Tag: Peace

Not In The Storm

Today’s a new day!

There comes a moment in life when you realize the journey is not about pretending to be strong every second of every day. It is about learning how to walk honestly with God through both the beautiful moments and the painful ones. As I continue walking this crazy beautiful health journey, I am jumping into the deep end of life.  I am choosing to live fully, love deeply, and embrace every moment God places in front of me. I am taking trips with my bride, cherishing the laughter, the quiet moments, and the memories we are building together. I am having deep and meaningful conversations about real life, real struggles, real faith, and real hope. No sugar coating. No masks. Just honesty wrapped in grace.

Some days are incredibly good. Some days feel light, hopeful, and full of strength. Then there are days that are really tough. Days where the storm feels loud and exhausting. But through every high and every low, I refuse to let the storm become my identity. My diagnosis is not my identity. My struggles are not my identity. My difficult moments are not my identity. My identity is found completely in Christ, and that is the only identity that truly matters.

The world often tries to define people by what they are going through.   God defines us by who we belong to. We belong to Him. We are loved by Him. We are redeemed by Him. We are sustained by Him. Storms may shape parts of our story, but they do not get to name us. Jesus does.

What this journey has taught me more than anything is this: life is too precious to spend buried under fear, hesitation, or regret. Too many people are waiting for “someday” to start living. Someday they will take the dream trip. Someday they will say “I love you.” Someday they will forgive. Someday they will have the hard but healing conversation. Someday they will step out in faith and pursue what God placed in their heart. But someday is never promised.

So my encouragement to everyone reading this is simple: live life to the fullest. Trust God enough to truly live. Take the trip. Make the phone call. Sit down and have the real conversation. Laugh loudly. Love deeply. Pray boldly. Stop allowing fear to keep you trapped in a life of “I wish I would have.” The storm may still rage around you, but there is a way to live beyond the storm.

Living beyond the storm does not mean pretending the storm is not real. It means refusing to let the storm steal your joy, your purpose, your faith, or your ability to truly live. It means understanding that even in the middle of pain, God is still writing beautiful chapters. It means choosing to see every breath as a gift and every day as an opportunity to love God and love people well.

At the end of our lives, most people will not regret loving too much, believing too much, or trusting God too deeply. They will regret the moments fear kept them from fully living. So live courageously. Live gratefully. Live authentically. And no matter what storm comes your way, never forget who you are.

Your identity is not in the storm.

Your identity is in Christ. ~OC

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Before We Speak

Today’s a new day! 

In a world overflowing with criticism, outrage, and division, followers of Jesus are called to respond differently. It is easy to point out someone’s failures. It is easy to condemn, shame, or speak harshly when people fall short. But Christ never called His people to become professional judges of broken humanity. He called us to become carriers of grace, truth, and prayer. Before we rush to criticize someone’s life, we should first fall to our knees and pray for their heart. Before we speak words of condemnation, we should ask God to move in their life the same way He once moved in ours.

Every person you see fighting battles, making mistakes, or wandering far from God is still someone deeply loved by the Creator. Many people are carrying wounds nobody knows about. Some are drowning in fear, addiction, loneliness, bitterness, or shame. They do not need believers throwing stones from a distance; they need people willing to intercede for them with compassion. Jesus showed us what mercy looks like. Even while hanging on the cross, He prayed, “Father, forgive them.” If the Son of God responded to hatred with prayer and forgiveness, how much more should we?

Pray more than you judge. Pray more than you condemn. Pray for your family members who seem far from God. Pray for those who hurt you. Pray for those trapped in sin. Pray for those who mock your faith. Prayer has the power to soften hardened hearts, restore broken lives, and bring people into an encounter with Jesus that no argument ever could. Condemnation pushes people further into darkness, but prayer invites the light of God into impossible situations.

The Church shines brightest when it reflects the heart of Christ. Truth matters, but truth without love becomes noise. We are called to stand for righteousness while still extending mercy to people who desperately need hope. None of us were saved because we were perfect; we were saved because Jesus loved us in the middle of our brokenness. May we become believers known not for harsh judgment, but for powerful prayers, compassionate hearts, and a relentless desire to see people redeemed by the grace of God. ~OC

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Bruised Not Defeated

Today’s a new day!

There were moments when the storms of life tried to break you. The winds of hardship blew against your heart, the rain of disappointment poured endlessly, and the waves of exhaustion threatened to pull you under. People mocked your faith, questioned your devotion to Jesus, and treated your love for God like it was foolishness. Some walked away from you because of your obedience to Christ. Others misunderstood your journey entirely. Yet through every tear, every sleepless night, every spiritual battle, and every lonely season, God kept you standing. You may be bruised, but you are not broken. You may have scars, but those scars testify that the Lord has carried you through battles that should have destroyed you.

The enemy thought the warfare would silence your praise, but instead it deepened your worship. Every attack became another reason to lean closer to Jesus. Every trial became another testimony of His faithfulness. You kept praying when your heart was tired. You kept serving when nobody noticed. You kept praising the King of kings even when life made no sense. That is not weakness — that is spiritual endurance forged in the fire of God’s presence. The world may see an ordinary believer, but heaven sees a warrior who refused to quit.

Nothing can defeat a child of God who keeps their eyes fixed on Jesus. The storms may rage, but they cannot overthrow the foundation built on Christ. Spiritual warfare may intensify, but the power of God is greater than every attack of darkness. The same Savior who conquered death lives inside of you. Because of Him, you are not fighting for victory — you are fighting from victory. The cross already settled the outcome. The tomb is still empty, the Holy Spirit is still moving, and the King still reigns.

So stand tall in your faith. Keep lifting holy hands in worship. Keep speaking the name of Jesus with boldness. Your survival is proof of God’s sustaining grace. Your praise in the middle of pain is a weapon the enemy cannot understand. 

Through every battle, every heartbreak, and every storm, one truth remains unshaken: you are still standing, still serving, still praising, and still held securely in the hands of the King of kings. ~OC

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Running The Race With The Looney Tunes

Today’s a new day! 

A wonderful memory from my childhood, is getting a bowl of cereal on a Saturday morning and watching cartoons. As I think back on those carefree days, the following came to me. 

At first glance, the wild and wacky world of Looney Tunes might seem like pure slapstick entertainment. Explosions, chase scenes, clever tricks—it’s all part of the fun. But if you look a little closer, these classic characters can actually offer some surprisingly meaningful reflections on the Christian lifestyle.

1. Staying Grounded Like Bugs Bunny

Bugs Bunny is calm under pressure. No matter what chaos surrounds him, he rarely loses his composure. In many ways, that mirrors what Scripture calls us to: a steady, grounded faith.

Life throws unexpected challenges at us, but believers are called to respond with wisdom and peace rather than panic. Like Bugs, we don’t have to react to every situation emotionally—we can trust God and respond with clarity and confidence.

2. The Danger of Pride: Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck is often driven by ego, always trying to prove he’s better, smarter, or more deserving than everyone else. And more often than not, it leads to his downfall.

That’s a powerful reminder of what pride can do in our own lives. Proverbs warns that pride comes before destruction. The Christian life calls us to humility—putting others before ourselves and recognizing that everything we have comes from God.

3. Perseverance with Purpose: Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner

Wile E. Coyote never gives up. No matter how many times his plans fail, he keeps trying. While his methods might not be wise, his persistence is undeniable.

Christians are also called to persevere—but with a key difference: our trust is in God, not in our own schemes. Hebrews encourages us to “run with endurance the race set before us.” 

Persistence matters, but it must be rooted in faith, not frustration.

Meanwhile, the Road Runner reminds us of the importance of staying focused. He doesn’t get distracted—he just keeps moving forward. In our walk with Christ, focus is essential. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we avoid many of the traps that slow us down.

4. Innocence and Watchfulness: Tweety and Sylvester

Tweety may appear small and vulnerable, but he’s more aware than he looks. Sylvester, on the other hand, is constantly scheming but never quite succeeds.

Jesus told His followers to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Tweety reflects that balance—gentle, yet aware. The Christian life isn’t about being naive; it’s about walking in purity while staying spiritually alert.

5. When Life Blows Up (Literally)

Let’s be honest—Looney Tunes characters go through a lot. They get flattened, blown up, and launched into the sky… and yet, the next scene, they’re back again.

While real life isn’t a cartoon, there’s a truth here: setbacks aren’t the end. In Christ, we have resilience. We may fall, but we’re not finished. God restores, rebuilds, and redeems.

Final Thoughts

The world of Looney Tunes is exaggerated, humorous, and chaotic—but isn’t life sometimes the same? The difference for believers is this: we don’t navigate the chaos alone.

Where the characters rely on tricks, luck, or endless retries, we rely on something far greater—God’s grace, wisdom, and direction.

So the next time you see a cartoon chase or a comical mishap, remember: even in the most unexpected places, there can be a reminder of truth. Stay humble, stay focused, persevere with faith—and keep your eyes on the One who guides your path. ~OC

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On This National Day Of Prayer

The National Day of Prayer is more than a date on a calendar. It is a reminder that prayer is not supposed to be our last resort, but our first response. Across churches, homes, schools, hospitals, and communities, believers gather to pray for healing, wisdom, revival, peace, and direction. Yet the true challenge for the Christian community is not simply whether we pray publicly for one day, but whether we genuinely believe that God still hears and answers prayer every single day. Scripture reminds us in James 5:16 that “the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Those are not symbolic words. They are a promise from God Himself. Too often Christians speak about prayer while secretly battling doubt in their hearts, praying out of routine instead of expectation. But throughout the Bible, prayer moved mountains, opened prison doors, healed the sick, and changed entire nations because people truly believed God was listening.

Living out His Scriptures means more than quoting verses on social media or hearing sermons on Sunday mornings. It means becoming people who actually trust God enough to walk in obedience after we pray. When we pray for peace, we must become peacemakers. When we pray for revival, we must repent and pursue holiness ourselves. When we pray for the hurting, we must be willing to love, serve, and encourage them. Jesus never called believers to have a shallow faith built only on words. He called us to a living faith that produces action, compassion, courage, and transformation. In Mark 11:24, Jesus said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” The Christian community must return to praying with faith, expectation, and surrender, knowing that God is still moving even when answers do not arrive on our timeline.

This National Day of Prayer can become more than a tradition if believers truly unite with humble hearts before God. Imagine what could happen if Christians stopped praying powerless prayers filled with fear and started praying bold prayers filled with faith. Imagine churches becoming known not for division or performance, but for love, healing, truth, and the presence of God. The world does not need Christians who only talk about Scripture; it needs believers who live it out daily. Prayer changes things, but prayer also changes us. When we seek God sincerely, He shapes our hearts to reflect His heart. And perhaps that is where revival truly begins — not merely in crowded gatherings, but in believers who genuinely trust God, obey His Word, and live as evidence that Jesus Christ is alive and still working today. ~OC

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Haunted By Regret

Today’s a new day! 

Christians are not called to live lives haunted by regret. In Christ, you are not a patched-up version of who you used to be—you are a brand new creation. The old you is gone, not hidden, not waiting to resurface, but fully replaced by the transforming power of God’s grace. Too often, we allow our past mistakes, failures, and pain to whisper lies into our present, trying to convince us that we are still bound to who we were. But the truth stands firm: your past has been erased by the King of kings. What He has forgiven, He has removed. What He has redeemed, He has restored. You are no longer defined by what you’ve done—you are defined by who He says you are.

Walking in that truth means choosing victory over remembrance of defeat. It means refusing to sit in chapters that God has already closed. When you continually revisit your past, you risk giving it power it no longer holds. Instead, God invites you to step forward into the life He has prepared for you—a life filled with purpose, hope, and new beginnings. He has amazing plans for your life, plans that cannot be fulfilled if you remain anchored in yesterday. So stop re-reading those old pages. Let them remain in the past where they belong. Today is a fresh page, and tomorrow is an unwritten chapter. Walk boldly in your new identity, dwell fully in His promises, and start writing a story marked not by regret, but by redemption, victory, and the unshakable faithfulness of God. ~OC

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A Warning

Today’s a new day! 

Jesus didn’t spend the majority of His warnings confronting the broken, the wandering, or the openly sinful. Instead, His strongest rebukes were directed at those who stood on the inside—those who knew the language of faith, who held positions of influence, and who used religion as a tool for personal gain. Again and again, He challenged the religious leaders of His day not because they lacked knowledge, but because they had weaponized it. They had turned what was meant to be a pathway to God into a system of control, burdening people with rules while neglecting mercy, justice, and humility. His words were not casual corrections—they were urgent warnings about the danger of a hardened heart hidden behind spiritual appearance.

This truth should cause us to pause and reflect, not on “them,” but on ourselves. It’s easy to point at hypocrisy in others, but Jesus invites us to examine our own motives. Are we using faith to serve, or to be seen? Are we building others up, or subtly controlling, judging, and elevating ourselves? The heart of the Gospel is not about power or performance—it’s about surrender, love, and transformation. Jesus welcomed outsiders with open arms, but He confronted insiders who had lost the heart of God while keeping the form of religion. That same call echoes today: to lay down pride, reject manipulation, and return to a faith that is marked by authenticity, compassion, and a genuine love for God and people. ~OC

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Front Porch Conversations

Today’s a new day! 

When I was growing up, some of the richest moments in life didn’t come from big events or expensive experiences—they came from sitting still and listening. We’d gather around grandparents, older relatives, or even a neighbor leaning back in a worn-out chair, and just soak in their stories. There was something sacred about it. Their voices carried history, wisdom, humor, and lessons you couldn’t learn from a screen. I remember asking questions—not because I had to, but because I wanted to understand where they had been, what they had seen, and how they had made it through life. Those conversations shaped me more than I realized at the time.

These days, that kind of connection feels harder to find. I see young people constantly pulled into their phones, measuring life through likes, shares, and fleeting moments of attention. At the same time, I see many older folks growing frustrated, shaking their heads, and criticizing the very generation they could be pouring into. Somewhere along the way, we stopped meeting in the middle. We traded front porch conversations for comment sections, and real laughter for digital noise. And in doing so, we lost something deeply human.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way. If we truly want a better country, a stronger community, and a more connected world, it starts small—right in our neighborhoods. It looks like putting the phone down, walking outside after dinner, and pulling up a chair in someone’s yard. It looks like asking questions again and taking the time to listen. It looks like older generations choosing to share rather than complain, and younger generations choosing curiosity over distraction. Real life happens in those moments—in the stories, the laughter, the silence between words.

Maybe the answer isn’t complicated at all. Maybe it’s as simple as showing up, being present, and remembering that every person has a story worth hearing. If we can get back to that—back to sharing life instead of scrolling past it—we might just rediscover the kind of connection that can change not only our communities, but the world around us. ~OC

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A Love Connection

Today’s a new day! 

Yesterday, Laura and I drove up to North Florida. If you have lived in Florida or parts of the South, you know what time of season it is. Yes, it’s love bug season. Those little insects can be a nuisance, but what if we looked at these annoying little bugs a little closer. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned. 

Every year in parts of the South, love bugs show up in swarms—small, unassuming insects that spend much of their short lives attached to one another. They’re not flashy or impressive, and to most people they’re just a seasonal nuisance. But if you pause long enough to notice, there’s something quietly symbolic about them. Love bugs are almost always seen in pairs, joined together, moving as one. In a simple, created way, they reflect a picture of connection, persistence, and a kind of devoted closeness that’s hard to ignore.

That image can point us to something far deeper—the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel tells the story of a God who didn’t remain distant, but chose to draw near to us, to bind Himself to humanity through Jesus. Where love bugs cling together for a season, Jesus stepped into our world and held fast to us even through suffering, rejection, and the cross. Scripture reminds us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ—not failure, not pain, not even death. That’s a far stronger bond than anything we see in nature.

There’s also something humbling about love bugs. They don’t try to stand out or make a name for themselves—they simply live out what they were created to do. In the same way, the Gospel calls us to a life not centered on self-promotion, but on abiding in Christ and walking in love. Jesus said that people would recognize His followers by their love, not by their status or accomplishments. When we remain “connected” to Him, like branches to a vine, our lives begin to reflect His grace, patience, and mercy to those around us.

So the next time you see those tiny insects paired together, maybe it’s more than just a seasonal inconvenience. Maybe it’s a small reminder of a greater truth: that we were created for connection—first with God, and then with one another. And through the Gospel, Jesus has made a way for that connection to be restored, secured, and sustained forever. ~OC

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More Than Mortality: A Call To Live Well

Today’s a New Day!

There’s a question that tends to follow me these days as I walk through this health journey: “Do you think about your mortality?” And the honest answer is yes—but probably not in the way people expect. Because the truth is, this isn’t just my reality; it’s everyone’s. Whether we acknowledge it or not, every one of us is living on borrowed time. None of us know when our final breath will come. We make plans, we chase goals, we assume tomorrow is waiting—but that’s never a guarantee. And maybe that’s not meant to scare us, but to wake us up.

Instead of obsessing over when the clock might run out, I’ve started asking a different question: what am I doing with the time I have right now? Am I using it in a way that matters? Am I choosing love over division, compassion over judgment, action over apathy? It’s easy to get caught up in labels—who people vote for, how they live, what they believe—but none of those things will matter as much as how we treated one another. At the end of the day, our legacy won’t be built on opinions shouted the loudest, but on kindness lived out the longest.

Time is a gift, even on the hardest days. Especially on the hardest days. And maybe the real challenge isn’t figuring out how much time we have left, but deciding what kind of impact we want to leave behind. Are we lifting people up? Are we showing grace where it’s least expected? Are we making someone’s load a little lighter? Those are the questions worth wrestling with.

Because when the clock does finally run out—and it will for all of us—it won’t be about how long we lived, but how well we loved. ~OC

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