We older servants of God are watching you younger servants come to the same inevitable realizations: It’s all so much harder than you pictured. And you thought, if you served faithfully, everything would go smoothly. It didn’t. You’re realizing people are impossible to please. ->

You actually thought Christians would act like Christians & many of them decidedly did not. People have let you down and, worst of all, you have let yourself down & you have no idea how to navigate the future. If any of this describes you, bless your God. You are right on track.

Things are going just as Jesus said they would. Problem is, many if not most of us were trained by a fusion of biblical Christianity & American ideology. I love my country but recognizing the conflation is critical for the church to prosper within it. Jesus said it would be HARD.

Prosperity according to the gospel is the full recognition and embrace of our complete reliance upon Jesus Christ. Abundant life is the effervescent abundance of His Spirit in our lives. The sermon on the mount in a nutshell: Blessed are you if you need Me for you shall have Me.

And this, brothers & sisters, is why I’m convinced that, if we will return our hearts, souls, minds and energies to Jesus Christ as our first love, our priority affection and magnificent obsession, we are quite possibly on the cusp of the biggest move of God we’ve ever witnessed.

Don’t you see what a glorious mess we’re in, that we are virtually without answers, solid plans & slick moves? That it is one of the first times, if not the very first time, we all, across-the-board, are in the same crisis? God is staging a divine intervention. Welcome to rehab.

He has come to break our addictions to all of our idols. They have failed us. I write all of this to say, take heart, servant of God! This is a wondrous time to be alive. A frightful time yet we are told not to fear. A hateful time yet we are told to love. A narcissistic time...

Yet we’re told to deny ourselves, take up our crosses & follow Jesus & that those who lose their lives in him will find them. We have suffering ahead but, if we’ll allow our suffering to be wholly used for the sake of the gospel, we’re about to stumble headlong into an awakening.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Phil 4:4