I have a good friend who has a highly questionable
strategy when it comes to car maintenance. When
she hears a sound under the hood that sounds
a little strange, she doesn't pull over. She
doesn't call a mechanic. She just turns up the
volume on the radio. Her theory. If she can't
hear the problem, the problem doesn't actually
exist. Now we laugh at that and go, that's crazy.
But we do the exact same thing in our lives.
Most of us assume that a major structural failure
happens all at once. A violent storm drops a
tree through the roof, or floodwaters suddenly
take over your living room. Something loud, catastrophic,
and obviously enough that you can walk in, point
at the wreckage, and say, well, there's the problem.
But if you talk to any actual contractor, they'll
tell you the damage that really scares them is
much quieter than that. It's the slow, hidden
water leak behind the drywall. It doesn't make
a sound. It doesn't flood the basement overnight.
And for months, everything keeps functioning
normally. The lights turn on, the rooms look
clean, and you keep walking through the house
completely oblivious until one random Tuesday
afternoon, you notice a faint discolored stain
that wasn't the toddler. Once you see it, you
realize the stain isn't the actual problem. The
stain is just the evidence. It means something
has been happening behind the wall for a lot
longer than you realized. And now you have a
choice to make. You can paint over it and pretend
it's fine, which is always incredibly tempting
because a can of paint is significantly cheaper
than a plumber. And it's way faster. And denial
is way easier than a repair. Or you can actually
open up the wall. That's exactly how drift catches
up with us in real life. It's rarely a massive,
scandalous collapse. For Christy and I, we've
had a rule since we got married that we go to
bed together. Rather than having completely different
schedules where one wakes early and the other
stays up late, we wanted to spend time together.
Not be in the same house on different schedules,
physically present, but not in sync. But even
with that, we realized at times... that we need
to make adjustments. It came from recognizing
our communication started to be off, not arguing
so much as just not being on the same page. It
was a small sign, but it was enough to make us
go, what needs to be done? Now, there's a classic
leadership concept that perfectly captures what
Christy and I had to walk through, and it's the
idea that in a marriage, women are often the
thermometer, but men are the thermostat. God
has uniquely gifted women with this incredible
high -definition radar for relationship and connection.
They are the thermometer. They naturally sense
the exact emotional temperature and the atmospheric
shifts in the home. They can tell when the climate
drops by a fraction of a degree. And they will
almost always spot that little tiny stain on
the wall way faster than we will, guys. Now,
side note, husbands, our wives notice these things
faster than we do often, but they're more sensitive
to them. We need to hear them and talk through
what's causing it and take the time to deal with
the underlying issue. We have a tendency to say,
eh, it's no big deal, until it is a huge deal.
As husbands, we are designed to be the thermostat.
A thermometer can only register the temperature.
But a thermostat sets it. While that's not a
perfect analogy of men and women, it does give
us the idea of God's design. The overall emotional
climate, the felt safety, and the spiritual tone
of your home will almost always regulate to whatever
you set your heart at. If you check out mentally,
guys, ignore the subtle warning signs. and turn
up your internal car radio you drop the thermostat
of your marriage into a freeze your presence
actively dictates the atmosphere wives understand
how your husband is wired we're different it's
not that your husband doesn't care or is blind
even though he can't find the one blue shirt
in the drawer even if it's the only thing in
the drawer we're just wired differently and focus
on different things. God designed us each to
complement each other, not to be identical. This
is God's good design. Because here's what happens
when guys are finally presented with the issue.
Our wiring usually drives us straight to one
of two extreme options. Either we look at it
and we try to minimize it saying, look, it's
tiny, just touch it up with some paint and let's
keep going. Or, We swing to the complete other
side of the pendulum and say, oh, you want to
deal with it? Fine. Let's grab a sledgehammer,
take out the entire wall, rebuild the whole thing
from scratch. We don't do middle ground very
well. We go from lazy denial straight to full
demolition mode over a normal Tuesday dinner
conversation. Now, wives, this is exactly where
you're incredible. God -given balance comes into
play. You help us see the stain is telling us
something more important that we can just ignore
and paint over, but we shouldn't. But at the
same time, you stand in the doorway and you don't
allow us to go into total demolition mode. This
should be a precise hole cut in the drywall and
a simple patch on the pipe. You keep us from
burning the house down over a minor repair. To
fix our small communication leak, Christy and
I had to lean into that exact dance and make
practical adjustments. So now I get up in the
morning and have a few minutes of quiet time.
And then we make an effort to have coffee and
talk each morning. It doesn't always happen,
but it's one small way that we keep our priorities
and that came from the same small stain for us.
Because realigning a life doesn't require total
demolition. And it doesn't work with a quick
coat of cosmetic paint. God doesn't expose the
drift behind our walls to crush us or issue a
failing performance review. He shows us what's
happening behind the drywall to rescue us before
the whole structure collapses. Starting over
doesn't mean the whole house was worthless. What
neglect has been quietly eroding. So take a breath.
Don't panic. Stop trying to paint over it. The
stain on the wall isn't there to shame you. It's
just exposing the hidden leak underneath while
it's still a minor repair instead of a total
wreck. Welcome to Grace and the Grind. Brought
to you by Arrow and Roots Coffee Company. Where
faith meets the everyday. Here we slow down.
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. Now,
today I've got some porch -like grace from Aaron
Roots in my mug. But, full disclosure, there's
no fancy pour -over or anything like that this
morning. I'm sitting in a hotel room somewhere
in Fort Worth. And the water temperature wasn't
perfect. The bloom was, eh, lackluster. No premium
setup. The only thing that was good was I had
bottled water instead of tap water. And the coffee
maker did its job. The great thing is about Portulac
is it still came out with a really good cup of
coffee. Even without all the fancy setup, the
taste is great. And that's really good with...
how everything mixes, and just giving me enough
energy to go through the rest of my day. So we're
going to jump in, and first we need to talk about
in our last cup, we were talking about the middle
season, and that it can be an incredibly frustrating
space there where nothing seems to be changing,
even though you're doing your absolute best to
stay faithful. But today, we need to talk about
something different than that kind of season.
We're talking about moments that may feel like
that kind of season where everything looks perfectly
fine on the outside, but God begins to show you
something underneath that has quietly shifted.
It's not loud. It's not obvious. It's more like
a subtle, unsettling moment that you walk into
a room and realize it feels completely different,
even though all the furniture is technically
still sitting in the exact same place. And that's
what makes this kind of drift so incredibly hard
to name. Nothing is missing. Nothing is shattered.
But something you once passionately protected
has slowly become something you merely assumed
will be fine. Cup 8 was about trusting God when
you feel completely stuck. This cup is about
how we respond when God, in his absolute kindness,
helps us see what has quietly... slipped out
of alignment. Not because your life has collapsed
into a total wreck, but because he loves you
too much to let you keep drifting towards a cliff.
Once you notice that stain on the wall, you have
to make a choice. Either paint over it or open
up the wall. To really understand what it looks
like to rebuild, we have to look at the Old Testament.
And while we'll eventually be going to Ezra chapter
3, I think we actually need to sit with a different
prophet first. Because Ezra shows us how to rebuild,
and we're going to get there. But the prophet
Haggai helps us understand why the rebuilding
process was necessary in the first place. And
let me tell you, Haggai chapter 1 hits painfully
close to home. Contextually, God's people had
just returned from their 70 -year exile in Babylon.
They were finally back in their homeland. They
were no longer strangers in a foreign place.
And the survival mode of the exile was technically
over. But things were still not right. The temple
of God was still sitting in total ruin. And the
most uncomfortable part of this story is that
the people had simply gotten used to it. The
very thing that should have grieved their hearts
had slowly just blended into the background of
their daily lives. They accepted it. They walked
past the rubble. Every single morning. They lived
their lives around it. They built their own houses,
managed their own businesses, handled their daily
responsibilities, and took care of their kids.
And somewhere in the middle of all that normal,
frantic activity, the thing that was supposed
to be central became something they promised
they would get to later. That's exactly how drift
works. It rarely starts by you looking up at
heaven and saying, I refuse to obey you. It almost
always starts by quietly saying, just not right
now, not today, not this week. I'll get settled
back into that once things finally settle down.
I'll focus on my marriage once this project is
off my plate. I'll focus on it once the kids
are out of the house, but right now they need
me. I'll focus on my soul once life gets a little
easier. The problem is, Life rarely announces
the exact moment when later silently turns into
total neglect. Haggai says the people were constantly
telling themselves the time has not yet come
to rebuild the house of the Lord. And honestly,
it sounded so reasonable, didn't it? They had
a massive responsibility. They had homes to build
from scratch, families to feed, fields to harvest,
and bills to pay. This wasn't a crowd of lazy,
rebellious people. This was ordinary, hardworking
life becoming so utterly consuming that worship
got pushed to the absolute margins. And then
God breaks through the noise, looks at them,
and says three words that should make all of
us pause. Consider your ways. That sentence right
there is the spot on the wall. That's God saying,
look closer. Pay attention. Something is deeply
off here, and you have simply learned to live
around it. He points out this bizarre paradox
in their lives. He tells them they're planting
a ton of seeds, but harvesting almost nothing.
They're eating, but they're never full. They're
drinking, but they're still completely thirsty.
They're earning wages, but it feels like they're
putting their money into a pocket filled with
holes. Operational, but underneath, something
was misaligned. They are incredibly busy, but
their souls are totally unsettled. They're active,
but they're not aligned. And God connects that
inner emptiness directly to a deeper structural
issue. His house lies in total ruins while they
keep frantically managing their own lives. Now,
we have to be careful here. This is not a call
to ignore your family, quit your job, or neglect
your daily responsibilities. Scripture never
honors hyper -spiritual language that uses God
first as a lazy excuse to neglect the people
and tasks he has actually entrusted to us. But
Haggai is confronting something we all understand
on a deep level. It is entirely possible to keep
up the frantic pace of life and still completely
drift. from worship. It is possible to maintain
the structure of the house while totally neglecting
the fire on the altar. This is where the conversation
gets incredibly uncomfortable because most of
us don't drift by making a big dramatic decision
to walk away from what matters. We drift by delay
and it's always a reasonable delay, isn't it?
It's The kind of procrastination that sounds
deeply responsible in the moment. But there's
a massive difference between surviving a genuinely
hard season and living with permanently neglected
priorities. And the terrifying thing about drift
is that we rarely notice the exact moment a temporary
season hardens into a permanent lifestyle. We
don't reject the main things. We just learn to
live without. giving them the attention they
deserve. That can happen so easily in our walk
with God. Not because you stopped believing the
Bible or walked away from your faith, but because
real, intimate communication slowly gets replaced
by automated motion. You're still around spiritual
things. You're still using the right vocabulary.
You're still showing up to church when it fits
into the calendar. Around your kid's summer league,
vacation. You know those tired Sundays when you
just don't feel like making it, fishing trips
or whatever else you've got going. But your prayer
life has become completely thin. Scripture has
become an occasional notification on your phone.
Worship has become an event you attend on Sunday
instead of the ultimate anchor that orders your
entire week. Before you know it, God is still
technically in the house, but he's no longer
the sinner. Holding the house together. And let's
be completely honest. It happens in our marriage
all the time. Not because the love has vanished
or someone cheated. But because the relationship
became assumed. You still live under the same
roof. You still split the responsibilities. You
talk about the schedule, the kids, the finances,
the endless logistics of running a household.
But the actual tenderness gets paper thin. The
focus gets divided. The friendship gets whatever
radioactive leftovers are left at the end of
the night after the urgent things have finished
taking their turn. And because nothing is technically
broken, you convince yourself that nothing needs
to be repaired. This can happen in parenting
too. And man, this is a part that hurts me to
say out loud. It's entirely possible to love
your children so much that you would willingly
give your life for them. while simultaneously
being too completely distracted to actually sit
on the floor and look them in the eyes. It's
possible to provide for your family, keep them
safe, fed, clothed, and transported to every
single extracurricular event known to mankind
while losing the basic habit of being fully present
in the room. That's the kind of misalignment
that's so dangerous. It hides inside good things.
It works good. Providing is good. Serving is
good. Keeping the house from falling into total
chaos is a literal miracle. But good things become
dangerous the second they quietly take the place
of first things. When the order is off long enough,
the disorder starts to feel completely normal.
You stop noticing the leak because your nose
has simply gotten used to the smell of damp drywall.
When God says, consider your ways, he isn't asking
you to put on a performance of guilt. He's inviting
you to tell the truth. He's asking us to stop
measuring the quality of our lives solely by
whether the machine is still functioning. Because
functioning is not the same thing as being faithful.
A house can function with a hidden water leak
behind the wall for a while. A marriage can function
with a massive emotional distance for a while.
A soul can function with prayer pushed to the
absolute margins for a while. But God loves you
way too much to let for a while become your entire
story. So he lets you see the stain, not to humiliate
you, but to wake you up. This is where grace
has to meet us, because clarity can either lead
us to repentance or get twisted into guilt that
leads to death. When you finally get that moment
of clarity, the first question is not, how on
earth did I let things get this bad? That matters
eventually, but it's not the first step. The
better question is simply, Lord, what are you
calling me to return to? Because the biblical
answer to drift is never panic. It's repentance.
And I'm not talking about theatrical, dramatic,
social media announcement repentance. I'm not
talking about walking down the aisle crying in
the front of the church. I'm talking about quiet,
honest repentance. The kind that happens when
you're sitting alone in your car or at the kitchen
table. Looking up and saying, God, I see it now.
I've been frantically managing what you called
me to steward. I've been assuming what you called
me to protect. I've been obsessing over the outside
while the center has been totally neglected.
Bring me back to the altar. That's exactly where
Ezra chapter 3 meets us. When the remnant finally
decided to rebuild. They didn't start with massive
city walls or the defensive structures to make
themselves look secure. The text says they built
the altar before the foundation of the temple
was even laid and before the walls were secure.
They returned to worship first because they knew
that if the altar was neglected, every other
repair you attempt is just cosmetic paint over
structural damage. And hear me clearly on this,
because this is where grace has to anchor your
heart. Noticing the drift is not condemnation.
It really is mercy. Shame and guilt is always
the first to arrive. The second clarity shows
up. Using pieces of truth to build a cage for
your soul. But God does not expose drift the
way an enemy does. An enemy... exposes you to
accuse you. A father exposes you to restore you.
There's a universe of difference between those
two things. When God tells you to consider your
ways, he's not doing so to crush you. Apathy
would leave the leak alone and let the house
rot. Love is the thing that boldly opens the
wall. It's almost never comfortable. And nobody
enjoys finding out the damage is deeper than
they thought. But there's immense mercy in being
shown what needs to heal while there's still
time to fix it. Restoration doesn't mean you
have to erase your past or throw away your life.
It means God takes what remains and brings it
back under his good rule. You aren't starting
over from scratch. You're just letting him repair
what drift has weakened. So here's my passionate
invitation for you this week. Do not try to fix
everything at once. I know I say that a lot.
That's usually where we get ourselves into a
lot of trouble, and I'm saying that to me. We
get a moment of conviction, and suddenly we want
to completely overhaul the entire structure of
our lives before breakfast. If you're wired anything
like me, You immediately start project managing,
and doing that with your sanctification is always
going to make you fail. You start making these
massive, frantic plans. Okay, starting tomorrow,
we're going to do family worship every night.
Date night every Friday. Phones in a basket at
6 p .m. Scripture memory at breakfast. A budget
meeting on Tuesday. A perfect Sabbath rhythm
by the weekend. And somehow, everyone in the
house is going to be emotionally healthy by the
end of this month. Which... You know, that sounds
spiritual on paper, but it's actually just a
guaranteed way to completely exhaust every single
human being in your home by Thursday afternoon.
It's not what God is inviting you into. The invitation
is much smaller, much humbler, and much more
honest. And it has way bigger results. I want
you to sit with the Lord this week and ask him
just one question. What have I been painting
over? And this is hard for me right now. Because
I have to ask myself the same thing. And not
just once. This is an ongoing question. Don't
ask him, God give me ten things, I can handle
it. Name the one specific place where God has
been quietly trying to get your attention. And
you've been tempted to make excuses or turn up
the radio. Maybe it's an uncomfortable conversation
with your spouse that you keep avoiding because
it's going to require some really raw honesty.
Maybe it's a morning rhythm of silence that used
to keep your soul grounded, but lately it's become
entirely optional. Maybe it's the way you walk
through the front door physically, but you're
still carrying the entire stress of the office
in your head. Whatever it is. Stop trying to
make it look pretty. Just tell the truth about
it. That's what it means to open the wall. It
doesn't mean you magically know how to fix the
plumbing yet. It just means you're finally done
pretending the stain is just a cosmetic issue.
And then take one single faithful step of repair.
Not a dramatic lifestyle overhaul. Just one step.
Have the conversation. Put the phone in the other
room. when you walk into the door. Protect one
single evening. Return to quiet prayer before
you return to frantic planning. And please, apologize
to the people you love without giving a 20 -minute
closing argument about why you were tired, busy,
or mostly justified. Just say, I see it now.
I haven't protected this relationship like I
should. And I want to make it right. It's not
weakness. It's real spiritual maturity. And if
any one of these relationships is out of line,
it affects everything else. So if it's the vertical
one with God, you've got to get that corrected
for the marriage and the family to be on the
right footing. If it's your wife, your husband,
your kids, whatever it is, you've got to get
that right to get... that vertical relationship
back to center. So before we close, let me pause
here for just a second. If you want to help us
continue these honest conversations, grab a bag
of coffee from Aaron Roots. It's the simplest
way to do that. I know I mentioned earlier that
I'm drinking porch lot out of a cheap hotel pot
today, and honestly, that feels like a pretty
good metaphor for this episode, but we really
appreciate your support and all that. we're doing,
and honestly, we just want this to glorify God.
So thank you so much for listening to Grace on
the Grind. If this has been helping you, share
it with a friend. A lot of us don't need to burn
down our lives and start over from scratch. We
just need some people to walk along with us and
help us refocus, point us back to Scripture,
point us back to God. Maybe you can be that for
a friend that you're walking with today. And
if you haven't already, take five seconds to
follow the show, subscribe, and leave an honest
review. Apparently, the internet algorithms require
total strangers to confirm that a podcast is
worth listening to. And I don't make those rules.
You can find the link to Arrow and Roots right
there in the show notes, along with ways to support
what we're building here. But until next time,
keep your coffee strong and your faith stronger.
And remember, the stain isn't there to shame
you. It's just God in his immense kindness letting
you see what needs attention underneath before
the damage gets any deeper. We'll see you in
the next cup.