Category Archives: the Church

secure: how we rule in the midst of our enemies

Posted on by September 18, 2026

Finn walked past us on the deck, and as he bumped a stalk of lambs quarters he also dislodged a tiny spider who saved itself by sailing to the edge of my Bible. It seemed all confused about the sudden relocation, and I know I mentioned smashing spiders recently but this was different because it was outside where it belongs.

I mean, it does not belong in Proverbs, but it is supposed to be outside catching bugs, so I re-relocated it to some carrot greens within reach and wished it the best.

secure: how we rule in the midst of our enemies || Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

Fall seems a little late here and even though the wind is blowing like normal today, there are still more green leaves than yellow on the trees. As I type this, we’ve just nudged into the last half of September, which is no guarantee you’ll get this before October, but here’s hoping. You can wish me the best, too.

Because it has been a season. And I don’t mean fall.

For the first time in almost a year, we’re back to almost-full weeks at the desk again. Which means twice as much writing time as we’ve had lately, which further means there’s time to finally catch up on the burgeoning posts-in-progress document that taunts me with unfinished pieces of work.

(Note: I, too, am an unfinished piece of work.)

That document is currently tipping the scales at 23 pages because thoughts have accumulated faster than I could process, accruing at an alarming rate that the diminished office time couldn’t keep up with.

So here we are, keeping up…and catching up, because I refuse to send you a 23-page blog post. You’re welcome.

In non-writer speak, it’s like load after load of laundry piled up on the couch with no one home long enough to take care of them. You get clean clothes at least, so there’s that, but they’re not sorted, folded, or put away. And when you want to get dressed, you have to dig for your favorite shirt, which is probably wrinkled and hiding under one of the cats. (Also, you can’t sit on the couch.)

So in effort to keep shorter accounts with myself (and my document), and in better touch with you, I’m shifting gears a bit to attempt shorter, probably more rambling posts.

All of which is to say, you’ve been warned.

(This may also explain why there are three flannels — all mine — on the back of our bathroom toilet, and another over the desk chair behind me. A sign that it’s not just writing that needs caught up on around here.)

I should also warn you that I’ve attempted this with the last couple posts and they clearly did not end up shorter. You probably noticed this, but I’m saying it aloud so you know I’m trying, at least.

I mean, I’m trying to try less: To keep things lighter, take things less seriously. But this is a serious season, and it’s not cooperating.

At the end of the last post I mentioned this concept of ruling in the midst of our enemies – and of course people are not our enemies, though sometimes they act or feel like it. This season is not my enemy, or your enemy either.

secure: how we rule in the midst of our enemies || Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

It is a crucible for sure, but it’s not the first and won’t be the last and it really is no more than the breeze combined with Finnegan’s elbow that dislodged the spider from its green stalk earlier today: We are moved in a way we didn’t choose, and disturbed from our comfortable routines in a way we probably didn’t expect. And while it may be the end of some things, it’s not the end of everything (unless you’re a spider and someone squishes you).

It is a combination of elements and events, and none of them are the enemy.

Which is not to say that

a) there isn’t an enemy, because there is

or that

b) everything is a coincidence, because it’s not. God is here and working purpose into everything.

secure: how we rule in the midst of our enemies || Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

So the serious season can also be our remaking as much as it feels like our undoing. It is certainly refining…or ought to be, if we steward it well. It may actually be the beginning of something we never could have imagined, or made happen on our own, or thought ourselves capable of.

But here is the question, and how we answer it will greatly decide the matter:

Are we just as secure in a hard season as we are in an easy one?

The spiritual, Churchy answer is Yes, of course we are.

But the honest answer is revealed by how we really we live it out.

The Lord says to my lord,
“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”

The Lord sends out from Zion your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your foes.

– Psalm 110:1-2

This is a Psalm of David about a lot of things, but among them is a message for us about our identity.

So, some follow up questions to flesh this out:

  • In a season of grief, loss, or mistakes, do we feel as capable as we do in a season of winning?
  • In a season of attack, betrayal, or abandonment, do we feel as secure and confident as we do when we are surrounded by our friends who believe the best in us?
  • In a season of (fill in the blank), can we still remember that what will be well is even now well, because we live in the Kingdom that is already and not yet?
  • Or do we allow opposition to shift our behavior and demeanor, and diminish who we are?

Because our identity hasn’t changed in any case, but if we believe the accusations of the enemy, we will act like it has. The key is to keep those lies outside where they belong. Unlike spiders, they should be squashed regardless of their geography.

If we can do that, we will rule in the midst of our enemies. That knowledge will actually make a difference in our hearts so we feel it and live it out, rather than just nod and smile with the right religious answers.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

— Romans 8:1

The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

— Galatians 2:20b

We can learn to be so integrated, whole, and secure in who He says we are, that the temporary things don’t fracture or diminish us.

There’s another challenge to this and I hate to bring it up because we’d usually just rather ignore it.

And that challenge is, Ignoring it. Living in denial or avoidance, because facing our enemies feels risky.

But that is the thing God is calling us to do: to challenge (and change) those feelings, and bring them into alignment with Him. He wants us to believe Him so strongly that people and circumstances don’t change our belief in what He says. Instead, that belief is truly lived out, and it changes those relationships and circumstances.

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing: to the one group a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is qualified for these things?

— 2 Corinthians 2:15-16

So we have to face it. We will not know we can do this until we actually…do it.

It feels safer to avoid, but the only way it gets better is to engage. I’m talking about teaching teenagers to drive, and other terrifying situations.

secure: how we rule in the midst of our enemies || Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

When I was praying about this a couple weeks ago – living out our true identity, that is, not driving with teens – I realized I had avoided it because I was afraid that believing Him would become overconfidence. I was afraid of a lack of awareness or sensitivity to my own faults and blind spots, leading to a numbness of conviction.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.

— 1 Corinthians 2:12

The Lord pushed on that and said, What else?

What else? Well…if pride leads to a fall, I realized I was afraid He would allow me to fall, which would lead to Him correcting me in a huge, humiliating, devastating way.

So you’re afraid that if you agree with Me fully about your value and ability in Me, that I’ll humiliate you?

That looks pretty stupid in print, but yes, that’s what it was. Afraid of success, afraid of blindsiding, the other shoe dropping, afraid that God would be like the genie in the bottle or the leprechaun who turns wishes into curses. Worse and worse.

He asked, What will keep you from becoming insensitive to My instruction and correction, so that doesn’t happen?

Abiding, I said. Duh.

Yeah, He said. Do more of that.

So here we are, doing it: Shorter accounts with Him, shorter accounts with you, pages and pages and pages in the journal, and that work-in-progress document slowly shrinking as I sort things out.

His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.

Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature.

— 2 Peter 1:3-4

To sum up:

  • We can walk among our enemies (whoever or whatever they are…or seem to be) with the same sense of favor as we walk in among our friends.
  • We can move and live and breathe with the same purpose when we’re in the midst of opposition as we do when we’re in the midst of friends.
  • We can also remember that we are not our own enemy – and the Lord will keep us in check as long as we abide. We must keep even shorter accounts with Him.

This is what happens. Someone will casually mention something off-hand, and it messes you up for three weeks. Then you write 2000 words and feel better.

At least, I do.

Praying for you,

Shannon

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling
and to make you stand without blemish
in the presence of his glory with rejoicing,
to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

— Jude 24-25

P.S. If you are needing to process some things too, we have a couple slots for coaching currently available for either single sessions or longer (6-8 weeks). Couples coaching is also now available with both Vin and I, if your marriage needs some healing and perspective. Info and sign up here.

open hand: how we fight pride, presumption, & other delusions of grandeur

Posted on by September 2, 2026

Up way too early. Out of bed, throw on jeans, a belt, a hoodie. All is stealth-mode until I hit the stairs, where the floorboards creak like books that have never been opened.

Turn on the teapot, turn over the quail eggs in the incubator. The light slants sideways through leaves on trees, and at this hour it’s golden like sunset but coming from the opposite direction.

I usually miss this.

The cats yawn and stretch in lazy suspicion, and I hear Kav, our youngest, sneeze in his room. He’s usually the first one up and you don’t sneeze in your sleep, so I peek in and his skinny arms stretch out for me, for a warm hug that comes with a silent grin.

open hand: how we fight inflation, presumption, & other delusions of grandeur

Back in the living room, it feels like forever extends before me. Like hours. I could do anything – clean the house, work on a class, read a couple chapters, bake something special for breakfast.

But really, I make tea and sweep the floor. That’s it.

Because it’s not actually hours that I have, or even a single hour. It feels like it in those first minutes, but this is Sunday, our only early morning of the week. Everyone’s got to get up and moving in forty minutes.

There’s nothing wrong with an extra forty minutes. But the delusions of grandeur threaten to make the found time seem small, insignificant, not enough. They aren’t, though; it’s just that unrealistic expectations take up too much room, crowding out gratitude for what really happens.

It was still bonus time, and quiet space. It’s all gain.

But inflation, as it tends to do, makes it seem like loss.

We have a good thing going, but something subtle sneaks in and steals from it.

Which leads me to the service.

It could be any Sunday morning service. It’s probably most of them, in fact.

But on this particular one, in the middle of amazing worship, I saw a picture in my mind of a 40,000-foot view of the churches of the Valley. It happened during a moment of noticing our congregation leaning into the song – the Spirit-filled singing, the off-the-page adoration of Him – and I felt like in that 40,000-foot view, the Lord was super pleased with our church and several others that morning.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling the Lord’s pleasure on something, by the way.

But in that moment, I also felt pride in our church and the way we were pursuing Him.

And the Holy Spirit very quickly squashed that and corrected me, and said that our leaning toward Him cannot be anything — ANYTHING — about our church or any particular church, or who we are, or our particular style. It can only be about Him.

If it’s about anything else, even (or, especially) in the guise of being about Him when it’s really about us, it’s idolatry.

Look at us, how humble we are, how we’re looking to Jesus, how good we are at holding this fragile bubble of genuine worship— pop! It’s gone as soon as we touch it.

We are not meant to hold this for ourselves. As soon as we’re aware of it, we’ve lost it.

I probably don’t need to tell you how many churches I’ve worshiped in where this kind of pride was just the status quo, part of the air we breathed, even as we were singing that He was the air we breathed.

So hey, let’s talk about Uzzah. We have something in common here.

Uzzah’s story happens in 2 Samuel, right after David is anointed as king over all Israel. David wants to bring the Ark to Jerusalem so he chooses his closest 30,000 friends to help, and here we are in verse 3:

They carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill.

Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart with the ark of God, and Ahio went in front of the ark.

— 2 Samuel 6:3-4

So the Ark had been in the house of Abinadab, and the reason it was there is a whole other story, but it had been there for twenty years. A long time, at Uzzah’s dad’s house.

So Uzzah was pretty familiar with it. Probably too familiar. He may have felt a sense of entitlement, ownership, and authority over it, as we tend to do with things we feel inflated over due to our proximity to them.

When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen lurched.

The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him there, and he died there beside the ark of God.

— 2 Samuel 6:6-7

We often read this like, Ohhh, poor Uzzah, he was just helping! Dude, that was harsh. Even David thought so. And, sorry to keep picking on David but this wasn’t the only part of this situation he got wrong, because they weren’t supposed to be carrying the ark on a cart in the first place. They were supposed to carry it with poles, because it was not to be touched.

Uzzah had become so familiar with something sacred of the Lord’s that he thought the Lord needed his help in caring for it. You could argue it was just a sudden reaction and there was no thought involved at all, but you could also argue that our knee-jerk reactions are the tangible result of thoughts we’ve allowed to percolate.

I know the rules, but God needs my help; He’ll make an exception for me.

This is called presumption. A person who knows the rules but wants to see how far they can stretch them or get away with them is often also a person who is neither honest with themselves nor God…nor anyone else.

God knew exactly where Uzzah’s heart was, just as He knows our heart when we make excuses.

That is a sobering, fearful thing, especially in our culture (and even our churches) where we take such pride in our roles, associations, and privileges.

Because if Uzzah can’t get away with this, what does that mean for us?

It means we cannot treat what is holy as something that is common.

Uzzah, instead of being humbled by proximity and stewardship, seems to have made it about himself and became arrogant.

All of Israel had been warned against this:

As for anyone who presumes to disobey the priest appointed to minister there to the Lord your God or the judge, that person shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. All the people will hear and be afraid and will not act presumptuously again.

— Deuteronomy 17:12-13

I don’t know how it works for other people, but for Christians, pride usually sneaks in masked as righteousness: the sneaky humble brag, the fancy prayer, the exaggerated testimony, the subtle judgment of “those people” (whoever they are) that we distance ourselves from, not wanting to be inadvertently associated with. Or the desire to have (or be) the answer for someone, instead of seeking The Answer with them.

Inflated superiority takes up too much room, and crowds out gratitude for who we really are, what we really have privilege to access, and the sacred space we get to live in.

(Knightley also takes up a lot of room, but none of us mind too much.)

We have the privilege of proximity to so many holy things: His presence. Our families. The gifts we’re endowed with. The hearts of each other.

We have these sacred things but as soon as we get too familiar, we can take them for granted and treat them as common. Our hand closes over instead of staying open, and we begin to act like we are the one to be served, rather than the one serving.

When I’ve looked back honestly (facing all the cringe), I see this in so many of my old ways, and even in recent ways that I just thought were fine. They were so much a part of church culture that I didn’t realize how opposed they were to Kingdom culture, until He confronted me.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christand be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

— Philippians 3:8b-9

It is so good to be confronted by Him, when our hands are open to His ways and not close-fisted to ours.

Perfection doesn’t qualify people for ministry; repentance and obedience do. Humility does. Surrender to Him does. These things expand us without inflating us.

Pride is a disqualifier, though often a delayed one. God is so patient with us, giving us so many second chances to see ourselves rightly.

(I wonder how many second chances Uzzah already had?)

One of the things I have learned over decades of intercessory prayer and prophetic ministry is that when you are an intercessor, you pray about things you can’t talk about. God tells you things you can’t talk about, and when you minister, people tell you things you can’t talk about, too.

If you’re an intercessor, you know. It’s not our job to talk; it’s our job to pray, watch, and speak in agreement with God.

He never tells us something to hold over someone else, though. He doesn’t entrust secrets to those who get an ego boost or otherwise abuse them.

And we want to be those He can trust.

He is breaking off pride in our Valley and elsewhere, where we have taken something holy and perverted it into elevating ourselves, our individual churches, or ministries. If we want the spotlight on what we are doing instead of what He is doing (and it must be said, these are often not the same things), we have gravely lost focus.

Let love be genuine;
hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

— Romans 12:9-10

It’s not that He wants us to be nameless or unidentifiable, but that He wants us to be so attentive to Him that we are oblivious to any name we are making for ourselves. This is for our protection.

Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.

— Romans 12:16

Also, it’s not the desire to do something big or significant that’s wrong. There’s nothing wrong with healthy ambition or wild exploits or the desire to accomplish a whole list of things in an hour that you would normally sleep through.

And it’s not wrong to feel the relief or sense of achievement that comes from getting those things done, or from leaving something — or someone — better than you found them.

Making something or someone (even if it’s ourselves) better than before isn’t what’s wrong.

It’s thinking that we are better than [insert name or group here] that’s wrong.

If I’m understanding this right, the only person in the Kingdom I’m better than is myself, yesterday.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

— Romans 12:3

Don’t miss this: He is right there with you, as He is here with me, at the desk, in the car, in line at the post office, and as we are wandering the aisles in the grocery store, trying to find where they relocated the dairy. He is in the tension-filled meeting, and in the garden where the weeds are threatening to take over.

His presence is right there, the air we breathe, but we will miss Him if we are distracted by our preconceived notions and focused on our superiority masked as righteousness.

This is holy ground. We hold it all with an open hand, because we want to steward it well.

P.S. Along these lines: What does the Bible really say about leadership in the Church? Two theologians — a Hebrew scholar and a Greek scholar — untangle where we’ve often confused man made traditions and assumptions with what the Word (and words) actually say. Important info and perspective here.

Teaching & sharing wholeness, hope, and Kingdom culture is our family’s full time job. You can learn more about what we do here, or support our ministry here. Thanks!

worth the drive: how we protect the Body when the battlefield is silent

Posted on by July 17, 2026

We packed the Jeep with our gear for the day, and Vin turned on the ignition. Country music blared suddenly from the speakers, and several of us jumped – including me, and I was the one who left it that loud.

“Sorry guys,” I said, turning it down. “I went to Grandma’s last night.” Meaning I drove home with all the feelings and tried to drown them in volume.

worth the drive: how we protect the Body when the battlefield is silent || Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

The Jeep has many assets, but with seven occupants, extra space is not one of them. So my floorboard was covered with essentials: purse, bookbag, extra shoes with extra socks, a small container of snacks. I held my jar of water in my lap (why do I not use a lidded water bottle like other grownups? I don’t know, just accept it and move on) and as I leaned down to grab my bag I forgot all about it and spilled a couple ounces on my lap.

Whoops, won’t do that again, I thought – though on a 75 degree Alaskan day, it actually felt pretty good.

But just five seconds later I did do it again when I reached for something else. This time fourteen ounces whooshed down my legs, all around the seat, into my purse…but mostly into a side pocket that was full of partially used tissues and a couple of ancient-yet-remarkably-absorbent receipts, because that’s how moms roll.

Menopause is something else, I tell ya.

But it wasn’t just me that day. Vin was talking about the landmarks on this road and how to find the turn we needed: You look for the long flat building, and the bent mushing sign, and the pond on the —

“Aaand, I missed it,” he said, realizing we were much further down the road, accidentally on the way to a different friend’s house.

Just so we’re all on the same page here, he’s not going through menopause.

He said it’s the leaves; there weren’t leaves on the trees when we made this drive last time, in early spring.

A couple days later on another drive, I was on my way home from Grandma’s again. All the feelings again. Always wondering if this was the last visit.

I hadn’t cried in weeks; we had a lull of sorts once she was finally adjusting. Things were looking up in so many ways that it was easier to forget this is still a short timeline and we don’t know when it ends.

She still changes every week but those changes are different – not as angry or sad anymore, so that’s a huge relief, but others that mean more decline. More confused. More tired. More in and out of consciousness and reality.

The sky was a million shades of silvery blue over a million shades of green as I drove home. I flipped the blinker at an intersection and noticed that Grandma’s hair tie – the one a nurse had pulled her hair back with, but Grandma wanted it out because she never wears her hair in a ponytail and was a little scandalized to realize it was in one, no matter how cute we told her it was – anyway, the hair tie was still on my wrist, next to the bracelet she bought me in Ireland that I wear most days lately.

According to that nurse, Grandma had slept a lot that evening even after sleeping most of the day. I sat next to her, and her head kept leaning against mine as she drifted in and out.

These are precious, thick, persevering days. Sometimes it’s just her and me, and sometimes it’s my uncles, too, when our visits overlap. We share life updates and memories aloud, and patient grief and concern in silent looks.

There are so many things we are not saying, that we don’t know how to say.

Some of it doesn’t need to be said because we know; we already know about the grief and the flesh that is raw in some places and weathered tough in others. What we don’t always know is where those tender spots are, in ourselves or others, so we are tentative lest we do damage.

It’s one of those seasons that demand a dramatic soundtrack but instead it’s filled with these quiet evenings, conversations and hugs with nurses, small talk scattered amid end of life discussions and daily care. I could hear another resident breathing in a way that sounded like her last, but the nurse assured me it’s normal.

Or, normal for now. Relatively, for this stage.

It is a season of ragged breathing, and it’s not just on this front, in this home. It’s also in our own home with kids and their decisions, and in other parts of our community with families in crisis, and loved ones battling for their mental health, and some making choices that don’t even have that excuse, and also, so many things in our house suddenly demanding expensive repairs.

Life is a war zone with skirmishes happening on several fronts, and many of them are silent, under the radar.

Some of them, in my life and yours, we don’t talk about openly because we know all too well about drawing fire, even from those on the same side. We know how people can take aim and still miss the mark, even when they mean well…and not all of them do.

If we’re not abiding, we’ll miss the Lord’s direction and shoot at anything that moves or makes noise. When we do that, we often hit someone who’s on our side, just trying to figure out their next move forward while quietly enduring the present onslaught.

If it’s felt like your home, family, church, workplace, or neighborhood is a battleground, it is: The Kingdom-minded believer is either taking ground, losing ground, or holding their ground.

We’re not really talking about physical land, of course, and we’re definitely not talking about political boundaries. That’s a “look here, not there” tactic of the enemy, and too many have been falling for it. Not to get too woo on you, but let’s be real — most of the battle is on another plane, and what we see is not all there is.

God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

— Ephesians 1:20-21

The non-physical ground we’re claiming starts within our own heart, our own personal clean-up operation – throwing open all the doors, letting the Spirit blow through and find anything we’ve avoided for so long that we’ve become seared or numbed to it.

See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking, for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven!

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

— Hebrews 12:25-29

You’re already in the middle of the battlefield, but another blow comes: the news, the diagnosis, the estimate, the announcement, the disappointment, the explosion.

We feel numbness; it’s all too much. And then that weight in the chest, the pain in the throat. Swallowing. Blinking. Staring off into space. Everything blurs. Fear whistles overhead, and the ground around us shakes.

The enemy wants that territory back. He wants you to think you are losing ground. But —

Will you trust Me? the Lord says. Can you move through the next hour as though you know I’m already taking care of this?

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

And let endurance complete its work, so that you may be complete and whole, lacking in nothing.

— James 1:2-4

He’s wanting us to gain ground here, but sometimes it’s just the smallest thing in the midst of everything else that sends us over the edge, and we wonder if it’s all over. We don’t think we can hold this ground, or get this back, or take one more surprise, or handle one more grief.

Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve been there. And the Lord met me there and said, I always defended, protected, and provided for the women who bowed at my feet.

Mary, sitting at His feet to learn in the room with the men when Martha demanded her help in the kitchen.

Mary again, breaking the expensive jar of oil and pouring her savings over Him, when others were indignant at what they thought was waste.

The woman caught in adultery, held to a double standard by a crowd hungry for her bloody death but apathetic about the man who was at least as guilty as she was — probably more so, since in that culture, he had status and protections she did not.

And Jesus’ own mother, when He was on the cross and she looked up at Him, her oldest son and provider. He assigned John to care for her from then on, and did not leave her defenseless.

He modeled it for us, because we also claim ground by helping others hold their own – by nurturing the hearts of those around us, loving the Body.

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way:

in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities,
beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;
in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love,
truthful speech, and the power of God;
with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;
in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.

We are treated as impostors and yet are true,
as unknown and yet are well known,
as dying and look—we are alive,
as punished and yet not killed,
as sorrowful yet always rejoicing,
as poor yet making many rich,
as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

— 2 Corinthians 6:3-10

How do we love the Body? Love doesn’t move in self protection mode but moves on behalf of others, at our own expense.

Sacrifice, service, and leadership will cost us. It is the meal, the extra sweater in bad weather, the afternoon’s agenda swept aside to make room for what wasn’t scheduled but had to happen.

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said,

“I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.”

— 2 Corinthians 6:16

When the Body gathers, we create sacred space. The body of believers is holy ground:

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

— Matthew 18:19-20

This is where the battle is won.

It’s usually quiet though, without fanfare.

Your gentleness toward others and your effort to keep a tender heart rather than a seared conscience does violence to the enemy, and wrenches vast amounts of real estate from his grasp.

You must make every effort to support your faith with excellence,
and excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness,
and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.

For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

— 2 Peter 1:5b-8

Your effort to hold your tongue and wait, to let the other finish, to not rush to fill silence with noise – these are all such small moves of faith that take the land. It is what trust and humility look like, because we know the Lord is in our midst and we don’t have to do all the talking.

Superficial moments on the surface, but momentous underneath. These are the sweetest seasons happening in the deepest grief and need and concern: uncertainty about timing juxtaposed with the certainty of His goodness and protection, while we do not know what that goodness and protection will actually look like.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power;

put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

— Ephesians 6:10-12

We submit to the upheaval of routines because certain situations have taken vivid, sudden priority and they are worth flipping our days upside down for.

Like one Monday, when a text came in that was rapidly followed by a phone call from the nursing home. Urgent prayer over speaker phone while kids ran in and out of the house, and then were quickly ushered into one vehicle with Vin while I took the other on a rushed drive across town after peeling out of the driveway and almost taking out some wandering raspberries.

But she was okay. It wasn’t time yet. We still have work to do, hearts to tend, time to hold with an open hand.

So we are here in the midst of beauty in the chaos, steadiness in the uproar. We are watching for landmarks, not wanting to miss the turn when it comes.

The time together is worth the drive. Our fellowship retakes occupied territory: The roots that run deep, the arms that stretch wide, all the ways we care for each other. This is how we hold our ground, and how we gain it.