The Power of Your Unseen Life with God
What if the most important part of your spiritual life is the part nobody else sees?
In our age of social media highlights and public performance, we've become accustomed to measuring our worth by what others witness. We post our achievements, share our victories, and carefully curate the image we present to the world. But what about the hidden places? What about the secret conversations between you and God that no one else knows about?
There's something profoundly transformative about developing a secret life with God—not secret in the sense of shameful things we're hiding, but secret in the sense of sacred intimacy that belongs only to you and Him.
The Beauty of Surrender: Lessons from Mary's Yes
In a world that celebrates control, achievement, and carefully curated images, the concept of surrender feels almost countercultural. We plan our days down to the minute, manage our reputations through social media, and work tirelessly to ensure our lives unfold according to our designs. Yet in the Christmas story, we encounter a young woman whose life teaches us something radically different about what it means to follow God.
Mary was an ordinary teenage girl living in Nazareth, going about her daily routines—drawing water, grinding grain, learning the skills needed to manage a household. She was engaged to a respectable man named Joseph and likely had dreams about her future wedding and married life. Nothing about her circumstances suggested she was destined for anything extraordinary. She wasn't wealthy or influential; when she later brought the purification offering to the temple after Jesus' birth, she could only afford two doves instead of a lamb—the offering permitted for those of limited means.