For the last time this year, I’m writing. It’s been quite a journey, and when I add it all up, it’s staggering.

365 entries, containing

106,019 words, made up of

563,029 characters, on

465 pages, that would take

7 hours and 22 minutes to read.

I’m not sure what I thought would happen as I wrote throughout the year? I knew there would be days when I would want to, and days when I wouldn’t want to. I knew there would be some posts that felt like some of my best writing, and other posts that, well, wouldn’t.

I wondered if more people would read what I was writing, and there were days when I would see the stats and wonder why I was doing all this work for such seemingly little return.

That’s when God would remind me what this was always about. Forget all the words and characters and visits and pages. When it’s all stripped away, the only thing that mattered was obedience.

Simple obedience.

The kind of simple obedience that produces supernatural outcomes.

I was reminded of this as The B99 watched a movie called “tick, tick… Boom!” with our son, Parker, the other night. It was the story of Jonathan Larson, the creator of “Rent,” a show that ran for 12 years on Broadway and grossed over $280 million.

But the movie wasn’t about that show. It was about a show he’d worked on for 8 years called SUPERBIA, and the struggles he faced as an unknown performing artist in trying to get it funded and produced. Without giving away any more than you could find on Wikipedia, suffice it to say that the show he’d poured 8 years of his life into was received with great applause, but never picked up.

As he’s speaking with his agent after hearing the devastating news, he asked her what he should do next.

“Start working on the next one,” she replied.

His next one was the show that “tick, tick… Boom!” Is based on, which was followed closely by “Rent.” It’s fair to say that he had to invest 8 years of his life in an apparent failure to get out what was hidden so deeply within him.

Where does all this lead? Only God knows. I’ve been obedient to do this year what I sensed Him leading me to do, and now, I’ll be obedient to whatever comes next.

The writing will continue because I know that there are more words in me that have yet to find their way to a page. And while I may not post what I write every day like I did this year, I am confident in this: simple obedience produces supernatural outcomes, and that one truth makes me lean forward into a new year with expectation.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash

As the old year comes to an end, let me remind you of The God Who Sees us. I can do this because He showed Himself so powerfully to me yesterday.

As you surely know, I’ve not hidden any of my grief from anyone. The grief I’ve felt over many friends who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be present in my life due to the pandemic at a time when our family was walking through very muddied and murky waters. The grief I’ve felt over the loss of what feels like foundational truths in our culture. Of course, the grief I’ve experienced since dad died in October was laid on top of all of that, along with the grief I was already feeling over the loss of a close friend just months before that.

It’s been a lot, and I’m sure many of you can relate.

All of that had me pouring over scripture after scripture yesterday around the theme of joy being restored. As I read God’s truth, a wave of emotion hit me and I began to weep. They weren’t tears of defeat or depression as much as tears of disappointment and honesty.

“Father, I know that these words are true, and yet I also know how far away this seems. I know that You can turn my mourning into dancing, but when? How? Please, Lord, restore my joy.”

It was a simple, weighty prayer from a broken place to a God who – if I can be so bold – seems distant. I say seems because I know He isn’t, even though it feels that He is.

I left that place and went on with my day. Nothing extraordinary happened. It was just a normal Wednesday, or as normal as any day is now.

And then, in the middle of our weekly prayer service at church, I found myself being bear hugged by a good friend who kept squeezing me and praying the same thing over and over again:

“Restore his joy, Lord. Restore his joy. Let him laugh until his belly hurts. Restore his joy.”

I don’t believe in a God who sees me because it’s doctrinally or theologically true (although it is). I believe in a God who sees me because of moments like that. Moments when God speaks through someone who could have no idea about a simple prayer whispered in a quiet room to the God who sees in secret.

He sees me, and that means He sees you, too. No pain you feel has escaped His heart. No moment you’ve experienced has escaped His eye. No prayer you’ve whispered has escaped His ear.

He has felt it all, heard it all, and seen it all.

He is El Roi.

The God Who sees us.

Sometimes in our search for happiness, we end up settling for happiness.

“God wants me to be happy!”

“Do whatever makes you happy!”

“As long as it makes you happy.”

Our culture has made happiness the goal, and yet so many of the things that we experience in the pursuit of happiness can’t make us happy 100% of the time.

We search for meaningful relationships, and yet that introduces us to disappointment as we learn to love one another, and pain when that relationship ends, whether it ends poorly in a breakup or ends in death after decades of being together.

I could go on, but you get the point. If our happiness is the goal, we’ll never stay with anything or anyone through the difficult seasons that don’t make us happy, and we run the risk of missing something that runs much deeper than happiness. You and I will never find joy if all we want is happiness.

There is a passage of Scripture in a little-known book by a prophet who was called by God to live a life that nobody would call happy. You can read more about Hosea on your own time (and I would highly recommend it), but for now, take note of what I’ve highlighted in these two verses:

Therefore, I am going to persuade her, lead her to the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her vineyards back to her and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt. (Hosea‬ ‭2:14-15‬ ‭CSB, emphasis mine)

In our search for happiness, we focus on the great promises in these verses: God will give us hope, make us fruitful, give us the passion and energy we had when we were younger and were first set free from sin.

Of course, all of those things would make us happy, and they should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But take a minute to ponder more than the “what” in these verses. Did you notice where God gives her all the things that could make her happy? In the wilderness.

God led her to the desert, and in that place, she found far more than happiness. She found joy.

Joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5) and replaces mourning (Isaiah 61:3).

Joy grows in the places that the search for happiness will never take us, and is the reward for those who refuse to settle for happiness.

Are you in the desert? Instead of rushing to get out of it, sit with the Lord and allow Him to transform it.

Beauty for ashes. Praise for despair. Gladness instead of mourning.

Joy instead of happiness.