The Courage to Reveal

“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” — Philippians 2:13

“We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” — 2 Corinthians 3:18

Editing Ourselves

One of the most freeing moments I’ve had recently happened while talking about our vision of Bramhaven.

Some new friends asked about the vision.

As I began describing it, I noticed something familiar happening.

I started editing.

Not because I didn’t know the vision.

Because I was afraid of how large it sounded.

I found myself softening it.
Adding explanations.
Leaving pieces out.
Trying to make it sound more reasonable.

Then my friend reached across the table and gently said,

“You know the vision. Don’t be afraid to speak it without needing to justify it.”

Her words caught me completely off guard.

Because I realized…

I’ve been editing myself for most of my life.

“Who Do You Think You Are?”

When you’ve spent time around people who misunderstand, criticize, or feel threatened by what God has placed inside you, you learn to make yourself smaller.

Not necessarily through fear.

Through accommodation.

You become fluent in reading the room.

You instinctively know which parts of yourself feel “too much.”

So you trim them away before anyone else can.

Eventually, you forget what your full voice even sounds like.

I don’t think I’m alone in that.

I think many of us carry religious voices long after we’ve left religion behind.

Voices that whisper,

“Don’t sound too confident.”

“Don’t dream too big.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“Be humble.”

But humility was never pretending God said less than He did.

Humility is agreeing with Him.

No more.

No less.

Jesus Lifts Our Gaze

The more I read the Gospels, the more I realize Jesus spent very little time trying to make people behave differently before He first taught them to see differently.

The disciples saw five loaves.

Jesus saw a feast.

They saw a storm.

Jesus saw an opportunity to reveal the Father.

They saw children as interruptions.

Jesus saw the Kingdom.

They saw a blind beggar.

Jesus saw a son whose faith could already see.

Again and again, He wasn’t simply giving people new information.

He was lifting their eyes.

Religion teaches us to look down.

At our failures.

Our lack.

Our limitations.

Our performance.

The Kingdom lifts our gaze.

Not because reality is ignored.

But because there is a greater reality the Father is inviting us to see.

Ask Him, “How do you see this?”

His perspecive is the revelation, but we forget to ask.

We assume we know.

Ask Him.

Living Alive in the Father

I think we’ve often misunderstood Jesus.

We admire Him for His miracles.

We marvel at His wisdom.

But what if His greatest revelation wasn’t simply showing us what God is like?

What if He was also showing us what humanity looks like when it is completely alive in the Father?

One of my favorite quotes by Saint Irenaeus says, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

I want to live fully alive.

Jesus never edited Himself.

He never apologized for what the Father was saying.

He never made Himself smaller because people were uncomfortable with the largeness of the Kingdom.

Yet He was never self-promoting.

Never ambitious.

Never trying to prove Himself.

He simply lived in complete agreement with His Father.

Every miracle…

Every parable…

Every act of compassion…

Every invitation…

Was simply the life of the Father being revealed through a Son who had nothing to prove.

Perhaps that’s why He could say,

“Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.”

He wasn’t trying to become someone extraordinary.

He was revealing the One who lived within Him.

Unveiling

As we’ve walked away from transactional faith, I’ve realized that transformation isn’t becoming someone else.

It’s uncovering who God created us to be.

Not construction.

Unveiling.

Recently I remembered a vision the Lord gave me.

in the vision, I was living in a tiny shack.

As He showed me the lies that had kept me there, I realized I could leave.

We walked across a field until we came to Bramhaven.

As we entered the estate, many of the rooms were closed and waiting to be opened.

At the time, I thought they were empty because I didn’t know how to fill them.

Now I see something different.

They weren’t empty.

The furnishings inside were covered in protective sheets, simply waiting to be uncovered.

This year, one room opened when I stopped trying to master the Kingdom and began receiving it.

Another when I discovered that beholding changes us more deeply than striving.

Another when I stopped trying to create someone else’s world and began embracing the world God placed inside me.

Another when I realized beauty isn’t a distraction from the Kingdom—it can reveal it.

Another when I found the courage to stop apologizing for the vision.

I haven’t been building a new house.

I’ve been uncovering the one He always intended.

One Voice

Perhaps that’s what transformation has been all along.

Not adding something that was missing.

Removing everything that has kept us from revealing the life already planted within us.

Maybe that’s why the journey out of religion can feel so disorienting.

We’re not just learning new theology.

We’re shedding old voices.

Voices that taught us to live cautiously.

To make ourselves smaller.

To explain away the impossible.

To edit what God was writing.

Until finally, only one voice remains.

The Father’s.

The One who has been speaking over us from the very beginning.

“This is who you are.”

Taste and See

My life verse is:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

For years I thought that was simply an invitation to experience God.

Now I wonder if it’s also an invitation to reveal Him.

Perhaps the Kingdom has never been asking us merely to explain God’s goodness.

Perhaps it has always been inviting us to become people through whom others can taste and see it.

Not only through our words.

But through our homes.

Our hospitality.

Our tables.

Our gardens.

Our work.

Our beauty.

Our generosity.

Our courage.

Our lives.

Maybe that is what Jesus was revealing all along.

Not people trying to become more spiritual.

But sons and daughters becoming so aligned with the Father’s voice that they no longer need to edit themselves.

They simply reveal Him.

In everything you do -eat, play, and love- may it always be Seasoned with Joy!

Let’s Continue to Go Deeper…