I want to tell you about a grief I never had. I didn't manage it with willpower, and I wasn't being brave. What kept that grief from moving in was the calm, settled comfort of knowing exactly Who was in the room with me, and exactly where I was going if I didn't survive.

A few years back, I received an unthinkable diagnosis. A renowned neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic sat across from me and described something growing inside my skull that, in his own words, he had never seen documented in quite that way before. Two brain surgeries and a stroke later, I’m still here, greeting you from this page—so you already know how the chapter ended. But I want to be honest about the middle of it, because that’s where the real question lives: what do you do with news like that—the dread diagnosis?

Here’s what surprised several people around me. I never grieved the prospective loss of my own life—not the way I’ve watched good people grieve such a serious diagnosis, with the sleepless 3 a.m. spirals, the bargaining, the dread that seeps into grocery runs and bedtime prayers and every quiet dinner at the table.

Not that I felt no fear. I did, just not the fear you’d probably expect. I wasn’t afraid of the anesthesia, or the scalpel, or even of dying on the table. My fear was narrower and heavier: that I’d survive the surgery and wake up changed on the inside—that the nerve damage to my brain might change my personality and I might no longer love my wife and children the way I always wanted to. That fear was genuine, and it was mine. Most people facing news like that are afraid, plainly and understandably, of dying itself, and I get that. Mine simply took a different shape.

Underneath the fear, though, there was no grief over losing my life, and I believe that’s because losing it isn’t really a loss. Not when you know, all the way down, that what waits past that threshold isn’t an ending but a far better life.

That difference has a name, and the Apostle Paul gave it to us two thousand years ago, writing to a grieving church in Thessalonica: “We do not want you to be uninformed... about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Paul was talking about grieving a loved one’s death, and that grief belongs there every time. Losing someone is still a loss; I’m not telling you to skip the tears at a graveside. I’d be concerned about you if you did. But that same verse quietly answers a second type of grief nobody preaches on: the grief of learning your own life may be shorter than you expected.

That second grief is real, and it isn’t shameful. Anyone who tells you a frightening diagnosis should simply bounce off a person of faith has never received one. But hard news and hopeless grief are two different animals, and what separates them is whether you trust Who is waiting on the other side of this brief life.

So let me show you the thing that keeps my own life the right size in my head.

Scripture’s own genealogies—Genesis 5, Genesis 11, and Luke 3—run ten generations from Adam to Noah and some sixty-six more from Noah to Jesus. Carry that rhythm forward another two thousand years—to our era—and you land somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred generations, give or take, depending on how you count. Not a hundred thousand. Not a hundred million. A number of people you could sit down and list by name—all the generations from Adam’s to yours.

Now set your own life inside that. Call it seventy-five years, reasonable by Moses' math—"the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty" (Psalm 90:10). Give every year of human history a page of its own and you'd be holding a book six thousand pages long, three or four family Bibles thick, stacked spine to spine on the shelf. Your entire life is contained in one brief chapter of that book, somewhere in the middle of the last section. And that entire book is a mere pamphlet next to what comes after.

Here’s where the arithmetic quits on us, because eternity is bigger than the equipment we were issued, and no illustration really captures it. The best any of them can do is leave you a little less lost than you were.

My favorite comes from the historian Hendrik Willem van Loon. He describes a mountain in a northern land called Svithjod, one hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. For scale, Mount Everest stands about five and a half miles above sea level, so we are talking about eighteen Everests stacked one on another. Once every thousand years, a little bird lands on that mountain and sharpens its beak against the stone, wearing away the smallest imaginable bit of stone. When the whole mountain has finally been worn down to nothing, one beak-sharpening per millennium, a single day of eternity will have passed. One day. Not eternity—just its first day.

Sit with that a moment. Every generation since Adam, every kingdom that rose and fell, every war, every wedding, every walk to the mailbox any of us has ever taken—the whole six-thousand-year run of it—wouldn’t register as one coffee break against forever. And I’m supposed to lose sleep over the timing of my seventy-five years?

But I want to be careful here, because bigness on its own is no comfort. If all I had were the mountain and the bird, I'd be left holding nothing but my own smallness, and smallness is scant company at three in the morning. What turned that arithmetic into comfort instead of a crushing weight is that the eternity on the far side of it is not empty. There is a Person in it. Jesus Christ walked into death ahead of me, came out the other side on the third day, and said, "Because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19). That is the whole reason the numbers read as good news. He has already made the trip. He knows the road. He has promised to come back for His own.

None of this erases your fear, or mine, but it’s the reason our fear doesn’t have to harden into grief. James wrote it more simply than I ever could: “What is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14, NKJV). A vapor—you’ve seen your own breath on a chilly morning, there, visible, gone. That’s the honest length of a human life against Svithjod's mountain, against eternity itself. And Paul, writing from a prison cell, turned that same brevity into comfort: “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). A life this brief was measured out short on purpose, so that what follows it could be measured in mountains, and birds, and eternity’s first, unfinished day.

That’s what sat with me in that clinic room, and it’s what let a genuinely dangerous diagnosis pass through me without leaving grief behind—not because I’m braver than you, but because I’d already been shown Who was waiting at the end of the vapor, and I trusted the report. “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3, NKJV) turned out to be literally true in my chest at three in the morning, more nights than I could count.

If you’re holding a diagnosis today, or grieving someone who has already gone on ahead of you, I’m not asking you to stop feeling what you feel. But there is a second layer underneath the fear, wide and calm, and its name is hope. It doesn’t erase the hard news. It only makes sure the hard news never gets the last word. Christ is enough for the diagnosis, enough for the operating room, and enough for whatever waits at the end of the vapor—and He will still be enough on the morning the little bird’s first day of eternity finally dawns.

Let it hold you there tonight, just as it continues to hold me.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
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Pull your chair a little closer to the fire. What follows only works if we’re close enough that neither of us can pretend not to hear it.

Here’s a sentence we say more often than we might realize: “I’m a ___ Christian.” Fill in the blank as you like—I’ve heard it filled a dozen ways, in quiet confessions after the sanctuary emptied. The blank never named a truth about the person—it named a decision they’d made not to repent.

Think of it this way: a child who trips over the rug is one thing—she didn’t mean to stumble. A child who plants her feet and dares you to move her is something else, and God, patient as He is with both, doesn’t pretend they’re the same. Both get His compassion. Only one gets called what it actually is—willful disobedience.

Today’s letter isn’t about the trips and stumbles—it’s about the sins we’ve planted our feet on and call by nicer, more polite names.

Nobody says to me, “I’m a bank-robbing Christian.” Such behavior is plainly wrong, so nobody bothers dressing it up. But consider what we do with the softer sins: we list the behavior first and let the noun, “Christian,” trail along behind it, as though it’s there to validate it. “I’m a Christian” needs no qualifier—it already means follower of Christ, full stop. The moment we start adding descriptors, ask which word is actually defining us. It’s almost never the noun, and the two are always at odds.

“I’m a sexually active Christian.” Meaning: I’m sleeping with someone I’m not married to, and since almost everyone I know does the same, I’ve decided it doesn’t count as sexual immorality anymore. Paul disagreed: “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Not a suggestion. The will of God.

“I’m a money-grubbing Christian.” Meaning: the pursuit of more has quietly become the organizing principle of my life, while I still call Jesus first on Sundays. Our culture celebrates this, wrapping it in words like “security” and “the American Dream.” But Paul’s warning to Timothy stands: “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10). Jesus was blunter: “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

“I’m a porn-watching Christian.” Meaning: I’ve decided this one is private and common enough not to count with the sins people get caught for. Jesus didn’t grade it that gently: “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). He moved the line inside your own skull.

“I’m an egocentric Christian.” Meaning: my preferences quietly outrank everyone else’s, including God’s, and I’ve decided that’s just how I’m wired, not something to repent of. Philippians offers no exemption: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

“I’m a homosexual Christian.” Meaning: I’ve settled into a lifestyle of same-sex relationships, and I’ve decided it doesn’t need to come to the same altar as everything else here because our culture has wholeheartedly endorsed it. (When did our culture’s endorsement displace God’s approval?) Paul names this sin alongside others already on this list—thieves, the greedy, slanderers—then says: “such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Were. Past tense, forgiven by the same grace offered to everyone here, but never meant to be sustained.

“I’m an unforgiving Christian.” Meaning: I’ve decided that holding a grudge differs from sin, because I was the one wronged, and I’m still waiting for an apology that may never come. Peter once asked how many times he had to forgive, probably hoping for a number he could count to and stop—Jesus said seventy-seven times (or seventy times seven—either version meaning that we don’t bother counting), then told of a servant forgiven an enormous debt who turned around and refused to forgive a much smaller one. The king’s response was not gentle (Matthew 18:21-35). Whoa.

I could keep going, but here’s what matters: none of us is sinless, and stumbling through ordinary life isn’t what I’m describing here. I mean the sins we’ve planted a flag in—staked a claim on, built a life around, and declared, this is me, this is who I am. That’s not weakness—that’s hypocrisy, and we all carry some version of it. The real question isn’t whether we have it, but whether we wear it proudly, like a badge. That’s a matter of choice: whose voice gets to define you—the world’s, or His? John says that the world and its desires are passing away, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17). That’s not a religious affiliation, but a determined choice to follow and obey Him, day after day. So ask honestly: have you determined that your own preferences get to be your primary identifier—or has He? Jesus said whoever follows Him must deny himself and take up his cross daily (Luke 9:23)—death to self. If “sexually active” is the flag you’ve planted, and “Christian” is just stitched on behind it, that reveals whose voice you’ve decided matters more.

Paul wrote a version of this list long ago: “the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity... enmity, strife, jealousy... those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21). Hard verse. But he doesn’t stop there—next he describes what grows when a life stops excusing and starts surrendering: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23), because “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions” (Galatians 5:24). Crucified, not managed.

None of this is a performance test. Ephesians 5:3 names these same categories—sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness—then states the goal plainly: these things “must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.” Holy. Not perfect by morning, but set apart and moving—grace training us “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives” (Titus 2:11-12). If your holiness hasn’t moved forward in years, ask whether you’re still choosing it.

So here’s what I’m asking, plainly. Whatever adjective you’ve put in front of “Christian” to make peace with something you already know isn’t right—say the real word today. Out loud if you’re alone, silently if not, straight to God. Not to earn His love—you already have that—but so He can deal with the thing, instead of co-managing it with you indefinitely.

Name it. Today. Ask God to help you actually surrender it, not just feel better about it for a while. Then tell one person you trust—a spouse, a pastor, a friend who won’t flinch—because confession kept private tends to stay exactly where it started, and confession to one another brings healing (James 5:16).

He is not waiting to condemn you. He’s waiting to welcome you home, the way He always has.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
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Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. What’s the real word behind the adjective I’ve been hiding behind?

2. Who is one person I trust enough to say that word to out loud?

3. What would it look like, today, to actually bring this to God instead of quietly carrying it alone?

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You may have had that sentence on the tip of your tongue, or at least it has been a quiet undercurrent in your heart. You are not the only one. I can’t put a number on how often I have heard it, and for the most part it is not said with any kind of bravado. More often than not, there is a sigh to it, or a wistful half‑smile from a person who was once a fixture on Sunday mornings. Someone who would sing the worship songs with all sincerity, shake hands, listen to what was preached and serve where he or she could, fully convinced the church was the safest ground to be on.

And then, for you, it turned out to be the source of some of your worst pain.

Maybe it was an insensitive word dropped like a stone in the middle of your grief. Maybe it was gossip that shredded your name in the very place where you thought your story would be protected. Maybe it was a leader who wrapped control and manipulation in spiritual language. Maybe it was being invisible—carrying heavy burdens while others talked about love and never looked your way. Whatever the details, the common thread is that the church, which is meant to embody the kindness of Christ, became a place where you felt exposed, misunderstood, shamed, or betrayed.

If that is your story, I want you to hear something clearly early in this letter: you are not foolish for hurting. You are not overly sensitive because you still wince when certain memories surface. You are not weak because sitting in a church parking lot makes your chest tighten. Some of the heaviest hurts in life come from the hands of people who were supposed to be safe. When those hands belong to fellow believers, the pain can go down to the bone.

Many people use the word hypocrisy to describe what they meet in church. They hear people who often speak of grace but do not extend it to others. They hear sermons about love and humility and then watch leaders operate with pride and self‑importance. They watch some Christians bless others with their lips and curse them behind closed doors. Hypocrisy is not a small failure; it is a deep fracture between confession and life. That it happens “in church” does not make it holy. It makes it more confusing, more disorienting, and often far more devastating. You expected some cruelty from the world. You did not expect it from the people who sing about mercy and ask God to refine them in His holy fire.

If this letter does nothing more than sit beside you and say, “Yes, it did hurt, and what was done to you was wrong,” that might already be a kind of relief. The church was meant to be a place of honest love and gentle care. When it was not, that failure should be named. You do not need to pretend that your story is softer than it is. Your tears matter. God has not dismissed them.

At the same time, I want to gently invite you to consider one more layer—not instead of your pain, but alongside it. Scripture says, “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with all.” (Romans 12:18). That does not mean you must return to unsafe people or unsafe leadership. It does not mean you must ignore lies, abuse, or deep betrayal. But it does ask a sober question of the heart: as far as it depends on me, have I sought peace?

You may have truly done all you could. You may have tried to speak up, tried to reconcile, tried to forgive, tried to stay, and still found that the situation was damaging your soul. Leaving may have been the only way to survive. If that is the case, then your decision carries its own kind of courage.

Others, if they look carefully, may see places where their pain began to drive their every response. Places where listening stopped. Where forgiveness was withheld. Where bitterness was silently fed. Where isolation became more comfortable than risk. None of this erases what others did. But there is a kind of freedom that only comes when we let God show us not only how we have been sinned against but also how we have sinned against others within the story of our hurt. That is part of what “as far as it depends on you” means. It is an invitation to let the Holy Spirit search the corners of our hearts, not to condemn the wounded, but to set them free more completely — free from the condemnation we would level at them.

Still, even that is not the deepest point of this letter. When Scripture says, “Do not forsake the gathering of yourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25), it is not merely commanding us to attend a religious meeting—don’t make that mistake. It is calling us to be something together—to be a people who encourage one another, bear one another’s burdens, stir one another to love and good works, confess and forgive, worship and grow, weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

In other words, the call of God is not simply, “Go to church.” It is, much more deeply, to BE the church.

That is part of why church hurt is so bitter: the wound does not come only from a building or a program, but from a body of people that was supposed to live like Christ and has failed at it. The flock was meant to protect its weakest sheep. Instead, some sheep bit, others wandered, and some shepherds were more interested in building their own platforms than in tending to the needs of souls. When that happens, people do not just lose trust in a Sunday service. They begin to wonder if a truly Christ shaped community is even possible.

If you are in that place—caught between longing and mistrust—then for now, this letter will not pressure you to walk back into the nearest church building next Sunday. It will do something gentler. It will remind you why believers still need the church at all and then entrust you to the Shepherd who knows how to lead wounded sheep.

You and I need places where Scripture is opened, and Christ is preached in truth and humility. We need brothers and sisters who will sit with us in grief and remind us of hope. We need relationships where someone will gently confront us when we are wandering, and where we can use the gifts God has given us for the good of others. We need tables where the bread and the cup call us again to remember the One who gave Himself for us. We need imperfect people who are learning to repent and forgive so that together we can all slowly become what we were meant to be.

If the church you knew became a place of deep hurt, it may have been wise—necessary, even—that you stepped away. Sometimes leaving is the only way to keep breathing. But staying gone forever is not the only story God can write. It may be, in time, that the same Christ who has sat with you in your pain will lead you toward a different flock—a healthier body, a humbler community, a congregation more interested in being the church than merely dressing like one.

Until that day, if all you can do is sit by the hearth and tell your story honestly to Him, that is enough. He is not waiting for you at the end of the road with folded arms, tapping His foot while He marks a checklist. He is with you in the middle of the road, patient and gentle. And if He still calls His people “His body,” then somewhere, somehow, He has not given up on the possibility of you belonging there—not as someone who merely goes to church, but as someone who, with others, slowly learns again what it means to be the church.

I believe it is His desire to bring reconciliation between all believers. You’ve been hurt, and that is the truth of it. But without you there, His body is missing a vital organ. You are not just wanted. You are needed.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><

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If you’d like to talk about this with a trusted friend, pastor, or small group, here are a few questions that might help you begin:

1. When you think about your own story, what specific moments of church hurt still feel most tender, and why?

2. In those moments, what did you most need from God’s people that you did not receive—comfort, honesty, protection, repentance, something else?

3. When you hear, “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with all,” what feelings rise first—resistance, weariness, hope, confusion?

4. Looking back, are there any ways pre-existing pain shaped your responses—your words, your silence, your decisions—in ways you now wish had been different?

5. What would it take—for your heart and your story—for you to consider trusting a church again, even a little?

6. Turning the light in the other direction now, how have you failed in your relationship with the church? How might you approach things next time?

7. As you sit with Christ at the hearth, what would you most like to say to Him about your experience with His people—and what do you most need to hear from Him in return?

I want to begin with a confession, and you may recognize yourself in it. I have a tendency — and I do not always enjoy admitting it — to look hard at what I do not have. At what I have lost.

If you’ve read my earlier letters, you know that a rare brain disorder came into my life in 2021 and required surgery at the Mayo Clinic. In its wake came nerve damage, a paralyzed vocal mechanism, and the grief of watching abilities I had leaned on my whole life slip out of my hands. And so it has become easy to take a long inventory of the missing things — the voice I used to have, the strength and health I once had. Even long before the surgery, I knew this habit well: the resources our little church lacked, the gifts I felt I lacked, the resources that belonged to others. The list, if I let myself go, is easy to build.

Here is what I have come to believe, and I offer it to you gently, for you to weigh for yourself: it is terribly easy to miss the value and the power of the things we have. We become so fixed on the empty places that we cannot see what is already in our open hand.

I keep returning to Moses. You remember his story: born into danger, raised in Egypt, then forty years as a shepherd in Midian. And when God called him from the burning bush to set His people free, Moses did what most of us would do. He began listing what he did not have. Who am I? They will not believe me. I am not a good speaker; I stammer. I have no standing, no eloquence, no confidence for a task of this gravity.

And God did not argue with the inventory. He simply asked a question — the one that is the heart of this letter. “What is that in your hand?” It was only a staff, an ordinary shepherd’s stick. But God said, throw it down, and it became a serpent; pick it up, and it became a staff again. God took the plain thing Moses already had and made it the instrument of deliverance for an entire nation.

That is the premise I want to place in your hands today: God uses ordinary things and ordinary people to do extraordinary and even miraculous things. But oh, how easily we miss it, snared in “what don’t I have” instead of “what do I have.”

Have you ever noticed how quick we are to correct God? Moses did — Lord, You have the wrong man. Jeremiah did — I am only a youth. We are remarkably skilled at reciting the reasons God cannot use us, and at overlooking what He has already placed in our care. The lesson is simply this: take what He has given you and use it for His glory.

Scripture tells this story over and over. Think of the widow at Zarephath in 1 Kings 17. Elijah asks her for bread, and she answers out of her despair: I have nothing but a handful of flour and a little oil; I am gathering sticks to bake one last loaf, and then my son and I will eat it and die. And what does Elijah ask? The same question — what do you have? Make it, he says. And that meager handful fed the prophet, the widow, and the rest of her household until the famine broke. It began with a nearly empty jar and the question, what do you have?

Think of the disciples in Mark 6, as the day grew late and thousands pressed close. Send them away to buy food, they said — handing the Lord their tidy list of steps. Have you ever done that? Jesus said, you feed them. And He asked the question again: what do you have? Five loaves and two fish. It isn’t enough, Lord. Take it, He said. And five thousand men, besides women and children, ate until they were satisfied, with twelve baskets left over.

And here is the part that moves me most, because it shows this truth can be learned. In Acts 3, Peter and John go up to the temple, and at the gate called Beautiful, a man lame from birth asks them for money. Peter says, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And the man who had never once stood, rose to his feet — walking and leaping and praising God. Peter knew exactly what he lacked, but he no longer let the lack define him, for he had learned he possessed something far greater: the name of the Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Because he didn’t have what was asked, a multitude saw the glory of God that day. Five thousand men placed their faith in Christ.

Imagine how the moment might have unfolded if Peter had carried silver or gold. He could have pressed a few coins into the man’s hand and walked on into the temple. The man would have received exactly what he asked for — a small mercy, quickly spent — but there would have been no miracle, no astonished crowd, and no surge of new believers.

In the end, it was Peter and John’s lack, not any supply of riches, that became the very ground on which God moved that day. It all began with what they did not have.

Even the temple rulers felt it. When they hauled Peter and John in, Scripture says they were astonished, for they perceived that these were ordinary, unschooled men. No pedigree, no credentials, nothing that should have given them any standing. So many things they lacked. And still — what did they have? The Spirit, and the name and power of Jesus Christ. That was more than enough.

So let me ask you plainly what God asks: what do you have? What is that in your hand, in your home, in your accounting of days? I know how the other list runs, because I run it too — I don’t have the talent, the resources, the health, the years I used to have. And how often have we disqualified ourselves before we ever took the first step of obedience, simply because we were staring at the empty places instead of the full ones?

Here is the verse I most want to leave in your thoughts: “The eyes of the Lord range throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is fully devoted to Him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9). His gaze searches not for the gifted or the well-provisioned, but for hearts that are wholly His. Notice that the promise does not depend on what you have. The one thing it asks — a heart fully devoted to Him — is something you already have the power to give. And it is enough to move the hand of the God who made all things. And why does He search for them? So that He can show Himself strong on their behalf!

Paul learned this in his own weakness. “My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord told him, “for My power is made perfect in weakness.” And so Paul could write: “when I am weak, then I am strong.” Not his strength — God’s own, given a place to shine precisely where Paul had none.

Think of Samson, too, whom everyone kept asking where his strength came from; the strength was never in his frame. If he had loomed over people with the muscle mass of a champion bodybuilder, no one would have asked him about the source of his strength. “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” That was the whole secret.

If God has a purpose, do you think He will be hindered by what you lack? Fix your eyes on Him. Remember Peter walking on the water — steady as long as his eyes were on Christ, sinking the moment he looked at the wind and the waves. The storm you may be facing, the Lord walks right over the top of it. And when your eyes are fixed on Him, He lifts you above it too.

So I will stop reciting what I have lost, and I invite you to set your list of things you lack down beside mine. What do you have? You have the Lord. You have a heart you can give Him, whole and undivided. And that, dear friend, is a very great deal — because He still uses ordinary things and ordinary people to do extraordinary, even miraculous things. Perhaps He is waiting to do one through you.

Held with you in Christ,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><

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For Your Reflection

Take these with you into a quiet moment, or into your prayers, this week:

1. What is the “what I don’t have” list you tend to recite? What would change if you set it down and asked instead, “what do I have?”

2. Where have you disqualified yourself from something God may be asking of you, simply because you felt you lacked the gift, the resource, or the strength?

3. God promises to show Himself strong for the heart that is fully devoted to Him. Can you name one area where you long to give Him your whole, undivided heart?

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Recently, I watched a short video excerpt from the late Rabbi Abraham Twerski in which he describes what he calls “fish love.” A young man is asked why he is eating fish for dinner. He says it’s because he loves fish. The rabbi disagrees, asserting that he does not love the fish. If he loved the fish, he would not have taken it from the wate…

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A reader wrote to me recently — he used the “Suggest a Letter” feature here at The Pastor’s Hearth — with a question I have been turning over ever since. He asked, simply, how a person ought to go about choosing a church. I’m certain he is not the only one wondering about this. And I will tip my hand at the outset: my answer may not be the o…

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This is not one of my regular weekly letters from The Pastor’s Hearth. You’ll still receive your weekly letter on Wednesday morning, and this week’s letter, No. 7, is an answer to a reader’s question about how to choose a church. I’m writing today for a very specific reason: to clear up any confusion about what it means to “Pledge Support” f…

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I saw her when I was six years old, and I have never forgotten her.

It was a straight, tree-lined street in front of my cousins’ house, the kind of suburban block where children spilled out onto the sidewalk and, in the 1960s, nobody’s mother stood guard. I had fallen in with a few of the neighborhood kids that summer day. We were playing wha…

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I didn’t recognize myself.

I mean that literally. There was a stretch after the aneurysm, the two brain surgeries, and the stroke when I would stand at the bathroom sink, look up, and not find my own face. The nerves in my brainstem had been damaged, neurological function lost, and the man looking back at me was a stranger — older, saggier, t…

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I wonder whether you’ve believed this common lie. It’s told quietly in a thousand small ways, often by people who love us, mean well, and don’t know better themselves. The lie is this: that if you follow Jesus closely enough, your life will somehow be spared the storms that fall on everyone else. Pray hard enough, obey carefully enough, give…

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I pictured a football stadium full of passionate fans. Everyone is into the game, and everyone is an expert on how to play it. Most of them believe they could do it better than the players on the field. That made me laugh a bit. It also made me think about the differences between the fans in the stands and t…

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That part wasn’t unusual. I get them. Bad ones, sometimes. But this one came with something I had never had before — odd little neurological symptoms I couldn’t explain. Stumbling when I walked. Trouble finding ordinary words. Moments of confusion. The strange inability to hold more than one thought in my head at a time. It troub…

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Since this is the first letter, it seems right to begin with the truth that sits beneath all those to come.

I didn’t light The Pastor’s Hearth because I had something new to say. I lit it because I had something old to say — something the Lord has made more and more precious with every season that drove it deeper into my life.

The old thing is this: Christ is sufficient. He is enough.

Not Christ plus a good marriage.
Not Christ plus a strong, healthy body.
Not Christ plus enough money to be free of financial worry.
Not Christ plus a ministry that finally behaves as expected.
Just Christ. He is sufficient.

I didn’t reach this conviction through a tidy argument or easy experiences or even through my study of the Bible. I reached it the long way — the way most of us do, if we live long enough and are honest about it. I learned through a marriage that failed, and a second, flourishing one that God built with mercy and patience. I learned it through a medical diagnosis I wasn’t expected to survive. Through months when the numbers at the bottom of the ledger refused to balance. Through seasons of ministry that were faithful but exhausting, fruitful but costly.

And throughout each of these, He was still there. Not loud. Not triumphant in the way I would have scripted. Just quietly, persistently sufficient.

That’s what these letters are about.

Why letters?

A sermon has its place, but a letter does a different kind of work. A sermon speaks to a room; a letter speaks to a person. A sermon stands; a letter sits. For some truths, it’s essential to come to one’s feet. Other truths are better shared sitting down.

So these will be letters — unhurried, particular, written as if addressed to one friend at a time, even when the envelope reaches many.

Why a hearth?

A hearth is where the real conversations happen — the ones about marriage and money, about the body’s quiet betrayals, about ministry that costs more than you expected, about doubts that don’t survive the morning but somehow obsess in the night. A hearth is not a stage. It’s a gathering place. A warm corner in a cold week.

That’s what I hope this space becomes for you.

What will I write about?

Truthfully, it could be anything, but these are themes I spend most of my time orbiting — places where I’ve found that real life and our faith walk are often at odds:

Discipleship — it simply means to follow Christ and do what He says. But defining it is the easy part. Walking with Christ is joy and suffering woven together. It is the lifelong reversal of the world’s system, where self-rule is broken and a servant’s heart slowly takes shape.

Close Relationships — “A greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” Nothing breaks your pride or softens your heart like loving the people who know you best.

Marriage — the comfort and beauty of a covenant that endures, and the truth that humility and forgiveness aren’t optional; they’re prerequisites. If your marriage is struggling, Christ has answers. If it’s thriving, He deserves the credit (ask me why).

Ministry — the calling and the cost, whether you’re ordained, volunteering, caregiving, mission tripping, teaching, or simply trying to love people well in Jesus’ name.

The Body — aging, illness, diagnoses that shake you, and the remarkable confidence of facing death with a Savior who has already passed through it.

Money — stewardship without fear, poverty without shame, generosity without spectacle, and the quiet faithfulness of living a modest life within limits.

The Mind — what I’m reading, thinking, and trying to think more clearly about in a noisy age.

Community — why the Christian life cannot be lived alone, why the church matters even when it wounds us, and why belonging is not optional for a disciple.

The Writer — the craft of putting true things into honest sentences. (Candidly, this one is mostly for me. Writing has become one of my primary pursuits since disability narrowed the scope of the others.)

A promise, and a small ask.

I promise you three things. First, that what arrives under my name is actually mine — my voice, my study, my story. Second, that you will be treated as someone included, not managed or dismissed. Third, that what I write will be helpful and consistently Biblical. If a letter can’t meet those three, it won’t be sent.

The small ask is simple: if a letter ever helps you, forward it to one person who might be helped by it too. That’s the whole growth plan. No funnel. No gimmick. Just one friend telling another about a warm space.

Your next letter will arrive soon. I’m grateful you’re here.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

The Pastor’s Hearth is free to read.

One more thing before I close. If I ever open a paid tier, with more content and other advantages, you can tell me now — without spending anything at all — that you’d like to be among the first to support it. It simply helps me think ahead. And if a paid tier does appear someday, you’ll still have the freedom to say no. A pledge now is just a nod of interest, and that’s helpful to me.

Looking for more? Browse the full collection of letters from The Pastor’s Hearth.

Pledge Your Future Support

Letters on Love, Loss, Failure, and the Long Road of Discipleship

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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