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…

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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.

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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

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• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

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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

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On X (formerly Twitter) : Shashue Monrauch on X

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• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

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Shashue Monrauch

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

The Faith Muscle: When God Stretches What You Claim to Have

It’s Saturday night. By grace, these words will find you tomorrow morning.

I haven’t sent a weekly review in over a month. I’ll be real with you: it’s been a hard stretch. Not hard in my faith, but hard in how far the Lord decided to stretch that faith. To the point of snapping. The questions swimming in my prayers weren’t theological. They were visceral: Will my body give up? Will my spirit break?

I’m coming to think of faith as a muscle.

We claim to possess it in our morning and evening prayers. We speak it into the air. “I believe. I trust. I have faith.” And in return, the Trainer of our souls does what any good trainer does. He stresses it. He stretches it. He twists it to its absolute limit. He loads it with weight we never volunteered to carry.

You reach what feels like the breaking point. You’ve used all the worldly ointments, the plans, the distractions, the logical escapes, the numbing agents. You realize they mean nothing. They are dependencies on systems “highly influenced by principalities and authorities in the unseen places.” They offer no instant relief for a spiritual demand.

So you close the doors. You strip down to your spiritual birthday suit. You sit on the cot of your own helplessness. And you cry out the honest, ugly prayer: “You gave me this assignment. You made these promises. Why have you not equipped me with what I need to carry it out?”

You sit in the silence that follows, convinced it landed on deaf ears.

This is where the muscle grows. Not in the claiming, but in the waiting after the crying.

Slowly, imperceptibly at first, things begin to happen. But you only see them if you’re paying attention. That “unknown number” blowing up your phone? You dismissed it as a telemarketer. It was help. That person who kept texting about oil prices? That wasn’t why they stopped by. They came to help. The siblings, preoccupied with their own busyness? They brought that busyness to your house, and their presence was medicine.

The moments pass. Then days. You notice the soreness is gone. You haven’t reached for the ice pack of anxiety. The pain relievers of control lie untouched. Your body, your spirit has healed. Not by your strategy, but by a provision you never saw coming.

You look back over the wreckage of the week and see it: a thousand little prayers, answered not in the way you expected, but answered nonetheless. The muscle, sore and torn, has repaired itself stronger.

This isn’t a theology lesson. It’s a praise report from the other side of the stretch. I feel edified. Fit. Ready for whatever tomorrow demands.

On a slightly different note, I feel a compulsion to say this plainly:

All your intellect, your degrees, your doctrinal knowledge, your accumulated wisdom they are not suitable substitutions for solitude with Him.

The enemy has accounted for all of them. He is equipped to leverage every one of your strengths against you. Your logic can be twisted. Your theology can be weaponized. Your wisdom can breed a pride that deafens you to His whisper.

You must disconnect from the word about Him and designate time to be still with Him.

Not reading about Him.

Not listening to others talk about Him.

Not consuming content about Him.

Being. With. Him.

It might mean hiding in a closet.

It might be a walk with no destination.

It might be the tool shed, the car, the bathroom floor.

You must make time, every day, to be still and know.

This is the core of the muscle. Everything else is just exercise equipment.

It brings me to a verse that has been echoing in this quiet space:

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God… So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:10, 12, ESV)

We will all stand. Each of us. Individually. Not with our church. Not with our family. Not with our favorite teacher. We will give an account of ourselves.

That personal accountability is why the personal relationship is non-negotiable. You cannot borrow someone else’s faith muscle on that day. You cannot point to your pastor’s quiet time, your parent’s devotion, your friend’s conviction. You will answer for your own. For the time you did or did not spend in the closet, on the walk, in the shed. For the prayers you cried and the ones you didn’t. For the moments you trusted the ointment instead of the Trainer.

The stretching has a purpose. The solitude has a point. It’s preparing you to stand alone before a seat no one else can approach with you.

So let the stretching come. Seek the silence. Feel the muscle burn.

And when the relief finds you…in the unknown number, the inconvenient visitor, the busy sibling, you’ll know. It wasn’t a random act. It was the answer to a prayer you sobbed in the dark, offered to the God who was listening all along.

He is building something in you that the world cannot break.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

Be sure to check out my e-Book using the below links. It’s available in written or as a podcast from any of your podcast listening sources. I’ve kept each installment in short digestible bites of less than 25 minutes. They are available via all podcast apps, YouTube and here on Substack.

From the Archives

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I felt an urge the share this lady’s prayer and Nick’s commentary. It’s only about 12 minute long, check it out.

“I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! I sought the LORD, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.

Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.

This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!

The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing. Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.

Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.

The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.

He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.

Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

(Psalm 34:1-22, ESV)”

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I write this from a place of stripped-down conviction. If the ground feels unsteady under your faith, these words are for you.

I hold to this: Satan’s final, greatest soul harvest is upon us. His target is not the world. The world already marches in lockstep with its prince. His target is the remnant. The ones who think they are subjects of the Kingdom, but who have, through a thousand subtle compromises, become loyal citizens of man’s empire.

The dividing line is coming into razor-sharp focus. It will not be drawn between denominations or political tribes. It will be drawn between ears that hear and ears that do not.

How do we know which side we’re on? How do we know if we’re aligning with the Kingdom or kneeling to the empire?

I believe it comes down to one thing, and one thing only: a voice.

Not doctrine. Not tradition. Not moral performance. A voice.

Those who will stand will be those who have cultivated a personal, conversational relationship with the living God. They will have been speaking with Him, and being commanded by Him, for a long time. They will be familiar with the sound of their Shepherd’s voice. So familiar that when the Father speaks, they know it. And when a counterfeit whispers, they recognize the dissonance instantly.

This is our only defense. I am convinced of it.

The reason is simple, and it has leveled me: I know nothing.

Let me say that again. I. Know. Nothing.

Every framework I thought was solid, every narrative I believed was true, every “fact” I built my understanding upon, it has been chiseled away. The Lord has, in His mercy, helped me see the profound, systemic depth of the enemy’s deception. It is not a few lies sprinkled in the truth. It is a complete, beautiful, coherent counterfeit reality, built and maintained through the five systems he controls. Government. Finance. Education. Media. Healthcare. The air we breathe is a curated lie.

We have been educated in his schools, paid with his currency, healed by his institutions, informed by his networks, and governed by his puppets. What part of our understanding has not been touched by that?

So we cannot think our way out of this. We cannot doctrine our way to safety. A well-crafted theology can be co-opted by the empire and used as a weapon. Our only hope is to know the Shepherd so intimately that His voice cuts through the static of ten thousand lying channels.

This brings me to the heart of the matter. A question posed in a note, a question that deserves to sit in the center of this page:

“How do you distinguish between God’s voice and your own, in a way that someone else can recognize as valid?”

There it is. The question that separates the pretend Christian from the servant.

If your answer is a list of theological checkboxes you are describing a process or a system. A good process. A necessary one. But a process can be gamed by a heart that wants its own way. A process can be interpreted by a mind still in love with the empire’s definitions of “peace” and “confirmation.”

The true answer is relational. It’s the difference between describing your spouse’s voice and knowing it from another room. You can’t prove it to a stranger with a list of features. You just know. It’s built through ten thousand conversations, through shared silence, through obedience in the dark, through correction that stung but later brought life.

The validation for someone else? It won’t be in your explanation. It will be in your fruit. It will be in a life that increasingly looks like Christ, not in a argument that increasingly sounds sophisticated. It will be in a peace that persists when the world burns, a love that serves the unlovable, a joy untethered from circumstance. These are the byproducts of a life lived in obedient dialogue with the King.

The empire wants subjects who follow rules. The Kingdom wants sons and daughters who know their Father’s voice.

So I ask you, and I ask myself: Am I a pretend Christian, fluent in the language of the empire but deaf to the King? Or am I a humble servant, whose greatest skill is the terrifying, beautiful ability to be still, to listen, and to obey the one voice that matters?

In the coming harvest, that distinction will be everything.

With all that said, check out the conversation taking place in this note and pray on it.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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I write this for those who feel the ground shifting beneath their feet. If these words find a home in your spirit, please pass them on.

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44, ESV)

Let that name sink in. Not a liar. The father of lies. The source. The origin point of every falsehood, every twisted half-truth, every beautiful, deadly deception. He speaks from his character because his character is the lie. This is the architect we are dealing with.

Now, hold that truth in one hand. With the other, turn the page back. To a moment that should feel familiar, because we are living its echo.

The elders of Israel gather. They come to the prophet Samuel, God’s appointed judge. Their grievance has a kernel of legitimacy: Samuel’s sons are corrupt. They “turn aside after gain. They take bribes and pervert justice.” (1 Samuel 8:3, ESV).

But their proposed solution is a category error of cosmic proportions.

They do not seek the Lord’s justice. They do not cry out for renewal under His rule. They say: “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” (1 Samuel 8:5, ESV).

Samuel is grieved. He prays. And the Lord’s answer slices to the bone of history: “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” (1 Samuel 8:7, ESV).

God then instructs Samuel to warn them. To paint a vivid picture of the king they crave: He will take your sons for his armies. He will take your daughters for his service. He will seize the best of your fields, your vineyards, your flocks. He will take a tenth of everything. “You shall be his slaves.” And when you cry out in that day, “the Lord will not answer you.” (1 Samuel 8:11-18, ESV).

The people’s response is a masterpiece of self-deception: “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19-20, ESV).

Do you see the tragic, terrifying symmetry?

They rejected the direct, sovereign rule of the living God, the source of all truth, for the visible, political rule of a fallible man. They traded the Kingdom for an empire. They exchanged the whisper of the Spirit for the shout of the crowd. They chose to be “like all the nations.”

And God said, “Obey their voice. Make them a king.” (1 Samuel 8:22, ESV).

He gave them what they asked for.

We read this and think, How foolish. How could they? We sit in our modern chairs, looking backward through the lens of scripture and history, and we judge them.

But look around. 2026.

He will take your sons and daughters. Not for chariots, but for ideologies. For systems that teach them they are cosmic accidents, that their identity is self-created, that their purpose is consumption.

He will take the best of your fields. Not for vineyards, but for data. Your attention, your allegiance, your very thoughts are the new currency, harvested by empires you never elected.

He will take the tenth of your flocks. It’s called taxes, inflation, debt, a sophisticated seizure that leaves you perpetually indebted, a slave to the machinery.

You shall be his slaves. The chains are digital, psychological, and spiritual. We call it convenience. We call it progress. We call it being “like all the nations.”

We have done it again. We saw the corruption in the house of God, the hypocrisy, the scandal, the failings of human leaders and instead of crying out for the pure reign of Christ, we demanded a king. A system. A political savior. A cultural identity. Anything but the terrifying, liberating, direct rule of God.

And He is giving us what we asked for.

Why can’t we see it? Jesus explains the mechanism in Matthew 13, quoting Isaiah: “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” (Matthew 13:15, ESV).

We become blind and deaf because we choose to be. The distractions, the pride, the love of the world’s approval, the refusal to surrender, these are the roadblocks we erect. We close our own eyes. We plug our own ears. We reject the healing because we prefer the sickness we know.

This is where the father of lies operates. In that chosen dullness. In that preferred blindness.

Paul warns the Thessalonians of the ultimate consequence of this choice: “Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, ESV).

Do you see the progression?

1. Refuse to love the truth.

2. Take pleasure in unrighteousness.

3. Be handed over to a “strong delusion.”

4. Believe the lie.

It is a spiritual law. Reject the King, and you get the king you deserve a tyrant dressed as a savior, a prison you call freedom. Reject the Truth, and you get the father of lies.

So what is our defense? Jesus gave us the posture for living as sheep among wolves: “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16, ESV).

Serpentine wisdom: See the systems for what they are. Understand the playbook of the deceiver. Recognize the “king” who promises to fight your battles while he enslaves your children.

Dove-like innocence: Cultivate a heart that remains pure, guileless, and faithful to the true King. Do not let the wisdom needed to navigate the world corrupt the simplicity of your devotion to Christ.

“I didn’t know” will not be an excuse. “I was tricked” did not work for Adam and Eve, and it will not work for us. We have been warned. The pattern is laid bare in scripture.

Our only refuge, our only navigation through the strong delusion, is not a better theory, a more fortified bunker, or a purer political tribe. It is intimacy.

I am banking everything on a personal, intimate surrender to the Shepherd. I want to know the cadence of His voice so intimately that the shout of ten thousand deceivers sounds like meaningless noise. I want my eyes so fixed on His face that I cannot be hypnotized by the glittering illusions of the age.

The Father of Lies is counting on your distraction, your dullness, your desire to be “like all the nations.”

The question is this: Will you let your heart be so captivated by the true King that you lose all taste for the counterfeits?

Hold fast to the Truth. He is the only antidote to the lie.

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.

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This article is one installment of a multipart series. Be sure to check out my site for previous segments of this series. It will make more sense if you read them in order.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The first installment contained Chapters 1-3. This one contains Chapters 24 and 25.

Chapter 24: An Invitation to the Table

(Source: “185 An Invitation to the Table: Finding Each Other Outside the Walls”)

For a long time, like many around me, I thought “church” was a destination. A place you drove to. A building with a sign, a stage, and rows of chairs facing the same direction. You showed up, you listened, you left. It was a weekly event you attended, not a people you belonged to.

Then my world cracked open on a night in October, and I started seeing things differently. Gradually I began to understand what the New Testament meant when it called us the temple, not a building, but a people. The dwelling place of God isn’t made of bricks and mortar; it’s made of flesh and blood, stories and bread, wine and whispered prayers.

I read something recently that cut deep. It was an autopsy of the church building. The author talked about how we’ve confused the container for the contents. We’ve built palaces, called them “God’s house,” and then wondered why He often feels absent from them. We created sacred spaces we could leave, instead of becoming a sacred people who carry Him wherever we go.

It got me thinking about the early church. They didn’t have capital campaigns for amphitheaters. They met in homes. Around tables. In courtyards. They broke bread, they shared life, they prayed for each other, and they did it face-to-face. They knew each other’s struggles and victories. There was no professional up front doing all the talking. It was a shared life, fueled by a shared Spirit.

That’s the kind of “church” I’m hungry for now. Not an event, but a family. Not a sermon, but a conversation. Not a service, but a shared life.

So here’s my question, my invitation:

Are you out there?

I’m not talking about starting a new institution. I’m talking about something simpler, and I believe, more ancient.

I’m imagining a handful of people. Maybe in a backyard as the sun sets. Maybe in a garage with folding chairs. A living room with kids playing in the next room. A picnic table at a quiet park.

We bring what we have. Some bread. Some juice or wine. We come as we are tired, hopeful, confused, faithful, doubting, seeking. We read a passage of Scripture not to have it explained to us, but to wrestle with it together. We pray, not elegant, pre-written prayers, but real ones. We talk about what God is doing or what it feels like He’s not doing in our lives. We confess where we’re struggling. We give thanks for where we’ve seen grace.

We take communion not as a ritual, but as a tangible reminder that we are one body, broken and poured out for each other and for the world.

No membership cards. No offering plates passed, though we’d absolutely help if someone had a practical need. No one person in charge. Just fellow travelers, trying to follow Jesus, wanting to do it shoulder-to-shoulder with others who get it.

The goal isn’t to grow a big group. The goal is to know and be known. To “one another” each other to encourage, admonish, comfort, and bear burdens. To be a living room-sized expression of the family of God.

Maybe you’re on a similar path. Maybe you feel like a stranger in the pews but a believer in your heart. Maybe you’re just plain lonely in your faith.

We don’t need a building. We just need each other, and the promise that where two or three are gathered in His name, He is there, in the midst of us.

Let’s gather. Let’s break bread. Let’s remember Him together.

A Moment in the Workshop

Do you know one other person, just one, who is walking a similar path? Someone who has been through the earthquake, who is done with the performance, who is hungry for something real? Can you reach out to them this week? Not with a plan. With a question: “Would you want to grab coffee and talk about what God is doing?” The ark begins with two. And a willingness to be honest.

Chapter 25: The Whisper in the Wiring

(Source: “The Whisper in the Wiring: Why My Business Would Be Called ‘End Times Solutions’”)

If I were to start a business today, it would not be a tech company. It would not be a consultancy. It would not be anything the world would recognize as a conventional enterprise.

I would call it “End Times Solutions.” Not because I am a doomsday prepper. Not because I think I know the date of Christ’s return. But because I have come to believe that the most important work of our generation is building resilient, decentralized, faithful networks that can sustain communities when the centralized systems begin to fray.

And they are fraying.

The supply chains are fragile. The financial systems are leveraged beyond comprehension. The institutions government, media, education, even the church are hollowing out from within, eaten by the same pride and self-reliance that Part III warned about. The world is not falling apart in some unprecedented way. It is revealing what was always underneath the surface: a structure built on sand. The sinkhole beneath the parking lot has been forming for a long time. We are only now hearing the pavement crack.

The ark was not built for a sunny day. Noah built it in the face of ridicule, in the heat of a drought, when not a single cloud was on the horizon. He built it because God told him to. He built it because he could hear the whisper in the wiring the subtle hum of a world approaching a threshold. His neighbors laughed. The rational calculus of his moment said he was a fool. He built anyway, one plank at a time, in obedience to a voice no one else seemed to hear.

I hear that hum now. And my response is not fear. It is obedience.

The “End Times Solutions” in my heart are not bunkers and freeze-dried food, though practical preparation has its place and is not foolishness. They are relationships. Skills shared across generations. Meals prepared for neighbors who are struggling. Knowledge of how things actually work, how to fix a pipe, grow a garden, care for the elderly, educate children without a screen, set up communication channels that don’t depend on centralized infrastructure, pray for the sick and know that it matters. They are the quiet skills of a people who are learning to need each other again, in a world that has spent a century teaching us we don’t.

This is the vision that emerged from the journey documented in this book. From the garage on October 3rd to this page, the arc has been consistent and deliberate:

Personal awakening → daily integration → systemic discernment → tactical discipline → community formation.

Each section of this book has been one movement in that progression. The earthquake cracked you open. The crucible put your faith to work in the ordinary. The detox cleared away the counterfeit scaffolding. The new rhythm gave you tools to maintain the connection when the feelings are gone. And now, finally, the community, the quiet network is the last piece and, in some ways, the most important one.

You are not just surviving. You are building. The ark is not a thing. It is a network of people who have been through the fire, who have been stripped of their idols, who have been taught to hear the Shepherd’s voice, and who are now ready to serve. Not the world’s version of service platform, visibility, influence, metrics, a brand. The Kingdom version. Invisible. Local. Faithful. Multiplying.

One seed produces a tree. One tree produces a thousand apples. One apple holds a dozen seeds. God’s economy is not addition. It is multiplication. Every awakening that leads to obedience that leads to community that leads to service that network radiates outward in ways no human spreadsheet can track.

Your awakening was not for you alone. Your integration was not for your personal comfort. Your discernment was not for your private superiority. Your discipline was not for your individual holiness. All of it every chapter, every 3 a.m. classroom, every scrubbed bathroom tile, every missed whisper confessed and corrected, every log placed on a cold fire in a dark room with no audience was preparation.

Preparation for this: being a node in the quiet network. Being the person others can lean on when their world cracks open. Being the cup of water, the patient ear, the steady hand, the functional faith in a room full of panic. Being the neighbor who knows how to fix the thing, cook the meal, speak the prayer, sit in the silence without flinching. Being the person who, when the systems fail and the noise stops and people finally stop pretending, already knows what to do next, because they have been practicing surrender and service in the small things for years.

The Antichrist, when he comes, will offer systems. He will offer solutions at scale. He will offer the very things we have been conditioned to want: efficiency, safety, belonging, purpose, an end to the chaos. His offer will be irresistible to the unprepared, because it will speak directly to every unhealed wound, every unmet need, every idol we never gave up.

But to a person who has walked this road who has been through the earthquake and the crucible and the detox and the discipline and the table, the offer will ring hollow. Not because they are cleverer than everyone else. But because they have already received what the counterfeit is imitating. They have already tasted the real bread. They know what it feels like to be fully known and completely loved by the only One who can actually deliver it. The forgery will not fool them, because they have held the original in their hands every morning before their feet hit the floor.

That is the defense. That is the ark.

You are the ark. Not alone. Together. A colony of heaven, planted in the soil of a dying world, showing by our peculiar, peaceable, enemy-loving lives that there is another way, another King, and another country.

Build it. One relationship at a time. One shared meal. One honest conversation. One “Can I pray for you?” spoken to a man with a broken back in a driveway in Florida. One plank at a time. In obedience to a voice the world cannot hear.

The Builder will show you where it fits.

A Moment in the Workshop

What skill, resource, or capacity has God given you that could serve others when the systems fail? It does not have to be dramatic. Can you cook for twenty? Can you fix a car? Can you teach a child to read? Can you sit with a grieving person and say nothing? Can you pray? Can you listen without judgment? Can you show up, reliably, when things fall apart? That is your plank in the ark. Offer it. The Builder will show you where it fits.

Epilogue: A Final Word, The Driveway at Dawn

The birds are still singing. The dew is burning off. My mother is content. The dog, for this week at least, has eaten all her vegetables.

I am still a man in a driveway in South Florida. I still have a mop in one hand and a glucometer in the other. The garage where it all began is still there, just down the hall. The cot is folded up now. The desk is covered in journals. The podcasting software I am learning blinks on the screen, waiting for me to figure out what I am doing.

I did not write this book to tell you how it ends. I cannot. It has not ended. This morning was an ordinary morning, which is to say it was a sacred one another lap around the spiral staircase, another revolution past the same landmarks, but a level deeper than last time. The glucometer reading was good. My mother laughed at something on television. Wiggles nudged my knee and walked off into the morning sun.

I wrote this book because the journey demanded a record. Because the God who met me in the wreckage of my own competence deserves a testimony. Because somewhere out there, in another garage, another kitchen, another 3 a.m. silence, someone is having their own earthquake, and they need to know they are not losing their mind.

You are not losing your mind. You are losing your old one. And the One who took it is building something better.

I do not know what your life looks like right now. I do not know the specific shape of your crucible, the name of your idol, the wall you most need to lower, the kink in your particular hose. I do not know who your man with the broken back is, or which of the eight promises is the one you need to carry in your pocket this week. I do not know if you are in the scrub or the dry, the descent or the brief, blessed moment of rest on the other side.

But I know this: the same God who met me in a garage in South Florida will meet you where you are. He is not a theory. He is not a system. He is not a set of doctrines to be correctly arranged. He is a Person who knows your name and has been in the room the entire time, waiting with the patience of the father in Luke 15, the one who saw his son coming from a great distance and ran. That is not the posture of a God who is managing from a distance. That is the posture of a God who has been watching the road.

He is watching the road.

You did not stumble into this book by accident. There are no accidents in the Kingdom. Something, Someone put it in your hands, and whether you are on page one or page two hundred and something, you are here because the story that started in a garage in South Florida is not just one man’s story. It is yours, adapted for your latitude and longitude, your particular wreckage, your specific mother or dog or broken pipe or whispered assignment.

The fault line is real. Everything is now measured as Before or After.

And the After the long, unglamorous, sacred, exhausting, beautiful After is a life of listening. Waiting for the next nudge. Obeying the small thing in front of you. Laying the next log. Sitting at the next table. Placing the bowl again, whether or not the dog eats the vegetables.

It is not a spectacular life by the world’s measure. But it is the only life worth living, because it is the only life that is actually tethered to the One who is holding all of it the glucometer and the gospel, the mop and the kingdom, the driveway and the dawn in the same open, sovereign, loving hand.

I will see you at the table.

After the Awakening: A Field Manual for the Disoriented, Disillusioned, and Devoted

by 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.

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• Shashue npub1ldn7g28j6rc49gmmyh2yk4z8y688hhuuzgs2v5q2erz784cegshs6427d0

Thanks for your time and support.

Shashue Monrauch

So I’m reading Judges 4, right? And it’s the story of Deborah and Barak. The Israelites are in a bad way, they’ve been under the thumb of Jabin, king of Canaan, for about twenty years. His commander, Sisera, is running around with this state-of-the-art, high-tech army. We’re talking 900 iron chariots. That’s the ancient world’s top-tier military hardware.

Then there’s Deborah. She’s a prophetess, judging Israel. God tells her, “Hey, rally an army and go deal with Sisera.” So she calls up Barak and lays it out: “Hasn’t the Lord commanded you? Go gather 10,000 men from Naphtali and Zebulun. I’ll draw Sisera out, and God will hand him over to you.”

Now Barak… he gets a little shaky. He’s basically like, “Excuse me, prophetess? You do know these guys have a state-of-the-art, high-tech army, right? If you don’t come with me, I’m not going.” You see, his confidence is low because he doesn’t have access to that kind of gear.

Deborah agrees to go, but she tells him straight: “Alright, I’ll come. But because you’re being a bitch about this, you’re not getting the glory for the win. The Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Ouch.

Battle day arrives. Barak’s ragtag crew faces off against Sisera’s elite force on the field. And as you would expect, God does His God-type thing. He routs Sisera’s entire army. Sisera bails on foot, ends up hiding in the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, supposedly an ally.

Jael offers him shelter, lets him crash. Then, while he’s deep in sleep, she takes a tent peg and a hammer, goes softly to him, and drives that peg straight through his temple into the ground. Game over.

In the end, Sisera is defeated. Deborah did her thing. God did His thing. Barak’s army did their thing. And Jael did her thing, she got Barak’s glory, and they even wrote a song about her.

Now, here’s what sticks with me. Reading this in my modern, distraction-filled life, I have to ask: If the Lord came to me with a message like He gave Deborah, would I even hear it? Or would it be drowned out by my social media feeds, my screens, the endless phone calls?

Barak was hesitant. He was, let’s be real, a little bitchy about the whole mission. But he still went. He still carried out the Lord’s will. His faith might not have been David-facing-Goliath level. It was probably more like a mustard seed, small, but real.

That’s the comfort for me. God doesn’t need my confidence to be sky-high. He doesn’t require me to have all the answers or the best resources. He just needs me to listen, to say “yes” even when my voice shakes, and to take that first step. He can work with a mustard seed. He can work with a Barak.

The question for us now isn’t about iron chariots. It’s about the noise in our heads and the screens in our hands. Will we create the space to hear that command? When God’s call comes, and it might come in a whisper, not a shout, will it find us listening?

Because the need is still there. The oppression might not be a king with chariots, but it’s real. And God’s plan to bring deliverance still involves people. People who hear. People who go. Even people who go with a nervous glance over their shoulder, asking for a little company on the road.

So maybe today, the first act of faith is just this: to turn down the volume. To sit in the quiet. To ask, like the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” See if there’s a word He’s been trying to say. A next step He’s been trying to show. You don’t need a state-of-the-art faith. You just need a listening one.

What’s one distraction you could intentionally set aside this week to better hear God’s voice?

That is all, and thank you for reading.

Public Service Announcements:

I’ve been publishing my latest (actually first) book in short installments, 30 minutes or less over these past few weeks. You can listen to them here on Substack or you can listen via youtube or anywhere else you catch your other favorite podcasts. You can find them by searching “Monrauch Podcast” or “Shashue Monrauch”. I hope you’ll check it out. Included here is the first installment in writing or podcast format, whichever method is your preferred for content consumption. It’s free, check it out.

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This article is one installment of a multipart series. Be sure to check out my site for previous segments of this series. It will make more sense if you read them in order.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The first installment contained Chapters 1-3. This one contains Chapters 20-23.

Chapter 20: From Lambos to Daily Bread

(Source: “184 From Lambos to Daily Bread: How God Schooled My Prayer Life”)

Let’s talk about prayer. More specifically, let’s talk about how mine has evolved from a polite, transactional memo to a constant, running conversation. If you had told me eighteen months ago that my prayer life would one day feel less like a ritual and more like breathing, I would have politely nodded while secretly thinking you had lost the plot.

It started simply. In the early days, right after the fault line split my life, prayer was formal. Kneel. Recite the Lord’s Prayer. “Amen.” Clock in, clock out. Less than five minutes. There was usually a 5 a.m. group prayer call; I would hop on for an hour boom, another check. I would spend 30 minutes to an hour in silent meditation. Early on in those days, nothing spectacular happened, though over time my ears could hear and my eyes could perceive differently. It felt like a series of checking boxes on my morning spiritual to-do list.

Then it grew. I added a Bible verse. Prayers for sick family, struggling friends. Good stuff, some of it noble. Then, let’s be real, I added my wish list. I did not call it that, of course. I called them “needs.” But let’s be honest: they were wants. The chariot needed new tires. Wiggles needed a new fence. I needed running and hiking gear. My youngest needed help with rent. All valid but temporary, focused on making life down here more comfortable for the flesh and ego. They were prayers for better moves on an old game board.

I was praying for Lamborghinis and mansions. Not literally, but in spirit. Things with a shelf life.

Then God, in His infinite and slightly mischievous wisdom, changed the economy.

Learning to Pray When the Invoices and Paychecks Stopped

Remember the deal from that first night? The command to cease my traditional work? The paid labor that funded all those tire-and-fence prayers? Yeah. That income stream dried up. Yet, the opportunities kept coming. Lucrative contracts. Guaranteed money. My old life was waving cash at the window.

I will admit it, I looked for loopholes. Maybe just one client in a different time zone? Maybe a small project, a low lift? My flesh was negotiating like a seasoned lawyer. Thankfully, the conviction from that October night was stamped deeper than my temptation. I said no.

And that is when I got enrolled in God’s most practical, nerve-wracking, and brilliant course: Daily Bread 101.

He put me on a short leash. And He knew exactly what He was doing. Provisions arrived not in monthly salaries or quarterly bonuses, but in daily rations. A need would arise, a bill, a necessity, and somehow, that same day, a way would appear. A check from an old account I had forgotten. An unexpected gift. A solution so specific it could not be coincidence. It was divine just-in-time inventory.

Honestly, it took me a while to see the pattern. I would try to lean on my own understanding, to engineer my own guarantee. And without fail, those man-made solutions would blow up in the most unnatural ways. A guaranteed check would bounce. A sure-thing opportunity would vaporize. It was like watching divine comedy at times. God was teaching me to distinguish His voice from the noise of my own plans from the old me. How do you train someone to recognize your voice? You make it essential to their survival. You become their daily bread. Which is what God did to me and for me.

How Daily Bread Transforms Prayer

So, how does living on daily bread transform prayer? It kills the monologue and births a dialogue.

My prayer life today is not contained to a morning quiet time. It is a constant, all-day conversation. It might seem tedious in a world moving at light speed, buzzing with distractions. But it has become my reality. I am scanning for prompts all day. Is this mine to do? Is this Him? Should I speak, or wait?

This course has trained my ears. I can now hear the old, control-freak version of me trying to grab the wheel from a mile away. It has taught me a patience I never knew I could possess. I now understand, humbly, that my time is not my own to command. It is on loan. It is all His time.

Sometimes I sit with this awe: How does my God manage this intimate, daily-bread relationship with me, and do it a billion times over for every single one of His children who call on Him? In comic book terms, that is the ultimate superpower. And He operates it flawlessly.

I pray. I sit still. I scan. I obey. I wait.

Accepting a Love and Grace I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Fully Understand

I am so programmed to a world of transactions, value for value. Nothing is ever really free even when it says so boldly on the brochure.

All that to say, even to this day, considering all that God does and continues to do for me, it just does not compute, yet. Love and grace are not part of the business world and dialogue that I lived in for half a century.

Just this morning on my walk, I thanked Him for making sure I was on His team and not the enemy’s. I prayed He would show others who He is, just as He has done for me. I do not know how I got here. Was it the prayers of others? His sheer grace? Maybe one of those hollow prayers I shot into the void years ago, not expecting a reply? Probably all of it.

The walk continues. Some days I am more faithful. Some days I am more comfortable in the not-knowing. Every day, I am more appreciative.

Do I mess up? Of course. But confession and repentance come quicker now. The connection is clearer. The line is open.

A Moment in the Workshop

Look at your prayer list. How much of it is a wish-list for dying things? How much is a daily conversation with a living Father? Try this: for one week, replace your list of requests with a single sentence each morning: “Lord, what is mine to do today?” Then listen. The answer may come as a nudge. A name. A chore. A silence that feels like company. That is the walkie-talkie.

Chapter 21: The Only Question That Matters

(Source: “211 The Only Question That Matters”)

While we are all at different stages of our walk in the Faith, my current perspective has narrowed to a single, defining question.

Am I bent toward Him, or away?

The articles circle the question like scholars mapping a star’s distant light. “Are we, as gentiles, under the law?” “Does the New Testament render the Torah a shadow?” The debate spins its fine web of terms, covenant, fulfillment, grace.

But here, in the quiet of my own spirit, the mission is more basic. It cuts through the web with a blade of simpler fire.

The question is not where the law resides in the library of theology. The question is the posture of my soul at this exact moment. Am I being obedient to God, or am I rebelling against His will? Am I doing the thing He has whispered for me to do, or am I choosing the pursuit of my personal, fleshly desire?

It is a binary state. A heart cannot harbor both captains. It is either yielded, open-palmed, saying “Your will,” or it is clenched, turned inward, saying “My will.”

I expect, I assume with the bedrock faith of a child, that if the answer is faithful obedience, then nothing else truly matters. The theological coordinates adjust themselves around that fixed point. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5 ESV). The mind follows the heart’s allegiance. If my heart is obedient, my mind will find the truth it needs to walk the path.

The law, then, is not a fence to argue over. It is the shape of the yes. My obedience is the living Torah, written not on stone but on the willing tablet of a heart that has stopped fighting its Maker. Is that not the promise? “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33 ESV).

So I let the notes and articles fall away. They are notes about the map. I am asked to walk the territory. And the only question for the walker is this: Am I walking with Him, or am I walking away?

This is the North Star. When every other metric fails, when the feelings are gone, the theology is confusing, the community is fractured, and the path is dark, this question cuts through the noise like a lighthouse beam.

Obedience is not perfection. It is direction. It is the willingness to take the next step the Shepherd indicates, even when the step makes no sense, even when the destination is invisible, even when the cost seems unreasonable.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15 ESV). Love is the motive. Obedience is the evidence. Not the other way around.

A Moment in the Workshop

What is the last thing God clearly asked you to do that you have not yet done? Not a grand assignment. A small one. A conversation to have. An apology to make. A habit to stop. A call to return. Can you do it today? Not perfectly. Just obediently. The only question that matters is not “Do I understand?” It is “Am I obeying?”

Chapter 22: The Unseen Curriculum

(Source: “205 The Unseen Curriculum: Learning to Yield in a World That Praises the Grind”)

This morning, I found myself staring at a stubborn garden hose. It was kinked, twisted from years of being wound too tight. I was trying to water the dry patch of earth by the fence, but the water was just a weak trickle. I yanked it. I pulled it straight. I fought with the plastic coils. Nothing. Just a pathetic spray and my own rising frustration.

Then, I stopped. I walked back to the spigot, turned the water off completely, and let the tension drain from the hose. I watched it go limp. I walked its length, gently easing out the hard kinks with my hands, not forcing, just guiding. Then I turned the water back on. A full, strong stream rushed to the end and soaked the parched soil in seconds.

I stood there, hose in hand, feeling that familiar tap on the shoulder. The lesson was not about horticulture.

My entire life, I was taught to fight the kink. To grit my teeth, summon more willpower, yank harder. This is the gospel of the world: effort equals outcome. Strain equals success. The hustle is holy. We admire the calloused hands, the sleepless nights, the story of “I did it my way.” We are a culture of pullers and yankers.

But since that night in the garage, God has been teaching me a different arithmetic. A counterintuitive calculus of the Spirit. His way is not about increased tension. It is about released tension. It is not about summoning my strength, but about draining my strength so His can flow. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV). His power is perfected not in my peak performance, but in my admitted emptiness.

I see this pattern everywhere now. In my prayers, I used to present God with my solutions. “Here’s the problem, Lord, and here’s my five-point plan for how You can help me fix it.” I was bringing Him a kinked hose and asking for stronger water pressure. Now, I am learning to bring Him the kink. Just the kink. “Lord, here is the twist in me. I don’t know how to straighten it. I’ve tried. You take it.”

This is the unseen curriculum. It happens in the 3 a.m. quiet, in the moment of choosing patience over reaction, in the decision to bless instead of curse. It is the daily practice of yield.

We want the burning bush, the parted sea, the giant-slaying moment. God is often busy with the smaller, stranger work: softening a heart here, untwisting a motive there, smoothing out a kink of pride we did not even know was blocking the flow. He is less concerned with the spectacular output and more with the condition of the conduit.

Think of Moses. His curriculum was not the plagues first. It was 40 years in the desert, tending stubborn sheep. Learning the terrain. Learning patience. Learning to lead something that could not even reason back. God was smoothing out the kinks of a prince, making him a shepherd, so he could later shepherd a nation. The spectacular came later. The yield was forged in the mundane.

This is why the “big” obediences often feel impossible. We look at the command, love your enemy, forgive that debt, walk into that calling, and we see a solid wall of impossibility. We brace our shoulders and prepare to ram it. But God is not asking us to be the battering ram. He is asking us to be the door that He opens. Our job is not to generate the force. Our job is to be open, available, untwisted.

The world shouts, “Try harder!” The Spirit whispers, “Yield deeper.”

This yielding is an active surrender. It is not passivity. It is the most intense work I have ever done. It is the work of stopping. Of relinquishing the white-knuckled grip on my own plans, my own timeline, my own understanding. It is walking back to the spigot of my will and turning the valve to “off,” so He can turn His to “on.”

I feel this in my ongoing struggles, the ones that did not vanish overnight. I pray for deliverance, for the sudden release. Sometimes He gives it. Often, He gives me instead a gentle hand on my shoulder, guiding me to walk with Him back to the source of my striving. He shows me the kink: a fear, a lie I believed, an old wound I am protecting. He does not yell at the kink. He asks me to let the pressure off, to stop fighting it, to let Him smooth it with a truth, a memory, a scripture. The healing, the change, comes in the release, not in the redoubled effort.

This is the scandal of the gospel in a self-help world. Your weakness is not your disqualification; it is the prerequisite for His power. Your failure is not the end of the story; it is often the beginning of His chapter. Your “I can’t” is the exact prayer He has been waiting for, because it makes room for His “I can.”

So I am learning to audit my effort. When I feel the familiar strain, the frustration, the trickle where there should be a flow, I ask now: Am I fighting a kink? Am I trying to power through a twist in my soul that only He can ease?

My prayer is shifting. Less “God, give me strength,” and more “God, show me where I’m relying on my strength.” Less “Help me to do this,” and more “Make me a vessel that can be used for this.”

The hose is back on the reel now. The dry patch is soaked. The lesson is etched a little deeper. The curriculum continues. Not in a classroom, but here, in the ordinary dirt of my daily life. Learning, moment by moment, to stop yanking, and start yielding. To trade my weak force for His effortless flow.

A Moment in the Workshop

Where is the kink? Where in your life do you feel the strain of effort with a trickle of result? A relationship you are trying to force? A habit you are white-knuckling against? A calling you are trying to power into existence on your own timeline? Can you walk back to the spigot, turn off your own pressure, and let Him smooth what only His hands can reach? The prayer is simple: “Lord, show me where I am relying on my strength instead of Yours.”

Chapter 23: Silent Prayers and Cool Mornings

(Source: “177 Silent Prayers & Cool Mornings: Finding the Path on the First Day”)

It is 3:09 in the afternoon on the first day of the new year. The house is quiet. My prayer was brief today. The fireworks kept me up late last night, and it has been chilly by Florida standards, the kind of cool that makes you want to keep the windows shut and the coffee hot.

This is not a profound entry. It is not a mountaintop revelation. It is a raw journal entry from a man sitting in a house in South Florida, with his mother down the hall and his dog at his feet, trying to find the path on a day that feels like any other day, except the calendar has turned and the world expects grand resolutions.

I have no resolutions. I have a single, ongoing commitment: to show up. To sit in the quiet. To listen for the whisper. To obey the nudge. To lay the next log on the fire, even when the fire feels like cold ash.

The quiet hours keep handing me the same threads. The Babylon inside the self-righteous heart that still thinks it can manage its own standing before God. The broken places the shattered tools, the stuck situations, the stuckness itself that He keeps meeting me in. The story we tell about the cross, whether God is a punisher to be appeased or a healer to be trusted.

These are not new themes. They are the same themes, deepening. Like grooves in a record, playing the same song at increasing fidelity. Each pass reveals a nuance I missed the last time through.

And that is the model for the daily, quiet, persevering pursuit of God. It is not a dramatic ascent to a summit. It is a slow, circular deepening. A spiral staircase descending into the heart, where each revolution brings you past the same landmarks, the same struggles, the same promises, the same surrenders, but a level deeper each time.

The mornings are everything. What you do, how fast you grab your phone, what you are thinking about, the immediate things that happen not just after you get out of bed but before you even get out of bed. Your eyes open. First thing: Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God. Thank you for the blessings. That is the posture.

This does not require a prayer journal, a devotional app, or a well-organized quiet time. It requires only the willingness to give the first moment of the day to the One who gave you the day. One sentence. One breath. One act of recognition that you are not alone, that the bed you are lying in is on ground He made, in a body He sustains, in a story He is writing.

From that first moment, the rest of the morning builds. The small obediences stack. The nudges become perceptible. The log is placed on the fire, damp and ordinary, and over the hours it catches, and there is warmth again.

New Year’s Day carries a weight it was never designed to bear. We have made it into a referendum on our lives a day to account for all we failed at in the previous year and promise to fix it in the next. We write the resolutions with the best intentions and feel the familiar weight of our own insufficiency before February arrives.

But the Kingdom does not run on annual cycles of self-improvement. It runs on daily bread. On this morning’s manna. On the single, repeatable act of turning toward Him before the world has fully claimed your attention.

I have no breakthrough to report today. I have no dramatic word from the Lord to share. I have a quiet house, a cool morning, a dog at my feet, and a mother who is content down the hall. I have the small, ongoing certainty that He is here, that He sees, that the path is beneath my feet even when I cannot see it clearly.

That is enough. It has always been enough.

This morning was cool. My prayer was silent. The path is here, beneath my feet, same as yesterday. And I will walk it again tomorrow.

A Moment in the Workshop

What does your morning look like? Not the ideal morning. The real one. Can you describe, honestly, the first five minutes after your eyes open? What fills the empty cup of your heart? Is it gratitude? Anxiety? The phone? Tomorrow, try a different five minutes. Not a revolution. Just a rotation. One sentence of thanks before the feet hit the floor. One breath of acknowledgment that you are not alone. Start there. The rhythm begins with a single beat.

CONCLUSION: BUILDING THE ARK

(From Survival to Sustainable Community)

Focus: How to build and find the “quiet network” for the long haul.

Conclusion Introduction: The Quiet Network

You have walked a long road to get here.

You survived the earthquake. You learned to find God in the mess. You dismantled the machinery that would have processed your raw faith into religious plastic. You built the daily rhythms that keep the fire burning when the feelings are gone.

And now you stand at the edge of the final, necessary question: Can I do this alone?

The answer is no.

You were not designed for solitary faith. The enemy wants you isolated. He wants your awakening to be a private experience that gradually fades into a fond memory. He wants you to be a spiritual island, impressive in your independence, useless in your disconnection.

God’s design is different. He calls out a people, not a person. He builds a body, not a collection of limbs. He sets the lonely in families, not in bunkers.

But here is the tension: the communities you have known — the churches, the institutions, the organized religion — may have been part of the machinery you just dismantled. The pews may feel like a costume party. The sermons may feel like sales pitches. The small groups may feel like performance stages.

So where do you go?

You go to the table. Not the institution’s table. The Lord’s table. The one He set in a borrowed room with twelve imperfect men, where He broke bread, poured wine, and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

That table can be in a living room. A garage. A backyard. A park bench. It does not require a building. It requires bodies. Broken ones. Willing ones. Ones who have been through the earthquake and are done with the show.

The chapters that close this book are about finding those bodies. And becoming one of them.

Be sure to use the below links to be notified when the next installment hits the newstands.

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