus, and the way people try to keep going when life gets heavy, but somehow a shirt became…

Continue through Jesus’ final teachings and prayer in the Gospel of John. Part 09 explores the promised Advocate and peace of Christ, the True Vine, the world’s hostility toward Jesus’ followers, the Spirit of Truth, sorrow transformed into joy, Jesus’ prayer for His own glory, His disciples, and all who would later believe through their…

One of the heaviest burdens you can carry is the belief that you are responsible for keeping everyone around you happy. You say yes when you should say no. You stay silent because you are afraid someone might be disappointed. You change your decisions because another person is upset with you. Eventually, you can become…

Follow the Apostle John through some of the most revealing moments of his discipleship with Jesus. Part 02 explores John’s place beside Peter and James, Jairus’s daughter, the Transfiguration, his desire to call down fire, his struggle with ambition, Jesus’ radical definition of greatness, preparing the Passover, Gethsemane, and the question of John’s faithful presence…

Chapter One: The Word We Say Without Thinking There are words we can repeat so often that they become almost invisible. “Amen” may be one of them. We hear it at the end of prayers, sermons, songs, funerals, weddings, meals, hospital-room prayers, whispered prayers in the dark, and prayers spoken by children who barely understand…

Chapter One: The Moment You Stop Pretending You Are Fine There are days when a person can keep functioning even though something inside has already given way. You answer the phone. You go to work. You make dinner. You smile when somebody asks how you are doing. Then the house gets quiet, the lights are…