We’re coming to Durham! Join KaitlynSchiess and @sharonhmiller.bsky.social for An Evening with the Holy Post on October 4th! These events are a really special opportunity to connect with others & be encouraged and we hope to see you there. 🎟️ Tickets: holypost.com/events & bring a friend!

Wrestling is inherently intimate. You cannot wrestle a person without being close to them, & this truth has shaped how I relate to God. We live in a culture that relies on materialism, comfort, & easy spiritual answers to avoid that wrestling. But we sacrifice depth as a result.

Scripture tells us that focus determines direction, which is why the self-esteem movement ultimately failed. Its focus--the self--was too small a purpose for the human soul. The truth is: self-focus, even when it's positive, is a spiritual dead end. We were meant for more.

God knew social media was coming. He knew we’d be inundated with more knowledge about the world than capacity to address it. And with this foreknowledge, He commanded: Love your NEIGHBOR. Because we cannot control what’s happening in the world, but we can do this.

2 months ago, Ike & I penned a church-wide email with guidance for living faithfully in times of turmoil, & we counseled our people to do 3 things: 1. Limit your time on social media. 2. Remember your citizenship. 3. Pray This is how we walk in wisdom, integrity, & true power.

Everything you are building right now--I mean everything: your family, career, reputation--sits on the cornerstone of your integrity. When that piece is removed, your life might stand precariously like a Jenga tower for a bit, but it WILL fall eventually, and it will ALL fall.

“The accent of Acts 2 would seem to lie not on speaking, but on hearing." - Walter Brueggemann

Two “check engine lights” for leadership burnout: 1. Escapism. Numbing, distracting, self-medicating, procrastinating, avoidance of silence. 2. Self-righteousness. Entitlement, superiority, martyr complex, resenting the people you serve.

Asking for help is incredibly vulnerable. You risk imposing, or being a burden, or being told no. But because vulnerability is an essential part of relationships, people will struggle to feel close to you if you never take this risk with them.

One of the greatest determiners of where you are headed and who you are becoming is what you do with your pain.

We often resent the experiences and seasons of life that most require us to trust in God.

Motherhood is an incredible gift, a sacred responsibility, and a role of profound influence. And also, motherhood is not a woman’s highest calling. A woman’s highest calling is to follow Jesus.

You cannot pick up the sword of Jesus’s authority without the handle of his humility. It cannot be done. You might be parroting his words, but you will not be wielding his power.

Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighbor and says, “I was only joking!” - Prov. 26:18-19 I remind my kids of this verse a lot, but it’s a good reminder for adults too. “It was a joke” is not a get out of jail free card for careless words.

Paul does not give a lot of time to dunking on the culture, or the government. More often he pleads with Christians to maintain their spiritual integrity, and their distinctiveness from both.

Very often, the wound is not the spiritual warfare. It’s more a result of living in a broken world. The spiritual warfare is what we do with that wound. What lies we believe about it. What meaning we make out of it: about us, about them, about everyone. The Accuser works there.

Jesus performed miracles, healed the sick, preached history defining sermons, & led the best small group ever. And none. of. it. was. enough. to prevent people from rejecting him. Leaders, we cannot do what Jesus himself could not. We cannot perform well enough to keep people.

The next time you see a flower poking out from a crack in the cement, remember: this is what the Kingdom of God is like. This world cannot pave over the seeds of the Kingdom anymore than it could pave over Jesus’s crucified body.

The Jesus of Holy Monday is, for many people, their favorite Jesus. This is the Jesus who finally gets angry, confronts injustice, & overturns tables pro wrestling style. We love this Jesus because we want to be this Jesus. But we are not Jesus in this story. We are the temple.

Holy Week is bookended by two displays of Jesus’s kingship: Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Which is to say, Holy Week is a microcosm of the arc of human history. Life after the Garden is dark, uncertain, and full of loss. But we know where this is going.

Discipleship is not about monthly coffee meetings. It’s about who gets access to your everyday life. The people who will be most influenced by you are the people who spend the most time with you.

The first grasp for control came not in the form of power, but knowledge (Gen 3). Anyone who offers special understanding, or insight, into what is happening in our world (“No one is talking about this!” “No one will tell you this!”) is just appealing to that temptation.

Storms inflict damage, but they also reveal what was already there: The shallow roots. The dead limbs that needed to be pruned. The house built on sand. The storms of life are the same, which is why we must not categorize their impact simply in terms of harm, but revelation.

When Christian doctrines like love and grace are grounded not in our weakness, but in our strength, born not out of wrestling with sin or with God, but of intellectual study…that is when they present not as a holy limp, but as a weapon.

One takeaway from reading the Bible in a year is that you can't escape the relentlessness of humanity's missteps. It becomes tiresome to read again & again. Then irritating. Then revolting. Then numbing. And this experience is the point. Human grace is exhaustible. God's is not.

Reminder: Knowledge without agency creates anxiety. This is the psychological warfare of social media in a nutshell.

Human default is to deny, deflect, and distract from our weakness and limitations. Lent, however, is the season when we consciously choose to do the opposite. We don’t simply reflect on our weakness, but we provoke it.

You know, it’s always going to be imperfect. Our best efforts at serving & honoring God are going to be fraught with problems because we are fraught with problems. So don’t get so distracted by how “they could be doing it better” that you forget: that’s the whole point of Jesus.

“If you say the heart can be deceived, I will say the mind can also be deceived. A *pure* heart can be trusted. As Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’” - Brian Zahnd

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Because truth is not trusted, specious propaganda takes over. Because justice is not trusted, whatever is useful is declared to be just.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It cannot be overstated that one of the most important things you must do in the face of evil is to pray. Why? 1. Because *you* cannot change people. 2. It is one of the only ways you can guard your heart for the long work of faithfulness.

“I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.” - Lesslie Newbigin

Biblical ethics are a lot like a piece of fabric that weaves together many threads. If you tug on one, the whole thing begins to unravel. That's why it's been so fascinating to watch both the left and the right try to isolate the thread of sexual ethics, as if it can be done.

“It is hard to promote or prescribe certain behavior if you think your moral framework is merely a useful fiction.” - Andrew Wilson

One of the reasons the world is appalled by greed and adultery in professing Christians? Because what we do with our money, and what we do with our bodies, reveals our actual convictions.

No matter how “right” your doctrinal convictions, one of the clearest metrics of your spiritual maturity is how you treat people you disagree with.

@taylorschu.bsky.social were you the one who watched the entire Super Bowl commentated by Sponge Bob last year?? I still laugh out loud thinking about that! 🤣🤣🤣

When you step into leadership, it’s not just your gifts that move from obscurity into the light, but your flaws & failures too. This is incredibly exposing, which is why so many leaders struggle with imposter syndrome & hiding. But it is actually one of our greatest invitations.

Something I just said to my kids that feels like a word for the internet as well: Insulting people makes you no better than them.

The Enemy is a master of distraction. If he can get you to fixate on what’s wrong “over there,” he can get you to ignore what’s wrong “over here.” This is how we get rants on toxic empathy from internet bullies, & public shaming from the tolerant. We aren’t facing our own sin.

One *positive* thing that social media will never show you: All the pastors and Christian leaders who are offered access to power, or photo ops with politicians, who say NO, because it will distract from their mission.

Liturgy is a tool, not a fail-safe. I think this is worth remembering because of the sheer number of books I’ve read recently by evangelicals ecstatically discovering liturgy as if it is the ANSWER. It’s a wonderful resource, not a solution. Signed, Raised Presbyterian

Church leaders, I hope you will consider contacting your local World Relief to help step in here. worldrelief.org/pr-world-rel...

Whenever the rhetoric of social media and the turmoil of national events are loud, it is *essential* that we make Jesus’s voice in our ears louder. Nursing outrage and cynicism is foolishly short-term thinking. Our assignment is only sustainable if we are sustained by His hope.

“Cynicism is a lack of faith in people; skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions." - Jamil Zaki

In our highly boundaried culture, I often see people use the word “boundary” when what they really mean is “wall.” What’s the difference? Boundaries serve relationships. Walls cut them off.

One way to tell the difference between holy ambition and selfish ambition? Anxiety. Pressure. Insecurity Striving. Panic. Fear of rest. The burden of ego is heavy and unrelenting, but holy ambition is light.

“You are enough” in the same way that a loaf of bread and a fish were enough.

Heartsick to hear of the passing of Richard Hays. He was my NT professor in seminary, and I will always remember him concluding each unit of Scripture with a sermon proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. He never forgot—nor let us forget—why we were all there.