Before Living Commissioned Had a Name
Before the Journey
Living Commissioned didn't begin with a book.
It didn't begin with a blog, a ministry idea, or a carefully mapped out plan.
Long before I had language for any of this, God was already writing it into my life.
I just couldn't see it yet.
There were years of rejection.
There were doors I was convinced were supposed to open that never did. There were places I thought I belonged, only to discover that I didn't. There were seasons when I questioned whether I had heard God correctly at all.
There were mistakes.
Some I can look back on now and laugh about. Others still sting a little when I think about them. There are decisions I would make differently today, things I wish I had understood sooner, and lessons I apparently needed to learn the hard way.
There were also brothers in Christ who loved me enough to tell me the truth.
Not always the truth I wanted to hear, either.
They challenged me in ways I had never really experienced in church. They didn't just encourage me, agree with me, or tell me what I was doing well. They challenged my thinking. They challenged my motives. At times, they challenged my sin.
They also helped me look beneath some things I had learned to live with for years.
There were places where hurt had been left alone long enough to become bitterness. There were wounds I thought I had moved past that were still affecting the way I responded to people, situations, rejection, and even ministry.
God used these brothers to help me search deeper.
Sometimes that meant conversations I didn't particularly enjoy having.
Sometimes it meant realizing the problem wasn't everyone else.
Sometimes it meant repenting.
Those relationships taught me something I don't want to forget. Sometimes one of God's greatest provisions in our lives is a brother or sister who loves us too much to leave us where we are.
I needed encouragement, but I also needed correction.
I needed people who believed in me, but I also needed people who were willing to look me in the eye and tell me when I was wrong.
Looking back, I can see how God used both.
There were people who stood beside me when things were difficult. There were also people willing to dig beneath the surface when something in me needed to change.
Both were the mercy and grace of God.
There were also moments of incredible provision.
Times when there shouldn't have been a way forward, but somehow there was.
People showed up.
Doors opened.
Needs were met.
God provided in ways I couldn't have planned, sometimes through people or circumstances I never would have expected.
Then came a season when my own health began forcing questions I wasn't prepared to answer.
When your body stops cooperating with your plans, you discover pretty quickly how much of your identity has become attached to what you can accomplish.
I didn't enjoy learning that lesson.
I'm still learning it.
There were days when I wanted answers and didn't have them. Days when plans had to change because I simply couldn't do what I once could. Days when weakness wasn't something I could preach about from a distance anymore.
I had to live in it.
Weakness has a way of exposing things.
It showed me places where I had relied on myself more than I realized.
It reminded me that being useful to God and being loved by God are not the same thing.
It forced me to confront how easily doing things for God can begin to take the place of simply being with Him.
I wouldn't have chosen that road.
But God has used it.
He is still using it.
Somewhere through the uncertainty, weakness, disappointment, victories, failures, ministry, relationships, rejection, provision, and unexpected turns, something began taking shape.
A way of seeing what it actually means to follow Jesus.
Not perfectly.
Not theoretically.
But honestly.
Living Commissioned eventually became the language for it.
Even that didn't happen all at once.
Over the years, I've filled notebooks, documents, sermons, conversations, voice memos, and probably more unfinished ideas than I could count.
Some became something.
Some didn't.
Some ideas I was certain were brilliant turned out to be terrible.
But certain things kept resurfacing.
Jesus.
Discipleship.
Surrender.
Obedience.
Stewardship.
The Kingdom.
The Great Commission.
And the growing conviction that following Jesus was never supposed to become something we simply believed while continuing to build our lives around ourselves.
Eventually, I began to realize that many of the things I had been writing weren't separate ideas at all.
They were pieces of the same journey.
That journey is becoming Living Commissioned.
I don't know exactly what all of it will become yet.
And I don't think I need to.
What I do know is that I don't want Living Commissioned to become another place built around pretending to have all the answers.
I don't have all the answers.
I'm still following.
Still learning.
Still being corrected.
Still discovering how faithful God has been in places that didn't feel particularly meaningful while I was walking through them.
Looking backward, I can see things I couldn't see then.
Some of the rejection was preparation.
Some of the closed doors were protection.
Some of the mistakes became teachers.
Some of the weakness exposed things success never could have.
Some of the provision taught me to trust.
Some of the successes reminded me that obedience actually matters.
And some chapters still don't make sense.
Maybe they will someday.
Maybe they won't.
But Living Commissioned is being built from all of it.
Not just the victories.
The whole journey.
That's what I want this space to be.
A place to share some of those stories.
The things I've learned.
The things I'm still learning.
The moments God provided when I couldn't see a way forward.
The mistakes I don't want to repeat.
The victories worth celebrating.
The correction I needed but didn't always want.
The questions I'm still wrestling with.
And the lessons that sometimes took years before I understood what God was teaching me.
But ultimately, I'm not sharing these things just so you can know my story.
My hope is that somewhere in these stories, lessons, failures, victories, and unfinished thoughts, you will be pointed beyond me.
That you will behold the King.
That you will see Jesus more clearly, love Him more deeply, surrender more completely, and follow Him more faithfully.
And then that you will go for the King.
That following Jesus won't remain something you simply believe. I hope it shapes the way you live, the people you love, the things you steward, and the way you spend the life He has given you.
Because Living Commissioned was never meant to end with me telling my story.
If God can use anything He has taught me, whether good, painful, embarrassing, successful, or difficult, to help someone else take another step of obedience toward Jesus, then it's worth sharing.
I won't tell all of those stories at once.
Some of them probably aren't ready to be told yet.
But over time, I hope the pieces begin to make sense.
So if you've found your way here, you're not arriving at the beginning of a polished idea.
You're stepping into the middle of a story that has been unfolding for years.
A story about seeing Christ more clearly.
Following Him more faithfully.
Stewarding what He places in our hands.
And spending our lives making Him known.
Behold the King.
Go for the King.
Live commissioned.