This letter is for you, the ones who sit at this small round table with me. It’s not for the big stage. It’s for the quiet conversations, the shared burdens, the kind of talk that happens after the main meeting is over and only a few remain.

When I first started this Substack, it was a simple, reluctant obedience. The Fath…

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I want to tell you a story about a tree. Not a metaphor yet, but a real one. A hundred years ago, on the edge of a small town, a grandfather planted an apple sapling for his newborn son. He tended it. His son climbed it, built a treehouse in it, and as a man, harvested its fruit for his own family. The neighborhood knew that tree. Kids knew which branch would hold their swing. The scent of its blossoms meant spring; the tart crunch of its apples meant fall. It was a landmark, a silent witness to generations.

Now, I want you to see that same spot today. The house is gone, replaced by a concrete slab. The yard is a tangle of weeds and litter. And the tree? It’s a twisted, skeletal thing. Its bark is scarred with graffiti. Its few remaining branches are brittle, bearing only hard, worm-ridden knots that no one would call fruit. It’s not dead, but it is diseased to its core. It no longer gives life. It’s a monument to decay.

This tree is our story. The story of the last hundred years.

We look around at our world, at the normalized lawlessness, the fractured families, the hollowed-out churches, the tension that hums in every city street…and we wonder, “How did we get here?” We’re like the grandson staring at the gnarled, fruitless tree, struggling to imagine it ever being healthy. We’re told this is progress. We’re told we have more freedom, more rights. Yet we feel a deep poverty. We work more for less. We are connected yet profoundly lonely. We have entertainment, but no peace. We have information, but no wisdom. We have rights, but no righteousness.

We are living in the harvest of a diseased tree. And we must understand that this harvest did not appear by chance.

The rot began where all life begins: at the root. And our root, our first and most fundamental institution, is the family, under the headship of the father, under the authority of Yahusha, under the blessing of Yahuah. When that order is rejected, the entire organism sickens.

The Unraveling: A Chain Reaction of Failure

Our spiritual autopsy must begin where Paul directs our gaze: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12, ESV). This is the critical first truth. Our battle is not primarily against people, policies, or social trends. Those are merely the symptoms manifesting in the flesh. The war is first waged and lost in the spiritual realm.

The chain reaction is visible, but its origin is invisible.

Churches failed. They ceased being pillars of truth and lamps on a hill. They traded the narrow way for the broad path of cultural relevance. They offered therapy, not transformation; comfort, not conviction. They stopped teaching the Bible from beginning to the end and began teaching selective passages, which are embedded in man made doctrine and traditions. When the Church abdicated its role as the guardian of divine Holy truth, it created a spiritual vacuum.

As a response to failed churches, churches became businesses. The focus shifted from discipleship to attendance, from holiness to budgets, from the message of the cross to the method of the market. The house of prayer became a corporation with a spiritual mission statement. More buildings sprung up, but the power was departing.

When the Church, the spiritual foundation, crumbled, the earthly foundation was next to crack. Fathers failed. They abandoned their posts. They traded their sacred duty as protector, provider, and priest of the home for the pursuit of comfort, prestige, or mere escape. They left a void where godly authority and loving discipline should have been.

As a response to fathers failing, mothers were forced to play the role of both mom and dad. This was not a liberation; it was a crushing, doubling of burden. The rational, necessary response to this abandonment was a social movement that sought to empower women to do it all, because men would not do their part. Feminism, in its modern form, is the logical fruit of widespread paternal failure.

The fruit of this broken family unit was inevitable. As a result of broken families, the children in the neighborhood became lawless. A child with no father has no living picture of a loving, strong, protective authority. He rejects all authority. A child raised in instability, stress, and the chaos of a broken home learns that the world is not safe, that commitments are not kept, that love is conditional. He becomes a fortress of self-reliance or a vacuum of neediness. He becomes easy prey.

Neighborhoods fell apart. The communal fabric, woven from strong families who knew each other, looked out for each other, and held each other’s children accountable, frayed and tore. Suspicion replaced trust. Anonymity replaced community.

Entire communities, followed by cities, broke up and fell apart. We traded front porches for fenced backyards, then for high-rise balconies. We replaced the shared responsibility of a village with the cold, distant bureaucracy of a city department.

This was not an accident. It was a cascade. A spiritual failure at the top (the Church) led to a failure of earthly authority (fathers), which collapsed the primary cell of society (the family), which destroyed the connective tissue (the neighborhood), which doomed the larger body (the community, the city).

We can trace this sickness through the headlines of the last century. Watch the language shift. Watch the “troubled youth” of the 50s become the “delinquents” of the 70s, the “gangs” of the 90s, and the “violent flash mobs” of today. Watch the celebration of the “single mother doing it all” morph into the normalization of fatherlessness as just another “family structure.” The fruit tells you everything about the tree.

The Seeds of the Thistle

So what seeds were planted to produce this harvest of thorns? You named them. They are the tools of the “cosmic powers over this present darkness.”

Drugs to numb the pain of the fatherless, to pacify the angry, to enslave the searching soul to a chemical master.

Guns in the hands of the lawless, a symbol of the fear and chaos that fills the vacuum where peace and order should be.

Media to shape the perception, to sell the lie that broken is beautiful, that rebellion is freedom, that you are the god of your own universe.

Educational System Programming to institutionalize the lie, to separate generations from His story, from truth, from the very concept of a Creator to whom we are accountable.

These are not random social ills. They are strategic weapons in a spiritual war. Their purpose is to cement the delusion.

And what is that delusion? The prophet Isaiah named it a millennia ago: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20, ESV).

We are living in the age of the Great Exchange. Paul diagnosed it in Romans 1:25: They “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” We traded the infinite for the finite, the eternal for the temporary, a world of multiplication for one of extraction, the Creator for the creations.

And when a society persistently, willfully makes that trade, a terrifying judicial act occurs. Yahuah, in His righteous judgment, hands them over. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity…” (Romans 1:24, ESV). And for those who refuse to love the truth, “God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:11, ESV). The lie becomes our reality. The inverted moral compass becomes our only guide.

This is why our leaders proclaim madness with a straight face. This is why the culture celebrates what Yahuah calls an abomination. Jeremiah saw it in his day: “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; and my people love to have it so” (Jeremiah 5:31, ESV). We have learned to love the lie because the truth demands something of us: repentance, humility, surrender.

A Life Under the Hater

This brings us to the stark choice laid out before us. We must open our eyes to whose world we are living in.

Imagine living in a time where we are taught by the one that hates us. From kindergarten through graduate school, we are taught a story of cosmic accident, of human sovereignty, of moral relativity. We are taught we are advanced animals, our lives have no inherent purpose, and our highest goal is our own pleasure and fulfillment. This is the curriculum of the hater, designed to separate us from the knowledge of our Creator.

Imagine living in a time where we toil for the one that hates us. We spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week building systems, companies, and economies that are fundamentally built on greed, exploitation, and vanity. Our labor is co-opted to enrich the very principality that despises the image of God in us.

Imagine living in a time where who our enemy is, is defined by the one that hates us. We are told our enemy is our neighbor who votes differently, or a people group across the globe, or a “system” that we must tear down. We are never told our true, ancient enemy is the spiritual force that feeds on this division and hatred.

Imagine living in a time where the food we eat is produced and concocted by the one that hates us. It is designed not for nourishment, but for addiction, for sickness, for dependency. It weakens the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Imagine living in a time when we are taught who we are and where we come from by the one that hates us. Our identities are reduced to race, gender, sexuality, political tribe, or consumption habits. We are told we are products of meaningless forces, not beloved creations fashioned in the very image of God.

Imagine living in a time where the medicine we use to heal our bodies is produced by the one that hates us. It often treats symptoms while ignoring root causes, creates lifelong customers rather than healed people, and often becomes another chain of dependency and profit.

This is our reality. We have become walking advertisements for the products of our own destruction. We consume the poison and call it progress. We wear the chains and call them jewelry. This is the pinnacle of lawlessness: a life willingly surrendered to a rebellious creation, while spurning the loving Creator.

And we think the solution is more laws. More regulations. More government programs. But we cannot legislate a heart. We cannot reverse spiritual decay with a political policy. Chaos, once unleashed, has only one natural direction: increase. A society can, at best, build a dam to hold it back for a season. But the pressure builds. The dam cracks. The chaos floods through again, worse than before. We are watching the dam crack.

The Good Tree: A Life Under the Creator

But there is another reality. A parallel kingdom. It exists right now, in the midst of the chaos. It is the Kingdom of the One who created us, who loves us, who redeemed us.

Imagine living in a time where we are taught by the one that created us. His Word becomes our lens. We learn wisdom, not just information. We understand our origin, our purpose, our destiny. We are taught by the Spirit of Truth Himself.

Imagine living in a time where we toil for the one that created us. Our work, however mundane, becomes an act of worship. We see our labor as a stewardship, a way to provide, to create, to serve others, and to glorify Him. Our vocations become our ministries.

Imagine living in a time where who our enemy is, is defined by the one that created us. We recognize the true battle is “against the spiritual forces of evil.” Our human neighbor is not the enemy; he is a captive we are called to love and free. Our fight is against the lies that bind him.

Imagine living in a time where who our friend is, is defined by the one that created us. Our fellowship is with those who fear the Lord. Our community is the body of Messiah. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, past and present.

Imagine living in a time where the food we eat is produced by the one that created us. We seek to nourish the bodies He gave us with what He designed for them. We eat with gratitude, seeing it as provision and a reminder of His faithfulness.

Imagine living in a time when we are taught who we are and where we come from by the one that created us. We are the children of the King. We are image-bearers of the Most High. We are known, chosen, and loved from before the foundation of the world. Our identity is unshakeable because it is rooted in Him.

Imagine living in a time where the medicine we use to heal our bodies is produced by the one that created us. We seek the healing properties in His creation. We understand that true healing often involves the spirit and soul as much as the body. We trust in His wisdom for our health.

This is not a fantasy. This is the offered reality for those who are in Messiah Yahusha. It is a transfer of kingdoms. It is a shift in citizenship. It is choosing which tree we will draw our life from.

Yahusha was brutally direct about this. “Beware of false prophets… You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:15-18, ESV).

Look at the fruit of the last hundred years. Look at the harvest of our cultural tree. Is it love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Or is it anxiety, depression, division, rage, addiction, perversion, and death?

The fruit tells you the root. We are feasting from a diseased tree. A thornbush. A thistle.

The Path Back: Grafting onto the Good Tree

So what do we do? We don’t start by trying to fix the tree. We start by fleeing from it. We start by being grafted onto the good tree.

The path back begins with a question from the Psalms, a question that cuts through every layer of delusion: “O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” (Psalm 15:1, ESV).

The answer is not a politician, a program, or a policy. The answer is a person. A person who “walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart.” It starts in the heart. It begins with us, in our closets, on our knees, speaking truth in our own hearts. Admitting the delusion we’ve believed. Repenting of the lies we’ve loved. Turning away from the diseased tree and its rotten fruit.

It means looking at our own lives, our families, our choices, and asking: “What fruit are we producing? Does it resemble the fruit of the Spirit, or the fruit of this present age?” This is the personal autopsy that must precede the cultural one.

We must stop consuming from the orchard of the hater. We begin the slow, often difficult process of aligning every part of our lives, what we learn, what we watch, what we buy, what we eat, how we work, how we raise our children…back under the authority of the One who created us and loves us.

We reconnect with the true Vine. Yahusha said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, ESV). Our power to produce any good thing, to resist the decay, to be a source of life in a dying world, comes only from abiding in Him. It is not a self-help program. It is a total dependency on divine life.

This is how order is derived from chaos. Not from within the chaos, but from outside it. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2, ESV). The Spirit hovered. Then He spoke. And order came. Light broke in.

He must hover over the chaos of our hearts, our families, our lives. Then we must let Him speak His Word into it. His Word brings order. His Word brings light. His Word brings life.

The societal decay may have begun in desperate and poor neighborhoods, but the spiritual decay began in the human heart. The healing must begin there, too. One heart at a time. One family at a time. One small, grafted branch on the good tree, beginning to bear the faint, first blossom of true fruit.

It will look foolish to the world. It will look like retreat. It will look like we are not “engaging with the culture.” But we are. We are engaging at the root level. We are planting a seed of the Kingdom in the ruined soil of our own lives. We are becoming a pocket of order within the chaos, a point of light within the darkness.

Woe are we, yes. The diagnosis is dire. The tree is diseased. The fruit is poison.

But hope is not found in nursing the diseased tree. Hope is found in the Good Tree. Hope is found in the One whose name is worthy. The One who brings order from chaos, light from darkness, and life from death.

The harvest of lawlessness is fully ripe. But so is the offer of the Kingdom.

Which tree will you draw your life from?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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I used to think of holding patterns as empty seasons. Times when my life was on pause, and Yahuah’s real work was happening somewhere else. I’d look at the stillness and assume I was spiritually benched. But I was wrong. Yahuah is everywhere, knows everything, and holds all power. If I believe that, then there is no such thing as a spiritually empty moment. The challenge wasn’t His absence. It was my attention.

I recently experienced this blindness in a new way. A close friend began sending me links to social media clips, content far outside his usual interests. A curiosity was sparking in him. Before my Kairos moment, I would have seen these texts as a nuisance and muted the thread. More recently, I might have dismissed them as distractions from my own quiet time with God. I would have missed the brother, an image-bearer of the Creator, and completely failed to realize the Holy Spirit was sending me an assignment for that very moment.

This is the myth of the holding pattern. We interpret stillness as inactivity. We mistake a lack of dramatic, personal forward motion for God’s disengagement. But scripture reveals a different reality. “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed,” (Matthew 13:31, ESV). It starts invisibly small. Our mistake is waiting for the fully grown tree to appear instantly, while dismissing the daily planting as “nothing happening.”

What looks like God’s waiting room is actually His workshop. And in that workshop, He is not mass-producing disciples on an assembly line. He hand-crafts each one. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” (Jeremiah 1:5, ESV). He knows the unique texture of your doubt, the specific shape of your pride. So why would He use a one-size-fits-all manual? My path to surrender involved silent caregiving. Yours might involve public ministry. The destination of trust is identical, but the journeys are as unique as our fingerprints. This is the Master Artist’s custom curriculum.

My friend’s curious texts were part of his curriculum, a gentle nudge from the Spirit. And my response or lack thereof was part of mine. God was inviting me to participate in His work in another life, not from a place of busy striving, but from a posture of attentive readiness. He was showing me that my “holding pattern” was not a pause in His activity, but a repositioning of my awareness.

This leads to the most profound truth: God prefers to work through the collective body. He is not a human benefactor commissioning five separate paintings. He is the Master Artist commissioning one masterpiece, inviting five different painters to collaborate on the same canvas, one story…His story. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ,” (1 Corinthians 12:12, ESV).

My old view was selfish. I wanted God’s work to be clean, solitary, and obvious a bag of cash found on a walk. But that desire is a quiet rebellion against interdependence. It’s a wish to be an entire body unto myself. God’s design is communal. His “manifold wisdom” (Ephesians 3:10, ESV), polupoikilos in Greek, meaning variegated, multi-colored, is displayed in a tapestry, not a single thread.

When my friend sends a link, he is applying a brushstroke. When I respond thoughtfully with an article that speaks to his curiosity, I am applying another. We are working on the same section of the canvas, guided by the same Spirit, though we may not fully see the final image. My obedience in that small moment might be the dash of color that makes sense of his struggle. His curiosity might be the answer to a prayer I never prayed.

This shatters the holding pattern myth completely. You are not circling, waiting for permission to land and begin your real work. You are already on the worksite. Your current location, your relationships, your conversations, your inbox, your quiet moments, is your divinely appointed workstation. The perceived stillness is the focused concentration of the Artist at work, and you are the brush in His hand. The links from a friend, the nudge to call someone, the quiet hour of study; these are not distractions from your path. They are the path.

There is no waiting room. There is only the workshop. There is no pause. There is only purposeful positioning. Your collaboration is not a secondary activity; it is the primary method of the Master Artist. He is building His kingdom one connected brushstroke at a time, and your willing hand is always part of the painting.

When has a seemingly random interaction with someone else recently felt less like an interruption and more like a deliberate part of a larger work?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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Let’s talk about prayer. Not the formal, distant kind, but the raw, running conversation between a child and a good Father. The kind that happens in the shower, on a drive, in the quiet of a morning journal. It’s in these spaces where faith is lived, not just theorized.

I found myself writing one of those prayers recently. It started like they often do, with gratitude. Thank you for the roof, the peace, the family (even the ones I struggle with), the clean clothes, the cleansing. Gratitude, I’m learning, is the soil where trust grows.

Then, almost sheepishly, the list began to form. The needs. The wants. The “I would likes…” Cell phone bills, car repairs, insurance, dreams of a camper van and a new life in a cool place, vet visits, household bills. The mundane and the monumental, all jumbled together. The math even came to mind: $300k conservatively, $500k generously.

And right there, in the ink on the page, the lesson presented itself. This is the pivot point of true faith. The moment where our child-like asking meets our child-like trust.

We are commanded to ask. Yahusha was unequivocal: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7, ESV). He framed it in the most tender terms: what human father, when his son asks for bread, gives him a stone? “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11, ESV).

So we bring our list. We are meant to. But we must bring it with the right heart. We bring it not as demands to an ATM, but as confessions to a Dad. We bring it with the preface that frames everything: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

This is the sacred surrender. It is saying, “Father, here are the things my limited human eyes see as needs. The broken car, the looming bill, the dream of a fresh start. I am bringing them to your feet not because I know better than You what is good for me, but because I trust You completely. Your will is always better for me than my will.”

This aligns perfectly with the other pillar of His teaching: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33, ESV). Our asking isn’t divorced from our seeking. We ask for provision within the context of seeking His Kingdom. The prayer journal showed this: gratitude first, then the list, then the immediate surrender of that list to His will and His mission. The request for clarity of mind, for strength against unclean compulsions, for words to disciple a friend, for healing for a neighbor, these are Kingdom-seeking prayers. They are about becoming the person He wants me to be, right where I am.

This is the confidence John speaks of: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15, ESV).

Asking “according to his will” isn’t a magic incantation. It is the slow, daily work of aligning my desires with His. It is wanting His glory more than I want my comfort. It is wanting His timing over my urgency. It is trusting that the “good things” He promises (Matthew 7:11) may look different from my $500k dream. They may be the peace to endure the wait. The creativity to solve the problem. The community to support the need. Or the quiet “no” that protects me from a path that would ultimately shipwreck my faith.

So, we make our lists. We be specific. We are honest about our dreams for a van, for a cool place, for freedom from debt. This is the “asking.” But then, we must practice the “letting go.” We place the list at His feet and say, “Not my will, but Yours.” We trade anxiety for petition wrapped in thanksgiving (Philippians 4:6).

The detox mentioned in the journal…the physical cleansing, is a powerful picture of the spiritual process. As the toxins leave the body, clarity emerges. As we surrender our will, our anxieties, our demanding spirits to Him, a clarity of mind and purpose emerges. We start to see our needs through His eyes. The list doesn’t disappear, but it ceases to be a source of worry. It becomes a subject for trustful conversation.

This is the daily walk. The daily grain of sand. Bringing our humanity, our bills, our dreams, our struggles with family and compulsions…into the presence of the Divine, and leaving transformed. Not because we got the van, but because we got more of Him in the process. And He is, always, the ultimate provision.

A Prayer of List and Letting Go:

Father Most High,

Thy will be done, here in my life, just as it is perfectly done in heaven.

Thank you. For the breath in my lungs, the roof over my head, the people you’ve placed in my path, for all of it, the easy and the hard.

Here is my heart, laid bare before you.

Here are my needs, both great and small: the practical burdens of this month, the dreams that feel too big, the relationships that need your mending, the healing my body and spirit crave.

I present them to you, not as one who knows better, but as a child who trusts.

I seek first your Kingdom and your righteousness. Align my desires with Yours.

If my dream is from You, pave the way and I will walk in it with joy.

If it is not, gently close the door and give me a heart of patient, expectant peace.

Help me to be sober-minded, loving, and useful in Your hands today.

Speak through me to those who need to hear from You.

I ask all these things, in full confidence of Your goodness and perfect will, in the mighty name of Yahusha the Messiah.

Amen.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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I feel a nudge to share this video with you. It’s just shy of an hour in duration.

Check it out when you have some time and see if it speaks anything to you. I am not affiliated with them in any way. But I do own one of their Bibles and I use it conjunction with two other translations that I keep in physical form in my prayer closet.

That is all, and thank you for reading…and watching.

If you enjoy Faith In The Fast Lane, I would be incredibly grateful for your support. Consider using one or more of the links below.

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If you enjoy Faith In The Fast Lane, I would be incredibly grateful for your support. Consider using one or more of the links below.

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Shashue Monrauch

The question landed in my spirit this morning with the quiet weight of a stone dropped into still water. It began as a journal entry, a simple line of thought that quickly revealed the deep crack running through the foundation of our world. “Just believe,” the voice around us says. “Faith is a feeling, an assent, a transaction of the mind.” But another voice, the one that has been my truest companion on this narrow path, whispered back: “What about to truly love?”

Yahusha was devastatingly clear on this point. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” He said (John 14:15, ESV). And to the lawyer testing Him, He distilled all of life’s purpose into this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40, ESV). Love is not a sentiment. It is an action. It is obedience.

Which brings me to the list. The ten. The words spoken by the very voice of Yahuah from the fire on the mountain (Exodus 20:1-17). They are not suggestions. They are the foundational architecture of a functional universe, the Owner’s manual for the human heart.

1. No other gods before Him.

2. No carved images, no worship of created things.

3. Do not take His name in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and mother.

6. Do not murder.

7. Do not commit adultery.

8. Do not steal.

9. Do not bear false witness.

10. Do not covet.

Simple. Direct. Ten rules. Not ten thousand. Ten.

And here is the question that sat on my heart, the one I now bring to you: If we, as a species, can’t even manage to obey these ten basic, life-giving laws, laws written on our consciences, echoed in every decent society’s code then what arrogant fantasy makes us think we can successfully observe and legislate the tens of thousands of complex, contradictory statutes that make up our modern empires?

We build towers of Babel made of legal code, thinking complexity equals progress. We draft endless regulations to manage the symptoms of our societal sickness, the greed, the violence, the deceit, the idolatry…while ignoring the disease itself: a heart in rebellion against its Creator. We try to patch a crumbling dam with more bureaucracy, all while ignoring the massive, foundational crack right at its base.

As I wrote in The Master’s Plan, The Son’s Missions, we have forgotten that the same Savior who offers grace is the Judge who demands righteousness. We want the forgiveness without the transformation, the label of “believer” without the walk of obedience. We have, as I explored in The Wheat and the Tares, created a faith that often focuses on the wrong harvest, on outward appearance rather than the fruit of a heart aligned with Yahuah’s will.

These Ten Commandments are that will, in its most concise form. The first four outline our vertical relationship with God: worship Him alone, don’t reduce Him to an idol, revere His name, set aside time for Him. The final six outline our horizontal relationships with each other: honor life, honor covenant, honor property, honor truth, honor contentment.

If every human heart yielded to these ten principles, what would vanish? The relentless pursuit of money, status, and pleasure that becomes our modern idolatry (Commandments 1-2). The profane carelessness with which we treat the holy (3). The 24/7 grind that burns out our souls and families (4). The broken homes and fatherless children (5). The news cycles of violence and outrage (6). The shattered marriages and relational betrayal (7). The fraud, the exploitation, the inequality rooted in theft (8). The media spin, the political lies, the social media deceptions (9). The entire engine of consumerism and discontent that fuels our economy (10).

It would be a different world. A kingdom world.

But we can’t. In our own strength, we are utterly incapable. This is the very point of the law. It shows us our need. It leads us to the cross, where the blood of Yahusha covers our failure. And it leads us to the New Covenant, promised long ago: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV).

The solution is not more human laws. It is surrendered hearts. It is moving from believing in God to believing God…enough to do what He says. It is the slow, daily walk of obedience I wrote about in The Slow Walk, where love is proven in the small, unseen choices.

So, let’s ask ourselves plainly: Do I love Him? Then let the proof be in my obedience, not to earn His love, but because I have received it. Let my life be a lived-out answer to His ten words. Let my citizenship be in a kingdom built on that rock, not in an empire collapsing under the weight of its own ten thousand complex, unkeepable rules.

That is the question. Our collective chaos is the answer. And His grace is the only way through.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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I want to talk with you today about a fracture in our understanding, a crack that runs right through the heart of how many of us see God. It’s the idea, so common now in 2026, that the God of the Old Testament is somehow a different being than the God of the New. One is portrayed as a God of wrath, of rules, of judgment…mean, distant, and harsh. The other is seen as a God of grace, of love, of forgiveness…sweet, approachable, and kind. We’ve created a divine split personality, preferring the Son over the Father, as if the Son came to correct the Father’s mistakes.

This isn’t just a theological error. It’s a spiritual blindness with dangerous consequences. It arises from a fundamental confusion of the order between the Father and the Son, and a loss of understanding about the distinct missions the Master has given His Son. We love to talk about Yahusha as our Savior. We bask in that grace. But we rarely, if ever, acknowledge with the same fervor that this same Yahusha, authorized by His Father, is also our Judge.

Let’s walk through this together. Let’s lay aside what culture tells us and look at the story the scriptures are telling. It’s a story of one God, one plan, and two world-altering missions carried out by the same beloved Son.

The Father’s Heart and the Sent Son

To untangle this, we must start at the beginning, with the Father. Yahuah, the great I AM, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is not a moody deity who changed His mind between Malachi and Matthew. His character is consistent: holy, just, merciful, and abounding in steadfast love.

The problem was never with the Father’s nature; it was with our ability to live up to His holy standard. The law revealed His character and our brokenness. The prophets cried out for a solution. And the Father’s answer was always His Son.

The Master sent His Son the first time with a very specific, focused mission. It was a mission defined by the vocabulary of redemption: to serve, to teach, to forgive, to love, to be the suffering servant. Yahusha said it plainly: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45, ESV). He came to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His “rules of engagement” for this mission were humility, compassion, and self-sacrifice. He turned the other cheek.

Yahusha came to earth the first time through the womb of a virgin, lived in relative obscurity for 30 years, doing human things and eventually stepped on the stage for His final three years. But scripture tells us He returns the second time in a very different manner and “style”, if you will.

On His first assignment, he prayed for His persecutors. He allowed Himself to be mocked, tortured, and crucified. Why? To fulfill the Father’s will to redeem a people for Himself. He was the perfect Executor of the Father’s saving plan.

This is the Yahusha we know and love. This is the image we cling to. And it is right and good to do so.

The Great Irony of Expectations

Here is where history gives us a piercing irony. When Yahusha came the first time, the Jewish people, living under the severe thumb of Roman oppression, were reading the same prophetic scriptures we have. They saw the promises of a conquering King from David’s line, a Messiah who would break the rods of their oppressors. They were expecting the Warrior-King, the Judge who would bring deliverance through power and might.

Instead, they got a “hippie” from Nazareth. A man who talked of loving enemies, of a kingdom not of this world, who rode a donkey instead of a warhorse. They expected the Lion of Judah; they got the Lamb who goes silently to the slaughter. They were looking for the mission of judgment and were confounded by the mission of salvation. Many rejected Him because He did not fit their expectation.

Now, flip the script to our day. We have fully embraced the Lamb. Our modern theology, our worship songs, our preaching often present only the Savior of unconditional acceptance. We have created a Jesus in our own image…always gentle, always affirming, never confronting. We expect, if we think of His return at all, this same gentle rabbi coming back. We are utterly unprepared, just as the first-century Jews were, but for the opposite reason. We expect the Savior; He is returning as the Judge.

We have taken the first mission and assumed it is His only disposition. We have comforted ourselves with half a Messiah.

The Second Mission: To Judge and to Reign

But the scripture is unblinkingly clear about the Son’s return. The Father, who sent Him first to save, will send Him again with a different mission. “And he [the Father] has given him [the Son] authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man” (John 5:27, ESV). Paul stood in Athens and declared, “[God] has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31, ESV).

The book of Revelation unveils this Judge in terrifyingly glorious detail. This is not the meek Yahusha of Galilee. This is the glorified Son of Man, the Faithful and True Witness, the King of kings.

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire… From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” (Revelation 19:11-15, ESV)

His eyes like a flame of fire see through every pretense, every hidden sin, every secret act of faithfulness. The sword from His mouth is His word, the same word that said, “Let there be light,” the same word that said, “Your sins are forgiven.” That word will execute perfect, final justice. The time for pleading, for mercy extended through His sacrifice, will be past. The time for settling accounts will have come.

This is not a different God. This is not a Son who has overruled a cranky Father. This is the same Son, perfectly executing the second phase of the Father’s single, holy plan. The Lamb who was slain is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals (Revelation 5:9). The One who submitted to death is the One to whom the Father has given all authority to judge the living and the dead.

The Demand of Love: Obedience

This brings us to the heart of the matter: love. We forget that God desires willingly given love. And love, in His economy, is not a fuzzy feeling. It is allegiance. It is obedience. Yahusha Himself said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV). And again, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (John 14:21, ESV).

He wasn’t speaking of a new, relaxed list. He was referring to the spirit and intent of the Father’s instructions…the law written on our hearts by the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:33). All of them. The ones about loving Him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). This is how we show Yahuah we love Him. Not just in sentimental words or intellectual knowledge of texts, but in the doing. In the way we live with one another. In how we obey Him.

The gentle Savior of the first coming was not morally permissive. He raised the standard of the law to its true, heart-level intent (Matthew 5:21-48). He called for radical obedience, for a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). The Judge of the second coming will assess our lives by this very standard. He will separate the sheep from the goats based on acts of mercy done to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46). He will test the quality of each person’s work with fire (1 Corinthians 3:13).

The parable of the minas in Luke 19 is a stark picture of this. The nobleman (Yahusha) goes away to receive a kingdom. To his servants, he gives resources and says, “Engage in business until I come” (Luke 19:13, ESV). When he returns, he rewards the faithful servants who multiplied what was entrusted to them. But to the wicked servant who hid his mina out of fear, saying, “I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow,” the master replies, “I will condemn you with your own words” (Luke 19:21-22, ESV). And his judgment is severe. Furthermore, for the citizens who said, “We do not want this man to reign over us,” the command is, “Bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27, ESV).

This is the same Yahusha. The one who extends grace now will dispense justice then. His patience in this age is an invitation to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), not a license for lawlessness.

The Shaking and the Unshakable Kingdom

This is why the warning in Hebrews is so urgent: “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking… our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:25, 29, ESV). And, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens… in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:26-27, ESV).

Everything built on sand, on pride, on carnality (living by the fleshly nature), on love of self, money, and pleasure (2 Timothy 3:2-4)…will be shaken. Every kingdom, every institution, every life not founded on the Rock of hearing and doing His words (Luke 6:47-49) will suffer great ruin. The shaking is not random cruelty. It is the necessary, merciful removal of all that opposes the holy will of the Father so that His pure, unshakable Kingdom may be established.

We live in the tension between the two missions. We dwell in the grace of the first coming while the shadow of the second lengthens across our world. Our calling is not to terror, but to clear-eyed, sober-minded faithfulness. We are to build with gold, silver, and precious stones, the works of the Spirit, not with the wood, hay, and straw of the flesh (1 Corinthians 3:12). We are to move from carnality to spirituality, setting our minds on the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5).

The Reward of the Faithful

Let me end not with fear, but with the happiest note imaginable for those who know and love God…not just in words, but in the obedient doing.

For the faithful servant, the one who has heard the Master’s words and built upon the Rock, the second coming is not a threat. It is the blessed hope, the glorious appearing (Titus 2:13). It is the moment when the King returns to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21, ESV).

It is the final rectification of all wrongs. The end of suffering, injustice, and evil. The wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9). The restoration of all things. The wiping away of every tear (Revelation 21:4). It is the glorious fulfillment of the prayer Yahusha taught us: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, ESV).

The Rider on the white horse, with eyes of fire and a sword from His mouth, is also the Bridegroom coming for His spotless Bride. His judgment purges the world of all that defiles so that the New Jerusalem, where righteousness dwells, can come down (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:2). For the one who loves Him and keeps His commandments, this Judge is our Champion, our Vindicator, our coming King.

So, walk on, friends. Know the whole story. Worship the one true God…Father, Son, and Spirit…in the breathtaking fullness of who He is. Embrace the Savior who forgives you completely. Prepare for the Judge who will evaluate your life faithfully. Let your love for Him be proven by your obedience to Him. Build your life on the Rock of His words.

And when you see the signs of the times, the shaking that has begun, do not fear. Be grateful that you are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28). Offer to Yahuah the worship He truly desires: a life of reverence, awe, and willing obedience.

The Master sent His Son. He sent Him first to save us. He will send Him again to gather us, reward us, and reign with us forever. That is the good news, the whole, unshakable, glorious good news.

If Yahusha returned today to judge you, not your church, not your political party, not your religion, but you, where would you find yourself? This isn’t meant to scare you, but to make the future hope or warning…visceral and immediate. It’s a question I have to ask myself, too.

Would the gaze of those fiery eyes pass over you as wheat gathered into His barn, or would you be sorted out as a tare, fit only for the fire? Would the door to the wedding feast swing open for you, your lantern burning with the oil of faithful readiness, wick trimmed in expectation? Or would you be left outside in the darkness, your lamp empty and guttering out? When the Shepherd-King separates the nations, would you be placed on His right side with the sheep, or on His left with the goats?

These aren’t theoretical questions for a distant theology. They are the pressing, personal questions of a life built either on the rock of obedience or the sand of presumption. His return is the fixed point toward which all of history is moving. The only question that remains is: On which side of that line will I be found?

It all comes down to the condition of your heart today, revealed not by your words, but by your walk. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21, ESV).

“And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:22-23, ESV)”

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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Almost two years, as I write this. Two years since the ground beneath my feet shifted from the firm, familiar topsoil of inherited belief to the solid, unyielding bedrock of a Person. That’s how I mark time now: not by calendars, but by the distance traveled on a path I never knew was there until I stumbled onto it.

For those of you who have been walking this Way for decades, this might all be Captain Obvious stuff. Feel free to walk on ahead. I’m just pausing here at this almost two-year marker to catch my breath and look back at the terrain I’ve crossed. It’s less a sermon and more a trail report from a fellow pilgrim who’s still breaking in his boots.

The first thing I had to understand, the thing that caused all the initial spiritual friction, was the simple, seismic difference between being a “Christian” and being a “walker of the Way.”

For most of my life, “Christian” would have been how I self-identified. My sisters and I were raised Catholic and went to Catholic schools our whole lives. It was a heritage. A family name. A box checked on a form. It was a set of ideas I agreed with, mostly. It was a cultural identity, worn like a comfortable sweater. It required little from me except a general assent and an appearance on certain holidays.

But “a walker of the Way”? That’s what I’ve become. Or rather, what I’m becoming. The difference isn’t semantic. It’s ontological. It’s the difference between owning a map of a mountain and actually climbing it. Between admiring a portrait and entering into a relationship with the Person painted.

Yahusha didn’t say, “I am a set of correct doctrines.” He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, ESV). The Way is a Person. To walk it is to follow Him. Your life’s trajectory, your moral compass, your very hope, gets re-anchored. Not in a philosophy, but in a living Guide.

This path has a name: the narrow way. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14, ESV). I used to think “narrow” meant restrictive, like a set of picky rules. Now I see it means specific. It is the path of obedience to a King, not the suggestion box of a culture. It’s the difference between Kingdom Law and Empire Law, and you feel that tension in your bones every single day.

The early church knew this. They didn’t call themselves “Christians” at first. That was a label slapped on them by outsiders in Antioch (Acts 11:26). Their own name for themselves was “the Way” (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 23). It was their identity. It meant their entire life…ethics, community, purpose, was oriented around following this Person, Yahusha. It marked them as distinct, separate, a people whose citizenship was elsewhere. They were “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11, ESV).

That’s what I’ve learned: walking the Way isn’t a one-time decision you make at an altar. It’s a verb. It’s peripateō…to walk, to conduct one’s life. “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Ephesians 4:1, ESV). “Walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16, ESV). It’s active, continuous, daily. You don’t arrive; you journey.

And this journey, I’ve learned, is not a group tour on a luxury coach. It’s a custom-tailored trek. Getting to know Yahuah isn’t a one-and-done download. We will never, in these skin-and-bone bodies, know all there is to know about Him. This walk is an evolutionary process. By His grace, He pulls back the curtain on more truth, and as He does, we know our Father more. Some call it “spiritual growth.” My curve and direction will look different from yours. Why? Because the Designer knows His creation. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13, ESV). He knows the path that will best shape me into the image of His Son, and it won’t be the same path He uses for you.

We think we know the best configuration for our lives. We use our “free will” like a machete to carve our own paths through the jungle, convinced this is freedom. Unbeknownst to us, that’s precisely what the enemy wants. “Do as thou wilt,” he whispers, the oldest lie in the book. We’ve been deceived into believing “freedom to sin” is superior to “freedom from sin.” It’s the repeating pattern of rebellion, from Eden to today.

So, what does this daily walk actually look like on the ground, two years in? It looks shockingly small.

For months, I told people…I told myself, “God has me in a holding pattern.” I was waiting for the big move, the clear sign, the divine detour. I felt stagnant. Then I realized: the holding pattern was my blindness. I was looking for the earthquake, the parting sea. God was working in grains of sand. One obedient choice. One resisted temptation. One silent prayer offered instead of a complaint launched. One small kindness to a stranger. Day by day, grain by grain. I was waiting for a skyscraper to appear; He was laying a foundation, brick by tiny brick.

He taught me the staggering importance of the small obediences. The “nudges” you almost ignore. The phone call you feel prompted to make. The apology that sticks in your throat. I’ve seen, in heartbreaking clarity, how my disobedience in a small thing, something that made no sense to my limited view, can deprive someone else of a blessing, an answered prayer, a moment of grace. We are connected in ways we cannot see. Our obedience is never just about us.

He reshaped my understanding of worship. Praise isn’t the rigid pursuit of man-made doctrine or the hollow performance of tradition. It’s walking through my days as His image-bearer. It’s exemplifying how a loved son moves through moments. Does a loved son gripe about his Father’s provision? Does he cut corners on the tasks his Father sets? No. He moves with trust, with gratitude, representing his Father’s character in every interaction.

He redefined “church” for me. My church isn’t a corporation, a building, or an appointment on my calendar. My church is the people I encounter as I move through the day. The cashier, the neighbor, the delivery driver, the stranger in line. They are my parish. My pulpit is the sidewalk, the checkout lane, my own front porch.

And love. Oh, He expanded love until it broke my old containers. Love isn’t a warm feeling I reserve for those who are easy to love. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20, ESV). Love is the conscious choice to see the image of God in the homeless man, the angry clerk, the offensive relative, the annoying neighbor. When my emotions are stoked, I’ve learned to hit pause. To seek the Spirit. My most frequent prayer has become, “Lord, I’m feeling ______. Help me understand what You want me to understand here, and show me what You want me to do.” Then I wait. I get still. And He answers. Not always with thunder, but with a recalibration of my heart.

I’ve also realized Yahuah speaks a custom language to each of His children. The way He speaks to me…through a sudden clarity in scripture, through a quiet nudge in my conscience, through the beauty of a sunrise that feels like a personal note, won’t be the same way He speaks to you. And just when I think I’ve learned His vocabulary for me, He uses a new dialect. More than once, I’ve whispered in awe, “I didn’t know You could speak to me that way.” He is endlessly creative. “But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth,” He told Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:27, ESV). He opens our ears, too, in unique ways.

All this walking has made the enemy’s tactics painfully clear. In our culture, his most effective tools are deception and distraction. He doesn’t usually attack with obvious horror; he seduces with plausible substitutes. He convinces us we’re pleasing God when we’re actually just polishing the empire’s idols. We get distracted by “foolish controversies… quarrels about the law,” which are “unprofitable and worthless” (Titus 3:9, ESV). We bicker over the shiny things of Babylon while Rome burns. We mistake cultural battles for spiritual warfare.

The enemy’s playbook hasn’t changed since Eden. “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3, ESV). He twists truth just enough. He offers a broader, more popular path. Here’s a hard truth I’ve had to swallow: if the majority of the people around you are moving in the same direction you are, you’re probably not on the narrow path. The wide road is popular for a reason.

So, after two years, what do I understand?

I understand that walking the Way means my faith has moved from my head to my feet. It’s not what I think; it’s where I’m going and how I’m getting there.

I understand that the journey is custom-made by a Father who knows me better than I know myself.

I understand that the “big” work of God usually happens in the small, daily obedience I’m tempted to overlook.

I understand that my church is everywhere my feet take me, and my worship is how I treat the people I meet there.

I understand that love is a decision to see Yahuah’s image in every face, especially the difficult ones.

I understand that the enemy’s greatest victory is making me think I’m serving God while I’m actually just serving myself in a religious costume.

And I understand that the path is narrow, often lonely, but it is the only one that leads to Life.

The walk continues. The road is hard. But the Guide is good. And I am, finally, no longer just a Christian. I am, by His grace, a walker of the Way.

Where does your path feel narrowest right now? Is it in a relationship, a habit, a belief you’re being asked to shed? That might be exactly where the real walking begins.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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I say it often. Maybe you’ve said it, too. “God has me in a holding pattern.” It slips out with a sigh, a shrug, a feeling of spiritual treadmiller. The scenery isn’t changing. The breakthrough hasn’t broken. The big sign hasn’t appeared. It feels like a succession of Groundhog Days, where the only movement is the sun rising and setting on the same set of unresolved prayers.

But let me ask us both a blunt question: Is it true?

When I use that phrase, what I’m really confessing is my blindness. I am blind to the things God is doing around me, in me, through me. My expectation is calibrated for the earthquake, the parting sea, the shout from heaven. So when the day passes in quiet obedience, in unseen resistance, in a small kindness offered, I file it under “Nothing Happened.” I miss the work because I’m looking for the wrong kind of worker.

But when I look back…really look back, through the rearview mirror of my life, those stretches I labeled “holding patterns” were nothing of the sort. God was there. He was just doing His work in small bites. Day-by-day, grain-by-grain construction.

Think of it like a beach with no sand. You stand on empty, hard-packed dirt. God places one grain of sand on that shore. Just one. The next day, He adds another. And another. Each day, a single grain. You walk that shore every morning and perceive no difference. The landscape seems static. You sigh and think, “Still here. Still waiting. Holding pattern.”

But months pass. Years pass. And one day you wake up, and you’re standing on a beach. A vast, golden, sun-warmed beach. You enjoy it. You walk on it, have picnics on it, meditate on its beauty. You forget the empty shore entirely. You forget the daily, imperceptible delivery. Because the finished product is so complete, so grand, you assume it must have arrived all at once. You missed the building because you were waiting for a building crew, not a patient, persistent Artist placing one grain at a time.

We do this. We set out each new day looking for the big “God move.” We want the Kairos moment, the Damascus road light, the prison-shaking earthquake. And when a time, times, and half a time goes by without it, we conclude we’re on pause. We overlook the small, the miniscule, the quiet miracle of incremental grace.

But Scripture is the story of the grain, not just the harvest. “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants” (Matthew 13:31-32, ESV). The work starts invisibly small. “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness” (2 Corinthians 9:10, ESV). The multiplication happens in His hands, over His time, often outside our sight.

We hear a lot about pruning. Cutting off dead branches. Purifying hearts in the furnace. And that’s true, He is a refiner’s fire. But there are two sides to His work. While He is cutting here, He is also building there. While He is simplifying one area, He is multiplying another. That multiplication often feels like a holding pattern because it lacks the drama of the cut.

So as we step into this new week, let’s adjust our eyes. Let’s be mindful of the grain of sand being added to our shoreline today. Did you choose patience over irritation? That’s a grain. Did you offer a silent prayer instead of a complaint? That’s a grain. Did you faithfully do the small, unseen task He set before you? That’s a grain. Give thanks for it. It only seems small because you lack the hindsight of a thousand tomorrows that will reveal the majestic coastline He is crafting.

If you think you’re in a holding pattern this season, stop looking for the air traffic controller’s signal. Look down. Look for the single grain of sand. Thank the Most High for it. Understand this: you are not in a waiting room. You are on the work site. And the Architect is always, always on the job.

What is one “grain of sand” you can identify from yesterday that you might have previously dismissed as nothing?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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This is the portrait of the covenant. This is us. We are Gomer. We pledged ourselves to a faithful God at Sinai and then sprinted toward every Baal we could find. We called it freedom. He called it whoredom.

The heart of Hosea is the heart of God, ripped open and bleeding on the page. “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her… And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth” (Hosea 2:14-15, ESV). Despite our betrayal, His love pursues. He doesn’t disown. He woos. He disciplines to restore. “How can I give you up, O Ephraim?… My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8, ESV).

But here’s the crushing weight of Hosea: the prophet’s story, and by extension God’s story with Israel, ends with a plea, not a finale. The final chapter is a desperate prayer from a broken people: “Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips… I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely” (Hosea 14:2, 4, ESV). It is a cry for a healing not yet realized. It is a covenant still fractured, a marriage still in need of a final, perfect reconciliation. Hosea buys Gomer back from the slave market (Hosea 3:2), a powerful picture of redemption, but the story’s final note is one of longed-for healing, not declared completion.

The story hangs there, unresolved, for centuries.

Then, on a Roman execution device, a man with nail-torn hands speaks three words that rush into that ancient, aching silence: “It is finished” (John 19:30, ESV). Tetelestai. Paid in full.

In that moment, Hosea’s prophetic marriage finds its eternal bridegroom. The love that allured an adulterous people into the wilderness was now sealed with blood. The price Hosea paid in silver and barley to buy back his wife was a shadow of the price Yahusha paid in His own life to buy back His church. The plea of Hosea 14 “heal our apostasy” was answered with a declaration from the cross: “Healed.”

Hosea ends with a prayer for restoration. Revelation ends with its proclamation: “It is done!” (Revelation 21:6, ESV). The first completes redemption; the second completes restoration. Together, they bookend what Hosea could only prophesy.

We are Gomer. Loved while we were still whores. Bought back at a price no prophet could afford. The covenant we broke has been repaired by the only One who could keep it. Our story is no longer one of cyclical adultery and temporary return. It is one of a finished work. The marriage is secured. The vow is eternally kept.

The question Hosea leaves us with is answered by the cross: “How can I give you up?” The answer is, “He didn’t.” He finished it.

Will we live like the purchased bride, or like we’re still for sale?

How can God tell one from the other?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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This piece is for the man I was a year and a half ago. I was that guy, hungry for real community, turning over every stone I found in the traditional places…the Bible study circles, the Sunday morning pews. And in most of them, I felt it. A grating, a resistance, a spiritual friction that made my soul feel like it was rubbing against sandpaper.

I didn’t understand it then. I thought the problem was me. But this message is what I’ve since learned about that friction. It wasn’t a flaw in my seeking. It was a signal.

We must begin with a simple, staggering fact: God makes covenants. He binds Himself. He speaks reality into being with His words and then, in a move of breathtaking grace, He includes us in the story. The first covenant, what many call the Old Testament, was a masterclass in His patient, pedagogical heart. It had many parts…land, law, blessing, curse. But I want to talk about its beating heart: the priesthood.

Under that first covenant, the system had a specific, God-ordained plumbing. Sin created a breach between a holy God and His people. The repair, the atonement, flowed through a specific channel: the Levitical priesthood. Aaron, Moses’ brother, a great-grandson of Levi, was chosen. His sons after him were chosen. They were the Kohanim. They stood in the gap. They took the blood of bulls and goats, they entered the tabernacle, they made intercession. It was a sacred, solemn, and utterly temporary system. It was a picture, a shadow, a tutor leading us to the substance.

Think of the lineage. Abraham, our father in the faith, paid a tithe to a mysterious priest-king named Melchizedek. Five generations later, Abraham’s descendant Aaron puts on the sacred ephod. From Abraham to Aaron: Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, Amram, Aaron. The line is clear, human, traceable.

But Melchizedek… there’s the rub. The Scripture gives him no genealogy. No beginning of days, no end of life. He appears in Genesis 14 as “priest of God Most High” and then vanishes. He is of a different order. A higher order. Abraham, the patriarch, the one holding the promise, paid homage to him. The writer of Hebrews lays it bare: the lesser (Levi, still in Abraham’s loins) pays tithes to the greater (Melchizedek). The Levitical priesthood, for all its God-given glory, was established by “a law of a fleshly commandment” (Hebrews 7:16, ESV). It was based on physical descent. It was mortal. It was repetitive.

Melchizedek’s priesthood was based on the “power of an indestructible life” (Hebrews 7:16, ESV).

Do you see it? The first covenant contained, within its own sacred text, a blueprint for its own obsolescence. It pointed to a priesthood not of tribe, but of triumph. Not of lineage, but of life itself.

Then came the New Covenant. The New Testament. And with it, the gospel, the good news that shatters every earthly system.

The gospel is this: Yahusha the Messiah, the Son of God, died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and was raised to life on the third day. Through faith in Him, we receive forgiveness and are reconciled to God (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, ESV).

This single, historical, earth-shattering event changed everything. It rendered the old plumbing obsolete. Why? Because God provided the final, perfect, and complete sacrifice: Himself. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The same sacrifice He provided in the thicket for Abraham, sparing Isaac, He did not spare for Himself. He gave His only Son.

In short, the gospel declares our new High Priest: Yahusha. He is our one mediator. He is the intermediator between God and man. And His priesthood is not after the order of Aaron. It is “after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 5:6, ESV). Eternal. Unchanging. Based on an indestructible life, proven by His resurrection.

This is where our feet must hit the pavement of our daily lives. When we insert any other mediator between ourselves and the Father, be it a person, a ritual, a system, a tradition, what are we saying with our actions? We are saying, “Yahuah, the sacrifice of Your only begotten Son was insufficient. Your new and living way is not quite enough. I need something more, something else, something older.” We are, in effect, calling the crucifixion a waste and the empty tomb a nice gesture. How cruel is that? How utterly antithetical to the willful, explosive, finished expression of love that was the cross?

This is why the testimony is unanimous and unyielding:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, ESV).

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12, ESV).

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5, ESV).

He is the door. The only door. If anyone enters by Him, he will be saved (John 10:9, ESV).

This truth does not make us comfortable. It makes us distinct. It sets us apart. The Master sent servants, and we shunned and killed them. Then He sent His Son. To follow that Son is to inherit the world’s hatred. “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19, ESV).

We are meant to be visibly, undeniably different. We are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9, ESV). We are sojourners and exiles in a system built on a different covenant. We are the salt that stings the wound of the world’s corruption. We are the light that exposes its comfortable darkness. This is not optional. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2, ESV).

The enemy’s deepest deception is not outright atheism. It is a corrupted understanding of covenant. It is taking the beautiful, finished work of Yahusha and adding layers of human mediation back onto it. It is using fancy words to debate what “new” really means while clinging to old, broken systems. It is changing the potent, meaningful names…Yahuah, Yahusha, for generic titles like “Lord” and “God” that any pagan religion can use. It is smoothing out our distinct edges so we fit better into the empire’s machinery.

But we are not called to fit. We are called to follow. And He commanded us to “make disciples… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20, ESV).

This will look different for every walker of the Way. For some, the disciple-making is on a street corner with a voice raw from truth. For some, it is in the quiet sanctuary of a home, raising children in the fear and admonition of Yahuah. For some, it is in the faithful endurance of a difficult marriage, showing a covenant-keeping love. For some, it is in the radical generosity that pours out their resources for the sojourner and the poor. For some, it is in simply doing their job with such integrity and joy that it provokes a question: “Why are you different?”

The method is as varied as the members of the Body. But the message is singular: Yahusha the Messiah, our Eternal High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, has opened a new and living way through His flesh. The old system of tribe and temple and temporary atonement is fulfilled, finished, and swallowed whole by a better hope.

So come. Come boldly. Not because you have the right lineage, but because you have the right Priest. Not because you have offered the right sacrifice, but because He has. You don’t need a human go-between. You have the Son. He is the door. Walk through Him, and find pasture. The law of a fleshly commandment has been superseded by the power of an indestructible life.

That life is mine and yours, by faith. Now go live like the royal priest you are.

What aspect of the old, earthly system do you find yourself most often trying to rely on, instead of resting in the finished work of your Eternal High Priest?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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Shashue Monrauch

This morning I want to re-tell an old story. You can find the original in the bible.

He created us. This is our beginning, the only fact that matters. Before memory, before time, before we knew our own names, He knew us. He formed us from dust and breathed His own life into us. We were His, born of a thought in the mind of God, fashioned for a purpose only He fully understood. This is not a metaphor. It is the bedrock.

Then, He made a promise. A covenant. He said, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” He came to us, the Son of Man, and etched this relationship in stone and spirit. The terms were not hidden in fine print. They were declared from a mountain, whispered to the prophets, lived in the flesh by the Messiah. The deal was breathtaking in its simplicity: He would be our protector, our provider, our guide, our very life. He would do certain things for us…provision, protection, presence…forever.

There was one condition. One. It was not a list of rituals. It was not a demand for perfection. It was the only thing a being who is Love itself could ask for: that we would freely, willfully love Him in return. Not because we had to. Not because we were coerced. But because we saw His goodness, His beauty, His worth, and our hearts, of their own accord, turned toward Him like a flower to the sun.

So then, the question that defines every human life: How do we show Him that we freely, willfully love Him?

We obey His commands.

Don’t flinch. Don’t let your modern mind twist that into some grim, slavish transaction. Think of it like this: My mother loved me. I know this because she fed me when I was hungry. She held me when I was scared. She spoke truth to me, even when it stung. Her love was not just a feeling in her heart; it was an action in my world. Her love had a language. My obedience to God is the exact same thing. It is the language of my love for Him. If I say, “I love you, Yahuah,” but I carve my security from a piece of wood or a bank account, my words are a hollow gong. If I say, “You are my all,” but I treat the day He sanctified as just another slot in my calendar for productivity, I am speaking a lie. Love acts. Love does what pleases the Beloved. His commands are not a fence to keep us from joy; they are the very shape of joy itself, the instruction manual for a heart synchronized with its Maker. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV).

We seek Him for guidance in all our ways and deeds. Not as a last resort, but as the first breath of every morning. “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:6, ESV). This is the posture of love: a constant turning of the face, a perpetual, “What would you have me do here?” It is relational, moment-by-moment dependence. This is how we show our love is free and willful…we choose, again and again, to consult Him, to listen, to submit our small plans to His great one.

This was the way. This was the simple, beautiful, difficult dance of covenant love.

Then, the empire arrives. It always does. It did in the Garden, whispering, “Did God really say…?” It did in the wilderness, with a golden calf conjured before the echo of Sinai’s thunder had faded. It has happened so many times that the pattern is worn into the fabric of our history like a stain. The empire watches this intimate dance of love, this obedience, this seeking…and it finds it… inefficient. Unruly. A threat to its own authority. The empire cannot tolerate a higher loyalty.

So it begins its work, patient and corrosive. It convinces Yahuah’s children, that they no longer need to do these things, these specific, covenantal things, to show Yahuah they love Him. “That’s the old way,” it murmurs, smooth as polished marble. “That’s for a simpler time. We have progress now. We have enlightenment.” The empire offers a swap: keep the feeling of love for God, but outsource the expression of that love to a new manager. To the empire itself.

The slow, meticulous con reaches its apex. The empire, with its scholars and its systems, convinces the children that the very terms of the covenant have… evolved. Changed. Been updated. “Follow these new laws,” it proclaims, pointing to its own constitutions, its legal codes, its societal norms. “These will please Yahuah just the same. This is the new, improved way to show Him your freely, willfully offered love. Be a good citizen. Pay your taxes. Vote. Consume. Follow the program. This is how you honor Me now,” it says, stealing the divine pronoun.

And so, Yahuah’s children, now thoroughly confused, begin to build. They conjure governments. They draft constitutions. They erect vast, humming bureaucracies. And here is the devilish genius of it all: these new systems are not obviously evil. They look a lot like Yahuah’s laws. They borrow the vocabulary. They speak of “justice,” “order,” “rights,” “freedom,” “liberty.” They outlaw murder and theft (mostly). They pay lip service to family. But they are a forgery. They are close to Yahuah’s laws, but they are eternally, fatally far from the same, because their source is not holy. Their foundation is human sovereignty, not divine.

Look at the substitution, line by line. I see it every day.

The Kingdom says, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3, ESV). The Empire enshrines secular pluralism, where the state is the final arbiter of truth and the marketplace of ideas is the highest altar. Our ultimate allegiance is legally redirected to the nation, the ideology, the economy.

The Kingdom says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8, ESV). The Empire builds a 24/7 economy where rest is a commodity you purchase, and ceasing work is a luxury or a sign of laziness. The rhythm of grace is replaced by the grind of production.

The Kingdom says, “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12, ESV). The Empire asserts the state’s parens patriae power, positioning government experts as the ultimate authority over a child’s upbringing, education, and values, overriding parental wisdom with bureaucratic decree.

The Kingdom says, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13, ESV). The Empire legally protects the destruction of life in the womb as a right and, in many places, claims for itself the authority to take life as punishment, a power never granted to any human court in the Torah.

The Kingdom says, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14, ESV). The Empire gives us no-fault divorce and a culture that celebrates fornication, severing sex from covenant and making a mockery of the sacred.

The Kingdom commands just weights and measures and forbids usury that preys on the poor (Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 19:35-36, ESV). The Empire constructs a labyrinthine financial system of hidden fees, predatory interest, and complex instruments designed to extract wealth legally, creating a permanent underclass.

This is the great deception. The enemy, in his depth, does not just create obvious evil. He creates a convincing imitation. He takes the good, holy law of God, adds a few of his own “improvements,” omits a few of the more “inconvenient” commands, and presents the whole package as a superior, updated model. “Follow these,” he says. “Be good empire citizens. This is what pleases God now.”

And we bought it. We bought it so completely that we forgot His very name. We replaced the Father’s name with a generic title. We excluded commandments that clashed with our commerce and altered others to fit our politics. We took the language of covenant and used it to bless our own ambitions. The Psalmist’s cry becomes our own haunting reality: “I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not your commandments from me!” (Psalm 119:19, ESV). We forgot we were sojourners. We tried to become citizens of the wrong kingdom.

And voilà. We have “Human Civilization 2026.” A world gleaming with technological marvels and starving for truth. A society connected by invisible networks and utterly disconnected from the Source of life. We have built a tower whose pinnacle reaches cloud servers in the sky, and we cannot understand why we feel so lost, so anxious, so angry, so alone. The machinery hums, but the soul of the thing is dead. Society is broken because it is built on a broken covenant. It has exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man (Romans 1:23, ESV).

Some see it. Some with open eyes and unstopped ears look at the polished despair of our age and know, in their bones, that this is not how it was meant to be. They see the cracks in the empire’s façade. Some even understand why it’s broken, they have traced the sickness back to the source, back to the moment we accepted the counterfeit covenant.

This few, this remnant, does the only sane thing left to do. They turn from the noise of the empire and reach out, in the quiet, to the Almighty. They fall on their faces, as Isaiah did, and cry, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5, ESV). And they ask the one question that can save a life: “What can I do?”

The answer comes, not in a new program or a fresh political strategy, but as an echo from eternity. It is the same answer given to every generation that has wandered into the empire’s maze: “Go back to the source.”

It’s all been written. It’s all been prophesied. Unlike Adam, unlike the children of Israel in the desert, unlike the kings of Judah, we have the benefit of their errors in writing. We have the entire story, the glorious beginnings, the catastrophic failures, the patient restorations. We have the Law that shows us our sickness. We have the Prophets who diagnosed it. We have the Gospels that offer the cure. We have the letters that explain the recovery. We have the Revelation that shows us how it all ends.

We have the pattern, clear as day, if we would but look. We have the story of Daniel and his friends, youths taken into the very heart of the Babylonian empire. They were given new names, fed the king’s food, taught the empire’s language and literature. Yet “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank” (Daniel 1:8, ESV). Their first act of resistance was a quiet, steadfast adherence to the covenantal boundaries of their God. They remembered the source. And God gave them favor and wisdom that outshone all the empire’s wise men.

This is our call. Not to storm the capitols, but to step out of the system’s feast. Not to rage against the machine, but to quietly resolve not to be defiled by it. To remember our true identities and our redeemer. To recover the discarded commands. To relearn the language of covenantal love, the love that shows itself in obedience and seeks guidance in all things.

The empire will rage. It will call you archaic, judgmental, a threat to the new harmony. Let it. You are not a citizen of the empire. You are a redeemed citizen of Yahuah’s Kingdom, a sojourner just passing through. Your allegiance was purchased at a price no empire could ever match. Your law is written on your heart by the Spirit, not on parchment by committees. Your Sabbath is a weekly gift, not just a day on a calendar.

So go back to the source. Read the story again. See the pattern. Hear the call. Let His Word be a lamp to your feet and a light to your path (Psalm 119:105, ESV) through the empire’s gathering darkness. The covenant still stands. The offer of love-for-love remains. The only question is which set of laws will you live by, the Kingdom’s, which lead to life, or the empire’s, which promise everything and deliver dust and lawlessness?

The choice, as it always has been, is ours.

What is the first commandment you feel the empire has most convincingly asked you to forget?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

4 Citations

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The Only Constant Episode 028 - Shashue Monrauch

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I am sharing a variation of my prayer from this morning.

As I spoke the words, a specific name surfaced in my heart, a person I realized I hadn’t fully forgiven. In that moment, I repented, released the debt in prayer, and lifted that individual up. The act was less about them and more about a chain being dropped from my own soul.

So, if a face or a name comes to mind as you read this, don’t dismiss it as random. Listen. It may be the Spirit’s gentle nudge toward your own liberation.

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14, ESV)

Forgiveness isn’t a favor we grant another; it’s the freedom we grant ourselves.

Is there a name that surfaces for you today?

A Sunday morning prayer.

Good morning, Father Most High,

Hallowed, set-apart is Your name, here and nigh.

Your kingdom come, Your will be done,

On this spinning earth, beneath our sun,

As it is in heaven, where Your reign’s never undone.

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive our trespasses, as Your Word has said.

As we forgive those who’ve trespassed against us,

Teach us to release, without fret or fuss.

So, Father, I ask, search this heart of mine,

For any hidden grudge, any bitter line.

If there is one whom I hold unforgiven,

Shine Your light there, let that prison be riven.

I forgive them now, I release the debt,

For the one who wronged me, I won’t fret.

He is a good man, a family man, it’s true,

His problem with me is not mine to construe.

You are in him, just as You are in me,

We’re both Your creations, though broken we be.

Not sinless in my eyes, nor I in Yours,

We stand in the shadow of heaven’s opened doors.

But by grace, by mercy, Abba, so sweet,

By Yahusha’s sacrifice, laid at Your feet,

We are saved through Your resurrection, made complete.

Thank You, Father, for peace in this season’s embrace,

A stillness of soul, a gift of Your grace.

I pray now for loved ones, near and afar,

Bring clarity of thought, a circumcised heart.

Facilitate a path for their eyes to see,

The love that You are, that You’ve shown to me.

I believe Your timing is perfect, divine,

Your sovereign will in its own design.

May this simple prayer, in its imperfect rhyme,

Find its place within Your perfect time.

For I’ve come to see, in my walk so frail,

Your logic in moments will often veil.

We can’t understand the work that You do,

In the midst of the storm, in the grey and the blue.

But in the rearview mirror, looking back on the road,

Your purpose shines clear, Your mercy bestowed.

So I trust in this moment, though the picture is dim,

I trust in the path, though the edges are grim.

Give me ears to hear Your whisper, soft and low,

Give me courage, Father, Your commands to sow.

Give me a softened heart, pliable and true,

To walk through these days reflecting only You.

An image-bearer of Yahuah, honest and kind,

In the mighty, majestic name I find,

Yahusha the Messiah, just and loving, I pray,

Take these words, this heart, this new- dawning day.

Amen.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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I sometimes watch and listen to the testimonies of how other walkers of the way come to their understanding of certain truths. I know they are truths because the Holy Spirit has led me to those same ones…the non-negotiables, the bedrock principles of our faith. Yet, I listen to their specific stories, their moments of revelation, their battles and breakthroughs, and their path is so wildly different from the one the Holy Spirit carved for me.

I make this point here because I come across these same truths written by other believers, and the journey they describe…the prayers, the struggles, the specific scriptures that landed like a thunderclap is nothing like my own. Their road to Damascus looked nothing like mine. Their wilderness had different terrain. Their wrestling match with Yahuah used a completely different set of moves.

For a while, this bothered me. Did I miss something? Was my path less valid? Less dramatic? Less… spiritual?

Then it hit me, quiet as a morning whisper: this is the point.

Yahuah knows us better than we know ourselves. He knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. He knows the unique texture of our doubt, the specific shape of our pride, the exact frequency of our fear. So why would He use a one-size-fits-all curriculum to teach us? He is the Master Creative Artist, as I wrote about recently. He doesn’t mass-produce disciples on an assembly line. He hand-crafts each one.

Think of it this way: two students can arrive at the same mathematical truth, say, the Pythagorean theorem. One gets there through geometric proofs, manipulating shapes and angles. The other gets there through algebraic equations, balancing numbers and variables. The destination is identical: a² + b² = c². But the journeys? Completely different. The teacher used different tools because He knew how each student’s mind worked.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…”

(Jeremiah 1:5, ESV)

He knew you. Intimately. Personally. So His instruction is personal. Your “curriculum” is custom-tailored.

The enemy wants us to believe there’s only one valid spiritual biography: the dramatic conversion on the road, the audible voice in the storm, the instant healing, the prophetic dream sequence. And if your story doesn’t match that template, you start to question its authenticity. This is a lie. It puts God in a box of our own limited imagination.

The truth is, Yahuah will lead you through the valleys He knows you need to walk to kill the specific giants in your heart. He will assign you the battles that will forge the exact strength your calling requires. He will whisper the scriptures that will unravel the particular knots in your soul.

My path to understanding surrender involved caregiving for my mother in silence. Yours might involve public ministry or private loss. My lesson in humility came through hidden financial provision. Yours might come through public failure or quiet success. The truth we both land on “God is sovereign, and my trust must be in Him alone” is the same. The paths to get there are as unique as our fingerprints.

This is why we must never assume that “the way He worked in me” is the only way He works. When we do that, we do two destructive things: First, we judge other believers whose stories don’t mirror ours, creating division where there should be unity in truth. Second, we limit God, reducing His infinite creativity to a single, predictable pattern.

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6, ESV)

Varieties. Diversities. Different workings. Same God.

I love reading the testimonies of other faithful servants. I am often awed, sometimes baffled, always encouraged by how God does His “God things.” But I never assume my path and testimony will be or should be identical to the next servant’s.

So, take heart if your journey feels lonely or strange. If your “aha” moments came in the laundry room instead of the church sanctuary. If your most profound healing happened over months of quiet prayer, not in a single shouted command. Your curriculum is yours alone, designed by a Teacher who knows exactly how you learn.

He is painting a masterpiece with billions of individual brushstrokes. You are one of them. Your color, your placement, your texture is unique. But you are part of the same painting. Trust the Artist. He knows what He’s doing with you.

That is all. And thank you for reading.

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A few pieces went out from me these past few weeks. You can find a few of them below. For everything in one place, my site holds the archive.

The Word in the Vineyard

When the Living Truth Arrives, and the Tenants Choose the Curse

The questions that has been buzzing like gnats around me in the summer heat these past few weeks, even months…“What’s next? Where will you go? What will you do?” have settled for a moment. In this stillness, a single word has been echoing, a word I thought I understood but am only now beginning to feel in the marrow of my faith.

Logos.

It’s a word we render as “Word.” In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We read it, we nod, we move on. But I’ve been circling it, this capital-W Word. It is not a spoken sentence or a written command. It is the divine will and intention of Yahuah, Elohim. It is the active, creative, ordering principle of all that is. The Logos is what God means. It is His intent made manifest.

And Yahuah sent His Logos to us. Wrapped in flesh. Bearing the full weight of His divine will. He sent His Son.

This is the story that has been burning in me. It’s the story behind every story, the parable beneath every prophecy. It’s the story of the vineyard. And I think, perhaps, we have missed the terrifying, glorious point.

I. The Owner’s Heart

The parable is simple. Brutally so.

“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country.” (Matthew 21:33, ESV)

See the Owner’s labor. He doesn’t just find a vineyard; He creates it. He plants. He fences. He digs. He builds. Every provision for abundance, for security, for productivity is His doing. The tenants inherit a finished system, a world already humming with potential. Their job is simple: tend what is His and return to Him the fruit in its season.

Yahua and Yahusha, what they mean to me. Read this 👇🏿👇🏿🙏🏿✝🕊

This is the covenant. This is the relationship. “I have done the work,” says Yahuah. “I have given you everything you need. Live according to my design, and there will be life, blessing, peace.” The terms are not hidden. They are proclaimed from mountains, written on stone, woven into the fabric of a world that sings of its Maker.

The Owner then goes to another country. He grants them agency. Stewardship. He gives them space to choose: will they be faithful tenants, or will they play at ownership?

For a long time, I read this as a story about ancient Israel. It is. But it is also about me. It is about you. The vineyard is your life. Your breath. Your gifts. Your time. This world. He planted it. He put a fence of laws and boundaries around it for our protection. He dug the winepress of consequence, action and reaction. He built the tower of His watchful care. Then He leased it to us. He went into the heavenlies, but He never abdicated ownership.

We are all tenants.

II. The Servants Sent

When the season for fruit drew near, the Owner sent His servants.

“When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.” (Matthew 21:34-35, ESV)

These servants are the prophets. They are the living reminders of the covenant, the embodied call to return, to give Yahuah what is His. They speak His Word, His Logos, into the vineyard. “Remember the Owner,” they cry. “Remember the terms of your lease. Your life, your abundance, is not your own. It is a gift, held in trust.”

And what do the tenants do? They beat them. Kill them. Stone them. They reject the message because to accept it is to acknowledge they are not owners. It is to surrender their illusion of control.

For centuries, this was the pattern. The Owner, in His patient, longsuffering mercy, sent more servants. The result was the same. The tenants grew violent in their defiance. The vineyard, designed for sweet wine, began to produce the bitter fruit of rebellion.

Why? Because the Logos, the Word of the Owner, is an inconvenience. It is a claim on their autonomy. It tells them the fruit is not theirs to hoard.

III. The Son: The Logos Made Flesh

Finally, the Owner makes a decisive move. He has one left to send: His beloved Son.

“They will respect my son,” he says. (Matthew 21:37)

He sends the Son, thinking, “Surely, they will see Him and remember. They will see my image in Him and yield.”

But the tenants see the Son and their thinking reveals the core disease of every human heart apart from grace: “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.” (Matthew 21:38)

They believe that by eliminating the Heir, the living representation of the Owner’s claim, the vineyard will become theirs. If they can destroy the living Word, the living Will, then they can be free of the claim altogether. The illusion of ownership will become reality.

This is not just a story about first-century Jews and Romans. This is the story of the Logos in every age.

Who is the Son? He is Yahusha the Messiah. But before He was Yahusha of Nazareth, He was the Word.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1, ESV)

The prophets carried the message of the Word. The Son is the Message. He is the divine will and intention of Yahuah walking on two feet. He is the covenant made flesh. He is the living, breathing claim of God upon His vineyard.

The Scriptures laid out His arrival with meticulous clarity. He was not a surprise.

He was the Servant in whom Yahuah’s soul delights, upon whom His Spirit rests (Isaiah 42:1).

He was the covenant for the people, a light for the nations (Isaiah 42:6).

He was the righteous Branch from David, who would execute justice and righteousness (Jeremiah 23:5).

He was the one anointed to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted (Isaiah 61:1).

He was the prophet like Moses, to whom they must listen, who would speak only the words Yahuah put in His mouth (Deuteronomy 18:15-18).

He was the one like a son of man, given dominion and an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14).

Yahuah sent His Son, bearing His divine will and walking with His full authority, because His will was the will of His Father.

“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’” (John 5:19, ESV)

“For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.” (John 12:49, ESV)

“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” (John 7:16, ESV)

Yahusha’s every word, every deed, every silent prayer, every touch of healing, was the Logos in action. He was the Owner’s will, incarnate, walking through His own vineyard. He was the living, breathing “This is what I meant.” He was the embodiment of the original design for the vineyard: love, obedience, perfect submission to the Father’s purpose.

He was the true Tenant, showing us how to live in the vineyard as it was meant to be.

IV. The Rejection: Killing the Word

And what did the tenants do?

They took him out of the vineyard and killed him.

They scorned Him. They scoffed. They tortured, humiliated, and murdered Him. Just as the parable foretold.

We look back now, with the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight and eighty-plus books of compiled Scripture, and we ask the rhetorical question: How could they not see? How could they not recognize their Messiah?

We judge them. We cluck our tongues at the chief priests and the Pharisees. We marvel at their blindness.

But I do not judge them. Not anymore.

These things had to happen this way. Not only so that prophecy would be fulfilled, though it was. Not only to provide the spotless Lamb for the sacrifice, though He was.

I believe they happened this way because it was the one means for Yahuah to harvest the Jobs among His creation.

Think of Job. He was tested, refined in the fire of suffering, not because he was wicked, but because he was righteous. His faith was proven genuine, not in comfort, but in calamity. His story is not about why bad things happen to good people; it’s about how true faith survives when every visible reason for faith is stripped away.

The rejection and killing of the Son…the living Logos, was the ultimate test, the final sieve. It separated those who loved the idea of God from those who loved God Himself. It revealed who served the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and who served the god of their own tradition, their own power, their own vineyard.

When the perfect Will of God stood before them, speaking truth, offering life, demanding nothing but their acknowledged dependence, they could not tolerate it. They had to destroy it. Because to accept Him was to die to themselves. It was to admit they were tenants.

Their violent “No” was the necessary backdrop against which every feeble, faithful “Yes” would shine.

The remnant, the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, the ones who remained faithful, obedient servants to the end they saw. Perhaps not all at once, not without doubt and fear, but they saw. They were the ones who, when the Heir was cast out and killed, mourned. They were the ones who, after the resurrection, believed. They were the ones who finally understood: the vineyard was never theirs. Their hope was never in their tenure, but in the mercy of the Owner and the faithfulness of the Son.

The Kingdom was taken from the wicked tenants and given to “a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43). That people is not defined by ethnicity, but by faith. By their recognition of the Son and their willingness to give the Father His fruit.

V. The Remnant and the Narrow Path

This brings me to the haunting, sobering math of grace.

We are told that today, roughly 33% of the world’s population…about 2.4 billion people self-identifies as Christian. Is this the remnant? Is one, third of humanity the “few” who find the narrow gate?

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14, ESV)

A third of the planet is not “few.” A third of the planet is a multitude. The remnant, by its very definition, is a surviving fraction. A small group preserved after judgment.

I am coming to a painful, personal realization: the remnant is much, much smaller than 33%. The 2.4 billion includes every denomination, every cultural Christian, every person who checks a box on a form. It includes those who love the benefits of the vineyard, the sense of community, the moral framework, the cultural identity, but who have never bowed the knee to the Heir. Who have never surrendered their claim to the inheritance.

The remnant are those who, like Job, love Yahuah for who He is, not for what He gives. They are the ones who treat the Son, Yahusha, “with praise, honor, glory and gratitude, because He endured what He did so that we would have a template, an example of how we ought to walk in alignment with the divine will and intention of the Father.”

They are the ones who understand that the Logos is not a doctrine to be debated, but a life to be lived. A will to be obeyed.

So, how do we become part of that remnant? Not how do we identify as part of it, but how do we become it?

The answer is in the parable. It’s in the example of the Son.

1. Recognize the Heir. We must see Yahusha for who He truly is: not just a wise teacher, not just a moral example, but the living Logos of God. The exact representation of the Father’s will. The rightful Owner of the vineyard of our lives. This starts with a personal relationship, not a religious affiliation. “Do you know me?” He asks. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” (John 8:19).

2. Give Up the Illusion of Ownership. This is the daily death. We must crucify the tenant’s mentality that says, “This is my life, my time, my money, my plan.” We must say, daily, “I am a steward. This vineyard belongs to You. What fruit do You want from it today?” This is the prayer that answers every anxious “What’s next?” with “I will go where and when the Father asks.”

3. Guard the Gateways. How can we hear the Shepherd’s voice if our souls are flooded with the world’s noise? The Logos speaks in a “still, small voice.” We must guard what enters our eyes and ears. We must create the quiet space to be still and know that He is God. The enemy is also spiritual, and his primary tactic is not to make us wicked, but to make us distracted. Too busy to listen, too preoccupied to obey.

4. Obey in the Small Things. The Logos did not come with a thunderclap of radical demands for everyone. He started with small obediences. “Follow me.” “Give her a drink.” “Go show yourself to the priest.” Our boot camp with the Holy Spirit often begins here, in the seemingly insignificant nudges. The call to be kind when we want to be sharp. The urge to pray for a stranger. The discipline of turning off the screen and picking up the Word. These small “yeses” train our ears to hear and our wills to align.

5. Forgive as We Have Been Forgiven. The unforgiving servant is the ultimate wicked tenant. He accepts the master’s forgiveness of an unimaginable debt but then claims the right to exact payment on a petty debt owed to him. Holding onto grievances is a declaration of ownership. It says, “This justice is mine to administer.” To forgive is to acknowledge, “I am a tenant who has been forgiven much. I have no right to withhold what I have freely received.”

6. Seek the Fruit, Not the Inheritance. The wicked tenants wanted the inheritance, the vineyard itself, the stuff, the security, the autonomy. The faithful tenant seeks only to produce the fruit the Owner desires: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Our goal is not to own the field, but to please the Farmer.

VI. The Vineyard After the Storm

The parable ends with a question and an answer. Yahusha asks the chief priests, “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

They reply, correctly, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” (Matthew 21:40-41)

They pronounced their own judgment.

The Kingdom was taken from them and given to a people producing its fruits.

Where does that leave us? Here, today, in our own lives filled with questions and distractions?

We are the “other tenants.” We have been given the vineyard after the storm of rejection. The Heir was killed, but He will return. The Owner has entrusted His vineyard to a new generation of stewards. Us.

Our test is the same. The Logos is still here, it is in you and me. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and His Spirit now dwells within us. The divine will and intention of Yahuah is not a distant concept; it is a living being, the Holy Spirit, His Helper to guide us into all truth.

Every day, the Owner sends His Spirit to collect His fruit. Every day, we have a choice: do we beat, ignore, or kill the prompting? Or do we recognize the Heir in it and yield?

When the Spirit nudges you to forgive, that is the Logos asking for His fruit of peace.

When He prompts you to turn off the noise and pray, that is the Logos asking for His fruit of faithfulness.

When He convicts you of a long-held sin, that is the Logos asking for His fruit of repentance.

When He places a stranger in your path, that is the Logos asking for His fruit of kindness.

The remnant is not those who can recite doctrine. It is those whose lives are yielded to the will of the Father Most High, Yahuah. Those who, like the Son, can say, “I do nothing on my own authority… I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” (John 8:28-29).

The gate is narrow. The way is hard. Those who find it are few. But it is found not in a theological head-count, but in a surrendered heart. It is found in the quiet, daily, often unseen choice to be a faithful tenant in a world of wicked ones.

So today, as the world grinds back to its empire-building, as the questions about your future buzz around your head, remember:

You are a tenant. The Son is the Heir. The Logos is the rule of the house.

Your only job is to recognize Him when He comes, and to give the Father His fruit.

The rest is just noise.

Walk in that truth today, friends.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

From The Archives

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Shashue Monrauch