Psalm 71:17-24 The Message
17-24 You got me when I was an unformed youth,
God, and taught me everything I know.
Now I’m telling the world your wonders;
I’ll keep at it until I’m old and gray.
God, don’t walk off and leave me
until I get out the news
Of your strong right arm to this world,
news of your power to the world yet to come,
Your famous and righteous
ways, O God.
God, you’ve done it all!
Who is quite like you?
You, who made me stare trouble in the face,
Turn me around;
Now let me look life in the face.
I’ve been to the bottom;
Bring me up, streaming with honors;
turn to me, be tender to me,
And I’ll take up the lute and thank you
to the tune of your faithfulness, God.
I’ll make music for you on a harp,
Holy One of Israel.
When I open up in song to you,
I let out lungsful of praise,
my rescued life a song.
All day long I’m chanting
about you and your righteous ways,
While those who tried to do me in
slink off looking ashamed.
Word of God for the Children of God
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen
You know that space between heartbeats?
In the dead of night, when the house is finally quiet, the scroll wheel on your mouse has lost its zing – slows down, the mouse wont track or stops working?
That’s where it finds you.
A vague, shapeless ache.
A whisper thumps in your eardrums, hammering away; This can’t be all there is!
You signed up for life, and life more abundant.
You memorized the Bible verses about peace that pass understanding and joy unspeakable.
But on a sunny afternoon, and you’re stuck in traffic with a low fuel light and a lower spirit, and then the gospel feels like a theory. A beautiful, distant theory.
And you wonder, is it just me? Is my faith broken?
What if it’s not?
What if the problem isn’t the absence of faith but a misunderstanding of its fingerprint? What if the life of a believer isn’t about a glowing, ethereal perfection but a series of quiet, counterintuitive, and deeply human postures that, over time, carve the image of Christ into the very grain of our being?
This isn’t about performing for an audience.
It’s about the seven things that happen when the Audience of One truly takes His seat in your heart as a real Christian.
1. They Listen to a Different Whisper
Speaking from experience, I know for a fact the world’s voice is a crescendo.
It’s the algorithm’s curated envy, the news cycle’s curated panic, and the marketplace’s curated lack of profit for your new roof. It shouts of what you must have, what you must fear, and who you must become to be enough. It’s a heavy yoke, and it’s a yoke we often pick up and carry without a second thought.
But what if somewhere along the way we have learned to tune your ear to a completely different frequency? A lower, quieter, older sound.
It’s the sound you have to get still to hear.
It’s not in the earthquake or the fire, but the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12).
A real Christian isn’t someone who never hears the world’s noise; they’re just someone who has practiced recognizing the timbre of the Shepherd’s voice over the din of the crowd.
“My sheep hear my voice,“ Jesus said, “and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).
This is the first, most fundamental difference.
It’s not that real Christians are never afraid; it’s that they’ve learned which voice to answer when fear calls their name. They turn down the volume on the chaos to hear the whisper that says, “I am with you. I am for you. Be still.”
2. They See the World Through a Lens of Ownership—Not Tenancy
Most of us live as tenants.
We pass through spaces—our jobs, our neighborhoods, even our families—with a temporary mindset.
We complain about the mess but feel no real responsibility for cleaning it.
We see the brokenness but feel powerless to mend it.
“It’s not our house; it is not our problem we’re just passing through.”
But a real Christian operates from a wild, paradoxical truth: they are both a pilgrim and a steward.
They understand they are “a stranger and a pilgrim” on this earth, as stated in Hebrews 11:13-16; their ultimate citizenship is elsewhere.
Hebrews 11:13-16 The Message
13-16 Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.
Yet, this freeing truth doesn’t breed detachment; it fuels radical engagement.
Because they know the Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Psalm 24:1-2).
24 1-2 God claims Earth and everything in it,
God claims World and all who live on it.
He built it on Ocean foundations,
laid it out on River girders.
They are not temporary tenants; they are only stewards of the King’s estate.
This changes everything.
It means the trash on the sidewalk is litter on the King’s highway.
The lonely neighbor is a subject of the King who needs companionship.
The injustice in the city is a stain on the King’s dominion.
They don’t see a world they are trying to escape from, but a creation they are entrusted to care for on behalf of its rightful Owner.
Their work, their charity, their civic engagement, ministry and mission—it’s all an act of stewardship, a way of tending the garden until the Gardener returns.
3. They Hold Their Plans With Open Hands
We clutch our five-year plans like life rafts adrift in the crashing waves.
We white-knuckle our careers, our relationships, and our dreams.
We see a closed door as a personal failure and a detour as a disaster.
Our identity gets tangled up in our itinerary.
But have you ever noticed how often God’s greatest works begin with a divine interruption? A detour on the road to Damascus. A change of route that leads to a Macedonian call. A Messiah who arrived in a feeding trough, not a palace?
The real Christian has a paradoxical relationship with control.
They make plans, yes.
They are diligent.
But they hold those plans loosely, writing “if the Lord wills” in the margins of their life.
Just like it clearly says in James 4:15, “For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that.”
Nothing but a Wisp of Fog
13-15 And now I have a word for you who brashly announce, “Today—at the latest, tomorrow—we’re off to such and such a city for the year. We’re going to start a business and make a lot of money.” You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. You’re nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing. Instead, make it a habit to say, “If the Master wills it and we’re still alive, we’ll do this or that.”
This isn’t passive fatalism.
It’s active trust.
It’s the difference between being the author of your own story, frantically trying to control the story plot, and our images of being a beloved character in God’s great narrative, trusting the author’s pen – never in His auto-pen
It’s the freedom that comes when your identity is rooted in who you belong to, not what you are accomplishing.
Understanding the closed door isn’t a tragedy but a redirection.
The interruption isn’t an annoyance; it’s an invitation to a better story.
4. They Find Strength in the Unmasking
The world teaches us to curate.
To present our highlight reel. To armor up with confidence, success, and togetherness. Vulnerability is seen as a weakness, a crack in the façade.
But the kingdom of God operates on a different economy. It’s a kingdom where strength is “made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
The real Christian isn’t the one who has it all together in the church foyer.
The real Christian is the one brave enough to unmask in a small group and say, “My marriage is struggling,” or “I’m battling a fear I can’t shake,” or “I feel so alone.”
They understand church is not a museum for saints but hospital for sinners.
It’s in the honest confession of our brokenness that the light of grace gets in.
It’s in admitting we are weak we finally tap into a strength that isn’t our own.
This is the scandalous exchange: our anxiety for His peace, our weariness for His rest, and our mess for His mercy.
We don’t have to pretend anymore.
We can bring our whole, tired, tangled selves to the foot of the cross and find that we are met not with condemnation, but with a love that heals precisely where we are most wounded.
5. They Practice a Gratitude That Doesn’t Ignore the Pain
It’s easy for us to be thankful on the mountaintop. When the sun is shining and the bank account is full and the kids are healthy.
But according to 1 Thessalonians 5:18, the call is to “in everything give thanks.” In everything. Not for everything.
There’s a profound difference.
A real Christian develops a gratitude that is not blind to the darkness but that chooses to acknowledge the single point of light.
It’s a defiant act.
It’s giving thanks for the single flower growing through the crack in the pavement of a devastatingly dry year.
It’s the “sacrifice of praise,” like in Hebrews 13:15, that costs us something—our pride, our self-pity, and our right to be the center of our own tragic story.
This gratitude isn’t a plastic smile.
It’s the raw, honest prayer of the Psalmist who cries out in
Psalm 13:1, 5, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
and then, in the very next breath, declares, “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.”
Real Christians can hold the pain and the promise in the same hand and thank God that the story isn’t over yet.
6. They Extend the Mercy They Themselves Desperately Need
We are natural scorekeepers.
We keep mental ledgers of who has wronged us, owes us, and who has failed us.
We withhold forgiveness until we feel the other person has suffered enough.
But then you really, truly understand the gospel.
You realize you are a debtor who has been forgiven a debt so astronomical it could never be repaid.
Ten thousand talents worth.
And that person who cut you off in traffic, relative who betrayed your trust, that coworker taking credit for your work—their debt against you is, by comparison, a hundred pence (Matthew 18:23-35).
The real Christian doesn’t forgive others because they are a doormat.
They forgive because they have been lifted off the floor themselves.
They extend mercy because they are living on a daily supply of it.
They know holding onto offense is like drinking a 10 gallon jug of hemlock and waiting for the other person to get sick.
The command to love our enemies isn’t a weapon for guilt; it’s a prescription for freedom. Matthew 5:43-48
It’s the only way to unlock our own hearts from the prison of bitterness.
7. They Live from a Future Promise in a Present Tense
This is the thread that ties all the others together. Everyone lives with an underlying narrative about how the story ends. For some, it’s a quiet hope in personal legacy. For others, it’s a grim certainty of decay and nothingness.
However, the real Christian lives with a blessed assurance.
A “hope both sure and steadfast” (Hebrews 6:19).
Hebrews 6:17-20 Christian Standard Bible
17 Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain. 20 Jesus has entered there on our behalf as a forerunner, because he has become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
This hope is not a vague wish but an anchor for the soul.
It’s the settled conviction the story ends with restoration, reconciliation, and resurrection.
That every wrong will be made right, and every tear will be wiped away.
And that future promise changes everything about the present tense.
It means our suffering is not meaningless.
It means our labor in the Lord is not in vain.
It means that when we stand for justice, when we create beauty, when we offer comfort, we are not just delaying the inevitable darkness.
We are planting seeds of a coming kingdom. Matthew 13 Parable of the Sower
We are living now as citizens of the world to come.
We are, as Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright says,
“celebrating Easter in the midst of Lent.” We live in the tension of the “already” but “not yet,” and it infuses our present moment with eternal significance.
So the next time that ache finds you in the quiet dark, don’t dismiss it as a failure of faith.
See it as a homing device.
A reminder that you were made for more than this world can offer.
The difference for real Christians isn’t in the absence of the struggle.
It’s in the presence of a companion within it.
It’s not about doing more.
It’s listening, receiving, responding to a love that has already done everything.
In the name of God, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit ….
Praying …
Psalm 16
Confidence in the Lord
A Miktam of David.
1 Protect me, God, for I take refuge in you.
2 I[a] said to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have nothing good besides you.”[b]
3 As for the holy people who are in the land,
they are the noble ones.
All my delight is in them.
4 The sorrows of those who take another god
for themselves will multiply;
I will not pour out their drink offerings of blood,
and I will not speak their names with my lips.
5 Lord, you are my portion[c]
and my cup of blessing;
you hold my future.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me
in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
7 I will bless the Lord who counsels me—
even at night when my thoughts trouble me.[d]
8 I always let the Lord guide me.[e]
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad
and my whole being rejoices;
my body also rests securely.
10 For you will not abandon me to Sheol;
you will not allow your faithful one to see decay.
11 You reveal the path of life to me;
in your presence is abundant joy;
at your right hand are eternal pleasures.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 