Some of the biggest changes in my life didn't
come with explosions. They came quietly. No dramatic
breakdown, no pack your bags, we're changing
everything moment. There was no movie soundtrack
swelling in the background while I realized my
whole life needed a total overhaul. Most of the
time, it was much less impressive than that.
It was more like sitting in the middle of a normal
week, drinking coffee I'd already reheated twice,
looking around at my life and thinking, something's
off. Not destroyed, not scandalous, just off.
One of those moments came when Fletcher, our
oldest, was about a year and a half old. Christy
and I had always talked intentionally about priorities.
God first, marriage second, family next. We meant
it. We probably said it with total confidence.
The kind of confidence you have before you have
children and realize toddlers don't care about
your theological framework for time management.
Before kids. You say things like, we're going
to protect our lifestyle and we're not going
to let our child run everything. Then a child
enters your home and immediately begins conducting
sleep experiments in violation of the Geneva
Convention. So somewhere in that first year and
a half of parenting, we slipped into survival
mode. Not rebellion, just survival. We were trying
to work full time. Keep a marriage healthy, serve,
and keep the house from looking like a raccoon
had opened a daycare in our living room. No big
deal. And if I'm being honest, I was quietly
trying to keep up with everyone else who looked
like they had somehow figured this all out. That's
usually how drift works. Nobody calls it drift
while it's happening. Nobody wakes up. and says,
today seems like a great day to slowly move away
from the priorities I claim to believe. It just
happens. One not tonight at a time. One once
things slow down at a time. And then one day,
you realize the things you said mattered most
are getting whatever energy you have left. You
didn't stop loving them. You just stopped protecting
them. That's what's scary about all of this.
Everything looked fine from the outside. We were
showing up. But it wasn't collapse. It was drift.
And drift is harder to name because it often
looks responsible. It looks like maturity until
you slow down long enough to ask, are we actually
living according to the priorities we say we
believe? For us, the answer was uncomfortable.
We had not abandoned our priorities. we had stopped
protecting them. And once you see that, you can't
unsee it. Welcome to Grace in the Grind, brought
to you by Arrow & Roots Coffee Company, where
faith meets the everyday. Here, we take time
to notice God's presence in the middle of life's
busiest moments, to find encouragement, clarity,
and a reminder of His grace right in the grind
of daily life. So grab your coffee, and let's
take a sip of this cup together. I've got some
coffee date brewed today from Aaron Roots Coffee
Company. I went with a pour over this morning,
mostly because I enjoy the ritual of standing
there, watching it, letting it make the kitchen
smell great. Like a place where, you know, adults
actually live and have their lives together.
You know, I can dream. I'm drinking it black
today. No cream, no sugar. Just smooth, solid
cup. Nothing fancy. No hidden metaphors, just
a really good cup of coffee to get this day moving.
Before we move on, though, if you're finding
this show helpful or just funny in some ways,
the best way to support us is grabbing a bag
of coffee from Arrow & Roots Coffee Company.
It's a simple way to keep the lights on for us
and keep my caffeine levels high enough to actually
make sense. Plus, let's be honest, buying a bag
of genuinely good coffee is significantly cheaper.
than a midlife crisis, and it tastes way better
than a green smoothie. Check the link in the
show notes, grab some porch light or some coffee
date, and help me keep this conversation going.
No guilt, no pressure, just good beans for the
grind. So today we're talking about the middle
season. The one where nothing is falling apart,
but nothing feels new either. In pot two, we've
been talking about the false dream we were sold.
And part of that dream is the idea That if you
are following God, you should be seeing constant,
visible, upward movement. We've been conditioned
to believe that progress is only evidence of
God's favor. So when we hit a season where we
aren't rebuilding from a wreck, but we aren't
breaking ground on a new project, we get nervous.
We're just there. And that's part of what makes
the middle so uncomfortable. There's no obvious
crisis to rally around, no clear problem to solve,
no dramatic turning point you can point to and
say, this is where everything changed. Life is
functioning. Your faith is intact. You're doing
what you know to do. And yet, something feels
stalled. The tension we're feeling is this. We
expected obedience to feel like progress, but
sometimes obedience just feels like staying.
We thought faithfulness would always come with
a sense of momentum, of movement, clarity, visible
growth. And when it doesn't, the question quietly
forms in the back of our minds. Am I actually
being formed or am I just stuck? Our primary
passage today comes from Galatians 6, verse 9.
And we'll also look at a small overlooked verse
in Luke 16. My hope is that by the end of this
episode, you'll see. that the middle is not wasted
time. It's formative time. Theologically speaking,
this is where sanctification usually does its
slowest and deepest work. We love the word sanctification
when it sounds like a transformation story, but
most of the time, sanctification is just God
reshaping our instincts over time. It's teaching
us how to trust him without the constant dopamine
hit of a win. It's teaching us how to stay faithful.
when the only person watching is him. So Galatians
6 .9 says, Let us not grow weary of doing good,
for in due season we'll reap if we do not give
up. Now, I want you to notice who Paul is talking
to. He isn't writing to people who are in open
rebellion. He isn't writing to people who have
walked away from their faith and who are living
in a scandalous mess. He's writing to people
who are doing good. They are showing up. They're
serving. They are being responsible. They're
trying to follow the blueprint. And yet Paul
knows that these are the people most at risk
of growing weary. That verse doesn't exist because
perseverance is easy. It exists because weariness
is expected. Paul is acknowledging that doing
the right thing day after day without seeing
the harvest is exhausting. He doesn't shame them
for being tired. He doesn't say, If you were
really spiritual, you'd have more energy. He
says, don't give up. Which tells us something
important. The danger in the middle season isn't
usually dramatic disobedience. It's quiet resignation.
It's that slow internal shift from I'm trusting
God here to I guess this is just how it's going
to be. It's when we stop expecting God to move
and we just start enduring him. Paul anchors
our hope not in immediate results, but in due
season. That's Argarian language. A farmer doesn't
plant a seed and then go out the next morning
and scream at the dirt because there isn't a
stalk of corn yet. He knows there's a hidden
work happening beneath the surface that he can't
see and he can't rush. The due season is God's
timing, not ours. And the if in that verse, if
we don't give up, is the call to remain in the
field even when the dirt looks exactly like it
did yesterday. Now, we're going to talk more
about the due season part of this in the extra
shot this week. But I want to continue on here
and look at Luke 16 .10. It adds another layer
to this. One who is faithful in very little is
also faithful in much. We usually hear that as
a motivational speech like, do a good job at
your entry -level position so you can get a promotion.
But in the kingdom, that's not a motivational
speech. It's not motivational language. It's
formational language. Jesus isn't saying, hang
in there and someday I'll give you something
that actually matters. He's saying this is what
matters. Faithfulness is not a destination for
you to reach once you have a big platform or
a big house. or a big breakthrough. Faithfulness
is a muscle that is built in the small and unseen
and the repetitive. It's built in the seasons
that aren't impressive enough to talk about at
the dinner party. The middle is not the interruption
to your real life. The middle is the training
ground. We have a bad habit of dividing our lives
into sacred moments, the ones where we feel God's
presence or see his hand move. and ordinary moments
that we just have to get through. We think God
cares about our time at church, but he's indifferent
about our time at the office or time folding
laundry or whatever else it is we do. But that
division doesn't exist in scripture. Biblically,
your vocation, your calling, isn't first about
what you do for a living. It's about where God
has placed you right now to live faithfully.
Paul says in Colossians 3 .23, Whatever you do,
work heartily as for the Lord. That verse wasn't
written to people with exciting dream jobs or
creative freedom. It was written to people doing
repetitive, often difficult, unseen work. And
Paul tells them that work is your worship, which
means your job right now, your current role,
your current family dynamic. Your current unchanged
season is not something merely to endure until
your real calling shows up. It is the very place
God is forming you. Not because it's glamorous,
not because it's efficient, because obedience
lived quietly reshapes the heart. If you look
at the heroes of scripture, they spent far more
time in the middle than they did in the spotlight.
Moses spent 40 years, four decades, shepherding
sheep in the wilderness before he ever saw a
burning bush. David spent his youth tending sheep
and running from a crazy king before he ever
sat on a throne. And Jesus himself lived 30 years
in absolute obscurity in a carpenter shop before
he had three years of public ministry. We love
the three years of ministry. We want the miracles
and the crowds. But God clearly valued the 30
years of middle. He was at work in the sawdust
and the mundane. God does not wait until you
have momentum to start working. He is already
at work right now, in the stable, unchanged,
ordinary grind of your Tuesday afternoon. Now,
we have to be careful here. Because for a lot
of us, faithfulness has started to sound a lot
like burnout. In our false dream culture, We've
been told that being faithful means being exhausted.
We think that if we aren't constantly pushed
to our limit, we aren't doing enough for the
kingdom. If your obedience currently requires
three alarms, two energy drinks, and a whispered
prayer at 2 p .m. that sounds like, Lord, please
just get me through the next hour, we need to
pause. Burnout is not a spiritual badge of honor.
God is not more pleased with you because you're
tired. He isn't looking at your... exhaustion
and thinking, wow, look at how much they love
me. He's looking at you and thinking, I gave
you Sabbath for a reason. If your sense of calling
sounds suspiciously like your LinkedIn headline,
you might not be living out vocation. You might
be living out a performance. You might be trying
to prove something to yourself or to your parents
or to your neighbors that God has already settled.
Biblical faithfulness is steady. Not frantic.
Faithfulness asks, what has God actually entrusted
to me? Burnout asks, what am I trying to prove?
And just to be clear, having limits is not a
sign of weak faith. It's a sign that you're human
and not the Messiah. I have some good news for
you. The position of Messiah is already filled.
And the guy who has that job is doing a much
better job than you ever would. Faithfulness
can survive a day off. Faithfulness can survive
a no. Faithfulness can survive a season where
you aren't the top performer. Burnout, on the
other hand, panics at the idea of slowing down.
And that panic tells you exactly what is really
being trusted. You are trusting your own effort
more than you're trusting God's providence. So,
let's do a quick diagnostic. This isn't to shame
you. It's just to help you notice what's going
on beneath the surface of your own grind. Ask
yourself, is what I'm calling faithfulness producing
love, trust, and steadiness in my life? Or is
it producing constant exhaustion, hidden resentment,
and a low -level hum of anxiety? True faithfulness,
the kind that comes from the Spirit, produces
fruit, even in the middle. It might be slow fruit.
But it's there. Burnout produces performance,
and performance eventually cracks. Another question.
Am I responding to what God has actually asked
of me? Or am I reacting to expectations, comparison,
or fear? Sometimes staying faithful means showing
up again. It means doing the work, making the
call, and folding the laundry. But sometimes,
staying faithful means closing the laptop, saying
no without a long spiritual speech to justify
it, and trusting God to keep the world spinning
without your constant involvement. That's not
laziness. That's trust. Here's the grace in all
of this. Stable seasons are not a punishment.
If you're in a season where nothing is moving,
don't automatically assume it's because You've
done something wrong. Don't assume God is holding
out on you or you're being disciplined or put
on the shelf. Waiting seasons are not wasted.
Ordinary obedience is not second -class faith.
God does some of his deepest and most structural
work in the seasons that feel repetitive and
quiet. This is how sanctification usually works.
It's slow. It's steady. It happens over time,
not overnight. comparison will still whisper
in your ear that you're behind. It will show
up in your highlights of everyone else's breakthroughs.
But scripture reminds us that calling is not
a race and faithfulness is not a competition.
Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is just stay present right where God has already
placed you. Stop waiting for the real season
to start. This is the season. The clearest sign
that God is at work in your life might not be
a promotion or a new relationship or a big win.
It might just be the fact that you haven't burned
out yet. It might be the fact that you're still
showing up, still praying, and still trusting,
even when the dirt hasn't changed. That's not
failure. That's formation. So here's the invitation
for this week. Name one ordinary act of faithfulness
you've been tempted to dismiss as nothing. Is
it going to work and doing your job with integrity?
Is it serving quietly in a way that will never
get a shout out? Is it showing up for your family
when you're tired? Is it praying when it feels
like a routine you're just going through? Name
it. And then, I want you to thank God for it.
Not because it feels impressive, but because
it is an act of obedience. Then practice one
act of trust. Let go of something you've been
carrying that was never yours to hold. Maybe
it's the pressure to get ahead. Maybe it's anxiety
over a timeline you can't control. The goal of
this life is not to prove how much you can handle.
The goal is to trust God enough to stop acting
like everything depends on you. If all you do
this week is keep showing up, Without quitting,
without burning out, without giving up on the
God who hasn't given up on you, that's not nothing.
That's faithfulness. And scripture tells us that
God honors that far more than we usually realize.
He isn't looking for heroes. He's looking for
sons and daughters who trust him in the mundane.
If you know someone who feels stuck right now,
someone who isn't broken, they're just tired,
tired of waiting on the next thing, Share this
episode with them. Sometimes people don't need
a breakthrough or a miracle. They just need reassurance
that staying with God is not the same thing as
falling behind. It's a hard thing to admit that
you aren't the hero who has to move the story
forward. But there is so much mercy in that admission.
You don't have to carry the weight of what's
next. You just have to carry the grace of what's
now. Thanks for listening to Grace in the Grind,
where we keep the coffee strong and our faith
stronger, even in the middle, especially in the
middle. God is still at work. We'll see you in
the next cup.