STEWARDING
YOUR NOW

Notice what the verse doesn't say. It doesn't say floodlight. It says lamp.

A lamp gives you enough light for the portion of the journey immediately in front of you. We often ask God for clarity when what we actually want is certainty, but clarity and certainty are not the same thing.

Clarity says, “Show me my next step.” Certainty says, “Show me how all of this is going to work.”

There are dreams in you. Ideas. Things you can see that do not yet exist in the form you imagine them. Realth is one of them. It isn't merely something you thought of casually. You have given thought, language, architecture, and energy to it.

But vision can become frustrating when you can see the destination more clearly than you can see the road. This is where mature faith becomes very practical. You don't necessarily need God to show you everything. You need enough light to obey the next thing.

There is also nothing unspiritual about receiving help with the mechanics. God has always used people, wisdom, systems, tools, relationships, and resources to help move assignments forward. The question isn't whether you receive help. The question is whether the help remains a tool while God remains the Source.

Sometimes the next step also becomes clearer in community. Trusted believers, mentors, wise friends, and healthy spiritual community can help us see things we cannot always see alone.

Clarity doesn't always arrive as a dramatic revelation. Sometimes it looks like a sequence. Have this conversation. Write this down. Call that person. Learn this skill. Wait here. Move there.

The miracle isn't always that God shows you the whole staircase. Sometimes the miracle is simply that the next step becomes clear. Then you take it.

This may be one of the most important disciplines for someone who genuinely believes she hears God.

Scripture does not tell spiritually mature people to stop listening for God. It tells them to test what they hear.

John says, “Test the spirits.” Paul speaks about being transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we can “test and approve what God's will is.” Discernment, then, is not evidence that you don't trust God's voice. Discernment is part of how you honor God's voice.

The closer we feel to God, the more important this becomes because our desires also have voices. Our disappointments have voices. Loneliness, ambition, relief, fear, and even happiness can influence how we interpret what is happening around us.

Sometimes what we deeply want can sound remarkably spiritual when we want it badly enough.

One of the marks of spiritual maturity is becoming willing to ask, “God, is this You, or does this simply feel like You because it gives me what I want?” That question is not distrust. It is surrender.

God's love for you is not measured by His willingness to endorse every path that brings you relief or happiness. Sometimes His love says yes. Sometimes His love says wait. Sometimes His love says no. And sometimes His love says, “I understand exactly why you want this, but this isn't the way.”

There is something beautiful about reaching a place where much of your prayer life consists of worship and thanksgiving. You trust God for daily bread. You don't have to spend your days anxiously begging Him to take care of you. That is growth.

Perhaps the next layer of that trust is being able to say, “God, I trust You enough that I don't need every answer to be the answer I preferred.”

Discernment also becomes healthier when every important conclusion does not have to be reached privately. Scripture, the Holy Spirit, wise believers who know us well, and healthy spiritual leadership can provide necessary guardrails, particularly when our own desires are strong.

A God who truly loves us does not merely confirm us. He leads us.

Elijah's story is fascinating because God responds to him on more than one level. Elijah has just experienced an extraordinary spiritual victory. He has seen God move powerfully, yet shortly afterward he is depleted, afraid, overwhelmed, and asking God to let him die.

God's first response is not a sermon. He lets Elijah sleep. Then He feeds him. Elijah sleeps again, and God feeds him again. Only later does God begin dealing with Elijah's perspective, assignment, relationships, and future.

There is something profoundly important here. God did not treat Elijah as though his spiritual life and physical life were disconnected.

Sometimes our minds have moved forward while our bodies are still carrying something. We can genuinely feel happy, productive, peaceful, and grateful while our bodies are still holding tension accumulated from previous seasons. That does not mean the peace is fake. It may simply mean different parts of us process life at different speeds.

You recently wrote a book called The Work We Hide. There may be another interesting layer to that phrase. Sometimes the work being hidden isn't work we're intentionally concealing. Sometimes it is the quiet work happening underneath the surface of us.

Your mind may genuinely say, “I'm good.” Your heart may say, “I'm happy.” Your spirit may say, “I'm at peace.” All three can be true while your body is still processing, adjusting, recovering, remembering, or responding.

That doesn't mean something is necessarily wrong, and it certainly doesn't mean you should become afraid of every signal your body sends. It simply means your body deserves the same curiosity, care, and attention you give to the other parts of your life.

God cares about the whole person. There are moments when the appropriate response is prayer and worship. There are also moments when wisdom looks like medical attention, movement, physiotherapy, rest, nutrition, slowing down, asking questions, or simply paying attention.

Elijah needed revelation, but before revelation, Elijah needed rest.

Perhaps The Work We Hide isn't only something you've written about. Perhaps there is also work happening quietly within you that deserves to be noticed. God sees that work too.

Moses had an assignment and an insecurity at the same time. Those two things can coexist.

We sometimes imagine that confidence must arrive before assignment can be executed. Scripture repeatedly shows us otherwise.

Moses asks, “What if they don't believe me?” Then he raises concerns about his ability to speak. Eventually God asks him a wonderfully practical question: “What is that in your hand?”

It was a staff. Nothing spectacular. It was simply something Moses already possessed.

God often begins there. Not with what you wish you had, the personality you wish you had, the skill someone else possesses, or the platform you imagine you need. He begins with what is already in your hand.

You may not be the person who wants to walk into every room shouting, “Look at me.” That's okay. You don't have to become her.

You may not naturally enjoy selling yourself or promoting what you have created. That may mean you need people around you whose strengths complement yours. Knowing what you do well and what you don't do well isn't necessarily insecurity. Sometimes it is healthy self-awareness.

But self-awareness becomes a problem when it becomes an elegant explanation for staying small. There is a significant difference between saying, “That's not my strength,” and saying, “Therefore, what God gave me can never grow.”

If the vision is bigger than your present skill set, the answer may not be to abandon the vision. The answer may be partnership, team, structure, learning, delegation, and courage.

There is also another piece of evidence you should not overlook. You wrote the book.

The Work We Hide exists because something that once lived only inside of you made it outside of you. An idea became language. Language became pages. Pages became a manuscript, and the manuscript became a finished work.

At some point, you have to let the evidence speak. You have already created, developed, written, and finished something meaningful.

Perhaps the next question isn't, “Am I confident enough to do this?” Maybe it is, “What would I do next if I stopped requiring myself to feel confident before I moved?”

Confidence does not always come before movement. Sometimes confidence is the evidence movement leaves behind.

There is a difference between being liked and feeling like you belong.

You can be surrounded by people who genuinely like you and still occasionally wonder where you fit. You can have friends, family, a spouse who loves you, people who enjoy your company, and relationships you value, while still feeling a particular pull when you see a circle of people who seem deeply connected to one another.

Something in you can quietly say, “I want that.” There is nothing shallow about that desire.

God created human beings for relationship. Before sin entered the world, before there was rejection, betrayal, insecurity, or loneliness, God looked at a human being and said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” The desire to belong is older than brokenness.

But because we live in a broken world, a God-given desire for belonging can sometimes become tangled with other questions: Do they like me? Do they want me there? Why wasn't I included? What do they have with each other that I don't seem to have? Is there something about me that makes connection harder?

When we feel included, we can interpret it as evidence that we are valuable. When we feel excluded, overlooked, or unable to break into a particular relationship or circle, we can unconsciously interpret that as evidence that something is wrong with us. But those two things are not the same.

Not belonging everywhere does not mean there is nowhere you belong.

Jesus Himself moved through different relational spaces. There were crowds around Him, disciples who followed Him, twelve He specifically called, and a smaller group who experienced moments others did not. That tells us something important. Not every good person is going to become your person.

You can meet someone you admire, enjoy them, recognize qualities in them that resonate with you, and genuinely hope a friendship develops. Sometimes it will. Sometimes it won't. The danger is allowing another person's response to determine what you believe about yourself.

You don't have to audition for belonging. You don't have to become more interesting, more impressive, less intense, more agreeable, more useful, more successful, or more like the people in the room in order to deserve meaningful relationships.

Psalm 139 begins somewhere deeper than human acceptance. David says, in essence, God knows me completely and still stays close. Human belonging becomes healthier when it grows from divine belonging.

When you already know where you belong with God, you can approach people with open hands. You can desire friendship without demanding it. You can initiate without chasing. You can enjoy connection without immediately needing to define it. You can recognize when something is mutual and also recognize when you are doing most of the relational work.

Sometimes chemistry isn't there. Sometimes timing isn't there. Sometimes people already have the relational capacity they can manage. Sometimes someone you thought would become a close friend becomes an acquaintance, while someone you never expected becomes family. None of those things determine your worth.

There may also be another layer to why Realth resonates so deeply with you. You understand that a person can possess health and wealth and still recognize another form of richness that matters enormously: relational wealth.

Perhaps Realth isn't merely something you are building for other people. Maybe God is continuing to teach you what relational wealth looks like in your own life.

Not the largest circle. Not the most impressive circle. Not simply being invited into somebody else's circle. Your people.

Relationships where there is reciprocity. Relationships where curiosity travels both directions. Relationships where you are not constantly wondering whether you are wanted. Relationships where you can give and receive. Relationships where you can be challenged without feeling rejected and known without feeling managed.

Some of those relationships may eventually be found through a healthy church community, through the work you are building, through people you already know, or through relationships you haven't encountered yet. But the deeper prayer isn't simply, “God, give me more friends.”

Perhaps it is: “God, heal anything in me that makes belonging responsible for proving my worth, and then teach me how to recognize the relationships You are actually giving me.”

Because there is a difference between finding people and finding your people.

Jesus gives us an interesting picture of fruitfulness in John 15. He doesn't describe a branch frantically trying to produce fruit. He describes a branch remaining connected to the vine.

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you.”

There is a difference between fruitfulness and striving. Fruitfulness comes from connection, stewardship, obedience, work, patience, pruning, and time. Striving happens when the thing we are building begins carrying a weight it was never designed to carry.

There is nothing wrong with wanting something you have created to succeed. You should want Realth to succeed.

You have invested thought, creativity, time, energy, language, and vision into it. You see something in it. You believe it can help people. Wanting that vision to grow is not automatically ego or ambition. It can simply be stewardship.

But there is an important question underneath every meaningful vision: What happens inside me if this doesn't grow as quickly as I hoped?

That question helps expose whether the vision is something we are stewarding or something we have quietly asked to validate us.

There is a difference between wanting something to succeed because you believe in it and needing it to succeed because its success has become evidence that you matter.

Realth matters. But Realth cannot carry the weight of proving Debbie.

Neither can the next opportunity, platform, audience, invitation, income stream, partnership, or accomplishment. Those things can reveal what you carry. They cannot determine what you are worth.

Ephesians says that you are God's workmanship. Notice the order. You are His workmanship before the works He prepared for you to do. Your work flows from your identity. Your identity does not flow from your work.

When we build something that came from our own thinking, experience, values, and convictions, people's response to the thing can begin to feel like their response to us. If they don't understand it, we can feel misunderstood. If they don't support it, we can feel unsupported. If it doesn't grow, we can quietly wonder whether we misjudged ourselves.

But a slow response does not automatically mean a wrong assignment. Neither does enthusiasm automatically mean a right one. This takes us back to discernment.

Your responsibility is not to force fruit. Your responsibility is to remain connected to the Vine, steward what is in your hands, listen, learn, adjust, work, and obey.

There may be seasons when God tells you to push harder. There may be seasons when He tells you to change strategy. There may be people He brings who can do parts of this better than you. There may be things about the original vision that need to evolve. None of that diminishes you.

Perhaps the question is shifting from “How do I make this succeed?” to “How do I remain faithful, fruitful, teachable, and connected while I build it?”

You can work hard without striving. You can promote something without making promotion an exercise in proving yourself. You can want Realth to become significant without requiring Realth to make you significant.

The vision came through you. It was never supposed to become your identity.

Near the end of John's Gospel, Jesus has an extraordinarily personal conversation with Peter. Jesus talks to him about his love, calling, future, and responsibility.

Almost immediately, Peter looks over at John and essentially asks, “What about him?” Jesus' answer is striking: “What is that to you? You follow Me.”

That isn't cold. It is clarifying. Peter loved John. John mattered. But John's story was not Peter's assignment to control.

You said something that reveals a great deal about your heart: “I'm really doing okay. I want the people around me to be okay too.”

That is beautiful. It can also become heavy.

When you are okay, you have enough emotional room to notice everyone who isn't. You notice who is lonely, who is dissatisfied, who hasn't found their people, whose potential isn't being realized, whose story could be lost, whose legacy needs protecting, and whose life needs something to change.

Love notices these things, but love must also learn its limits.

Galatians gives us what initially sounds like a contradiction. Paul tells us to “carry each other's burdens,” and then only a few verses later says, “each one should carry their own load.” Both are Scripture.

There are burdens we help people carry, and there are loads that still belong to them. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

You can care deeply about someone without becoming responsible for their outcome. You can help preserve what matters without controlling what happens next. You can encourage someone without doing their work. You can see potential in someone without becoming responsible for activating it.

You can love people fiercely and still return them to God.

This may be especially important in a season when you are genuinely doing well. You do not have to create a burden for yourself simply because someone you love has one.

There are people whose stories matter deeply to you. There are people whose loneliness concerns you. There are legacies you don't want to see wasted. That care is not something you need to get rid of. But perhaps God wants to teach you how to carry those things differently.

There is a difference between caring and carrying.

Perhaps one of your deepest acts of faith now is learning to say: “God, I care deeply about this person and about what happens next. But You care about them even more than I do.”

Then open your hands, not because you stopped caring, but because you remembered whose hands are bigger.