I’m writing this from my son’s hospital room.

My oldest, he’s four, was admitted the other day for complications from the flu. He’s making a full recovery, praise God. But as I sit here in this chair that doesn’t recline quite right, listening to the nurses moving up and down the hall, and watching his small chest rise and fall under the hospital blanket, I can’t stop looking at my watch.

And I can’t help but wonder: How many times has this watch sat by someone’s bed?

How many hospital rooms?

How many late nights?

How many funerals has it attended?

The watch on my wrist is an Omega Seamaster from the mid-1960s. I bought it last month at an antique market in Mount Dora. I’m a sucker for a deal, you see. Maybe it’s the salesman in me, but I will look for a deal everywhere. Even on a good deal you can expect me to try and build in 30% margin. Never hurts to ask, right?

My wife Taylor and I had ventured out early that Saturday morning with both kids in tow. We walked up and down the rows of tables, vintage glasses, figurines, rusty tools, photographs of dead strangers, pouring caramel popcorn into our sons’ cups to keep them compliant. I was hunting. Looking for a vintage watch. Something mechanical. Something with history.

And then I found it.

An Omega Seamaster. Gold-capped case, cream dial aging to champagne. Lying on a velvet lined box between a a Casio and some costume jewelry. I picked it up. Felt the weight. Turned it over.

Engraved on the case back:

The mainspring was slack. Silent. But I wound it anyway, after a couple turns it came back to life, and then I heard it. That whisper-thin tick-tick-tick-tick, surprisingly audible even in the relative noise of the event. After years, maybe decades, of sitting dormant, the watch was alive.

“How much?”

The dealer glanced at it, “five hundred.”

I started negotiating. Thirty percent margin, remember? Never hurts to ask.

We settled on five hundred… cant win them all.

Now it’s on my wrist, ticking away, as I sit in this hospital room watching my son sleep off the flu. And I keep thinking about Henry. About the watch sitting on his wrist during his own vigils. His own hospital stays. His own 3 AM moments of wondering if the people he loved would be okay.

Because this watch has been places. Has seen things. Has measured out moments of joy and terror and boredom and grief. For fifty-eight years, this little machine has been ticking through someone’s life. And now it’s ticking through mine.

The Mechanism

Inside the case on my wrist, beneath the now champagne dial and the gold hands and the crystal that’s somehow survived all this time with minimal damage, there are approximately 150 microscopic components engaged in a conspiracy against entropy.

At the heart of it all is the mainspring: a flat ribbon of hardened steel, coiled tight. Right now, because I wound it this morning, that spring is loaded with potential energy. It wants to release all that energy at once. Wants to snap back to its relaxed state in a violent blur. But it can’t.

Because I wound the crown, thirty-seven turns this morning, which connects to a ratchet wheel that coiled the mainspring tighter and tighter. That mainspring connects to a gear train: the center wheel, the third wheel, the fourth wheel. Each one stepping down the torque, translating brute force into something refined, something useful.

The fourth wheel connects to the escape wheel, a tiny gear with precisely angled teeth that looks like a miniature crown.

And here’s where physics holds order.

The escape wheel is controlled by the escapement. Specifically, a lever with two synthetic ruby pallets that alternately lock and release the escape wheel’s teeth. As each tooth escapes from one pallet, it gives the balance wheel a tiny push, like a child on a swing. The balance wheel oscillates back and forth, governed by a hairspring so fine you can barely see it. Five times per second, it oscillates. Each oscillation releases one tooth of the escape wheel.

Tick.

Another tooth escapes.

Tick.

The mainspring unwinds one increment at a time. Its energy is transformed into the measured rotation of hands around a dial. Transformed into time itself. Into this moment and then the next and then the next.

Without the escapement, the mainspring would empty itself in seconds, all its energy wasted in a single violent release. With the escapement, forty turns of the crown gives you forty-eight hours of measured, reliable, relentless ticking. Maybe less after all these years.

Eight beats per second. 28,800 beats per hour. 691,200 beats per day.

Someone’s monitor somewhere beeps every few seconds. His IV drips maybe once per second. His breathing is slower than that pace, maybe twelve breaths per minute now that he’s sleeping peacefully. And my watch ticks eight times per second, faster than all of it, measuring out this evening in increments smaller than his heartbeat.

I keep thinking about Henry.

The Gift

In 1967, someone decided that Henry’s three decades of service warranted something substantial. Something Swiss. Something automatic. I don’t know if the Omega Seamaster wasn’t the obvious choice for a retirement gift. A gold pocket watch would have been traditional. A Rolex would have been flashy. But the Seamaster was something else: modern, technical, sporty. A watch at the time with 30 meters of water resistance, as if Henry might spend his retirement diving for lobsters in the keys.

Maybe he did. I’ll never know.

What I know is this: someone handed Henry a box. Inside was this watch, already ticking, already wound from the automatic movement. Henry lifted it out, I can see it, can’t you? The weight of his retirement heavy on his conscious, the quality of gift maybe surprising him, and he turned it over and read his own name engraved on the case-back and:

He put it on. Adjusted the bracelet. Felt it tick against his wrist.

He wore it home. Wore it to dinner with his wife, who probably commented that it was handsome, he was maybe thinking about what retirement meant for him, about whether he knew what to do with himself and all this time he just gained. He wore it to bed that first night, or maybe he set it on the nightstand where he could hear it tick in the dark.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That watch measured out Henry’s mornings. His afternoons. His retirement years.

And I’m sitting here wondering: Did it measure out nights like this one? Did Henry ever sit in a hospital room, watching someone he loved fight off an illness, listening to monitors beep while his watch ticked? Did he ever check the time at 3 AM and think about how many ticks he had left? How many ticks they had left?

Because that’s what I’m thinking about right now.

My son is going to be fine. The doctors are confident. The fluids are working. But sitting here in the flattering flourescent light, listening to him breathe, watching that little chest rise and fall, I’m acutely aware that none of this is guaranteed. That his escapement could have stopped. That mine could stop at any minute. That the watch on my wrist might outlast another owner.

The Mainspring

We are wound.

Not by our own hand, not at first, but we are wound nonetheless. I believe it to be God but I know some of you readers believe it to be a cosmic accident. The physics of life are above my pay grade. But the mechanical reality is undeniable: my son showed up on this planet four years ago with a mainspring already coiled, already loaded with potential energy he didn’t do himself.

And the moment he arrived, that first breath, that first scream, his escapement started ticking.

I was there. Watched it happen. Watched the nurse suction his airways and stimulate his breathing and count his Apgar score while I counted his fingers and toes and tried not to pass out. And then they put him in my arms and we heard that fast, rapid heartbeat that newborns have, ticking away at 140 beats per minute, twice as fast as an adult’s, as if he knew he had so much living to do and needed to get started.

Four years of ticks since then. Four years of that mainspring unwinding. Every breath. Every laugh. Every skinned knee and nightmare and “Dad, watch this!” moment. Every tick bringing him closer to whatever his final number is, and I don’t know what that number is, and sitting here in this hospital room that not-knowing is almost unbearable.

The watch on my wrist will run for forty-eight hours on a full wind. After that, if I don’t move it, if I don’t give it more energy, it stops. The mainspring goes slack. The escapement falls silent. It’s not dead, all those components are still capable of function. but it’s dormant. Waiting.

We’re the same. We wake up every morning needing to be wound. Food and water and purpose and love, we need energy input to keep ticking. My son needs IV fluids right now because the flu stole his energy, emptied his mainspring faster than we could refill it. The doctors are winding him back up, drip by drip.

But here’s the thing: the watch knows exactly how much time it has. Forty-eight hours per winding. We don’t know. Have no idea. Could be eighty years. Could be four years and three days. Could be tonight.

I don’t know. Can’t know.

Henry didn’t know either.

The Tooth That Chips

Mechanical watches fail in predictable ways. The most common failure point is the escapement itself. A tooth on the escape wheel chips, maybe from a shock the watch wasn’t designed to absorb. Or a pivot wears down. Or the pallet stones develop a flat spot where the geometry no longer works.

And when that happens, the watch doesn’t gradually wind down. Doesn’t give you warning. It just stops. Mid-tick. All that remaining mainspring energy still coiled and ready, but with no way to release it.

That’s the thing about the escapement. You don’t know if a tooth might chip. Don’t know which tick might be the last one.

What happened between 1967 and today with Henry? Did he wind this watch every morning for another thirty years, feeling that connection to his career, to his worth, to his identity? Did he wear it to his own children’s bedsides when they were sick? Did he check it during arguments with his wife, watching the seconds tick past while deciding whether to push the point or let it go?

Did it tick against his wrist during his final conscious moments? Did he wear it in his coffin and his wife remove it before his burial?

Or did it sit in a drawer, forgotten? Did Henry put it away after a few years, finding it reminded him of things he wanted to leave behind?

Did he kids sell it off in an estate sale?

Did he fall on hard times and have to sell it for groceries?

Why did it end up in a junker collectors box at an antique show?

Why didn’t his kids keep it after he passed?

Did he have a family?

I don’t know. I’ll never know.

But here’s what I do know: at some point, Henry’s escapement stopped. His escape wheel clicked past the pallet stones for the final time. His mainspring, whatever energy remained, never fully unwound.

And this watch, this beautiful, precise, carefully engineered gift that was meant to honor his life’s work, ended up on a dirty velvet tray in Mount Dora, between costume jewelry and a 10 dollar watch, waiting for some sucker who hunts for deals to wind it back up.

The Hospital Vigil

I wonder how many hospital rooms this watch has seen.

In my head i’ve concocted this tory that Henry was 65 or 70 when he retired in 1967, probably. Which means he was born around 1900, give or take. Which means he lived through the Spanish Flu. Through the Depression. Through two world wars. He lived through the polio epidemics of the ‘40s and ‘50s, when hospitals were full of kids in iron lungs, when parents sat vigil like I’m sitting vigil now, wondering if their children would be okay.

Did Henry sit in rooms like this? Did he watch his own children fight fevers? Did this watch tick on his wrist while he prayed? Was he a believer? Would he have prayed?

The watch doesn’t remember. It just ticks. It measured out those moments for Henry the same way it’s measuring out this moment for me. Impartially. Relentlessly. Eight beats per second, no faster during the good times, no slower during the hard times.

There’s something both cruel and comforting about that.

Cruel because the watch doesn’t care. Doesn’t care that I’m exhausted and worried and my wife hasn’t showered in two days. Doesn’t care that my son is hooked up to an IV and monitors. Doesn’t care that these might be the longest night of my life so far. It just ticks. Tick. Tick. Tick.

But comforting because... it just ticks. It doesn’t speed up with my anxiety. Doesn’t slow down with my dread. It just measures out the time, second by second, beat by beat, reminding me that this moment will pass into the next moment will pass into the next. That the sun will come up. That the fever will break or it won’t. The escapement keeps ticking regardless.

My grandpa one told me that time is God’s gift to us. As I’ve grown up I realize that without it, without the measured passage of moments, we’d be overwhelmed by the eternal present. We’d be crushed by the weight of everything happening all at once. Time, the escapement, gives us the grace of sequence. This happens, then that happens, then the next thing. One tick at a time.

I think he was right.

I’m grateful for the ticks. Grateful that this night is passing one second at a time instead of lasting forever. Grateful that my son’s fever is lower now than it was six hours ago. Grateful that the escapement keeps ticking, keeps measuring, keeps moving us forward from 2:47 to 2:48 to 2:49.

One tick at a time.

I’m going to wind the watch. Show up. Do the work. Try to wind other people’s mainsprings by being present, by being useful, by being a good dad and a good husband.

And when my final tooth chips, when my escape wheel clicks past the pallet stones for the last time, I hope someone picks up the things I built and finds them useful. I hope they wind them up and put them to work. I hope my sons grow up and wind other people’s mainsprings the way Taylor and I wound theirs.

I don’t know Henry’s but I hope he was a believer. I hope after I am greeted by my family in heaven I meet him.

I plan to thank him for the lesson he left behind for this tired dad.

Make today worth a few ticks,

Chance

P.S. I had the watch inspected by a reputable dealer, and I even though I lost the negotiations I have plenty of margin in this deal :)

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Heavenly Father,

On this Christmas Day, we come before You with grateful hearts, tired hands that have wiped tears and made countless meals, hearts that have worried and rejoiced, minds that have planned and sacrificed.

Thank You for the sacred privilege of parenthood, for the children You’ve entrusted to our care, and for Your presence with us through every moment of this journey.

For Today

Lord, grant us peace in this present moment. As we gather with our families, help us to be fully present, to see the wonder in our children’s eyes, to hear their laughter as gift, to hold them close and remember that these fleeting moments matter.

When the day feels chaotic or doesn’t match our expectations, remind us that Your love was born in a simple stable, and that You are here in the ordinary moments of our homes. Give us patience when we’re tired, joy when we’re overwhelmed, and eyes to see You in the faces of those we love.

For This Year Past

As we reflect on 2025, we bring You our whole story, the triumphs and the failures, the moments we’re proud of and the times we fell short. Forgive us for the days we were too distracted, too harsh, too absorbed in our own worries to truly see our families. Thank You for sustaining us through the hard seasons, the sleepless nights, the difficult decisions, the financial pressures, the moments we didn’t think we could carry on. Please enable us to reflect on where we imaged you, and where we need to focus in the year ahead.

Thank You for the growth we’ve witnessed in our children and in ourselves, for the lessons learned through struggle, and for Your faithfulness when we felt utterly inadequate. We release our regrets to You and receive Your grace.

For the Year Ahead

Father, as we look toward 2026, we surrender our plans and fears to You. Please grant us wisdom to guide our children well, to know when to hold on and when to let go, when to speak and when to listen.

Give us strength for the challenges ahead and courage to trust You with what we cannot control. Help us to parent not from fear or pride, but from love. May we raise children who know they are deeply loved, who walk in kindness and integrity, who seek You with their whole hearts.

Protect our families, Lord. Protect all the parents, both moms and dads, that subscribe to Dads Fight Club.

Shield our children’s hearts and minds. Provide for our needs. Heal what is broken in us and in our homes. And when we stumble, because we will, remind us that Your mercies are new every morning, that we don’t have to be perfect, only faithful.

May we point our children toward You, the greatest gift ever given, not just at Christmas but every day of the year ahead.

In the name of Jesus, hallelujah what a savior,

Amen.

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The Exhaustion of Multiple Selves

Long before I would become successful in sales, before I would have trouble selling my business (wait, I bought a business?) and therefore get my real estate license in order to join a business brokerage, and well before I would get laid off and strike out to become a business coach, I was going to be Dr. Sweat.

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Which sounds more like something you apply to manage athlete’s foot than the name of a serious doctor.

I wanted to be an ER Doctor. I loved the idea of orthopedics, but I wanted some resemblance of a normal schedule, low chance of on-call, and I didn’t want to deal with patient follow ups. I wanted to do some procedures, have some hectic and crazy moments, be able to tell some great stories, yet be able to “clock out” at the end of the day.

In college I was pursuing a degree in Biology, which I did get, and working in the Emergency Room on the days and nights that I didn’t have class or lab.

One of my most vivid images burned into my brain was Mother’s Day 2015.

The scene belonged in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Towards the end of the shift, packaging up charts and preparing to turn over to the night shift when someone yelled “WE NEED THE DOCTOR!”

I turned around to find a gurney being raced into room 3, right off the ambulance bay, with my mother on top of a patient doing chest compressions (don’t worry she was an ER Nurse at the time).

Intubation, IV’s, bags of fluid, life saving medications, ice packs, the ER Staff threw everything at this kid. He was 18, if I remember correctly, and collapsed on the field near the hospital playing soccer with his friends. Out of pure terror they threw him in the car and rushed him to the hospital about a mile away.

We did compressions for over an hour. In my 3, maybe it was 4, years in the ER at the time I had seen a lot of death. My first night ever out of training our first patient was a young lady that had hung herself because her boyfriend wouldn’t leave his wife for her.

I sat in my car and cried for an hour after that shift.

In nearly the half a decade I had spent witnessing and documenting these moments, I had never seen the doctor do this though. He turned to each person in the room and asked what they wanted to do. I didn’t have an answer for him, I was too choked up seeing myself on that gurney. Everyone said that it was time to call it, we had been working for over an hour and there were no signs of life, no signs of any brain activity.

However, one nurse asked for a few more minutes, and the doctor obliged, no one argued with her, they continued with the chaotic ballet that was a code.

Ten minutes later the doctor called the time of death, and brought the parents in and told them their son was gone. I remember the father swinging at the doctor, the paramedics having to restrain him. That night I walked to my car, swung through Starbucks for a frozen coffee treat. I listened to music and drove with the windows down.

I didn’t shed a tear.

In some ways I realized then that I was broken at the time. I had compartmentalized my work in order to not let it affect me, in order to not let it suck the life out of every other area of my life. The doctor I worked with that night is one of the greatest men I know, and one of the most caring, but I came to realize over the coming year that I couldn’t do this with my life. I did not want to be this jaded to trauma. I didn’t want to be a guy that could witness what I witnessed and treat myself to something like I had a long day answering emails.

The Cost of Compartmentalization

I thought I was protecting myself at the time. Building walls between the ER and everything else. Work stays at work, home stays at home, church stays at church (I wasn’t going to church then but you get it).

Neat little boxes. Clean separation. The problem is that when you build walls inside yourself, you’re not actually protecting anything, you’re fracturing everything else about you.

That drive home from the hospital wasn’t actually peaceful. It was numbness masquerading as composure. Windows down, music up, pretending that watching an 18-year-old die and then ordering a caramel Frappuccino was somehow normal human behavior. It wasn’t strength. It was survival mode.

Survival mode is a terrible long-term strategy for actually living.

Here’s what I didn’t understand then, and I’m only now coming to realize in my 30’s, compartmentalization doesn’t contain the damage, it spreads a different type of damage instead.

You can’t turn off your capacity to feel in one room and expect it to magically reappear in another. The callousness I needed to walk out of that ER without breaking down wasn’t something I could just leave at the hospital. I brought it home. I brought it to dinner with friends. I brought it to school. I became fluent in surface-level conversation because going deep required accessing parts of myself I’d locked away for self-preservation.

We tell ourselves we’re being professional. Appropriate. That different contexts require different versions of ourselves. And there is truth in that. You probably shouldn’t crack the same jokes with your kids that you do with your adult friends. But there’s a massive difference between adjusting your delivery and fundamentally changing who you are.

It’s exhausting. Not just for the people around you, but for you. Because maintaining multiple versions of yourself requires constant code-switching, constant performance, constant energy expenditure on just trying to remember which mask you’re supposed to be wearing in which room.

And here’s what I learned after getting laid off, you start losing track of which version is actually you.

When I was working in that ER, I thought I was protecting my “real self” by not letting the job touch it. The truth is I was eroding my real self by practicing disconnection as a daily discipline. Every shift where I chose numbness over feeling, efficiency over empathy, I was training myself in fragmentation.

The version of me that could do that wasn’t some professional alter ego I put on with my uniform. It was becoming me. And the scarier part? I was starting to need that fragmentation. Because if I let myself actually feel what I was seeing in that ER, I’d have to make a choice about whether this was really how I wanted to spend my life. Compartmentalization wasn’t just protecting me from the job, it was protecting me from having to make hard decisions about my life.

Roosevelt said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Compartmentalization is choosing nothing. It’s deciding that instead of integrating hard experiences into your life and making decisions based on who you actually are, you’ll just create different versions of yourself for different contexts and never have to decide anything.

That 18-year-old’s father swinging at the doctor wasn’t irrational. It was the most human thing that happened that entire night. He was feeling everything all at once, grief, rage, helplessness, love, without any walls or compartments or professional distance. He was integrated, even in his breaking. And I walked out to my car and felt nothing.

That’s the real cost. Not just the energy it takes to maintain the performance. The slow erosion of your ability to be fully human in any room.

What Integration Actually Looks Like

Integration isn’t about being the same in every situation. It’s about being yourself in every situation. That’s a huge difference.

You’re going to be different with your five-year-old than you are in a business negotiation. That’s not duplicity, that’s called not being a sociopath. Your tone will change, your vocabulary will change, your energy will adjust to the context. But the core of who you are, your values, your character, your way of moving through the world, that stays consistent.

Think about the best men you know. The ones you actually respect, not just admire from a distance. They have range. They can be serious when it matters and ridiculous when it doesn’t. They can lead a meeting and coach a soccer team and have a difficult conversation with their wife, and somehow they’re recognizably the same person in all of it. That’s not because they’re performing consistency, it’s because they’ve done the work of actually integrating who they are.

Anthony Bourdain understood this. Watch any episode of his shows and he’s the same guy whether he’s eating street food in Vietnam or sitting across from Obama. Curious, honest, respectful, occasionally profane, always real. He didn’t code-switch based on who was in the room. He adapted his approach while maintaining his essence. That’s the difference.

When I left the ER and eventually found my way into sales, I learned this the hard way. Early on I tried to be “professional” in the way I thought you were supposed to be professional. Measured. Careful. Presenting the version of myself I thought clients wanted to see. And it was exhausting and ineffective in equal measure. No wonder I would log off and doomscroll for hours. I was spent.

I spent my twenties living segmented. Code-switching like it was an Olympic sport. ER Chance was calm, clinical, efficient, nothing got through. Corporate Chance was polished, rehearsed, whatever the client needed me to be. Home Chance was... honestly, I’m not even sure who that guy was supposed to be.

I thought I was being sophisticated. Mature. Professional. What I was actually doing was fracturing myself into pieces and calling it success.

It worked for a while. Or at least I thought it did. I climbed the ladder at my company, hit my numbers, built a reputation, tons of friendships. Nearly nine years of performing, compartmentalizing, keeping all the different versions of myself in their proper boxes. And then they laid me off.

That afternoon hit different than I expected. I thought I’d be angry, or scared, or worried about finances. But in the week and a half since, I realized that I was actually mourning. Not for the job, but for the piece of Chance that I’d left in that company. The version of myself I’d built over nine years that no longer had anywhere to exist.

Have you watched the show Severance yet? Where they split your work self from your real self, except I’d done it voluntarily to every area of my life. And now one of those selves had just been deleted, and I was supposed to figure out who was left.

I lost the plot I discovered in that ER. That numbness I felt walking out after the 18-year-old died wasn’t strength or professionalism, it was the beginning of my own fragmentation. I’d learned to disconnect, to separate, to keep parts of myself isolated from other parts. And I’d gotten so good at it that I’d forgotten how to be whole.

The layoff forced me to confront something I’d been avoiding, who was I when I wasn’t performing for anyone?

Curious if you’re severed? Ask yourself: What would you do if no one were watching? What would you do if everyone were watching? If those answers are substantially different, you’ve got work to do.

I’m not talking about the dumb stuff. Obviously you might scratch different places in private than in public (too bold?). I’m talking about character decisions. How you treat people. What you’re willing to compromise on. Whether you keep your word. Do you eat the cookie or don’t you? If those things change based on who’s in the room, you’re not integrated, you’re just performing different versions of morality for different audiences.

Integration means your private self and your public self are having the same conversation. The way you talk about your struggles is the same whether you’re with your men’s group or in a business meeting, honest about the difficulty, committed to growth, not pretending you have it all figured out. The way you treat people is consistent whether they can do something for you or not. The standards you hold yourself to don’t fluctuate based on whether anyone’s checking.

This doesn’t mean oversharing your personal life in inappropriate contexts. I’m not suggesting you process your marriage struggles with your clients or lead with your trauma in every conversation. Context matters. But there’s a massive difference between having appropriate boundaries and having different operating systems for different parts of your life.

If my kids were old enough to understand what a layoff was, I’d tell them the truth. Not all the details, but the truth. If it’s been a hard week, I say it’s been a hard week. They see me as someone who works hard at something that matters, not some mysterious figure who transforms into a different person when he leaves the house. And when they see me at church, or coaching their teams, or having dinner with friends, they should see the same person.

Your values are your operating system, not your persona. The same code runs different applications. Honesty, integrity, service, courage, those don’t change based on whether you’re in a boardroom or at a barbecue. How you express them will change. But the core commitments stay consistent.

That’s integration. Not sameness. Coherence.

The Christian Integration

If you’re a Christian, your faith shouldn’t be a Sunday supplement to your real life. It’s not a hobby you pick up once a week between work and golf. It’s supposed to be the foundational architecture. The operating system we were just talking about. And if it’s not functioning that way, you need to ask yourself some hard questions about whether you actually believe any of it.

I’m not talking about being the guy who leads every conversation with a Bible verse or finds a way to mention Jesus in every business meeting. That’s not faith integration, that’s awkward evangelism masquerading as authenticity. I’m talking about letting what you say you believe actually shape how you live in every context.

Jesus was many things, but compartmentalized wasn’t one of them. Read the gospels without your Sunday school filter on and you’ll find someone who was consistently, sometimes uncomfortably, himself. Overturning tables in the temple. Calling out religious leaders for their hypocrisy. Eating with tax collectors and prostitutes while the respectable people clutched their pearls. He didn’t have a “synagogue voice” and a “street voice.” He had integrity in the truest sense, the word means wholeness, being undivided.

When he said “let your yes be yes and your no be no,” he wasn’t giving communication advice. He was describing integrated living. Mean what you say. Say what you mean.

Being a Christian at work doesn’t mean you proselytize in meetings or put Scripture references in your email signature. It means you tell the truth even when a lie would be more profitable. It means you treat the intern with the same respect you show the CEO. It means you take responsibility when you screw up instead of blame-shifting. It means you’re known for keeping your word, serving others, and doing the right thing even when it costs you something.

That’s Christianity with its work boots on. And it doesn’t require you to announce it, people will figure it out on their own. If you have to announce it, well, you get it.

The beauty of the gospel, if you actually understand it (something I think I do until I read it again), is that it demolishes the need for multiple selves. God, I wish I had come to walk with Jesus seriously 13 years ago after that night in the ER. Grace means your worth isn’t earned in any room. You’re not performing for God’s approval, you’re not hustling for validation, you’re not code-switching to meet different audiences’ expectations. You’re a son. That’s your identity. Everything else is just context.

This matters for your kids in ways you might not realize yet. They don’t need to see faith as a religious performance you put on for church. They need to see it as bone-deep identity that doesn’t change when you walk out of the building. When your Christianity affects how you treat the server at dinner, how you talk about people who aren’t in the room, how you handle losing money or gaining it, losing a job or landing the dream role, that’s when they start understanding it’s real.

If your faith makes you more careful, more anxious, more image-conscious, more fragmented, you’re doing it wrong. And boy have I been doing it wrong. The gospel should make you more free, more bold, more yourself. Because if God’s acceptance of you isn’t based on your performance, why are you still performing?

This is the part where a lot of Christian men get lost. They mistake religious activity for spiritual integration. They go to men’s group, serve on a committee, lead a small group, all while being fundamentally the same fragmented, performance-driven, anxious men they were before. Because they’ve added Christianity to their life instead of letting it be what they build their life principles on.

What You Gain (And What You Lose)

Some relationships won’t survive your integration. When you stop performing the version of yourself that people have come to expect, some of them are going to be confused, uncomfortable, or even angry.

Let them go.

I know that sounds harsh, but relationships built on fragmented versions of yourself aren’t real relationships. They’re in love with a version of you that doesn’t actually exist. When you continue to fan those relationships you’re trading authenticity for approval, and it’s a terrible exchange rate. The people who stick around when you start being consistent, those are your people. The ones who can’t handle the real you were never really with you anyway.

When I told my close friends I was going to start a Small Business Coaching practice, not a single one said “that’s not a real thing,” or “but you have a family you can’t waste your time doing that.” Instead, my real friends asked how they could help, encouraged me, a few even asked if they could become clients. Tell your circle your true dream, see who is in line with the real you. It’ll startle you.

Some opportunities will close. New job opportunities that require you to compromise your values. Clients who want you to operate in ways that violate your integrity. Promotions that demand you become someone you’re not. These losses sting in the moment, especially when you’re watching someone else take the opportunity you walked away from.

This week I took a few interviews. On each one I told them my filters: I won’t be a road warrior. I won’t let someone dictate when I can take lunch. I will pick up my boys from school at least once a week, and there’s no way I miss the Christmas Parade. Some of those interviews were awkward because I was refusing to be who I’m not, and refusing to be a set version of what their employees must be. The interviews I’ve taken to the second round are with companies that loved that I stated that. That’s where the real Chance belongs anyway.

Every opportunity you decline because it requires fragmentation is an opportunity that would have made you more fragmented. You’re not losing something valuable, you’re avoiding something corrosive.

When you stop performing, people stop relating to your performance and start relating to you. The friendships that form around integrated living are different, they’re built on truth instead of shared facades. Your wife stops wondering which version of you she’s married to. Your kids stop trying to decode which dad is showing up today.

And at the end of your life, when your kids tell stories about who you were, they won’t remember your performance. They’ll remember whether you were the same person everywhere, or whether they spent their childhood trying to figure out which version of dad was real.

Give them the gift of consistency. Give yourself the gift of integration. Be yourself.

See what happens.

In your corner,

Chance

A couple weeks ago was our first annual “Dads-giving”. For my whole life, I’ve heard all sorts of renditions of Thanksgiving dependent upon the crowd attending around the holiday, but I’ve never seen anything like this one. It was real, authentic, vulnerable men talking about real things we go through.

Listen, can we get real from the get-go?

Parenting is hard, leading a family is hard, being a man in today’s society is hard, providing for our families is hard, and following Christ is hard. If you think that you have all these together and these things are easy, I strongly encourage you to look yourself in the mirror honestly and ask yourself one question, “Is it all easy or am I just settling?”

Luckily, God created men to do hard things.

If you were a fly on the grill of our Dads-giving, you would have seen fathers around a table communing with one another about sports, work, and our every day lives. If you listen long enough, though, you would hear conversations turn from regular commonplace chatter into something much deeper - something much more real.

You would hear of their failures and emotions about fatherhood, sharing the reality of what fathers face today. We didn’t follow guided questions from our church and we didn’t watch a video or read some specific passage of Scripture. Don’t get me wrong - those aren’t bad things. But we had freedom and space to share what’s really going on in our lives with no script. Sometimes, the structure can remove that very freedom.

I observed that freedom of real men being real. It wasn’t prettied up. It was intense and rough around the edges. It may have had a few cuss words dropped throughout the night because sometimes the strongest emotions bring about our strongest language and our imperfections - and I love it because it’s authentic.

Now Jimmy - I get it - yes, fatherhood is hard and life is hard, but I’ve heard it all before. I’ve been a part of guy’s groups and we just don’t get that real. Trust me, I hear you loud and clear.

Can I give you actual examples? If you were at our table that night in my seat, you would’ve heard the following things, and I could only hear from one end of the table:

• “I said I’d never be the kind of father I had, now I look in the mirror and that’s all I see.”

• “My ex keeps trying to fight so I can’t take the kids to church on Sunday.”

• “I feel like all I’m doing is faking it. I don’t know what I’m doing as a dad.”

• “My kids are just living on my last nerve all the time. Does it ever get better?”

• “I just got laid off after years of service to my company and I keep wondering why I ever trusted such a soulless organization.”

• “I’m afraid I’m going to screw up my kids.”

Men - these struggles are real.

Fatherhood. Is. Hard.

BUT, Scripture paints us a path:

• “Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” - Proverbs 27:17

• “Two are better than one…For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion.” - Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

• “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” - Romans 8:28

• “The LORD Himself goes before you; He will be with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.” - Deuteronomy 31:8

Men, we were not created to bear our burdens alone. The Lord tells us in Philippians that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Despite what my younger self would’ve said, this context of this verse is not to make me a better athlete. This verse is written by Paul who is in prison, abused, and after being shipwrecked all to share the gospel of Christ. He is writing that through Christ, we can make it through the hardest things in life.

And on a Saturday night a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, Christ showed up through 12 dads who don’t have it figured out and are far from perfect. But, we commit our hardships unto the Lord and do our best to act as the hands and feet of God’s work. So, when our fellow men have hard things come up, we make sure they are met with an arm around their shoulders, encouragement, prayer, and a phone number of someone to call.

And, here’s the cool thing: We get to see those hardships turn into God moments to be celebrated!

• “I have every reason to have screwed up kids, but by the Grace of God, they are all walking with the Lord today.”

• “The Holy Spirit convicted me and I chose to die to myself so I know my kids can be in church every Sunday.”

• “Trust me, we all feel like we’re faking it sometimes. We’ve been there and we’re here for you.”

• “My teenage daughter texted me today and wants to come to church with me for the first time tomorrow.”

• “My kids are growing up so fast right before my eyes, but thank God they’re growing to know Him as their Savior.”

• “It sounds crazy, but God is bringing random connections to me for my next career opportunity.”

• “There’s something special here - and it’s not just the smoked turkey.”

The Lord works. 2,000 years ago the Lord worked through a carpenter and a virgin to raise up the Son of God. Then, that Son whose name is Jesus, took 12 imperfect and messed up men, died a death he didn’t deserve so that we may live in perfect union with God one day. And, He used those 12 men to spread that message all over the world.

I’m grateful for the tribe we have and I pray you find yours if you haven’t already. You never know what God can do through a group of men gathered in His name.

In your corner,
Jimmy

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We’re four hours deep into touring the Apostolic Palace, Papal Palace, Vatican Palace - it’s the Pope’s house - a massive structure that’s been continuously built, rebuilt, and added onto for 1,500 years next to St Peters Basilica.

Every corridor is packed with statues, monuments, names of long dead popes marking their contributions to Christendom (and to the wealth of the church). The level of detail is genuinely overwhelming. My wife had stated that we needed an entire day of our time in Rome dedicated to the Vatican. Truthfully, that was not enough time.

Anyways, here I am, having wound through all the public floors and exhibits, prodded through the Sistine Chapel like cattle, finally reaching the end of the tour, walking through a gift shop corridor when I turn to see my oldest son grab the glass enclosure of what I can only assume is a priceless artifact of the Christian Faith, and lick the glass.

I’m talking full head articulation from 6 o’clock to 12 o’clock. The kind of lick that leaves a comic book quality streak. Pretty sure I’ve seen Scooby Doo do this to Shaggy. I hurriedly ushered my family out of the hall before we became a spectacle. We all know what some legalist can do if you make a scene (Pharisee joke).

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Upon reflection this got me thinking about how we adults do the same thing, just mentally and with far less tongue on priceless art. We walk through spaces saturated with the divine, glazed over and bored, until we do something to feel something.

That evening we were staying in a hotel along the Piazza Navona, which sits on the ruins of an ancient circus built for Emperor Domitian. The hotel itself was built in the 1600s by famed Baroque artist Borromini (have you heard of him?), commissioned by Pope Innocent X (spoiler alert: not so Innocent) as a palace for his family.

We were sleeping in a building older than my country, looking out at a square older than that, built on top of something older still. And you know what my brain kept doing? Not taking in the magnificence of it all. The human mind is magnificent at taking the extraordinary and filing it under “Thursday.”

That same evening there was a private concert in a side chapel of the Chiesa di Sant’Agnese in Agone, a 17th century church attached to the palace, now a hotel, and I find myself in a secret chamber that Pope Innocent X had added to his residence that allowed him to spy on the priest (remember what I said earlier about him?). This secret room had a grate that on the pope’s side was bare metal, and the other (being a part of the ornate ceiling in the chapel) elaborate gold and painted to hide his sin.

I was standing where a Pope stood. I was sleeping where a Pope slept. I walked through a crypt that day with dozens of Pope’s laid in rest. Heck, I gazed upon the spot that the Church believes the Apostle Peter is resting until the resurrection. It was overwhelming don’t get me wrong, but it was overwhelming in a fleeting moment as I moved to the next dopamine hit of travel.

I couldn’t help but think that somewhere between the Reformation’s rightful emphasis on God’s accessibility and our modern pursuit of “come as you are” church culture, have we accidentally made God feel ordinary?

I made a point to walk into every church in Italy while there and I started to understand something physically that I’d only understood intellectually before, and thats a stretch. Every surface was intentional. The ceiling fresco literally breaks through the architectural frame creating illusions, spilling into three-dimensional space. Light pours through windows positioned to create specific effects at specific times of day. Marble carved so skillfully it looks like fabric caught in a soft breeze. This isn’t Restoration Hardware space with some minor detailing. This was theology made visible, a physical argument that encountering God should overwhelm your senses, should remind you of your smallness and His magnitude.

The average worshipper in 1650 Rome walked into spaces like this weekly, daily even. They knelt on stone floors beneath angels and saints rendered in gold. Ceiling painted by hand over decades by master artist. No AI inspiration, no Youtube on how to do it. They participated in liturgies that engaged every sense: incense, bells, chants prayers, the Eucharist. Worship was an event that demanded something of the whole person.

Now consider what someone might walk into on a given Sunday in America: A carpeted room with drop ceilings, a portable stage, screens for lyrics. Music could be hit or miss depending on the budget and quality of the volunteers. Accurate teaching from a seminary trained pastor. The gospel will get preached, and I have no doubt lives are being changed there. But what does the space communicate about God? Efficiency. Practicality. Comfort. We can set up and tear down quickly. We’ve removed barriers to entry, made church feel less intimidating. These aren’t bad goals, we SHOULD be removing every barrier for those far from God to hear the gospel.

But what have we lost in the process?

I think about my son licking that glass case, the kid was bored. He was overstimulated, overtired most likely, but under-engaged. He couldn’t possibly take this in, I was barely capable of doing so. Surrounded by priceless beauty he couldn’t access or comprehend. So he did something visceral to make the moment feel real, something to get a reaction from his father. And I wonder if that’s not a perfect metaphor. We’re surrounded by the extraordinary, the living God, the gospel that changes everything, the presence of the Holy Spirit, but we’ve somehow accomplished to put it all behind glass. Visible but not transformative. Present but not overwhelming us like it should.

So we chase emotional experiences that feel spiritual. We treat worship like a concert we attend rather than a throne room we’ve been granted access to. We approach prayer casually, worship carelessly, select sericulture based on mood (hello magic eight ball bible reading) not because we don’t believe, but because we’ve forgotten to be amazed. Because being amazed can be a choice.

The great risk isn’t that we’ll stop believing in God. It’s that we’ll believe in a version of God we’ve made safe. Manageable. Predictable. A God who fits comfortably into our lifestyle rather than one who disrupts it. Scripture is clear about the appropriate response to God’s presence:

Isaiah sees the Lord and cries, “Woe is me! For I am lost.”

Moses asks to see God’s glory and is told, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”

The disciples see Jesus transfigured and fall on their faces, terrified.

When was the last time you felt that way in worship? When was the last time I did? Have I ever?

I’m not suggesting we all become Catholic or that we need to build cathedrals. But I am asking myself - what practices and environments help me remember who God actually is? For me, it’s small things, recognizing small details and making small changes. I’ve started kneeling when I pray. Don’t mistake me, I don’t believe there magic in the posture, but because my body needs to be involved in recognizing who I’m talking to. I’ve also been creating space for silence. Not filling every moment with words, music, or a podcast. Sitting alone with my thoughts and waiting for Gods spirit to nudge me. And I’ve been seeking out beauty intentionally, in art, music and architecture that points toward the Creator.

My son licked priceless art because he was bored in a palace. He couldn’t access what was right in front of him, so he acted out. I think about how often I do the same thing in my walk with God. How often I’m physically present but mentally elsewhere. Self selecting to lock myself out from the riches of God. How often I approach the throne of grace the same way I’d approach a customer service counter.

The worshipper in 1650 Rome had architectural advantages I don’t. But I have the same God, the same Scripture, the same Spirit. I have the same capacity for awe if I’m willing to cultivate it.

The question isn’t whether I’ve become complacent in my reverence for God. The question is. what the hell am I going to do about it?

In your corner,
Chance

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This wreaked havoc on my mental and physical health. I learned later, through the amazing work of a counselor, that my stress and anxiety about “the next shoe to drop” was so out of balance. Should we have a little angst about what might be in our future? Sure. It keeps us alert and on our toes. But to wake up at 4 a.m. with full body sweats, to have a string of heart palpitations at the sound of an early morning text? Not productive.

It wasn’t until I came to grips with the fact that I was not strong enough - nor should I have been - to shoulder that emotional pressure alone, so I went on the offensive to make as many close personal friends as possible.

Now making friends in your late 20s and early 30s is a weird thing, especially if you have kids. You essentially have to just hope that your wife’s friends’ husbands aren’t weird. That the kids your kid has started playing with don’t have closet weirdo parents.

In August of 2024, we began attending a new church, something I mentioned when I wrote about God’s comedic timing. A message during that series made me decide to lean into both the church community and cultivating my own community outside of our church. If Jesus could pick his 12 closest friends, then maybe that’s what I was supposed to do as well?

I texted three guys.

One I knew and had spent quite a bit of time with, whose wife happened to have gone to school with mine, and two other dads I knew from the kids’ park group. We met at an Ale House with the understanding that Dads Fight Club was a place to talk about whatever we needed to, and the conversation couldn’t leave the table.

Since then, Dad’s Fight Club has grown to a 17-person group that meets monthly at my house for dinner. I grill the protein, the guys bring the sides - we laugh, make fun of each other, and talk about life. Since then, I’ve launched this newsletter, recruited a friend to write with me, and as I speak, we are crafting a vision for what Dads Fight Club is going to become. We may never break 100 subscribers, and honestly, that’s okay. I prayed for some men to lean on when life gets tough, and the Lord has brought that over the last year in numbers I could not have imagined.

Last evening we had our first “Dads-giving” here at the house. It will 100% be a yearly event that I look forward to and plan in advance. Next year I’m praying that the attendance will be double. I’m praying that between now and then, the lives of these men and their families is “straight up and to the right.” I’m praying for life trajectories to change, and I’m praying we have some fun along the way.

With all this change comes some changes for us as well, as we intentionally create margin in our lives. Meaning more spaced out posts, but deeper dives into topics and experiences that we think will enrich your email inbox.

The Bible study series will continue in a few weeks, and expect some essays picking apart some topics that have been rolling around in our brains, and I can’t forget to mention an upcoming piece on our vision of what we want Dad’s Fight Club to become in the years ahead, my number one promise is that we are going to build this community in public.

Dad’s Fight Club has already become a platform for real life change and I would be a fool to not lean into it.

Always in your corner,
Chance

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💥 THE BRIEFING

N.T. Wright writes, “If you go to a meeting where someone demolishes the way you’ve been brought up to think, and offers you instead a way of looking at the world which, though convincing, will be extremely costly, you may well find good reasons to be somewhere else next time the preacher comes to town.”1

I’ve been there. Honestly, on quite a regular basis, what I consider to be “true” is challenged. It seems like the years 25-30 of my life have reshaped many things I used to believe, while also reaffirming others, but I would guess 75% of my beliefs have been considerably reshaped.

Funnily enough, during a Bible study just this week, of which 3 of us are dads, and the 4th is newly married with no kids yet, the Dad’s noticed just how exponentially we have changed since our kids were born, and in this world we live in, where everyone has their own truth, we can expect this to be the case.

We can’t forget that in the proceeding passages Christ feeds the 5,000, and then walks on water, yet in last weeks post (welcome to the team Jimmy), we see these followers being challenged. Their truth is put under the microscope and suddenly they don’t like this free bread dealing miracle worker… and I can’t help but see the parallels of Israel’s grumblings here tying all the way back to the story of Exodus. Constantly grumbling, constantly being corrected, constantly getting back in line, and repeat. Sounds like my relationship with God, and my kids’ relationship with me.

It’s easy to accept the truth that someone is sharing with you when it already fits the narrative you’ve built up in your own mind.

It’s easy for me to see the truth in my behaviors when events are going in my favor. It’s challenging when my three-year-old doesn’t get what he wants, because in his head, he’s the one in charge.

The crux of this text, however, I believe is in John 6:62-63. We need to come to terms with the fact that Jesus was equally at home on earth as He was in heaven. He was, and is, the Word made flesh. When you wrap your head around this and understand that when the flesh is indwell with the Spirit of God, everything in the previous discourse becomes a bit more clear.

Similarly, when you get your eyes on Christ and constantly reframe your thinking about a God who would bear pain and suffering because of His love for us, you begin to see the world more clearly. And in turn, the things that are “true” are more and more, for lack of a better word, not.

Obviously, unless this is your first time studying John (in which case, welcome!), you know that Jesus will teach His disciples, and us 2,000 years later, much more about this ‘Spirit in us’ concept. But what He is asking us here is to grasp His words spiritually rather than merely physically, while also recognizing that our understanding will never be complete here on earth.

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🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.”2

Jesus just told the crowds they need to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Now even His disciples are backing away: “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Jesus doesn’t chase after them. He doesn’t soften the message. He doesn’t say, “Let me explain what I really meant,” or “Here’s a version you might find more palatable.”

He lets them walk.

Then He turns to the Twelve and asks, “You do not want to leave too, do you?”

We live in a world where everyone has their own truth. Where we’re told to find what works for us, what feels right, what aligns with our personal journey. But Jesus isn’t offering customizable truth. He’s offering the truth, and it’s costly.

Peter’s response cuts through all of it: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Peter doesn’t say he understands. He doesn’t say it’s easy. He’s essentially admitting, “This is hard, but You’re still the only one worth following.”

The crowds wanted a Messiah who made sense on their terms. Many disciples wanted teaching that fit their preferences. But biblical truth doesn’t bend to our comfort, we bend to it.

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

A simple question this week:

Where are you softening Jesus’ teaching to make yourself feel more comfortable?

³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.3

Are you loving God and loving your neighbor?

🤝 THE HUDDLE

Our kids are growing up in a world that treats truth like a buffet, take what you like, leave what you don’t. And if we’re I’m honest? I do it too.

We’ll follow Jesus when it makes sense. When it fits our plans. When it doesn’t cost us too much, but the moment His Word pushes back on our money, our pride, our comfort, our schedule? Oof.

Are we following Jesus, or a version of Jesus we’re more comfortable with?

Obedience is expensive.

Stop editing Jesus. Stop making excuses for why you can’t do what His Word clearly says. And let your kids see you choose the hard path because it’s His path.

They need to see a dad who doesn’t soften the message, even for himself.

In Your Corner,

Chance

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💥 THE BRIEFING

When you become a parent, you start to see what it was like for your parents when you were a kid. I remember always trying to go to the other parent when I didn’t get the answer I wanted originally.

“Um, excuse me, but I didn’t like your answer so I went to my other option of authority - and other person tall enough to reach the cookie jar,” would be my thought. The worst part for my parents is when I intercepted the other before they could align stances and I would end up getting what I wanted anyways. Mission success.

When I became a parent and our oldest son started to be able to communicate, I learned quickly what it was like for my parents when I would continually be asked the same question. You remember doing this to your parents?

“Can I have another cookie?”

“You can’t have it, it’s not good for you.”

“But, I really want it.”

“You can’t have another cookie. It will make you sick.”

“I don’t care, I want another cookie. Can I pleaseeeee have another cookie," as if the emphatic politeness would change my parents’ stance.

“No, my answer is final. I’m not going to say it again. You cannot have another cookie because it is bad for you.”

“Ughhhhh, I’m going to ask Mom!"

Been through this before? My toddler can’t even talk yet and he’s pulling it on us already. He’ll make a noise and point to the cabinet that he somehow always knows his Veggie Straws are on the other side. When Mom says “No”, he finds me and does the same. Why? Because he either didn’t understand or didn’t like the answer.

In the same way we start to see our parents’ perspective when we become parents ourselves, I wonder what God’s perspective looks like when we do this to Him. How often do we pray for something and miss the answer? How often do we read a Scripture that points us to Him and shows us our next step towards Christ, then we close our Bible and move on to the next task in our day? Then we pray for the very thing God provided that we already missed.

I always forget about the 2nd half of John 6. The first half tells of legendary miracles of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and walking on water - feats impossible to man and proof He is more than man. Yet, the second half of the chapter talks about Jesus’ continued teaching to those same followers he miraculously fed with a child’s lunch.

They come and Jesus immediately calls them out for wanting more physical gifts - not spiritual. Jesus reminds them that He came as the true “Bread of Life” given by God and come down from Heaven. The bread that Jesus speaks of will feed us and fulfill us for eternity, unlike bread made by man.

Through back and forth dialogue consisting of 43 verses, Jesus reiterates this same message again and again and again because the crowd just isn’t grasping His message. He told his followers not once, not twice, not three, not four (I’ll stop here, you either get my Lebron James Miami promise reference now or you don’t), but Jesus told them 12 times!

12 times! Surely, after 12 times the Jews understood and finally saw the Christ in front of them as the Son of God, right? Wrong. Not only did they not understand, many of those followers walked away and rejected Jesus, hoping the promised Messiah would one day come. They completely missed it.

The Son of God stood before his followers after performing multiple miracles . . . yet they still didn’t understand. He repeated himself 12 times . . . yet they still didn’t understand. God, Himself, in the form of man standing before them, giving them exactly what is best for them - a relationship with God through Christ - and they missed it.

(see John 6:22-69 for the full passage)

🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

Fellow dad - Jesus is our Bread of Life. Don’t miss it. He is our Savior, our Fulfillment, our Joy, our Peace, our Love, and our perfect example of how to be a man on this Earth. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will feed your hunger, quench your thirst, and fill the emptiness of our heart. Please, don’t miss it.

“‘So, Jesus said to the twelve, You do not want to go away also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.’” - John 6:67-68

Simon Peter has it right. Jesus is the “Bread of Life”. He and His words give life - eternal life that will never perish.

When your son needs guidance, Jesus’ words give life.

When your daughter needs confidence, Jesus’ words give life.

When your wife needs encouragement, Jesus’ words give life.

When you need fulfillment, Jesus’ words give life.

And, remember as I type, I’m the dad in your corner. But, there is another dad in your life that needs to hear this that needs you in their corner. Share with them the power of Jesus’ life-giving words.

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🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

This week: Memorize Jesus’ words.

For some of you reading, memorizing Scripture takes you right back to Bible Drill (any other Southern Baptists out there?). I’m not asking you to memorize Scripture just to retain it. I’m asking for you to find Jesus’ words and implement them into your family’s routine.

What is something Jesus spoke that you can repeat to your family?

Can you tie it into mealtime prayer or bedtime routine?

Do you repeat it to your kids with the same frequency you tell them you’re proud and you love them?

Do you write them notes somewhere for them to find Jesus’ words greeting them through the day?

Find a way to take Jesus’ words from Scripture and implement them into your family’s life. Speak, write, and repeat life over your family.

Then when you’ve done it for this week, do it again and again and again. It may take more than 12 times for your kids, wife, and even yourself to grasp the truth from Jesus’ words. It may take hundreds. But, make sure the words of truth from Jesus will ring true in your family’s ears.

🤝 THE HUDDLE

Remember the prayer Christ displays for us in Matthew 6:

“Give us this day our daily bread”

Christ is the Bread of Life. When we’re down and when we’re up, this truth remains clear: Christ will fulfill us.

It may not feel like it right now. If life feels like it’s beating you down, everything you try is hitting a brick wall, and you’re at your end - Christ is the Bread of Life giving us what we need in our moment of weakness.

If you’re on top of the world, don’t lose sight. Keep at it. The bread of which we eat of this world will not sustain us. Only the Bread of Christ will sustain our spirit.

You’re not alone. You have other fathers in the same fight. Ask them what they do. How do they let Christ’s words sit true in their hearts? How do they implement His words in their family rhythms? You’re not alone. Christ is always with you, and brothers are there to help point you to Him. We are too.

In Your Corner,
Jimmy Hartley

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QUICK INTRO!

Yes, that’s a new name underneath the title. I’m honored Chance has asked me to write for Dads Fight Club.

I accepted Christ very young and always lived in a God-honoring home. I’m blessed for my upbringing and probably take it for granted more than I show proper appreciation for it. I grew up in Central Florida until going away for college.

I attended a small college in Charlotte, NC to play baseball and attend school. Only the school part of that worked out, but God moved in me more than I could describe in a few short words. He instilled into me a purpose to inspire others that remains to this day.

After graduating, I met my wife through mutual friends and we got married in April 2022. We moved back to Florida in August of 2022. In March of 2024, we welcomed our first son. In October of 2025, we welcomed our second son. Life has moved fast and God has been good to us.

I met Chance at church and he invited me to “Dads Fight Club”. I knew nothing except the clear reference and he mentioned steaks. What guy would say no to that?

What I found was God’s provision for the community for which I’d been praying since we moved back to FL. Men need other men, especially to point each other towards Christ.

I’m honored Chance asked me to be a part of Dads Fight Club. I pray the words you read through Dads Fight Club point you to Christ and the eternal “Bread of Life”.

In Christ,
Jimmy Hartley

A devotional to my sons:

“Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”

- Isaiah 65:24

Boys, imagine texting me with a problem, and before you even hit send, I’ve already solved it. Before your question even finishes loading, the answer’s already on its way. I’m not this good, but our Father in heaven is, and this is exactly what He promises here.

God is already moving. Think about that. Right now, (or in a decade when you discover this, and I pray that you don’t find it embarrassing) you’re reading this, God already knows what you’re going to pray about tomorrow. He knows the test you’re worried about next week. He knows the friendship struggle that’s going to hit next month. And here’s the wild part, He’s already working on the answer.

This doesn’t mean God is a cosmic vending machine where we get whatever we want instantly. It means something better: God cares so deeply about you that He’s already paying attention. He’s not scrambling to keep up with your life. He’s not caught off guard. He’s already there, in your future, preparing the way.

When you feel unheard, remember this: God heard you before you spoke. When you’re in the middle of explaining your problem to Him, He’s already listening, not like someone waiting for you to finish, but like someone who already understands completely.

I pray that this will change how you pray. You’re not trying to get God’s attention or convince Him to care. You’re talking to a Father who’s already leaning in, who’s already moved by your need, who’s already at work, something I could never achieve but He can.

So today: What’s weighing on you? Tell Him. Not because He doesn’t know, but because He wants you to trust Him with it. He’s already answered. He’s already listening.

You’re not alone in this. Ever.

Love, Dad

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Father, thank you for completing my sentences. Thank you for loving me so unconditionally, in a way that is only possible for you. Thank you for never tiring as you wait for us to turn to you, and thank you for already working on our ask before we even know what we want. Thank you for saying no when we don’t need it, and thank you for knowing better and not leaving us to our own wisdom. Amen

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💥 THE BRIEFING

I’m going to apologize ahead of time to my mother, as I don’t know if she has ever heard this story, but in 2012 I was almost swept overboard while sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

Much like my grandfather, and father, I do happen to have a tendency of embellishing stories. Blame genetics, or blame summer going to a Southern Baptist Church in Northeast Georgia. Regardless of cause, I believe this ordeal is pretty close to being accurate.

The summer of 2012, having just graduated high school a few weeks prior, I boarded a plane for NYC. At JFK I connected with some of the other crew and jetted off to St. George Bermuda. Our planned home for the next 40 days was a 112 foot traditionally rigged schooner. I was 1 of 30 members of the crew that was about to embark on a transatlantic passage from Bermuda to Rome.

We spent a day or two in Bermuda as we waited for favorable weather to depart. Leave too soon there might be too much wind, leave too late and the weather system might leave you in the dust.

Both happened to us.

We departed in the afternoon. Quick phone call home to let my mom know that we were heading out and that we expected to be sighting land in the Azores in about a week or so… we organized ourselves into 3 watch teams with 2 staff crew per watch, the skipper taking the mermaid watch mid day so that we could sit in our marine biology class and eat lunch.

We left with the attempt to time the weather, and instead found ourselves violently seasick as the wind caught us. While the actual weather was more tame a squall, or micro storm, caught us in its crosshairs with gust of 60mph and rolling waves in the 10-20 foot mark by best guess. Even though the sun had not yet set it was pitch black out.

When underway on one of these ships you clip into these lifelines that run along the deck, much like rock climbing you clip into the next before undoing the one prior to move about, and I was about to move.

Over the whistling of the wind across the lines, and the crashing of waves on deck, the environment was deafening, but the call to action was clear that I was to help secure a governor to the main boom to prevent an accidental jibe. To save you the sailing lesson, myself and others needed to secure a thick rope to the sail to prevent it crossing midline of the ship, violently, and wreaking massive damage.

As I unclipped from the life line to move to the chart house, I for some reason laid flat on the chart house roof, I have zero recollection why I did that, but in that second between unclipping and moving to the rail clipping (the one place on board you couldn’t reach without unclipping first), the boom swung across the deck crashing to the other side.

One second sooner, or had I not leaned over, that massive piece of steel would’ve rocketed me off that deck into the cold Atlantic.

I didn’t have a strong faith in 2012, and truthfully even now I would be terrified in that moment. Truthfully… if I had looked up and saw someone walking on the water I probably would’ve fainted.

This story comes right after the feeding of the 5,000 in 3 of the 4 gospels, and the comment in verse 19 leads me to believe there was a eyewitness report aspect here. I think John here is showing us that not only the disciples saw and experience this but the crowd in following verses also noticed what had occurred.

This story, and my own personal story, remind us that we don’t know when a storm is going to arise in our lives. We don’t know when the wind is going to whip up, when the waves are going to begin crashing over the sides to swamp us.

Being of the flesh I bet we don’t acknowledge the presence with us, and in us, as we struggle through, much like the lifeline I was tethered to, it was only after the fact that I was aware of the security I had.

The sooner we realize during choppy waters that our life is secure, the sooner we realize we are already in a safe harbor.

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🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

“When they had rowed about three or four miles...”

Oddly specific, and not specific at the same time.

Like we saying my record bass was 10-11 pounds…

That’s not the kind of detail you include unless you were actually there, counting strokes, checking the shoreline, measuring how far you’d gotten.

John’s giving us an eyewitness account. He’s saying “I remember exactly where we were when this happened.”

Three or four miles meant they were in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. Halfway between where Jesus sent them and where they needed to land.

Jesus didn’t wait until they were close to shore to show up. He met them in the middle, when they were exhausted and had no way out.

That’s the detail John wanted us to catch: Jesus shows up in the middle of your storm, not after it.

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

This week’s drill: Name the middle.

Every morning, write down one area where you’re “three or four miles out,” stuck between where you started and where you need to be.

The job situation that won’t resolve. The marriage tension that won’t break. The kid’s struggle that won’t improve. The financial pressure that won’t ease.

Don’t try to fix it. Don’t create a five-step plan. Just acknowledge: “I’m in the middle of this, and I can’t row my way out.”

Then pray: “Jesus, I’m scanning the horizon for you here.”

That’s it. Recognition before resolution. You’re not waiting for the storm to calm before you acknowledge He’s present. You’re training yourself to see Him in the middle of it.

🤝 THE HUDDLE

The disciples were never alone in that boat, even when they felt abandoned. They were rowing toward where Jesus had already sent them, and He was coming to meet them exactly where they were.

You’re not rowing solo either. The exhaustion is real, the waves are real, but so is His presence in the middle of it.

You don’t have to explain. We get it. And sometimes just naming it reminds you that you’re not the only one still rowing, all that matters is that you don’t stop. He’s going to meet you at the point you need Him too.

In your corner,

Chance

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Heavenly Father,

We come before You today with grateful hearts, thankful for the gift of friendship. Thank You for bringing us together, brothers and sisters who stand beside each other, who encourage and sharpen one another, and who remind us that we don’t have to walk this journey of parenthood alone.

Thank You for the laughter we share, the burdens we help each other carry, and the strength we find in community. Please pour out your blessings on all of us, Lord

Help us to continue showing up for one another, to be people of integrity, compassion, and courage.

May our friendships reflect Your love and may we always point each other back to You.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

💥 THE BRIEFING

The feeding of the 5,000 is my favorite miracle recorded in the Bible. I don’t really know why, but even stacked up there with raising the dead, and walking on water this one really sticks out to me.

Maybe because it’s recorded in all 4 gospels?

Maybe because I know that the Kia Center in Orlando holds 20,000 people, and when John writes about the 5,000 he’s likely only counting men, so many scholars estimate it at 15,000 people. I can picture that.

“Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

You know, one of my biggest struggles in my faith is prayer.

It really is, I get caught up in my own head, trying to make these lofty prayers, or I plan to say my prayers before bed and then fall asleep or I throw out a quick one and then feel guilty for not giving God more of my attention.

Because of that, I’m doing what I always do and look for an answer in a book. So I just finished reading Tim Keller’s Prayer and Tyler Staton’s Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, and both authors keep circling back to this same idea, that was perfect timing, we just need to bring what we have to Jesus, even when it’s laughably insufficient.

And my prayers are laughably insufficient.

But what can this text teach us parents?

The Apostle John wants us to connect this feeding with Israel’s wilderness wanderings, when God provided manna from heaven for people who were grumbling and complaining.

The Israelites in the wilderness didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. They were following a God they couldn’t see to a promised land they’d never been to, with nothing but daily bread that expired if they tried to hoard it.

Fatherhood is wilderness living. Every day you wake up not knowing if you’ll have enough patience, wisdom, energy, or answers for what your kids will throw at you. Let alone what the world is going to throw at you. You can’t stockpile solutions. Yesterday’s victories don’t guarantee today’s success.

But here’s what the boy with the lunch teaches us: you start with what you have.

🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they for so many people?” - John 6:9

Have you heard the song, Fishes & Loaves by Josiah Queen? My boys love it, and it's a regular request when we’re heading somewhere. Here are a few lyrics is case you dont have the time to listen this morn:

Put the food in His hands
I held back my questioning thoughts
But something told me that that preacher could see
The war between my head and heart

When He said, “Oh my child let go
I know You’re uneasy, but I’m in control
I don’t need that much for Me to show
I’ll make the most of your fishes and loaves”

Maybe I’m alone in this, but my heart sure isn’t easy about a lot of things. Money, career, relationships, the endless onslaught of terrible heart breaking news.

That’s the father’s dilemma right there.

Your kid is struggling with something, and you have no idea what to do. So you say its going to be alright.

Your teenager is asking questions about faith that you’re still figuring out yourself. You have some Sunday School quality answers and thats it.

Your marriage is strained because parenting is harder than anyone told you it would be, you have good intentions and a heart full of love.

What good is all this among such deep waters?

What good is all of this among such complicated dynamics?

This isn’t about getting everything you want, or figuring it all out on this side of Heaven. It’s about learning to trust the One who provides what you need.

The prosperity gospel wants to make this story about God giving you more than you can imagine if you just have enough faith. But that’s missing the point entirely.

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🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

This week: Practice the discipline of honest offering.

Every morning, before you check your phone, ask yourself: “What do I have to bring to Jesus today?”

Not what you wish you had. Not what other dads seem to have. What do you actually have right now?

Maybe it’s:

• Ten minutes of patience before you lose it

• One honest conversation with your wife

• A willingness to admit you don’t know what you’re doing

• The courage to apologize to your kid for yesterday’s failure

• A prayer that feels more like a Costco list than devotion

Bring it. All of it.

Then say out loud: “Jesus, this is what I have. I know it’s not enough, but it’s yours.”

This counters the masculine lie that we have to figure it all out before we can be useful to God or our families. Sometimes the most powerful thing a father can do is show up empty-handed but open-hearted.

Don’t try to multiply the loaves yourself. That’s His job. Your job is to bring what you have and trust Him with what you don’t.

🤝 THE HUDDLE

The boy in this story didn’t know he was about to participate in a miracle. He just knew Jesus was asking for lunch contributions and he had a lunch.

Your kids don’t need you to be the dad who has it all figured out. They need you to be the dad who knows where to go when you don’t have enough, and show them.

You know I finally saw in my study that the crowd wanted to make Jesus king because they thought He would give them everything they wanted. But Jesus withdrew because He knew that’s not what they needed.

The miracle isn’t that you’ll always have enough. The miracle is that when you don’t, you know where to go.

Forward this to a dad who’s trying to solve problems that are bigger than his resources.

In your corner,

Chance

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Heavenly Father,

I dread these moments. The ones where I have to break my kid’s heart to shape their character. The shopping meltdowns, the timeout battles, the “no you can’t have candy for breakfast” wars. It honestly feels like this might never end.

Should I just fold and buy the toys to avert the tantrum?

Should I relent and hand over my phone in the restaurant?

Give up my parental duty to a screen?

I’d gladly hand over the $8 for a toy I know they’re going to break to make the screaming stop.

Here’s what I’m learning from you Father, the tantrum might look different but i’m doing the same to you. You love us too much to give us everything we think we want. If you answered every prayer of mine how much better would the world look, versus how much “better” would my life look by social media standards? When we throw our own tantrums, demanding that promotion, that relationship, that easy path, You sit with us in our disappointment, not because You enjoy our pain, but because You’re forming our character.

Lord for my sons, I’m asking that you help them understand that discipline isn’t punishment. When I say no to that toy, I’m teaching them that tantrums don’t work. You will never enjoy something you screamed your way into getting. When I make them clean their room before their friends come over, I’m teaching them that good things require effort. When I don’t let them quit when things get hard, I’m teaching them that the best parts of life are on the other side of difficulty.

Lord please give them eyes to see what I learning, that love sometimes looks like disappointment. Strength sometimes means holding the line when it would be easier to cave. That the most powerful thing I can do as a father isn’t always making their momentary dreams come true, it’s being willing to be the bad guy because I love them too much to let them become someone nobody wants to be around.

Holy Spirit, be to my boys what I’m trying to be in these hard moments, the steady presence that says “I love you, but the answer is still no.” When they’re adults and facing Your discipline in their own lives, help them recognize Your love is still working even if answers to their prayers come with delayed answers, and that the hard lessons that shape them into men of character are why you say no sometimes.

And Father, help me trust what You’re showing me, that discipline done in love creates security, not fear.

I know I can’t shield them from every disappointment. I can’t remove every obstacle, but I can show them what it looks like to love someone enough to do the hard thing. And in doing the hard thing, I can point them to You, the perfect Father who disciplines every child He accepts, who loves us too much to leave us the way we are.

This is my prayer, in the name of Jesus, who knew what it meant to submit to His Father’s will even when it led to a cross, and who calls us to take up our own crosses daily.

Amen.

“My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” - Proverbs 3:11-12

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

This week, before you discipline your kids, ask yourself: “Am I doing this out of love or frustration?” Take a breath if you need to. Remember that discipline should be training of their character, not punishment. Your goal isn’t to win the battle, it’s to shape their character for the war they’ll face when they’re adults.

💥 THE BRIEFING

When I was a kid I would visit my father’s parents in North Georgia every summer. I have fond memories of visiting. My grandmother would basically make myself, and the dozen cousins or so breakfast, and then let us loose on their 15 acres. The unspoken statement of don’t come back until the next meal.

Going back every summer I have these vidid memories like blips in a movie montage of what it was liking visiting their old school Baptist Church. Wooden pews, baptismal at the front, and why does every old church smell the exact same?

I remember the hymnals, and I remember the summer they got an electric guitar and drum set…

I can still picture him sitting in his usual spot, 4-5 pew from the front on the right side, arms crossed, jaw set, glasses midway down his nose, one of two colored flannels he wore in rotation. It looked like someone had replaced the communion table with a ping pong table.

But here's the thing about Pawpaw. Every Sunday after church, he'd settle into his recliner and watch the same rotation of westerns and courtroom dramas. Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Matlock. He loved a good trial scene, the drama of evidence being presented, witnesses taking the stand, truth being uncovered.

Even though I often joined him in the Bible study before service, as I loathed the cheesy games in kids ministry, I was too young to retain any of it, if he were still with us, I think he'd find John 5 fascinating. Because what we have here isn't just a healing story. This is a courtroom drama, complete with charges, prosecution, defense, and a stunning reversal where the defendant becomes the judge.

The scene opens at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. Covered colonnades surrounded the water where the sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed waited for healing. Among them was a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

Thirty-eight years. That made him old for his time period. John doesn’t say it here, but to me it reads as if he seems comfortable in his situation? When Jesus asks if he wants to get well, the man doesn't say "Yes!" He makes an excuse about not having anyone to help him into the pool.

This guy had turned his disability into his identity, and to have lived 38 years in first century Judea he must’ve been doing all right making a living begging at this pool.

"Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."

The man is healed instantly. But instead of those around him celebrating, instead of praising God, the religious authorities show up ready to prosecute because he picks up his mat on the Sabbath.

The structure of John 5 reads like a legal proceeding. Verses 1 through 15 present the "crime" of Sabbath violation. Verses 16 through 18 show the decision to prosecute. Verses 19 through 47 contain the trial itself.

But like my grandpa’s favorite court room drama, the case is never straight forward.

🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

The Jewish leaders began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. The text suggests this wasn't isolated persecution but ongoing harassment tied to his regular practice of working on the Sabbath.

The real charge surfaces in verse 18:

This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.

That crossed the line from religious disagreement into blasphemy. That made this a capital case.

"Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does."

But then Jesus flips the jury in this metaphor.

Under Old Testament law, you needed multiple witnesses to establish truth. Jesus calls five to the stand:

God the Father has testified concerning him. John the Baptist testified to the truth. His own works testify that the Father sent him. Scripture itself testifies about him. Moses wrote about him. Mic drop.

Suddenly the prosecutors become defendants. Jesus exposes their real problem: “You have not heard his voice at any time, and you haven’t seen his form. ³⁸ You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent.”

They possessed religious knowledge but had forgotten how to love God. They knew their Scriptures and used them to defend all the wrong things.

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🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

We know our Bibles (this will be a never-ending practice of mine). We attend church. We teach our kids to pray, but are we more concerned with maintaining religious tradition than seeing God move?

My grandfather's resistance to the drum set wasn't really about music. It was about control, about preserving the way things had always been. Regardless of my focus on this right now, I’m sure in my old age I’ll rally against the robot worship team on my implanted brain chip.

Thirty-eight years is a long time to live with a problem. Long enough to get comfortable with it. Long enough to make it part of your identity. When Jesus shows up and asks if he wants to be healed, the guy doesn't even answer the question. He just explains why healing hasn't worked for him yet.

How many of us have gotten comfortable with our own limitations, whether honest limitations like disability, or self imposed ones? “I'm just not good at praying with my kids.” “I don't know the Bible well enough to lead family devotions.” “I'm not the spiritual type.”

Jesus saw someone who needed help and helped him. Then he told him to do something that would definitely get him in trouble with the religious police.

Sometimes being a godly dad means breaking some “rules.” Maybe that's letting your kid ask hard questions during prayer time instead of insisting they fold their hands and close their eyes. Maybe it's skipping an event with friends to take your family to serve at the homeless shelter. Maybe it's admitting to your teenagers that you don't have all the answers about faith.

The religious leaders knew their Scriptures backward and forward. They could quote you chapter and verse, even though those didn’t exist yet, but when God showed up in their midst, they tried to arrest him for breaking their rules.

This week, ask yourself: What matters more to me, my kids following religious rules or my kids following Jesus?

Because those aren't the same thing.

🤝 THE HUDDLE

In the end, it was religion that would condemn and crucify Jesus as a religious "duty."

Brothers, we cannot raise our kids to be good little religious performers. I know for one that I want to raise them to know and love the living God. Sometimes that means coloring outside the lines that church people have drawn.

Sometimes it means picking up our mat and walking on the Sabbath.

The courtroom drama ends with Jesus as judge, not defendant. When we have to choose between comfortable religion and costly discipleship, which side of the courtroom will we be on?

Your kids are watching. They'll learn more from seeing you love Jesus than from hearing you defend tradition.

Don't let them inherit empty religion. Give them the real thing.

In your corner,

Chance

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Heavenly Father,

Hallelujah what a Savior!

I'm thinking about those nights, the one that parents know. The ones where we'd finally get the kids settled, lights off, door cracked just right, nightlight set, and then hear it: "I'm scared."

So we go back in. Sit on the floor next to their bed in complete darkness. Not reading, not talking, not doing anything productive. Just being there. Sometimes for five minutes, sometimes for an hour. Our presence the only thing standing between them and whatever monsters their minds had conjured up.

Here's what I'm learning from you Father, You do that for us. You sit with us in the dark rooms of our souls, not because You have to, but because You love us. When anxiety grips our boys' hearts, when failure stings, when the future feels overwhelming, You're here.

For my sons, I'm asking, help them understand that Your presence isn't always loud or obvious. Sometimes, like a mom and dad sitting in their dark room, You work most powerfully in the silence. When they feel alone in their struggles, with friends, with purpose, with faith itself, remind them You haven't abandoned them. You're the God who sits in darkness with His children, not because You must, but because You love.

Give them eyes to see what we learned in those midnight moments, love often looks like simple presence. Strength sometimes means staying still. The most powerful force against fear isn't explanation or argument, but the quiet assurance that they're not alone.

Holy Spirit, be to my boys what I try to be in those dark rooms, the Comforter who needs no words, the Peace that makes no sense, the Presence that makes darkness lose its power. When they're too old for me to sit by their beds, when they face battles I can't fight for them, be their constant Companion.

And Father, help me trust what I witnessed in those sacred, dark moments, Your presence is enough. Forgive me when I think I need the right words, the perfect solutions, the brightest light. Sometimes the most Christlike thing I can do is simply stay present, patient, and full of love.

I know I can't always fix what scares them. I can't remove every threat or answer every question. But I can show up. And in showing up, I can point them to You, the God who showed up in flesh, who knows darkness, who felt abandoned, yet promises through His Spirit to never leave us.

So when my boys grow up and face their own dark rooms, the kind that come with adulthood, with marriage, with being dads themselves, may they remember. May they know in their bones that they're never alone. That somewhere in the darkness, their Father is sitting quietly, lovingly, powerfully present.

This is my prayer, in the name of Jesus, who Himself knew what it meant to cry out in darkness and find His Father there.

Amen.

"Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me." - Psalm 23:4

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

When your kids are scared at night, don't just rush to turn on the lights or explain away their fears. Sometimes, sit with them in the darkness for a moment. Let them feel your presence before you fix the problem. Then remind them, and yourself, that this is what God does for us every single day.

Quick housekeeping:

• Bible study through John will continue on Mondays moving forward

• Mid week post will become more frequent

• More devotional and prayers to come on Saturdays to send us into the weekend

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I had the pleasure of attending a night with Justin Earley last week at First Presbyterian Church. I've really enjoyed his writing, having just finished Habits of the Household, and implementing some of the habits in my own home. What happened, however, is that Justin opened with his story and shared this idea of a Theology of Excellence. You see Justin is a full time business lawyer running his own firm in Richmond, and shared how he transitioned from traditional missionary work in China to what I captured in my notes as the "mission field within business." His simple but profound philosophy: whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to do it the best I can.

This isn't about becoming the weird Christian at work who makes everyone uncomfortable with awkward conversations about Jesus, or tries and draw the spiritual parallels of the water jug in the break room somehow always being full. It's about embracing a theology of excellence that recognizes ministry isn't confined to church buildings or seminary graduates. It's understanding that wherever God has planted you, because that's your mission field.

Different Gifts, Same Spirit

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 that ministry takes many forms. "There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work."

Think about this for a moment. The accountant working with integrity, the teacher investing in students, the mechanic serving customers honestly, or the mom that's forgoing a corporate career to pour her all into shaping her kids - each of these are examples of the Spirit at work. Romans 12:6-8 expands this: "We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach."

Paul doesn't limit these gifts to church activities. Your gift might be serving through customer service, writing complex business contracts, teaching through mentoring colleagues, or encouraging through consistent reliability. But here's what's crucial to understand; Paul himself wasn't a trained rabbi when he began his ministry. Neither was Peter, a fisherman who became the rock upon which Christ built his church.

Qualified by Calling, Not Credentials

The religious establishment of Jesus' day was dominated by those with formal training, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes who had spent years studying under established teachers. Yet Jesus chose fishermen, tax collectors, and tradesmen as his disciples. When the religious leaders saw Peter and John speaking boldly, Acts 4:13 tells us they "realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men" but were astonished by their confidence because "they had been with Jesus."

This doesn't mean education is worthless, far from it, I myself have a degree in Biology. Paul was highly educated, having studied under Gamaliel, one of the most respected teachers of his time. But his credentials didn't qualify him for ministry; his encounter with Christ did. The same is true for us.

Romans 2:11 declares there is no favoritism with God. The CEO and the custodian, the surgeon and the sanitation worker, all have equal dignity and calling before God, even while we might give more credit to one role over the other. You don't need seminary credentials to be in ministry. God doesn't show favoritism to those with degrees over those with trade certifications, to those behind pulpits over those behind desks.

James 3:1 warns us, "Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." This isn't about discouraging teaching, it's about understanding the weight of responsibility that comes with formally instructing others in matters of faith. But there's a difference between being a teacher in the formal sense and sharing what God has done in your life through conversation and example.

The Power of Questions and Conversation

Jesus' primary teaching method wasn't lecturing, it was asking questions. "Who do you say I am?" "What do you think?" "Which of these three was a neighbor?" He drew people into conversation, making them think, wrestle, and discover truth for themselves.

This is how ministry often works in our daily lives. It's not about having all the answers or delivering sermons at the water cooler, are those even a thing anymore? I’m honestly not sure as I’m a remote worker…

It's about asking the right questions at the right moments. When a coworker is struggling with a difficult decision, instead of immediately offering advice, you might ask, "What do you think would happen if you approached this with complete integrity?" When someone is going through a hard time, rather than jumping to fix their problems, you might ask, "How are you finding strength to get through this?"

These conversations create space for God to work. They invite people to think beyond their immediate circumstances and consider deeper questions about purpose, meaning, and hope.

Remember, it’s not your job to to “close the deal” thats the Spirits role.

Workers in the Harvest Field

In Matthew 9:35-38, Jesus surveyed the crowds and saw them "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." He told his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

We need more people called to vocational ministry, sure, but we've been too narrow in our interpretation of "workers in the harvest field." The harvest field isn't just the church, it's the marketplace, the classroom, the hospital, the courtroom, the construction site. We don't have enough professional ministers, but we have millions of believers already positioned in every sector of society. Why aren’t we ministering?

Paul's instruction to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15 applies here: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth." The worker who doesn't need to be ashamed isn't just the preacher, it's every believer approaching their work with integrity, excellence, and faithfulness.

Excellence as Worship, Not Performance

Jesus' warning in Matthew 6:24 that "no one can serve two masters" often gets misinterpreted as condemnation of business success. But the issue isn't making money, it's what masters you. When our work serves God's purposes of provision, service, and human flourishing, we're not serving money; we're using money to serve God.

Paul's question in Galatians 1:10 about whether we're trying to please people or God applies to our work too. Excellence isn't about impressing bosses for personal gain it's about honoring God through quality efforts.

Here's what I've been mulling over since last week. A theology of excellence recognizes how we work is a form of worship. When we show up consistently, treat people with dignity, pursue improvement in our skills, maintain integrity even when it costs us, serve others through our work, we're living out our calling. We're being salt and light not through awkward evangelistic conversations, but through the quiet testimony of consistent excellence paired with genuine relationships and thoughtful questions.

The beauty of this approach is that it opens doors for deeper conversations naturally. When people see you working with integrity, treating others with respect, and maintaining hope in difficult circumstances, they start asking questions. "How do you stay so positive?" "Where does your peace come from?" "What drives you to work so hard when this place is falling apart?"

These are invitations, not to preach, but to share. To tell your story. To ask questions back that might help them discover what you've discovered.

God has strategically placed believers throughout every industry, every profession, every level of society. You're not there by accident, you're planted there for purpose. Your mission field isn't somewhere you need to travel to, it's where you are Monday through Friday.

Whatever you're going to do, do it the best you can. Not for human applause or personal advancement, but as worship to the God who has gifted you, called you, and planted you exactly where you are.

The harvest is abundant. The workers are needed. And you're already in the field.

In your corner,

Chance

P.S. - Justin if you read this, it was great to shake your hand and tell you a bit out my story after the event. Looking forward to the next time you’re in Orlando!

💥 THE BRIEFING

This might come as a shock to some of you, but when I was a kid I used to spend time during my summers with my grandparents in North Georgia working on a chicken farm. I have very vivid memories of riding up the dirt road from my grandparents' house either via go-kart or 4-wheeler to one of the two buildings. These buildings were unbelievably long in a kid's eyes. If I remember correctly, my older cousin was working part-time for the owner, but when I was in town I would tag along since he was the closest in age to me, and the other cousins lived farther away, he was simply right up the other driveway.

There was this whole process to collecting the eggs. When you entered the building, there was a whole system for cleaning and protecting your shoes so that you didn't track anything into the actual chicken houses. We would then walk the length of the chicken house with Mr. Jamie and collect any of the "residents" that had "expired" since the last walk-through, which was usually the day before, and this simply meant picking them up, or in some cases speeding along the process if you found one "close" to expiration.

During this walk-through you looked for any rogue hens that weren't using the boxes for laying, and any other issues. After the walk-through you would head back to the front and this comically long conveyor belt would be turned on. This belt was a long racetrack of sorts that ran the entire length of one side of the chicken house underneath each of the boxes the hens laid in and brought the eggs right to you, and here was my favorite part as a kid… wipe any poop off the eggs and put them in the tray to head to the refrigerator!

This process was repeated twice for each house. As a little kid, I probably only handled a couple hundred eggs, as there is a true science and skill to doing this fast and effectively. I remember Mr. Jamie turning the belt off on a regular basis as I worked as fast as I could. Looking back, I realized I was most definitely holding him back as the days I "worked" always ended up with me being ushered to a lunch of chicken ramen (hilarious in hindsight) made by his wife Beth, and then I would find myself back down the road at my grandparents'.

My boys are growing up in a residential suburb, and while watching chickens be dispatched sounds grim, I hope in their early teens they have some sort of experience like this. Maybe that's why I was so keen on my in-laws getting chickens on their property this past year.

I played such a tiny part during those summer excursions to the chicken farm. I didn't build the houses, I didn't order the chickens or the feed, or lay any of the groundwork for collecting, but I did get to harvest, and it was a memory that will live within me. We have an amazing opportunity as parents to not only prepare the field in our kids' hearts for harvest, but to potentially be there when the harvest is ready. So what are you going to plant in them today?

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🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

“Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest. The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”

- John 4:35-38 (CSB)

The word "ripe" here is leukos in Greek, it literally means "white" or "gleaming." Picture a wheat field ready for harvest, golden stalks swaying in the breeze, practically glowing in the sunlight. I’m not a farmer but I think even I could pick out when it's ready.

Obviously Jesus isn't talking about actual wheat. He's looking at the Samaritan villagers walking toward them, people the disciples would have written off as spiritually dead, and He's saying, "Look! They're ready RIGHT NOW."

The disciples are thinking in agricultural seasons: plant in spring, harvest in fall, everything has its proper time. But Jesus is saying, "Spiritual harvest doesn't follow your calendar. It follows readiness."

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

This week: Practice the discipline of recognizing harvest moments you're missing.

Every morning, ask yourself: "Where is the harvest ready in my house that I'm not seeing?"

Your teenager rolling their eyes might actually be wrestling with deeper questions about faith. Your eight-year-old's constant chatter during your quiet time might be their way of processing what they're learning about God. Your toddler's meltdown might be the moment they need to see how daddy handles hard things.

Stop waiting for the "right time" to have spiritual conversations with your kids. Stop thinking you need four more months of preparation before you can speak truth into their lives.

Jesus looked at rejected Samaritans and saw a harvest ready to be gathered.

What harvest is ready in your home right now that you're leaving on the vine too long?

🤝 THE HUDDLE

Your kids don't need you to be the hero of every story. They need you to be the man who knows how to let Jesus be the hero.

I've been thinking about Mr. Jamie and that conveyor belt. He could have easily told that annoying kid to go sit in the corner while the adults worked. Instead, he let me be part of the process, even when I slowed everything down.

Your patience with interruptions today might be the sermon your son remembers when he's thirty.

Your willingness to let Jesus work through the chaos might be the testimony your daughter shares when she's facing her own impossible situation.

The Samaritan woman's testimony wasn't, "Jesus gave me the perfect life." It was, "Jesus saw all of me - the good, the bad, the shameful - and still called me valuable."

That's the testimony your kids need to see lived out in your daily life. Not perfection, but transformation. Not having it all together, but knowing where to go when it all falls apart.

In your corner,
Chance

💥 THE BRIEFING

When was the last time you played poker? Or blackjack? I guess any card game would work.

I couldn't help but think about why we sometimes feel like the most important things in our lives are getting re-stacked to the bottom of the deck, and its usually God as the cosmic dealer doing this for our benefit. You see this in companies or organizations where important tasks, functions, roles seem to be eliminated or replaced. I've seen this with countless clients, both small business and Fortune 500.

And it makes you look at those around us too. We see someone who has all the shiny things, fancy shoes, nice new car, and you somehow stack them higher in your own mental catalog. But if you see someone at the bottom, begging on the side of the street, you just sort them to the bottom of that deck.

I couldn't help but think about this theme as I was going through John chapter 4 for this newsletter.

This woman was someone that Jesus should not have been talking to. Take away his position as a rabbi and the Messiah, but just as a man in first century Judea, he should not have been alone with a woman. He should not be seen talking to a woman in public. When you stack on the fact that he was the Messiah and a rabbi, it makes it even more complex and taboo.

But that's not what Jesus does. He comes out of his high place. He steps down from a pedestal, which is what we need to do as husbands and fathers and step down and show that we do not have hard and found borders, our roads must be passable when necessary. We do not have mountains that we refuse to traverse, and we shouldn’t have mountains we’re willing to die on besides our faith in Jesus.

Here's the thing though. Whenever we're challenged with anything, what do we do naturally as humans? We put up a fight or we switch the argument to something we feel we can win. We do this with our politics with our policy positions. When we get challenged in something we don't feel comfortable with, we switch it to something else.

And that's exactly what the woman at the well did here. She switched the conversation from her own challenges and problems and this concept of living water, which is really just a parallel you can make to Jesus's blood for us, as living water would’ve been understood as needed for ritual purification. And she diverted it along racial divisions, saying that "Well, you guys worship here, and we worship here," and how that's not fair or that's not the way that it should be.

We do this as well. We have our own mountains that we do and do not cross or boundaries we will not walk through. In reality, that's exactly what Jesus is showing us and encouraging us to do here.

But here's the thing that got me this week: Jesus had zero respect for those boundaries.

In John 4, Jesus does something that would've made first-century jaws drop. He talks to a Samaritan woman. Alone. At a well. In broad daylight.

This wasn't just crossing cultural lines, he was straight up obliterating them. Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Men didn't speak to unaccompanied women in public. And this particular woman? She had a reputation that kept her drawing water in the heat of midday instead of the cool morning hours with the other women.

Jesus’ humanity (and his divinity) saw all the red flags, all the reasons to keep walking, all the social warnings and he sat down anyway.

🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

The Greek phrase Jesus uses in John 4:10 is:

ὕδωρ ζῶν (hydōr zōn)

• ὕδωρ = water

• ζῶν = living, alive, active (from ζάω, to live)

This isn’t still water in a bucket. It’s moving, fresh, flowing, it is like a spring or a river. Which is why the woman is probably confused because if there was a spring or river nearby she would’ve known.

In John 7:38, Jesus says:

“Whoever believes in Me…streams of living water will flow from within him.”
(He was speaking about the Spirit.)

So this “living water” isn’t a thing, it’s a Person. The Holy Spirit, alive in us.

Fast forward to John 14. Jesus says:

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth…
You know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.”
— John 14:16–17

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

Challenge: Cross the Boundaries You've Built

This Week's Drills:

1. Map Your Samaria: Write down one person or group you've been avoiding. Not because they're dangerous, but because they're inconvenient, uncomfortable, or complicated.

2. Check Your Excuse: Ask yourself honestly, what boundary have I used to justify keeping my distance? Politics? Social status? Past drama? Personal preference?

3. Make the Move: Approach that person this week. Not with an agenda to fix or change them, but with simple kindness. Buy them coffee. Send an encouraging text. Show up where they are.

4. Practice Redirection: When someone deflects with "but" statements, don't argue the logistics. Point them to the deeper truth, just like Jesus did.

🤝 THE HUDDLE

What does this tell us about God? He's always moving toward us, across every line we thought was uncrossable. While we're building walls, he's tearing them down.

What does this tell us about humanity? We hide behind shame and build mountains out of pride, identity, and preferences. We'd rather stay thirsty than admit our need.

What does this tell us about Jesus? He breaks every barrier to offer living water, life that doesn't just fill us up but wells up and overflows to others.

What does this tell us to do? Stop hiding behind your boundaries. Stop making excuses about why certain people are off-limits. Step down from your mountain and offer the living water you've received.

In your corner,
Chance

It’s been almost 2 months exactly since my wife and I sold our small business, 5 years, 9 employee’s, millions in revenue during that time, and a countless number of evenings and Saturday mornings that I missed because I was at the shop.

There’s no newsletter this weekend. Don’t get the impression that I write these on Saturday mornings, I actually did wrote the study on John 4 earlier this week.

But going into this long weekend, I plan to watch my boys play in the backyard while Taylor and I have great conversation. I plan to have dinner with some great friends for a 30th birthday party. I plan to work on home renovation projects with Taylor and make waffles with my sons.

We have such a prominent hustle culture in America and we have utterly convinced ourselves that this is noble, that we need to be working and building something constantly to be of value. But here's what I realized in the last two months: those Saturday mornings didn't just cost me time. They cost me joy. I robbed my family of Saturday mornings with their dad who was fully present. I robbed myself of watching my kids be kids when their hearts were lightest and their imaginations were wildest. It wasn’t a waste of course, that sacrifice will pay dividends that give me more time with my family as the dividends compound, but for now, I’m being present and keeping my work contained to the weekdays.

This is your reminder to be intentional about your rest. To guard your joy as fiercely as you guard your schedule. The work will always be there, but your kids won't always be this age. The moments you're missing right now won't replay themselves when it's more convenient for you. So take the long weekend. Sleep in with your family. Make the waffles. Watch the cartoons. Let the emails wait. The world won't end if you choose joy over hustle for a few days. Trust me, I'm testing this theory right now.

In your corner,

Chance

💥 THE BRIEFING

I flew into Minneapolis last minute for a work trip this week. Instead of staying at some sterile downtown hotel, I chose to crash at my cousin's house. It’s rare for a family member to be in the same category as a best friend, siblings might rank there but usually not a cousin that lives across the country.

Her and her husband just welcomed their second daughter in under 2 years. Their home is pure chaos and pure joy.

I'm sitting on their sofa Tuesday evening after an afternoon of work meetings and a team dinner, watching my cousin in full mom mode. Last time I saw her she was pregnant with her first, so I hadn’t yet seen her as a mom, and here she is in the thick of it. The almost-2-year-old is doing what almost-2-year-olds do, and the newborn needs constant attention, including her husband. Both kids are being, well, kids.

And my cousin? She's calm. Patient. Loving them through the chaos. Jokes about breast feeding here and there, comment about lack of sleep sure, but loving.

Before I flew home yesterday morning I met up with a great friend and former boss. This guy has talked me off more ledges than I can count, and I don’t think he even realizes it (he will now since he’s a subscriber), not only is he one of the most talented people in our company, close to achieving his black belt in Jiu Jitsu, but he also happens to be an incredible father. We're sitting at some coffee shop where we talk for an hour sharing stories and catching up the narrative for this week’s newsletter starts to settle in my brain.

I've seen John 3:16 on In-N-Out cups, Tim Tebow's eye black, coffee mugs, bumper stickers. It's everywhere. And maybe that's the problem? Maybe we've become so familiar with it that we've stopped seeing it, stopped noticing it.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

But here's what I realized sitting in that coffee shop: agape love is all around us. We can see it every time a parent loves their kid through a tantrum, through disobedience, through failure. It's the only kind of love I've personally witnessed that truly mirrors what Jesus is describing here.

For almost 2000 years, people have been adding to the gospel. Complicating it. Making it harder than it needs to be. But the truth is the truth: whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Even Nicodemus, with all his religious training, couldn't grasp what Jesus was saying. But Jesus didn't give him a theology lecture. He gave him one sentence that explains everything.

The cross isn't just showing us the love of the Son. It's showing us the heart of the Father.

This isn't just the most famous verse in the Bible. It might be the most important one. Because everything we need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to love our kids - it's all right there.

Most of the time, let's be honest, we're only capable of phileo love for our brothers and sisters. Conditional love. Love that depends on how we're feeling, how tired we are, what's in it for us.

But sometimes, sometimes you catch glimpses of agape peeking through. Like watching a new mom show patience she didn't know she had while going through the thick of it with a toddler and newborn. Or an old friend who arguably has more important things to do taking time to grab coffee with you because he knows you might need it.

Agape love is all around us, but because it's so prevalent in those we're closest to, it almost becomes invisible. Like John 3:16 on every mug and burger cup, so familiar we stop seeing it.

But this one sentence? It's everything we need to know about how God loves us. And maybe, just maybe, it's showing us how we're supposed to love our kids too.

🎙️ THE CORNER TALK

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

Let's talk about that word "loved."

The Greek here is agape. This isn't the love you feel when your team wins or when your wife makes your favorite dinner. This isn't even the love you have for your kids when they're being good.

Agape is something different entirely. It's love that acts regardless of response. Love that initiates. Love that costs something and gives anyway.

Here's where we've gotten it twisted, and it's messed up how we think about God and how we parent: We've been taught that God was angry with us, so He sent Jesus to take the punishment so God could love us again. Like God was the bad cop and Jesus was the good cop trying to talk Him down.

But that's not what John 3:16 says.

"For God so loved the world..."

The love came first. Not after Jesus died. Not after we got our act together. Not after we proved we were worth it.

The cross wasn't about placating an angry God. The cross was God expressing His love for us. God Himself was on our side. God Himself came to suffer to bring His beloved creation back to Himself.

God Himself. Not God sending someone else to fix what He was too angry to handle. God stepping into our mess because that's what love does.

This changes everything because if God's first response to your worst day, your biggest failure, your most embarrassing moment is love, not disappointment, not frustration, not that edge in His voice, then maybe, just maybe, that should be your first response too.

🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN

This week's drill: The "John 3:16 Check"

When your kid (or anyone) messes up, and they will, probably today, before you react, ask yourself one question:

"What was God's first response to me?"

Not God-the-disappointed-father. Not God-the-frustrated-teacher.

Then respond to your child (or coworker) from that same place.

This doesn't mean no consequences. My kids still have bedtimes and chores (minor ones) and yes, they still get in trouble when they disobey. But it means the discipline flows from love that moves toward them, not frustration that wants to push them away.

Your kids are watching how you respond when they fail. They're learning what love looks like when someone lets you down. They're figuring out if grace is real.

Show them agape. Show them love that acts first, asks questions later.

🤝 THE HUDDLE

Brothers, here's what I keep coming back to.

If we get John 3:16 wrong, we get everything else wrong. We'll parent from performance instead of grace. We'll teach our kids that love has to be earned. We'll pass on the same broken understanding of God that we've been wrestling with.

But if we get it right, if we really understand that God's love for us came first, that the cross was His idea, that He moved toward us when we were moving away from Him, everything changes.

Your kids don't need you to be perfect. They need you to understand that you're imperfect and completely loved anyway. They need to see what it looks like when someone receives agape love and then gives it away.

For God so loved your family, your loud, messy, chaotic, beautiful family, that He gave His one and only Son. That includes your worst parenting day. That includes the moment you lost your temper at your boss, and then kept on being angry when you got home from work. That includes every time you've felt like you're failing at this whole dad thing.

The love came first. The love remains. The love never runs out.

Now go love your kids the same way.

In your corner,
Chance