27 notes
Today
Regret keeps trying to pull me backward. Worry keeps trying to drag me into a future that has not happened. I am learning that peace does not require me to understand every attack or trial. I have repented for the past and surrendered the future. Today is what remains to obey.
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Feathers
For weeks, white feathers appeared in my right pocket—inside shorts, golf pants, swim trunks, and clothes that had never been worn in our current home. I had asked God to let me know that His protection surrounded my family, but eventually I wondered whether I was imagining the answer. Then my seven-year-old son walked into the dining room.
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Sheepdog
Hours after hearing a message about sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs, I watched a police chase end in a violent interstate crash. The driver climbed from a wrecked van and ran toward a fence. I drove into the ditch, tackled him, held him at gunpoint, and waited for law enforcement.
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Spank Butt, Spank Butt!
My oldest daughter stood up in the pool, looked me straight in the eyes, and splashed me again. In an instant, I remembered the toddler who once stood in the bathtub and announced, “Spank butt! Spank butt!” as though she were volunteering for the consequence. We laughed and gave her another chance. Years later, that memory taught me something I had missed about fatherhood, discipline, and the God who loves His children too much to leave them untrained.
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A Single Yes
Then one uncomfortable yes took me from Wyoming to Orlando, introduced me to a woman I thought had stolen my ticket money, put me in a van with seven women, and began a love story that led from hello to “I do” in 58 days. The best thing waiting outside my comfort zone was not personal growth. It was Danielle.
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The Talent I Could Not Bury
God did not give me those abilities so I could prove I was great. He entrusted them to me so I could become faithful.
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Exposing Snakes
A wildfire once burned tens of thousands of acres around our Wyoming ranch. The fire exposed: snakes that had once disappeared into the sagebrush suddenly shining against the burned ground. The fire did not create the threat. It removed its camouflage.
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Provide & Protect
The best decisions of my life have done two things at once: they provided for the people I love and protected what God entrusted to us. The worst decisions usually promised one while quietly destroying the other.
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When the Battle Comes Home
The battle came into our bodies, our sleep, our marriage, and our children’s bedrooms. I learned that spiritual authority is not panic with Christian vocabulary. It is standing in the victory of Jesus while refusing to surrender.
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When Nobody Applauded
Some of the most important assignments God gives us happen without a stage, headline, or audience. From giving away money and time to funding free masterminds, I learned that faithful completion carries a reward public recognition never could: hearing God say, “Well done.”
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Tomorrow
Tomorrow never arrives. Addiction offered relief today and promised freedom tomorrow. God reversed the arrangement. Freedom began when I stopped trying to win forever and learned to obey Him today.
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The High-Stakes Life
The first casino win did not feel like temptation. It felt like confirmation. I entered with $200, sat beside a man who appeared to be carrying thoughts of suicide, watched his entire posture change as he recovered his losses, and walked out with nearly $2,600. A year later, casino hosts knew my name, hundreds of thousands of dollars could move across a table in one night, and I was convinced I was always one good session away from getting back on top.
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Why [Not] Me?
“Why me?” can be an honest cry from pain or a prison built from comparison and self-pity. “Why not me?” can be ego chasing somebody else’s success or surrender making itself available to God. The words are similar. The direction is completely different.
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My Name Is a Headline
I built an early career learning how to control what people found when they searched a name. Then my own company failed, a lawsuit followed, and the results I wanted buried became impossible to escape. God did not tell me to erase the headline. He told me to make things right, leave the result where people could see it, and trust Him with the full story.
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The Black Sheep
I spent years changing colors to belong. What I once called being different, God eventually taught me to call being set apart. The goal is not to become different for attention or isolated by rejection. It is to belong so completely to the Shepherd that the flock’s approval no longer has veto power over your obedience.
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Happiness
Happiness becomes a moving goalpost when we attach it to the next relationship, achievement, purchase, or outcome. The picture will keep changing, but the Source does not. Happiness is not the picture. It is the posture of a heart that knows God is present and the story is not over.
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His Name Is James
I woke because of a presence in our bedroom. Duncan was already on full alert, staring into the corner. That was where I saw the warrior whose name God would later reveal through a verse: James 1:22.
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And Then the Lights Went Out (right after writing Dangerous to Darkness)
Earlier that day, I published Dangerous to Darkness. Then, while our church prayed against witchcraft and rebellion, there was a loud pop and every light went out. Darkness changed the conditions—but it could not stop the prayer, silence the message, or extinguish the Light.
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Two Is One
Two is one and one is none taught me to eliminate the failures I could foresee. Two destroyed tires taught me something deeper: preparation handles what I can see, but God’s providence carries me through what I never saw coming.
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Dangerous to Darkness
Darkness does not fear the loudest man in the room. It fears the man who has nothing left to prove, protect, purchase, hide, or control because everything in him has been surrendered and made available to God.
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The Time Is Now
I do not need sight to confirm what faith has already heard. I know the Shepherd’s voice. When He gives me the next step, I move—before fear, logic, consequences, or public opinion can negotiate me out of obedience.
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Silence
Every season of my life has contained silence. In the good ones, I invited God into it and found solitude. In the darkest ones, I locked the door, listened only to myself, and called it strength.
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The Wingprint
At 30, I thought the miracle meant I was bulletproof. Looking back, I know it meant our assignment was not finished.
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Equanimity
The old version of me thought faith meant God would protect me while I moved at full speed. The mature version knows that peace comes from moving when God says move—and letting Him determine the outcome.
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Hypocrite
The next generation does not need perfect parents. It needs honest parents who are willing to let Jesus expose the pattern, change their direction, and lead from the front.
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Forever Was Impossible. Today Was Enough.
I could not imagine never drinking again. I could imagine waiting until tomorrow. Then tomorrow became another decision.
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Why the First Book Had to Come First
A private promise leaves room to disappear. This book makes the promise public—and makes every story after it something I now have to face.
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