Citizens Church

Most of us know the feeling of looking at a need and doing the math. The bills, the hours in the day, the energy we have left. We size up what’s in front of us, compare it to what’s in our hands, and quietly conclude there’s just not enough. Not enough money, not enough time, not enough of whatever it would take to make a difference. This week’s episode takes us to an old story about a hillside, a...

Most of us have a well we keep going back to. For some people it's the next promotion or a bigger paycheck. For others it's approval, a relationship, a goal, or just being noticed. It works for a while. Then the thirst comes back, so we lower the bucket again. In this episode, we look at an old story about a woman who goes to a well at noon, probably to avoid running into anyone. She has a complic...

You know the feeling. You're standing in a room with someone, nodding along, and your mind is already three hours ahead, running through a to-do list, replaying a conversation, worrying about something you can't control. You're there, but you're not really there. It happens with your kids, your partner, your friends. It even happens with the things you care about most. Somewhere along the way, peo...

Most of us are chasing something. A promotion, a relationship, a bigger number in the bank account, a child who turns out okay, a room full of people who approve of us. And most of those things are good. The trouble starts quietly, when we stop just wanting them and start needing them to tell us we matter. We reach the goal, feel good for about a week, and then notice there's another one waiting....

Think about the last person you decided didn't deserve a break. Maybe it's someone who hurt you, someone who thinks differently than you, someone whose choices you can't stand behind. If you're honest, some small part of you has probably hoped things would go badly for them. That instinct feels justified. It even feels fair. But this episode asks an uncomfortable question: what if that instinct sa...

Most of us have a version of the same story: something we know we need to do, and a hundred reasons we haven't done it yet. Make the call. Have the hard conversation. Walk away from the thing we've been tolerating. We tell ourselves we're waiting for the right moment, or more information, or just a little more certainty that it'll actually work out. So we wait. And wait. And somewhere along the wa...

Everyone knows what it's like to end up somewhere they never meant to be. Maybe it's a slow drift that finally caught up with you, a choice you can trace back if you're honest enough to look. Or maybe it's something that landed on you out of nowhere... a diagnosis, a loss, a relationship that ended despite everything you tried. Either way, the questions are the same in the middle of the night: how...

There's a version of avoidance we all know intimately: the thing you keep not doing. The conversation you keep not having. The calling, the change, the hard thing you know is right there in front of you, and instead of walking toward it, you quietly book a ticket in the opposite direction. It doesn't feel dramatic in the moment. It just feels like relief. This week kicks off a new series built aro...

We all want the same thing: to change. To finally stick with the workout, fix the relationship, quiet the anxiety, break the habit. And we tend to imagine that change arriving as a single dramatic moment—the breakthrough, the epiphany, the day everything clicks. So when that moment doesn't come, we assume we're doing it wrong, or that we're just not the kind of person who changes. This episode mak...

Some people walk into a room and the whole mood shifts — not because they're loud or impressive, but because something about their presence just makes things better. Other people walk in and you can feel the temperature drop. Here's the uncomfortable truth: nobody is neutral. Every single one of us is changing the atmosphere around us, all the time, whether we mean to or not. The conversation move...

Everybody's waiting on something. A diagnosis. A decision. A phone call that hasn't come yet. And most of us handle the waiting the same way — we either check out completely, or we white-knuckle it, watching the clock, unable to actually live in the meantime. This episode starts there: with the strange, universal discomfort of not knowing when the thing you're waiting for is going to happen. From...

Here's a question most of us avoid: who's actually forming you right now? Not in an abstract way — literally, day to day. Your feed, your job, the people you spend the most time with, the shows you watch before bed. Something is shaping how you see money, success, relationships, and yourself. Most of us never stop to ask what it is, or whether we'd choose it on purpose. The idea at the center of t...

There's a particular kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. You can be in a house full of people who need you, a marriage that looks fine from the outside, a job where everyone depends on you — and still go to bed at night feeling like nobody actually knows what you're carrying. Everyone knows your role. Almost no one knows your pain. This episode starts there, with an old sto...

Summer has a way of filling up our calendars while quietly emptying out everything else. Trips, kids' activities, time off from normal routines — none of it is bad, but somewhere in the middle of all that motion, it's easy to end up busy and depleted at the same time. This episode starts with that very ordinary, very human tension: how do you stay full when life keeps pulling you toward distractio...

Most of us spend a significant amount of energy trying to figure out who we are — scrolling through other people's lives, measuring ourselves against what we've accomplished or failed to accomplish, and quietly wondering if we're enough. The comparison trap is exhausting, and the confidence it occasionally produces never seems to last very long. This episode pushes back on that cycle with a straig...

We all know what it feels like to be in a waiting room. Not just the physical kind — hard chairs, bad lighting, a TV no one picked — but the invisible kind. The one where you're sitting with a relationship that won't heal, a prayer you've said so many times you've almost stopped meaning it, or a version of your life you're still hoping will show up. Waiting is uncomfortable precisely because you'r...

Most of us are running some version of a plan. A career plan, a financial plan, a family plan — maybe a backup plan for the backup plan. And for a lot of us, that planning isn't just practical, it's emotional. Our plans are where we park our sense of security. So when one collapses — a diagnosis, a job loss, a relationship that doesn't hold — it doesn't just disrupt the schedule. It rattles someth...

We've all been there: snapping at someone we love, replaying a fight in our heads for the fifth time, convinced that if the other person would just change, everything would be fine. It's easy to blame stress, circumstances, or the difficult people in our lives. But what if the conflict around us is actually a mirror — showing us something happening underneath the surface that we've been avoiding?...

Think about the wisest person you know. Chances are you didn't think of them because of what they know — you thought of them because of how they live. There's something about the way they handle pressure, treat people, and carry themselves that sets them apart from everyone else who's just loud, smart, or successful. That difference has a name. And in this episode, we're going after it. Most of us...

Most of us have said something we immediately wished we could take back. And most of us can also point to a handful of words — spoken years or even decades ago — that we still carry with us today. Words have a strange persistence. They don't just land and disappear. They echo. Drawing from one of history's most quoted passages on the subject — a short letter written nearly two thousand years ago —...

Most of us have a mental list — without ever writing it down — of who's worth our time. We drift toward the confident, the successful, the people who might open a door for us. And we quietly drift away from everyone else. It's not something we're proud of. Most of the time, we don't even notice we're doing it. This episode takes an honest look at that instinct — the way we size people up in real t...

We’ve all been there: you hear a piece of advice that hits home or have a sudden realization about a habit that’s holding you back, and for a moment, you feel a spark of motivation to change. But then the week gets busy, life gets loud, and that clarity slowly fades. We often find ways to keep living as if we never had the insight at all, leading to a frustrating gap between the person we are on t...

Nobody signs up for suffering. But what if the hardest seasons of your life aren't accidents — what if they're actually doing something? In this episode, Jason Laird opens a brand new series through the Book of James with a question most of us avoid: what if the fire isn't the problem? Drawing from one of the earliest writings in the New Testament, Jason unpacks why trials aren't random, why numbi...