Subscriber Update: Walk Forward Anyway

The Spirit Says "Go"

Walk Forward Anyway

Paul is warned repeatedly: if you go to Jerusalem, you will suffer. The Spirit tells him through multiple voices. And Paul goes anyway.

Friends beg him not to go. The cost is clear. But obedience to integrity is clearer still.

Paul hears the cost. Paul understands the moment. Paul walks forward anyway.

This is not stubbornness. This is not a failure to repent. This is Paul imitating Christ.

“Imitate Me.”

This is no motivational talk. This is vocation in the vale of tears. Christianity is not merely a “spirituality.” This faith is a Way above all ways. We will not be dissuaded. We will not be denied. Take they life, goods, name, child, wife: let these all be gone: the Kingdom remains.

Lent is not about self-improvement. It’s not about religious minimalism. It’s not about proving yourself. Lent is remembering that freedom is not freedom from the Word of God. It is freedom into the Word of God.

Obedience is Not a Bad Word

Your Father loves you. His call is not punishment. His discipline is not harsh. The ash heap is not necessary. The sacrifices are over now.

But what about the pain? The suffering? The loss? The fear?

All things are Yes in Christ Jesus now. Have you never read where it is written, “Truly I tell you, no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and for the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age—houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”

Arguments about Law or Gospel collapse this into gnostic tripe. The sophists twist “the Law” into curses to be avoided and the legalists dissolve grace entirely in the name of traditions taught by men. Underneath, families are hollowed out, congregations are overrun, and men of God are driven to the fringes.

One of you sent me this book. ☝️ Color me impressed. It does what this book 👇 does, but with less “reformed kick.”

In both cases, the epidemic is the loss of obedience as virtue under grace. “No man takes this honor to himself, but [it is] appointed by Him who said, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.’

“[Jesus], in the days of His flesh… offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears … and was heard because of His reverent submission. Though He was Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.”

ὑπακούω (hypakoúō)

ὑπό (hypo) = under, beneath

ἀκούω (akouō) = to hear, to listen

Hatred for obedience is hatred for hearing. It is a refusal to open your ears. It is to demand on the hardening of your heart. Again, I say, burying this under word games about “Law” and “Gospel” does violence to the Lutheran confessions and teaches as commandments the things of men.

Paul does not instruct “older women… to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not enslaved to much wine, teachers of what is good…subject to their own husbands,” for the sake of misogyny, but “so that the word of God may not be dishonored.”

This is that there be no βλασφημέω (blasphēméō), “to damage by speech.”

Paul does not instruct a man to “rule his own household well, having his children in submission with all dignity” for the sake of his pride or power, but so that all may know “how will he take care of the church of God.”

Repentance is not a feeling but a posture. The Spirit is not a multiple choice right answer but a Way. The Kingdom is not a theory but a standard. A banner.

Love

Love without obedience is a tree without fruit. The tarnishing of the word by our anarchal age was foretold by St. Jude as being much more than a matter of relations between a man and his people.

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that … these people, relying on their dreams … reject authority, and blaspheme … all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear … waterless clouds … fruitless trees … wild waves … wandering stars….

Obedience is a call to us all. “Come to Me … and I will give you rest.” There is nothing to earn. There is nothing to prove. There is nothing to atone for.

There are things to stop doing. There are ways that ought not be. There are paths we must not follow. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered.” “Commit your works to Jesus Christ, and your thoughts will be established.” “Trust in Jesus Christ with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

Imitate Me

Do not reject Paul’s admonition. Do not turn your nose up at Peter’s warning. Hear with clarity the encouragement of John:

I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning … because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness … and does not know where he is going.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him … but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

John wrote this to show us our sin. John wrote this to curb our fleshly desires. John wrote this to guide us in the Way to go. John wrote this because it is True. Without this truth, we get what we see everywhere: spiritual language with no spine, freedom with no direction, mercy with no formation.

And that vacuum is being filled fast. By AI. By algorithmic persuasion. By dopamine loops. By synthetic authority. By loud women. By wicked men. By “conspiracy! conspiracy!” And by sin trumped up in many labels that prevent repentance, that stop us from turning, that trap us in a Babel of accusation, blame and bitterness.

The Cost

The collapse of the visible churches that has been upon us for decades is not a moral issue alone. It is a covenantal thinning. It is a “Yes, but” mentality. It is “Did God really say” applied stringently even by those who most loudly claim the name of Jesus as their own. Faith without works is dead, even as works without faith are not the works of God.

“I am ready to die for the Name,” Paul said. Not because he loved suffering. Because he had been loved by Jesus Christ. Not hustle. Not spectacle. Not spiritual branding. Not politics. Not better homes and gardens.

Submission. On a cross. The hearing that flows from sonship. The love that drives out fear.

Narratives will keep multiplying. The world will keep accelerating. Women will keep rejecting their men and men will keep tyrannizing their women. But the question of Lent remains the same:

Who are you following?

Are you going to stop just because they shout at you? Or are you going to walk forward anyway?

Updates: Every Place is Over

This week felt quiet on the surface compared to last week. But that is probably more a matter of the crazy normalizing more than it is the normal returning.

With the Commander in Chief simultaneously fighting a tariff war with the SCOTUS, directing troop amassment near the Strait of Hormuz, and overseeing the slow walk out of digital currencies tied to the blockchain, he also took the time to join forces with Barack Obama in stoking the fires of alien stories.

The thing that startled me most this week—more than politics, more than markets, more than personal upheaval—was realizing how much of the artificial-intelligence revolution is happening underground. Not hidden exactly, just invisible unless you’re already standing in the stream: on X, in research threads, in founder circles, in quiet demo videos that never make the evening news.

Capital is pouring into narrow entry points. Startups and nation-states are racing for leverage. You hear Elon rhyming about orbital or atmospheric compute, solar-fed systems meant to undercut terrestrial costs, proposals tied to universal wealth.

Two things are happening at once: men are boasting of their power to change the world; and it’s actually happening. The curve has gone vertical.

I’ve spent my whole life keeping pace with change. This is the first season where I can’t. There are too many new tools. There’s too much news about the new tools. Too many claims arriving at once. Math problems are falling. New physics frameworks are appearing. Art and short films are crossing a threshold where they outshine what Hollywood used to spend millions to achieve.

The advocates speak in the language of Eden: universal plenty, frictionless abundance, a world finally cured of scarcity. Meanwhile, voices like Eric Weinstein warn that white-collar work is headed for extinction. Both camps may be exaggerating. But exaggeration doesn’t negate trajectory. Robotics alone has crossed from novelty into inevitability, and it’s moving faster than our institutions can metabolize.

So I find myself asking older questions with sharper edges. What does Christian discernment look like when images think back at us? What does it mean to worship—or resist—the three-dimensional idol, when it sings, paints, and persuades? What happens to the average worker when cognition becomes a commodity?

I fear loss of comfort but I fear loss of conscience much more. The likely outcome is not persecution but accommodation. People will buy, sell, trade, comply—put on whatever mask is required to stay onboard. Buildings will be preserved. Accounts will be kept solvent. And somewhere in that bargain, faith will be quietly negotiated away.

I don’t have a clever solution. I have Lent. Not a tech boycott. Refusing to close my eyes and hope that it will all go away while handing the kids to the algorithm. If a single generation drifted under the soft power of television, this amplification defies imagination. It portends a collapse—not of infrastructure, but of formation. Christian civilization won’t fall because the robots got smarter. It will fall because our hearts are going slack.

Here’s the paradox that keeps me awake wondering what went wrong in my household: in the same hour that synthetic voices threaten to become our catechists, you can sit down with the original languages of Scripture and let a machine tutor you patiently through Greek or Hebrew. You can learn to build whatever you want to build. You can read and write whatever you want to write. You can level up your understanding with belief that the Word of God redeems the tools.

You can build a Peace Bot.

The tools that hollow us out can also sharpen us. The future won’t be decided by silicon alone. It will be decided by what we love, what we refuse to sell, and whether we have the courage to become apprentices again while the world accelerates past us.

@flicker4501

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Thank You

Thank you for supporting me. Whether on Patreon, Subscribestar or as a paying subscriber here. My daily grind is keeping the house bills paid, but it is your abundance shared with me that is making it possible to continue to send something to my children. There is a narrow window that will soon close, after which our former healthcare package will run out. I’m managing our resources to keep them covered after the wheels fall off for as long as I can. But I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. And, I don’t know what any of it really means.

For the sake of good order, and because I believe in covenant, I continue to pray that repentance and mutual submission to Jesus Christ will open a way for our family to rise up to new days of mercy and peace. As anyone who has lived through family trials knows, there are no unilateral answers. Jesus must bring the healing. Trust is a two-way street.

So, your prayers remain more valuable to me than any offerings or gifts. Implore Him, as I am doing, for mutuality, for wisdom and for peace that will lead to a new dawn and a chance to put my voice to work for a local parish again.

Imitating Paul, I press onward toward the goal. I walk forward anyway. I accept the lot that has fallen. And, I discipline my body to count it all joy to suffer for the Name of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for walking in forgiveness with me. Thank you for desiring mercy rather than sacrifice. Thank you for believing with me that we shall overcome. Let us stand, indeed.