Faith In The City

I wake up every morning and I look up. That’s it. Before my feet hit the floor, before I check my phone, before I do anything — I look up at the sky.It started because I love sleeping. I know that sounds like a weird reason to build a spiritual practice, but hear me out. When I close my eyes at night, the world is still going. The sky is still doing what it does. And when I open them in the morning — clouds, trees, the way the light comes through — I get hit every single time with this thought: He did that.Not an accident. Not just physics. God. The one who is Lord of Lords, the one who spoke the world into existence, the one who placed the stars exactly where they are and said “yes, that’s right” — He did this. For us. Because He wanted to.Psalm 8:3-4 says it plainly:“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”And the Psalmist asks the question I ask too. Because when you really sit with the scale of what God created — the oceans, the galaxy, the fact that the human body knows how to heal itself, that a seed becomes a tree — you have to wonder. Why would someone capable of all of that stop and think about me?But here is the part that really gets me. God doesn’t just notice us. He delights in us.Delight is not a casual word. Delight is not “I’m aware of you.” Delight is not even “I love you because I’m supposed to.” Delight is joy. It’s God turning toward us on purpose, with pleasure, wanting to be in relationship with us.And He does this knowing everything about us. He knows our true nature. He knows the parts we hide from other people. He knows the version of ourselves we are at 2am when no one is watching. He knows. And still — delight.The kind of love that shows up with that full awareness and still chooses you? There’s no human version of that. The closest people in your life still only love you based on what they know. God loves you based on what only He can see — and He delights anyway.I think about my own creativity and how much I care about the details of what I build. The way I want my ecosystems to work — separately and together, each thing functioning on its own and as part of something bigger. I learned that desire from Him. We are made in His image. That attention to detail, that love of beauty, that need to create — it came from Him.So the question isn’t whether you’re worth His attention. The question is whether you’re willing to receive it.The next time you look at the sky — early morning, late night, whenever you catch it — let it be a reminder. The same hands that placed those stars are mindful of you. He has not forgotten you. He is not too busy. He is not indifferent. He is delighting.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

We’ve all seen the bracelet. WWJD. What would Jesus do?It’s a good question. But Philippians 2:5 goes deeper than that.“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Jesus Christ.”Not just His actions. His mindset.There’s a big difference. Actions can be performed on autopilot. You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. You can be generous while being resentful. You can serve while keeping score. You can act like Jesus in public and not think like Him at all.But mindset? You can’t fake that. Mindset is what drives the action before anyone’s watching.I was sitting with this verse and a devotional that broke it down this way: the real question isn’t what would Jesus do. It’s what would Jesus prioritize? What would He value in this moment? How would He see this person, this situation, this challenge?Jesus’s mindset was completely different from ours. Our default is our own perspective — what affects us, what inconveniences us, what we feel we deserve. Jesus’s default was humility. Others first. Lifting people up. Not holding power over anyone. That’s not natural for us. That’s practiced.The devotional gave a simple example that caught me off guard. At home, showing grace when you want to be petty. And I thought — I know exactly what that is. Certain people not putting things back where they found them. Not refilling what they used. And my very human response is sometimes to just... not do it either. Let them see it. Let them learn.Which begs the question — is that trying to teach someone responsibility? Or is that just me being petty with a justification?I think the honest answer depends on my mindset going in.The devotional then went further and talked about what Jesus actually endured — silence in the face of being spit on, beaten, a crown of thorns, crucifixion — and how He did all of that in silence, out of love. That is the ultimate example of not keeping score. Of not proving a point. Of not needing to be right.Here’s what humbled me most: He had ultimate power and chose not to use it. He could have called angels. He chose the stable. He chose the human life. He chose the cross. That’s what unconditional love looks like when it stops being an abstract concept and becomes a choice.I try to be helpful. I volunteer for people. I show up. And I’ll be honest — I feel it when the same people don’t show up for me. That’s real. That hurt is real. But the mindset I’m being called to isn’t one that tracks what people owe me. It’s one that serves without the invisible invoice.I don’t have this perfectly figured out. But I’m working on it.The question I’ll take into this week: What would Jesus think right now?Not what would He do. What would He think? What would He prioritize? How would He see the person in front of me?That shift in thinking changes everything.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Romans 10:14 says this:"But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?"That last part. That's the one."How can they hear about him unless someone tells them?"Not unless a pastor tells them. Not unless someone with a theology degree tells them. Not unless someone who has their life fully together and hasn't made a mistake in three years tells them.Just someone.I sat with this verse for a long time this morning because I think we have made faith-sharing into something that requires a credential. We think we have to know all the answers. We think we have to be living proof that being a Christian means your life is smooth. We think our mess disqualifies us from pointing someone else toward God.But Paul's argument in Romans 10 is so straightforward it almost sounds too simple. Faith comes from hearing. Hearing requires someone speaking. And the people who need to hear — they are not waiting for perfection. They are waiting for something honest.Here is what I love about how God uses people in the Bible. He did not pick resume people. He picked real people. David the adulterer who was also the man after God's own heart. Abraham who lied about his wife twice. Noah who got drunk after saving everyone on the ark. Samson who did not take his gift seriously. Solomon who was supposed to be the wisest man on earth and still ended up with foreign gods in his house.Imperfect people. All of them. Used anyway.Because the message was never about the messenger being perfect. The message is about God being real.Your story — the honest one, the one with the hard parts still in it — is already enough to open a door for someone else. It does not require polish. It does not require you to have arrived somewhere.Think about one person in your life right now who is going through something difficult. You do not have to preach to them. You do not have to have the answer. You just have to be willing to say something true about who God has been to you.That conversation could be the one that opens the door to their entire life.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

We talk about David like his story is a highlight reel. The kid who killed a giant. The shepherd boy who became king. The guy who messed up with Bathsheba. Done.But I've been in 2 Samuel and I need somebody to slow down with me for a second, because we are skipping so much.I've been doing The Bible Recap and I'm on day 137 — 2 Samuel 16-18 — and I'm sitting here like... why did nobody tell me David's life was this complicated? This layered? This real?Here's what I mean.God called David a man after His own heart (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22). That phrase gets quoted all the time. It shows up on mugs and phone cases and church bulletins. But let's actually look at the life of the man that phrase was given to, because I think we've been reading it wrong.David was anointed king as a teenager. Samuel shows up, pours oil on his head, it's a whole moment. And then do you know what happened next? He went back to the field. Back to the sheep. Back to the lowest-status job a person could have in that culture.God anoints before He installs. And the gap between the two is always the training ground.But it doesn't stop there. David gets called into the king's court to play music. Then the king starts trying to kill him. David flees. His first wife gets given to another man while he's running for his life. He has opportunities to kill the man trying to kill him and he doesn't take them. He honors someone who is actively out to get him.Then that king dies, and David doesn't celebrate. He mourns.This is who God calls a man after His own heart.And we haven't even gotten to Bathsheba yet. When that happens, the consequences come hard. He loses a child. His son Amnon assaults his daughter Tamar. Another son, Absalom, kills Amnon. Then Absalom spends years positioning himself to take the throne from David. And David — the king — has to flee his own palace because his own son is coming for him.People he thought were loyal turn out to be traitors. The man he rescued, Mephibosheth, gets accused of betrayal. Shimei throws rocks at him and curses him while he's already down. And David doesn't retaliate. He just... keeps moving.All of this. To a man after God's own heart.Here's what I want you to sit with: the chaos in David's life doesn't disqualify the description. God still called him that — not before the chaos, not after the chaos, but through it. David's whole story is a pattern of falling and returning, sinning and repenting, running and trusting. Not perfect. Not pretty. But always coming back.And what I keep thinking about is this: we have minimized his story to like two or three moments. But God didn't minimize his life. God used all of it — the shepherd field, the palace, the exile, the sin, the grief, the waiting — to build someone whose heart kept returning to Him.That's what makes him a man after God's own heart. Not the wins. The returning.So wherever you are right now — if your life is messy and complicated and nothing like you thought it would look by now — you are in good company. Not excused. But not disqualified either.The question God seems to ask isn't whether you fell. It's where your heart goes next.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Can I tell you something that sounds too good to be true?You cannot earn your salvation. Not even a little bit. No good deeds, no attendance record, no perfect behavior, no amount of being a good person. None of it counts toward the price of admission because there is no price of admission. It’s already been paid.God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. Ephesians 2:8-9 NLTI sat with this verse this morning and I felt genuinely relieved. Like a deep breath I didn’t realize I was holding.We live in a world where everything costs something. Every service, every relationship, every opportunity — someone wants something from you. And a lot of us have accidentally dragged that transactional mindset into our faith. We figure there must be a checklist. Show up to church enough times. Volunteer enough hours. Stop doing enough things on the list. Then God will be satisfied.But that’s not what this says at all.The devotional I’m working through framed it this way: imagine you created something incredible. Something that changed lives, something that mattered. And then someone else walked in and took all the credit for it. That’s what it would be like for us to take credit for our own salvation. We didn’t do it. We couldn’t do it. God is the creator, the sustainer, the one who put oxygen in our lungs and rhythm in our hearts. He’s the one who initiates, pursues, and saves. Not us.And here’s what hits me: he pursues us even though we don’t deserve it. He saves us when we are lost and hopeless. We are not capable of being the solution to our own deepest problem — and that is actually the best news there is. Because it means the pressure is off.Ephesians is packed with identity. In just a few chapters it names who we are in Christ: wanted, chosen, redeemed, adopted, forgiven, restored. Not who we’re working toward being. Who we already are because of what he already did.So if good works don’t earn salvation, what are they for?I think about the phrase from my devotional: our lives should be lived as an overflow of who we are. Not a performance. Not a transaction. An overflow. If I genuinely understand that I am loved without condition, forgiven without earning it, chosen without deserving it — the natural response is to live differently. To love differently. To give, to serve, to show up — not to accumulate points, but because that’s what it looks like when love moves through a person freely.This is also a reminder about judgment. None of us are in a position to decide who qualifies for God’s love and who doesn’t. Because none of us qualified. No title, no race, no culture, no track record puts anyone above or below anyone else when it comes to needing grace. We all need it equally. We all received it the same way.He chose to reveal himself to us. He initiated salvation when we couldn’t save ourselves. And then he invites us to join him in the greatest story ever told.Are you in?I am all in.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

There was a moment somewhere in the middle of an impossible decision where I realized something that stopped me cold.I was talking to God. Actually, I was talking at God. The whole time I was asking for answers, processing my anxiety out loud, going back and forth about where Jordan and I should live, what was the right move, what made sense — and somewhere in the middle of all of that noise I had to ask myself: am I ever actually quiet long enough for him to respond?The honest answer was no.A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. Proverbs 17:22 NLTThat verse hit different this morning because I sat down to process how I was feeling — which is what I was actually prompted to do — and here’s what came out: I’m good. I am genuinely, deeply, peacefully good. And that surprised me to say because the last few months have been heavy.I had to make a major decision about where Jordan and I were going to live. A move. A whole transition. And I did what I do, what I think a lot of us do when we’re raising kids on our own or building something on our own or just living life without a partner in the room: I put my head down and pushed through. I made lists. I weighed options. I second-guessed myself into a full spiral.And then my best friend said something to me that I’ve been chewing on: ask God for his strength, ask for his guidance, ask for your steps to be ordered, ask him to make the decision. Then stop. And listen.That’s where I went quiet.Because the truth is I had been calling on God, but I hadn’t been giving him space to respond. I was making it a monologue when it was always supposed to be a conversation.The thing about single life, single parenting, solopreneurship — any version of doing life where you are the primary decision-maker — is that it trains you to be self-sufficient in a way that can quietly become a barrier to actually trusting God. You get good at figuring it out. And figuring it out can start to crowd out asking and waiting.I caught that in myself this morning. Not with shame. With clarity.I am still in transition. The move happened, we’re settling in, and there are still things in motion. But I’m light. I have my peace. My mom is feeling better. I get to see her this weekend. I woke up this morning and looked at the sky from where I lay in my room and I felt something I hadn’t felt in months: uncomplicated joy.Second-guessing doesn’t serve us. It really doesn’t. It took me a while to believe that, but I lived the proof of it. All the anxiety, all the going back and forth — the situation still resolved. God was still in it. The second-guessing just cost me peace I didn’t need to spend.If you’re in the middle of a decision right now, I want to offer you the thing I wish someone had handed me sooner: ask God, yes. Make your request known. Be honest. Be specific. And then go quiet. Actually quiet. Long enough to hear something.He responds. He directs. He orders steps that we cannot see from where we’re standing.We just have to stop talking long enough to find out.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

There’s a kind of loneliness that doesn’t announce itself. It just settles in somewhere between the grocery runs and the big decisions nobody else signs off on.I am a single mom. I get to decide how Jordan is raised. I genuinely love that freedom. But something came up in my journal time this morning that I had to sit with: I have been making decisions alone. Literally and physically alone. Not just because it’s my right as his mom. But because somewhere along the way, doing it alone became my default.And in the middle of writing that, I stopped and had to admit something. I was calling it strength. God was calling it unnecessary.Today’s scripture was Proverbs 17:22 — A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. NLT. And we had just come through one of the most emotionally exhausting decisions I’ve made in a while: figuring out where Jordan and I were going to move. The second-guessing alone nearly did me in. Not because the decision was impossible. Because I kept trying to carry it myself.My BFF said something that cut right through: Ask for His strength. Ask for His guidance. Ask for your steps to be ordered. And then — this is the part I had been skipping — listen.I have a terrible habit of calling on God like He’s a suggestion box. I drop my request in the slot and keep moving. I don’t wait. I don’t get quiet. I don’t make space for an answer. I’ve been treating prayer like a monologue when it was always meant to be a conversation.And what I felt this morning, on the other side of that hard season? Light. Happy. At peace.The move is done. I’m in transition, but I’m excited about what’s next. My mom is feeling better. I’ll see her this weekend. Jordan is good. And I realized that all that second-guessing I’d done? It didn’t help me make a better decision. It just took away my joy while I was in the middle of making it.That’s what second-guessing does. It doesn’t protect you. It robs you of the moment you’re standing in.Here’s what I’m taking from today: You can have the legal authority to make a decision by yourself and still not be meant to make it alone. God isn’t just available when things fall apart. He’s the one who orders your steps — which means He wants to be consulted before you take them. Not after everything goes sideways.Call on Him. Hand over the decision. And then — this part matters — get quiet long enough to hear what He says back.A cheerful heart is good medicine. And right now, I have it. Peace tastes different when you know what it cost you to get there.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

There’s a kind of loneliness that doesn’t announce itself. It just settles in somewhere between the grocery runs and the big decisions nobody else signs off on.I am a single mom. I get to decide how Jordan is raised. I genuinely love that freedom. But something came up in my journal time this morning that I had to sit with: I have been making decisions alone. Literally and physically alone. Not just because it’s my right as his mom. But because somewhere along the way, doing it alone became my default.And in the middle of writing that, I stopped and had to admit something. I was calling it strength. God was calling it unnecessary.Today’s scripture was Proverbs 17:22 — “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.” NLT. And we had just come through one of the most emotionally exhausting decisions I’ve made in a while: figuring out where Jordan and I were going to move. The second-guessing alone nearly did me in. Not because the decision was impossible. Because I kept trying to carry it myself.My BFF said something that cut right through: Ask for His strength. Ask for His guidance. Ask for your steps to be ordered. And then — this is the part I had been skipping — listen.I have a terrible habit of calling on God like He’s a suggestion box. I drop my request in the slot and keep moving. I don’t wait. I don’t get quiet. I don’t make space for an answer. I’ve been treating prayer like a monologue when it was always meant to be a conversation.And what I felt this morning, on the other side of that hard season? Light. Happy. At peace.The move is done. I’m in transition, but I’m excited about what’s next. My mom is feeling better. I’ll see her this weekend. Jordan is good. And I realized that all that second-guessing I’d done? It didn’t help me make a better decision. It just took away my joy while I was in the middle of making it.That’s what second-guessing does. It doesn’t protect you. It robs you of the moment you’re standing in.Here’s what I’m taking from today: You can have the legal authority to make a decision by yourself and still not be meant to make it alone. God isn’t just available when things fall apart. He’s the one who orders your steps — which means He wants to be consulted before you take them. Not after everything goes sideways.Call on Him. Hand over the decision. And then — this part matters — get quiet long enough to hear what He says back.A cheerful heart is good medicine. And right now, I have it. Peace tastes different when you know what it cost you to get there.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Somewhere along the way, most of us got handed an invisible checklist for God’s love. Go to church. Read your Bible. Be a good person. Try harder. Do better. Then maybe — maybe — you qualify.Ephesians 2:8-9 showed up in my journal this morning and just wrecked me in the best way.God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. NLT.There is no checklist.Come As You Are isn’t just a feel-good phrase. It’s the actual doctrine. You don’t have to clean yourself up first. You don’t have to earn your way in. Salvation is a gift — not a transaction, not an achievement, not something you maintain through perfect behavior.And here’s what stopped me about this passage: it says none of us can boast. Not the deacon. Not the person with the most scripture memorized. Not the one who’s been saved since childhood. None of us. Because none of us earned this. We were all equally in need of rescue.That levels the playing field in a way that should make us more gracious with each other, not less.The devotional went deeper into Ephesians and I was honestly surprised by how packed that book is. Practical guidance on marriage, parenting, money, prayer, spiritual warfare — all of it. And woven through everything is this identity message: we are wanted, chosen, redeemed, adopted, forgiven, restored.That’s not who we’re trying to become. That’s who we already are in Christ.And because of that, Ephesians says, we should be doing good works. Not to earn love. Not to prove ourselves worthy. But as a natural overflow of who we are.An overflow means it’s coming from something already full. You can’t pour from empty. But when you’re genuinely rooted in your identity in Christ, the good you do in the world stops being effort and starts being expression.The part that made me completely stop? God chose to reveal Himself to us. He initiated this. He saw us when we were lost and hopeless — unable to save ourselves, unable to be the solution to our own problems — and He still came after us.He invites us to join the greatest story on earth. Are you in? I am all in.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

Somewhere along the way, most of us got handed an invisible checklist for God’s love. Go to church. Read your Bible. Be a good person. Try harder. Do better. Then maybe — maybe — you qualify.Ephesians 2:8-9 showed up in my journal this morning and just wrecked me in the best way.“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” NLT.There is no checklist.Come As You Are isn’t just a feel-good phrase. It’s the actual doctrine. You don’t have to clean yourself up first. You don’t have to earn your way in. Salvation is a gift — not a transaction, not an achievement, not something you maintain through perfect behavior.And here’s what stopped me about this passage: it says none of us can boast. Not the deacon. Not the person with the most scripture memorized. Not the one who’s been saved since childhood. None of us. Because none of us earned this. We were all equally in need of rescue.That levels the playing field in a way that should make us more gracious with each other, not less.The devotional went deeper into Ephesians and I was honestly surprised by how packed that book is. Practical guidance on marriage, parenting, money, prayer, spiritual warfare — all of it. And woven through everything is this identity message: we are wanted, chosen, redeemed, adopted, forgiven, restored.That’s not who we’re trying to become. That’s who we already are in Christ.And because of that, Ephesians says, we should be doing good works. Not to earn love. Not to prove ourselves worthy. But as a natural overflow of who we are.An overflow means it’s coming from something already full. You can’t pour from empty. But when you’re genuinely rooted in your identity in Christ, the good you do in the world stops being effort and starts being expression.The part that made me completely stop? God chose to reveal Himself to us. He initiated this. He saw us when we were lost and hopeless — unable to save ourselves, unable to be the solution to our own problems — and He still came after us.He invites us to join the greatest story on earth.Are you in? I am all in.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I want to start this the way every honest conversation should start: with the truth.I made a lot of bad choices in college. I do not mean minor stuff. I mean the kind of choices that, when I look back now, I have no logical explanation for how I walked out of them okay. And for a long time I would think about those years with a mix of embarrassment and confusion — embarrassed that I went there, confused about how I survived it.Then I hit Psalm 18:30 this morning. It caught me completely off guard."God's way is perfect. All the Lord's promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection." — Psalm 18:30 NLTHonest moment: I had never really sat with this one before. And the line that stopped me was not the one you would expect. It was not "His way is perfect." It was "He is a shield for ALL who look to him."All. Not the ones who had it together. Not the ones who made smart choices. Not the ones who were already in church every Sunday. All.When Protection Does Not Look Like You Think It ShouldHere is what came up for me immediately: college. The number of situations I walked into that I had no business being in. The danger I created for myself through choices that did not reflect any wisdom I currently have. And yet — I came out.Then I thought about the harder stuff. I have talked about surviving suicidal thoughts. I have talked about sexual assault. Those are not things I brought on myself through bad decisions. Those are things that happened to me, that could have broken me permanently, and I am still here. Still building. Still writing this.And then there is the stuff I do not even know about. The car that did not hit me. The situation that never escalated. The person who changed their mind at the last second. The danger God deflected before it ever got close enough for me to see it coming.He protects my home. He protects my son Jordan. He has been doing it even when I was not paying attention.The Thing About PerfectThe phrase "God's way is perfect" could be intimidating if you read it the wrong way. Like — if His way is perfect, and I am clearly not following it properly, what does that mean for me?Here is what I actually heard this morning: God's way being perfect does not put that pressure on you. His perfection is not a measuring stick for your behavior. It is a description of His nature. He does not operate in error. He does not miss things. His protection does not have blind spots.That means when He says He is a shield for all who look to Him — He means it. There is no fine print about only qualifying if you have been good enough. You just have to look to Him.I needed that this morning. I need it most mornings.His Promises Are True — Even the Ones You Have Not Claimed Yet"All the Lord's promises prove true." I have been walking with God for a while now and I am still running into scriptures that feel brand new. This was one of them.It hit me that I have been living in the results of promises I did not even know to ask for. Protection I did not think to pray about. Favor I did not see coming. And if that has been true without me knowing — imagine what is available when I actually stay in alignment with Him on purpose, every day, intentionally.That is the practice. That is the invitation. Not perfection. Just proximity.What Do You Do With This?Take a few minutes today — not a formal prayer if that is not where you are — just a moment to think about the ways God has protected you. The obvious ones and the invisible ones. The ones you asked for and the ones you did not know you needed.Then let yourself feel the gratitude. Not the forced kind. The real kind that shows up when you actually count it up.God is not keeping score on your mistakes. He is keeping watch over your life. That is the deal. And He has been honoring it longer than you have been aware of it.I do not know what you are carrying today. But I know this: the same God who protected me through the worst of my own choices and the worst things done to me — that same God is a shield for you.Look to Him. That is the only requirement.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I sat down with my journal this morning and landed on Psalm 18:30: "God's way is perfect. All the Lord's promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection." (NLT)My first thought was: I've never read this before.That happens to me more than I'll admit. I've been in and around church my whole life, and there are still scriptures that show up and feel completely new. This one hit like that. And then the prompt asked me to think about the ways God has protected me and take a moment to praise Him.So I started writing. And here is what came out.I went back to college.College me was reckless — actually reckless. I put myself in situations I look back at now and genuinely cannot believe I walked out of. I was young, I thought nothing could touch me, and I was not close to God the way I am now. Not even close.And yet. I'm here.I kept writing, and more came. I've been through suicidal thoughts. I've survived sexual assault. Heavy things. Real things. I don't always talk about them out loud, but they happened, and I lived. I've been through seasons that should have broken me, and I'm sitting here on a Tuesday morning doing a Bible study journal.My son is healthy. My home is standing. I have never been robbed, never been carjacked. And while those might sound like small things, they are not small. They are evidence of a God who shows up in the everyday — not just in the dramatic testimonies we hear on Sunday morning.But here's what the verse unlocked that I wasn't expecting:God's way being perfect does not mean my life has been perfect.I have spent so much energy trying to be enough. Good enough, consistent enough, spiritually mature enough. And this verse quietly reminded me — His perfection doesn't depend on mine. His way is perfect. My way has taken some serious detours. But His? Flawless. Even in the middle of all of mine.And then this: "He is a shield for all who look to him for protection."All. Not the people who have it figured out. Not the people making all the right choices. Not the people with a clean record. All.That means the version of me in college making every wrong decision still qualified. That means the version of me at my lowest point still qualified. That means you, right now, with everything you're carrying — you qualify.Here's what I've come to understand about protection: most of it is invisible. We only see what we survived. We never see what God blocked before it even reached us. We get frustrated at doors that closed, paths that didn't work out, people who left. But sometimes — a lot of times — those were shields. God keeping something dangerous away from us before it could even reach our front door.I spent years frustrated at things that didn't work out. Looking back, those were shields. Every single one.I don't know where you are today. Maybe you're in the middle of something hard and feel completely unprotected. Maybe you're looking at your past and feeling like your choices disqualified you from His covering. Maybe you've never stopped to count what He's kept from you.Stop and count.The bad things that happened are real. But so are the bad things that didn't. Both are evidence that God has been on post. He hasn't moved. He hasn't stopped. He's not keeping score of your failures — He is keeping you.Praise Him today. Not because everything has been perfect. Because He has.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

I'm going to be straight with you about something I read this morning.1 Corinthians 3:7: "So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow."I have read a lot of Bible verses. I do not know that I have ever seen this one before today. And when it landed in front of me, I sat with it for a minute — because it quietly dismantled something I have been carrying.Here is what hit me. We talk a lot — especially in entrepreneur and achievement circles — about the grind. Hustle harder. Work smarter. Optimize everything. Think outside the box. Be proactive. Build systems. Show up consistently. And none of that is wrong, exactly. But this verse says something that stops all of it cold: none of that is what actually makes things grow. Only God does that.I know this from personal experience.There was a season where I was grinding to build a business. Strategy on top of strategy. Action plan after action plan. And God was not in the room. I had not invited Him. I was doing it my way, with my hands, on my timeline.And He said to me — clearly, not dramatically — if I'm not in it, then how can it be?That sentence stopped me. And then later He said something else: it's not going to happen until I'm ready for it to happen.Two sentences. Two conversations. And I have not been the same since.That is why The Kharis Company is built on grace, not grind. Not as a brand line. As truth. As the literal way I had to learn to work and build and show up. God is the one who makes things grow. My job is to be faithful — to plant, to water — and then to get out of His way and trust that He will do what only He can do.There is something so freeing about that once you actually receive it. You do not have to force the harvest. You were never supposed to.The second thing that came up in my reading this morning is this: it is every Christian's job — not just pastors, not just preachers — to share the good news. The devotional I read was called "The Call of Every Christian" and it was direct. God wants to use us. He wants us to share His message. That is our responsibility.I had to sit with that because honestly, I do not know that I fully understood it before. I knew about testimony. I have given some. But there is something different about understanding that the Holy Spirit is the one who actually makes the seed grow in someone else. You say something, you share something — and it is the Holy Spirit that makes it take root. You just have to be willing to open your mouth and trust Him with the rest.The YouVersion app has been doing this work in me every single day, for free. A verse, a devotional, a reminder to step out in faith. It has been one of the main reasons my faith has grown the way it has. God used a free app to do His work in me. That is grace.So here is what I want to leave with you today.You can do every right thing — the strategy, the consistency, the execution — and if God is not in it, it will not happen on your timeline. And that is not a threat. That is the most freeing thing I have ever sat with. Because it means you were never supposed to carry it all. Your job is not to force the harvest. Your job is to plant, to water, to be faithful, to invite Him in — and then to watch what only He can do.He has got it. Let Him have it.Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com

There's a verse I ran across this morning that I had never seen before, or at least one I never noticed. 1 Corinthians 3:7: "So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow." I sat with that for a minute. Because I have spent years doing the most. Strategizing. Optimizing. Networking. Hustling. Creating systems and content plans and launch strategies. And I'm not saying any of that is wrong. God gave me the brain I have and I intend to use it. But this verse hit me different because it made me realize: all of that effort, as smart and intentional as it is, is still nothing if God isn't the one making it grow. That landed hard. I remember a season when I was trying to build a business and I was going at it full speed with God on the sideline. Not intentionally, but I was the one at the wheel and I was just asking Him to bless the route I had already mapped out. And He stopped me. He said it to me in that way He does when you know it was Him: "If I'm not in it, how can it be?" And then another time: "It's not going to happen until I'm ready for it to happen." Those two conversations changed my life. That's why The Kharis Company is built on grace, not grind. That's not just a tagline. It's a testimony. I built it out of something He said to me. The name Kharis literally means grace in Greek, the language of the New Testament. And grace is the foundation because I learned the hard way that grind without God is just exhaustion wearing a work ethic costume. And here's what the devotional added this morning: it's not just about our businesses or our plans. It's about our purpose. Every Christian is called to be an evangelist, someone who shares the good news of who God is and what He's done. Not a preacher on a corner necessarily, but someone who opens their mouth and lives in a way that makes people want to know what they know. That used to feel scary to me. I would keep my faith kind of private. Personal. Mine. But the truth is that is not what God had in mind. He wants to use us. He wants to grow things through us, through our words, our presence, our willingness to just say "hey, let me tell you what God did." The beautiful part is this: our job is to plant the seed and water it. His job is to make it grow. We don't have to manufacture the outcome. We don't have to perform a conversion. We just have to show up, be faithful, and trust that God does what only God can do. That takes so much pressure off. If you're building something, a business, a family, a creative vision, a ministry, and you've been carrying the full weight of making it work, I want you to hear this today: you are not the one who makes things grow. God is. Your job is to plant in faith and water with consistency. His job is the harvest. Do the work. Do it well. And then release the outcome to the One who actually holds it. Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com