AFTER THE AWAKENING: Installment 8

Installment 8, Chapters 20-23

Apr 27, 2026

Good morning and hello friends,

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.

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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.

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