From the Road
Occasional notes. The book is finished; the walking is not.
I sealed First I Pray because it said what I had to say, and because I know myself: left alone with it, I would edit it forever and call that faithfulness. So the book is done. I am not.
The practice it describes keeps happening to me — most days, in ways I don't see coming. The first reach still goes wrong more often than I'd like to admit, and by grace it keeps getting corrected. Every so often one of those moments asks to be written down. This is where I put it.
There is no schedule here. There may be three notes in a week and none for a season. If it has been quiet, it means I've been walking, not writing — the practice doesn't pause when the page does. There is nothing to subscribe to and nothing to keep up with. Come back whenever you think of it, or don't; the book is the place to start, and it isn't going anywhere.
These are just notes from the same road — dust still on my shoes.
There's a sentence I've learned to be careful around, and to teach the people close to me to be careful around: "God told me."
I've never found a good way to argue with it. That's exactly the problem. Said honestly, it's holy ground. Said carelessly — or worse, used to win — it becomes a door no one's allowed to knock on. I've watched it end conversations that should have kept going. A claim you're not allowed to question isn't automatically from God. Sometimes it's just the last word dressed up as the final one.
I don't think the answer is to stop listening for God. It's to stay open while you listen. Scripture never treats testing as the enemy of faith — test the spirits, John says, and he says it to friends, like it's an act of love. The Bereans fact-checked Paul and got praised for it. And the wisdom that comes down from above, James says, is open to reason.
So here's my rule of thumb: if a word from God is real, it won't be afraid of the question. The Spirit has never once needed me to defend Him by shutting someone else up.
Be careful with "God told me." Not because God doesn't speak — but because I love the people who'd have to live with me getting it wrong.
Watched a neuroscientist named Anne-Laure Le Cunff give a talk this week. She said when she was told she might die, her first instinct was to check her calendar. I laughed out loud — because I know that reach. Something cracks open and I grab for the schedule, the plan, the fix, anything with edges I can hold. She has a name for it: compensatory control. Clinging to what you think you know so the ground will stop moving.
Her way out is curiosity — tiny experiments, one small thing you try without needing to know how it ends. Mine is a little older than hers. First I pray. Before the grip. Before the plan. Not because the prayer hands me the outcome — but because it loosens my fingers first.
She closed with "control keeps you small, but curiosity sets you free." I'd change one word. Control keeps you small. Surrender sets you free.