Why Being Forgiven Isn’t The Whole Story
Excerpt from "The Gospel: Powers And Principalities"

Tom Bedford • Senior Pastor
August 30, 2026

8 Minute Read

Forgiveness clears the record of your sin. Deliverance frees you from its source. Salvation includes both, and if you have only ever been taught the first half, you will spend your Christian life confessing the same darkness you were given authority to break.

Being born again was not handed to you so you could be a good boy or girl and keep your nose clean. It was given to you so you would have power and authority over the power of hell and over the rulers of darkness, in your prayer life, in your obedience, and through the gospel of Jesus Christ. His rulership of the spiritual world in Jesus Christ brought back our ability to live for God and to see His righteousness prevail in the earth over the powers of darkness. If you do not understand that, you do not understand your commission.

What Is The Difference Between Forgiveness And Deliverance?

Your salvation does more than forgive you for participating in darkness. It gives you authority over darkness, and it gives you the power to set other people free from it. Let that sink in, because the implication is uncomfortable. You cannot remain in darkness and think you are going to set somebody free of it.

So salvation has to include deliverance from Satan and from the nature of evil that works in this world. Being forgiven for the failures is one thing. Being delivered from the source is another thing entirely. Most of us were handed the first and never told the second existed.

Jesus Called The Devil A Father, Not A Force

When Jesus confronted the Pharisees, He did not describe Satan as an impersonal influence floating somewhere out there. He said, "You are of your father, the devil." He calls the devil a father. "You want the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks, it is a lie. He speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44).

Satan is a father of lies, and he is a father of evil. That word father matters, because fathers pass on a nature. They do not simply commit isolated acts. They reproduce something in the people who belong to them.

Where Did Sin Actually Come From?

Some Christians would say that you are the originator of sin, that it is inherently in you, that you are the author of it, and that this is why you need to be forgiven. I would say something different. Before man was ever made, there was a devil, and he was the original sinner, the energy behind sin in man. Man, by falling in his nature, has used that energy for evil, and in turn becomes creative at it and becomes his own source of it. But Satan is the author, the father of lying and deception, and the evil one.

Sin did not originate in humans. It originated in the devil. And to this day, demonic powers seek to rule humanity through deception and seduction. How do they do it? They do it by baiting and seducing the sinful nature that is in us, working through self-interest, which is a constant, and through sinful passions.

So when you get a new Father, it is because you had an old father. You were saved from your old father because you have now come into relationship with the Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ. You have to be delivered from an old father in order to walk with this new Father.

Why "Deliver Us From Evil" Is Part Of The Lord's Prayer

Jesus made this so simple. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." You begin with the Father. Then comes your dependency, your repentance of sin, and your forgiveness of others. And then it comes back around to this: "deliver us from temptation, and from evil and the evil one" (Matthew 6:9-13).

Why is the tempter's path in the Lord's Prayer at all? Why is the evil one named there? Because you do not worship the Father and simply ignore that this other thing exists. Repentance and dependence on God is what delivers you from it and connects you to Him.

Look at the shape of that prayer. Sandwiched in the middle of two places, God the Father on one side and the evil one on the other, is you. Your dependency, your repentance, and your forgiveness of others set you in the Kingdom instead of on that other path. Standing in one place, darkness has you. Standing in the other, the Father of lights has you, and with Him there is no shifting shadow. That is where the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are.

There Is No Third Space

Ephesians chapter 2 is a masterpiece that explains the world you are living in right now. Paul writes, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:1-2).

Stay on that phrase for a moment: the course of this world. The course of this world is everything outside of knowing Jesus Christ. There is no third space. There is God in His Kingdom, and there is the father of lies in his domain. There is no other place where you get to say, "I don't want to be in that, but I'm not too hot on this either, so can I live over here?" That is a deception. There is the Kingdom of God, and there is darkness. That is it.

When we did not know God, we were living in it and operating in it. We walked in it. And who is guiding it? The prince of the power of the air, who works out of a nature of evil and disobedience, in people who want to be disobedient. That compelling darkness of wickedness is now at work in disobedient people.

Here is what that means for you. God delivered you from your sin, but He also delivered you from the nature to be disobedient to God that Satan loves to revel in. Satan cannot walk into your house. Demons cannot walk into your house and take it over. But you can absolutely open the door and give it to them.

Can Christians Have Demons?

I took an enormous amount of heat as a young believer for saying that Christians could have demons. I got thrown out of churches over it. People would tell me they were really mad at me, and I would tell them they probably had demons.

Here is what I actually want you to hear. You can have whatever you want to have. You can decide tonight to go down the street and participate willfully in dark deeds, and demonic powers will take advantage of your disobedience and come right back.

Your job is not simply to be forgiven of things. Your job is to be delivered of the things that make you do what needs to be forgiven.

What About Everyday Sin And Failure?

We live in a fallen world and we are not perfect. We need forgiveness every day of our lives, and we need the blood of Jesus at all times. None of that is in question, and no honest reading of this should make you think you have to be flawless before God will have you.

But there is a difference between daily failure and willful service. I do not need to go walk in willful disobedience, serve demonic spirits, and then say, "Well, I'm a Christian and I've been forgiven, so I'm dark and I do dark stuff when no one is looking, but I'm saved." No. You will have no authority over the powers of darkness until you stop serving them.

Where To Go From Here

The gospel of Jesus Christ is what sets you free. That is the whole point of it: to set people free from the power of hell, to bring forgiveness of sin, and to separate people from demonic spirits.

So the honest question is not whether you have been forgiven. If you have come to the Father through Jesus Christ, you have been. The question is whether you understand the difference between forgiveness and deliverance, and whether you are still holding open a door that God already gave you the authority to close.

Being forgiven is real, and it is yours. It is simply not the whole story. The rest of the story is that you were given authority over the very darkness you were forgiven for, and the power to set other people free from it too.

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From this Collection: Blog
September 6, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Why You Don’t Need Talent To Share Your Faith
You do not need talent to share your faith. You need the message. That is not a lowered standard, it is the actual instruction the apostle Paul left behind in the last letter he ever wrote, and his charge to a young pastor was short enough to memorize: "Preach the word" (2 Timothy 4:2). If you have ever thought you were not gifted enough, confident enough, or interesting enough to tell someone about Jesus, the qualification you are looking for was never supposed to come from you. It comes from the Word you are carrying. For anyone unfamiliar with the Bible, it is made up of a lot of different books written by a lot of different authors, but it has one real Author, and that is God. This is the Word of God. So when we want to know things about God, when we want to understand what He thinks, what He sees, and what He has commanded us to do, we look at the Scriptures and we line our lives up around them. Why Paul's Final Letter Carries So Much Weight The verse just before the charge sets the tone. Paul writes, "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom" (2 Timothy 4:1). Who is the "I" in that sentence? Paul. He is a man who wrote a large portion of the New Testament, an apostle converted by Jesus, brought into His Kingdom, and then commissioned out from Him to preach the gospel. Here is what makes this so weighty. 2 Timothy was written around AD 64 to 66, likely from a place called the Mamertine Prison, a small holding cell in Rome. The only way in and out was through a hole roughly the size of a manhole cover. You were dropped down into it. When it rained, it flooded. You were never expected to survive in there. You were sent there because you were going to die, either when the powers that be finally remembered you and decided to kill you, or simply because they forgot to feed you enough times. It was not a good place. I have been there. It is terrifying. So this is Paul as an old man, writing what he knows will be his last letter to one of his sons in the faith. He had called Timothy his true son in the faith, and over the years he had sent him out to strengthen churches and preach the gospel. This is the last chapter of the last book of Paul's life, and he knows it. This is what he chooses to say. "I charge you." That is not a suggestion. It gets heavier when he adds that he is giving this charge in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, the One who is to judge the living and the dead. Paul is laying it on thick, and he means to. It is the equivalent of me telling my kids, look, if you do not remember anything else, would you please remember this? Four chapters in, after everything else he has already said, Paul wants Timothy holding on to the presence of God, the judgment of God, and the promise of His appearing while he hears what comes next. What Does "Preach The Word" Mean In 2 Timothy 4:2? Then comes the instruction itself: "Preach the word." That is the whole job. Not build the Word, not improve the Word, not make the Word interesting. Preach it. Paul does not tell Timothy to become compelling. He tells him to deliver a message that is already compelling. Do You Have To Be Qualified To Share Your Faith? Not in the way most people assume. Sharing your faith is not based on your confidence or your competence, and it is not based on your creativity either. If you are thinking you need to be stirred and inspired before you can preach the gospel, you do not. You do not have to bring inspiration to the Word of God, because the Word of God is already inspired. Your job is to bring the message. If you have read this far, you have enough awareness and understanding of the truth of the gospel to share it. You could pass along what you have read here. You are qualified if you know Jesus, because at the end of the day what you are preaching is Him, and He has all the creativity you need. He made the universe. You are fine. You are really fine. Does Sharing Your Faith Require A Big Personality? No. You do not need a bunch of personality or charisma. I can tell you that from experience. I have been in rooms where people ask me, "Are you angry?" No, I am not angry. I am sorry. It is just my face. It is just the way it is, and I am working on it. According to some of the older men I know, I am still young, so I have room to grow. Here is the point. I do not need a great personality to preach the gospel. I need to know Jesus and preach His Word. It really is that simple. What Does Hebrews 4:12 Say About The Power Of God's Word? It says the Word does the work you and I could never do. "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). Notice what is not in that verse. There is nothing in there about you being able to do any of that. I do not have to divide soul from spirit. I do not have to judge the thoughts and intentions of anyone's heart. The Word does that for me. All I have to do is offer a life that looks like the Word so people take me seriously. If I preached a gospel of fitness, who would listen? Nobody, because I do not look like it. If I preached a gospel of a full head of hair, nobody would listen to that either, because I do not live like it. But if I look like Jesus and I live like Jesus, they will listen. They will still know I am imperfect, because I am human and so are they. If I preach the Word to them, though, the Word does all of that for me. He does it for me. Does God's Word Really Accomplish Anything? Yes, and God says so about His own Word. "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:10-11). The rain and the snow are the metaphor. The point underneath them is that God's Word accomplishes God's purposes. It does not come back empty. Where To Go From Here When Jesus met Paul on the road, He sent him into the world with the gospel, knowing it would return to Him with the salvation of souls. The same holds for you. When you are sent into the world, all you have to do is bring the gospel. He takes care of the rest. So you do not need talent to share your faith. You need to know Jesus and carry His message. His Word is enough. His Word is enough.

Daniel Dunn

Elder

Currently Reading
August 30, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
Why Being Forgiven Isn’t The Whole Story
Forgiveness clears the record of your sin. Deliverance frees you from its source. Salvation includes both, and if you have only ever been taught the first half, you will spend your Christian life confessing the same darkness you were given authority to break. Being born again was not handed to you so you could be a good boy or girl and keep your nose clean. It was given to you so you would have power and authority over the power of hell and over the rulers of darkness, in your prayer life, in your obedience, and through the gospel of Jesus Christ. His rulership of the spiritual world in Jesus Christ brought back our ability to live for God and to see His righteousness prevail in the earth over the powers of darkness. If you do not understand that, you do not understand your commission. What Is The Difference Between Forgiveness And Deliverance? Your salvation does more than forgive you for participating in darkness. It gives you authority over darkness, and it gives you the power to set other people free from it. Let that sink in, because the implication is uncomfortable. You cannot remain in darkness and think you are going to set somebody free of it. So salvation has to include deliverance from Satan and from the nature of evil that works in this world. Being forgiven for the failures is one thing. Being delivered from the source is another thing entirely. Most of us were handed the first and never told the second existed. Jesus Called The Devil A Father, Not A Force When Jesus confronted the Pharisees, He did not describe Satan as an impersonal influence floating somewhere out there. He said, "You are of your father, the devil." He calls the devil a father. "You want the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks, it is a lie. He speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44). Satan is a father of lies, and he is a father of evil. That word father matters, because fathers pass on a nature. They do not simply commit isolated acts. They reproduce something in the people who belong to them. Where Did Sin Actually Come From? Some Christians would say that you are the originator of sin, that it is inherently in you, that you are the author of it, and that this is why you need to be forgiven. I would say something different. Before man was ever made, there was a devil, and he was the original sinner, the energy behind sin in man. Man, by falling in his nature, has used that energy for evil, and in turn becomes creative at it and becomes his own source of it. But Satan is the author, the father of lying and deception, and the evil one. Sin did not originate in humans. It originated in the devil. And to this day, demonic powers seek to rule humanity through deception and seduction. How do they do it? They do it by baiting and seducing the sinful nature that is in us, working through self-interest, which is a constant, and through sinful passions. So when you get a new Father, it is because you had an old father. You were saved from your old father because you have now come into relationship with the Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ. You have to be delivered from an old father in order to walk with this new Father. Why "Deliver Us From Evil" Is Part Of The Lord's Prayer Jesus made this so simple. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." You begin with the Father. Then comes your dependency, your repentance of sin, and your forgiveness of others. And then it comes back around to this: "deliver us from temptation, and from evil and the evil one" (Matthew 6:9-13). Why is the tempter's path in the Lord's Prayer at all? Why is the evil one named there? Because you do not worship the Father and simply ignore that this other thing exists. Repentance and dependence on God is what delivers you from it and connects you to Him. Look at the shape of that prayer. Sandwiched in the middle of two places, God the Father on one side and the evil one on the other, is you. Your dependency, your repentance, and your forgiveness of others set you in the Kingdom instead of on that other path. Standing in one place, darkness has you. Standing in the other, the Father of lights has you, and with Him there is no shifting shadow. That is where the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are. There Is No Third Space Ephesians chapter 2 is a masterpiece that explains the world you are living in right now. Paul writes, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:1-2). Stay on that phrase for a moment: the course of this world. The course of this world is everything outside of knowing Jesus Christ. There is no third space. There is God in His Kingdom, and there is the father of lies in his domain. There is no other place where you get to say, "I don't want to be in that, but I'm not too hot on this either, so can I live over here?" That is a deception. There is the Kingdom of God, and there is darkness. That is it. When we did not know God, we were living in it and operating in it. We walked in it. And who is guiding it? The prince of the power of the air, who works out of a nature of evil and disobedience, in people who want to be disobedient. That compelling darkness of wickedness is now at work in disobedient people. Here is what that means for you. God delivered you from your sin, but He also delivered you from the nature to be disobedient to God that Satan loves to revel in. Satan cannot walk into your house. Demons cannot walk into your house and take it over. But you can absolutely open the door and give it to them. Can Christians Have Demons? I took an enormous amount of heat as a young believer for saying that Christians could have demons. I got thrown out of churches over it. People would tell me they were really mad at me, and I would tell them they probably had demons. Here is what I actually want you to hear. You can have whatever you want to have. You can decide tonight to go down the street and participate willfully in dark deeds, and demonic powers will take advantage of your disobedience and come right back. Your job is not simply to be forgiven of things. Your job is to be delivered of the things that make you do what needs to be forgiven. What About Everyday Sin And Failure? We live in a fallen world and we are not perfect. We need forgiveness every day of our lives, and we need the blood of Jesus at all times. None of that is in question, and no honest reading of this should make you think you have to be flawless before God will have you. But there is a difference between daily failure and willful service. I do not need to go walk in willful disobedience, serve demonic spirits, and then say, "Well, I'm a Christian and I've been forgiven, so I'm dark and I do dark stuff when no one is looking, but I'm saved." No. You will have no authority over the powers of darkness until you stop serving them. Where To Go From Here The gospel of Jesus Christ is what sets you free. That is the whole point of it: to set people free from the power of hell, to bring forgiveness of sin, and to separate people from demonic spirits. So the honest question is not whether you have been forgiven. If you have come to the Father through Jesus Christ, you have been. The question is whether you understand the difference between forgiveness and deliverance, and whether you are still holding open a door that God already gave you the authority to close. Being forgiven is real, and it is yours. It is simply not the whole story. The rest of the story is that you were given authority over the very darkness you were forgiven for, and the power to set other people free from it too.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

August 23, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
What God Really Did When Jesus Died For You
What Jesus did on the cross was larger than forgiveness. According to Colossians 2, God made you complete, made you alive, canceled the certificate of debt that stood against you, and disarmed the spiritual powers that had been using that debt to push you around. All of it happened at once, and all of it belongs to anyone who surrenders to Him. Most people who grew up near the church can tell you that Jesus died for sins. Far fewer live like the record has actually been erased. If you have ever stood in a worship service singing about grace while a voice in the back of your mind whispered, "Yes, but what about that thing you did," then Colossians 2 was written for you. Why Religion Loves to Replace the Gospel Paul opens this section with a warning worth repeating: see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2:8). Men love religion, and religion loves to replace the gospel. Whenever you are part of a group that starts saying things like we are the only people who know God, we are the only people who have the gospel, we are the only people who really have it right, that is a tradition of men that has moved out in front of the gospel. Imagine believing you are the only people in the whole world who know God. All of a sudden the work becomes about maintaining your position and your influence, and the thing meant to bring people in becomes a barrier that keeps them out. When traditions of men replace the gospel in our doctrine, our stuff becomes more important than people's lives. That is why the devil loves religion. It is the fastest way to blind our eyes and get us thinking about ourselves instead of seeing the lost. What Does It Mean to Be Complete in Christ? Paul keeps going: for in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete(Colossians 2:9-10). Notice the word you. He has made you complete. Ask yourself what completion would actually mean in your life. Would you like the torment in your mind to come to an end, and a maturity to settle over you that is no longer susceptible to it and no longer listens to it? Would you like the warfare against your family to finally stop, and for your household to arrive at a place of completion and development in this thing called the gospel, where you are no longer under its power, where it no longer makes your decisions and pushes you around while you sit there with no ability to resist it? When I came to Jesus, I knew that sin, ongoing and lived out and enjoyed, would kill off the eternal life living in me. Given enough time I would have let that life go and gone back to evil. So I was grateful for a completion that entered my soul and said, that is no longer who you are or what you are. You are no longer that man. You are no longer that person. Why, Lord? Because I died and rose from the dead to break its curse and deliver you from its nature. Now I live in you, and I spring up all the time, life and righteousness, so you can be like Me now instead of like what you were. That is what it means to be saved. This is why I come to the altars, lift my hands, and cry out to God. Some people assume I do that because I am the preacher and it comes with the job. It has nothing to do with being a preacher. I am simply grateful that the power of sin no longer rules my heart, no longer rules my thinking, and no longer controls my life. Why Do I Still Feel Guilty for Sins God Already Forgave? The gospel does a next thing. When you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions (Colossians 2:13). The reason I can stand and lift my hands and weep in the presence of God is that I am alive. The gospel made me alive, and I no longer have to think about my transgressions, because I have been saved from them. You know the thought. You are singing the song, and something says, yes, yes, but there was that. Here is what the gospel of Jesus Christ answers back: I thank You, Lord, that I have been forgiven and that it is under the blood, and I cast that thought out, because that is not me anymore. The whole world needs to hear that. Some will say, "I am a new Christian, and I still have a lot of problems." You have fewer problems than the people on their way to hell. They have real problems. A friend and I used to remind each other when we were going through hard things that other people have real problems, the kind you find out on the streets when people are disconnected from God and end up with all kinds of hell working on them, eating their lives out and destroying them from the inside. I may not be perfect, and I do not have to be. I have Jesus, He is perfect, I live in His light, and that transformation never ends. What Did Jesus Cancel on the Cross? Colossians 2:14 says He canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and He took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Think about what that means. The devil comes to your house and says you are this and you are that, you are all of this, it is never going to work for you, you are a big loser. Then God picks up the decree and stamps one word across it: canceled. It is finished. Then He posts it on the cross so the whole world can read how free you really are. That is what cancel culture should be. Cancel culture has been running since the garden, where it first tried to cancel God. Now God does the canceling. Evil, canceled. You are this, canceled. Your eternity is going to look like this, canceled. You are doomed to do that again, canceled. Your children are going to have devils, canceled. Whatever decree is standing against you today, say it: canceled. That is good news, and when you surrender to Jesus, the cancellation hits. A church that lives in a place of canceled debt should be the loudest voice telling the whole world about Jesus Christ and how their sin can be canceled too. Did Jesus Defeat Satan on the Cross? Paul does not stop at the canceled debt. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). He did not only cancel the sin. He also destroyed the powers that use it against you. So the gospel is two things. It is the message of your salvation, your freedom from sin, and your rescue from the wrath that comes upon all that rebellion. It is also deliverance from the powers that use sin against you and manipulate you with it. I am free of it, and I am free of them. Nobody gets to pick one or the other. You have to have both. I once asked a pastor of a large church in another city how he dealt with the spiritual component of a situation he was facing. He told me that just about all the churches in his city do not believe that realm exists at all. My thought was immediate: then what kind of gospel do they have? If your gospel only deals with your sin and never disarms rulers and powers, those powers can walk right back in, because you do not even think they are there. It is the ultimate invisible person. Jesus taught us to do the will of the Father by depending on Him for daily bread, receiving forgiveness through repentance, and being delivered from temptation and from the evil one who destroys men's lives (Matthew 6:9-13). What Does Jesus' Authority Mean for You Today? Matthew 28:18 records Jesus saying that all authority has been given to Him. Authority over what? Everything. What man lost and surrendered in the garden, Jesus took back, in the realm of the spirit and on the earth, and that authority can never be contested again. Then comes the part that changes your Monday. Because you know Him, He extends that authority to you. You did not win it, and you are still more than conquerors (Romans 8:37), which means He was the Conqueror and you get to enjoy the benefit. Your job, though, is not only to enjoy it. Out of the love of God, your job is to go set somebody free. What Jesus did on the cross made you complete, made you alive, canceled every decree written against you, and stripped the powers that once ran your life. If that is true of you, there is somebody near you still living under a debt that has already been paid. Go tell them it is canceled.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

August 16, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
Why God Feels Silent When You’re Struggling
If God feels silent while you're struggling, you are not failing at faith. You're standing right where a prophet once stood. The book of Habakkuk opens with a man asking God why He will not speak, and the answer he gets is stranger, harder, and more hopeful than the one he was hoping for. I'll be honest with you. Habakkuk is not a book I go back and read all the time. But as I was preparing this message, I felt like the Lord drew me to this passage, and the longer I sat in it, the more I saw a man asking the exact question a lot of us are carrying quietly. Who Was Habakkuk, and Why Does His Question Still Land? Habakkuk lived in the nation of Judah and was considered a prophet in the Old Testament, ministering roughly between the seventh and eighth centuries BC. His timing is the part that matters. He stood at the end of the Assyrian Empire, which was a real force in the world at that time, and at the beginning of what we now refer to as the Babylonian Empire. We've all heard of Babylon, and we understand how terrible and how ruthless the Babylonians were. So picture the pressure he was living under: one mega superpower was already bringing destruction to the earth, and another one was rising up right behind it. Something was also shifting inside Judah itself. Judah had been moving through a cycle where it had identified who God was and was living in pursuit of Him and in obedience to Him. But at the beginning of Habakkuk 1, we read how Judah began to turn toward immorality and toward sin. Sound familiar? A nation built on godly principles and godly morals, beginning to lose sight of its own identity and nature. That's the curious place Habakkuk is standing in. His own nation is heading toward its demise, and the nations that would seek to capture it are growing stronger and building. Why Does God Feel Silent When You Cry Out for Help? Habakkuk opens with the question I believe we ask God all the time. How long, Lord? How long will our nation keep turning its face away from You? How long will Babylon keep coming at us? How long are we going to be living so clearly outside of the context God called us to live in? Here's how he says it in Habakkuk 1:2: How long, Lord, must I cry for help, but You do not listen? I call out to You, "Violence!" but You do not deliver. Why do You force me to witness injustice? Why do You put up with wrongdoing, destruction, and violence? Conflict is present, and one must endure the strife. He is basically saying, God, where are You in all of this? All I see is demise. All I see is struggle. All I see is pain, suffering, and rebellion. The point I want to get across is this: Habakkuk isn't questioning whether God exists. He is questioning what God is doing. There's a real difference. His question is, how could it be that this God fearing nation, this called upon people, is both turning away from You and being oppressed by what the world considers an evil empire? How long, Lord, will You remain silent? When God's Answer Is Not the Answer You Wanted God doesn't stay quiet. He says, you know what, I'll answer. But listen to the answer. In Habakkuk 1:5, God tells him to look at the nations and pay attention, because you will be shocked and amazed, for I will do something in your lifetime that you will not believe, even though you are forewarned. That sounds great. Who doesn't love to be shocked and amazed for the better? Habakkuk has to be on the edge of his chair thinking, this is going to be good. I hear revival. I hear things changing. I hear things shaking. This is exactly what I've been waiting for. Then the Lord tells him what He is actually about to do. He is about to empower the Babylonians. He describes them as a ruthless and greedy nation who will sweep across the surface of the earth and seize dwelling places that do not belong to them, because they are frightening and they are terrifying. How would you like that to be the answer to your prayer? Something is coming, but it isn't what you want to see, because He is raising up your enemy. How Could a Just God Allow Something Like This? So Habakkuk changes the question. He stops asking where God is and starts asking why God isn't doing anything about it. He brings a second complaint in Habakkuk 1:12. Notice what he does. He starts reminding God of who God is. Lord, surely You have been active from ancient times. Surely You're the God who created the heavens and the earth. You created all men. You created all species. Clearly You are capable, my sovereign God, and You are immortal. Lord, You have made them an instrument of judgment. Surely God is too just to tolerate evil, and unable to condone wrongdoing. Then comes the question underneath the question: Why do You put up with treacherous people? Why do You say nothing when the wicked devour those more righteous than they are? Habakkuk is trying to remind God of His own character. God, Your word says You are holy. Your word says You are righteous. Your word says You are trustworthy and just. So how could a just God empower the Babylonians? Put another way, how could God empower something that feels like oppression to me, something that feels like resistance against me? Habakkuk cannot understand how God could possibly use this. That question is not rebellion. That question is faith trying to do math it doesn't have the numbers for yet. What God Told Habakkuk to Write Down The Lord has mercy on Habakkuk's unbelief in chapter two. He tells him to write the message down and to record it legibly on tablets, for the message is a witness to what is decreed, and it gives reliable testimony about how matters will turn out. In other words, you can take this to the bank. My word is good. What the Lord is saying is that His word will not come back void, regardless of whether you understand His ways, His methods, His timing, or His reasoning. Surely the Word of the Lord will come through, and His Word will not remain void. It will certainly come to pass. I have no idea what you're walking through right now. I have no idea what battles you're facing, or what questions you're carrying about your future, your family, or your career. But if we could just realize what Habakkuk had to realize, that the Word of God remains true over our lives and remains true over our families and will not become void, it changes how we wait. What Does It Mean That the Righteous Will Live by Faith? Habakkuk 2:4 is the epitome of the response the Lord asks for when we're going through adversity, trial, pain, and heartache. The righteous will live by faith. Read that again, because God is showing Habakkuk something specific here. Faith is not just trusting God when His actions make sense and everything is clear. It isn't assuming that when everything is finally in order, we can then affirm the faithfulness of God. Faith is trusting the nature and the ways of God when His actions exceed all of our understanding. That's why Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.Read that slowly, because it carries real weight for anyone in a season of silence. If I don't see it, God is still faithful. If the substance doesn't feel like it's working, and I'm not feeling it, it is still working. Why? Because faith is the evidence of things that have not yet been seen. It is the reality of that promise already working on our heart. Where This Leaves You If God feels silent while you're struggling, Habakkuk gives you permission to say so out loud. He asked twice. He brought his confusion, his frustration, and his sense of injustice straight to God, and God didn't rebuke him for it. God answered him, and then God told him to write the answer down so he would still have it when the waiting got long. The silence you're in is not proof that God has stopped moving. Sometimes God is doing something in your lifetime you would not believe even if you were forewarned. Your job in the meantime is the one given to Habakkuk. The righteous will live by faith, trusting the character of God when His methods make no sense, and holding onto a Word that will not return void.

Alex Kidd

Worship Team Leader

August 9, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Why Your Kids Learn Faith By Watching You
Children learn faith by watching their parents live it. Not by hearing what you know about the Bible, but by seeing how you know God when life gets hard. If you're wondering how to pass your faith to your children, start there, because how you raise your child determines what kind of foundation you are laying in them. Every decision you make right now is forming that foundation. If you have kids, this is true of you. And if you don't have kids but you serve children in some capacity, it's true of you as well. How you react to God, how you react to storms, and how you react to life is building something underneath the children who are watching. What Your Children Actually Need to See They have to see you, mom and dad, making choices in private at home when no one's looking. Here's why that matters more than any lesson you could sit them down and teach: they don't need to know what you know about the Bible. They need to know how you know Him, and how you know that He knows you. That distinction changes everything. Bible information can be handed over in a classroom. A relationship has to be witnessed. Your children need to see your relationship with God so that when they watch you face something, they see how you know God and how God responds to your life. When God Leads You Through the Storm Instead of Around It Here's the part no parent volunteers for. God comes, and He doesn't always make the storm go away. Sometimes He leads you through it to the other side instead, because sometimes God wants you to go right through the storm rather than save you from it. That's not the version of faith most of us would choose for our families, but it's the version your children need to see, because it's the one that proves the foundation holds. Testimonies are great after the test. They're hard in the middle of it. And the middle is exactly where your kids are watching you. What I Want My Children to Say About Me When I stand before God and leave this planet, I want to know one thing. Did You know me, and was I pleasing to You? Was my life lived in such a way that my children, even in the humanity of my weaknesses, saw something bigger than my flesh? I hope they'll say something like this: dad was an interesting guy, but I'll say this much, the man knew God. He might not have been perfect at it, but the man knew God, and he showed me what it was like to know God. That's not a low bar. That's the entire inheritance. My mom showed me what it was like to know God, and I learned how to know God by watching how she knew God when I was a child. Now I'm teaching my children how to know God the way I know God. One Generation Declares It to the Next My wife and I both had mothers who came to the Lord later in life, but long before we did, they began to declare God's works to us. Psalm 145:4 says that one generation shall praise His works to another. We had to watch our mothers, and then ultimately our fathers, come to the Lord and face the trial of their own humanity. We watched them surrender their pride, their flesh, their pursuit of whatever their vanity desired, and surrender in brokenness to God. It made an impact. When my mother came to Jesus, it was a ticking clock, and it was only a matter of time before I was going to be there with her, because she kept declaring who God was and I saw God shift her foundation in front of my eyes. I watched God shift her foundation right in front of me. She wasn't perfect. She was a brand new Christian. But the foundation shift was so real that it terrified me, because I thought, whatever she has, I don't have, and I am in big trouble. My wife had a similar experience. Her mother came to Jesus and the foundation shift was radical. By the time I met her mother, I was 20 years old, and all she did with me was declare God's mighty works, teach me Scriptures, tell me Bible stories, and tell me testimonies from her own life. The Decision We Made Before We Had Children We made a decision when we got married. We said we may not be rich, we may not be all this or that, and we may not be famous preachers, but my God, if I lose my children, what will it have been worth? I would rather have all of my children in the house of God living on a foundation of truth than have the things of this world. How about you? How many parents would say the same thing, that it doesn't matter what they have in terms of material things and houses, but they cannot lose their children? They cannot grow up, go out to the world, and collapse. Why You Can't Build This Foundation Alone No church is a perfect place. You could walk into most of them and rightly say it could all be done better, and the honest answer is, yes, probably. We're trying. But here's what matters more: we may not have it all figured out, but what we do want is to know God and have Him know us. He'll get us through. He'll get us there. He'll get you there. There's something about building it together that helps the foundation become solid. I watched a group of children put on a play once, and what I loved about it was that they were working with each other. One child loved another child enough to come help them in their calamity and bring them along. We're going to need each other for there to be a foundation that has power. It can't just be you. Your kids need to see other people living it too. Where Kids Really Learn to Worship When you see a room full of children dancing, singing, and rejoicing, where do you think they actually learned that? Do you think they learned it from the worship leader? They learned it from mom and dad. Because when you're driving down the road facing a trial, they can see you in the rearview mirror with tears running down your face, saying, God, You will be here. Your presence will lead us and Your power will save us. What's going on, dad? You okay? Yeah, I'm good. Just praying. What are you praying about? All things. Just praying. They know when you need God. They can feel it in the house, they can feel it in their hearts, and they know it. How to Pass Your Faith to Your Children When they see you choosing God in the hard moments, acting like a man of God and a woman of God, you are sowing into a foundation of rock and teaching them that they can know God too. What you're going to find out on the other side of all of it is that He knew us. So tell your children stories and testimonies, and help build their foundation of faith. Then go live stories and testimonies, so they see a foundation of faith actually being lived out in front of them. That's how it gets passed down, through what your children watch you know.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

August 2, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
Why God Is Worthy No Matter What You're Facing
God is worthy of worship because of who He is, not because of what He does. That one truth is what makes worship possible on the worst day of your life. Your circumstances do not change His worth, which means your circumstances do not have to change your worship. But that truth is harder to live than it is to say, and most of us have never noticed how much of our worship is actually built on something else. What's the Difference Between Worship and Gratitude? I know exactly what my own moments of "worship" tend to look like. I find a good parking spot, and that feels like a moment of worship. I'm moving a little fast down the highway, I notice a CHP officer sitting there, he doesn't whip around, and that feels like a moment of worship too. Not my finest example, I know. I step on the scale and the number went down instead of up, and there it is again. None of that is wrong. Gratitude is good. But look at the motivation underneath it. Every one of those moments depends on a favorable outcome, which means what I'm calling worship is really just relief with a spiritual accent. Jesus is worthy of worship always. When I step on the scale and the number goes up instead of down, He is still worthy, because the number does not touch His worth. When I get the $307 ticket, He is still worthy, and that one is on me, not Him. When I have to park in the back 40, He is still worthy. When I get a diagnosis I don't like, He is still worthy. When I'm healed, He is still worthy. My circumstances do not affect His worth, and so my circumstances do not have to affect my worship. That is hard, by the way. It is tough, because we live in a world that is completely and utterly broken and futile. It is just broken, and we live here. So we don't worship only because He answered a prayer, or only because we happened to feel His presence that morning. Do You Need the Right Atmosphere to Worship? I was in a city once with a group of young people, sitting in a worship service that simply was not landing. I don't know if the piano player had broken fingers or what was going on, but it was a bad day up there. No flow, no momentum, nothing. I looked down the row at those students, and they were dead. Completely disengaged. What they were waiting for was a certain atmosphere before they could enter in and worship. That was the moment I knew we had a serious problem. We needed an atmosphere to worship, and the reason we needed it is that we were not seeing Him clearly enough to understand that He is worthy of worship regardless of the room, the sound, or the mood. Who Is God? The Question Underneath Everything The good thing about asking why we worship is that it pushes us past the wrong question. The wrong question is, what has God done for me? The real question is, who is God? He is the God of the universe. You do not get to understand everything He does, because you are not Him. He sees all of time and all of creation as though it were happening right now. He holds the whole universe in the palm of His hand. If you understood everything there is to understand about God and why He does what He does, then by definition you would be Him. After a few decades of studying the Bible, this is what I have landed on: there is a God, and I am not Him. I don't get to understand everything. I get to trust that He is good. What Does "Holy, Holy, Holy" Mean in the Bible? There is a man in Scripture named John, one of the apostles, one of the first disciples of Jesus, and the one who lived the longest. Rome tried to kill him more than once. It was a rough life. He pastored in Ephesus for a season. He saw miracles happen in and around him. He knew Jesus intimately and personally. And at the end of his days he was in exile on an island, and God came in, pulled back the curtain, and said, let Me show you what heaven is like, and let Me show you what is to come. Some of you have experienced days when the barrier between what is seen and what is unseen feels a little thinner, when God shows you something. Some people would call that mystical. It isn't. That is just what happens when you walk with a God who is spirit, because we worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). But what John received was something else entirely. This was a vision. In Revelation 4:8, John describes four living creatures whose appearance is so strange and complex that no summary does them justice. He writes that they are around the throne, and "day and night they never cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come." Day and night. They never stop. These unimaginable creatures that God created are so struck by His worth that night and day they are circling the throne with the same words. Heaven is not responding to changing circumstances. Nothing changes for them, and He is still worthy of everything. Two Visions, 800 Years Apart Eight hundred years before John, a man named Isaiah had a moment like that. In Isaiah 6:2-3, he describes angelic beings before the throne, and he writes that "one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." Two men, 800 years apart, different covenants, different moments, and it is the same heaven with the same song. They were singing it in Isaiah's day, they were singing it in John's day, and they are singing it right now. Is It Clean, or Is It Clean Clean? Have you ever told your kids to go clean their room, then walked into said room and found it clean? Some of you are more drill sergeant than others, so I hear it is possible. It never once happened for me. Mine would head upstairs and take an hour on a job that did not require an hour, which means something else was happening up there. Eventually they would come back down, having half forgotten why they went up in the first place, and announce, "Dad, it's clean." And I would say, right, but is it clean clean? Not my standard. Mom's standard, because Mom's standard is higher. That is the sense of the holy thing. In Hebrew, you say something twice to mean the greatest of its kind. There is a book in the Bible called Song of Songs, which means the greatest of all songs. Jesus is called the King of kings, which means He is King over all the kings. So when heaven says He is holy, and holy, and holy, what it means is that He is completely and totally holy. Nothing is holy compared to Him. Nothing can be more holy than He is. He is all holy. Why God's Holiness Is the Reason He Is Worthy Why does that matter? Because that is precisely why He is worthy. There are no imperfections in Him. There are no problems in Him. God never has a bad day and never has a bad motive. Everything He does comes out of love and out of His holiness, because holiness is not something He is holding. Holiness is who He is. When we understand that, we understand why He is worthy. He is holy, holy, holy, the Most Holy, and therefore He is worthy. And what that does in the life of a believer is produce worship in every circumstance, no matter what. How Do You Respond to a God Who Is Holy, Holy, Holy? So the first question is settled. Is God worthy of worship? He is. He is worthy. Which means the question is no longer whether He deserves it. The question becomes what happens in you when you actually see Him. How do you respond to Someone who is holy, holy, holy? How do you respond to a Jesus who is worthy? That is the question worth carrying into your week, especially the weeks where nothing is going the way you hoped. His worth is not up for renegotiation based on your diagnosis, your bank balance, your parking spot, or the quality of the music on a Sunday morning. He was worthy before you walked in, and He will be worthy after you walk out. Everything else is just the setting in which you get to see Him clearly.

Daniel Dunn

Elder

July 26, 2026 • 9 Minute Read
How To Live Like Your Life Has A Mission
Most of us do not move through the day feeling like our lives have a mission. We are busy, we are a little self-absorbed, and we can get from morning to night without really noticing anybody. Learning how to live like your life has a mission does not start with changing your job. It starts with changing who you understand yourself to be while you are in it. For a season I traveled constantly for work. I always had my own rental car, and I would land in random cities: New York City, Pittsburgh, places all over the states and in other countries. I would wake up, read my Bible, and drag around a duffel bag holding a hundred pounds of books and commentaries, because thanks for paying your taxes, I could take whatever bags I wanted. I would set up shop wherever I landed, then head out into the city and ask God one question: where am I going today? It was a really interesting way to live, and somewhere in the middle of it I began to think of myself as an ambassador of Christ. What Does It Mean to Be an Ambassador for Christ? At some point God said something to me that reordered everything. You are no longer an operator who happens to be a Christian. You are my Kingdom ambassador who happens to work there. That was a total mindset shift. If it is true, then everything you do, everywhere you go, and every person you talk to is now on behalf of that. The next morning I woke up thinking in completely different terms: where am I going, and what am I doing for the Kingdom? This is what Paul asks of us in 2 Corinthians 5. He asks us to live life as though it is not our own, and to live as though we are representing the Kingdom of God in whatever place we happen to be embedded. Why Do the Fear of God and the Love of God Both Matter? There are two things happening in this passage. There is a fearful responsibility, and there is a compelling love. The fear of the Lord and the love of Christ are not competing truths; they balance each other. In every mature stance there is a tension between two things that seem contradictory. How do predestination and free will both work? They do. The truth is not apathetic in the middle, it is a tension. That is the way the mysteries of God tend to work, and the mature answer usually lives in the middle, holding both things at once. There are two miles of ditch in every mile of road, and people love to end up in one of them. We plant a flag in one camp or another and settle in. But the road runs between the ditches, and that is where we live, in the place where the fear of God and the love of God both compel us to go after people. I remember living inside that tension. I did not want to fall back into sin, because the fear of God had gripped me, and at the same time I wanted to go out and watch the love of God transform people. It was both. I cannot fall back, because I would be in the hand of an angry God, and yet He loves me so much. You stand there realizing it is somehow the same God. If I ended up in His judgment, I would get everything I deserved, and somehow He rescued me from all of it. He is the same loving, merciful Father who sent a Son, and now His love compels me to act on His behalf. Fear gives the weight of our calling. Love gives the confidence for it. The same holy God before whom we deserve destruction chose to reconcile us through Christ. Without reverence, love becomes casual and cheap. Without love, reverence becomes legalism. The gospel gives us both. Does Living on Mission Mean I Have to Perform? No. If this turns into a works-based religion, it will not last and it will not ring true. The love of Christ is what compels us, and it has to come out of a real well. People can tell when it is fake. Bob Mumford said it this way: it does not matter what somebody is saying to you, you know if they love you, you know if they are prejudiced against you, and you know if they hate you. You can feel it in the room. You do not have to be some discerning prophet to pick that up, because it is simply in us as human beings. The reverse is true as well. You can say some genuinely powerful and genuinely hard things to people if you love them, because they know it. They look at you and say, I know you love me, and that is why you are telling me this. Paul tells us what that love produces. "For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). We do not deserve this, and yet somehow we get invited into the process of watching other people transformed into the Kingdom. Love God, love people, serve both. We operate from a place of having been reconciled ourselves, transformed by the love of God in our own hearts, and now motivated by that same love to go after people in the world as His representation on the earth. Christianity begins with His love, not with guilt, pressure, or performance. I remember the day God said, “I love you.” I was washing dishes in my kitchen, and a second later I was on the floor crying, wondering where that even came from. I was just washing dishes. What Is the Nudge, and Where Does It Come From? The word Paul uses carries the sense of being held together, driven, and carried forward. That is where the nudge lives. Scripture says Jesus looked out at the crowds and was filled with compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). That is what moved Him. He looked at people and saw that they needed salvation and they needed the love of God. He went to the cross for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), and what motivated everything He did was the love He had for the Father and the love He had for people. That same love should motivate us. When we understand the reconciliation we have through Him, and when the Holy Spirit begins to transform us, we start to see people differently. The love of God is the nudge. You are sitting somewhere and you become aware of another person, and love is what does that. How Do You Hear God in the Middle of a Busy Day? You slow down. We are all born selfish, and I was born selfish. I can get busy and self-absorbed and move through an entire day without noticing a single person. But when I slow down and ask God what He wants to do here, and who is nearby that needs to hear something from Him, everything changes. Would you slow your life down enough to ask those questions and actually mean them? Okay, where are we going? We are going over there. We are going to talk to them. I do not even need to know what to say, because He will give me the words. Maybe the person only needs to know that God sees them. The fact that you noticed them, and that God pointed them out to you, is a place to start. A friend of mine handled it about as simply as it can be handled: “Hey, we are Christians, and we just felt like God said this.” That is a great answer. “Hey, I am a Christian, and I felt like He wanted me to tell you that He sees you.” Start there. I have said exactly that and watched people make puddles in a coffee shop. That is not the goal. The goal is obedience to the nudge. The stories I keep hearing all share a common thread. Somebody thought about a particular person. There was a nudge, a compassion that surfaced for them out of nowhere. Something in us asks, what is going on with that person over there? That is compassion, and it is the love of Christ compelling us. What Does Living on Mission Look Like on an Ordinary Day? It does not have to be anything cosmic. Pray for somebody. Encourage somebody. Buy a coffee. Make a phone call. Send a text. Sit and listen, and maybe just be quiet and let somebody talk, because that can be more powerful than anything you would have thought to say. None of that is spectacular, and that is rather the point. This is what walking in the life of the Spirit actually looks like. It is walking in the love of Christ, caring about other people, and being led by the Spirit of God through compassion and through His love. You do not need a different job, a different city, or a different assignment to live like your life has a mission. You need to understand that you are already an ambassador, embedded exactly where you are, and then slow down enough to notice the person standing in front of you.

Nick Watson

July 19, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
How To Set People Free (Without Being A Pastor)
Maybe you have heard messages about healing, deliverance, and the power of God, and quietly thought, "That is fine for the pastor. That is fine for the prophet. It is another day at the office for them. But I never had that." If that is you, I want to free you from a lie right now. You do not have to be a pastor, a prophet, or anything else to walk in what I am about to describe. You only have to be one thing. You have to be born again. Jesus gave His twelve disciples authority and sent them out to heal the sick and to deliver people from demonic power, from illness, and from every kind of affliction (Matthew 10). That same mission belongs to you. The qualification for it is not a title or a platform. Jesus said that being born of the Spirit is like the wind: "you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it came from or where it is going" (John 3:8). You cannot always explain it. But when you are born of the Spirit, you are already in it. You Do Not Have to Be a Pastor, You Just Have to Be Born Again I have been a Christian for forty-four years, and I will tell you the truth about how it worked for me. When I first got born again, I was a lot wilder and a lot less refined than I am now. God did not teach me to live this way through great visions. I never took a trip to the third heaven and came back with a revelation to go transform the world. Instead, He taught me through something much smaller and much simpler. Sometimes I would just be somewhere, and the Lord would say, "Look at that person." And there was this little prompting on the inside. I call it the nudge. If you have walked with God for any length of time, you know exactly what I am talking about. The First Thing: Learn to Follow the Nudge Here is how the nudge would work. The Lord would say, "Look at that person," and I would look. Then He would say it again. And I would think, "They are going to think I am weird." He would say, "Look at them again." Then would come the harder part: "Go pray for them." And more than once I answered back, "I do not want to do that. They did not ask me to pray for them." He would simply say, "I asked you to pray for them." Have you ever been in a moment like that, where the nudge was working and you did not want it to? Where you got clammy and sweaty and stirred up inside? I have paced a Walmart parking lot, praying quietly to work up my faith, just to walk up to a stranger and say hello. So this is the first thing I want to give you. Learn to follow the nudge. You do not have to manufacture it. You do not have to create it. You just have to follow it. What Does It Mean to Be Led by the Holy Spirit? Being led by the Spirit is not as strange or as dramatic as people make it sound. It does not always come as some overwhelming, otherworldly experience. Most of the time, the nudge is simply compassion, pointed. You look at someone, and your heart goes out to them. You see the pain they are in, and something inside you says, "I see you." When you notice a person who is in distress, harassed and hurting like a sheep with no shepherd, and your heart breaks for them, that is the nudge too (Matthew 9:36). This is not about showing up to entertain yourself or to have a spiritual moment in public. It is about love. Love is greater than prophecy, and it is greater than knowledge (1 Corinthians 13). When you are moved by compassion, God is all about that. Now, sometimes the Spirit does get your attention in more physical ways, and He will use whatever teaches you to pay attention. Early in my walk, whenever the Lord wanted me to notice someone, my cheeks would flush blood red. I would be sitting at a table in a restaurant, not saying a word, and my wife would look at me and say, "Something is going to happen." I would ask, "What do you mean?" She would say, "Your face is red," and then she would start scanning the room, wondering who it was. Other times my hands would begin to burn hot, and I would know something was about to happen. God was patiently teaching me, "This is how you know I am here." But even with all of that, most of the time it is still the compassion that points the way. The Second Thing: Five Words That Open Every Door Once compassion has pointed you toward someone, here is the second thing, and it could not be simpler. It is five words: "Can I pray for you?" I could tell you stories all day long that started with that one question. Who is going to be offended enough to say no? A few people might, and for them you will need a different approach, but most people respond with, "Please." I was recently at a client's house. I have a side business, and this man has been my client for ten years. He is a lovely guy, and he does not know the Lord. Every time I am there, he offers me marijuana, even though he knows I am a pastor. He does not even realize I would not do that, and honestly, I love him. So I was at his house, and I asked him, "Can I pray for you?" He said, "I do not believe in a sky God, but please pray." So I laid my hands on him and prayed for him, and he started crying. He told me, "Thank God you are my friend. Thank God you love me. You have been such a good friend to me." A grown man, standing there in tears. He did not come to Jesus in that moment. But I understood something. That one question, "Can I pray for you?" opened a conversation I was not expecting, and that conversation will lead to more conversations. Sometimes those five words are the doorway that everything else crosses over. So just try it out. You Are Not Depending on Your Own Ability When these two things work together, when the nudge points you and then you ask, that is the moment where everything becomes possible. And here is the freeing part: your dependency does not rest on how good you are at any of this. It rests on the eternal Spirit who lives inside of you. Even if you have not been a Christian very long, the Holy Spirit has been here a long time. He has loved these people with an everlasting love; He has loved them a long time (Jeremiah 31:3). The one living inside of you already knows exactly what to do. That is why Jesus told His disciples not to worry about what they would say, because it would not be them speaking but the Spirit of their Father speaking in them (Matthew 10:19-20). You do not have to work up the perfect words. When the nudge hits, the Spirit of your Father is the one prompting you to go and offer those five words. You yield, you ask, and He shows you what to do. Where to Go From Here Imagine what would happen if ordinary believers were simply released into their cities to follow the nudge. You do not even have to create it. You just have to follow it. When you see someone in distress, harassed and hurting, and compassion points you toward them, go. Offer a heart of love, and ask, "Can I pray for you?" Love has a look. Love has a sound. Love has a way about it, and when it is in you, other people can see it, even people you have never met. So the next time your heart goes out to a stranger, do not talk yourself out of it. Follow the nudge, offer those five words, and watch what He does. The door swings wide, and the Holy Spirit is right there.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

July 12, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Why Do Things Get Worse After You Get Saved?
You said yes to Jesus. You expected peace, maybe even an easier road. Instead the pressure grew, old struggles came roaring back, and a quiet voice started asking whether any of it was ever real. If things seemed to get worse after you got saved, you are not doing something wrong, and you are not alone. There is a spiritual reason the battle intensifies after salvation, and understanding it changes everything about how you fight. The truth underneath all of it is simple: the Kingdom of God demands a response. The Kingdom Demands a Response Arriving at faith does not automatically transfer you into the Kingdom of light. There is a choice to make. Jesus said it plainly: "repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). That choice is allegiance. We can pledge allegiance to a flag all day long, but what really matters is allegiance to the King of Glory. That is what faith actually is. What Allegiance to the King Actually Looks Like Consider what happens when someone becomes a citizen of a new country. In the United States, they study, they sit for a test of comprehension, and then they are sworn in. That swearing in is the moment everything changes: a new identification, a new purpose, a new citizenship. Something similar happens the moment faith sparks and you decide you no longer want to belong to the darkness. God brings you in as a citizen and gives you a new identification and a new purpose. And here is the mercy in it: God does not make you pass a test of comprehension first. What He requires is faith, allegiance, and obedience. Allegiance looks like repentance. It says, "I know what darkness looks like, and I do not want to be part of it." Notice too that when a new citizen struggles to keep the laws, they do not lose their citizenship. God does not excuse sin, but love covers a multitude of sins and struggles, because He knows we are frail beings. His mercy and grace are enough to cover what we are not yet clear on, so we can keep growing and walking with Him. This is why believing is far more than believing God exists. Scripture reminds us that even "the demons believe, and shudder" (James 2:19). Knowing God exists is not enough. We place our allegiance in Him and put ourselves under His legal claim. Many people resist that, wanting to keep their own freedom. You can keep that freedom right up until the day you are judged. I would rather be a bondservant of Christ, because "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). He demonstrated His love before we ever understood it, so that when faith becomes real, surrendering to His lordship is no longer a struggle. Why Do Things Get Worse After You Get Saved? Here is where many new believers get blindsided. The moment you get saved does not stop the battles. They often intensify, and the enemy begins to whisper that maybe this was never real, that you should go back to who you were and simply serve yourself. But you were never neutral. Human beings do not begin neutral. We are born into the domain of darkness, under the old system, while Jesus already reigns as King and His Kingdom keeps expanding. Salvation is the moment you cross over from one kingdom to the other, and choosing the new system provokes a response from the one you left. We are "receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken" (Hebrews 12:28), a Kingdom that is eternal and unchanging. But deliverance from darkness does not mean darkness will stop knocking. Look at how the enemy treated Jesus. The enemy tried to hand Him the very Kingdom He came to receive, only without the suffering. When Jesus refused, the pressure turned to torment. The enemy does the same to us today. First comes the offer: take the money, the comfort, the fame, and skip serving God. When you refuse, the accusations and afflictions follow, and if we are not sure of who we are, those things can make us crumble and start looking for the exit. Does the Devil Attack You More After Salvation? The attacks are real. Darkness will still tempt you, still accuse you before God, still try to deceive you, still attempt to bring torment, and it will oppose you at every turn. That opposition is not evidence that your faith failed. It is evidence that you changed kingdoms. So what separates a believer who grows through all of this from someone who stays stuck in a miserable place full of sin and unresolved struggle? It comes down to one distinction that changes how you fight. An Attack Doesn't Require Your Agreement, but Influence Does Here is the heart of it. An attack does not require your agreement, but influence does. Darkness can knock, tempt, and accuse without your permission. It only gains influence when you start to agree with it. The trouble begins when you believe the lie: that you are nothing, that you are a nobody, that you have to become someone other than who God has said you are. That agreement shows up in recognizable ways. It manifests as condemnation and self-hatred, as self-destruction, as accusing other people, and even as accusing God. The attack by itself cannot own you. Agreement is what hands it the keys. How to Take Away Darkness's Influence If influence comes through agreement, then freedom comes through a different alignment. The answer is to keep putting yourself under the things of God and to ask Him to rule you. When life gets harder, get on your knees more often, not less. Falling back, going quiet, and ducking out is exactly what darkness wants. Pressing in tells it plainly that it does not get to own you. This is where the discipline of the Father becomes a gift rather than a punishment. When we are willing, when we actually ask for it, His discipline changes our thinking and our motives, and darkness loses its influence even while the battle continues. Repentance is the opposite of rebellion, so we stop obeying ourselves and the enemy. Faith is the opposite of unbelief, so we say, "I believe who You are, God. I believe every word that comes out of Your mouth. I surrender my own bad thinking to You. Take everything out of me that is not like You, and change it." Those are basic, foundational prayers, and they are not small. When we mean them and spend real time there, that kind of prayer life transforms us into people who honor God, walk in His will, and produce lasting things in His Kingdom. Where This Leaves You There is no middle ground. Humanity will either serve sin or serve obedience. But in Christ we are freed from sin, and by the Holy Spirit living and working in us, we can be freed even from its influence. The battle that started when you got saved is not a sign that something went wrong. It is the mark of a citizen who now belongs to a Kingdom that cannot be shaken. Darkness may still trouble you, but it does not get to own you, because you belong to the King.

Jason Guenther