I recently led a coaching session over Zoom. Of course there were technical difficulties.

The internet crashed, participants had trouble with mute and breakout room, etc.

The session was actually really beautiful overall, but I walked away feeling disappointed and unsettled.

You know how we can fixate on the small things that went wrong rather than the overall picture of wonder and beauty?

God had more in store for me. He wanted to show me how He is working precisely and gloriously in what looks like random trouble.

Someone reached out after watching the session, and what do you think she said?

Did she comment on all my wise insights? Nope.

Did she comment on how clear my explanations were? Nope.

She said "P.S. I love that your mom is in this program! It was adorable to see you help her troubleshoot on the recording! I feel like I got a huge insight into your heart. How someone treats their mom is SO SO revealing!"

God had something in store precisely for this woman. Then through her, He had something precisely in store for ME!

So, my friends, let us once again open our eyes and our hearts to the saving work that God is bringing about right now in the seeming randomness of our circumstances.

Let's say "yes" to God's work even if it seems to make no sense right now.

And every time our plan is derailed, let us remember that God's plan never fails. He uses all things for the Good of those who love Him.

Let's be Saints,

Isaac

"It is not how much we really have to give, but how empty we are – so that we can receive fully in our life and let Him live His life in us" - St. Teresa of Calcutta

Mother Teresa, like all the Saints, turns our usual way of thinking on its head.

She sets aside our obsession with our own capacity, strength, wisdom, comfort, and talent, and instead she invites us to emptiness!

To emptiness??

How absurd!

But let's be honest, emptiness isn't something new for us. We all experience emptiness.

The trouble comes when we try to fill our own emptiness with our strength, capacity, wisdom, comfort, and talent.

Mother Teresa proposes that we live our emptiness not in fear but in humility.

Humility allows us to receive life from God rather than trying to create and manage life for ourselves.

A few years ago, this simple realization profoundly changed my way of approaching the spiritual life:

Humility is the capacity to receive undeserved love.

Humility makes one fully aware of brokenness and smallness, yet opens to receive the unfathomable love and honor given by the Father.

Humility receives the Father's love with baffled wonder and gratitude.

Pride, instead, rejects the Father's love because it would rather earn love and honor through achievement and perfection. Pride hates the love the Father gives because the Father's love is never earned, yet it is always given abundantly.

This is how you can tell the difference between true humility and false humility.

True humility is self-awareness that receives the undeserved love of the Father.

False humility is just another attempt to earn love by trying to act the "right" way.

If you look inside yourself and find a miserable, messy emptiness, hold off on asking the Father to fix you and your messy life.

Ask Him first to give you the humility to receive His mysterious, boundless love right where you are.

Let Him claim you as His own beloved, little one.

Let your emptiness be a place to receive fully in your life.

Let's be Saints,

Isaac

As a friend and therapist, I've noticed a strange phenomenon that people minimize their suffering.

We saying things like:

"This shouldn't be affecting me so much, it wasn't that bad."

"I'm just pathetic, other people go through the same stuff just fine."

"I shouldn't be this upset about it, other people go through way worse than me."

Our hearts hurt, and we say to ourselves "shut up and stop complaining."

A couple months ago, I had a new realization about something I've heard over and over again.

We are made to be loved.

God desires for us to be known, loved, respected, and honored in every interaction all the time.

God did not create us to be rejected, used, betrayed, ignored, forgotten, abandoned, misunderstood, or hurt.

Every single day, we experience appalling attacks against our created dignity as human persons in the image and likeness of God. And every day, we commit appalling attacks against the created dignity of our brothers and sisters.

No one in heaven looks down and says "it's not that bad.”

Instead, they see the horrors of sin and our numb misery in the face of it. We are stuck in the valley of tears and our muffled hearts cry out for a savior.

We need a savior!

We need a savior, healer, and comforter at every moment in this sin soaked world.

But praise God we have a Savior!!

We carry a hope within us that is greater than all the horrors of this world!

So let's rise once again and run to Jesus!

Let's surrender ourselves into His arms. Let’s bring to Him all the pain, confusion, desire, and sin that we carry.

Let's run into the arms of Love which have stretched out to find us within this world of hate and indifference.

Come, my brothers and sisters! Come! Run to Jesus with me!!

"Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverence." Hebrews 12:1

Let's be Saints!

Isaac