• Everyone's needed: introverts lean in, and extroverts give room for others to talk too.
• People over preference: this room of men has to matter more than your opinions.
• This is not a counseling session: it's brotherhood, not therapy.
• No BS, no pitching, no selling. Just be honest.
• Lean in and fully engage. Leave your skepticism at the door.

"I need to spiritually grow." We've been conditioned to answer that by going and getting more: read more Bible, pray more, give more, serve more, more theology, more information. But growth was never about stockpiling information. It was always about expectation. We want to be men who move from information to expectation, stirring our faith and expecting God to do something in us, around us, and through us. The rules keep the room honest enough for that to happen.

Leave the skepticism at the door: the "I've tried it before," the "I already know how this goes." God asked Israel, "do you not perceive it?" Our job is to perceive, to actually see what He's doing.

Two questions to get honest with ourselves:

• What's the thought that keeps showing up in your head that you know is a lie, but most days it feels true?
• What is something you secretly believe about yourself that you know isn't true, but you still struggle with?

We built the case for sonship straight from Scripture, in the order we walked it:

Paul prays in Ephesians 1:18–19 that the eyes of our heart would be enlightened so we'd know four things:

1. A heart enlightened (Isaiah 43:19): we finally perceive the new thing.
2. Confidence in your standing: your identity is settled.
3. The riches of His inheritance: held in the saints.
4. The immeasurable greatness of His power: toward us who believe.

If we're sons of the Father, then four things are true of us:

1. We carry the namesake of the Father.
2. We're given an inheritance.
3. We're given authority.
4. We're given access.

Knowing you're a son isn't the finish line. Identity has to be practiced. So what does the battle start with? Truth.

Every morning, stand in front of a mirror. Yes, actually do it. This exercise will train your mind and shift your heart. Look yourself in the eyes and say these truths out loud. Speak with confidence. Believe them. I am a son of God.

Today I will live like the son my Father already says I am.

In Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, Captain Sobel passes Major Winters and won't salute him. Winters' reply lands the whole night: "You salute the rank, not the man."

Five encounters, one thread: what people believed about Jesus's authority is what they walked away with.

The centurion understood what most men miss: his authority came from being under authority. He could give orders because he took orders. Jesus lived the same way, and everyone in these stories had heard His message.

Two things to seek, and the order matters:

1. His Kingdom: the King's dominion. His rule, His reign, His way of running things.
2. His Righteousness: not ours, His. And on His terms, not ours.

Most men define righteousness by their own scorecard: a list of good stuff and a lot of self-cleaning. That's not it.

If we want to see Him do something miraculous, we have to believe His authority and His righteousness, not ours. And His way.

Five minutes every day. No phone, no music. Be still. That's the whole assignment, and it's harder than it sounds.

Five uninterrupted minutes, every day, to calibrate: more signal, less noise. Quiet enough to actually hear the One whose rank you stand under.

Questions to carry into the week. Don't rush them. Sit with the ones that sting.

Jesus starts the night with a picture of the Kingdom of God. What is it like? A mustard seed, the smallest thing you'd plant. Tiny. But when it's grown, it becomes the largest of the garden plants, and two things happen:

1. Large branches: protection & provision.
2. Nests in its shade: comfort, belonging, security.

Same night, same page in three Gospels. Jesus says, "Let's cross to the other side." Then the crossing turns violent.

Underneath the panic is an accusation: God doesn't care. He's got more important things on His plate than me. Sit with how much of your fear runs on that quiet assumption.

Two honest questions when the wheel is out of your hands:

• When life gets out of control, what do you do?
• What do you resort to?

Where your hands and your heart go the second you lose control tells the truth about what you actually believe.

The disciples had to cross the boat and wake Him. We don't. We already have access. The line is open before the storm ever hits.

Don't wait for the storm to wake Him. Run first. This week, the moment anxiety rises, before you resort to the old thing, take the access you already have: pray it out (4:6), then deliberately fix your mind on what's true (4:8). Then practice it (4:9).

The goal is to shorten the gap between "out of control" and "run to Jesus" until there's barely any gap left.

Questions to carry into the week. Don't rush them. Sit with the ones that sting.

Nehemiah gets the win. Fifty-two days, and the wall that had been rubble for a hundred and fifty years is standing, and the watching nations know it wasn't him.

That's a real, God-honored victory. God called → I built → I'm done. Roll the credits.

Except the book doesn't end at 6:15. Turn one page.

Hear this carefully, because it's easy to take it the wrong way. The wall was not a distraction. It was not a waste. Nehemiah did not misunderstand his assignment. God gave it, God directed it, God blessed it, and God got glory in it.

It just wasn't the finish line.

The wall had to come first. But first isn't final. A finished wall is a strange kind of victory if it's guarding a city with almost no one in it, and that's exactly where 7:4 leaves him. The completed work revealed an incomplete one.

Every one of us is running at something we've quietly decided is the end of the assignment:

• Build the business.
• Get the promotion.
• Raise the kids.
• Pay off the debt.
• Finish the project.
• Launch the ministry.

All of it framed the same way: complete what God called me to. And then what? Sit with two of them honestly:

"I'm raising kids. When is that done?" Eighteen? College? Marriage? The role changes. The Kingdom investment doesn't end.

"God called me to build this business. What happens when it's built?" Maybe the thing God built through you now becomes the thing He works through.

God asked Nehemiah to accomplish a wall. What God was producing was a restored, reordered, worshiping people. Same assignment. Two very different measures of "done."

One of the men put his own years on the table here. He was in a band, and he knew God had called him to it. That wasn't in question then and it isn't now. What he also had was his own definition of what success would look like: make it big, travel full-time, do it for a living.

They never hit it. The band fizzled out over the years. By his own scoreboard, that's a failure: called to something, gave it years, never crossed the line.

But looking back on it now, he can see what was actually happening. It wasn't wasted. It was the assignment. It just didn't produce the finish line he'd drawn in his head. It produced something he'd need far more than a tour schedule: a man who had learned, season after season, what it looks like to trust God's provision and walk by faith.

Walk the whole book. Faithfulness never looked the same twice. It kept changing shape as God kept moving.

• Nehemiah 1 · Jerusalem is broken: Weep. Pray. Fast.
• Nehemiah 2 · Someone has to go: "Send me."
• Nehemiah 3 · The work begins: Build. Organize. Lead.
• Nehemiah 4 · Opposition comes: Persevere. Defend. Continue.
• Nehemiah 5 · Problems arise within: Confront injustice. Lead with integrity.
• Nehemiah 6 · The wall nears completion: Stay focused. Finish.
• Nehemiah 7 · The wall is finished, the city is empty: Prepare for what's next.
• Nehemiah 8 · The people need more than walls: Return to the Word. Listen. Worship.
• Nehemiah 9–10 · The people confront unfaithfulness: Confess. Repent. Renew covenant.
• Nehemiah 11–12 · Jerusalem must become alive: Commit. Serve. Worship. Celebrate.
• Nehemiah 13 · Old problems return: Lead. Correct. Remain faithful.

Early on, progress was easy to measure. How much wall is left? Where are the gaps? Are the gates hung? You could stand back and see it. And eventually, done.

But how do you measure faithfulness? Worship. Character. Community. Generosity. Repentance. Men who actually know and experience God. None of that has a ribbon to cut.

• How do we measure who I am becoming?
• How do we measure who my children are becoming?
• How do we measure who the people around me are becoming through what God is doing in me?

One of the men answered it out loud first. At the start of this year he wrote one word in his journal: Go.

"You've spent enough time sitting and learning. You're going to keep learning, but it's time to go. Stop waiting for the perfect opportunity at the perfect timing and get going."

It hasn't been clean. It's been a lot of work: the full-time job, then home, then evenings spent building the thing he believes God has put in front of him right now. That's what this season requires. Not comfort. Not clarity about the finish line. Just go.

Take the question to God this week and let Him answer it: "What does faithfulness require of me right now?" Don't answer it for Him, and don't assume it's the same answer as last year.

It might be resting. It might be waiting. It might be saying no to something good. It might be celebrating what God has already done and refusing to rush past it. It might be go.

Then name your season out loud to one man in this room, and do the thing it requires.

Questions to carry into the week. Don't rush them. Sit with the ones that sting.

Core beliefs are the deeply ingrained, fundamental assumptions we hold about ourselves, others, and the world. They act as a mental filter for everything we experience.

They operate at a subconscious level and quietly shape our thoughts, our emotions, and our behavior. Life is unfair. People will let you down. Can't trust anyone. You may have never said one of those out loud, and it can still be running the show.

Here is the turn for a man walking with God: what has been operating as a mental filter is meant to become a spiritual one. Not the assumptions you absorbed by accident, but the truth of who He is, sitting under every choice.

A piece of my own story. As a child, then a student, then in college and beyond, I was quietly building my core beliefs. Many of the ones I was sure were true turned out to be flat wrong.

Here was one of the big ones: nothing good ever lasts, and God is a taker. That belief became my filter. If nothing good lasts and God is going to take it anyway, then it is on me to hold everything together. So I became a workaholic. I did not decide to become one. The belief decided it for me.

Peter had one too. He carried deeply ingrained attitudes toward Gentiles, that they were religiously "unclean" and to be kept socially separate. Underneath it was a core belief: the Good News is for the Jews; my ministry is for them only. Watch God go after that belief in three movements.

First, Cornelius. A Roman centurion, an officer commanding eighty men, a Gentile, and yet a man who feared God, loved God, and served Him. God sends an angel to him.

Second, Peter. The next day, up on a rooftop, God gives Peter a vision: a sheet of "unclean" animals and a voice telling him to kill and eat. Peter refuses. The voice answers him, three times.

Verse 17 says Peter was "inwardly perplexed." Of course he was. The vision from the Lord did not line up with his core belief. That is exactly the point. God was not correcting Peter's diet. He was rewiring the belief so He could open a door to Kingdom impact far bigger than Peter could ask or imagine.

Third, the miracle. Peter goes to a Gentile home, something his old belief would never have allowed, and preaches. While he is still speaking, God does a miraculous work.

God could have just told Peter to go knock on Cornelius's door. Instead He went underneath the action to the belief driving it, because a man who goes once out of obedience but still believes the old thing will drift right back to it. Change the belief, and the behavior follows on its own.

And notice what was on the other side of that one rewired belief: the gospel breaking out of one nation and reaching the whole world. More than Peter could have asked or imagined.

Two things this week. First, spend ten minutes journaling one question, and let God answer it rather than answering it for Him:

Do not rush to the tidy answer. Ask Him to show you the filter you have stopped noticing, and be honest about where it came from.

Second, go back to the mirror from week two. One of the oldest core beliefs a man carries is that he is simply not enough, and you do not out-think a lie like that. You speak truth over it until it loses its grip. Every morning, stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and say these truths out loud with confidence. Believe them.

Today I will live like the son my Father already says I am.

Questions to carry into the week. Sit with the ones that sting.

Remember what this is really about. It is not a self-improvement project on your beliefs. It is a relationship with Him, learning to walk with Him, talk with Him, and think with Him, until His heart becomes the filter.

He opened with a simple question: when someone says "hear the voice of God," what happens in you? The room was honest. Excited. Skeptical. Curious. Fearful.

Fearful, because if the God of the universe spoke, you'd expect thunder and lightning, not a quiet word. Fearful, because it feels like a father coming home to check the to-do list he left you. Skeptical, because most of us have watched it misused. Somebody says "God put it on my heart that you'd be great in this role," and it turns out to be the slot they couldn't fill. That's manipulation wearing a spiritual word.

And one man said it plainly: this is the Creator of the universe, the lover of my soul, the One who knows me better than I know me. Why wouldn't I want to hear from Him?

He grew up a pastor's kid in a tradition that taught the miraculous gifts had ceased, either with the last apostle or once the Bible was complete. When he went to Bible college in 1981 he had to sign a pledge that he would not take part in charismatic practices.

And yet every summer his dad took students to a camp that was, on paper, the worst youth camp in America. Preaching all day, no recreation, long pants in a Mississippi summer. The bus filled up every year anyway, because at that camp they met God in a way they never did back home. One night it turned into four hours of spontaneous generosity, people saved, youth groups reconciled, men set free. At eleven o'clock he went to the altar and asked God for one thing: peace that would never leave. It never has. They didn't have words for any of it. Their theology said it shouldn't happen.

Then in 2000, in his dream job, his wife was diagnosed with a disease that can turn deadly in months. (It has never activated. Praise God.) That sent him back to the Bible for himself. Not what his professors said. What does this actually say about healing?

None of this sets the Word aside. He holds it as without error, the rule for faith and life. He gave two main reasons he reads it: to recognize God's voice, and to know Him and what He wants to do in and through him.

He recently met a young man with what may well be a real prophetic gift, and a red flag went up fast. The young man hadn't opened his Bible in two years because he "just wanted to hear from God." But there are a lot of voices competing for you. How would you know which one is His?

Jesus was fully God and fully man. Philippians 2 says He laid aside His rights as God to become a man, and from His baptism on He lived fully dependent on the Holy Spirit. That takes away our favorite excuse: well, He was Jesus. He showed us what a man filled with the Spirit can live like.

Look at the day He met the woman at the well. No Jewish man went through Samaria. They walked around it. So what were Jesus and the Father talking about in the quiet that morning? I need you to go through Samaria today. There's a woman there who has been hurting a long time.

That word matters, in his spirit. When you came to Christ you became a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and your spirit is where the Holy Spirit lives and speaks. Your mind, will, and emotions still need renewing (Romans 12:2). Your spirit is already made new.

Being filled with the Spirit means giving Him control. The trouble with being a living sacrifice is that it's living. It keeps crawling off the altar. Jesus never did.

Then he ran through the book of Acts. Over and over the early church is being directed: by the Spirit, by angels, by visions, by dreams. They were so dependent on the Holy Spirit that even when they cast lots to replace Judas, they prayed first and trusted Him with the outcome.

The communication is constant. Paul wants to go one way and the Spirit says no, go here. Maybe they heard Him so often because they were so completely abandoned to Him.

He has friends who stretch him. You know the "where do you want to eat? I don't care. Not there." conversation? They don't have it. They ask the Lord where to go for dinner, even which grocery store, because they believe He may have a divine appointment waiting.

So one day he took three men out, an 81-year-old former missionary and two young guys, and said, "Let's ask God where He wants us to go." Immediately he saw a Kohl's sign in his mind. He assumed the busy one by the mall, more people, more opportunity. Heading down the interstate, he kept seeing the smaller Kohl's instead. Change of plans.

They split into pairs. Two of the men prayed for a woman inside and watched her get healed. Walking back to the car, he stopped to talk with a woman smoking out front on her break. A few minutes later she gave her life to Jesus, and then said she had to get back inside, because she had to tell people what just happened.

Old Testament prophets mostly stood between God and Israel and called them back. Very corrective. In the New Testament, prophecy is mainly for building up the body. And it only works soaked in love, the greatest gift of all (1 Corinthians 13).

He was taught it didn't exist. Paul says desire it. Here is how he handles it:

If it's corrective, pray. Don't speak it until God fully releases you. He once had a dream that the enemy was coming after a young woman on his team in a particular way. He couldn't tell her, and telling anyone else would be gossip. So he prayed for her for two years, until God set up a moment, with others in the room, where he could share it in a way that protected her instead of hurting her. She is still on staff and doing well.

If it's encouraging, say it soon. The world is starving for hope. On a mission trip in Kenya he woke at 3 a.m., which he never does, wrote down every name on the team, and in two hours had an encouraging word for each one. It changed that team for the rest of the week.

The day before, he asked for the name of every man who would be in the room. He sat in a parking lot and asked God for a short word for each one. Most of us he had never met. Here's some of what he read out:

1. He's filling you with joy. You'll be known among your peers as a joyful man.
2. Proclaim Jesus. Flashing, like a billboard.
3. Look to Jesus. He wants you to look into His eyes.
4. The Father says, I am with you.
5. The Father really believes in you.
6. He's calling you to a new level of worship.
7. You are enough. Live from the Father's love, not for it.

That last one landed on a man who had emailed, that same morning, almost those exact words about what God had been teaching him. A father confirming what He had already spoken.

His method is simple. Get still. Ask, "Holy Spirit, would You give me a word for this man?" Write down the first thing that comes. Don't agonize over whether it's you or Him. You asked, and He wants to answer. Then check it: none of it can cut against Scripture.

Did you notice that as other men were getting their words, your own spirit was being encouraged? That's the Holy Spirit. We all know how to speak death. Most of us have had it spoken over us. The people we love need us to learn His voice and speak life. And watch what you say about yourself, too. Call yourself "a skeptic" long enough and you'll become one. You're a son.

That was the first question afterward, and a good one. His answer: when he has missed it, the word usually wasn't wrong. He was. He took what he heard, ran it through his own reasoning, and added an interpretation to make it make sense. So now he says it as it came and lets the other man take it to the Lord.

Once a week he goes to the mall, sits in the food court, and asks, "God, who do You want me to encourage? Who do You want me to pray for?" Then he walks up to a stranger. He treats it like the gym. He's building two muscles: hearing, and faith.

You don't have to start at the mall. Start with one man you know. Get still, ask the Holy Spirit for a word for him, write down what comes, check it against Scripture, and if it's encouraging, give it to him this week.

Questions to carry into the week. Sit with the ones that sting.

This isn't about becoming a spiritual superstar. It is a Father who loves His sons and wants to talk with them, the same yesterday, today, and forever. He has been speaking life over you every day. The invitation is to listen, and to let Him use your tongue for the same thing.

Every man in this room carries things he was taught about God. Some of them are true. Some of them were caught more than taught. And sometimes God says something in His Word that runs straight into what we were handed.

The easy move is to walk away from it. That's not how I was raised. That's not my tradition. But the whole point of wrestling is that you have to get close. You grab hold. You stay in it.

John 14 through 16 is the last thing Jesus tells His closest friends before He goes to the cross. If you knew you had one conversation left with the men you love most, you would say what matters most. Listen to what He keeps coming back to. Six times in three chapters, and more than once He opens with "Truly, truly," as if to say, boys, listen up.

Notice what the asking is wrapped in. Fruit that lasts, so the Father is glorified (15:8). Joy that is full. This isn't a vending machine for getting rich. It is a son coming to his Father with confidence because of what Jesus did.

One of the men was honest about where he started. For most of his life he never expected anything when he prayed. He actually believed he shouldn't. Expecting an answer felt foolish, even arrogant. If he was really honest, he figured God probably wouldn't.

Then two things happened close together. He watched a friend pray for something and saw God answer it right in front of him. And he happened to be reading these chapters in John. He was shaken.

That's what a wrestling match with God usually looks like. Not rebellion. A belief you have carried for years running into the plain words of Jesus, and you have to decide which one you are going to hold on to.

The room kept circling back to John 15:16. You did not choose me, but I chose you. That takes the pressure off. If He chose you and appointed you, He already sees what He put in you. You don't have to carry expectations He never gave you. You get to step into what He called you to.

It also changes how we ask. A lot of us only bring God the "approved" requests, the needs of the world, while we keep the things we actually want off to the side and handle them ourselves. Bring Him all of it. If it's not what He wants for you, He will tell you, or He will change what you want.

Here is the danger when we stop wrestling. We start asking only for things that don't really need God to happen, and slowly we build a God in our own image, one who fits our experience, our comfort, and whatever some reverend told us once. And we still call Him God.

Israel did exactly that. They melted down their gold, shaped a calf, and then used the covenant name for it.

Images like that need to be torn down. His Word is not up for a vote. Either it is true or it isn't. There is plenty of mystery in it, but a man has to guard his heart and ask: am I worshiping You, or an idea of You that feels safe?

He isn't safe. Every one of the disciples gave his life for Him. But they weren't superheroes. They were regular men who trusted Jesus, and they saw the glory of God. C.S. Lewis said it about Aslan: he isn't safe, but he's good.

After reading those verses, the same man wanted to know God that way: ask, and watch his Father respond. He lived in Virginia Beach and kept a little rowboat on the inlet behind a friend's house. He had been around boats his whole life, Navy included, and never once had a fish land in one.

So he rowed out and prayed, "God, throw a fish in my boat." No net, no line. Something only God could do. He looked around. Nothing. A day or two later he went back out and asked again, reminding God of His promises, maybe (he admits) trying to corner Him. He searched every inch of that small boat. Nothing.

The next time out he wasn't even asking. Then he saw the water ruffle the way it does over a school of fish, and he rowed hard after it, trying to help God with the miracle. When he got there, a thought surfaced that scared him:

He answered it immediately. He closed his eyes and prayed out loud, "God, whether You ever throw a fish in my boat or not, I will always follow You." He opened his eyes, and a fish was landing in his boat.

And the fish wasn't really the point. The wrestling was. It's the same posture as the three men facing the furnace, and as Jesus in the garden:

Look at what actually happened out on that water. The blessing was the thing buried deep coming to the surface: if You don't do what I asked, I may not follow You. That's a core belief, the kind we talked about in week six. It sat there quietly until the wrestling dragged it into the open, and the moment he said it out loud he knew it wasn't what he really wanted to believe.

God met him right there, and gave him something he will never go back from. He knows now that he can ask his Father.

That's Jacob at the Jabbok. He wrestled all night and would not let go.

Two questions to take with you, and we'll pick them back up next week:

This takes honesty and a little courage. Go sit in the car if you have to and say it plainly: God, I've tucked this one away. I keep stepping around it.

Then look at your posture. Are you standing off, arms crossed, already tapped out? Have you marked some part of your life as untouchable, a place you won't let Him come close? Or are you in it like Jacob, holding on until He blesses you?

Questions to carry into the week. Sit with the ones that sting.

None of this is about getting God to perform. It is about a Father who chose you first, who told His friends to ask right before He went to the cross, and who is not scared of your questions. Wrestling with Him is a good and holy thing. It is how men get close.

Last week left us with a line worth chewing on: you can't truly wrestle with someone you're not close to. Most of us, when the tension shows up, don't wrestle it through. We run, or we just leave it alone. Some of us have friends who walked away from the faith entirely rather than wrestle. I'm out.

So we opened by asking what came up in the wrestling this week. The men were honest.

One is building his own business and opportunities keep landing. He doesn't want to chase every dollar sign. How do I not settle for good when God has something great? Another realized he'd been asking God to bless his ideas and make him better at the things he was already good at, instead of asking, What do You want me to do? And when a roadblock comes, God usually isn't the first one he talks to. Another named plain selfishness: the pull between what he wants and what his family needs from him as a dad.

And one man went to the deepest place. After coming face to face with real suffering in the world, he found himself asking whether God might be more distant than he thought. Sovereign, yes, but maybe not that concerned with the ants down here. He knows God is still good. He's learning what it means to trust that when the feeling doesn't resolve.

A mentor once said something that wrecked my thinking, and he was right:

That's the difference between asking God to sign off on our plans and asking Him what His are.

To be clear: moving from information to expectation does not mean less information. You will never go wrong studying Scripture and learning the ways of God. The problem is when information becomes the point. Knowledge with no outflow just builds pride, and Scripture says God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). The only people Jesus really went after were the ones who had it all figured out.

When we live only in information, we build formulas. A plus B equals C. Then life hands us D and we panic. But we see time in a straight line, and God doesn't. Maybe C is sitting somewhere we can't see yet.

One of the men told us his six-year-old's kitten was taken by coyotes that week. He could have handed her answers. Instead he told her, "This isn't the way it's supposed to be," and left it there. Sometimes our neat answers, "God's in control," "it's all for His purpose," are the wrong thing to say to someone who is grieving.

Another dad said his son was mad at him one night, and he tried to get him to wrestle it out. The boy just shoved him off and wanted to go to his room. I'd rather you wrestle with me than run from me. That's a father who wants to be close. So is ours.

Simple obedience has two parts: Scripture, and His leading.

Scripture first. When the Word says don't envy, simple obedience doesn't argue that it was a different culture. It says, Okay. Help me with that. And then His leading: God, every time envy pops up in me, will You point it out? Help me hear You when You do. That's an ongoing conversation, which is exactly what "pray without ceasing" sounds like.

You can't read the Bible and quietly take the miracles out. You can't live as a Christian as if the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead doesn't live in you. You can ignore Him. But He is a lover, not a bully. He won't force the relationship any more than you'd force your wife to enjoy date night.

He already said He's doing it. So the question isn't whether He's moving. It's whether we're perceiving it. My dad had the sharpest ears I've ever known. He'd hear a car three minutes before it hit the driveway. The more something matters to you, the more tuned your ears get. Make His leading matter, and you will start to hear it.

Too often we lean on things that aren't actually promises. Here are three that are.

Jesus said that. So here's a challenge, brother to brother: stop praying, "God, will You just be with us?" He already is. He has given us access to the Father through Jesus. Pray like a man talking to a God who is glad to be with him.

Flip the first half around. If you belong to Jesus, His Spirit lives in you. So it's less "Spirit, please come" and more "I'm ready. Let's go." Checking the boxes, pray, read, give, serve, show up, mission trip every two years, is not the whole thing. Walking it out with Him is how you actually experience Him.

One night my son was driving home from youth group and ran over our nine-month-old puppy. Both my boys were wrecked, and he was furious with himself. I didn't give them an answer. Their logical little minds were already asking why a good God didn't stop it, and I let them ask. All I said at that little grave was, "The Lord is near." That's a promise. And he just cried.

Think of Scripture as the diet and surrender as the experience. You have to eat. Without the Word, Bible study, good teaching, your diet is off, and you can look fine on the outside while things go badly wrong inside. Rely only on "His leading" with no Word underneath and you are in a dangerous place. Remember what we heard two weeks ago: one of the main reasons to read the Bible is to recognize His voice.

But the diet is for something. Brother Lawrence was a monk who knew the Word better than most and still asked, Where is the relationship? Someone asked him to wash the dishes. Simple obedience: of course. And standing at the sink he realized he had never once asked God about anything in his ordinary day. So he started. His little book, The Practice of the Presence of God, is the journal of an old man discovering that walking it out with God was the very thing missing his whole life.

One of the men found an old journal entry from three years ago: God says, I'm not Ben Franklin. Plenty of people talk about Ben Franklin like they knew him. They've read the books, they argue about whether he was a good man. None of them ever talked to him. God is not a dead man to be studied. He is alive, He wants to be experienced, and He's jealous for your time and your thoughts. He'd do the dishes with you.

Another man mentioned an interview with an Oxford mathematician and believer. His point: if I told you there was a red Ferrari in your driveway right now, you'd never know until you went and looked.

And notice how Jesus called His men. Not "here's what you need to know first." Just come on, follow Me, even when they'd fished all night and caught nothing. He called them out of their potential, not their résumé.

Keep the Scripture, all of it. But this week, focus in on His leading. Start by changing how you pray. Don't ask Him to show up. Thank Him that He's here, and ask to go with Him.

Sometimes that's my whole prayer, and then God blows my mind. Even when you bless the food, ask for something. Thanks for this meal, Lord. And will You heal Aunt Mary? Why not? Let's ask. Let's try.

And write it down. One of the men started journaling and realized God had been speaking to him pretty regularly. He just hadn't been keeping track.

Questions to carry into the week. Sit with the ones that sting.

I don't have this figured out, and I'm not going to pretend to. But I know this much: He is not waiting for us to get smarter before He'll walk with us. He promised He's already here. He's knocking. Our part is simple obedience, to His Word and to His leading, and to keep showing up with an empty plate.