Faith In The City

I did not expect this.I do not miss my games. I do not miss my shows. Every so often I will turn on something like Dateline or 20/20, and the second I hear it is going to be about a murder, I catch myself thinking I do not want that in my spirit right now, and I turn it off. That surprises me every single time.Here is what surprised me even more. The area I actually still struggle with is not the one I expected. I wish God would answer my prayers about sweets the way He has answered everything else. I wish wanting to work out consistently came as easily as walking away from things I used to think I could never live without. It has not. Not yet.So if you are expecting this road to be easy, you are mistaken. But if you are expecting it to be unbearable, hang on, because I think that depends entirely on where you are coming from and what you are actually surrendering.This is what got me thinking about Matthew 7:14 this morning. Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. That verse used to sound exclusive to me in a way that made me uncomfortable. If eternal life is free for everyone, why does it say only a few find it? It felt like the invitation was open but the door was somehow locked for most people.I have been walking this road long enough now to understand what that verse is actually saying. The gate is open to every single person. The road is not crowded, but that is not because God is hiding it from anyone.I never expected this road to be easy. Disciples struggled with it. Jesus died for it. What I did not expect was how peaceful parts of it would become, and how much I would not miss the things I assumed I would miss the most.There are still moments I want to respond to something the way I used to. I have to hold my tongue more than I used to, especially when it comes to integrity. But holding it feels different now. I get to walk away without shame or guilt. I do not have to carry the weight of wondering if I hurt someone or said something I should not have said.What I love most about this road is the hope built into it. I am not depending on my own strength, or waiting on another person to make something happen for me. My Bible Recap reading today put words to something I have felt for a while now. This road is the only one that promises true life, the kind where your success is not controlled by the world around you, where your feelings, your failures, and your relationships do not run the show. Peace and joy stay intact regardless of what is happening around you.The devotional made a point that stuck with me. Just because something is easy does not mean it is what is best for you. Eating healthy over a candy bar. Saving your money instead of spending it at the club. Hiking a mountain instead of staying on the couch. Small choices, same principle, every time.Then it said something that made me want to dig deeper. Jesus invites the entire world, but His invitation is exclusive, because not every path, religion, or good intention leads to God. That sentence is not comfortable. It is true.Here is the part that matters most. We do not earn our way through that gate by searching the hardest, climbing the highest, or praying the longest. Jesus makes it clear in John 10:7. I am the gate. He is not one option pointing toward God among many. He is the entry point itself.We cannot earn His love or His salvation. We can only accept the gift of grace already sitting in front of us and walk through it.That grace is where I bring my own honesty back into this. I prayed about pornography. I prayed about sexual desire outside of what God actually wants for me. I do not miss either one the way I thought I would, and I am not writing that to sound like I never wanted them, or like this makes me better than anyone still working through it. A lot of us have been there. I just do not want anyone to feel like they have to hide there. Every once in a while a desire still shows up. I notice it, and then I move on. That is not a testimony about my willpower. That is what grace held onto over time actually looks like.It is easier to scroll than to think about the deeper meaning of your life. It is easier to stay busy and distracted than to confess and repent. It is easier to dismiss God than to trust Him with your soul. The harder road is still worth it. The narrow gate leads to life, and there is no other way there than through Jesus Christ.I want to be one of the few who find it. And I want to help lead others to it too. Including the parts I have not figured out yet.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | kharisco.com

Today is the second anniversary of my brother Z's passing, and my verse for the day could not have been timed better. "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7.I used to be in a place where I hated life. I was depressed. I stayed because I was raising my son and told myself once he was raised I would be done too. That was my real thinking for a long time.Today I'm sitting in my prayer corner watching the sky move. Trees, clouds, that blue that only shows up on the good days. I miss my brother. Life is different without him, less funny, less entertaining. Every relationship leaves its own shape when it ends, and I'm learning to hold the sadness of losing him right next to the gratitude that I had him at all, even for a short time. I cry, and the tears carry both. Grief for the loss. Joy that I got to be his sister. Peace because I surrender to God and read His word daily, and that relationship is what carries me through days like this one.I love how a narrator from International Christian Center in Mombasa describes this kind of peace. Not surface level, not calm while everything churns underneath, but unshakable.Paul wrote these words from a prison cell, with no control, no comfort, and probably no idea whether he would walk out alive, and he had peace anyway. It reminds me of Peter in Acts 12, asleep in his cell the night before he was set to be executed, chained between two guards, sleeping so soundly an angel had to wake him up to get him out. Some of us can't sleep because a bill is due or a health scare has us spinning. Peter was hours from losing his life and slept like a baby. That is the peace we are offered, and I promise you it is real and available.I've been trying to remember the exact morning I first received it. I think it might have been the day I told God I was done. I laid on the bed, gave up, and before I could even hit the mattress I felt myself being lifted. The pressure came off my heart, my mind, my soul, all at once. I remember thinking about the way Joel Osteen talks about your troubles coming to an end, right in that moment. If that was the day, it might be the best day of my life, right alongside the day Jordan was born and the day I found out I was pregnant with him.A second devotional I read, Peace Beyond Anxiety, talks about how we are surrounded constantly by reasons to worry. Safety, conflict between people and countries, chaos in our own lives. Every time Jordan is out of my sight I think about his safety. I worry about my family's health, my friends' needs, the tension between people who can't get along. There is an endless supply of reasons to spiral.We get to choose. We can let those thoughts pull us into anxiety and overthinking, or we can submit them to God in prayer and remember He is the only one with the power to actually protect us. Guarding your thoughts and submitting them to God is easier to say than to do, and I don't think anyone fully explains what that looks like day to day. But when we do it, He gives us a peace that goes past anxiety and past whatever is happening in the world around us.Surrendering doesn't mean life suddenly goes smooth. When I was in the middle of a move, I had real anxiety. I questioned my decisions, missed deadlines, didn't have the money for things being asked of me. But I kept praising Him, kept reading His word, kept reminding myself of His promises, and that practice is what let peace win over the anxiety instead of the other way around.We don't have the power to change our circumstances or our own thoughts on our own. I've tried to handle things by myself and it always gets worse, never better. But when we hand Him our concerns, our anxiety, our depression, our shame, our guilt, our bitterness, He gives us peace in return. What a trade.So the next time you feel anxious, pause. Pray. Tell God exactly what you're feeling in that moment and let Him take it. He is always in control, and He is always with you.God offers a peace the world cannot give. That line deserves to be on a billboard.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | kharisco.com

I was listening to a sermon the other day about Hosea and Gomer, and it wrecked me a little.Quick refresher if you get the names mixed up like I do. Hosea was a prophet. Gomer was the woman God told him to marry. And Gomer was not exactly wife of the year material. The Bible describes her as a woman of promiscuity. She kept cheating on Hosea. Over and over. He would take her back, she would leave again, chase after other men, and somehow he kept going back for her.The preacher broke it down like this. Hosea represents God. Gomer represents us.I sat there like, wait. What?Because here is my honest reaction. If I were Hosea, I would have let her go the first time. Maybe the second time if I was feeling generous. By the third time, I am done. Keep the ring. Keep whatever you want. I am not chasing you down.But that is exactly the point.We are Gomer more than we want to admit. We go looking for love, validation, security, and joy in everything except God. A relationship. A job title. A number on a scale. A follower count. Attention from somebody who was never going to stay. We keep running toward things that were never built to hold us, and every single time we come up empty. Then we go looking again. Different face, same pattern.And God, the one we keep chasing after everything else instead of Him, is the one saying no, do not let her go. Go get her back.Hosea 3 says God told him to go love his wife again, even though she was loved by another man and was an adulteress. God literally used Hosea's real marriage as a live picture so an entire nation could see what His love actually looks like. Not love that gives up when it gets disrespected. Love that goes and buys back what it never should have had to buy back in the first place.There is a Hebrew word for this kind of love. Chesed. It means loyal, covenant love. The kind that does not quit based on your behavior. It is not a feeling. It is a commitment. God's chesed toward Israel, and toward us, does not move just because we do.Here is what got me. Gomer did not clean herself up first. She did not earn her way back. Hosea went and got her while she was still in it. That is not a story about a woman getting her act together and then being welcomed home. That is a story about being bought back in the middle of the mess, before anything changed.I think about my own life and how many times I went looking for something to fill me up. Approval. Relationships. Achievement. All of it left me empty because none of it was built to sustain me. Only God fulfills that. Not because He is boring or the safe backup option. Because He is the only one who was never going to leave in the first place.The uncomfortable part of this story is not Gomer. It is Hosea. It is realizing that the one who had every right to walk away is the one who went and got her instead. That is not weakness. That is chesed. That is a love that keeps showing up even when it makes zero logical sense to.If you have been chasing something that keeps leaving you empty, this is your reminder. You do not have to get it together first. He is not waiting for you to clean up before He comes looking. He already came looking. He is still coming looking.Believe Him.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

"Dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations." Psalm 22:28I know what it feels like to sit in the middle of a day where nothing is going right and ask God flat out, where are you.That was my Wednesday. I was in the middle of something that would not work out, frustrated, worn down, and I said it plainly. I feel alone. I need you. Where are you.I did not stay there.By the time I went to bed, or maybe when I woke up, I honestly do not remember which, something had shifted. I was praying. I love you, Lord. I am sorry. I know you are there with me. I know you love me. I trust you. I promise I do.I cannot tell you the exact moment it happened. I just know Thursday showed up and it was one of my best days. Friday followed right behind it.That is the part that gets me every time. It is not that the circumstances changed overnight. It is that something in me turned. It is like He reached over and flipped a switch, and I went from frustrated and lonely back to trusting, loving, and worshipping Him in what felt like no time at all.Psalm 22 does the same thing, and it does it in front of everybody.The psalm opens with words you have probably heard before, even if you did not know where they came from. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. Jesus said those exact words from the cross. That is how real the ache in this psalm is. It does not open polished. It opens in pain, in confusion, in a feeling of complete abandonment.But by verse 28, the tone has completely turned. Dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. The Hebrew word behind dominion is melukah, which comes from the same root as the word for king. It means kingship, reign, royalty. David is not just saying God has power over Israel. He is saying every nation, every government, every system that looks like it is in control, still answers to Him.That is the same arc I lived this week. Start in the ache. Ask where He is. End in a declaration that He is still ruling, even over what feels unmanageable.Here is what I do not want you to miss. The switch flipping was not something I engineered. I did not talk myself into feeling better. I asked a real question in a real low moment, and He met me in it. That is the whole point of dominion. It does not depend on my grip on the situation. It depends on His authority over it.If you are in a Wednesday right now, frustrated, wondering if He sees what you are carrying, I want you to know the switch is real. It might not happen the moment you pray. It might happen while you sleep, or the second you wake up, or three days later. Dominion belongs to Him, and that means your situation is never outside of His reach, even on the days it feels like it is.You do not have to fake your way out of the ache to get to the trust. Say where you actually are. Let Him meet you there. Then watch what He does with the days that come next.Peace, Love and Joy always.Infinite Faith and Favor | kharisco.com

Today is the second anniversary of my brother Z's passing, and my verse for the day could not have been timed better. "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7.I used to be in a place where I hated life. I was depressed. I stayed because I was raising my son and told myself once he was raised I would be done too. That was my real thinking for a long time.Today I'm sitting in my prayer corner watching the sky move. Trees, clouds, that blue that only shows up on the good days. I miss my brother. Life is different without him, less funny, less entertaining. Every relationship leaves its own shape when it ends, and I'm learning to hold the sadness of losing him right next to the gratitude that I had him at all, even for a short time. I cry, and the tears carry both. Grief for the loss. Joy that I got to be his sister. Peace because I surrender to God and read His word daily, and that relationship is what carries me through days like this one.I love how a narrator from International Christian Center in Mombasa describes this kind of peace. Not surface level, not calm while everything churns underneath, but unshakable.Paul wrote these words from a prison cell, with no control, no comfort, and probably no idea whether he would walk out alive, and he had peace anyway. It reminds me of Peter in Acts 12, asleep in his cell the night before he was set to be executed, chained between two guards, sleeping so soundly an angel had to wake him up to get him out. Some of us can't sleep because a bill is due or a health scare has us spinning. Peter was hours from losing his life and slept like a baby. That is the peace we are offered, and I promise you it is real and available.I've been trying to remember the exact morning I first received it. I think it might have been the day I told God I was done. I laid on the bed, gave up, and before I could even hit the mattress I felt myself being lifted. The pressure came off my heart, my mind, my soul, all at once. I remember thinking about the way Joel Osteen talks about your troubles coming to an end, right in that moment. If that was the day, it might be the best day of my life, right alongside the day Jordan was born and the day I found out I was pregnant with him.A second devotional I read, Peace Beyond Anxiety, talks about how we are surrounded constantly by reasons to worry. Safety, conflict between people and countries, chaos in our own lives. Every time Jordan is out of my sight I think about his safety. I worry about my family's health, my friends' needs, the tension between people who can't get along. There is an endless supply of reasons to spiral.We get to choose. We can let those thoughts pull us into anxiety and overthinking, or we can submit them to God in prayer and remember He is the only one with the power to actually protect us. Guarding your thoughts and submitting them to God is easier to say than to do, and I don't think anyone fully explains what that looks like day to day. But when we do it, He gives us a peace that goes past anxiety and past whatever is happening in the world around us.Surrendering doesn't mean life suddenly goes smooth. When I was in the middle of a move, I had real anxiety. I questioned my decisions, missed deadlines, didn't have the money for things being asked of me. But I kept praising Him, kept reading His word, kept reminding myself of His promises, and that practice is what let peace win over the anxiety instead of the other way around.We don't have the power to change our circumstances or our own thoughts on our own. I've tried to handle things by myself and it always gets worse, never better. But when we hand Him our concerns, our anxiety, our depression, our shame, our guilt, our bitterness, He gives us peace in return. What a trade.So the next time you feel anxious, pause. Pray. Tell God exactly what you're feeling in that moment and let Him take it. He is always in control, and He is always with you.God offers a peace the world cannot give. That line deserves to be on a billboard.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | kharisco.com

Colossians 3:12 says God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, should clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.I love this verse. I take it to mean basically what it says. When we carry ourselves filled with those five things, we represent God well.Two words in that verse carry more weight than they get credit for: holy and dearly loved.Holy means set apart. It means you belong to God, chosen and marked as His, with a purpose for you that nobody else can carry the same way.And He didn't just say loved. He said dearly loved. Adding "dearly" changes the whole sentence. It moves you from being loved in general to being loved specifically, personally, on purpose.If you have ever been told you are not worthy, not valuable, not enough, not impressive enough, not powerful enough, that you don't have enough followers or enough likes, here is what's true underneath all of that noise: you are more than enough. When you know who you are, when you know better, you do better. You feel better. You love better. You live better.This feels like a public service announcement: you are called, you are named, you are chosen, by the Creator, the Sustainer, the Redeemer. The narrator Hosanna Wong reminds us we are holy and set apart, and that we should embody the values of Jesus, giving people grace instead of treating them like they're below us.So how do you actually clothe yourself in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience? You start with your struggles. Think about what keeps you from living more like Jesus, then replace it with the opposite action.If you're sarcastic and cutting, choose something kind and encouraging instead.If you come across harsh, choose to do something that requires gentleness.If you're holding a grudge, make the decision to extend forgiveness.Alongside that, take part in whatever builds you up spiritually. Read His word. Connect with others. Spend time with people who keep you accountable in a positive way. Keep scriptures close that you can remind yourself of and apply to your life.This works like anything else you want to accomplish. Practice makes perfect. Pursue it. Live it. And give yourself grace when you fall short, because you're not perfect. No one is. We're all going to make mistakes.Pray and ask God to help you. I believe with all my heart you will see the change, because I've seen it in my own life. It's daily. It's the intentionality in clothing yourself and doing what's right, treating people the way He treats us. That intentionality is what it takes to build any habit into your daily life.It starts with receiving and accepting Jesus' unconditional love so you can reflect that love to others: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.Today is a good day to think about what it looks like for you to embody those traits. Make note of your struggles. Start small, with one or two that give you the most trouble, and make a plan to replace them with actions that draw you closer to Jesus. Start in prayer, asking for His strength, then work on each trait slowly and with intention. Stay fully committed, and in time those traits will come naturally to you.When you know who you are, it changes how you live. You are a child of the Most High God. You are holy. You are dearly loved. Let that be what you carry into today.Peace, Love and Joy always.Infinite Faith and Favor | kharisco.com

"Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." Psalm 34:14 NIVWhen I first read this verse, it seemed obvious. This is what we all should be doing, right? Turn from evil, do good, seek peace. Nothing complicated about it.Then the devotional pointed out something that made me want to dig deeper. David gives us four things to do in this one verse, and the fourth one is the surprise. Peace must be pursued. That means peace is something you have to chase, and the reason is one I had never considered before. Pride, anger, and selfishness do not die on their own. You have to put in actual work to have peace, and you have to keep putting in work to keep it.It went further. When Jesus was here on earth, He actively pursued peace, and He pursued reconciliation between God and man. I had never thought about it that way, and it made me think of accounting. When you reconcile the books, you get them balanced. That is exactly what Jesus did for us. We were deep in the negative, and we could not pull ourselves out of the dumpster we put ourselves in. So He balanced the books by dying for our sins so we could actually have a relationship with God.The devotional I read, Reconciled for a Purpose, compared this to solving a math problem. When I was in school, you never got credit for just writing the answer. You had to show how you got there. The same is true here. If you are a true follower of Jesus Christ, it is one thing to know that reconciliation is the answer to the disunity and injustice around us. It is another thing to actively engage in the actual process of reconciliation. The devotional called it the hard but good, messy yet beautiful, worth it kind of work, and I can definitely agree with that.Here is what makes this personal for every believer. Second Corinthians 5:11 through 21 says that every believer is a minister of reconciliation, empowered by God Himself. That includes you and me. And Psalm 34:14 gives us the steps for how to do it.Step one: turn from evil and do good. This means rejecting evil outwardly and addressing it inwardly, within our own hearts. We confess the sin that has put us in conflict with God and with other people, and we turn from our old ways.Step two: seek peace and pursue it. Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the presence of restored harmony. When we seek peace, we become more than peacemakers. We become active participants in the process of restoration. We listen empathetically. We strive for understanding. We see the brokenness around us and we put in the work, because the kingdom is worth it.And here is the part that takes the pressure off. Jesus already accomplished the work of reconciliation when He died on the cross. This is a process we have been invited into, and God is reconciling the world to Himself through it.So the question is simple. Will we join Him?Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I caught the second half of a message this week. Missed the entire beginning. And the half I heard still would not leave me alone.Here is the part that got me. Everyone has been given the opportunity to influence people. Everyone. Not just people with a following, a corner office, a pulpit, or a blue checkmark. Everyone, regardless of career, age, or title. God placed each of us in this generation on purpose to leave a mark, and He empowers us to lead with character and integrity from the inside out.Yesterday was World Population Day. Over eight billion people on this planet. And you are one of them, alive right now, in this generation, in your city, in your family, in your work. That was not random. Out of every generation God could have placed you in, He chose this one. You are here for such a time as this (Esther 4:14).So the question the message left me with is the one I want to leave with you. What are you going to do with the opportunity He has given you to be here right now?WHO ARE YOU INFLUENCING ALREADY?Maybe you hear the word influence and think it belongs to other people. People with platforms. Let me push back on that. Somebody is watching how you handle the meeting that went sideways. Your kids are watching what you do when the money gets tight. The person who rang you up at the store will remember whether you treated them like a person or a transaction. That is influence. It has been yours the whole time.Jesus said it in Matthew 5:14-16. You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so they see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Present tense. You are. No audience required.CHARACTER COMES FIRSTHere is the part that keeps it honest. Influence without character is just noise. The message said God empowers us to lead with character and integrity from the inside out, and our actions come from that. Read that order again. Inside first. Actions second. God builds character in us through time with Him, and then it shows up in the way we live without us having to announce it.That is the difference between talking and walking. Anybody can post the verse. Anybody can say the right thing in the group chat. Walking it means the version of you that shows up when nobody is recording matches the one who shows up when everybody is.ABOUT THAT UNEASINESSIf you feel restless where you are right now, pay attention to it before you rush to quiet it. Sometimes that restlessness is a glimpse. God may be showing you the edge of what He wants you to pursue. I have lived this. The discomfort I felt in seasons I assumed were permanent turned out to be Him getting my attention.WHAT TO DO WITH ITHere is what I am doing with this, and what I invite you to do too. Ask yourself three questions this week.Who is in my sphere of influence right now, no title required?Does my walk match my talk with those people?What is one thing I can do this week with the opportunity God gave me to be here, in this generation?You were created for a reason. You were placed here on purpose. Come as you are, and let Him work the rest out from the inside.Peace, Love and Joy always | Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Twice in the past few months I went through something hard, and both times I noticed the same pattern. The first things I lost were my peace and my joy. Worry moved in. Anxiety moved in. Mistrust moved in. I had to work my way back through it, and this morning's scripture named exactly what was happening. "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace." Ephesians 1:7 NIV The narrator from North Palm Worship opened with a question that got me immediately. Have you noticed that joy is the first thing to go when you are going through something? She shared that Paul wrote this to the church at Ephesus because he noticed the same thing, and this verse was his reminder to them of who they are. She is right. From my own experience, peace and joy are the first things you lose when you stop trusting Him, when you allow doubt and unbelief to enter your mind. Redemption is now one of my favorite words. Thanks be to God. Here is what it means in plain language. The Greek word is apolytrosis, which means release by the payment of a ransom. Redemption is being bought back and set free. When I first read the verse, I thought of it as another chance, and it is that. And it is more. Jesus paid the full price on the cross, so the debt of everything in your past is settled. You get another chance because the payment already cleared. Then the verse says forgiveness comes "in accordance with the riches of God's grace." That phrase is about measure. God forgives according to how rich His grace is, and His grace is endless. His grace renews for us every day. Your forgiveness is sized by His abundance, and that supply refreshes every single morning. The narrator reminded us that this verse says we have been set free from shame, guilt, sin, and the weight of our past. Because Jesus paid the price on the cross, we are free and we are forgiven. Failure is fully covered, and God has lavished us with grace that refreshes daily. Here is why that matters. Our joy returns to us when we remember what He has done for us, when we worship Him in the middle of it. I have lived this. In those two recent struggles, worry, anxiety, and mistrust replaced my peace and joy, and as I began to stop questioning Him and worship Him again, the joy came back. I got my peace back. It is the best feeling ever. The enemy wants you in regret. He wants you replaying your failures on a loop. God says worship in response to that. That is when the joy starts to come back, when there is a fresh remembrance that the chains have been broken, that you have been forgiven and set free, and that His grace is better than anything in your past. The devotional I read, The Center of Salvation, points out that the core of our Christian faith is found in the power of salvation achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus is a reminder of it. Because Jesus was perfect, He was able to sacrifice Himself for us so we could have forgiveness of sins and a relationship with God. His death and resurrection covered every sin, past, present, and future, and now nothing can separate us from the love God has for us. Think about that. The Creator of the world, who has all the power, gave up His own Son so we could be free of the many mistakes we make daily. And it gets better. He wants the relationship. He delights in it. He enters it gladly and on purpose. That knowledge alone should make us feel joyful and at peace. So here is the question the devotional left me with, and I am handing it to you. Are you allowing Jesus' sacrifice to set you free, or are you allowing the devil to keep reminding you of your mistakes? Take a moment today to cultivate your relationship with God. Remind yourself of His promises. Thank Him for everything He has done and everything He is going to do. Ask Him to fill you with the knowledge of His love and His grace so you can love others the way He loves you and be the disciple you were meant to be. Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I am on day 191 of reading the Bible in a year with The Bible Recap, and today I read something that made me want to dig deeper.It is in Isaiah 5. God tells a story about a vineyard. He picked a fertile hill. He cleared out the stones. He planted the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle of it and carved out a wine vat, because He fully expected it to produce good grapes. Then He asks a question that reads like it came straight from His heart:"What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?" Isaiah 5:4Verse 7 tells us plainly that the vineyard is His people. God planted them, protected them, and provided everything they could possibly need, and they still produced wild grapes. They still broke covenant with Him. When He asks what more He could have done, it reads like He is asking how He was not enough.Here is something I noticed when I dug deeper. Isaiah opens the chapter by calling it a song for the one he loves. Before any of the hurt shows up, this chapter begins as a love song. That framing matters. This is God singing about people He loves who walked away from Him.When I read it, it felt so sincere and so passionate. And underneath all of it, I heard hurt. Real hurt. The Creator of the world, our Sustainer, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, sounds betrayed. It is like He is saying, I have given you everything. I have done everything for you. And still you are not loyal to me.Here is the part that amazed me. If it were me, I would have an ego about it. I would be proud. I would be arrogant and pissed, and I would want everyone to feel the full weight of what they did to me. And God could do exactly that. He could destroy all of us with a word.Instead, He sounds hurt. Distraught, even. I say this with complete respect: He almost sounds needy. He wants us to want to be with Him. The most powerful being in existence is standing in front of people who can do nothing without Him, asking why they will not treat Him the way He deserves. And then He turns around and says He is going to save them anyway.He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the King of Humble.That changed something in me. I am so happy that my eyes have finally been opened and my heart has finally opened, because I want to be with Him too. And I want to be clear about what I mean. I want to be with Him, not just for things. I want to be in the relationship itself. It is the best relationship I have ever had. There are improvements I could make, and I want to make them. I want to cultivate this relationship, honor it better, and give it the attention it deserves.If you have ever pictured God as distant, cold, or waiting to punish you, read Isaiah 5 again and listen to His tone. That is a God who is passionate about you. He has already done everything. The invitation to come as you are is still open, and He is still saying I am going to save you.Peace, Love and Joy always.Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." 1 Timothy 6:12 NIVThis verse has so many layers. When I read it this morning it almost felt like a direct command, and it left me with questions. What does it mean to fight the good fight of faith? What confession did I make, and who were these witnesses? Is this literal, or does it mean something else?I even noticed it says the good fight of THE faith, and I figured there had to be a reason for that little word. There is. In the original Greek, "the faith" means more than my personal trust in God. It means the whole body of Christian belief, the gospel itself. Paul wrote this letter to Timothy while false teachers were twisting the truth in Ephesus, so he was telling Timothy two things at once. Keep trusting God with your life, and protect the faith itself from being corrupted. One small word carries all of that.The word fight is interesting too. Paul used an athletic word, the same root we get agonize from. The devotional I read this morning from Athletes in Action compared being a disciple to being an athlete, and it turns out that comparison is built right into the verse. An athlete decides every day whether to put in the work, the training, and the humility it takes to be great, then works with a team to accomplish a goal. Being a Christian is that same daily decision. It is choosing faith, trusting the Lord, and showing God's character through how we treat and love others.The devotional also reminded me that the faith journey will at times be difficult, messy, and challenging. Paul's words were a reminder that faith sometimes looks like a fight, and it is worth it because it is a fight for goodness, against our own broken nature and against God's enemies in the spiritual realm.And what about that confession? That part is literal. Timothy publicly declared his faith in front of real people, most likely at his baptism, possibly also when the elders laid hands on him and commissioned him for ministry. The very next verse points to Jesus making His own good confession before Pontius Pilate. So when you were baptized, when you claimed Jesus out loud in front of people, you made your good confession too.Here is where it got personal for me. Sometimes fighting means making the right decision when it is not the easiest decision, and I felt challenged with that this very week. Some friends with good intentions advised me to do something, and I told them I did not feel comfortable because that is not how I feel. The old me would have jumped at that opportunity. They gave me good reasons, and I believe those reasons are applicable. But this time I am turning it over to God. I am surrendering it to Him, which is something I have not done in the past. I used to just move forward with whatever sounded like a good idea. Let's go.Sometimes fighting the good fight of faith means we have to love someone who makes it hard to love. It means being gentle when it is in our nature to be harsh, and choosing love when it would be easier to be selfish.It also means being faithful to Jesus over the course of your life, and one of the key ways to do that is spending time with Him every day, reading His word and cultivating that relationship. Sometimes I wish He could just come sit with me so we could have a conversation, back and forth, out loud. Waiting on Him to put things in my heart can be hard. But this morning I sat near my window and looked out at His world. The sky was light blue and clear except for one cloud in the distance that took on a reddish orange glow and stayed in that one spot for the longest time. A squirrel jumped through the trees and looked right at me for a second. The slightest wind moved the leaves. Those are His clouds. That is His squirrel. He created all of it and allowed it to exist in this exact moment, and I felt close to Him watching it.Sometimes this journey feels lonely, quiet, and even scary. Sometimes I wonder if people will believe me because of my past, if they know I am being authentic and that this is not for a like or a follow. But we are not fighting alone. God is always with us, and when we draw near to Him, He empowers us with the strength we need to keep going. I find that reassuring. And I am still excited, because this is what I want to do.So today, fight the good fight. Make the right decision even when it is not the easy one. Love the person who is hard to love. Draw near to Him and let Him strengthen you. You made your confession. Now take hold of the life He called you to.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

For most of my life I did not rest. I worked. I cooked every dish for every holiday. I cleaned until every single thing was done. By the time I was finished I was too exhausted to even eat, or I ate because I was so tired I thought food would give me what I had actually taken from myself. It never did. What I needed was rest. I just did not know how to give it to myself.Then I came across this verse."God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." Genesis 2:3A narrator on Collide's devotional pointed out something I had never connected before. Rest, in this verse, means Sabbath. God was not tired. He did not need recovery. He built rest into the rhythm of creation on purpose, as an example for us. Work is not the whole story. Rest is part of the design, not a reward you earn after you have proven yourself.Another narrator took it further, and this is the part I am still working through, so let me break it down the way I am starting to understand it.Under the old covenant, Sabbath was a commandment. Work six days, rest on the seventh. That rhythm pointed forward to something bigger, to Jesus. Scripture calls him Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), which means he does not just observe rest, he defines what it actually means.Here is the shift. Under the law, the order was work, then rest. You earned your rest by finishing your labor. Once Jesus came, the order flipped. We do not work to earn rest anymore. We go to him first. We rest in what he already finished on the cross, and then we work from that place of rest, not to earn anything but because we are already secure in him. Hebrews 4 talks about this too, a rest that remains for God's people, entered through faith and not through our own effort.So it is no longer work then rest under our own strength. It is rest in him, then work that flows from that rest, fueled by his Spirit and his love, for his glory instead of our own approval.This is exactly what I have been relearning in real time. I just did not have the language for it yet. I used to think I had to earn my breaks, finish the to-do list, then maybe I get to sit down. Now I take fifteen to twenty minutes between projects to walk around, get water, use the bathroom, whatever gives me a minute before I go back in. I am learning to build breathing room into my calendar between meetings instead of going from one straight into the next. I am intentionally limiting when I make myself available to clients, because working five days a week does not mean I owe every single hour of those five days to someone else.A devotional called A Rhythm of Rest said it this way. God's rest was never about laziness or exhaustion. It was about showing us a pattern, work followed by rest and reflection, chosen on purpose and not collapsed into out of necessity. The invitation is to choose the rhythm of our Maker over a routine driven by exhaustion.If you are the type who feels guilty for stopping, ask yourself where that guilt is actually coming from. Is it Jesus asking you to prove something, or is it a habit you built before you knew there was another way to live. Grace already answered that question.That is the rhythm I am choosing now. Not because I have earned it. Because he already gave it to me.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I read 1 John 3:20 this morning. If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. It made me think about something I have wrestled with more than once.Sometimes the guilt I feel is the enemy trying to convince me I am less than who God made me to be. That is real. But then there is the other version. The version where I actually did something I should not have done, and the guilt shows up because of that specific choice. I started asking myself, is that condemnation? Or is that just checking myself? Auditing myself?The more I dug into it, the clearer the difference became.Checking myself, auditing myself, thinking I could have handled that differently, that is conviction. Conviction points at a choice. It says here is what you did, here is what you can do instead next time, here is the repair. It leaves the door open. It always includes a way forward.Condemnation is different. Condemnation does not stop at the choice. It goes after the person. It says you are a bad person. It says you are not redeemable. It takes one moment and turns it into a life sentence.Romans 8:1 settles this for me every time. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God does not deal in condemnation for His people. He deals in correction, in grace, in redemption. So if what I am feeling has no exit, no redemption, no way forward, that is not from Him.That is what 1 John 3:20 is actually saying. Even when your own heart is loud, even when it is telling you that you are too far gone, God is greater than that voice. He knows everything about you, including the thing you are ashamed of, and He still is not condemning you.So when I feel that heaviness now, I ask myself one question. Is this pointing me to a specific action so I can grow, or is this trying to convince me that I am unredeemable? If it is the first one, I take it to God and I make the adjustment. If it is the second one, I recognize it for what it is and I remind myself of the truth in Romans 8:1.You are allowed to check yourself. You are allowed to look at a moment and think about what you could have done differently. That is growth. It is not condemnation. It is Him growing you.But you are never allowed to let anything convince you that you are unredeemable. That is not conviction. That is a lie, and it is not one He is telling you.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I built a prayer corner in my room. Credit to an account called God Bless Her on Instagram for part of the inspiration, but I already had plants sitting in that corner before she posted anything. I added white lights. My favorite candle and incense, both made from onyx. Genuine gemstones. Some tea lights. I am working toward a full prayer wall next, framed prayers on the wall above it all. Every time I walk into that room, especially at night, I love it. It is peaceful. It is inviting. That is what I mean when I say I architect my atmosphere.Then I was listening to the Bible Recap, day 187, 2 Kings 14, and the reading mentioned a king who did not remove the high places, so people kept going there to offer sacrifices and burn incense. My stomach dropped a little. The way it was worded made it sound like both things, the sacrifice and the incense, were treated as wrong. That made me think about my own corner. Was I doing something God is against?That question made me dig deeper.Incense was never the problem. God commanded it. There was a specific altar built just for incense, and the priests burned it every single day as an offering to Him (Exodus 30:1-8). The smoke itself was never the sin.The high places were a different issue entirely. Before the temple was built, people worshipped God all over the place, wherever felt convenient. A lot of those same sites had already been used for Baal and Asherah worship. Once God established the temple in Jerusalem as the one place for corporate worship (Deuteronomy 12), the high places were supposed to be removed. Most kings did not remove them, which is why you keep reading he did right in the eyes of the Lord, but the high places were not removed. People kept mixing true worship with leftover idol worship in the same spot. That mixing is what scripture keeps flagging. Not the candle. Not the incense. The location, and what it was tangled up with.My prayer corner is not a high place. It is not dedicated to another god, and it is not replacing anywhere I am supposed to be worshipping instead. If anything it lines up with what Jesus said in Matthew 6:6, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret. That is exactly what I built.The gemstones matter to me for a reason I did not expect to have to defend. They come out of the earth. God made the earth. There is something beautiful about the fact that stones this stunning came out of dirt and rock. Using something He made to build a space that points me back to Him is not idolatry. It is the opposite of it.The only thing I am watching for, and the only thing anyone building a space like this should watch for, is whether the object ever starts to feel like it carries power on its own. If the candle becomes the thing that makes me feel close to God instead of a tool that helps me focus so I can feel Him, that is the line. Right now I am nowhere near it. My corner does exactly what it was built to do. It draws me in, it quiets me down, and it points me straight to Him.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I told my best friend something the other day and she pushed back on me right away. I said God is not supposed to be our backup plan, He is supposed to be our first move. Think about it like Batman and Robin. We act like we are Batman, handling everything ourselves, and God is just Robin standing by in case we need Him. It is actually the other way around. He is Batman. We are Robin. And I think we forget that more than we realize. I brought this up to two people this week, actually. My best friend, and someone else I am close with but would not call one of my inner circle. Both of them carry that same weight, that need to grind, strategize, and force things into place before they let God move first. They do not give themselves a chance to breathe and let Him do what He does best. My verse of the day brought all of this back into focus. Matthew 19:26 says, "With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." I found myself asking what Jesus was actually talking about when He said that, because that verse gets pulled out of context a lot. People hear "all things are possible with God" and think it means they can ask Him for anything, especially something selfish, and expect it to just happen. The devotional that walked me through this explained the real context. Jesus was talking to a young man who asked how to get eternal life. Jesus told him to give up everything he owned. The man could not do it. He failed the test, not because God asked too much, but because loving Jesus requires everything we are. We cannot split our love between Him and something else. The bigger point is this. We cannot earn salvation. We cannot work hard enough, grind long enough, or strategize well enough to achieve it on our own. We can only be saved through God, through what Jesus already did. That is the impossible thing being talked about. Not our to-do list. Our ability to save ourselves. That shifted something for me. If I cannot save myself, why do I keep trying to carry everything else myself too? Why do I keep acting like God is my backup instead of my starting point? The devotional asked me to reflect on what might be keeping me from loving Jesus with my whole heart. A relationship. A possession. A mindset. A show I watch more than I open my Bible. Unforgiveness or bitterness sitting somewhere in my heart that I have not dealt with. I prayed and asked God to search my heart and reveal anything standing between us. I am asking Him to keep doing that, because I know there is always something He is refining in me. So here is what I am doing today. I am thanking God for continuing to search my heart. I am asking Him to reveal what is keeping me from loving Jesus better, from surrendering completely. And I am praying that once those things are revealed, I actually surrender them instead of just noticing them and moving on. If you are the friend who grinds so hard you forget to let God cook, this is your reminder. He is Batman. You are Robin. Let Him lead. Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I told my best friend the other day that God is the plan, not the backup plan. I said it kind of joking, like He is Batman and I am just Robin. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I actually needed to hear that myself.Today's verse of the day is Matthew 19:26. Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." It is one of those verses that gets pulled out and used as a blank check. People quote it to mean God can do anything I ask, so I can ask for anything I want.But that is not what Jesus was talking about.The devotional I read this morning, Jesus Does the Impossible, walked through the verses right before this one. A young man came to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to get eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything he owned and follow Him. The young man walked away sad because he had a lot of stuff and he was not willing to let go of it.That is the context for "with man this is impossible." Jesus was not talking about wish fulfillment. He was talking about salvation. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot work hard enough, be good enough, or hustle hard enough to earn eternal life. Salvation only happens because God made a way through Jesus. It was never something we could achieve on our own strength.That makes me think about myself, because I know exactly what it feels like to try to do something in my own strength that was never meant to be carried alone.The devotional asked me to reflect on what is keeping me from loving Jesus with my whole heart. Is it a relationship. Is it possessions. Is it a mindset. Is it even something as small as a TV show. Is there unforgiveness or bitterness sitting in my heart that I have not dealt with. I read that question and it made me want to dig deeper into my own life more than I expected it to.So I prayed and asked God to keep searching my heart. I asked Him to reveal anything in me that is keeping me from loving Him fully, from surrendering completely to Him. And I am believing that once those things are revealed, I will actually let them go.Here is where the Batman and Robin thing comes back in. I told my friend that God is like Batman and I am the sidekick, Robin. I said it as a joke but it is actually true. We treat God like the backup plan. We grind, we strive, we strategize, and then if none of that works we ask God to step in and fix it. But He was never supposed to be the backup. He is supposed to be the one we go to first.I have people close to me who feel like they have to strive so hard for everything. They grind and plan and force things to happen because they do not feel safe letting God do His part. I understand it because I have done it too. But grace is not grind. Abide is not strive. Somewhere along the way we forgot that we get to let Him cook.So today I am not asking God for something impossible in the way people usually mean it. I am asking Him to search my heart, to show me what I am still holding onto in my own strength, and to help me actually hand it over instead of just saying I did.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Proverbs 19:17 says whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward them for what they have done. The more I read that verse, the more I understand what it is really saying. God is pleased when we are kind to people who have nothing to give us back. He treats it like we handed the gift straight to Him, and He remembers it.I watched a movie recently that made this hit home in a hard way. It followed people who were mean spirited toward the homeless, not just unkind but violent. They pushed people out of the only home they had, stole from them, beat them, and one homeless man was killed. It was difficult to keep watching. I kept asking myself who could treat another human being that way.One of the people doing the most damage in that movie ended up homeless himself by the end. I was not surprised. You can call it karma if you want, or maybe there is a more faith based word for it, but I do believe this. You cannot spend your life mistreating people and expect your own peace and blessing to last forever.I thought about a conversation I had with my brother once about someone who is rich, powerful, and influential. I told him I felt sorry for that man because of how he treats foreigners, the poor, and the widowed in his own country. My brother said not to feel sorry for him because he has money and power. I understood what he meant, but I still stand by what I said. No one with real joy in their life can treat people that way. I do not care how much money is in the bank account. I still pray for people like that, because something is missing in them that money cannot fix.The devotional I read this morning, narrated by Jennie Allen, said that when we care for the poor and needy we are actually caring for God, and that it feels amazing to know that is what we are doing in the moment. I found myself thinking about how good that would feel, to really know in real time that caring for someone in front of you is the same as caring for Jesus Himself.That same devotional talked about being poor in spirit, not just poor financially or materially. Poor in spirit means someone who feels spiritually empty, discouraged, or far from God even if their bank account looks fine. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 5:3 when He says blessed are the poor in spirit, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Being poor in spirit is not a bad thing to admit. It is actually the starting point for God to fill you.The devotional also talked about living an openhearted life. To me that means staying willing to give, help, and notice people even when it costs you comfort or convenience. It is the opposite of protecting your peace so hard that you stop seeing the people around you who need something from you.Matthew 25 backs this up completely. Feeding the hungry, clothing the needy, welcoming strangers, and visiting the sick and incarcerated are all listed as ways we serve Jesus directly. And 1 John 3:17 asks a question that convicts me every time. If someone has enough to live well and sees their brother or sister in need but shows no compassion, how can God's love be in that person?There is no specific action step attached to this one for me today. It is more of an invitation to look at how I treat the poor, whether they are poor financially, materially, or in spirit, and ask if I am loving them the way I would treat Jesus if He walked into the room. If we all lived that way, I do not know how different eternal life would even need to feel, because we would already be living in a kind of peace right here.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

This week I got tested on something I thought I had already handled. There is someone in my life I find hard to love right now. Not because they have done anything dramatic. Their comments and their energy just do not sit right with me, and my first instinct was to pull back. Distance myself. Remove them from my circle.I put on a good face. I acted like it was fine. But in my heart I was struggling, and that night I prayed and asked God to remove whatever was standing between me and loving that person the way He asks me to. That prayer came from a devotional reading through The Bible Recap, and it followed me around for the rest of the day.That same week I read Galatians 5:13. "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather serve one another humbly in love." I have read the Bible multiple times and I do not remember this verse ever standing out to me before. That surprised me, because it feels like something we should be taught the moment we come to faith and reminded of constantly.The translation I read explains indulging the flesh as giving into our sinful nature, the fear, the pride, the insecurity, and the need for approval that drives us before we know Jesus. Once we accept Him, we are free from that. We do not have to earn our worth or prove ourselves to God. We are already accepted, loved, and secure.Here is what got me. Freedom was never meant to be about us. It was given so we could serve other people, not so we could protect our own comfort. Jesus had every right to skip that towel and basin the night He washed His disciples' feet. He is the Son of God. Instead He knelt down and served the people He loved, including the one who was about to betray Him. If He can do that, loving someone whose comments annoy me should not be this hard.I also learned something about the word sin that changed how I see it. The original Greek word behind sin means to miss the mark. It comes from archery, from an arrow that did not hit the center of the target. In that sport, close does not count. You either hit the mark or you missed it. Every time I choose selfishness over humility, or hold a grudge instead of extending grace, I am missing the mark God set for me. Freedom asks more of me than comfort does, and that is the whole point.So what do I do with someone I find hard to love? I am learning the answer is not to avoid them and call it wisdom. It is to pray for them, refuse to gossip or complain about them, and love them even from a distance if that is what the season requires. Grudges and bitterness do not hurt the other person nearly as much as they hurt the one carrying them. I know that. I am still working on living like I know it.Freedom in Christ is not permission to do whatever protects me. It is permission to stop performing, stop proving, and start serving, even the people who make that hard. That is the freedom Galatians 5:13 is describing, and it is the freedom I am asking God to help me actually use.Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com