The Thinking Believer

  The People God Uses Flawed Vessels, Perfect Grace Let me tell you about a murderer. Not just any murderer. A man who killed an Egyptian and buried his body in sand, hoping nobody would notice. He ran. Hid in the wilderness for forty years. Probably thought his life was over, that God had stamped "REJECTED" across his file. You know his name. Moses. And here's the thing that still keeps me awake some nights: God didn't wait for Moses to become perfect. Didn't wait for him to sort out his anger issues or attend a leadership seminar or apologize properly for that whole murder situation. God just showed up in a burning bush and said, "Go. I'm sending you." Moses argued. Made excuses. Said, "Who am I?" like he hadn't learned anything in forty years. And God said something that still echoes through every flawed life: "I will be with you." Not "you're good enough now." Not "you finally fixed yourself." Just:...

The Algebra of a Broken Heart: David's Math and God's Grace When Your Sin Has an Answer You Cannot Solve We carry an internal ledger. On one side, our blessings: health, family, purpose. On the other, our failings. We trust in a simple, moral arithmetic: good choices sum to a blessed life. But what happens when a single, catastrophic entry—a great sin —corrupts the entire equation? Suddenly, 1 (a healthy body) + 1 (a loving marriage) + 1 (happy children) no longer equals peace. It equals a sprawling, unsolvable problem of pain, shame, and broken futures. The math of your life is broken, and you are left staring at the variable of your failure, trying and failing to solve for forgiveness. No one in Scripture embodies this shattered equation more than King David. Here was a man whose ledger overflowed on the blessing side: shepherd boy turned giant-slayer, beloved psalmist, anointed king, "a man after God's own heart." His life was a testament to divine favor. T...

  The Near Love: When God Feels Distant and Your Heart Is the Lock There is a quiet ache familiar to many earnest believers—the gap between the love we know is proclaimed and the love we struggle to feel. It's the space between solid theology on a Sunday and a sense of strange loneliness by Tuesday afternoon. For a long time, I lived in that gap. I could teach about grace, yet inwardly perform for scraps of approval. I knew God was love, yet often related to Him as a distant benefactor rather than a present Father. The turning point wasn't finding a new spiritual technique or unlocking a deeper secret. It was a humbling, grace-drenched realization: the problem was never God's proximity, but my reception. My new book, "The Near Love: Unblocking Your Heart to the God Who Is Already Close," is the map of that journey from self-hindrance to secure abiding. What You'll Find Inside This book is not a superficial pep talk or a dry theological treatise. It...