Before the Lord

Blake opens with a confession: during the last election, he let the political fight spill onto his social media — and it cost him his witness with a younger sister in Christ who had been reading his devotionals. To borrow Matthew 5:13, his salt lost its flavor. In this episode he traces how it happened, and the harder truth underneath it: few things make a believer go flat faster than caring more...

A cartoon by Mike Waters has stuck with Blake: a man fed up with a fence labeled “God's Commands” jumps over it — only to discover it wasn't a fence at all, but a guardrail at the edge of a cliff. In this episode Blake reframes God's commands the way the cartoon does: not a warden's fence meant to confine us, but guardrails set by a Father who loves us, placed at the edge of cliffs...

I know the moment my temper starts looking for a target — early evening, after a day when nothing went as planned, walking through the door wanting peace and finding chaos instead. Here's what I've learned to ask: what am I actually angry about? Because it's rarely the spilled milk. Underneath almost every outburst is a desire I carried through the door that went unmet. But here's...

One of the most dangerous places we can find ourselves spiritually, Blake says, is drifting from God without ever realizing it. We picture spiritual drift as something obvious — skipping church, dropping prayer, a visible pattern of sin. But what if the drift is quieter: we keep doing all the outwardly Christian things while our hearts slowly begin to pursue something else? In this episode Blake w...

Few things test our faith like waiting on God for an answer that never comes. In this episode — the third and final movement of the Power of Patience series — Blake gets underneath the how of waiting to the what it rests on. Prayer and stillness only hold, he says, if they rest on Someone who won't move. Drawing on Psalm 62, where a little Hebrew word meaning “only” drums through the psalm six...

When we're waiting on God and the answer won't come, Blake says the hardest thing He asks isn't to keep believing — it's to hold still. In this episode he unpacks why: everything in us equates action with progress, so we scramble to fix and manage even when we haven't heard from God. Drawing on Henry Blackaby's memorable inversion — “Don't just do something, stand there...

Few things test our faith like waiting on God — we pray, and then nothing. In this episode, Blake names the two ditches we fall into: forcing an answer ourselves, or going passive and checking out. Biblical waiting, he says, is neither — it’s active trust. He walks through what happens when we rush ahead (“creating an Ishmael,” from Abraham to Saul to Israel), then reframes the silence itself: God...

Where does real boldness come from? In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 3:12 — “since we have such a hope, we are very bold” — and draws the line between the self-made confidence the world sells (built on success, competence, and money) and a God-powered boldness that holds steady no matter the circumstances. The difference is the source: one collapses the moment life strips it away; the ot...

In this episode, Blake tells a simple story that reoriented his walk with God. While hosting longtime mentors for the weekend, he caught sight of his friend early one morning on the lanai — just a man and his Bible, deep in conversation with the Lord. It sent Blake into an honest reflection on his own quiet time, cluttered with journals, software, and highlighters, and wondering why his friend see...

In this episode, Blake opens one of his all-time favorite books — Larry Crabb’s The Silence of Adam (later Becoming a Man of Courage) — and lays out five marks of a godly man in his own words: strong, not powerless; active, not aggressive; at peace; always room to move; and free and purposeful. It’s a quieter, sturdier picture of manhood than the culture’s loud caricature — and, as Blake frames it...

In this episode, Blake opens with a story he isn’t proud of — putting on a show to impress the people around him on a business trip, until the friend on the other end of the phone asked the question that shredded his ego: “Who are you trying to impress?” From that sting he turns to Proverbs 29:1 and its sober warning: the one “often reproved” who keeps stiffening his neck “will suddenly be broken...

Peacemakers

Rejoice, Pray, Give Thanks

Matthew 6:33 - First Things First

John 15 - God's Love

Proverbs 15 - Pride

In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 22:1 — “a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches” — and names the gap between what we say we believe and what we actually chase. A good name, he explains, isn’t image management; it’s character made visible. And drawing on Luke 6:45, he locates where that character grows: the heart. A heart brings out what fills it, so a good name isn’t manufacture...

In this episode, Blake opens Mark 10 and lingers on a phrase that’s easy to read past: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” A rich young man kneels in the road asking how to inherit eternal life, and before a single word of challenge, Jesus fixes His gaze and truly sees him — then loves him. Blake draws out the order that follows: Jesus looked, loved, and only then spoke the hardest, costliest...

Insolence — an old word for a pride so sure of itself it won’t be told anything. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 13:10 and traces the line Solomon draws: arrogance breeds strife, while humility that listens and takes counsel breeds wisdom and peace. Underneath most conflict, he says, is a quiet need to be right, to win, to not back down — and he shares a phrase from his friend Scott Engelman...

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.” In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 13:5, where the Corinthians were busy questioning Paul — and Paul flips the script, turning the lens back on them. It’s the move we all need, Blake says, because it’s so much easier to spot what’s wrong in someone else than in ourselves. But genuine faith isn’t merely something we agree with; it’s...

It’s five words from James 1:27 that Blake can’t put down: “keep oneself unstained from the world.” In this episode, he looks at how the world actually stains a soul — not with one dramatic splash we’d catch and wipe away, but through what slips past us unnoticed, a drop at a time, until one day the white isn’t white anymore. Drawing on Romans 12:2, he frames the two directions a life can move — a...

It’s possible to know a lot about God and still have a heart that’s never experienced Him. In this episode, Blake opens 2 Corinthians 3 and draws out Paul’s picture of truth written not “on tablets of stone” but “on tablets of human hearts” — the very difference between head and heart. Head knowledge is truth on the outside; heart knowledge is that same truth moved inside, until it’s not just some...

One thread in Proverbs 4 stopped Blake cold: a parent’s job is to pass godly wisdom down to their children — not by accident, but on purpose. In this episode, he opens Solomon’s words as a handoff between generations, and names the quiet culprit that crowds it out for most of us: the sheer noise of the calendar. Drawing on Deuteronomy 6, wisdom is passed in the ordinary moments — the car ride, the...

We live with more access to applause than any generation in history — and social media has turned it into an obsession. In this episode, Blake opens the wisdom of Proverbs on praise and glory, and names the tender hunger underneath our scrolling: a longing to be seen, known, and loved. Carried to the crowd, he says, it’s like living on cotton candy — sweet for a second, and somehow leaving us empt...

One sentence can undo in five seconds what took five years to build. In this episode, Blake opens James 3 and walks through the apostle’s three vivid pictures of the tongue — the bridle that steers a horse, the rudder that turns a ship, and the spark that sets a forest ablaze. Each one carries the same truth: something small can control something large, for good or for harm. But James also says so...