A reader asked me to write this letter out of concern for a friend. He has trouble believing that God’s deepest love is meant for him. The love he can believe is meant for others somehow seems beyond his own reach.

I wish I could sit with him. There are things I would want to hear before I did much talking, and I wouldn’t expect one conversation to settle everything that hurts. But I would want him to leave knowing that we could talk about it again.

Perhaps you need that conversation, too. You may have spent years hearing that God loves you, agreeing with it, even helping someone else believe it, while wondering why the words seem to stop short of you. If so, I am writing to you as well.

You don’t have to convince me that this is hard. And you don’t have to hide the struggle out of embarrassment that a Christian ought to know better.

Perhaps you can almost believe God has forgiven you. He promised to, after all. But enjoying you? Being glad to have you near? That may feel like asking for something you have no right to want.

I wonder whether you imagine Him welcoming someone else with a warmth He would never quite have for you. He might allow you to stay, but you would know better than to expect much affection. You would try to be useful, keep your needs small, and be grateful you hadn’t been sent away.

My friend, if that comes close, I want to put a different picture before you. I would rather let Jesus show you His Father than ask you to take my word for what His face looks like.

You probably know the story of the son who took his inheritance and went away. By the time he came home, he had squandered it, and he knew he had sinned against his father. He was coming back with a confession and very little reason to expect a celebration (Luke 15:11–24).

But his father saw him while he was still far off, and he ran to him. He put his arms around him and kissed him; the word used for those kisses speaks of fervent affection, of kissing him again and again (Luke 15:20; Greek word study). Try to stay there for a moment, before we hurry on to the robe and the ring and the meal.

The boy who had so much to be ashamed of was in his father’s arms. His father knew which son this was, knew he had gone away, and was holding him anyway.

You may be thinking that God would feel differently if He knew the whole truth about you. But there is no discovery still ahead of Him, no moment when He will finally learn what you have been afraid to tell Him. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). His love has already faced the truth.

The son confessed, and the father called for the robe, the ring, the shoes, and the feast. He wanted the household to celebrate because his lost son had been found (Luke 15:21–24). I keep coming back to the father’s happiness in that story. The homecoming mattered to him.

When you picture yourself coming to God, is there any room in the picture for His happiness? I ask that gently. I know I cannot hand you a different feeling just by asking a question. But perhaps we can begin by letting Jesus’ story remain in front of us when the old expectation of rejection starts telling its own.

There is a little phrase in Zephaniah that helps me here: “he will rest in his love” (Zephaniah 3:17, KJV). The word behind “rest” speaks of being silent, rather than being worn out (Hebrew word study). I read it and find myself picturing one of my adult children in my arms.

I imagine that embrace lasting a little longer. There is nothing I need to explain at that moment, no advice I need to get in before we let go. This is my child. I am glad to be holding my child, and for a while I would simply like to stay there.

That is the picture those words bring to me. He rests in His love, not from loving you.

Would it be very hard to imagine yourself being held without having to make the moment worth His while? No report on how much better you have been doing. No promise that you will need less help tomorrow. Just being near the Father who loves you.

I realize the word “Father” may make this harder for you, rather than easier. If that word brings a memory of being dismissed, frightened, or left, I would never ask you to pretend otherwise. You can bring that hurt with you as we listen to Jesus. You don’t have to make your own history beautiful before you can begin to know His Father.

Zephaniah’s words first came to Jerusalem, to people God had confronted for their rebellion. He promised to remove judgment, gather His people, including the outcast, and be among them; then comes this extraordinary picture of His rejoicing over them (Zephaniah 3). Through Christ, we too are welcomed into God’s household (Ephesians 2:19).

And there is singing in that welcome. The Tree of Life Version says, “He will dance for joy over you with singing,” expressing the glad rejoicing of the Hebrew word (Zephaniah 3:17, TLV; Hebrew word study). The love that holds His people close also has a song.

I would love for you to consider that His delight might be as real as your need for Him. You know how much you need forgiveness, how much you need help. Could there also be something here for you to learn about how gladly He receives you?

We sometimes speak of a God-shaped hole in the human heart. I think of a “you-shaped” place in His heart, too, though God is perfectly whole and needs nothing from us to make Him complete (Acts 17:24–25). I mean a love personal enough to welcome you as you, with no need for you to become someone else first.

That brings me to something about the cross I don’t want you to miss. Hebrews says Jesus endured it “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). We have good reason to think long and deeply about His suffering. But have you thought about what He was looking forward to?

There was His Father’s work accomplished, His place at the Father’s right hand, and the bringing of many sons and daughters to glory (Hebrews 12:2; 2:10–13). And on the night before the cross, He prayed, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am” (John 17:24).

I wish I could read those words aloud with you. “May be with me.” There is such tenderness in what He asks.

And He made a point of including the people who would later believe through His disciples’ message (John 17:20). If you have come to trust Him through that message, then you are included. You are reading a prayer He prayed for you.

He asked for us to be one, to be with Him and see His glory, and to have the Father’s love in us (John 17:21–26). So when you look at another believer and think how much God must love that person, you needn’t subtract yourself from the family. Someone else’s welcome does not require your exclusion.

There is no shortage you have to manage. You can love that person, receive love from that person, and discover more of the Father’s goodness in the giving and receiving. You don’t have to stand back while everyone else belongs.

Of course, there is still the matter of our sin. I would be offering you very little comfort if I merely assured you it didn’t matter. Jesus came in the flesh, lived without sin, and bore our sins in His body on the cross (John 1:14; Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 2:24). He knew what bringing us home would cost.

His sacrifice fully satisfied God’s righteous judgment (Romans 3:24–26; Hebrews 10:10–18). He died, was buried, rose again, and lives to intercede for those who come to God through Him; in Him we receive forgiveness, peace with God, and adoption into His family (1 Corinthians 15:3–8; Hebrews 7:25; Colossians 2:13–14; Romans 5:1; Galatians 4:4–7).

You cannot add to that sacrifice by finding one more reason to despise yourself. He suffered “that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). That is where His saving work is taking you: to the Father.

He will correct you, and there will be things He asks you to leave behind. Scripture tells us that He disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:6). But you needn’t turn every correction into evidence that He wishes He had never taken you in.

If you have never entrusted yourself to Christ, come honestly. Turn from your sin, trust Him, and stop offering to purchase what He gives by grace. Consent to be saved. Consent to be forgiven. Consent to be loved.

If you already belong to Him, I am not asking you to be saved again because you have trouble feeling loved. You need not manufacture a feeling to make His welcome real. Perhaps your prayer today can be as simple as, “Father, I believe this for other people. Please help me believe it for me.”

And if that is all you can say, say that. You don’t have to finish the prayer sounding stronger than you were when you began.

Before I leave you, I want to return to the friend who prompted this letter. If you are reading it, I am glad someone cared enough about you to ask. I hope you will let that person stay close while you learn to receive what is so difficult to believe. You needn’t work through all of this alone.

And to you who recognized yourself in his struggle, the same invitation remains. Bring the fear of being unwanted to Jesus Himself. He said, “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).

If the fear is there again tomorrow, you can bring it again tomorrow. I would rather you keep coming with an honest, aching heart than wait at a distance until you think you have learned how to arrive properly.

Remember the father running toward his child. Let Jesus keep showing you that face.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

For Your Reflection

1. If you could tell God one thing about why His love feels meant for someone else, what would you tell Him?

2. Which part of this letter would you like to return to with Him: the father’s embrace, His resting and rejoicing love, or Jesus praying to have you with Him?

3. Who might you let sit beside you in this struggle, without feeling you have to make it sound smaller or easier than it is?

Meet Pastor Neal

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The Pastor’s Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you’d like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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You've held one of these. A hard plastic head on a stick—some cartoon character, some superhero, maybe a snowman around Christmas—with a hinge at the back of the neck. Tilt the head back, and a little brick of sugar clicks forward into your palm. Nobody has to explain a PEZ dispenser to you. You feed it, and it hands back exactly what you fed it, one click at a time.

I've been thinking about that toy as a picture of something many believe about how life works, whether we've ever used the word for it or not: karma.

Here's the mechanism, and it really is this simple. Load the dispenser with compressed sugary treats, and every click gives you back a sweet. Load it with a stub of chalk, a compressed piece of sand, a pellet of grit, or—down at the lowest rung—something as bitter as cyanide, and every click gives you back exactly that instead. The dispenser isn't angry with you. It isn't keeping score out of spite. It has no opinion whatsoever about what you feed it—it just returns it, click for click, treat for treat, poison for poison. That's the whole mechanism, and it's also, in miniature, how many assume the universe runs. Karma repays like for like. It has exactly one setting.

An empty dispenser deserves a word too, because it isn't being cruel when nothing comes out. If you never loaded anything in—never put in the study for the diploma, the years for the trade, the attention a marriage needs to survive—the lever clicks and your palm stays empty, and that's not injustice. That's simply what an empty dispenser does. Karma doesn't owe you a treat you never fed it, and neither does life.

Scripture doesn’t dodge this the way I sometimes wish it would. Paul told the Galatians plainly: "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Galatians 6:7). Read that fast, and it sounds like karma made it into the Bible after all. Slow down, though, and look at where Paul actually points it. He isn’t describing how a person gets right with God. He’s describing how a person already walking with God either sows to please the flesh or sows to please the Spirit, and reaps a harvest to match, in this life. The relationship between sowing and reaping is a real dynamic. It governs the crop your daily choices grow—your habits, your character, the kind of person you’re becoming, one choice at a time. But it has never once been the mechanism by which anyone gets saved.

Because if salvation ran on karma, none of us would want the machine to notice that we existed. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). Wages. That word alone tells the truth about what I’ve actually fed into my own dispenser over sixty-plus years—plenty of chalk, plenty of sand, some chunks I’d rather not list here. If the machine simply clicked back what I’d earned, I know exactly what would land in my palm, and it isn’t sweet.

That isn’t what landed, though. "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace doesn’t click back what I fed it. Grace reaches past the dispenser altogether and hands me something I never loaded in, never earned, and could never have afforded on my own.

God didn’t force a loophole into the karma machine; He built an entirely different one, in His Son, and it cost Him everything. "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ took the ugliness my dispenser was stocked with—every pellet of it—and handed me back what only His obedience had earned. My sin traded for His righteousness, on a cross, once, for good.

I still catch myself some days, before I was fully aware, trying to feed the machine better—more discipline, more service, more good days than bad—as if enough compressed sugar might eventually tip the scale in my favor. It won’t, and it doesn’t need to, because the scale was never how I got in. If you’ve been running the same internal math, tallying your own treats against your own chalk, grit, and worse, hoping the ratio comes out in your favor someday, I’d ask you to stop weighing it. You were never going to be saved by what you put in. If you will be saved, it will be by what Christ put in for you, and He isn’t handing it back click by click. He already gave the whole thing, once, and it’s yours for the taking.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor's Hearth

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Meet Pastor Neal

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Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. Where have I been expecting karma from God without ever saying so—assuming my bad days are payback and my good days are payout?

2. What have I been trying to load into my own dispenser, hoping enough good would eventually outweigh the bad?

3. Is there someone in my life who still needs to hear that grace, not karma, is available to them too?

The Pastor's Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you'd like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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I’m at my desk with five browser tabs open and a stack of printouts I’ve marked up in three different colors of pen, the fruit of months chasing a single name back through fourteen centuries. The name is Niall Noígiallach—Niall of the Nine Hostages—a High King of Ireland around the turn of the fifth century, and the paper trail in front of me finally confirms what I’d suspected for months: he’s mine. My bloodline runs back to him, and through him to a run of Celtic and other royalty I never once imagined belonged to my family story.

I sat back in my chair and felt something I wasn’t expecting. Not just interest. Pride. A quiet little upgrade in how I thought of myself, as if the DNA of dead kings had somehow raised my own standing in the room.

Nothing about me had actually changed in that moment. I was the same man sitting in the same chair with the same bills on the same desk. The only thing that changed was my awareness. But awareness, it turns out, can be a dangerous thing to hand a proud heart, because the moment I realized who I supposedly descended from, some small part of me started quietly acting like it. That royal blood was never going to replace what actually defines me. It couldn’t. It only distracted me from it for a while, the way a shiny but lesser prize can make you forget, for a moment, which prize you already hold.

The discovery prompted me to write a historical novel set in Niall’s world (I’m about half-way through the manuscript as of this writing), and I’m genuinely grateful to have learned the history and found the enrichment of such writing. Researching Niall gave me a gift I didn’t ask for and don’t take lightly. But gratitude for a gift is one thing. Building an identity on it is another, and I caught myself drifting from the first toward the second before I’d even noticed the pull.

I doubt I’m the only one. Maybe your version of Niall isn’t a king fourteen centuries back. Maybe it’s the promotion, the framed diploma, the name people recognize when you mention where you work, the family reputation you’ve spent years protecting. Fill in your own blanks. The world hands out identities constantly—career, politics, achievements, the “right side” of some argument—and every one of them will hold you up for exactly as long as you can keep producing it, and not one day longer.

John the apostle had a different answer, and he gave it to himself long before he gave it to anyone else. Throughout his own gospel, he never once refers to himself by name. Instead, seven separate times, he calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Not out of arrogance, but out of a settled identity. I believe he’d found the one label sturdy enough to build a life on, and he stopped reaching for any other one.

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). Read that sentence slowly. It isn’t “children of a king,” which would already be more than most of us could claim. It’s children of God Himself, and John seems almost startled by his own words as he writes them—“see what kind of love”—as though he still can’t quite get over it.

That love wasn’t sentimental, either. John is careful to say how it was proven: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him... he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). A king’s blood in your family tree might make for a good story at a dinner party, but make no mistake—it has never once paid for anyone’s sins. The identity John kept returning to cost God His own Son, which is a very different kind of pedigree than the one I was quietly admiring at my desk.

Here’s what I keep having to relearn, and I suspect I’ll be relearning it for the rest of my earthly life: a High King ancestor is something I have, an interesting fact sitting quietly in my family tree whether it ever earns a footnote anywhere but in my book. Being God’s beloved is something I’ve been given, at the cost of blood shed on a cross rather than won on some ancient battlefield. Niall’s blood made kings. Christ’s blood makes children of God. Between the two, I know which one is actually the most royal, and it isn’t the one I spent months digging through genealogical records to confirm.

I’m going to finish writing this book. I still catch myself smiling a little every time the research turns up another thread connecting me to that world. I don’t think that pleasure is wrong, and I don’t think curiosity about where your family came from is some kind of spiritual failure to be stamped out. I only know I need the family tree hanging in one place and the reminder of who I actually am hanging somewhere closer, so I know which one to reach for first when a hard day makes me ask the real question underneath all of this: who am I?

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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

Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. What label, achievement, or bloodline have I let define me more than being God’s beloved?

2. If that label were taken away from me tomorrow, would I still know who I actually am?

3. Do I extend to the people around me the same “beloved” identity I’m asking God to let me rest in?

The Pastor’s Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you’d like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

If this letter spoke to you, a like, comment, or share helps it reach others who may need it too.

It's a dark winter evening, snow falling steadily, and I'm driving home from a client meeting with a briefcase full of paperwork on the passenger seat. The plows are out ahead of me, throwing up a wall of gray slush, and my hands ache a little from gripping the wheel too tightly for too many miles. Home is still 30 minutes ahead. A warm kitchen, a chair, maybe twenty minutes to close my eyes before eating some leftover supper. I can already feel how good that chair is going to feel.

But I don't go home. I turn toward the hospital instead, because one of our church families has been sitting in a waiting room since that morning, and they’re under the heavy weight of concern. So I go in still wearing my coat, still smelling of winter, and I sit with them. I give some hugs, hold their hands, and share with them the pastoral love I truly feel. I pray for them, laying our shared requests at the feet of God. And when I finally do drive home, it isn't to rest. It's to the kitchen table, a Bible open next to a legal pad, working through a sermon that still needs some research before Sunday, my eyes stinging a little by the time I finally close the Bible for the night.

I want to be honest with you about something I don't say often. There were nights, driving between those two worlds, when I wondered if I was actually failing both of them. No one at the office knew how much of me the church had already used up that week. No one at church knew how much the office had already used up either. I wasn't looking for applause, nor am I now. I just knew I was tired in a place that sleep doesn't reach, and I carried that quietly, because I didn't think anyone other than my wife had the spare capacity to hear it.

If any of that sounds familiar, I want to say something to you plainly, because maybe no one else has said it to you before. You teach that Sunday school class after a full week at a job that has nothing to do with church, and you go home some Sundays wondering if anyone even noticed you were there. You drive your neighbor to chemo on your one day off, and nobody puts your name in a bulletin for it. You've been quietly discipling your grandkids for a decade, praying over them by name every night, with no title and no paycheck and no one to tell you it matters. I want you to hear this from someone who has stood exactly where you're standing: it matters. It has always mattered. The absence of a salary and a title was never proof of the absence of a calling.

Paul knew this in his bones, long before I ever did. When he arrived in Corinth, he didn't set up shop asking the church to fund him first. He found a couple named Aquila and Priscilla, and because they shared his trade, he stayed with them and worked—"for by occupation they were tentmakers" (Acts 18:3). Picture him some evening, hands raw from the awl and the heavy cloth, and then picture him an hour later, using the same hands, breaking bread and teaching the very people whose tents he'd been mending. He wasn't slipping out of ministry to go earn a living and then slipping back in when his shift ended. Both were happening at once, in the same tired hands, much the way both were happening in mine.

He told the Thessalonians exactly why: "our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God" (1 Thessalonians 2:9). And to the Corinthians, almost as if daring anyone to accuse him of doing ministry for the money: "What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge" (1 Corinthians 9:18). He had every right, by his own argument a few verses earlier, to be supported by the churches he served. He laid that right down anyway, at real cost to himself, and never once described it as a lesser way to serve.

I think about Jesus this way too, more than I used to. Before there were three years of miracles and crowds, there were years of sawdust and callused hands in a carpenter's shop in Nazareth, years Scripture passes over almost in silence because they didn't need announcing to matter. The Son of God spent most of His earthly life doing quiet, unnoticed work that no one thought worth writing down, long before anyone wrote a Gospel about Him. And then, when the announced ministry finally came, He gave that away freely too, all the way to a cross He didn't owe us and we could never have earned. If the pattern of costly love without a bill attached runs all the way back to Him, maybe the tentmaking years of your life, and mine, are closer to the center of the story than we thought, not some detour from it.

Here's what I've come to believe two callings can do that one alone can't: they keep you from ever fully settling into just one identity. Neither job let me rest easy in it as the whole of who I was. When the ministry felt discouraging, the office was still waiting the next morning, plain and unglamorous, reminding me that faithfulness doesn't run on applause. When the office felt like nothing but numbers, the church was still waiting that same week, reminding me that a ledger was never going to be the real measure of a life. Neither one alone paid enough to carry my family, and neither one alone was ever going to be enough to carry my whole sense of who I was, either. I needed them both, together, more than I understood at the time.

I won't pretend the cost wasn't real, because it was, and I'd be lying to you if I dressed it up as something lighter than it actually felt some weeks. But I've stopped reading that tiredness as a sign that something had gone wrong. I think now it was closer to a sign that something was actually being given, freely, the way Paul gave it, the way Christ gave it first. And if you're the one right now who's tired in a place where sleep doesn't reach, doing work no one has thanked you for, I want you to receive this as a blessing: what you are laying down, quietly, unpaid, unnoticed, is not wasted. It is seen by the One who laid everything down first, and it is precious to Him even on the nights it doesn't feel precious to you.

So tonight, if it's snowing where you are or not, and you're driving home from whatever your version of that client meeting looks like, and there's a hospital room or a phone call or a tired child who needs you to stop before you get all the way home—go ahead and stop. You're not choosing the lesser calling over the real one. Like Paul, and like Christ before him, and like me on some of those dark, snowy evenings, you may simply be living your whole calling at once, in the same coat, in the same snow, on the same night. And whatever it costs you, however unnoticed it goes, it is never wasted on the One who has been counting every mile.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor's Hearth

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

Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. Where am I already doing ministry that I've never once called by that name, and have I let myself feel the weight of how much it matters?

2. What has my calling cost me that I've never actually said out loud to anyone, and who is safe enough to finally tell?

3. Can I receive tonight, as a genuine blessing rather than a scolding, that what I've quietly laid down for others has not gone unseen by God?

The Pastor's Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you'd like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

If you’ve ever seen a blade being sharpened against a spinning grindstone, you’ve seen the sparks fly—bright, fast, and a little startling if you’re not used to it. The sparks are just friction announcing itself, and the friction is the whole point. Nobody grinds an edge hoping for silence. Silence means the blade isn’t touching anything, and a blade that isn’t touching anything never gets sharper.

This November, my wife and I will mark thirty years of marriage. Thirty years, for us, has never meant thirty years without any friction at all. It’s meant thirty years of two different people, each carrying our own history into the same home, learning how to become one family instead of two.

We came into this marriage the way a lot of second marriages do: not as two blank pages, but as two people who’d already been shaped, and in some places scarred, by everything that came before. We each brought children from earlier chapters of our lives, and joining two sets of kids under one roof is not the tidy montage the movies promise you. It’s two sets of habits, two sets of wounds, two sets of instincts about how a home is supposed to run, suddenly expected to share the same kitchen table. In those early years there were real sparks—the kind that come from two histories being pressed together for the first time, each of us still learning where the other one’s tender places were.

Solomon wrote something short enough to miss if you’re reading fast: “iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). Picture what that verse actually describes. Two pieces of iron don’t sharpen each other by sitting side by side, agreeable and untouched. They sharpen each other by being pressed together, hard, until the friction wears away whatever was dull. Those early years were our coarse grinding—the kind of sharpening that throws visible sparks because two blades are meeting for the first time, still finding their edges against each other. I won’t pretend those years were painless, or that we always handled the friction well.

But thirty years into this marriage now, the sharpening looks different, and I think it’s worth telling you how. These days, when something flares between us, it’s almost never because we’re fighting over who’s right. It’s because one of us has bumped, without meaning to, against a place in the other that still carries some old pain. And what happens next isn’t a clash of blades. It’s closer to watching two people catch themselves mid-motion, go gentle with each other almost instantly, and choose to love each other through whatever the moment just uncovered.

That’s not the grinding wheel anymore. That’s a hone—the fine leather strop a craftsman reaches for once the grinding is done, drawing the blade across it again and again, with no spark at all, and yet the edge keeps getting sharper. A hone doesn’t correct a blade through force. It corrects it through contact, patient and light, applied exactly where the edge needs it. That’s closer to what my wife and I have now: not the absence of sharpening, but a much finer kind of it.

Solomon also warned about the alternative: “If the axe is dull, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed” (Ecclesiastes 10:10). A dull axe still swings. It just costs far more to get far less done, and eventually the wood wins. I’ve watched marriages go quiet the wrong way—not honed, just dull, both people keeping the peace by keeping their distance, avoiding the strop because even light contact feels like too much work. That’s not the maturity it can look like from the outside. It’s just two blades that stopped touching.

The kind of sharpening I’m describing only works with both truth and love in the same motion. Paul gave the whole church an instruction that applies just as well at a kitchen table: “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). Truth without love just cuts. Love without truth never sharpens anything. What my wife and I finally learned, after enough years of practice, is how to name the tender place honestly the moment we touch it, and reach for gentleness in almost the same breath. That combination is what turned our grinding into honing.

If you’re in a season where the friction still feels like grinding—like real sparks, real hurt, real distance—I don’t want to suggest that’s a lesser marriage than ours. It may just be an earlier stage of the same sharpening, and Solomon’s iron doesn’t skip that stage; it starts there. But consider the difference between two blades struck against each other and two blades pressed together and drawn across. Blades that clash in anger don’t get sharper. They chip. They dull. They gouge each other, because a strike is sudden and violent and is intended to do harm, not to help. Sharpening only happens through sustained pressure and deliberate direction, one edge drawn against the other on purpose, not force thrown in a moment of anger. What I’d ask is only this: check whether the friction is the tearing-down kind, pride striking out at pride, or the sharpening kind, two people who love each other enough to keep pressing instead of walking away from the stone. Repent quickly of the first. Stay faithfully in the second, even when it costs you something, because that’s the iron doing exactly what Solomon said it would do.

As my wife and I come up on thirty years together this November, the thing I’m most grateful for isn’t a marriage that ran out of friction. It’s a marriage where the friction changed shape—where what once threw sparks now moves like a hone across leather, quiet and precise, still sharpening us both, thirty years in.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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

Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. In my closest relationship, is our current friction the grinding kind or the honing kind—and how can I tell the difference?

2. When I touch a tender place in someone I love, do I reach for gentleness quickly, or do I have to fight my way there?

3. What would it look like this week to stay at the stone in an honest disagreement, instead of letting the blade go dull through silence?

The Pastor’s Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you’d like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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A few years back, I was driving through a construction zone on the highway, doing everything you’re supposed to do—hands steady, eyes up, speed down for the barrels. Somewhere in that narrowed stretch of concrete hallways, it didn’t matter how carefully I was driving. I became the middle car in a multi-car pileup, hurt badly enough that an ambulance carried me to the nearest hospital, where I stayed several days before I was well enough to go home. It would be months before the full damage from that crash caught up with me, but it did, and it eventually led to a second back surgery.

A reader sent me a note through the Suggest a Letter link and asked me to write about gratitude. He thinks too few people really understand what it is. I’d add, how do you actually give thanks when nothing in your circumstances seems to warrant it (because I think a lot of us have been there)? These are all fair questions, and honest ones, so I want to give them honest answers instead of greeting-card ones.

Here’s where I want to speak carefully because I don’t want to be unclear. I was not thankful for that pileup. I wasn’t thankful for the pain, the days spent in the hospital, or the second back surgery that followed months later. Nobody in their right mind thanks God for a construction-zone collision, and I’d be suspicious of anyone who claimed they did. But was I thankful in the middle of it? Absolutely. One hundred percent. Thankful to have survived a harrowing experience. Thankful for a wife who came to my side and refused to leave. Thankful for surgeons skilled enough to maintain an already damaged back. Thankful for a church family who covered us in prayer while we sorted out what came next. None of that made the accident good. All of it let me see God’s hand while I was living through something bad.

I’ve come to believe that’s close to a capsule of what it means to live in this world at all. It would be easy to expect something like karma from God—or from the universe, if that’s more your language—the sense that good gets good, bad gets bad, and whatever lands on you is simply a fair trade for something you put out first. Karma repays like for like. It has no other setting. That is not what happened to me on that highway, and it is not what has happened to me since I trusted Christ. In Him, I have not received like for like. I have received the exact opposite of what I earned: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ did not even the score between us. He took what I owed and handed me what He deserved instead—my sin traded for His righteousness, my debt closed out on His account. That is not karma balancing a ledger. That is grace, and grace does not keep books the way karma does.

That distinction—thankful for versus thankful in—comes straight from Paul, writing to a church that was getting battered from every direction. He didn’t tell them to feel thankful. He told them something sturdier: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Read that verse slowly and notice the preposition doing the heavy lifting. He didn’t write, “give thanks for all circumstances.” He wrote “in.” Thanksgiving offered in the middle of the wreckage, not for the wreckage itself.

Gratitude as a feeling and gratitude as a practice are two entirely different animals, and most of us have only ever met the first one. The feeling shows up on its own schedule—after good news, during a sunset, when someone says the right thing at the right moment. You don’t summon it. It arrives, or it doesn’t. And if that’s the only kind of gratitude you know, you’re at the mercy of your circumstances every day, because feelings follow circumstances the way a shadow follows a body.

David understood this better than most of us, and he wrote it while running from a king who wanted him dead: “I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1). At all times. Not just the good ones. David wasn’t hiding from an irritating coworker in that cave—he was hiding from an army and a king thirsty for blood. And he still put praise on his lips, on purpose, because he’d learned that genuine praise doesn’t wait to be released by one’s circumstances.

He wasn’t finished. Later in that same psalm, still hiding in the same cave, still under the same threat of death, David wrote, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8). Notice what hadn’t changed by verse 8. He wasn’t rescued yet. The king was still hunting him. The cave was still a cave. And from right there, unrescued, David called God good—not “God will be good once I’m out of here,” but good, present tense, in the middle of the very danger he hadn’t escaped. That’s the whole lesson, really. God’s goodness was never meant to be measured by the size or shape of our circumstances. It’s measured by who He is, and who He is doesn’t change based on where we’re hiding.

I think this is where a lot of us get gratitude backward. We treat it like a barometer—something that measures how good our life currently is—when Scripture treats it like a muscle. A barometer only tells you what’s already true outside. A muscle, worked on purpose, changes what’s true on the inside. Every time you name something to be thankful for when you don’t feel like it, you’re not lying to yourself or performing for God. You’re training the same instinct David was describing, the one that eventually gets strong enough to hold weight even when the feelings haven’t shown up yet.

I’m not going to tell you the feeling never came, back in that hospital bed. It did, in time, and in a thousand smaller moments since. But it came after the choosing, not before it, and most days it still does. Some mornings I wake up with an ache in a place that back surgery was supposed to fix, and gratitude is the last thing my body wants to hand me. I say thank you anyway. Out loud, sometimes, to a dark room, because James was right that faith without works is dead (James 2:17), and I’ve come to believe thanksgiving without practice dies the same way.

Paul had his own reason for writing what he did to the Thessalonians, and it wasn’t cheerfulness for its own sake. He’d already told them a few verses earlier to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17)—three commands stacked together, none of them dependent on how the day was going, all of them describable as habits rather than moods. That’s good news for people like me, and I suspect, people like you. You don’t need a happy day to obey Paul’s instructions. You just need a decision, repeated until it becomes a reflex.

So to the reader who asked the question: I don’t have a formula that removes the hard circumstances, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who claimed to. What I have is smaller and sturdier than a formula. Every day, sometimes every hour, name one true thing you’re grateful for, whether or not it feels like anything at all. Say it out loud if you can. Do it in the hospital bed, in the empty house, in the diagnosis you didn’t ask for. Not because the circumstance deserves thanks, but because the God who’s still with you in it does, and He hasn’t changed, whatever the day has done.

That’s the whole secret, if you can call something this simple a secret. Thankfulness was never meant to be a mood we wait around for. It’s a discipline we choose, because His goodness was never the kind that depends on our circumstances to stay true.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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

Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. Is my gratitude currently a feeling I’m waiting for, or a practice I’m choosing?

2. What is one true thing, however small, I can thank God for today—not because the day earned it, but because He is worth it?

3. Who in my life needs to hear me say thank you out loud, even if the circumstances around us haven’t changed?

The Pastor’s Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you’d like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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This isn’t one of our regular Wednesday letters. Labor Day showed up on the calendar today, so consider this a small holiday extra instead.

For most of thirty years, I carried two full-time callings at once: pastoring and running a financial practice. Labor Day itself was rarely a day off, though. Whatever the calendar said, mine usually still said “catch up,” and I’d tell myself the office being closed counted as rest, even while I spent the morning on sermon notes and the afternoon on paperwork that had backed up all week.

Here’s the part I’m more embarrassed to admit: it wasn’t only the workload driving me. More than once I’ve prayed for an outcome and then, without ever saying it out loud, tried to guarantee that outcome myself—working longer hours, tightening every variable I could control, as if enough hustle could out-perform simply obeying God and waiting on Him. I’d ask Him for help and then quickly get to work trying to answer my own prayers, just in case.

If any of that sounds familiar, you’re in good company, and older company than you might think. Job, a man who’d lost more in one week than most will ever lose in a lifetime, put it plainly: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble” (Job 14:1).

Into all of that, Jesus said something remarkable: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). If anyone else made that promise, I’d want to see their track record first. “Hang around with me and your load gets lighter” is easy to say and almost impossible for a human being to deliver. But Jesus isn’t in the business of promises He can’t keep, so the real question is simply what He actually prescribes.

And this is where it gets strange, if you slow down and really read it. Instead of prescribing more sleep, a vacation, a cleared calendar, or the answer to whatever has been keeping you up at night, Jesus reaches for something almost backward: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me” (Matthew 11:29). We just heard Him describe people worn out from labor, and His remedy is a tool used for labor. That should stop us for a second. How does more yoke answer too much yoke already?

The word Jesus used was the Greek zygos—roughly “zoo-gahs”—and it meant a wooden crossbeam. The farmers listening to Him that day would have pictured that beam laid across the necks of two oxen working a field together, since paired yokes were the everyday tool of that agricultural world. Many teachers of the day also used “yoke” as shorthand for something else entirely: becoming someone’s disciple. The rabbis spoke of “the yoke of the law,” meaning the discipline of submitting oneself to a teacher and a way of life. So when Jesus says “take my yoke and learn from me,” He’s likely doing both at once—inviting us into partnered labor, and into discipleship under Him specifically.

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Either way, the picture is the same: you were never meant to pull this alone. If it helps, think about how farmers actually train an ox. They don’t yoke two green, untested animals together and hope for the best. They pair the young one with an older, experienced animal who already knows the pace, the commands, and the field. The seasoned ox bears more of the pull while the newcomer finds its footing, and the newcomer learns simply by staying close enough to follow. Left entirely on its own too soon, an untrained animal can genuinely hurt itself—straining past what it’s ready for, with no one setting the pace. That’s exactly the failure mode Jesus is naming when He says, essentially, stop trying to pull this by yourself. Get in the yoke with somebody who already knows the field. For me, that whole picture lands closer to home than I’d like: I spent a fair amount of my life acting like the green ox who insists on pulling alone, mistaking exhaustion for faithfulness.

Then there’s the last line, the one that used to puzzle me most: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). “Easy” makes it sound like Jesus is promising a life with no more effort in it, which hasn’t matched my experience of following Him much of the time. But the Greek word behind “easy” carries the sense of good, well-fitted, kind—closer to a custom yoke shaped to fit the animal wearing it than to a task requiring no strength at all. What Jesus is offering, then, isn’t a yoke with nothing to be pulled on the other end of it, but one that fits us appropriately, worn beside someone who already knows the field, has already plowed harder ground than we ever will, and paces the work to what we can actually bear.

That’s the part I keep having to relearn, Labor Day after day of labor: real rest means stopping the solo act, laying down the harness I built myself—the one where I do my best to answer my own prayers through sheer effort and then call it faith—and stepping instead into a shared yoke with someone stronger and steadier than I am, letting the work go on without insisting on carrying it by myself.

So today, whatever this holiday means for your calendar, I’d ask you to consider something other than simply clocking out. Consider taking the yoke instead. Not the one you built for yourself out of hustle and control, but the one Jesus is holding out, sized to fit, with Him already pulling the harder share of it.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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

Before you leave the fire, I invite you to sit with these three questions:

1. Where in my life am I currently trying to answer my own prayer through sheer effort, instead of waiting on God?

2. Is there a “yoke” I’ve built for myself out of hustle and control that I’ve mistaken for faithfulness?

3. What would it actually look like this week to work alongside Christ instead of alone?

The Pastor’s Hearth is free to read, and it always will be. If these letters have been meaningful to you and you’d like to support the work, you can leave a Free-Will Offering below—it is entirely voluntary and deeply appreciated.

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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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 <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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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 <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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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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This isn’t a letter I have scheduled for you. Those arrive on Wednesdays, and I wanted to touch base with you today. I just thought: somebody reading this needs a short word of encouragement today, not a long one. So here it is.

Some mornings you wake up already behind. The dishes from last night are still in the sink. The problem you fell asleep worrying about is still there when you open your eyes, unimproved by eight hours of sleep. Maybe it’s a diagnosis. Maybe it’s a marriage that’s tired. Maybe it’s just the ordinary weight of being a person in a body, in a family, in a world that doesn’t slow down to ask you how you’re really doing. Whatever it is, some days start with a deficit, and you spend the whole morning feeling like you’re already behind on grace before you’ve even had coffee.

I want to hand you one verse today, because it has carried me through more mornings than I can count, and I haven’t written about it yet.

It comes from the most unlikely book in the Bible to find comfort in. Lamentations is exactly what it sounds like — a funeral dirge for a city in ruins, written by a prophet who watched everything he loved get burned to the ground. Jeremiah isn’t wearing a façade of optimism. Nor is he a man who has it all together. He says plainly, “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is.” (Lamentations 3:17). And then, right there in the middle of the wreckage, he writes this:

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22–23)

Here’s what I ask you to notice: he doesn’t say God’s mercy is unlimited in some abstract, theoretical way. He says it’s new every morning. Not old mercy stretched thin. Not last month’s grace, rationed out until it runs dry. New. Every single morning, whether you deserved yesterday’s or not, whether you wasted it or hoarded it or never even noticed it was there — this morning’s mercy has already been set out for you, like manna in the wilderness, like the sun coming up whether you were ready for it or not.

That matters more than it sounds like it should, because most of us are carrying grief and guilt over things a long way back down the road — the year we lost, the relationship we trashed, the version of ourselves we thought we’d be by now. And we might even assume that God is keeping a running tab, waiting for us to finally store up enough righteous and faithful acts to earn a good day. But that’s not how mercy works. It isn’t a balance you build. It’s a gift you’re handed again at sunrise, whether your account from yesterday closed in the red or not.

You don’t need enough grace to get through the whole month. You don’t even need enough for the whole week. You need today’s, and today’s has already been given — the full measure, not a short stack.

I think this is one of the quieter kindnesses of God — that He doesn’t ask us to carry Thursday’s fear into Friday, or last year’s failures into this one. He pours out new mercy every single morning, the way a good father doesn’t bring up last week’s mistakes at breakfast. Israel couldn’t stockpile manna either, remember — try to save it overnight and it spoiled. God wanted them coming back every morning, empty-handed, trusting Him again. Maybe that’s not a flaw in the design. Maybe that’s the whole point. :)

So if you woke up today already feeling behind — behind on rest, behind on patience, behind on whatever it is you think you should have figured out by now — I don’t have a five-step plan for you. I just have this: His mercies are new this morning. Not because you earned them. Because He is faithful, and faithfulness like that doesn’t run on your performance.

Great is His faithfulness. Even today. Especially today.

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Neal Letteney <><

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Today I want to tell you the story behind a song. Years ago, in a season I will describe in a moment, I wrote and recorded this song with my bandmates, BlueGrace. You will find the recording attached below, and I would be honored if you gave it a listen — before you read through, or after, or both. But let me tell you where it came from, because I suspect that place is some place you have been, too.

There was a stretch of my life when someone I love dearly was making life choices that could only lead to their destruction. I saw it coming the way you see a storm building on the horizon. And I strained to think how to change the weather. But storms, once gathered, have a way of inevitability.

You may be acquainted with the tactics I tried — I think we all try them at times like this. I talked. I listened. I warned. I prayed. I reasoned until I had no words left. I gave that person every good thing I had to give, and I would have given more if I had possessed it. And still their choices kept coming, and still their road kept bending downward, and there was not one thing in my power that could stop it.

If you have ever stood in that place — loving someone you cannot save, watching a life you treasure move toward its own undoing — then you already understand what I am about to say. This is not the grief of losing something and then, in time, laying it to rest. This is a grief that occupies you. It follows you into the morning, accompanies you through your day, and sits awake patiently with you in your thoughts at night. It is the ache of a battle you cannot walk away from, because the one you are fighting for is someone you cannot and will not stop loving.

And there is a second wound underneath the first one. I want to name it plainly because I think it is the wound most of us hide. Somewhere along the way, most of us came to believe that we are supposed to be equal to whatever challenge life sets in front of us. Capable. Strong enough to carry the weight, wise enough to find the answer, steady enough to hold the people we love together by the sheer force of our care. Cowboy up! And when the day comes that we cannot — when we run straight into a wall we have no power to move — it does not merely make us sad. It makes us feel like we have failed at something we were sure we could do. That is exactly where I landed. I was a failure in my own eyes. Whatever this battle required of me, I did not possess it. To put it in the barest words I own, my best was simply not enough.

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This song was born in that soil. I sat down with a guitar and let the music give voice to my groanings. It rose out of me the way a cry rises out of a person who has finally run out of strength. Its opening words say exactly where I was standing: “Beaten down, losing battle, wasn’t man enough today.” Not man enough. Those were not just lyrics I crafted. They were a confession.

Here is the part I most need you to hear, because it is the whole reason for this letter. If you’re hoping to hear that I was handed a solution to the problem the moment I poured out my heart, I’m sorry to disappoint you, because that’s not how it went. In that moment, nothing was fixed. The situation did not suddenly resolve, and the person I was praying for did not suddenly change their ways. There was no answer waiting at the end of my desperation that made the trouble go away. And I think this is precisely where so many of us come undone in our faith — because we have relied upon God to be a fixer, believing that if we only pray hard enough and flex our faith strong enough, the burden will be lifted from us. So, when it is not lifted, we might assume one of several things: that we have failed again, that God was never really there, or, worse, that He is there and simply doesn’t care.

But what met me in that low place was not a solution. It was a Presence — the Holy Presence. When I finally had nowhere else to turn and nothing left to try, I stopped reaching for a way out and leaned instead into the nearness of my Heavenly Father. And He came to me. He did not remove the trouble. He gave Himself to me in the middle of the pain. The only way I knew to say it then is the way the chorus still says it now: “Find my rest, gentle refuge, in the hollow of your hand.”

That picture — the hollow of a hand — is not mine. I borrowed it from God, who has been saying it to His people all along. “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). “He gathers His lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart” (Isaiah 40:11). “Casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). He is “the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4) — and notice, please, that it says comfort in our troubles, not always deliverance out of them. There is a hollow in the hand of God, a hidden and sheltered place, and it is shaped exactly to hold a soul that is worn out and weeping and certain it is not strong enough to carry the burdens of the season. To be held there is not the same thing as being rescued. In a way, it is better because it is a comfort that He gives amid your troubles and is not dependent upon a change in your circumstances.

“In the Hollow of Your Hand,” written and performed by Neal Letteney
with BlueGrace for the album Sweet River

So stay a while. Do not scramble to your feet the moment the tears begin to slow. Receive everything He is offering you here — all of it, every measure of the comfort He is pouring over your weeping heart — and do not leave until you have soaked it up. Let Him hold you until you are strengthened. The battle may well still be waiting when you rise. But you will rise as someone who has been comforted by God, and no one comes out of the hollow of His hand unchanged.

Now let me tell you the part I kept from you until now, because you have earned it by sitting with me this far. The one I could not save — the one walking that certain path to ruin — continued on that road and, indeed, suffered accordingly. But later, they repented and came back. That life turned around, and it has been given to following Christ for many years since. I cannot tell you how I praise God for it. But hear me, because this is the very center of what I want you to carry away from this hearth: God’s comfort in that valley was already real, already whole, already enough, long before I had any idea how the story would end — and it would have been every bit as real if the story had ended some other way. His nearness was never a down payment on a desired outcome. He did not hold me because the ending was going to be happy. He held me because He loved me, right there in the dark, in the not-knowing. And that is exactly how He will hold you.

So come up into the hollow of His hand, my friend. Rest in the comfort of His arms. You do not have to be equal to this battle. You do not have to be strong enough, or wise enough, or enough of anything at all. You only have to let yourself be gathered up and held. Listen to the song if it helps you get there. And then rest — proper rest, gentle refuge — for as long as you need, in the hollow of His hand.

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. Where in your life are you carrying a battle you cannot win by being strong enough, and what would it mean to stop reaching for a way out and lean into God’s nearness instead?

2. Have you quietly believed that God is meant to be a fixer? How might it change your faith to receive His comfort in your trouble rather than only deliverance out of it?

3. What does the picture of resting “in the hollow of His hand” stir in you, and can you name one place you need to be held there this week?

4. Is there someone you love whom you cannot save? What would it look like to keep loving them while letting God carry what you could never carry alone?

The Pastor’s Hearth

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

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Something I heard recently planted an image in my mind, and I want to kick it around with you. I wonder whether you can relate.

Imagine a great banquet table — the kind that runs the length of an enormous hall. It is heavy with food. There is bread still warm from the oven, lavish platters of meat, a great variety of fruit, vegetables, wine, pastries, cakes, and pies, more than anyone could finish. And the table is surrounded by people. They are laughing as they chat. They are joyfully passing dishes from hand to hand, leaning back in their chairs with the deep contentment of people who know they are completely welcome and know there is plenty for everyone to eat their fill. It is a feast, and it has no end.

Now picture one more person. This one is not at the table. This one is down on the floor, beneath it, in the shadows between feet and legs. And every so often a crumb falls from above — a piece of crust, a scrap of meat, a drop of wine — and this person snatches it up and is grateful for it. Genuinely grateful. That crumb is the best thing that has happened to them all day. And here is the part that undoes me: there is an empty chair at the table. A place set. A name card. The feast was prepared with this person in mind. Yet there they crouch on the floor, living on what falls to them accidentally, when they were invited to sit among the rest of the guests as an equal and joyfully eat their fill.

I have been that person on the floor. Maybe you have too.

Let me say plainly what I mean by the crumbs, because this is not really about food.

The feast represents the full life God offers you in Himself — His presence, His peace, His forgiveness, His joy, the sheer abundance of being loved by the One who made you. The crumbs are the substitutes we settle for instead. For believers, that may mean a quick word of prayer flung over our shoulder on the way out the door, instead of actually sitting down with Him. A borrowed feeling of holiness on Sunday, instead of a walked-out friendship all week long. The scraps of other people’s approval. The leftover satisfaction of a busy religious life that never once tastes the bread it is serving to everyone else. These are crumbs. And the tragedy is not that crumbs are bad — it is that they are so much less than what has been offered to us.

And then there are the counterfeit crumbs — all the ones the world calls a feast. Our culture tells you the real table is somewhere else — that if you can just gather enough money, enough success, enough applause, enough of whatever it is you are chasing, you will finally sit down and be full. So we run. We spend our one wild life sprinting after a banquet that is always one more paycheck, one more promotion, one more purchase away. And here is the cruel joke at the center of it: the greatest feast the world can offer amounts to less than one measly crumb. It is a scrap masquerading as a spread. A trifle, not a treasure. The King of all creation has set before you the only table that satisfies — the only one that ever will — and still, we go chasing table scraps in the far country and call it ambition.

I will tell you why I settled for crumbs for so long, and I suspect you already know the feeling in your own bones. It was not that I never saw the chair. I saw it. I saw my name on the card. And I was certain, all the way down, that it had been set there by mistake. Because here is what failure does to a person: it whispers that the feast is for the others — the ones who never fell, who never doubted, who never woke at three in the morning with the weight of their own wreckage pressing on their chest. You look at the shining table and you think, not me, not after what I’ve done, not after how many times I’ve been knocked flat. And so you make yourself small. You crouch in the shadows and you think of it as humility, when the truth is far uglier: it is shame and pride coexisting. Real humility dares to take the seat it is offered and says, thank you. What kept me on the floor was not lowliness at all — it was the arrogance of insisting I knew better than my host about who belonged at His table — and if anyone was on the outs with Him, it must be me. And maybe that is the very thing keeping you down there too. Maybe you have silently decided that grace is real for everyone but you. If that’s true, I am here to tell you that you have decided wrong.

There was another part, too — something I had believed from a different invitation. For years the world handed me its own brochure, glossy and inviting, promising that its table was the one worth sitting at. Just earn a little more, it said, climb a little higher, close the next deal, win the next round of approval, and you will finally feel full. So I pulled up a chair at that table and ate everything it served me. I chased the paycheck and the promotion, and the good opinion of people who would forget my name by next quarter. I told myself each new thing would be the thing that satisfied. It never was. I would swallow the whole spread and stand up hungrier than I sat down, because the world’s grand banquet, it turns out, is nothing but crumbs dressed up under better lighting. I know that trade well. I made it for years, and it cost me more than I like to admit.

But here is what I have come to believe, and what I most want you to hear. The One at the head of the table is not annoyed that you are late or that you have been distracted. He is not tapping His fingers, waiting to scold you for all the time you spent on the floor. He is the father in the story who saw his ragged son a long way off and ran — ran — to meet him, and called for the robe and the ring and the fattened calf, and threw a feast for a boy who came home expecting to be treated like a servant (the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15). That is the heart you are dealing with. He does not want you fed on crumbs. He wants you at His table.

And maybe you are reading this and thinking, Neal, you are describing a feast I am not even sure exists. Maybe you are the doubter, the skeptic, the agnostic who cannot make the leap; maybe you are the atheist who put the whole thing down years ago; maybe you are the unbeliever who has never once felt welcome in a room like the one I am describing. If that is you, I am not going to argue you into a chair. I only want to say this, gently: the very hunger that makes you suspicious of easy answers is itself a kind of evidence. You were made for a real feast, and every counterfeit you have tried has left you hungry precisely because it was a crumb and your soul was built for a meal. You do not have to believe your way to the seat. You are allowed to come to the table hungry and unsure, the way you would sit down at a stranger’s kitchen and let the food make its own case. The invitation is not for the people who have it figured out. It never was.

So I want to ask you the question that is under the whole of this letter. What crumb have you been settling for? Name it, just between you and God. Maybe it is a faith you keep at arm’s length because getting closer feels like too much. Maybe it is a wound you have decided to live with instead of bringing it to the table to be healed. Maybe it is a version of yourself — small, hidden, unworthy — that you have grown so used to that the floor feels safer than the seat. Maybe it is the world’s banquet — the money, the status, the endless chase — that you have believed was the real feast, when all along it was nothing more than an ongoing game of bait-and-switch. Whatever it is, I want you to hear that it is a crumb, and that there is a whole feast with your name prominently on the guest list.

You do not have to clean yourself up to come to the table. The prodigal came home smelling of the pigpen, and the celebratory robe went on him anyway. His finger was graced with the lofty ring of sonship. You do not have to feel worthy. Worthiness is not the price of the seat; it is the gift of the One who set it for you. You only have to stop reaching for scraps long enough to pull out the chair and sit down.

Come up off the floor, friend. The bread is warm. The cup has been poured. The seat has been empty long enough, and it was never meant for anyone but you.

With you at the table,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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

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Many people arrive at Sunday morning already exhausted by it. They have carried too many small worries through six ordinary days, and they sit down in the pew with the residue of all of them still on them. Worship, in those weeks, feels less like a joyful event and more like a chore they have finally gotten around to.

The Jews of old knew something about this that I think we have mostly forgotten.

Three times a year, at the great feasts, the faithful gathered themselves and their families and began the long walk to Jerusalem. They came from Galilee and from the coastal plains, from the villages of the Negev and from as far away as Babylon. And as they walked, they sang.

We have their songs still. Fifteen of them, tucked into the middle of the Psalms, numbered 120 through 134. The rabbis called them the Shir HaMa’alot — the Songs of Ascent. Pilgrim songs. Walking songs. Sung as the road climbed and the temple mount came into view.

"I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD." (Psalm 122:1)

Read that sentence slowly. I was glad when they said unto me. Not glad when I arrived. Not glad when the sacrifice was made. Not even during the journey. Glad at the invitation. Glad at the first word that we were going. The joy began before the journey did.

And here is what I think we have lost: the Jews did not walk to worship. They ascended to it. Every step of the road was already part of the meeting. The dust on their sandals, the ache in their legs, the songs they sang to keep the children moving — all of it was already worship. By the time they crested the last hill and saw the temple, they were not arriving at joy. They were arriving with it, having been building it inside themselves for days.

We do not walk to church anymore. Most of us drive, and the drive takes fifteen minutes, and we spend it thinking about parking. But the pilgrimage is still there if we want it. It begins on Saturday morning, with a cup of coffee and the honest admission that we have been away from Him this week and we are ready to come home.

So here is what I would offer you today, friend, on this Saturday before we gather:

Sing something. Even quietly. Even badly. Let a psalm rise up in you while you go about your morning — the dishes, the grocery list, the walk to the mailbox. Let tomorrow begin to gather in your chest today.

Remember that you are already on the road.

And when you rise tomorrow and dress for worship and pull into the parking lot, imagine for a moment that you have been walking three days to get there. Imagine the last hill. Imagine cresting it and seeing the sanctuary the way a pilgrim saw the temple — the roof catching the morning sun, the doors thrown open, the whole thing waiting. And God at the heart of it, His arms open to receive you.

That is not sentiment. That is what is actually happening.

We are going up to meet with God.

Let our hearts be glad.

— Pastor Neal <><

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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 water, killed it, and boiled it. You don’t really love the fish, he says. You love yourself, and you’ve taken everything from the fish in order to gratify yourself.

So much of what we call “love” in our culture is, if we’re honest, fish love.

We say, “I love my spouse,” or “I love my kids,” or “I love my church,” but underneath it can mean, I love how they make me feel, how they meet my needs, how they keep me from being lonely, how they tell me I’m a good person. When that feeling fades, or their behavior changes, or our needs aren’t met the way they used to be, we feel betrayed—as though love has disappeared. That is because fish love is finally nothing more than a vehicle for our own gratification.

Real love isn’t measured by what we take but what we give. The rabbi quotes a line that has stayed with me like a splinter in the soul: “You don’t give to those you love; you love those to whom you give.” The more of yourself you invest in the well-being of another person, the more your heart is bound up with theirs.

That’s not how our culture talks about love. Our world sells us love as a mutual admiration society with good chemistry and fair terms. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. You meet my emotional and physical needs, I meet yours. The trouble comes when “love” is mainly about how the other person functions for me. My spouse becomes a pain-relief system. My child becomes a source of pride. My friend becomes an emotional support animal. My church becomes a spiritual vending machine dispensing acceptance, kindness, and belonging.

When they stop performing those functions, we don’t just feel disappointed; we feel cheated.

Scripture, of course, has been saying this in another key for a long time. The love that Jesus shows—and the love He commands—is cruciform: shaped like a cross, not like a contract. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, ESV). That’s not romance-language; that’s sacrifice-language. It is love measured in lost rights, surrendered preferences, and costly faithfulness.

Here is the hard and beautiful truth: sacrificial love is not a feeling you wait to have; it is a choice you make in the fear of God and in the hope of the resurrection. It is the willingness, for Christ’s sake, to say, “I will seek your good even when my own good is not being perfectly served.” It is the courage to ask, “What can I give?” before, “What am I getting?” It is the stubborn resolve to keep treating the other person as someone made in the image of God, even when they are not behaving like it.

That does not mean you become a doormat, or deny abuse, or pretend sin isn’t sin. Sometimes sacrificial love looks like telling the truth that nobody wants to hear. Sometimes it looks like boundaries and consequences. Sometimes it looks like seeing a counselor, involving your church, or removing yourself from danger. Jesus did not confuse love with passivity; He confronted, He rebuked, He overturned tables. Scripture’s picture of love includes discipline, truth-telling, and sober wisdom.

What sacrificial love never does is turn the other person into a thing. It never makes them a fish on a plate: something consumed for my comfort and discarded when I’m done.

Which brings us to your marriage—or to the relationship that came to your mind as you started reading this.

“Why should I keep giving when they’re not?”

“Doesn’t love mean I should feel good? I don’t feel so good.”

“If they really loved me, I wouldn’t have to sacrifice this much.”

Underneath those questions are often deeper wounds: betrayal, neglect, abuse, chronic disappointment, fear that you do not matter. I will never minimize those, and the story you carry might make some people realize their own pain has not cut as deep as it might have.

If you’re in a season where your marriage—or your other primary relationships—feel more like a battlefield than a blessing, I’d invite you to sit quietly with two questions that flow out of the kind rabbi’s little story and the larger story of the gospel.

First: Where, in this relationship, have I slipped into fish love?

This is a blunt question, but a necessary one. Have I mainly loved the way my spouse stabilizes me, or admires me, or takes care of me? Have I loved the way my children make me feel needed, or how my church makes me feel respected? If I imagine those comforts being taken away, does my love collapse, or does it endure because I actually want their good more than I want my own?

Second: What would sacrificial love look like here, today, in one concrete, small act?

Not a grand gesture, not a dramatic vow—just one act: a listening ear offered without planning my reply while you’re still talking; a confession of my own sin that I’ve been avoiding; a prayer for the other’s good spoken out loud; a practical, ordinary kindness done without demanding recognition or reciprocation.

You and I will not love perfectly. Only One has ever done that. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10, ESV). Before He asks anything of us, God moves toward us in a love that is not fish love. He does not take from us to gratify Himself; He gives Himself for us, and then calls us to walk in His steps.

Paul says it this way: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV). That means He did not wait for us to be worthy, pleasant, or easy to live with. He loved first. He loved at great cost. He loved knowing that we would be slow learners and quick forgetters.

That is the love that stands behind your faltering attempts to love the people closest to you. As it takes root in you, you will find yourself learning, little by little, to love because He first loved you.

I wonder what might happen if, instead of asking only, “How do I fix this relationship?” you began to ask, “Lord, how are You inviting me to learn Your kind of love here?” When you ask that question, you’re no longer alone with your fish love and your fear. You are standing in the classroom of grace, with a Teacher who does not shame you, but patiently forms you.

If you’d like to keep thinking and praying about this with me, here are a few gentle questions you might bring to the Lord:

• When I say “I love” this person, am I mostly thinking of what I receive from them, or what I am willing to give for their good?

• Where, in my marriage or closest relationships, have I begun to treat the other like a source of comfort or validation rather than a soul to be served in Christ’s name?

• Is there a place where genuine love—patient, kind, truthful, enduring—would lead me to set a boundary, tell a hard truth, or seek help, rather than simply absorb more hurt?
  (You might sit with 1 John 4:7–10 and 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 as you consider this.)

• What is one small, specific act of self-giving love I can offer this week—something concrete and doable—that would be an echo of Christ’s love for me, whether or not it is noticed or returned? (Perhaps especially if it is neither noticed nor returned)

• Am I willing to ask the Lord not only to change them, but first to show me where fish love lives in my own heart, and to gently teach me a different way?

If one of these questions touches something tender in you, I would be honored to hear from you. You’re welcome to leave a comment on this letter if you’d like your thoughts to be seen by others, or if you prefer something more private, you can send me a direct message through Substack. I read these notes quietly and prayerfully, and I will respond as I am able—not as a therapist or a fixer, but as a fellow pilgrim and pastor who has had to learn, the hard way, that Christ’s love is sufficient when my own love falls all too short.

You don’t have to sort this out alone.

You may feel like your marriage is frayed, or your family is weary, or your heart is bone-tired. The One who laid down His life for His friends does not wait for perfect homes before He walks through the door. He comes into ordinary kitchens and living rooms, into tense conversations and long silences, with a love that has already gone to the cross and already walked out of the tomb.

He has loved you with more than fish love—He has given Himself for you at the cross and given His Spirit to you now. He is able to teach you, day by day, how to love as you have been loved. And as you give yourself away in His name, you may find, in ways you did not expect, that your heart is being bound up with theirs—and with His.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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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 one most would offer.

I am not going to tell you to find a large church or a small one. I am not going to steer you toward modern worship or toward the old hymns, toward a service that follows the liturgy like a well-worn path or one that runs free and loose. I have my own preferences in all of these things, and yes, they matter to me. But I have come to believe those preferences are not the point. They are the wallpaper. They are not the house.

When Jesus left His disciples, He did not hand them a style to preserve. He handed them a mission to finish. Standing on a mountain in Galilee, He told them to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe everything He had commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). That is the assignment. Everything else a church does is meant to serve it.

You may have heard the line — it gets repeated in a hundred pulpits — that the local church is God’s Plan A for reaching the world, and there is no Plan B. I don’t know who said it first, but it certainly rings true. The church, for all her wrinkles, is who Christ chose. He did not entrust His mission to a program or a platform, or a personality. He entrusted it to His people, gathered. The late Dr. Ralph Winter said, “God does not have a mission for His church; He has a church for His mission.”

So if you asked me to help you choose a church, I would not begin with the facility or the song list or the coffee service. I would begin with one question: Is this church taking the Great Commission seriously?

Does it work to see unbelievers come to know Christ — that new believers are being brought in and baptized? And if a particular congregation is not built for the front-line work of evangelism, does it at least lock arms with those who are? Some churches are not wired to be the tip of the spear, and that is all right — but a healthy one still puts its shoulder to the work through others: supporting missionaries overseas, funding church planters, coming alongside a campus or youth ministry, backing a rescue mission or a pregnancy center, running the recovery group, going on short-term mission trips, feeding the hungry with the gospel attached. It gives, it prays, it sends. Then comes the second half of the Commission: does it teach people not merely to know Christian things, but to obey them — to observe all that Christ commanded? This is discipleship: a disciple is simply one who follows Christ and does what He says. The definition could not be plainer. The real challenge is in carrying it out. Conversion and obedience. New believers born, and believers being made into disciples. New births and changed lives. That is the evidence of a church that follows Jesus.

If we are honest, many churches drift from it. God set each congregation down in a particular corner of the world, in a particular slice of time, on purpose — and it can be easy to forget why. A church can slowly stop looking like a body on mission and start looking like something else: a pleasant club for people who already believe, a comfortable room where the like-minded gather to feel warm.

I do not say that to sneer at struggling churches, and I am certainly not throwing stones at congregations that are weak or wandering. Every church is made of sinners, mine included, and grace is the only reason any of us are standing. But when people go looking for a church, many begin with an understandable list — but perhaps not the most important list.

They ask: Do I like the music? Do I enjoy the preaching? Is it comfortable here? Is there something for each of my kids? Will I find friends who are like me? None of those questions are foolish. Every one of them may describe something healthy. But notice — they are all questions about me. What I like, what I enjoy, what suits me and mine. The better question turns the other way: do these things serve the making of disciples (it is possible they do), or do they only make a nice place for Christians to sit?

Because a church is not a hot tub. It was never meant to be a warm basin where believers lower themselves in, sigh, and soak. It is meant to be a birthplace for the newly saved, a nursery for the young in faith, a training ground for the growing, a working ministry, and a sending station for the work of Christ. Every good thing under its roof — the music, the teaching, the fellowship, the programs — ought to point, somehow, toward that.

Here is a snare worth naming. It hides in every tradition, though it tends to be most present in the more formal ones. It is possible to sit through a service, recite the right words, follow the liturgy from start to finish, and walk out convinced you are square with God — when all you have really done is complete a ritual. I say this gently, because I have felt that very comfort myself, and I know how easily it can settle over a sincere heart. But being right with God has nothing to do with whether the service is high or low, or which color the hymnal is, or how faithfully you have kept a list of religious do’s and don’ts. It has to do with your relationship with Him — whether you actually know Christ and are following Him. The forms the service takes can help us worship, or they can lull us to sleep. So it is worth asking, tenderly and without fear, which one they are doing in your own heart.

And while your eye is open, keep it open toward the front of the room, too. I have heard it said that one of the gravest problems facing the church today is narcissism in its leadership — pastors and leaders who have made the ministry about themselves: their platform, their brand, their applause. The attitude says, I must increase so that Christ may increase — a perversion of John the Baptist’s humble confession, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30). It is a hard thing to say and a harder thing to see, because gifted people are magnetic, and a crowd will follow charisma a long way before it asks where it is being led. But the Great Commission was never about building a following for a man. Watch for a leader who points past himself to Christ, who will be questioned willingly, who serves rather than consumes the people. I do not say this to make you cynical, or to send you hunting for flaws in good and faithful pastors who are simply human. Most shepherds I have known love their people dearly and carry burdens you will never see. A church can survive a leader who is weak; we are all weak somewhere. What it struggles to survive is a leader who has increasingly fallen in love with himself. Pray for the ones who lead you, and look, with hope, for the humble.

And there is one more mark I would look for, maybe the plainest of all. Jesus said the world would know His followers by one thing: their love for one another (John 13:35). So when you visit a church, do not only watch what happens on the platform. Watch the hallways. Watch the parking lot. Watch how they speak of the ones who are not in the room. Do these people carry each other’s burdens? Do they forgive quickly, show up in the hard weeks, feed each other, pray like they mean it? Does any of it remind you, even faintly, of that first fellowship described at the end of Acts 2 and 4, where they broke bread house to house and no one among them was left in need? A church can have flawless music but thin love. But where love is real, the life of Christ is usually at work, even in the middle of weakness.

Now, once we have shined that light on a church, fairness demands we turn it around and let it fall on ourselves. Because here is something that must be remembered: the church is not an it. The church is a we. It has no arms but ours, no welcome but the one we offer, no love in its hallways except the love the people carry in with them. If the people will not obey Christ’s commands, the church will not stay on mission — it cannot, any more than a body can walk with no legs willing to move.

So the honest questions come home again, and they center on discipleship. If you have walked with the Lord for many years, are you actively helping someone younger learn to follow Him — are you within reach to encourage, to teach, to warn, to steady? And if you are young in the faith, are you letting yourself be taught, corrected, strengthened, formed?

Which brings me to something I did not expect to write, but I think it may be the most important line in this letter.

The best church for you may very well be the one you are already in.

Even if it falls short. Even if it has grown a little sleepy, a little inward, a little too fond of its own comfort. It may not need you to leave it; it may need you to love it enough to help it remember why it exists. I think of my own little home fellowship — the one that carried Sherry and me through the years after my brain surgeries, the people who shoveled our snow and cut our grass, prayed over us, and fasted before God on our behalf. Our church is not perfect. No church is. But it is alive because its people show up in love. The life is in the loving. And here is a thought worth considering: if your church is not yet functioning the way it should, it may be that God has given you a hunger for the very thing it is missing. That ache you feel for deeper prayer, or real discipleship, or care for the lost, or honest fellowship — what if it is not a reason to leave, but a calling to build? God often plants the hunger in the person He means to use to feed others. The thing you wish your church had may be the thing He is asking you to help foster within it.

It has been said that the best ability is availability. I like that. Most of what a church becomes, it becomes through ordinary people who simply made themselves available — who taught the class no one wanted, who sat with the grieving, who kept the nursery, who welcomed the stranger, who went where others wouldn’t. Is it possible that God has placed you in your church, in this season, not so you can grade it, but so you can help it work — in your neighborhood, and out into the world He so loves?

And here I must say the thing that holds all the rest together, or none of it will stand. We do not manufacture any of this by willpower. A church is not renewed, and a servant is not made useful, by gritted teeth and good intentions. It is the Holy Spirit who forms us, prepares us, and guides us into the work — who takes ordinary, available people and slowly grows in them what Paul called the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). Those are the very qualities a church runs on. You cannot schedule them onto the agenda or vote them into office; they are grown, not installed. So before you go looking for the perfect place to serve, ask the Spirit to make you the kind of person a healthy church is made of. Yield to Him. Let Him prune what needs pruning. He is the One who makes the church what it is meant to be, and He does it through people who have first let Him have His way in them.

So how should you choose a church? Gently, prayerfully, and with patience for yourself — but not by asking first, “Is this place built around what I like?” Ask instead: Is it taking Christ’s mission seriously? Is it making disciples? Is it teaching people to obey Jesus? Is love visible in the ordinary corners of it? And — the hardest question — am I willing not only to attend, but to give myself to it? Those are better questions. They are more searching ones. Because the church we need may not be the one that entertains us best, but the one that most faithfully calls us to follow Christ — and then hands us a place to serve.

So let me leave you with a few questions, and I would love to hear your answers in the Chat: When you picture the church you are looking for, what kind of ministry do you most hope it has — and be honest — are you hoping to serve in that ministry, or hoping to benefit from it? Both can be right, but it is worth knowing which one is driving you. And this: If God is calling you to help your church live out its mission more faithfully, what is the one small, available thing He might be asking you to do next? Tell me. Let’s chat about it.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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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” for this newsletter, and to reassure you about what you are—and are not—being charged right now.

Over the weekend, one of my readers happily told me she had subscribed to the letters. I realized, though, that she thought she had already been charged for her pledge. That conversation struck my heart. If even one of you is unsure about what a pledge does—and does not—mean, then I need to explain it clearly.

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At the same time, I am deeply grateful to those who have made a pledge. Your willingness to say “yes” ahead of time helps me discern whether turning on a paid tier someday would be wise, and it encourages me to keep writing letters that serve you well. If you have found these letters helpful and would like to pledge future support, you can do so from the subscribe button—but please only do so if it fits your own financial situation and sense of call.

If I ever do turn on a paid tier, I want it to feel like a deepening of what we already share here, not a barricade around it. I imagine things like occasional follow‑up letters that sit a little longer with hard themes—illness, divorce, blended families, finances, doubt—for those who want more space to reflect. I also hope to offer “Notes from the Writing Desk” about my historical novel, The Nine Hostages, which tells the fascinating story of one of my direct ancestors, a legendary king in 4th–5th century Ireland, and what I am learning as I walk that long road of writing (I’m six months and 70,000 words in as of now).

In time, a paid tier could also help me create simple guides or short devotionals around the pillars we’ve already named together: The Pastor, The Marriage, The Body, The Money, The Mind, and The Writer. Perhaps there will be occasional “mailbag” letters or small online gatherings where I address themes that many of you are walking through—always pastoral, never individual counseling. None of this is promised yet, but it is the kind of work your pledges would help make possible, if the Lord leads us there.

For now, The Pastor’s Hearth remains entirely free. It will always be a quiet place for honest faith. I will continue to write about love, loss, failure, and the long road of discipleship, trusting that Christ will be sufficient for us, as He has always been. Thank you for reading, for praying, and for simply being here at the hearth. Whether you pledge future support or not, I am grateful for you and to you.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

Letters About Love, Loss, Hardship, and the Long Road of Discipleship

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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 whatever games six-year-olds invent on an empty stretch of sidewalk on a free afternoon.

Then a girl came strolling toward us, a year or two younger than the rest. She was licking a large, round lollypop and carrying a bag full of candy. Lots of candy. Saltwater taffy, caramels, chocolates — the stuff of childhood dreams, a pirate’s treasure being paraded just out of reach.

She had not brought it to share. That was obvious. She had brought it to be seen with it. She circled us, saying nothing, meeting no one’s gaze, luxuriously pulling out one bright piece after another, relishing the way we watched her with longing eyes as she unwrapped each piece and pushed it into her already bulging mouth. Purple saliva overflowed and ran down her chin, seeping into her dress. She did not speak — she did not have to. The candy did all her talking for her. We were meant to want what she had, and without question, we did.

We must have looked pitiful, standing there in a loose group, our game suddenly in time‑out, pretending not to stare while staring all the same. She knew exactly what she was doing, and we felt the sharp pinch of envy — that sudden awareness of what you don’t have. At some point we must have chosen not to pay attention, and we drifted back to our games, losing track of her for an hour or so.

Suddenly, from down the sidewalk, we heard it — a high, broken wailing. The bloodcurdling sound of grievous loss.

We looked up. There she was, standing over a wide pool of bright pink and purple vomit, splashed across the concrete and soaking into her shoes. The bag, noticeably smaller now, sat on the sidewalk beside her. As she looked at the liquified candy before her, she sobbed and cried out the same two words, over and over.

“My stuff! My stuff!”

Even at five, something in me felt a peculiar tug at that. Because it was clear what she was grieving. She was not crying because she felt sick, or because she was embarrassed, though I imagine both were true. She was crying over the loss of the candy she had eaten. The treasure was gone, spilled out onto the pavement, and I had the strange certainty that if she could have, she would have scooped every drop of it back into herself rather than lose it. That is how much it meant to her.

I did not have the categories for this scene then. I only had the experience of witnessing it. But the picture stayed, and somewhere along the years it grew into something I could not unsee.

There’s something disturbing to me about the Candy Girl. I think it’s because I have not only seen her, but I have been her.

Not with a bag of candy, but with grown-up versions of it. The thing I was a little too pleased to own. The purchase I hoped someone would notice. The muted, private satisfaction of having what another person wanted and did not have. We dress it up and call it taste, or stewardship, or simply enjoying the fruit of our labor, and some of that is fair. But underneath, often enough, is the same smug strut around the kids on the sidewalk. Look what I have. The candy does the talking.

And here is the question I cannot get past, the one that turns this from a simple story of childhood remembrance into a heart-check: if it were taken from me, would I grieve it the way she grieved hers? Would I stand over the wreckage of my comforts crying, my stuff, my stuff? Because the depth of our sorrow at losing a thing tells us, more honestly than we might like, how much of our heart was resting on it. And maybe the harder question is the one the Candy Girl asks without meaning to: how much of what you cherish, if you saw it plainly, would amount to little more than brightly colored vomit on the pavement — sweet for a moment, gone the next, and impossible to scoop back up? It is a crude picture, I know. But she has been honest with us, and honesty deserves honesty in return.

Jesus said it plainly, and it is meant for all of us. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19–21).

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. He tells us that the heart simply follows whatever we have decided is precious. The candy was never really the problem on that sidewalk. The problem was a small heart that had attached itself to something that could not last, and so was bound to be broken when the thing was gone. Pink and purple on the concrete. Moth and rust by another name.

I am not telling you to despise good gifts. Scripture clearly does not say that. But I recommend you hold them the way you would hold something on loan — lightly, gratefully, ready to open your hand. The Candy Girl had been holding her treasure in a tight grip, and that is why the loss undid her.

So, what is worth treasuring? What can be loved without the dread of moth and rust lurking in the alley? Paul, writing from prison of all places, where a man has been stripped of nearly everything, answers it like this: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Everything else, he says, he counts as loss next to that one possession that cannot spoil, cannot be stolen, cannot be vomited up on the pavement and grieved.

Paul knew how quietly money can take the throne. When he listed what a leader of the church must be, he set it down among the rest, plainly: “not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:3). I have read that line as a pastor and felt it land where it was meant to land. It is a sobering thing to realize how many of us who have been trusted to shepherd others could be quietly indicted by it — not for having money, but for loving it, for letting the candy do our talking. I do not say that to point a finger down a row of pews. I say it because the Candy Girl is in me too, and I ask the same question of myself.

I think of her sometimes, that little girl with sugar and bile on her shoes, and I do not feel superior to her. I feel exposed by her. She just had the honesty to cry it out loud. My stuff.

Maybe today is a good day to look at what you would cry over, and ask the Lord, gently, whether it is sitting where it belongs.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

If today’s letter found you out the way the Candy Girl found me out, I’d love to hear about it. Let’s talk by the hearth: if it were taken from you tomorrow, what is the one thing you’d be tempted to stand over and cry, “My stuff!”? And here’s the harder half—seen plainly, might that treasure amount to little more than brightly colored vomit on the pavement, sweet for a moment and gone the next? Name it in the comments and let’s chat—it might be just the thing someone else needs to hear today.

P.S. If these letters are a help to you, I’d be honored to have you share them, repost them, and of course walk this road with me. The Pastor’s Hearth will always have a free letter for whoever needs it. When paid subscriptions open, they will carry a little more—added letters and a few other benefits—and your support will help keep the hearth lit for those who can’t yet give. And if you’d like to walk further down this road together, you can pledge your future support today or give a free-will offering of any amount.

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

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

Free-Will Offering (Deeply Appreciated)

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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, the life drained out of his features. Add the bone-deep malaise that comes with such severe medical trauma — the fog, the fatigue, the sense that your body has become a car whose engine won’t turn over — and you begin to understand why I say it plainly: I looked, and I could not find myself.

I tell you this not to dwell on my own wreckage, but because I suspect some of you know the feeling — of looking up one day and not recognizing the life that’s looking back.

Of all the things I lost in those years, the one that cut closest to the bone was my voice. Maybe that surprises you. But for most of my adult life, my voice was something of a distinguishing mark for me. It had a lot to do with my livelihood — I made much of my living in front of a microphone: radio and television voiceover work, professional singing, public speaking in both ministry and secular careers. When you’ve spent decades being a distinguished voice in the room, you start to believe, somewhere under the surface, that the voice is who you are. So when the instrument broke — shattered like a sugar bowl — it wasn’t just a skill I’d lost. It felt like losing my identity.

I could tell you about the other losses. There were many: the mobility, the energy, the easy confidence of a man who had always been able to think and earn and provide. But something about my voice was tightly braided into my sense of who I was. Strip away the voice, and I had to ask a question I hadn’t had to consider for sixty-some years: if I am not the voice, then who am I?

Maybe you’ve never lost your face in a mirror, but I suspect you know the feeling. The widow who reaches across the bed in the dark and remembers, again for the first time, that she is no longer a “we.” The man who gave his company forty good years and then, on a Friday afternoon, was handed a box and told to clear his desk. The mother who walks past the quiet bedroom of the last child to leave and wonders what a house — and a self — is for when the noise is gone. The diagnosis that rewrites your calendar. The divorce that rewrites your name. We don’t only lose people and abilities. We lose the stories we’ve believed about who we are.

And here is the thing I have come to believe, slowly and at great cost: those stories were always too small.

The world is obsessed with identity. It hands us a thousand labels and tells us to choose: your career, your achievements, your politics, your net worth, your appearance, your performance. We wear them like name tags. And the cruelty of it is this — every one of the world’s labels can be taken from you. The job ends. The body fails. The voice cracks. The mirror goes strange. If your name tag is one of those, then the day it’s peeled off, you will stand at a sink somewhere and not be able to find yourself either.

But there is one identity that no surgery can sever, no stroke can slur, and no Friday afternoon can revoke. The apostle John, an old man by the time he wrote his Gospel and his letters to the church, kept calling himself the same odd thing: not “the exiled evangelist,” not “the last living follower,” but “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Seven times in his Gospel he identified himself in that way. Understandably, people have interpreted this differently over the years. I’ll give you my take: I don’t believe it was exclusionary, as though John thought he was the only disciple Jesus loved. I believe it was the most settled thing John knew about himself. When everything else had been stripped away by years and exile and grief, what remained — what had always been truest — was simply this: I am loved by Jesus. I believe it became the bedrock of his identity — as though his very name became “Jesus Loves Me.”

That is the identity John urges on us in 1 John 4. Beloved. Not as a greeting card sentiment, but as the bedrock fact of who we are in Christ. And he reminds us that this love is no soft thing — it cost the Father His Son. God’s love was displayed not in mere feeling but in substitution, His Son bearing what we deserved so that we could be called beloved and mean it. That is a love with a spine.

Here is what undid me there at the sink: nothing about that identity had changed. The man in the mirror was a stranger to me, but he was not a stranger to God. The voice was gone, but the One who knit the voice together in the first place still knew my name — and it was not “the voice.” It was “beloved.” I had simply been living, for sixty-some years, with my awareness pointed at the wrong thing. Something happens when you finally realize who you are.

So let me ask you the only question that finally matters when the labels start peeling off: what do you want your truest identity to be? Your career? Your competence? Your appearance, your portfolio, your reputation, the role that’s now ending? Every one of those is something less — far less — than being God’s beloved. The richest man who ever lived, the most decorated, the most famous, the first to plant a flag on some far-off peak: all of it is a smaller name than the one God gives you in Christ.

I’m not going to pretend the mirror fixed itself overnight, or that my voice came roaring back, or that I never again felt like a stranger to myself. Recovery is slower and less tidy than that. But I no longer go looking for myself in the mirror. I had been searching the wrong glass. The truest thing about me was never my face or my voice; it was the love of the One who made both. And that love does not flicker when the body does.

There is a freedom in this that I did not expect. For years I carried a low, humming fear — fear of failing, fear of being found out, fear that if I ever stopped performing, I would find little of substance beneath. Scripture says perfect love casts out fear, and I once read that as an aspirational hope. Now I read it as a lifeline. When your identity rests on what you produce, every loss is a threat and every weakness is an exposure. But when your identity rests on being loved by God before you produced anything at all, the fear loses its grip. You no longer have to earn the face in the mirror. It was given to you, and it is held by hands stronger than your own.

If you are standing at your own sink today, not recognizing the life looking back at you, hear this from one learner to another: you have not lost yourself. You have only lost a name tag that was never big enough to truly identify you. Underneath it, the real name is still there, and it was there before you ever earned a thing. Beloved. Let that be the face you learn to recognize.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

If these letters are a help to you, I’d be honored to have you walk this road with me. The Pastor’s Hearth will always have a free letter for whoever needs it; when paid subscriptions open, your support will help keep the hearth lit for others who can’t yet give.

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)

Your interaction with this letter (likes, comments, restacks, and shares) prompts Substack’s algorithms to show it to more people. Together, let’s reach more people.