The air in my “office” (aka my garage, which doubles as my prayer closet, which doubles as my hiding place…well, you get it) is thick with a residue I can’t name. It isn’t anger. It’s the spiritual exhaust left in the soul when trying to walk in the Spirit collides, again, with the hard, messy edges of other broken image-bearers. People ar…

Read more

The coffee is hot, but my focus is not. I’ve read the same verse three times. My mind is a jumble of yesterday’s worries and tomorrow’s to-do list. The quiet time I carved out feels anything but quiet on the inside.

I remember not long ago, when my faith was new. I thought walking with God meant a constant, warm feeling. A steady stream of divine comfort. I didn’t know then that some days, faith feels like showing up to a silent room and sitting down anyway.

Jesus tells a story in Luke 18. He says, “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.” (Luke 18:7-8, ESV).

I read that and think, But I have been crying out. Where is the speed?

Then I see the next line. Jesus ends the parable with a question that smacks me in the back of my head: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Will He find faith? Not feeling. Not emotion. Not a perfectly curated quiet time.

Faith

It occurs to me that faith is not the absence of distraction. It is the choice to pray through it. It is see the world and its distractions for what they are and walking around them. It is not the certainty of an answer. It is the persistence to ask, day and night, when the answer seems far away. My job this morning isn’t to achieve spiritual clarity. My job is to be the persistent widow, knocking on Yahua’s door with my messy, distracted heart.

Maybe your mind is noisy today, too. Maybe your prayers feel like they’re hitting the ceiling. The call isn’t to fix the feeling first. The call is to faithfulness in the feeling. Show up. Read the verse a fourth time. Say the fractured prayer. The value is in the posture, not the poetry.

He sees you in the distraction. He hears the prayer behind the panic. Your persistent heart, even when it feels weak, is the faith He is looking for.

What ordinary distraction is competing for your focus today? Can you bring that very thing to Him in prayer, right now?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

This article was partly inspired by two articles. This one just below 👇🏿👇🏿👍🏿👍🏿 is the first and the second is at the end of this article.

From the Garden Gate

In the Beginning, Again

John does not begin his account with a birth announcement, a genealogy, or a prophet standing in the wilderness…

Read more

4 days ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Alyson Arevalo

I remember the sound. It wasn’t a prayer. It wasn’t a song. It was a recitation, spoken in perfect, practiced unison by every person in the room.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”

The pastor would begin, and like a trigger pulled, the entire congregation would finish it, a wall of voices completing the verse from memory. John 1:1-3. Every time. Mid-sermon, during prayer, it didn’t matter. It was their tic, their ritual, their spiritual heartbeat monitor. It felt powerful. It also felt… empty. Like a spell being cast, not a truth being received.

I liked those people. They were laborers, tradesmen. Their hands were calloused, their boots dusty. They didn’t dress for show. But that chant, that rhythmic, collective finishing of the scripture, it created a wall I couldn’t penetrate. My spirit grew restless. Then quiet. Then certain. The command was clear, if wordless: Leave. Do not return.

I obeyed. But the passage stayed with me. It haunted me. Were they seeing something I wasn’t? Was I missing the beauty they clearly cherished?

Back then, I didn’t know the Greek. I didn’t know Logos from Rhema. All I had was the echo in my head and the opening chapter of my Bible. So I went back to the beginning. My beginning. Genesis 1.

“In the beginning, God created…”

And there it was. Not an answer, but a resonance. A deep, fundamental harmony. John was not starting a new story. He was replaying the opening notes of the story, the one where God speaks and worlds form. Where darkness is pierced by a commanding, “Let there be light.”

The article above from From the Garden Gate puts finer point on it: “John does not begin his account with a birth announcement, a genealogy, or a prophet standing in the wilderness. He begins with words his readers already knew: ‘In the beginning…’” He was tapping into a memory etched into the soul of Israel. He was saying, “You know that story where God speaks and it happens? That speaking? That’s who Jesus is.”

That’s what I felt but couldn’t articulate. The terrifying, beautiful synergy. The Word wasn’t just a message. It was the active, creative, world-forming will of God. Psalm 33 calls it out: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made.” It’s the davar of Yahua, His effective, purpose-filled utterance. That’s the Logos.

And this is where my spirit had recoiled in that church. The recitation had become incantation. They were speaking a truth about the explosive, creative, foundational force of all reality and treating it like a magical phrase to summon a spiritual feeling. They were naming the Architect of the cosmos while reducing His blueprint to a mantra.

The other (below) piece, from Utterances from the Desert, pushes this further: “The Logos is the divine reasoning and will of God the governing force behind all creation and order.” This force, this Logos, “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

Think about that. The force that spoke galaxies into being, that ordained the boundaries of the sea, that breathed life into dust… that force has a name. And that name is Yahweh. And that Yahweh, John says, became flesh and dwelt among us.

When we recite John 1, we are not stating a nice theological fact. We are declaring that the governing intelligence of the universe, the source of all order and life and light, put on skin and walked in the dirt. This is either the most profound truth in history or the most insane. It cannot be a rhythmic punctuation mark in a Sunday sermon.

The article argues this Logos is also the source of the Law, the Torah. “The Law was never just for Israel, it was always rooted in the eternal Logos, governing all creation.” The Law isn’t a arbitrary list; it’s the owner’s manual for a reality spoken into existence by the Logos. It shows us how life works best within the system He created.

So what was happening in that church? I believe they were honoring the shell and missing the kernel. They were repeating the description of the fuse while ignoring the dynamite. They were chanting about the Word but not submitting to its governing authority, its Law, its order, its claim on every atom of their being.

The call to leave wasn’t about them being “bad.” It was a protection for me. It was the Father saying, “Don’t let the ritual become the reality. Don’t let the chant replace the surrender. The Word became flesh so you could have a relationship with the Speaker, not just memorize His opening line.”

The truth of John 1:1 isn’t found in unison recitation. It’s found in unified surrender. It’s the shocking, humbling, glorious realization that the Voice who said “Let there be light” looked at you in your darkness and said, “Let there be life.” And He did it by becoming the life. The Word became flesh. The Lawgiver became the Lamb. The Creator entered the creation.

We don’t need to chant it. We need to kneel before it.

We don’t need to recite it in unison. We need to let it divide us, soul from spirit, until all that’s left is awe.

The next time you read, “In the beginning was the Word,” don’t just finish the verse. Let it finish you. Let it bring you back to your beginning, to the moment He spoke light into your darkness, and worship the God who didn’t just send a message. He came Himself.

Utterances from the Desert

The Logos and the Law

Introduction…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Desert Sage

So, to answer a deeper question that bears this article’s title: “Why Some Worship The Bible”

When Abba made himself known to me that night on October 3rd, 2024, one of His commands to me was learn who He was and to get to know Him. I interpreted that command with “dude, I need to read the bible.” And that’s what I began doing. I did so starting at the beginning. Genesis and through to Revelation.

I don’t have any statistical data or studies to support my next claim or speculation if you will. I just have a collection of anecdotals from conversations I’ve had with professional Christians during my walk this past almost two years now.

I suspect many Christians read and learn the New Testament first. Than at some later point some go back and read the Old Testament. As a result, they receive the text contained in the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament. That subtly changes perspectives, understandings and so on.

As I’ve previously stated “mere speculation on my part.”

I think this is why some idolize the bible and place it ahead of seeking a personal relationship with the Father, most High.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

A random thought exercise and something I’ve been walking with the last couple of days.

The Heart of Rebellion

Seeing Past the Riot to the Real Lawlessness Within

It’s Wednesday morning. The news plays on in the background as I walk through the living room to make coffee. A talking head uses the word “lawless” to describe a city block after a protest. Another uses it for a cartel border crossing. My mind doesn’t go to the images on the screen. It goes to a prayer I half-whispered yesterday in a moment of quiet anger. Was that, too, a form of lawlessness?

We throw the word around. A dictionary will tell you it’s “behavior that actively defies established statutes.” It brings to mind mobs, anarchy, the collapse of order. It’s external. It’s them.

But the Bible uses this word like a surgeon’s scalpel, and it’s pointed inward first.

The Greek word is anomia. It doesn’t just mean “breaking a law.” It means being without law. It is the state of living as if no higher law exists. It is autonomy declared as ultimate reality. Rebellion not just against a rulebook, but against the very concept of the Rule-Giver.

Scripture never uses this word in a positive light. Not once. It is the anti-state to the Kingdom of God.

So who are the lawless?

1. The Spiritually Autonomous. This is the heart of it. Jesus’s warning in Matthew 7 is terrifying: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:22-23, ESV).

The lawless can be inside the church. They can hold the microphone. They can work wonders. But their core posture is self-directed. They use Yahua’s name to accomplish their own purposes. Their disobedience isn’t to a list; it’s to the Person of the Father. “I never knew you,” He says. The relationship was never the point for them. The performance was.

2. The Love-Grows-Cold Crowd. Jesus links lawlessness directly to the temperature of our hearts. “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:12, ESV). This is the slow fade. It’s not the riot; it’s the quiet, incremental selfishness that replaces sacrificial love. It’s the choice to protect your comfort over extending kindness. It’s the spiritual numbness that sets in when we live for ourselves. The increase of lawlessness around us is not an excuse for the coldness within us; it’s the very test of our faith.

3. The Practiced Sinner. John makes it brutally simple: “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” (1 John 3:4, ESV). This isn’t the one-time stumble. This is the habitual, unrepentant pattern. It is the life that has settled into rebellion as its default mode. It is the heart that has seared its own conscience, calling evil good and good evil.

4. The Final Rebel. Then there is the ultimate figure: “the man of lawlessness… who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, ESV). He is not just a bad leader. He is the full, final incarnation of the spirit of anomia, the creature who declares himself his own god, the logical end of a world that says, “I will live without Your law.”

So who are the lawless in our modern Western culture?

It is not primarily the criminal, though he is one symptom. It is the culture itself that has made Self its supreme deity. It is the spirit that says:

• “My body, my choice” without reference to the Creator of the body.

• “Follow your heart” when the heart is deceitful above all things.

• “You be you” as the highest moral imperative.

It is the pastor preaching a gospel of self-actualization. It is the politician who builds a platform on envy and calls it justice. It is the quiet neighbor who lives a morally upright life but has never bowed the knee to Yahusha, living perfectly well by man’s law while remaining in active rebellion to God’s.

Lawlessness is the air we breathe. It is the default setting of a world that rejects the Father.

My call is not to point fingers at the world out there. It is to guard my own heart. It is to ask: Where is anomia hiding in me? Where do I set up my own will as the final authority? Where has my love grown cold because I’ve absorbed the spirit of the age?

We are called to separate from this spirit (2 Corinthians 6:17). Not to hide from the world, but to be so saturated with the law of Yahua, which is love for God and love for neighbor, that the spirit of lawlessness finds no home in us.

The battle is not against flesh and blood. It is against this spirit of rebellion. And it starts in the mirror.

Father in Heaven,

Grant us eyes to see,

To discern the antichrist spirit

Taking root in me.

Strip away the veils of self,

The rebellion we defend.

By Your grace, let us rebuke it,

And our sinful nature mend.

For only when we conquer

The rebellion found within,

Will we stand unwavering

Against the external sin.

So when the deceiver comes,

With lies adorned as light,

We’ll reject him, knowing well

Our own heart’s former night.

Amen.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

The house is quiet, but not empty. My father is here. My niece is here. Our dog, Wiggles, is here. The silence I was hoping for to write this has been gently, persistently, filled with the living. It is a good filling. A holy interruption. But it means my stream of thought, my line to the deep water, has been broken. Let’s try to get back to it, shall we?

These last few days, my heart and mind have been heavily distracted from the Father. I have not been able to keep my mind fixed on Him. My Bible reads have been skims. My prayers have been fractured phrases, launched like emergency flares into a noisy sky. The world has been loud with questions.

What are you going to do next?

• Are you staying or going somewhere else?

• Are you going back to PA?

• What are my sisters and I going to do about the house?

The list could go on for pages.

These questions come to me from others, and sometimes from myself. They come from a place of self-interest. Other times, from a place of concern and love. In either case, there are usually two answers: the one that is spoken, and the one that is thought.

The spoken one depends on the asker. It is measured, practical, often vague. It lives in the currency of this world, plans, logistics, finances.

The thought-one is always the same. It is the quiet heartbeat beneath the noise: “I will go when and where the Father asks.”

I am reminded of an encounter. Years ago, before I knew God as I do now, before I believed in angels, one spoke to me in a dream. The message was simple: “Things are going to get hard. Life will be difficult. But the Father will have me reveal to myself whether I truly believe the things I’ve said in my prayers.”

The irony is, I wasn’t praying then. Not really. He was preparing me for a faith I did not yet have. For prayers I had not yet learned to mean.

Now, in this season where every prayer is a gasp for direction, that promise echoes. The test is not the difficulty; the test is whether I believe my own whispered trust. The problem is, I can rarely speak the true answer aloud. “I will go when and where the Father asks.” Most people in my orbit range from atheist to comfortable Christianity at best. They would either outright reject that answer or hear it as a pious metaphor, a spiritual placeholder for a real plan.

Today, society returns to the grind. To mortgages, rent, car payments, tuitions. The flavor of that grinding varies, but at its core, it’s all the same. We are trading our time on this earth to secure and obtain the shiny things of man’s empire. This is not a judgment. I see the twig in my brother’s eye only because I am painfully aware of the log in my own. I’ve been there. I am, in many ways, still there. The bills still come. Taxes must be paid. Calls must be answered.

But something has shifted. The me of today no longer values those worldly commitments in the same way. I know which moments of my day are the most important. They are not the hours that pay me in the currency of this age. They are the moments that pay in the currency of the Kingdom. Eternally.

These “Kingdom moments”… they always look like service. Like love. Like patience. Like being still with the Lord. They are a stark contrast to the frantic, acquisitive energy of the empire’s clock. They are relatively easy to recognize, not by their ease, but by their texture. They feel like surrender, not striving.

So, what does my first “work day” absent of the role of caregiving look like?

It is too soon to say. It is only 8:37 in the morning.

Perhaps that will be tomorrow’s journal entry.

This next part may seem disconnected. But a parable has been walking with me for days. I’ve been turning it over in the quiet spaces between the questions. I write it here to see what the Spirit intends for me to receive from my awareness of it.

It is the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.

“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…”

You know the story. The master sends servants for his fruit. The tenants beat one, kill another, stone another. He sends more; they do the same. Finally, he sends his son, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But the tenants see the son and say, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ So they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him.

Jesus asks the religious leaders listening: “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

They reply, correctly, grimly: “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.”

Then Jesus quotes Psalm 118: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…’ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

And the chief priests and Pharisees perceived He was speaking about them.

This parable has haunted me. It explains why the Kingdom would be taken from them and given to others. It connects directly to the journey of moving beyond institutional religion to a direct, obedient relationship with the Father and the Son.

But today, in this quiet house on a Tuesday after a holiday, it speaks to me differently.

I am not a chief priest. I am not a Pharisee. But I am a tenant.

The vineyard is my life. My time. My gifts. My relationships. This very house. My “what’s next.” The master planted it. He put a fence around it. He dug a winepress in it. He built a tower. He did the work of establishment. Then He leased it to me. He went into another country, but He retains all ownership.

And He expects fruit.

The questions buzzing in my mind, “What will you do? Where will you go?” are not just questions. They are the chatter of a tenant trying to figure out how to run the vineyard for his own benefit. How to secure the inheritance. How to claim ownership of a leasehold.

But the vineyard is not mine. The plan is not mine. The “what’s next” is not my intellectual property to devise.

My only job is to recognize the Son when He comes. To respect the Heir. To give the Father His fruit when He sends for it.

The wicked tenants made a fatal error: they thought killing the son meant the inheritance would be theirs. They confused stewardship with ownership. They thought the vineyard existed for their benefit, their security, their legacy.

We do the same. We look at our lives, our careers, our homes, our plans and we scheme how to secure our inheritance. We trade our time for the shiny things of the empire, forgetting we are just tenants. Forgetful stewards.

The grinding return to work this Tuesday is the sound of a thousand tenants hustling for an inheritance that was never theirs to seize.

My distraction these past days, my inability to pray, is the symptom of a tenant’s anxiety. I have been looking at the vines, the fence, the tower, and asking, “What do I do with this?” Instead of, “Master, what fruit do You want from this?”

The answer to every question…“What’s next? Stay or go?” is not a five-year plan. It is a posture: I am a tenant. The Son is the Heir. I will give the fruit to the Father when He asks for it.

The Kingdom was taken from the original tenants and given to others because they rejected the Son and coveted the inheritance. The Kingdom is given to those who recognize the Son, honor the Father, and faithfully tend the vineyard for Him.

So today, my first “work day” after caregiving, my only task is to remember who owns the vineyard. To listen not for the world’s questions, but for the Master’s request for His fruit. And to be ready, when the Son appears in my midst, to welcome Him, not as a threat to my tenancy, but as the rightful Heir to it all.

The rest is just noise.

Walk in that truth today, friends. You are a steward, not an owner. And that is the most freeing news of all.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

After these (almost) two years of reading my Bible almost daily, of wading through its infinite wisdom, its brutal history, its cosmic science and its raw sociology, I keep arriving at the same, simple, terrifying conclusion.

For the believer, for the walker of The Way, the point of the story isn’t hidden in a cryptic verse or a distant prophecy. It’s spelled out in black and white. It’s the architecture. It’s the ten stones upon which everything else is built. We read them in Exodus, we hear them repeated in Deuteronomy: “I am the LORD your God… You shall have no other gods before me…” and on it goes, through the prohibitions against carving images, taking His name in vain, breaking the Sabbath, dishonoring parents, murder, adultery, theft, lying, and coveting.

For a long time, I saw these as The List. The divine rules. The things you shouldn’t do if you want to stay on God’s good side. A moral checklist for the spiritually ambitious.

But the longer I walk, the more I see that’s like calling the foundation of a house a “list of rocks.” You’re not wrong, but you’re missing the entire point of the dwelling.

These commandments are not God’s arbitrary preferences. They are the manufacturer’s manual for the human soul. They are the loving design specifications from the Creator, explaining how this fragile, powerful thing called a human being is meant to function without short-circuiting, without corroding from the inside out, without collapsing under the weight of its own disordered desires.

“You shall have no other gods before me.” This isn’t rule number one in a contest. It’s the primary law of spiritual physics. When anything, a person, an ideology, a comfort, a fear, a political tribe, your own reputation, occupies the throne that belongs to God, the entire system warps. Every other dysfunction flows from this first dislocation.

“You shall not covet.” This isn’t about policing thoughts. It’s the final safeguard against the internal rot that makes murder, adultery, and theft not just possible, but inevitable. It’s a command to find your contentment in the boundary of your own life, in the provision of your Father.

And then, you come to the words of Yahusha. A lawyer asks Him to simplify, to reduce the vast, intimidating legal code to its essence. And He does. He takes the ten foundational stones and shows us the two pillars they were meant to support all along.

“‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

This is the revelation. The Ten Commandments are not replaced; they are explained. They are the practical, granular outworking of these two loves.

How do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

You have no other gods (Commandment 1).

You make no carved image to represent Him (2).

You do not use His name as a empty charm or curse (3).

You honor the Sabbath He created, setting apart time for Him alone (4).

How do you love your neighbor as yourself?

You honor the ones who gave you life (5).

You protect their life (6).

You honor their sacred bonds (7).

You respect their property (8).

You protect their reputation with truth (9).

And you guard your own heart against the seed of desire for what is theirs (10).

Leaning into this, obeying this, studying this, implementing this, this is the path. This is “The Way.” It’s not a mystical secret. It’s the daily, sometimes grinding, work of aligning our loves.

To love God above all is to dethrone every other idol. To love my neighbor as myself is to see their life, their dignity, their relationships, their possessions, their truth, as being as sacred as my own. It is the death of the selfish “I.”

This is the meaning. This is the purpose. We are here to learn how to love. Specifically. Practically. Radically. The Ten Commandments are the curriculum. The life of Yahusha is the lived example. The Spirit is the tutor.

When we treat these as philosophical ideas, we remain adrift. When we lean into them as the manual, obey them as the loving instruction of a Father, study them as the map of a healed relationship, and implement them as the daily practice of our faith, that is when we begin to fulfill the purpose for which we were made.

We become people who love God. And from that impossible, all-consuming love flows a genuine, practical love for the person next to us. It’s that simple. It’s that hard. It’s the only point of the story.

The manual is open on the workbench. The stones are heavy in our hands. The two sentences are written on our hearts. The work is today.

Walk in it.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

We start as walkers of the Way by reading words. We collect them like stones. Smooth ones, heavy ones, verses that feel good in the hand.

We read words like: “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.” (Jeremiah 4:4, ESV)

And: “But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8, ESV)

And: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1-2, ESV)

And: “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’” (Zechariah 13:9, ESV)

For a time, these are a sequence of texts. They make up a Bible passage. In some instances, they even sound poetic. We underline them in our nice Bibles. We nod. We understand the idea.

As the walk continues, they become a series of metaphors. The Potter and the clay. The pruning of the vine. The fiery furnace of refinement. The circumcision of the heart. We learn to wield them in conversation. We recall them instantly to indicate to others, and maybe to ourselves, our familiarity with the text. Our grasp of the concept. See? We know the things.

But then, the walk goes off the paved path. It descends into a valley you didn’t chart. And the season changes.

In that season, the ideas represented by these texts cease to be philosophical. They become a series of experiences that etch themselves into your bones. The metaphors stop being illustrations you use. They become the weather you live in.

The Potter is no longer a comforting image of being shaped. You feel the pressure of the wheel. You feel the crushing, the reshaping, the relentless, patient hands forcing you into a form you did not choose and cannot control. You are the clay, and it is a terrifying, vulnerable thing to be.

The pruning is no longer a neat gardening tip. It is the loss of a branch you loved. A relationship that seemed vital. A source of identity. A comfort. You watch it fall away, and the cut bleeds. The vinedresser’s shears are not metaphorical. You feel the slice. You bear the scar.

The fiery furnace is not convenient. It is not comfortable. It does not confer a feeling of spiritual superiority. It does the opposite. It humbles you to dust. It burns away the dross, the pride, the self-reliance, the secret idols, the petty grievances you nursed like treasures. You sit in the heat and watch the parts of you that you thought were solid curl into smoke and vanish.

It’s in those seasons you begin to have some measure, some awful, intimate knowledge, of the many layers of dross you’ve accumulated in your heart and soul. You thought you were mostly silver. The fire shows you how much is slag.

It’s in those seasons, remaining steadfast and focused on the path Yahusha lit, that you begin to get some measure of the extent to which your heart has been hardened and desensitized to the wicked ways of this world. You see your own part in it. Your complicity. Your quiet acceptance. The ways you benefited from systems that grieve the Father. The fire makes that clear, too.

And it’s in that collection of scorching, lonely, stripping moments that you come to know repentance in its most raw and fundamental sense.

“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD” transforms. It is no longer an idea, a metaphor, or a verse to recite. It becomes an actual, physical experience imprinted on your soul. It is the painful, necessary cutting away of a foreskin of flesh that has grown over your spiritual senses. It is the removal of a callus you didn’t know you had. Repentance stops being a word you say at the end of a prayer. It becomes the involuntary gasp of a heart being surgically opened by love.

You understand, in a way no sermon can convey, the love our Father has for His sons and daughters. You understand, in a way that breaks you, that He sent His only begotten Son into the flesh to endure and be sacrificed so that you, hard-hearted, dross-filled, callused you, might have a chance at redemption.

The heart-breaking reality that settles in your gut is this: many of us are not taking advantage of this most precious gift. In fact, some outright reject it. Not by the things we say, or the books we read, or the shows we consume or condemn. But by the way we live out the precious, numbered moments we have in the flesh. We reject it by clinging to our dross. By fighting the Potter’s hands. By begging for the pruned branch to be glued back on. By demanding a gentler fire.

This new, deeper understanding, forged in the furnace, carved by the knife, shaped by the wheel, is what drives a repentance I never knew existed. It’s not a transaction. It’s a collapse followed by a redirection of that heart.

It’s a falling to your knees, your head laid down on the cushion of your desk chair, crying from a pain you can only imagine Yahusha endured on that tree. And you realize, with a shock that empties your lungs, that for the better part of your life, you took that sacrifice for granted. You traded it for comfort. You exchanged it for a plate of lentils.

It’s the snotty-nosed, ugly, gut-wrenching cry of a son who is just beginning…just beginning, to have a real sense of love, of redemption, and what it cost.

That is the season. That is when the metaphors become memory. When the verses stop being verses and start being the map of your scars. The Potter, the Vinedresser, the Refiner, the Surgeon, they are no longer characters in a holy book. They are the only Hands holding you together. And you learn, in the silence after the weeping, that this is the point. The metaphors were never meant to be admired. They were meant to be lived. They are the curriculum of the wilderness. And the diploma is a circumcised heart, soft enough to finally beat in time with His.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

I don’t wander often into fiction. But this morning, I woke up with a creative itch. So I sat down, fed some quirky parameters into the machine, and blended them with a few Bible passages that have been living rent-free in my head lately. This is what came out. I sat with it for a bit, and it resonated. So I’m sharing it with you.

In the days of the fathers, when the people dwelt in the land given to them, a word was spoken that became a curse woven into their bones: “You will soon utterly perish from the land… And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you.” They had forgotten. They had grown old in the land and acted corruptly, making carved images and doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD their God, provoking Him to anger. Heaven and earth themselves stood as witnesses against them.

So it came to pass. The One who had gathered them now scattered them. The winds of judgment blew from the four corners of the earth, and they were driven out. The once-chosen people were pulled from their ancestral soil and cast like seafoam upon the shores of strange lands. They were carried to the north country, to the coasts of the sea, to Egypt and Pathros, to Cush and Elam, to Shinar and Hamath, to Assyria. They were taken to the east country and the west country, their bonds burst only to be reforged in foreign shapes. They became servants in lands not their own, where they served gods of wood and stone that could not see, hear, eat, or smell.

Generations turned to dust in exile. In the far north, under iron skies, a people once called Israel huddled against the cold, their songs of Zion replaced by the guttural tongues of their captors. Their children knew the stories of a land flowing with milk and honey as a fairy tale, a cruel joke whispered before a meager fire. They faced contempt and violence, a byword among nations. In the southern deserts, others labored under a relentless sun, building monuments to kings who knew not Jacob. Their identity faded, bleached by the sun and seared by the lash. To the west, across the Great Sea, families were bartered and sold, their lineage dissolving into the sprawl of empires that rose and fell. In the eastern empires of vast wealth and deeper decadence, they were pressed into service, their souls dwindling like a guttering lamp.

They were few in number. They were outcasts in the uttermost parts of heaven. They were the remnant, a people overflowing with unrighteousness, leaning on those who struck them. Destruction had been decreed. A full end was promised to all the earth. They wandered, a flock without a shepherd, fearing, dismayed, many missing. They walked through fires of persecution and were consumed by waves of assimilation. The yoke was on their neck; foreigners made servants of them.

This was their portion for days without number. The world listened to its own; it spoke from the world, and the world heard it. A spirit of error covered the earth, a strong delusion given to those who refused to love the truth and had pleasure in unrighteousness. The ruler of that world worked with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception. Yet, in their tribulation, a memory stirred. A law written on the heart, not on stone, echoed. “But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul… For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.”

And so, in hidden rooms and barren fields, by foreign rivers and in slave quarters, they began to return. Not in body, but in spirit. They turned their faces toward a name they had nearly forgotten. They sought the LORD their God. They obeyed His voice from the depths of their distress. They were the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who was in labor, brought low by the journey. They came with weeping and pleas for mercy. They chose the things that pleased Him. They held fast to a covenant they could barely remember. They kept their hand from doing any evil. They sought justice and did righteousness, waiting for a salvation they could not see.

And the LORD heard.

A day, great and like no other, a time of distress for Jacob, was also the dawn of his salvation. The word had come to the prophets: “Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. For behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall take possession of it.”

Thus says the Lord GOD: “I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out.” He who had scattered would now gather. He who had driven them with wrath would now lead them back with the tenderness of a father. “I will make them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”

The call went forth, a signal raised for the nations. “He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” To the north, He said, “Give up.” To the south, “Do not withhold.” He commanded: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth.” From the farthest parts of the earth, from the coastlands far away, He saved them. “I will save my people from the east country and from the west country, and I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.”

A great company, the remnant that remained, began the journey home. Not the great multitude as the sand of the sea, but a remnant saved. They leaned no longer on him who struck them, but on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. They were the flock, once fragmented, now gathered. “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the LORD.”

They returned to the land of Jacob. They rebuilt the ruined cities and inhabited them. They planted vineyards and drank their wine. They made gardens and ate their fruit. They built houses and dwelt securely. None made them afraid. The LORD executed judgments upon all their neighbors who had treated them with contempt. They were cleansed. They defiled themselves no more with idols or detestable things. “I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” He manifested His holiness in them in the sight of the nations. He was their God in faithfulness and in righteousness.

But the story did not end with the bloodline of Jacob alone. For the word had also gone out: “Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away.” The gathering was not merely a return of flesh, but a ingathering of spirit. The root of Jesse stood as a signal for the peoples. The nations inquired of him.

And the LORD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declared: “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.” Who were these others? The foreigner who had joined himself to the LORD. The one who, though not born of the scattering, said, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people.” To them, the word came: Do not say you are a dry tree.

For thus said the LORD: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant…these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

The path was open. It was not of blood, but of spirit. It was of holding fast. It was of choosing the things that please Him. The one who worked, presenting themselves to God as one approved, a worker unashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, such a one could find a place. They would be grafted in. They would be brought to the holy mountain. They would partake of the joy. They would be gathered to the already-gathered flock.

A king was raised up for them, a righteous Branch for David. He would reign and deal wisely, executing justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah would be saved, and Israel would dwell securely. His name would be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’ They would serve the LORD their God and David their king. The booth of David, fallen, would be repaired. Its ruins rebuilt.

And the people would say no longer, ‘As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the LORD lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’

The final gathering came. “For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land.” Justice, long awaited, arrived.

And they dwelt. Secure. Planted. Never to be uprooted again. The promise to the fathers was kept. The scattered were found. The outcasts were brought home. And others, from the four corners, joined them. The tree, once shattered, now stood whole, its branches wider, its roots deeper, its fruit for the healing of the nations.

The LORD had done it.

Relevant Passages Utilized:

1. Deuteronomy 4:25-31

2. Nehemiah 1:8-9

3. Isaiah 10:20-23

4. Isaiah 11:10-12

5. Isaiah 41:8-10

6. Isaiah 43:1-6

7. Isaiah 56:1-8

8. Jeremiah 23:3-8 (utilized twice)

9. Jeremiah 30:1-4

10. Jeremiah 30:7-11

11. Jeremiah 31:7-11 (utilized twice)

12. Ezekiel 20:33-34

13. Ezekiel 28:25-26

14. Ezekiel 37:21-23

15. Hosea 3:5

16. Joel 3:1-2

17. Amos 9:11-15

18. Zechariah 8:7-8

19. Luke 23:26-34

20. John 14:29-30

21. 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

22. 1 John 4:5-6

23. 2 Timothy 2:15

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

This is another one for the smaller inner circle. For the few of you who have been walking this path with me, step by step, in the comments, in the messages, in the prayers. If this finds you, you know who you are. Today’s words aren’t for the broadcast. They’re for the family table. Pull up a chair.

The last few weeks, the…

Read more

This one is for the family. For my sisters, my brothers, my aunts and uncles. For every friend of my mother’s who has passed through our door these last weeks, who has held our hands, who has shared a memory and a tear. If these words find you, please read them. They are born from this quiet house of grief, and they are the most important thing I can give you.

I am sitting at the same desk where, a week ago, I planned my mother’s burial. The flowers have wilted. The casserole dishes have been returned. The voices have softened, and the silence has returned, deeper and heavier than before. In this silence, my mind does not go to the eulogies or the hymns. It goes to the text messages. The well-meaning, beautiful, heartbreaking platitudes.

“She’s in a better place.”

“God needed another angel.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

And I found myself nodding, grateful for the love, while a quiet voice inside me whispered: No. That’s not it. That’s not Him.

It’s not that these sentiments are malicious. They are the language of a culture that has fashioned a god in its own image, a god of vague benevolence, of cosmic comfort, of positive vibes. A god who would never disrupt, never command, never inspire a holy fear. A god who exists to make us feel better about our choices, not to call us to abandon them.

This is what is precious to us in modern Western culture: comfort, autonomy, self-expression, peace defined as the absence of conflict.

These things are almost never what is precious to God.

And so I write this for you, my family, my mother’s friends, and for every person who, in this moment of loss, might be peering into the abyss and wondering what is actually true. I write this as a self-proclaimed follower of the Messiah, the only begotten Son of the living God Most High. And I write it with a pressing conviction: we cannot know the God of all comfort if we refuse to know the God of the burning bush. We cannot understand the Savior if we amputate Him from the Lawgiver.

Who am I to say this? I am just some guy on the internet. I am not a scholar, a theologian, a teacher, or a pastor. I came to know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob on the night of October 3rd, 2024. Before that, I was fluent in the language of the world. Now, I am a student…a desperate, grateful, often-confused student…of the Word. I write a couple of newsletters for Christians, about Christians, and about the things I see taking shape in this world. That’s my only credential: a transformed life.

If you are not a follower of Christ Jesus, if you have not surrendered your life to the will of the Father, tread lightly here. This is family business. This is about the narrow path.

I believe most of the reason Christians in our culture think of the God of the Old Testament as different from the God of the New Testament is because we have been taught to exclusively focus on Jesus while cultivating no fear of the Father.

We want the loving, accepting, gracious Jesus. We do not want the God who says, “I am against you, O Gog,” who commands armies to be wiped out, who strikes a man dead for touching the Ark of the Covenant with good intentions. We have created a theological divorce where the gentle Rabbi from Galilee seems disconnected from the pillar of fire and smoke. This is a fatal error.

The Scripture declares: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

One. Not two. Not a schizophrenic deity with a split personality. The God who spoke from Sinai is the God who spoke from the cross. The justice that demanded sacrifice is the love that provided it. You cannot have the salvation of the New without understanding the problem defined in the Old. You cannot cherish the Lamb if you ignore the altar upon which He was laid.

My faith, my daily walk, is not a static, twelve-step program. It is not a formula you can plug into a spreadsheet. If I were forced to associate one constant, one irreducible formula with this process of walking in faith, it would be this: faithful obedience to the will of the Father Most High.

Apart from that, there is nothing else I would feel comfortable declaring as a fixed, formulaic process. Not a prayer routine, not a Bible-reading plan, not a style of worship. Those are the how, but they are worthless without the why. And the why is always obedience. It is always surrender to His will, not my own.

So how do I, a flawed man in a Florida home filled with memory and loss, pursue this? How does this “faithful obedience” work itself out in the grit of daily life?

It begins with knowing Him. Not about Him. Knowing Him.

I read the Bible to understand my Father, the Most High. I read to learn what pleases Him, what offends Him, what He loves and what He hates. I read to understand His commandments, not as a list of archaic rules, but as the loving boundaries of a good Father for children who are prone to wander into traffic. I read the Old Testament to see His heart, His passion for justice, His fury at idolatry, His relentless pursuit of a covenant people. This is not a different God. This is the foundation of the relationship.

I read the Bible to learn by the example set by His Son. Jesus is how we learn to live in this world of flesh. He is the perfect portrait of what a human life submitted entirely to the Father’s will looks like. What did He do? He prayed constantly. He retreated to desolate places. He loved the unlovable and rebuked the religious. He obeyed, even to the point of death. I read to understand what the Son did that pleased the Father, so that I can, by the Spirit’s power, do it too. He is our model for faithful obedience.

And so, my practice flows from this relational knowing.

I pray without ceasing. It never ends. It is not a monologue before meals or bed. It is a running conversation throughout the day. It is whispering “Help” in the cemetery office. It is muttering “Thank you” for the bird at the window. It is crying “Why?” in the dark and learning to sit in the silence that follows. When God seems to go quiet in my life, I don’t turn on the television. I turn to Scripture. I meditate on it. I fast. I create space for His voice by removing the clutter of my own cravings and distractions.

I pursue obedience at all costs. This is where the rubber meets the road. A “fear of the Lord” is not a cowering terror of a cosmic bully. It is a profound, awe-filled reverence that recognizes He is God, and I am not. It is the understanding that His ways are higher, His thoughts are wiser, and His commands are for my ultimate good, even when they cut against my every desire. This fear is the beginning of wisdom because it is the prerequisite for true learning. You cannot be taught by someone you do not respect.

This obedience has a cost. It costs your reputation when you walk away from gossip. It costs your comfort when you give sacrificially. It costs your pride when you forgive the unforgivable. It cost my mother her son for two years as I cared for her, a cost I now treasure as the greatest investment of my life. Obedience is the currency of the Kingdom.

And in this walk, I have come to know the Persons I obey:

Yahuah – This is my Father in Heaven, the Most High, the ONLY true God. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The great I AM. The covenant-keeper. The holy, holy, holy One. He is my Father. Not a concept. Not a force. A Person. My Father.

Yahusha – The Messiah, the only begotten Son of Yahuah. The Word made flesh. The Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. The one whose name means “Yahweh is Salvation.” He is my Savior, my Lord, my King, and my elder Brother. He is the narrow gate. He is the way, the truth, and the life.

This is not academic. This is the relational bedrock of everything. I obey Yahuah because He is my Father and His authority is loving and perfect. I follow Yahusha because He shows me how a beloved Son obeys a perfect Father, and He has paved the way for me to do the same.

Now, some of you may read this and think, This is heavy. This is a lot of law. Where is the grace?

My friend, this is grace. Grace is not permission to ignore the Father’s will. Grace is the power, bought by the Son’s blood, to obey it. Grace is the Spirit of God living inside of you, enabling you to do what you could never do on your own: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.

What I see in our culture, and in many of our churches, is not grace. It is license. It is treating our eternal souls as if we are choosing an ice cream flavor at the parlor. Vanilla or chocolate? Sunday church or Sunday brunch? Honoring parents or ignoring them? Speaking life or sharing slander? Forgiving or holding a grudge? We treat these as matters of personal preference, insignificant choices in a spiritual smorgasbord.

We are playing a “religion” with our eternal souls.

The God of the Bible does not offer a choose-your-own-adventure spirituality. He offers a narrow path. He offers a yoke. He offers a cross. And He offers resurrection life on the other side of surrender.

This is why the Old Testament matters. It shows us the heart of the God who is, not the god we wish He was. It shows us His consistency. Let me show you something that has captivated me.

Look at Genesis 10. It’s a list of names, the “Table of Nations.” We often skim it. But here, we find the sons of Japheth: “Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras.” And the sons of Javan: “Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.” (Genesis 10:2-4).

Now, flash forward to the prophets. Isaiah speaks of a time when God will gather all nations: “I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud… to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.” (Isaiah 66:19).

And then Ezekiel: “Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him… Persia, Cush, and Put are with them… Gomer and all his hordes; Beth-togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes.” (Ezekiel 38:1-6).

These are not random, forgotten tribes. These are specific names, recorded in Genesis, referenced centuries later by the prophets as players in God’s grand narrative of judgment and redemption. This is not a God who changes His mind. This is a God who knows the end from the beginning, who works through generations and empires to accomplish His purposes. The God who named the nations in Genesis is the same God who prophesies about them in Ezekiel and Isaiah. He is the same God who, in Revelation, brings all this to its final culmination.

This consistency should anchor us. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His standards are consistent. His love is consistent. His justice is consistent.

Yet, we want to avoid the parts that make us uncomfortable. We want to skip from Genesis 3 to John 3, forgetting the 66 books in between that reveal His character. We forget that the same God who judged Miriam with leprosy for speaking against Moses (Numbers 12:1-2, 10) is the God who healed the leper and forgave the woman caught in adultery. His holiness demands justice; His love provides a way for mercy. You cannot understand the depth of the mercy without understanding the weight of the justice.

This is the God we serve. Not a mascot for our causes. Not a therapist for our anxieties. Not a divine endorser of our politics. He is the King. The potter. The Father. The Judge. The Savior.

So, to my family, to my mother’s friends, to all of you who have held us up these past weeks: I love you. Deeply. The food, the prayers, the presence, it has been manna in our wilderness.

And because I love you, I must point you past the platitudes, past the cultural god, to the real One. The One my mother, in her own quiet way, sought to serve. The One who holds her now, not because she was a good person (though she was), but because of the finished work of His Son, which she trusted in.

Your grief is real. Your loss is profound. In your quiet moments, when the world’s chatter fades, you will be left with the ultimate questions: What is true? What comes after? What really matters?

I am telling you what I have found to be true: Faithful obedience to the will of the Father Most High.

It is not a list of rules to earn love. It is the grateful, awe-filled response of a rescued child to a perfect Father. It is getting to know Him through His Word…all of it. It is learning to walk from His Son…every step. It is praying without ceasing. It is obeying at all costs.

This path is not easy. It will cost you. It will set you at odds with the world’s values. It will require you to fear God more than you fear man. But it is the only path that leads to life…real, abundant, eternal life. It is the only path that makes sense of both the beauty and the brutality of this world. It is the only path that ends at the feet of a God who is both just and the justifier.

My constant prayer for you, and for myself, is from the Psalms: “Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” (Psalm 86:11).

Let our hearts be united in this holy fear. Let our lives be a testament to this faithful obedience. Let us be known not just by the cross we carry, but by the path we walk, the narrow, difficult, glorious path of the Son.

That is all. And thank you for reading.

Walk in the light you’ve been given.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

In this deeply personal and unvarnished episode of The Monrauch Podcast, Shashue Monrosh steps away from the usual theological breakdowns to share something much more intimate: a raw prayer from his mother’s hospice room. Sitting in the heavy, sacred space between life and loss, Shashue opens up about the crushing tension of facing our deepest fears while clinging to God’s unseen wisdom and love.

If you are in a season where the ground feels like it’s giving way—whether you are waiting on a diagnosis, navigating grief, or just struggling to find the “right” words to pray when your faith feels dry, this episode is for you. You don’t need a perfect performance to talk to your Father. You just need to be honest.

In this episode, we cover:

The Unseen Hand: Finding God’s goodness and wisdom in the rearview mirror of our hardest seasons.

Naming the Fear: Bringing our very real anxieties—from family closure to financial burdens—directly to God.

Imperfect Petitions: Why clumsy, broken, and tearful prayers are exactly what the Holy Spirit intercedes for (Romans 8:26).

The Divine Hug: Asking the Father for comfort when theological precision just isn’t enough.

If this honest prayer meets you where you are, please share it with a brother or sister who might be sitting in their own tension today.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

Shashue challenges the “pretend Christian” who is fluent in religious language but deaf to the King’s direct commands. He argues that our only defense against a “coherent counterfeit reality”—sustained through systems like government, media, and education—is a personal, conversational relationship with the living God.

Key topics in this episode include:

The Razor-Sharp Focus: Why the coming division is based on ears that hear vs. those that do not.

The Systemic Deception: Recognizing how the enemy’s influence has touched every institution we rely on, from healthcare to finance.

The Voice vs. The Process: Why a theological checkbox can be gamed, but a deep, relational knowing of the Shepherd cannot be faked.

Fruit over Arguments: Understanding that the validity of God’s voice is proved by a life that looks like Christ, not a sophisticated argument.

If this message makes you stop and ask, “Do I really know His voice?” please share it with someone else who needs to hear the truth.

Connect with Shashue:

Website & Newsletter:

shashuemorauch.com

Social Media: @shashuemorauch

Until next time, walk in the light you’ve been given. Peace and blessings, fam.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

This one is for the inner circle. The ones who have walked the last few miles with me in your prayers and messages. If I ask myself why I’m writing to just you today, the answer is simple: because today, the wide broadcast feels too loud. Today, I need the quiet space of family.

There’s a lot moving at Che Shashue this week…

Read more

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

Emailed the draft to my sisters so they can review and edit as they wanted.

Then I put my head down on the desk and cried like a baby for a few minutes.

I cry not for the same reasons my sisters cry. For different reasons, but the pain and loss i…

Read more

Let’s go for a walk this morning and try to imagine with me.

The world’s most hated villain. Picture his face plastered on every screen, every wanted poster. Imagine the venom, the universal contempt spoken over dinner tables and bar counters. The collective desire for his ruin.

Now imagine I am that man.

In that life, a life of deserved infamy, of causing misery, I would have had one ally. One unwavering soul in my corner. Not approving of my actions, but loving the actor. Someone whose belief in me would remain unshaken by the world’s verdict. That person would have been my mom.

She was the fixed point in a chaotic universe. The one phone call you could make from rock bottom, knowing the voice on the other end would answer. Not with approval, but with a love that asked no questions because its foundation was laid before you could even speak. She was my lifelong witness, my constant, my living archive of every version of myself.

She took her last breath yesterday.

And this is the void that opens: to suddenly feel alone in a way you have never felt before. It is a tectonic shift in your emotional geography. You know, intellectually, you are not alone. You have family. You have friends. You have a heavenly Father who is “near to the brokenhearted.” The verses are true. The promises are solid.

But it is not the same.

That is the honest, heretical truth of it this morning. The love of God is perfect, infinite, unconditional. Yet it is not maternal. It does not come with the specific, earthly history of her hands, her voice, her remembered scent. God’s love is the sun…all-encompassing, life-giving, absolute. A mother’s love was the hearth, the specific, contained flame around which you warmed your small, cold hands. You can stand in the broad daylight and still feel the chill of that fire’s absence.

So many times, I’d call home from the darkest places, spiritually, physically…with nothing to say beyond a simple, “Hi, Mom.” I’d dial her number with no other words in mind, just to hear the voice of the one who had always comforted me. And she could tell, from the mere sound of that “Hi, Mom,” exactly what my heart needed to hear. Without context, not even knowing where I was or what I was going through, she always knew the exact thing to say. It was usually a Bible passage. I didn’t know the Bible in those days, but the words were always what I needed to hear to keep strong, to endure.

I am surrounded by uncertainty on every front. In my work, my future, the very practical next steps of this week. If I dwell on it, if I stare into that abyss, I will fall in. The pit of depression is not a metaphor; it is a real gravity. Anxiety is a current that wants to pull me under.

So my plan for today, and for every day that follows, is simple. It is not grand. It is not a sweeping declaration of healed grief.

My plan is to keep my eyes on Jesus.

Not for a miracle of feeling. Not for the void to be miraculously filled. But for Him to guide my feet since my heart is too heavy to navigate.

I will follow the steps He lays before me. Just the next one. Then the next. The will of the Father today is not for me to understand the loss. It is for me to do the next right thing. Make the phone call. Sign the paper. Show up. Eat the meal. Breathe.

This is the coping. It is not a bypass of the pain. It is a cordon around it. I acknowledge the vast, empty space where her allegiance once stood. I honor the loneliness of being a son without a mother in a world that still spins.

But I will not set up camp in that emptiness. I will walk through it. One step, laid by Christ, at a time.

Her love was my first and most tangible lesson in grace. Now her absence is my most painful lesson in dependence. I leaned on her constancy; now I must learn to lean on His, even when it feels less like a shoulder and more like a narrow path through a dark valley.

The villain has lost his one defender. The son has lost his first home. The world feels less anchored today.

But the steps are still there, laid out before me. Today, that is enough. Today, I will look for her in the memories, and I will look for Him in the next step.

That is the plan.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

My mom was placed in “imminent” status last Sunday. The labored breathing, the wheezing, the look of great discomfort, it all signaled the final turn. Since then, a nurse has been at her bedside around the clock. Doctors visit. Medications are managed. We are no longer treating a life; we are shepherding a body toward its end. We manage the symptoms as systems shut down: digestive issues, fevers, the irregular rattle of breath, the water in the lungs. It is a strange, clinical vigil.

I have become the host, the communicator, the point of contact. A stream of family and friends flows through the house. Some local, some from far away. They come to sit, to remember, to say goodbye. I am glad she has this. She always loved being the center of a full room. But the truth is, it is intense. Inconvenient. Exhausting. It is all for her, for what she would have wanted. And on some level, I am thankful for the distraction of the duty. But it means I must literally clear the bedroom to steal a quiet moment with her. To hold her hand, to pray over her, to remind her we are here, we love her, we are thankful. These whispered words in the quiet are the real work.

So where are we this morning?

She has not eaten since Thursday at lunch.

She asked to go to her bed after lunch on Thursday and has not left it.

She closed her eyes Thursday night and they have not opened since.

We give morphine when the moaning comes, usually once a day.

She has not made a sound since yesterday morning.

Apart from the slow, shallow rise of her stomach, there is little sign she is still with us. But “they” say she can hear. So we are careful. We allow only the conversations that would comfort her to fill the space near her bed.

I keep busy. Final arrangements. Ensuring medications are on hand. I started this writing at 8:30 AM. It is now noon. I return to it. She is still breathing. She appears comfortable.

A note. My mom has belonged to an SDA church for over a decade. Her church people came by to pray yesterday. My spirit was in agreement with every word spoken over her. All I ever knew about her church was Saturday services and no meat. But the prayers I heard were consistent with the little I have come to know and experience over these past two years. It was a moment of unexpected unity.

This is the update. The wait continues. Only God knows the exact moment.

I am not sure if I will post anything immediately when she finally departs. There may be no words left, or too many.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

(Matthew 24:36, ESV)

The words are as clear as they are frustrating. No one knows. Not the angels. Not the Son. Only the Father.

And yet, we keep asking. We keep calculating. We keep scanning headlines and aligning them with verses, trying to decode the divine timetable. There are smart people very smart people with exact dates, or at least a confident range of years. They map blood moons, they decipher numbers, they plot the course of nations against prophetic templates. And there are others, like me most days, who simply feel it in their bones: It’s imminent. Satan’s Little Season, It has to be now.

But here is the uncomfortable truth that sits between the two camps: We are all wrong until we are right. And our focus on the when is the very distraction the enemy loves.

So I ask you, and I ask myself, a different question. One that cuts through the speculation and lands in the mud of our daily lives:

What would you do differently if Jesus Christ returned in 6 days?

Your answer is probably immediate. You’d repent of that secret sin. You’d call that estranged family member. You’d give away what you’ve hoarded. You’d fall on your face in worship. You’d burn with urgency.

Now, what would you do differently if He returned in 6 years?

The urgency cools a little, doesn’t it? The timeline allows for a more “responsible” approach. You’d get your finances in order first. You’d plan that difficult conversation for next month. You’d start that ministry next year. The fire banked, replaced by planning.

And if it were 60 years? Or 600?

The flame of urgency gutters and dies. It’s replaced by the long, slow burn of “normal life.” The cosmic event recedes into a doctrinal footnote for future generations. Our posture shifts from a watchman on the wall to a settler building a permanent homestead in Babylon. Or in my case, somewhere in the high desert of Arizona.

This is the trap. Our faithfulness becomes contingent on a timeline we were never meant to know.

Jesus didn’t tell us to figure out the date. He told us a story: “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.” (Matthew 25:1, ESV). Five were wise. Five were foolish. The difference wasn’t in their expectation of if he would come, but in their preparation for whenever he might come. The foolish ones had oil, but not enough. Their lamps went out in the delay. The wise had extra. They were ready for the long, dark wait.

Our prayers should stop begging for a date. They should start asking: “What should I be doing differently right now?”

How does my heart’s posture change if the Return is tomorrow versus three centuries from now?

It shouldn’t.

If my love for Christ, my obedience to His commands, my love for my neighbor, my integrity in secret, and my public witness are only vibrant under the pressure of an imminent deadline, then they are not rooted in Him. They are rooted in fear, or excitement, or religious performance. They are the oil that burns bright for a moment but has no reserve.

I believe we are in Satan’s “little season.” The evidence of systemic deception, the spirit of the age, the feeling of a coiled spring ready to snap it all points to it for me. But what if I’m wrong? What if the “little season” is 3,000 years away? Does that mean I should relax? Does that mean I should build a legacy here, cozy up to the world’s systems, and let my lamp sputter?

No.

The call is to steady vigilance. The call is to live every day as if it could be the day, not with a frenzied panic, but with a settled, prepared heart. To have enough oil the oil of the Spirit, of prayer, of faithfulness, of scripture-saturated living to last through a long night or a short one. The wise virgins didn’t know how long the wait would be. They just knew they needed enough oil to be ready, regardless.

Our mission does not change with the calendar. Preach the gospel. Make disciples. Love God. Love your neighbor. Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. Be the light in the darkness, whether that darkness lasts a night or a millennium.

The unknown hour is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a gift to be stewarded. It is the divine pressure that keeps our faith authentic, our love active, and our eyes on the eastern sky, not on the speculations of men.

So stop asking “when.”

Start asking “how.”

How will I live today, in this moment, so that whenever He comes in 6 days or 600 years He finds me faithful, my lamp lit, my heart awake, and my hands busy with the work He gave me?

That is the only timeline that matters.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

I come before you with a heart laid bare. I repent. I repent for the anger that rose in me when you were moving pieces in my life, doing what was good for me, and I could only see the disruption. I didn’t know it was good. I couldn’t see the wisdom. Forgive my blindness, my resistance to your unseen hand.

Thank you. Thank you for plucking me out of the world’s frantic race and planting me right here. You knew this soil. You knew this season. You knew I needed to be here, to be the son my mom needed. Looking back over these two long years, your wisdom is now clear. Your love for me, for my family, is obvious in the rearview mirror.

So, Lord, help me to trust that this is always what you are doing. Right now. Today. The things unfolding that I view as pain, as suffering, as hardship, help me to see with the eyes of my spirit what my flesh cannot: that you are working them for my good. Even in this.

Father, I bring you my fears. I am scared of a life without my mom. I am terrified that her heart has not yet fully connected with yours, that she might take her last breath not truly knowing the depth of your love for her, all you have done. I fear my sisters will not find the closure and peace they need before she goes. I worry about the financial demands of this moment, and all the moments that will follow.

And yet, in the middle of this, I thank you. For an uneventful, peaceful night. For every person who has come to visit her, to honor her. For the professional, compassionate care she receives in these final hours. For my family. For the strength you have given me…physically to endure, spiritually not to break.

There’s a bird outside her window. It’s been there all morning. Is that one of your angels, keeping watch? Or is it just a bird, finding a warm spot in the sun? I don’t know. But I choose to see it as a reminder that you are near. That you see her. That you see me.

Today, I ask for one thing. A divine hug. The kind only you can give. The kind that wraps around a breaking heart and holds it together without a word. Can I have one of those?

In the name of Christ Jesus, my only comfort,

Amen.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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.

Leave a comment

Buy us a Coffee

Refer a friend

Subscribe now

You can also find me on other social media platforms using the below links.

On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

On YouTube: Shashue Monrauch on YouTube

On Instagram: Shashue Monrauch on IG

On NOSTR:

• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch