WEEKLY PURSUIT with Ryan

Helping you pursue God, people, and purpose - one step at a time.

Hey friend,

This week was my dad's birthday.

And honestly?

It was much harder than I imagined.

I know it's been a few months. I know grief doesn't have a timeline. I know there are going to be good days and hard days and days that surprise me.

But this week was just... hard.

There are some weeks when I feel like I'm doing pretty well. I'm working. I'm preaching. I'm hanging out with my boys. I'm laughing. I'm living.

And then a date comes along.
A birthday.
A holiday.
A song.
A random memory.
And suddenly, the grief is right there again.

Grief keeps coming.
The world keeps going.
And I'm just trying.

I won't always express my grief through these emails. I don't want every Weekly Pursuit to become a diary of loss.

But this week was a tough one.
So that's where I'm at.
And maybe that's where you are too.

I've always loved the moments in Scripture where God does the impossible in the most obvious way.

Daniel gets thrown into a den full of lions... and walks out.
Moses stands in front of a sea with an army behind him... and God makes a way through it.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego get thrown into a blazing furnace... and come out without even smelling like smoke.

And then there's Jesus.

Blind people see. Lepers are healed. Storms are silenced. Demons flee.

And Lazarus?
​WOAH.
Dead for four days, and Jesus calls him out of the grave.

I LOVE those stories.

I'm an extreme optimist. Give me an impossible situation and I'll probably start looking for the miracle before I start looking for the exit.

I love the moments where God steps in and changes everything.

But I'm learning something.

Sometimes the miracle doesn't come because the circumstances are easy.
Sometimes the miracle comes in spite of the circumstances.

Think about the early church.

We often picture Acts as this incredible explosion of revival... and it was.

But look at what was happening around it.

There was persecution. There were arrests. There were prison cells. There were people being scattered from their homes. There was uncertainty. There was opposition.

And yet...

God was moving.

The persecution that was meant to stop the church actually became part of the way the gospel spread. The people who were scattered didn't stop being the church. They carried the gospel with them.

What looked like disruption became multiplication.
What looked like loss became an opportunity for God to move in places they never would have gone otherwise.

The mess didn't mean God had stopped working.

The mess became the very place where God kept working.

And maybe that's something I need to remember right now.

Because sometimes I want the miracle to be God taking the grief away.
I want the hard thing to become easy.
I want the pain to make sense.
I want the circumstances to change.

But sometimes the miracle is different.

Sometimes the miracle is simply that you're still here.
Still loving.
Still showing up.
Still praying.
Still laughing when you can.
Still crying when you need to.
Still taking care of your family.
Still going to work.
Still trying to figure out what comes next.
Still trusting that God is good even when the day isn't.

Maybe the miracle isn't always that God changes the situation.
​Maybe sometimes the miracle is what He does in you while you're walking through it.

Weekly Resource

Empowered Sent | Week 4 In Week 4 of our SENT series, we look at the church in Antioch in Acts 11:27–30 and discover that sent churches don't just equip people—they empower people to participate in God's mission. Available on Youtube

So here's what I'm trying to remind myself this week:

Just take the next step.

That's it.
Not the next ten steps.
Not the five-year plan.
Not figuring everything out.

Just the next step.

Grief keeps coming.
The world keeps going.
And sometimes we're just trying.

And you know what?

That's okay.

If you need to take a smaller step, take a smaller step.
If you need to ask someone for help, ask for help. (I'm talking to myself here because I am notoriously bad at this.)
If you fail, fail forward.
If you don't know what you're doing, welcome to the club.
If you're exhausted, rest.
If you need to cry, cry.
If you need to laugh, laugh.

Just don't stop taking steps.

Because life is too short, and God is too good, for us not to keep trying.

We don't have to have everything figured out to keep moving forward.
We don't have to feel strong to take the next step.
And we don't have to pretend the hard things aren't hard.

Sometimes faith looks like believing for the impossible.

And sometimes faith looks like putting one foot in front of the other when you don't know how much longer you can keep going.

Both are faith.

Both matter.

And both can be places where God meets us.

So wherever you are this week...
​Keep going.
​Take the next step.
Then take another one.
You don't have to sprint.
You don't have to have it all together.
Just keep moving.

We've got this.

And more importantly...

God's got us.

As always, if there's something you're walking through right now, I'd love to pray for you.

Seriously.

You can hit reply to this email and send me your prayer request - big, small, complicated, simple, whatever it is.

I'll be praying.

Praying,
Ryan