I Haven’t Posted Because I’ve Been Spiritually Dry (Here’s What Changed)

[0:00] I need to be honest with you about why I haven't been posting any videos lately. And there's a huge part of this. This is actually really uncomfortable for me to say. I have opened this laptop probably 15 times in the last 2 months to record a video. And every single time I've closed it again without hitting record. Why? Because I have been spiritually dry. Like bone dry. I'd sit down at this desk and think, "What am I going to teach about today?" And nothing. Not because I don't know theology. Not because I don't love Jesus, but because somewhere between sales calls and bedtime stories and trying to keep my head above water financially, I felt like I lost that connection to the scripture that makes everything else make sense. Maybe more importantly, I'm feeling like I'm losing the connection with that God of scripture who holds everything together by his own hand. And

[0:47] here's the thing, when you're a theology YouTuber, that's a problem because people don't need more information. You don't need another guy regurgitating facts about Greek words. The way that I can contribute best is as someone who's actually being transformed by what he's teaching, and I wasn't. I felt like a fraud. How can I teach about the overlap of heaven and earth on one hand when my own life feels completely compartmentalized when work is work and family is family and Bible reading and being with Jesus feels like another item I'm failing at on my to-do list? But then something happened a couple of weeks ago that really changed everything for me. I was sitting at my desk, pounding my head against the wood between sales appointments, stuck, struggling, feeling like I was getting yanked in a million different directions, and I had no idea where to anchor myself down when I dug out an

[1:35] entrite New Testament that was given to me by my good friend Tommy Rick. And I just flipped it open immediately to Ephesians chapter 1. Not to create content, not to find some kind of illustration, just because I was desperate at that moment. I opened to Ephesians and I remembered why this letter from the Apostle Paul saved my life the first time I really read it. And I think it's going to set the trajectory for what I'm doing here, at least over the course of the next couple of months. Now, I probably don't have to tell you what spiritual dryness looks like. You probably know exactly what I mean just by using the phrase alone. We live in the most prosperous times in human history and also the most hectic. And we're all stuck in the place of having to do things like balance a demanding career or a family that we love and deserves our time and attention and dear friends around us and even in

[2:23] some cases a calling to serve and love others in the church. I think a lot of us are just walking around pretending that this doesn't happen to us. But what I've learned is that spiritual dryness isn't always about sin. Sometimes it's about a season of life that you're in and you're not sure how to navigate it. Sometimes it feels like it's about very real limitations of human energy and attention in a world that is demanding everything from us all at once. So the first thing I'd like to reflect on is just how work pressure can literally drain your spiritual tank. And I mean this again more practically than you might think. And if I'm pointing at you, there's three fingers pointing right back at me. I'm actually trying to speak mostly from my own experience here. when I'm in backtoback sales calls for eight hours and sales meetings and writing notes down and all of this stuff, having to be on constantly managing rejection,

[3:11] trying to hit my numbers and projections, solving problems for people, my brain is operating at maximum capacity every second of the day. Every decision, every conversation, every email requires a huge deposit of my mental and emotional energy. By the time I shut the laptop, I'm not just physically tired, I'm emotionally depleted. my decision-making reserves are completely tapped out. And then I'm supposed to open my Bible and have this like deep contemplative encounter with the living God. I'm not sure what I'm expecting by doing this, but this is the way that I've been trying to operate and it's not working. What actually happens is I flip open scripture and my brain immediately goes into work mode. How can I use this? What's the practical application? Is this teachable? Instead of receiving from God and relating to him, I'm trying to like produce for him still. I'm still in work mode. Deep

[4:00] meditation on the scriptures is what the Psalms call being like a tree planted by streams of living water. But when you're depleted, you feel more like a tree in the desert trying to squeeze fruit out of an empty root system. Work isn't evil. Paul worked as a tent maker while planting churches. But when work pressure becomes so intense that it crowds out the very thing that's supposed to sustain everything else in your life, you can end up spiritually malnourished even when you're succeeding professionally. But the second reality is that scripture can start to feel like another task on your to-do list instead of the source that feeds your very being. And that's where I was. I'd wake up in the morning and mentally run through everything I needed to accomplish that day. Sales calls, family time, household responsibilities, and somewhere in there, it's like, oh, and I should probably read the scriptures. That word is poison to your spiritual

[4:49] life. When Bible reading becomes something you should do rather than that you get to do, I feel like we've already lost the plot. It's treating the word of God like spiritual vegetables or something something that's good for you but not particularly enjoyable. And then when you do sit down to read, you're sitting there checking your watch saying, "Okay, well, I've got 15 minutes. Let me see what God wants to tell me today." As if the creator of the universe operates on our timeline. So, I started noticing was that I was reading scripture the same way that I read work emails, scanning for actionable items, looking for info I could use, missing the fact that God's word isn't just information to be processed. It's meant to be an invitation into relationship and it's supposed to mess with me a little bit. Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. This isn't spiritual discipline." And really,

[5:38] this isn't about just spiritual discipline. This is about spiritual nourishment. And that's a gap that makes a big difference when you think about it. And the third reality that I bet some of you know all too well is that sort of guilt cycle of not doing the duty of whatever your spiritual life is. In this case for me it was posting content on YouTube because you don't feel spiritual enough or you don't feel as though you're in a healthy place. So here's how this works. You're going through a dry season. You know you're supposed to be if it's not creating content then at least sharing the word with other people. But everything that you think about sharing feels hollow. So you don't share. Then you feel guilty about not sharing. Then you feel like you're letting people down. You start questioning whether you're really called into ministry of any kind at all. And you feel like a hypocrite for teaching about things you're not currently experiencing. So, you continue to not share and the cycle deepens. And if

[6:26] you're like me and you're in the Christian YouTube space, meanwhile, you're watching other creators who seem to have fresh insights every week and you're thinking, "What's wrong with me? Why can't I just turn on this spiritual faucet and produce content?" But here's what I came to realize. I've witnessed some of the most powerful ministry happen not when I'm overflowing, not when the other person is overflowing, but when they're empty and struggling and they're honest about it. Some of the most helpful teaching comes not from having all the answers, but from wrestling with the questions in real time. Paul wrote some of his most amazing, incredible, and encouraging letters from prison. David wrote some of his most honest and heart moving psalms from caves running for his life. They didn't wait until they had it all figured out to share what God was doing. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you

[7:12] can do is admit that you don't feel like you're in a very good place spiritually because that's when you stop pretending that it's about performance in the first place and you can just receive something from God rather than me trying to prove something. I think I'm giving room for God to do something. Which is exactly what happened to me the other day when I cracked open the Bible and started reading Ephesians again. So why Ephesians? What was it about this particular letter that cut through the spiritual fog when nothing else would? I think that there are a few reasons that go to the heart of what I think we're all struggling with to some degree or another when life feels overwhelming and compartmentalized. For me, there's history here. Ephesians is actually one of the letters that first changed my life before I was a Christian and caused me to come to faith in him. And then it also sustained me through a lot of early years trying to figure out what faith actually meant in practice. I remembered

[8:00] reading Ephesians 1 for the first time and being absolutely blown away by Paul's vision. And it had the seeds of what has become my ministry since then. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places right now. It's incredible. And then he's so bold as to say he he talks about God's plan to unite all things in Christ. things both in heaven and things on earth. Unite all things, heaven and earth. If you've been around my channel for 5 minutes, you know that we're in the realm of things that I'm very passionate about. Going to heaven when you die is not what's in view here. What we're talking about is heaven coming to earth. A cosmic renovation project that is already underway. I think that may have been one of the first times that I

[8:47] really understood that Christianity wasn't just personal salvation, but about God putting the whole universe back together the way it was supposed to be. And somehow impossibly we get to be a part of that. So when I'm in a season where nothing else is really making sense, I think that that's a prod of where my heart knows where to turn back to. Back to the letter that first showed me a glimpse of how God's plan really is so big and so beautiful. It's like maybe having a favorite song that always brings you back to a particular moment or feeling. Ephesians brings me back to the wonder of realizing that my small messy life is actually part of something cosmically significant and eternal. And I think a lot of us feel that way about Ephesians in particular, but maybe there's a different passage for you that has that same resonance. Maybe it's Romans 8. Maybe it's the last few chapters of John. But either way, we're not simply talking about nostalgia here. Paul's vision of heaven on earth unity

[9:37] speaks directly to the kind of overwhelm that I'm experiencing in my life right now. Think about it. Paul is writing about the mystery that was hidden for ages. That God's plan was always to bring heaven and earth together. Not to evacuate earth for heaven, but to unite them, to make them one reality. Work and worship aren't separate things. Parenting and disciplehip aren't separate from each other. Marriage isn't separate from ministry. For me, the drudgery and pain sometimes of being in the job I'm in isn't separate from my spiritual formation. Everything is part of the same integrated reality where heaven is breaking into earth. When I read Ephesians 6 about putting on the full armor of God, Paul is not talking about some simple separate spiritual battle, he's talking about very real struggles we face every day. Deception, discouragement, division, despair. But

[10:27] he's saying we don't fight these battles with earthly weapons. We fight them by remembering who we are and who's we are. When Paul writes about marriage in Ephesians 5, he's not just giving relationship advice. He's saying that the way husbands and wives love each other is a living picture of how Christ loves the church. Your marriage as a signpost pointing to the ultimate unity between heaven and earth. He even says things like, "Our work, whatever it is, is part of how we serve Christ and build his kingdom." And frankly, that's exactly what I needed to hear because I've been living like my sales job, my family time, my ministry calling, and the things that I'm supposed to do as a follower of his are three separate compartments that are competing for my attention. But Ephesians says that they're all part of the same thing, God's project to unite heaven and earth. And if I'm not understanding them that way, then I will lose track of why they're important in the long run. Putting a whole eternal and cosmic scope

[11:16] on everything can put my daily struggles in perspective. Paul opens the letter by zooming out to the biggest possible view. Before the foundation of the world, God had a plan that he was going to bring about by the council of his will. He's summing up all things in Christ. So when I'm drowning in sales quotas and bedtime routines and content creation pressure, I need that cosmic perspective. I need to remember that my struggles, while real and significant, are taking place within a much larger story. Paul talks about principalities and powers, spiritual forces that are bigger than my individual circumstances. And that the overwhelm that I was feeling isn't just about time and energy management. There's a spiritual dimension to the chaos of modern life in which forces that want to keep me fragmented, divided, running in circles are hard at work. And they're still at work in this world. And they're at work

[12:02] in your life, too. Maybe in different ways, but I have a hunch that it's similar. Paul also talks about being seated with Christ in heavenly places right now, not someday off in the future, today. Which means that even when life feels overwhelming, our truest identity is secure. We're already participating in the victory that Christ won. That doesn't make my drudgery sales calls any easier. It doesn't eliminate work stress or family challenges, but it does put them into context. It's not as simple as us to just survive another week. Instead, we need to see it as participating in God's mission to restore the world. And again, Paul wrote this letter while he was in prison. He's not writing from a place of everything working out and having it all figured out and everything's just perfect sunshines and rainbows. He was writing from a place of real constraint and

[12:50] suffering and difficulty. But he could see the bigger picture and that bigger picture transformed how he viewed his own circumstances. Which is why I realized that Ephesians isn't likely to just be the answer to what I need right now. I have a hunch that it's going to help all the rest of us as well. And I don't want to study it alone. So here's what I want to propose. Instead of me disappearing for months and then coming back with some brilliant series I've planned out, what if we just do this together? What if we let Ephesians teach us all at the same time about how heaven and earth are overlapping in real life? Let me put it this way. For the time being, I'm done trying to come up with content ideas. I'm done sitting at this desk thinking about what does this YouTube algorithm want from me or what theological controversy can I weigh in on this week. Instead, I want to let the scriptures set the agenda. My goal is

[13:40] that we're going to work through Ephesians verse by verse, passage by passage, and let Paul's vision of cosmic unity shape our conversations. Some videos might be about really heady theological concepts like what it means to be blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Other videos might be really practical, like how the unity between Jews and Gentiles in chapter 2 changes how we think about racial reconciliation today. Some episodes might dive deep into Greek words that unlock whole new dimensions of meaning, like apocalypsis. And if you don't know what that means yet, we'll get to it. Other episodes might be me wrestling in real time with how a particular passage is speaking to the tension between our work demands and career aspirations and family time and how do we reconcile what's needed in both cases. The point is, I'm not going to force it. I'm not going to take a

[14:26] passage about spiritual warfare and try to make it into clickbait about demons. I'm going to let the text be what it is and trust that God's word is inherently relevant to our lives. Maybe even especially when it takes us in directions we weren't expecting. This is actually how the early church operated, too. They didn't have curriculum committees and marketing strategies and YouTube algorithms to keep in mind. They had the apostolic letters that they read and reread and discussed until those letters transformed how they saw everything and how they lived every second. That's what I want to have happen to us. I want Ephesians to get so deep into our minds and our collective thinking and our hearts that it changes how we see everything. Our marriage, our work, our parenting, our friendships, our money, our time, everything. And next, I really am excited to see how the unity themes in Ephesians actually transform the mundane parts of our

[15:16] lives, too. Because that's where the rubber meets the road. When Paul talks about the unity between Jews and Gentiles in chapter 2, it's not as simple as just ancient history lessons. He's showing us what it looks like when God breaks down the dividing walls between people who were never supposed to get along and yet in him have found family. What does that mean for political divisions in our families? What does that mean for workplace tensions? What does that mean for how we navigate cultural differences in community? When Paul talks about marriage in chapter 5, and I know this passage makes a lot of people uncomfortable. He's not giving us a hierarchy chart. He's painting a picture of how the relationship between Christ and the church gets embodied in the most intimate human relationship we have. What does sacrificial love actually look like when you're stressed out about money? What does mutual submission mean when you're both exhausted from work and kids? When Paul talks about raising children in chapter 6, is it as simple

[16:03] as be nice to your kids? Or is he also talking about how the next generation learns to live in the overlap of heaven and earth by watching how their parents navigate that overlap in relationship with one another and with them as children? How do we parent in a way that shows our kids that following Jesus isn't about rules and regulations, but participating in God's mission to restore the world? And when Paul talks about work, whether you're an employee or an employer, maybe he's saying that your Monday through Friday isn't separate from your spiritual life, as if there is such a thing. It seems as if he's saying that it's part of how you serve Christ and love your neighbor. So, how does that change how I approach sales calls? How does that change how you approach whatever work God has given you to spend your time doing? Rather than some abstract theological concept, I'm trying to take intensely practical questions about how heaven and earth unity gets lived out when the dishes

[16:52] need to be done and the bills need to be paid and the kids need attention and the work deadlines are looming. And this is going to feed three birds with one scone because not only is it going to allow me to still create content, which is important to me. And it's not just that it'll allow me to open up the Bible and dig deep again. It's also something that is going to allow me to invite you all to come along with me and do it as a team and do it together as a community. I don't want to be just talking to you. I want us to discover together what happens when we take Paul's vision seriously. I'm going to read the comments on these videos a little bit differently. I always try to respond anyway, but I'm going to be looking not just for encouragement or criticism. I'm going to be looking for your insights. What is God showing you in this passage that I might have missed? How does this text speak to your circumstances? And on top of that, how can I pray for you in

[17:39] those same circumstances? What sorts of questions does it raise for you? I want to create space for the kind of community that the early Christians had when they gathered around these letters and heard them read aloud for the first time. They weren't passive consumers of religious content. They were active participants in figuring out what it meant to follow Jesus in their particular time and place. And so I'm going to ask for your stories. When Paul talks about spiritual warfare, I want to hear how you've experienced that in your own life. When he surfaces forgiveness, I want to know what that's costing you and what freedom it brings you. When he talks about using your gifts to build up the body of Christ, I want to celebrate what God is doing in and through you in your own sphere of influence. I don't want this to have the tone of a typical Bible study where I'm the person who's the Bible answer man and I give you right answers and you take notes. I want this to be a community exploration of

[18:28] what it means to live in the overlap of heaven and earth when life is messy and overwhelming and beautiful and hard all at the same time. Because I really do need this just as much as you do and maybe more. I need to be reminded weekly that my sales job and my family responsibilities and ministry calling are not to be seen as competing priorities. All of this is part of the same project, God's project, to unify things in heaven and on earth in Christ. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to jump into Ephesians together. We're going to let it mess with us and then we're going to let it show us how to live together in the light of heaven and earth. And I have a feeling that this is going to work on us and change us all in ways we can't even really imagine fully yet. So, here's where we are. I've been honest with you about why I mostly disappeared. I've been spiritually dry, overwhelmed by work, struggling to balance everything, and

[19:16] feeling like a fraud for trying to teach when I wasn't experiencing much myself. But then, Ephesians found me again. or rather God found me again through Ephesians. The letter that first showed me what it means to live in the overlap of heaven and earth. The letter that says God's plan from before the foundation of the world was to unite all things in Christ. Not to evacuate earth for heaven, but to bring heaven to earth. And I'm beginning to realize something. My struggles to balance my own work and my own family and my own ministry isn't a bug in this system. It seems to be the exact place where I need to learn what heaven and earth unity actually looks like in practice. So, I'm inviting you into something that I hope could be transformative for all of us. We're going to walk through Ephesians together slowly, carefully, letting Paul's vision of cosmic unity reshape how we see everything from our marriages

[20:04] to our Monday mornings. I don't simply want to stand at a distance teaching you about ancient texts. I want to sit with you together in the mess of modern life, letting scripture speak to our overwhelm and our burnout and our beauty and our chaos and the hope that we're all navigating together. So, if you're anything like me and you're in a season where life does feel fragmented, nothing seems to be connected, I'm hoping that this series will have something for you. And if you're tired of a Christianity that sounds great on Sunday, but doesn't seem to touch the reality of Tuesday afternoon when you're kneedeep in things that are burning you out and stressing you out, this series is for you. If you're wondering how following Jesus is supposed to transform not just your eternal destiny, but your daily decisions, then I want this series to be for you. And if you're in a spiritually dry season where you feel like you're going through the motions, maybe this is exactly what your soul needs. Not just more information, but a collective

[20:52] community transformation. At least that's what I'm praying for. In place of more theologies to learn, truth to live out. So, I'm going to show up consistently. I'm going to be honest about what I'm struggling with and what God is teaching me. I'm going to let the text lead instead of trying to force it into content that I think will perform well. And I'm asking you to commit to something, too. Don't just watch the videos. Please engage with them. Read the passages yourself. Ask hard questions. Share what God is showing you. Push back when something doesn't make sense. Help me see things that I'm missing. I want this to be a community effort from people who are serious about living every second of our lives in light of eternity. People who believe that the overlap of heaven and earth isn't just a nice theological concept, but a reality we're called to embody together. So, here's our first step. Go and read Ephesians 1:es 1-14. Just sit with it. That's what I'm going to do,

[21:42] too. And then we're going to talk about it next week. Don't try to figure out what it means for a video or Bible study or anything else. Just let Paul's words wash over you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, every spiritual blessing right now, not someday, today. And then ask yourself, if that's really true, how does it change how I approach my family this week? How do I best love my neighbor? How do I think about my struggles and my calling and my overwhelm? And next week, we're going to dive into those opening verses together, and look at the context of the letter itself. We're going to explore what it means to be chosen before the foundation of the world in him, adopted as sons and daughters, blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And we're going to figure out together what that cosmic reality looks like when you're trying to make your work stuff work and be present for bedtime and

[22:29] follow Jesus and love your wife or your husband all at the same time. And I don't know where that journey is going to take us, but I do know this. God's word does not return to him empty. When we give scripture the space to do its work in our hearts and minds and lives, transformation does happen even when I'm not expecting it to. Community happens. The overlap of heaven on earth becomes less of a concept that I want to teach and more of a lived reality even if it's only that big of a difference day by day. So, let's do this together. Let's let Ephesians teach us what it means to live in light of eternity. And maybe we'll discover that the ordinary, overwhelming, beautiful chaos of our daily lives is exactly where God wants to meet us and begin to change things in our own circumstances to look more like unity in heaven and on earth by Christ. Let me know if you're excited. Let me

[23:17] know if this is a break from the regularly scheduled programming that you're not excited about. But for me, in this season, this feels like what we need to move forward. So, if this is of any benefit to you, please let me know down in the comments. And maybe you've got a passage in mind that you're already looking forward to talking about or an insight that you'd already like to share because if you're like me, you already love Ephesians. I would love to hear those things, too. And maybe if this is fun enough and exciting enough, maybe we'll get to do the same thing with other letters or other books in the Bible as well in future dates. But for now, this is my only path forward. I need your prayers. I want to be here for you and with you in ways that I know God is going to bring about beautiful things we can't even see yet. And I just recognized I'm not even centered in this video. So, here's Mr. Professional YouTuber guy uh making rookie mistakes. So, please, please, please come along

[24:04] for this ride. Support me. I'm going to try my best to support you. Let's be here together and see what God works through his word and the collective community reading of it.