I’ve been praying for a friend who’s going through some relational conflict. As a recovering people pleaser, I can attest that one of the worst feelings in the world is when I have felt that someone is upset with me and I don’t know what to do to put it right.

I can also testify that there have been times in my life when I’ve prayed for God to change my circumstances and my surroundings to make my life easier and more bearable. Lately, I think what God’s been prompting me to pray for isn’t so much for God to change my environment but to change me in the midst of my environment.

I remember Dan Allendar said something like that if your cry for relief is greater than your cry for a changed and transformed heart, you’re never gonna grow up. You’ll never find transformation as long as you cling to comfort and familiarity instead of venturing out into change and healing.

It’s the question Jesus asked to the man who had waited at the Pool of Bethesda: “Do you want to be made well?”

In other words, do you want healing and wholeness, no matter how painful and protracted the process may be, no matter how much it costs?

Relationally speaking, if I am at odds with someone else, I may be seeking God to change the other person while God might be seeking to transform me. As humbling as it may seem, the place to start for reconciliation is to look in the mirror first through the lens of God’s grace to see the good, the bad, and the ugly.

God, change me in the midst of my circumstances so that I can look more like you, regardless of whether or not my circumstances change. I submit myself to you completely. Have your way in me. Amen.

As I’ve said before, anxiety is the belief that everything is up to me to figure out and solve. Worry is basically me seeing my world minus God in it. Both say that I need to figure everything out RIGHT NOW.

But those nail-scarred hands tell a different story. They say that God is concerned even about the lowliest sparrow, so He knows about you. God has numbered the very hairs on your head, so He is very much aware of what keeps you up at night.

You can trust that God will indeed work all things — including yours — together for good. He will work your circumstances toward the best possible outcome — both for your good and His glory. You can leave it all in the more than capable hands that were wounded for you.

I love what Craig Groeshel said about anxiety not being a sin but a signal to pray. It’s the spiritual equivalent of the check engine light coming on in your car, letting you know that everything is not alright with your vehicle and that something needs attention.

I do think that the culture we live in thrives on anxiety. I mean that the end goal of news media outlets and social media and advertising is to keep you in a perpetual state of fear and worry about what you’re missing out on or how the world’s about to come to an end or how you will never be fulfilled unless you drink this cola or wear these shoes or buy this luxury SUV.

But you do have a choices as to what you do with the anxiety. You can start by turning off the source. That means fasting from media, turning off the television, choosing to immerse yourself in God’s Word rather than Netflix or Amazon Prime.

You can pray. God doesn’t need reminding of how much anxiety you have, but you need reminding that God already knows. You need reminding that nothing you’re facing will catch God off guard or take Him by surprise. There’s nothing in your world that He can’t handle, that He hasn’t already overcome through the cross.

Don’t worry. Just pray.

“O my Father, give me eyes to see, a heart to respond, and hands and feet to serve you wherever you encounter me! Make me a billboard of your grace, a living advertisement for the riches of your compassion. I long to hear you say to me one day, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ And I pray that today I would be that faithful servant who does well at doing good. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen” (Max Lucado).

I think that if the lost world truly saw the grace of God living and active in us, they’d be a lot more willing to listen to what we have to say about our faith. Gospel conversations flow more easily out of grace encounters. When we show grace, we often will open doors for others to hear our own faith story.

I love the idea that while people can argue semantics or doctrine or theology with you all day long, but no one can ever dispute your story. No one can argue with a life transformed. When people see the grace of God, it’s hard to deny the goodness of God.

May you and I be living billboards of God’s grace everywhere we go to everyone we meet.

As you can tell from this photo, Peanut is living her best life every single day. I confess that I am quite envious of her lifestyle. There are days when I wish I could trade places and she could go off to work while I stay home and nap all day.

But she’s the smart one. She knows how to utilize her cuteness for maximum effect. She gets all the pets and belly rubs and snacks. I think she’s doing it right. Plus she’s a cat, so there are absolutely no expectations of doing tricks or responding to commands. She does what she wants and the rest of us adjust accordingly.

The beautiful part of the feline life is that the fatter you are the more people like you. The lazier you are the cuter you are. Sleeping all day only is only cute when you’re a dog or a cat. Not so much with being a grown adult.

“If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Seize the corner of his garment and don’t let go until he blesses you. He will reshape the day” (Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life).

I’m 98% sure I posted about the woman with the issue of blood who was healed when she grabbed hold of the corner of Jesus’ garment. I talked about how the Hebrew word for the corner of a garment can also be translated as wing, referencing the Messianic prophecy in Malachi about the Son of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings. Of course, that was about Jesus. The woman knew He was the Messiah, so she found healing.

I think we could do way worse than to cling to Jesus with everything we have. Instead of seizing the day (which sounds great in a quote but is hard to live out in real life), maybe we should seize the promises and the person of Jesus.

The part about not letting go refers to Jacob, who spent a night wrestling with God and refused to let go until God blessed him, even though it left him with a limp. That means we hold on, regardless of how much it hurts, remembering that getting Jesus is worth more than anything we might ever give up in the process.

The common thread is desperation. I think when we look to Jesus as one option among many, we don’t tend to see Him as clearly as when He’s our very last hope and very last option (because the fallen humanity in us will often cause us to look to every other avenue for help before we turn to Jesus).

May we seek every opportunity to cling to Jesus with all our might and not let go until He grants us favor and blessing.

I forget who said it, but it’s true that our hearts were made for none other than God, so our hearts will be restless until they find their rest in God. There will always be a void and a hole in our hearts until we invite God to fill that void. Filling it with anything else is like forcing a square peg into a round hole. It won’t go.

We might not be able to name our deepest craving, but I think deep down we long to be right with God. We long to be free from shame and guilt. We long to not feel broken and incomplete. We long for something only God can give and do and be.

To be right with God is to be right with the created world. It’s to be right with ourselves. It’s to be who God made us to be. It’s to be finally and fully free.

“When we are anxious we are inclined to overprepare. We wonder what to say when we are attacked, how to respond when we are being interrogated, and what defence to put up when we are accused. It is precisely this turmoil that makes us lose our self-confidence and creates in us a debilitating self-consciousness.

Jesus tells us not to prepare at all and to trust that he will give us the words and wisdom we need. What is important is not that we have a little speech ready but that we remain deeply anchored in the love of Jesus, secure about who we are in this world and why we are here. With our hearts connected to the heart of Jesus, we will always know what to say when the time to speak comes” (Henri Nouwen).

I confess that I am an overthinker and and overanalyzer. I’ve been known to play different conversation scenarios in my head and almost to have a script in my head in case I run into certain people during the day. Typically, this leads to anxiety.

But when I let it all go and trust that God will give me the words to say, I find peace. Being anchored in the peace that passes all understanding frees me from the need to overplan and overprepare. Instead of being a Martha that is constantly distracted and frazzled, I can be more like the depiction of Mary who was able to sit calmly at the feet of Jesus.

May we never get too busy doing for God that we miss being with God and getting to know the heart of God.

I think at some point all of us wish we could see our lives mapped out like the table of contents in the beginning of a book. If we knew there were better times ahead, we could solder on through the tough parts. But then we wouldn’t need faith.

I think knowing the whole story might be a bit overwhelming. Knowing every single obstacle, every single trial, every single tragedy, and every single moment of stress might be a bit much. Besides, the point isn’t to navigate through life as much as it is to get to know the heart of God, and what better way than seeing God reward your trust time and time again in the midst of the unknown?

It’s like the picture of the old-fashioned candle light and the staircase. We’re almost never shown the entire set of stairs. We get the step in front of us, and once we take that step, we get shown the next. That’s how faith works.

I love that it’s not about the size of my faith or how flawlessly I execute my beliefs, but it’s about the size of the God we believe in and how even the tiniest amount of faith can move mountains and work miracles.

I learned recently that the college graduating class of 2022 will be the last to have been born before 9/11. That both blew my mind and made me feel old. It’s been 21 years.

I still can’t get over how much of a seismic shock that day was. It was pretty much everyone’s worst nightmare come to waking life. It was what nobody ever imagined could happen in their lifetime — a major terrorist attack on domestic soil.

The images still haunt me — the towers crumbling, people leaping to their deaths out of the buildings rather than burn to death, and people walking out of the wreckage looking like ghosts from all the smoke and debris.

I also remember 9/12. There has never been a time since when we were as united as we were on that day. We were resolved to bring justice for all the lives lost and make the terrorists responsible pay. Churches were full of people who were seeking answers and who were maybe for the first time seeking God.

While that unity didn’t last, the hope that birthed it remains. Because of the cross of Christ, we who have chosen to follow Jesus have not just any hope but a certain hope and an undefeatable joy that no terrorist attack or catastrophe or death can ever take away. We have a firm foundation that nothing in all this world can shake because we know that in the end God wins and makes all things right and whole and healed and pure again. Even days like 9/11.