Maybe you’ve felt it. The same faces every Sunday. Seats that used to be full.

It’s easy to blame the culture, the times, the neighborhood. But often what holds a church back is quieter, closer, and more fixable than we think.

And almost every one of them has a remedy we can see in the life of Jesus.

Here are ten.

1. One Person Trying To Do Everything

Jesus had all authority in heaven and earth. And what did He do? He chose twelve ordinary men and sent them out to do the work themselves.

If the Son of God shared the ministry, no one person should carry it alone. When you see a leader drowning, that’s not a problem to complain about. That’s an invitation to lift.

“He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out.”
— Mark 3:14

2. A Cold Welcome

Jesus stopped for the people everyone else walked past. The woman at the well. Zacchaeus in the tree. The children being shooed away. He made outsiders feel seen.

You don’t need a title to do this. You just need to notice the person standing alone and walk toward them.

3. Forgetting the Young

When the disciples pushed the children aside, Jesus was indignant.

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.” — Matthew 19:14

He made room for the next generation. If your church’s kids or teens feel like an afterthought, maybe you’re the one who’s supposed to show up for them.

4. Choosing Talent Over Integrity

Jesus spent three years forming His disciples’ hearts before He ever sent them to lead. He picked humble fishermen over impressive résumés.

Gifting can build a platform. Only character can hold it up. When we raise up leaders, we start where Jesus started: on the inside.

5. Guarding the Past Instead of Reaching the Lost

Jesus came “to seek and to save the lost,” and He broke with tradition to do it, healing on the Sabbath, eating with sinners, going where the religious wouldn’t.

The church exists for the people not yet in the room. Comfort is a poor reason to stop reaching.

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” — Luke 19:10

---

6. Words That Inform and Entertain But Never Transform

When Jesus taught, people were amazed, because He taught with authority, and His words went straight to the heart.

The Word of God was never meant to just fill our heads or entertain. It’s meant to change us. If we leave church the same as we came, something’s been lost along the way.

7. Making the Building the Mission

Jesus cleared the temple when the house of prayer became about comfort and commerce. And then He sent His people OUT.

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” — Mark 16:15

A church is a launching pad, not a fortress. The mission was never to keep the doors open. It was to go out through them.

8. No Path From Visitor to Follower

Jesus didn’t just gather crowds.

He said “Follow me,” and then walked people step by step, from curiosity, to commitment, to being sent.

A healthy church helps people take the next step. If you see someone stuck at the edge, maybe you’re the one to walk with them.

9. Letting Conflict Fester

Jesus gave us the way through offense: go directly, and seek to win your brother back. And He prayed that we would be ONE.

Unspoken hurt and quiet division poison a church from the inside. Reconciliation is holy work, and every one of us is called to it.

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” — Matthew 18:15

10. Forgetting That Growth Is God’s Work

Here’s the one that holds all the others together.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.” — John 15:5

Every single thing on this list is just pruning and tending. We plant. We water. But only God gives the growth.

The healthiest thing any of us can do for our church is to stay deeply connected to Jesus, and let Him do what only He can do.

Just For You

Maybe you read this list and one of them wouldn’t let you go. One gap you kept picturing. One face. One need.

Don’t rush past that.

Because here’s the truth we don’t say often enough: the church isn’t the pastor’s job. It’s ours. All of us.

And often the surest sign that God is calling you to help somewhere is simple. You can see, more clearly than anyone else, exactly where the help is needed.

That pull you feel isn’t criticism rising up in you. It might be a calling. God has a way of giving certain people the eyes to see exactly where He wants their hands to go.

You are not too small. You are not unqualified. You are not “just” a member.

You are the church. And if you can see the gap, maybe, just maybe, God sent you to fill it.

Go be the answer to someone’s prayer this week. 🙏

Inspired in part by Geoff Surratt’s “Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches From Growing.” The reflections and Scripture here are my own.

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I wasn’t planning on making this video.

But after waking up in the middle of the night, 3 distinct thoughts came to mind. Each leading to the next, until I felt compelled to come downstairs and pray for whoever would watch this.

Maybe that’s you.

I pray this video strengthens your faith and reminds you that God is not limited by long prayers or perfect words. Sometimes just a few words, spoken in faith, are enough for Him to move.

Love you guys,
Shervin

We love the idea of an open door. An opportunity. A yes. A way through.

But when we pray “God, open a door,” we’re usually thinking like a game show. Door #1, Door #2, Door #3. A car. A vacation. Money. A prize behind every one.

That’s not the door I want to talk to you about today.

Don’t spend your whole life praying for the wrong doors to open while the most important one stays shut.

Watch this video. Then sit with it.

Love you guys. 🙏

And I have to tell you why.

The Left Turn

It started in January of last year, 2025.

An email popped up in my inbox, a property listing in Big Bear. And the moment I saw it, something in me gravitated toward it.

But then reality set in.

Who was I to want this? I couldn’t afford a cabin in Big Bear. I’ve been a youth pastor for ten years, on a youth pastor’s salary. It made no sense at all. So I just closed the email, and I didn’t think about it again.

Or so I thought.

I live in Los Angeles, and Big Bear sits about 2.5 hours up the mountain from me. Close enough to reach, far enough to feel like another world.

The next morning, I dropped my kids off like I always do and my plan was simple.

Drive home, prepare my lesson, get through my seminary reading.

But when I reached the intersection where I always turn right, something felt different. A quiet pull in the other direction. Almost without deciding to, I turned left.

And it made no earthly sense.

I had to pick my kids up later that day. That meant 2.5 hours up, and 2.5 hours back, nearly 5 hours of driving crammed into the hours I had. It was going to be tight. Almost impossible. Every practical bone in my body said turn around.

But I didn’t. I kept going, all the way up the mountain toward Big Bear.

I took the long drive as a chance to pray and to worship. And as the road climbed and that great expanse of mountain and sky opened up in front of me, something rose up in my chest. The beauty of it, the nearness of God in it, it just overtook me. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face, and I couldn’t have told you exactly why.

The Shepherd’s House

When I got there, I saw the house from the email. It belonged to a family with the last name Schäfer. Do you know what Schäfer means?

It means shepherd in German.

A man pulled off his ordinary road, weeping without knowing why, standing in front of a shepherd's house. I couldn't shake it.

Standing right there, I called my wife. I told her, maybe we can take a loan and do this. We could put it up on Airbnb, let it help cover the bills, maybe even turn a small profit. And without hesitating, she said, if that’s what you want to do, I will fully support you.

And strangely, the moment she said it, I felt more afraid, not less. Because now it wasn’t only my step to take. Her trust was resting on me. And I did not want to let her down.

Then I turned around and drove back down the mountain, and somehow, amazingly, I made it in time to pick up my kids.

By February, the house was ours.

Now, I know how this sounds. A youth pastor taking a loan on a mountain cabin. To be honest, this was not an emotional decision. It was a spiritual one. I felt compelled, and I felt at peace. But it also terrified me. Because it made no sense.

And I keep finding, when I read my Bible, that this is exactly how God tends to work.

He told Abraham to leave everything and go to a land he’d only see later, and Abraham went, not knowing where he was headed. He called a frightened man named Gideon, hiding in a winepress, and sent him out with far less than he wanted. He called Peter to step off the boat and onto the water. Over and over, God says go, before He ever says where. And the ones who trust Him step out anyway.

So I stepped out.

And this is the kind of decision the world simply doesn’t understand. There he goes again, they’ll say, with his prayers and his promptings, making a choice that has nothing to do with reality.

But I knew Who told me to turn left.

Furnishing It With Faith

After we bought it, something started happening almost on its own.

I found myself furnishing it with faith. A mat by the door that said Bless This Home. Framed art on the walls, The Lord Is My Shepherd. Little things, scattered around, each one quietly pointing to the One I belong to.

I didn’t have a name for what I was doing yet. I was just decorating a house the way my heart is decorated.

The numbers caught up with me almost right away. Between the taxes, the insurance, the cleaning fees, I wasn't turning the profit I'd hoped for. A year of it. Every month, money I don't have leaving my hands for a house that was never going to pay me back.

On paper, it makes no sense.

And yet, I kept coming back to one promise. The name on that house was shepherd. And my Shepherd had told me once,

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” — Psalm 23:1

I didn’t understand where He was leading me. I couldn’t see the end of it. But I knew His voice, and I chose to trust Him, even in the dark. I shall not want. Not because the numbers made sense—they didn't—but because the Shepherd was the one leading.

The Drive I’d Been Dreading

So this morning, I made the drive I’d been dreading. I had resolved in my heart to sell the house. So I headed up the mountain around 8am, one last time, just to give this house some love before I let it go.

I had one last renter coming in August, an older woman who’d booked the place for a full month. She would be my final guest. And I wanted her stay to be comfortable. So I packed her some water, treats for her dog, coffee pods, a little chocolate. Quiet ways of saying she was cared for.

And then two more things. My guitar, so the cabin would hold a little music.

And a Bible.

On the drive up, I tried to make my peace with selling. And I reached for Scripture to steady me.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he would later receive as his inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” — Hebrews 11:8

Abraham obeyed, not knowing where he was going. But he went.

And later, when God told him to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham raised his hand, and the moment he did, God stopped him. The obedience was the offering. The having was never the point. The willingness was.

So maybe buying the place was my Isaac, I told myself. Maybe I was only ever meant to obey for a season. To buy it, to hold it for a year, and now to lay it down.

Maybe the buying was never about the keeping at all.

But if I’m honest, the peace never quite came. I’d made my decision, and I was going to walk it out in faith, trusting, hoping, that it was right. But my heart wasn’t settled.

The Vision

And I began worshiping in the car.

And that’s when it happened again. Just like the first time I drove up, the tears came. I cried real hard. And into those tears, the Lord began to speak. He started painting me a picture.

Not a mat by the door. Not one little sign that said Faith over Fear. I mean walls.

Every wall in that house, covered in Scripture. Reference Bibles and commentaries on the shelves. Prayers printed on canvas. Crosses everywhere. A house where you couldn’t look anywhere without meeting the Word of God.

And I saw them.

Travelers, coming up for a night or two, standing in front of those walls. Seeing something in Scripture they had never seen before. I imagined them arriving weary and leaving changed. Coming to the Good News House, and having their whole life take a turn.

Yes. That would be the name. The GOOD NEWS House.

And I wept harder. Because I was holding that beautiful dream up against an impossible fact. I can’t afford this house anymore.

And I cried out, God, what are You doing to me? What do You want from me? I can’t do this.

So I kept worshiping. And into that ache, the Lord brought me another image.

The Bible. The one sitting on the seat beside me, the one I was bringing for my last renter. And I started wondering. Where do I leave it so she’ll find it? By the bed? On the shelf by the fireplace?

And right there, that question opened a door in my mind.

I started thinking about a Bible that YOU AND I have seen a thousand times and never really thought about. You know what I’m talking about. The one in the drawer of every hotel room.

It’s everywhere.

Every hotel, every motel, in room after room, even in hotels owned by people who don’t believe a word of it.

Free. Just waiting there.

But why? Have you ever wondered that?

Well, this is how it all started.

Two Salesmen

You see, there were two salesmen.

In 1898, John Nicholson and Samuel Hill got stuck sharing a crowded hotel room in Wisconsin.

Two strangers, both traveling men, both far from home.

They discovered they shared a faith in Jesus, and they prayed together that night. Out of that cramped inconvenience, a friendship was born, and then… a mission.

Because they knew something about the road. They knew what it was to be a traveling man, alone in a strange city, far from your wife, far from your children, far from anyone who knew your name. They knew the loneliness of a hotel room at night. They knew the temptations that come knocking when no one’s watching, and the despair that can settle over a man in the dark.

So they had an idea.

What if there was a Bible waiting in every one of those rooms? A quiet companion for the lonely traveler, the tempted man, the one on the edge. Something to reach for at the exact moment he needed it most.

A decade later, they began placing Bibles in hotel room drawers.

And they called themselves…

THE GIDEONS!

After Gideon. The frightened man in the winepress I mentioned earlier. The least of his family, from the weakest clan, hiding, overlooked, sure he was nobody.

And God walked up to that man and called him a mighty warrior. God saw the small, the hidden, the overlooked, and He called him by name.

And that, I realized, is exactly who walks into those hotel rooms.

The small. The hidden. The overlooked. The traveling man or woman far from home.

Maybe at the end of their rope. Maybe just alone in a quiet room where temptation comes knocking and no one would ever know. And there in the drawer waits a Bible, and through it, the same God who found Gideon finds them. Calls them by name.

And when they open it, when they answer, their whole life can change.

There are people who checked into a room to end their lives and opened that drawer instead.

There are marriages saved, addictions broken, souls pulled back from the edge, all by a book somebody left behind.

Over TWO BILLION Scriptures placed. Two billion quiet invitations, waiting in the dark for someone who feels small to discover they were never overlooked by God at all.

And that’s when it all came together, right there on the mountain road.

The Bible sitting on the seat beside me, the one I was bringing for my last renter, it wasn’t a Gideon Bible. It was just my own worn NLT. But I was about to do the very thing those two salesmen did.

Leave the Word where a traveler might find it, and hope God would meet her there.

Without ever knowing the word for it, I had become a Gideon.

And the house?

The house I’d spent a year quietly filling with Scripture, the walls I’d just seen in my mind covered in His Word, that was the same thing, only bigger.

Not one Bible in one drawer, but a whole house of them.

A place where someone could walk in weary and, maybe for the first time in their life, meet God. Hear His Word and finally understand it.

A well up on the mountain, where anyone who came up thirsty could drink.

The Good News House

A Message in a Bottle

And right there on that mountain road, through the tears, I began to pray.

Was this Your plan all along, Lord?

To take this little cabin and make it a Good News House? A place where travelers arrive, carrying every kind of ache, and find themselves in a room soaked in Your presence, surrounded by Your Word?

Your will is good, and pleasing, and perfect. And though I don’t know where this is headed, whether to sell this house or hold on and keep filling it with Scripture, just show me, Lord.

I’m sure John Nicholson and Samuel Hill reached a moment like this one. Two tired salesmen who simply took the first step, and then the next, without seeing the whole road.

So that’s what I’m doing. Taking baby steps, not knowing where God will lead.

And here’s the honest truth.

I don’t have a tidy ending for you.

This happened just today. I drove up that mountain ready to sell, and I’ll be driving home with a vision to turn it into a Good News House.

Because look at what God chooses. A frightened man in a winepress. Two weary salesmen in a crowded room. A little cabin in the mountains. A post you almost scrolled right past.

“God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” — 1 Corinthians 1:27

So consider this article a message in a bottle.

I’m casting it out to all of you, asking for your prayers, and for any advice you could send my way.

Perhaps somewhere out there, God will bring me my John Nicholson, my Samuel Hill.

And perhaps…

This is the beginning of Good News Houses all around the world.

Please pray for me. I'll keep you posted.

Love you guys. 🙏

A few months ago I woke up at 1:39am because I couldn’t shake off this verse. I made this video before I could talk myself out of it.

I keep coming back to it, so today it’s for you.

Joel 2:25 says God will restore the years the locusts have eaten. Not the days. The YEARS. The seasons you wrote off. The time you swore was wasted, gone, unrecoverable.

If you’ve been grieving lost time, this may be for you. A lost decade. A lost relationship. A lost version of yourself.

Watch it. Then sit with it.

Love you guys. 🙏

I didn’t want to go to my wife’s twentieth high school reunion. I’d made up my mind before we even arrived—I knew what reunions were like. Awkward small talk. People measuring themselves against each other. Uncomfortable comparisons. But Arsine needed me there, and that was reason enough. So I went.

We sat at a table with people she hadn’t seen in two decades.

There were pleasant exchanges—how many kids, what they were doing, the gentle choreography of reunion talk. A couple sat beside us: a gentleman and his wife, raising a young child.

I noticed a tattoo on his left arm: I will make a man out of you. Something about him felt different, though I couldn’t place it, and we kept talking.

The Tattoo

Then the conversation turned to Disney remakes. When Mulan came up, the whole table agreed the live action was better than the original. He disagreed. He said the animated film had meant something to him.

And there it was—the tattoo suddenly made sense.

In the film, that line comes from …

Read more

Growing up without a father

My dad had his own problems.

He wasn’t a bad man. He was a man trying to survive — living, in many ways, in a world only he could see. I never really knew him until the last ten years of his life.

So I was given to my own devices.

Figuring out the world. Figuring out who I was. My mom did her best, but even she eventually had to let go and trust me to find my own confidence, my own footing.

God, to me, was cultural Christianity. Church once a year, on Easter. That’s all I knew.

We’d gather around the table for Christmas dinner — eating, drinking, the whole family together — but Jesus was always left out of it. The only time His name came up was as an exclamation. A frustration. A surprise.

Everyone talked about themselves. Their achievements. They teased each other, swapped stories, argued a little.

It looked like family. It even felt like family, in a way.

But God was never actually at the table.

Read more

It was 1915.

Anahit was seven. She was hiding behind a low stone wall at the edge of the village, because her mother had shoved her there and said one word: stay.

She could see through a gap in the stones.

Soldiers had come into the yard — Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman army, in their dark uniforms and tall red fezzes, thick mustaches under hard eyes, rifles slung over their shoulders. One of them was shouting at her father — words Anahit didn’t fully understand, but she understood the tone. Hatred has a sound, even before you know the words.

“You Armenian dogs built your churches on our land,” the soldier spat. “Today that ends.”

Her father stepped in front of her mother. He didn’t shout back. He just said, quietly, “We have done nothing. We only want to live in peace.”

“Peace?” The soldier laughed — the coldest sound Anahit had ever heard. “Your peace died a long time ago.”

Her father didn’t move. He stood between the soldiers and his family — her mother, her older brother — like a wall m…

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Don’t pray.

It completely changed how I see prayer. And maybe, it’ll do the same for you.

The Masked Prayer Warrior

When the world shut down during Covid, I found myself doing what most people did — masking up, keeping my distance, and making quiet runs to Trader Joe’s for groceries.

But somewhere along the way, those trips became something else entirely.

I started praying for people and the mask made it easy.

Nobody could see my lips moving. Nobody knew. It was just me, my cart, and a stream of quiet prayers for every person who crossed my path.

The elderly man slowly pushing his cart down the cereal aisle? Lord, be with him today. The frazzled woman on her phone in the produce section? Give her peace, Jesus. The teenager bagging groceries who looked like he hadn’t slept in days? Bless that kid.

Cashiers. Couples. Strangers. Everyone.

No discrimination, no analysis… just quick, simple, sincere prayers whispered behind a mask.

It was my own way of practicing what I believed: that everyone needed Jesus, whether they knew it or not.

Fast forward to the birth of our third daughter.

It was one of those nights. Baby crying, coffee running low, tension in the air. We had just realized we were out of both baby formula and Nespresso pods — one for the baby, one for mommy.

So I did what any husband does when he wants to be a hero at 10 PM.

I grabbed my keys and headed to Albertsons.

There’s something different about grocery stores late at night. The lights feel colder. The aisles are quieter. And the people you meet? Well, let’s just say it’s a whole different crowd after dark.

I found what I needed and made my way to the front. One lane was completely packed — maybe a dozen people deep. But a few aisles down, I spotted a second lane. Open. One person in line.

Jackpot.

You fools have no idea what you’re missing.

Proud of my clever discovery, I wheeled over.

And that’s when I noticed something strange.

All those people standing in that long line — they could see this lane too. They weren’t oblivious. They had made a choice. They had looked at this lane, looked at the one person standing in it, and decided they would rather wait in a line of twelve.

I was about to find out why.

She stood alone, just ahead of me.

Late sixties, maybe. Wearing a leather jacket with some kind of death’s-head emblem on the back — “Judge or Die” or something like that. Her hair was messy. Her body trembled ever so slightly.

It didn’t take much to figure it out.

She was on drugs. Heavy ones.

Suddenly my clever shortcut didn’t feel so clever anymore.

I glanced back at the long line. A dozen people deep, sure — but they had known something I didn’t. Now it was too late to switch. I was committed. I just hoped she wouldn’t turn around. Wouldn’t say something. Wouldn’t make it weird.

I stared at my cart. Studied the formula can like it was the most interesting thing I’d ever seen.

And just like that, my thoughts turned cold.

That’s what happens when you make bad choices. You end up alone in a grocery store at 10 PM, shaking and lost.

I wish I could say that voice wasn’t mine. But it was.

And in that moment, I caught myself.

What are you doing? You call yourself a believer? You’ve been praying for strangers for months, and now you want to judge this woman instead?

I closed my eyes.

Alright, Lord. I’ll pray for her.

I started to form the words in my mind:

Dear God…

And that’s when it happened.

A pit opened in my stomach — deep, instant, unmistakable.

It was as if the Holy Spirit stepped in and said:

“Stop. You are NOT going to pray for her.”

I froze.

Wait, what? Why?

It didn’t make sense. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Pray for the lost, the broken, the hurting? Pray without ceasing? Scripture even commands it.

But the silence was deafening.

And then, slowly… He showed me something.

In my mind, I saw her — not as she stood before me, but as a newborn baby.

Just like the ones I had held in my arms in the hospital room.

She was tiny. Innocent. Beautiful. A bundle of possibility, swaddled in love.

Then I watched her grow up.

Wrong friends. Bad influences. Wounds that never healed. Abandonment. Addiction. No one to guide her, no one to hold her when she cried.

She didn’t choose to become a broken woman in a leather jacket.

She was a child once. Someone’s daughter.

And now, here she was — frail, frightened, maybe hungry — standing in a checkout line while the rest of the world avoided her.

And something inside me broke open.

And I loved her.

Not because I’m so spiritual. Not because I had it all together.

But because for a few seconds, I saw her through the eyes of the Father.

That’s when the Holy Spirit whispered:

“Okay. Now you can pray for her.”

Now I know what some of you are thinking.

Can God really tell someone not to pray?

He wasn’t forbidding prayer. He was refusing a hollow one. He wasn’t closing the door — He was making sure I walked through it with the right heart. Because a prayer whispered out of obligation, out of duty, out of spiritual performance — that’s not intercession. That’s religion.

God doesn’t want us to pray at people. He wants us to pray for them. And there’s a world of difference between the two.

He wanted me to feel something first. To see her first. To love her first.

Then pray.

And I did.

Right there. In line. Holding a can of formula and a box of Nespresso pods — standing next to a woman who had no idea anyone was fighting for her in prayer."

It wasn’t a long prayer. I don’t even remember the words.

But I remember the feeling.

The tenderness. The ache. The clarity.

The cashier had started ringing up my items. I looked around, hoping to catch her eye. Maybe say something. Smile.

Then it was my turn and I hoped I would complete my transaction fast enough so I could catch up to her.

But the system glitched and as soon as I was done, I ran out of the store and looked for her.

But she was gone.

I stood there holding a can of formula and a box of Nespresso pods, and I realized:

God doesn’t just want our words. He wants our hearts.

That night the Holy Spirit convicted me. He didn’t let me pray — not until I was willing to feel what God feels. To see people not as problems… but as sons. As daughters.

Because when we love like that — when we see people like that — our prayers stop being hollow.

They start carrying the heartbeat of Jesus.

Think about the person in your life who is the hardest to love.

The one you’ve written off. The one whose choices frustrate you. The one you pray about more than you pray for.

Before your next prayer, pause.

Don’t just bring their name to God. Ask Him to show you their story. Ask Him to let you see what He sees — not the leather jacket, not the bad decisions, not the mess they’ve made.

The child they once were.

The wounds they never chose.

The beloved son. The beloved daughter.

Because the moment you see people the way God sees them, something shifts. Your prayers stop being a duty and start being a cry from the heart. They stop being words on a list and start carrying the weight of real love.

And once you pray like that — once you’ve felt what God feels for the person you once judged —

You will never pray the same again.

Hear the story in my own words 👇

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She was five.

And she had the kind of life a five-year-old dreams of having. A father who adored her. A house full of warmth. Sisters to chase through the hallway. A bed that smelled like clean laundry and the perfume her mother used to wear before bed. She had every reason in the world to believe that life was good.

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Was I dreaming? Was it the wind? I told myself it was nothing. I closed my eyes and laid back down — and then I heard it again. A thump. And another thump. Coming from above. I sat up. It was clear now. Those weren’t dreams. Those were steps. Someone was walking on the rooftop in the middle of the night.

Let me give you some context.

It was the beginning of 2011. We lived in a ten-unit condo complex back then — me and my mom. My sister had just gotten married a few months earlier and moved out, and the house felt different without her. Quieter. Emptier in a way I hadn’t expected. I was single, still figuring my own life out, and it was just the two of us now — a young man and his mother, rattling around in a home that used to hold more. We knew our neighbors — some better than others — the kind of building where you waved at people in the parking lot and knew exactly whose dog barked at what hour. There had been a string of break-ins in the neighborhood that winter — cars rifled through, side doors jimmied open, a few units two streets down hit in the same week — and the whole block was on edge. We double-checked locks before bed now. We listened harder at night.

Which is why, when I heard those footsteps, I didn’t hesitate. I did what any brave, level-headed man of the house would do.

I went to wake up my mom.

My adrenaline rushed. I hurriedly walked over to my mother’s room. “Mom,” I whispered, again and again, until she stirred. Don’t panic, I told her. I think there’s somebody on the rooftop trying to get in.

“You’re probably dreaming,” she said, with the unmistakable tone of a woman who would very much like to go back to sleep.

“I’m not dreaming,” I told her. “I heard the steps.”

She was already getting ready to brush off my suspicions a second time when the steps came again — clear as day, right above us.

“See!” I exclaimed.

Her expression changed. “There’s definitely someone on the roof,” she said.

She pulled the blanket around her shoulders and stood up. By then, I was already dialing 911.

“Don’t make any sounds,” I whispered to her. “I’m calling the police. We’re going to catch him in the act.”

She asked if she could call her friend in the unit across from us. I told her that was fine — but to be very discreet. We were running a stealth operation here. The whole point was that the burglars wouldn’t know we were onto them.

We had checked every door and every window — they were locked. My mom had moved past her panic and was now somehow more composed than I was. I could hear her on the phone with her friend, voice low and careful:

“I’m telling you this, but don’t panic. There’s someone on our rooftop and I think they’re trying to get in. Yes — yes, we’ve called the police. They’ll be here soon.”

There was a pause. And then, from across the courtyard, I heard her friend’s voice cut through the night air like a foghorn:

“WHAT??!!”

A light flicked on in her unit. Then another.

So much for discreet.

My mom and I just looked at each other. There was nothing to say. The covert operation had been blown by a woman who simply could not contain herself.

And then, as if the universe wanted to make sure absolutely nothing about this plan would survive the next minute — the neighbor’s dog started barking. And barking. And barking. Until finally the owner woke up. He stepped out onto his balcony and saw what we had only heard — shadows gliding back and forth across the rooftop.

“Hey!” he shouted up at them. “Get down from there! Who are you? I’m going to call the police!”

Great. So much for catching them in the act. The element of surprise had now been delivered by a Chihuahua and my mom’s best friend.

Now the only thing left was to scare them — scare them so badly they would never come back. Whether they were trying to break in or just looking for a place to sleep. I threw open the window.

“We got you!” I yelled into the dark. “You have nowhere to go! The police are on their way!”

I’m sure they must have been terrified.

Then I made what is, to this day, one of the more questionable decisions of my life.

I ran downstairs in my slippers and grabbed a knife from the kitchen.

I’d like to say I had a plan. I did not. I was a single guy in pajamas, holding a kitchen knife, padding out onto the patio like I’d read about the situation in a manual once. I stepped outside just as my mother appeared on the balcony above me.

“What do you think you’re doing with that knife!” she snapped. “Don’t be stupid — come back inside!”

There are very few feelings in life worse than being scolded by your mom while holding a weapon. I rushed back inside, put the knife back where it belonged, and came back out into the courtyard.

That’s when I lost whatever was left of my composure. I stood in the middle of the courtyard and started yelling at the top of my lungs.

“Everyone wake up! We have people on our rooftop! Everyone wake up!”

Lights began flicking on across the complex — one window, then another, then another, like a string of Christmas lights coming alive in sequence. Doors cracked open. Heads peeked out. Within moments, the courtyard was no longer mine alone.

My neighbor Justin came stumbling out of his unit, blinking into the night air like a deer in headlights. He looked at me. Then at the rooftop. Then back at me. I started explaining what had happened — the footsteps, the dog, the police, the knife I would not be mentioning — and as I spoke, I watched his face change. His confusion turned into focus. His focus turned into something harder. His eyes went red.

I turned back toward the street.

And that’s when I saw them.

Two shadows. Slipping down the side of the building. They jumped the side gate, one after the other, and started walking away into the dark — not running, not panicking, just walking, like they had all the time in the world. Like none of this had anything to do with them.

“I see them!” I shouted. “They’re getting away!”

Justin didn’t wait. He bolted past me. The other neighbor was right behind him. I took off after them both, slippers slapping against the pavement, pajamas flapping in the cold air, the whole scene now firmly past the point of dignity.

We chased them down the block. Justin was faster than the rest of us, and he reached them first. He lunged forward and grabbed one of them — a girl. A young woman in a dress that wasn’t built for running. She screamed as he yanked her backwards.

That’s when I noticed the other one.

The boy was already far ahead. Much further than I had realized. He had broken into a real sprint while we were chasing them and could have disappeared into the dark without breaking stride. He could have made it. He could have gotten away clean.

But he didn’t.

The moment he heard her scream, he stopped. He turned around. And he ran back.

Back toward us. Back toward the men who had just chased him down the street. Back toward the girl he wasn’t going to leave behind.

He skidded to a stop in front of us, hands up, eyes wide. Tall, blond, skinny, earrings in both ears, chest heaving from the run.

“Please,” he begged. “Please let us go.”

But Justin and the other neighbor weren’t hearing it. The adrenaline was still pumping. They were yelling — both of them — over each other, over him, over the girl who was still squirming in Justin’s grip.

“The police are on their way!”

“You’re both going to jail for trespassing!”

“Don’t move!”

She kept screaming back, trying to twist free. He kept his hands raised, kept his voice steady, kept pleading into the noise.

And then, quieter this time — almost to himself — he said it again.

“Please. We weren’t trying to hurt anyone. We were just looking for a place to sleep.”

And something about those words did something to me.

We were just looking for a place to sleep.

I looked at him — really looked at him — and I saw it. He meant it. He meant every word of it. There was no calculation in his face, no lie being constructed, no cornered-animal cunning trying to talk his way out of trouble. There was just a young man, standing in a dark street in front of strangers who wanted to send him to jail, telling the truth.

They weren’t burglars. They were homeless. They were two kids who had climbed onto a rooftop because they had nowhere else to go.

“Hey,” I said. “Let them go. It’s okay. Look — they obviously got the point. They’re scared. We can let them go.”

Justin didn’t hear me at first. He was still gripping the back of her dress, still in the middle of yelling something about the police. The other neighbor was still shouting threats. The girl was still trying to twist free.

I said it again, softer this time. “Justin. It’s okay. They’re not going to come back. Look at them.”

He turned and looked at me. Then at the girl. Then at the boy, who still had his hands up. Slowly, the fire in his eyes started to cool. His grip loosened. She stumbled forward a step, almost falling, and the boy caught her by the arm.

But Justin wasn’t done yelling — not yet. The adrenaline was still in him, and he needed somewhere to put it. He started shouting after them as they backed away. Don’t ever come back here. Don’t let me catch you near this place again. The two of them didn’t argue. They didn’t say anything at all. They just held onto each other and started moving, slowly at first, then faster, until they were almost running again.

And we stood there in the middle of the street and watched them disappear into the dark.

A year passed

A lot can happen in a year. I had met a woman named Arsine. We had fallen in love. We had gotten engaged. And now, in the spring of 2012, we were two weeks away from our wedding.

Two weeks.

And we still had nowhere to live.

We had been searching for months. Every weekend, every evening, every spare hour — driving around Glendale and Burbank and Pasadena, scrolling through listings, sitting in open houses, walking through condos and townhomes and trying to imagine our future inside them. And every single one came with a deal-breaker. One was right next to a school — a constant wall of noise from bell to bell. Another sat directly under the flight path of Bob Hope Airport, with a plane roaring overhead every six minutes. One was too old. One was too small. One was beautiful, and we walked in ready to make an offer, and then we looked at the price tag and laughed the kind of laugh you laugh when you might otherwise cry.

We were running out of time. We were running out of options. And I was watching the wedding date creep closer on the calendar with a knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away.

That night, Arsine and I had dinner with her family. Afterwards, we drove to a Barnes & Noble nearby — but we didn’t go in. We just sat in the parked car under the lot lights, talking.

She was worried. I was worried. We were both worried. Two weeks out, no place to call home, and the conversation kept circling back to the same place no matter how hard we tried to point it somewhere else. What are we going to do? Where are we going to live? How is this going to work?

At one point, she turned to me and asked if she could borrow my small Bible — the little one I kept in the car. She wanted to take it home with her and read it that night.

I handed it to her without thinking much of it. She set it in her lap.

And then, in the middle of all of it, she stopped talking. She bowed her head right there in the passenger seat, and she prayed. Not a long prayer. Not a performance. Just an earnest, almost desperate plea — God, please protect us. Please help us find a home. Please.

When she said amen, she opened her eyes — and something was off.

“I don’t feel good,” she said. “My heart is racing.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. It just suddenly started.”

I suggested we go for a drive. Maybe a little air would help, maybe the movement would calm her down. So we drove. Half an hour, no destination, just looping through the streets while she pressed her hand to her chest and waited for the feeling to pass.

Eventually I asked if she wanted to go back to the bookstore.

“Can we just go home?” she said. “I want to lie down.”

So I took her home. And as she was getting out of the car, she turned to me with this look I’d never quite seen on her before. Soft, but urgent.

“Be careful driving home,” she said. “Please. Be extra careful tonight.”

It was the way she said it more than the words themselves. I told her I would.

And then I started the drive home.

It was late, and I wasn’t ready to go straight home. The drive felt too quiet, and the knot in my stomach was still there. So I decided to make a small detour. Stop at a 7-Eleven. Rent a movie from the Red Box. Something to take my mind off things for a couple of hours.

(For those of you too young to remember — Red Box was a bright red vending machine that lived outside gas stations and convenience stores. You’d slide your debit card in, pick a DVD off the screen, and the machine would spit out a movie for a dollar a night. This was 2012. Streaming hadn’t eaten the world yet. Renting a physical disc from a robot in a parking lot was a perfectly normal way to end a Saturday.)

I passed the first 7-Eleven without stopping. I don’t even remember why. I just kept driving.

I passed the second one too. I noticed it that time, and I had the thought — I could turn around — but for some reason, I didn’t. I kept going.

Instead, I drove all the way to the third 7-Eleven — much further than the other two. I told myself the route was shorter. It wasn't. It was actually longer. Looking back, I have no good explanation for why I drove that far out of my way to get to that specific 7-Eleven. I just did.

I pulled into the parking lot — and that’s when I saw a young couple screaming at each other right at the entrance of 7-Eleven.

This was the kind of late-night fight that spills out into a parking lot because there’s nowhere private left to have it. He was pacing. She was crying. He was throwing his hands up. She was throwing words back. Both of them looked exhausted, the way only people in a long fight look — like they’ve been at this for hours, or days, or years.

I drove slowly through the lot, scanning for the Red Box on autopilot, and that’s when I realized —

There was no Red Box here.

This 7-Eleven didn’t have one. I had driven past two other 7-Elevens that did have Red Boxes to get to one that didn’t. I rolled through the parking lot, came out the other side, and turned back onto the street to head home.

The Voice

But something caught in my chest as I pulled away. Something I couldn’t quite name. Just the feeling of the scene. Two young people. Stressed. Lost. Yelling at each other the way people yell when they don’t know where else to put what they’re carrying.

And I thought of Arsine and me. Of the stress that had been pressing on both of us for weeks. Of how easy it would have been, on any of a hundred bad days, for us to turn on each other the way these two were turning on each other now.

I kept driving.

And then I heard it.

Not out loud. Not exactly. But not silently either. A voice — quiet, clear, sitting somewhere between thought and instinct — said:

Go back. Buy them a cup of coffee.

I shook my head out loud in the car.

No. I really don’t want to do that. I was tired. It was late. They were strangers, in the middle of a fight, and the last thing two people screaming at each other want is some random guy from a 7-Eleven parking lot inserting himself into their night.

I kept driving.

And the voice came back. Stronger this time. Clearer.

Go back. Buy them a coffee.

I knew that voice. I had heard before. I had argued with it then too, and I had lost.

It was the Holy Spirit.

And I sighed, and I turned the car around.

It took less than a minute to get back to the 7-Eleven. They were still there. Still on the sidewalk. Still in the middle of whatever they were in the middle of.

I pulled the car right up to the curb in front of them. I put it in park. I sat there for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, watching them through the windshield.

What am I going to say?

I didn’t know.

I had no plan. No speech. Absolutely nothing prepared.

I got out anyway.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you guys doing?”

They both turned and looked at me. The fight stopped mid-sentence, the way a record stops when someone lifts the needle. They both just stared. I think they were trying to figure out if I was about to be a problem.

There was a long second where I wasn’t sure what was about to happen either.

“Good,” the girl said finally. Her voice was flat. Tired. Like she’d given the same answer a hundred times that night already.

“Yeah,” I said gently. “Hmm… so… look… I saw you two from the road. And you reminded me a lot of me and my fiancée. We’ve been going through a hard stretch ourselves lately. I just… I just wanted to come over and say hi.”

The boy and the girl just stared at me sheepishly.

“So I just — I saw you guys out here and I thought I’d come over and offer to buy you a cup of coffee or something.”

There was a long pause.

And in that pause, something shifted.

The air around them changed. Like a window had been opened somewhere I couldn’t see. The boy, who had been pacing a moment earlier, went still. The girl’s shoulders dropped about an inch. Her jaw unclenched. She looked at me — really looked at me — for the first time.

“Actually,” she said, almost surprised at herself, “I would love a hot cocoa.”

I was so relieved at her words and surprised at how small the words were. How simple. How human.

The boy nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

The three of us walked into 7-Eleven together.

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The clerk barely looked up.

“Get whatever you want,” I told them. “The flu’s going around hard right now, and a warm drink couldn’t hurt.”

We made small talk while they picked out their drinks. I learned they had been together for two and a half years. I told them what I was learning myself — that every relationship has hard stretches. That fighting doesn’t mean it’s over. That the ups and downs are part of the process, not a sign you’ve failed at it.

They listened. They actually listened.

The girl picked out a brownie. The boy didn’t grab anything to eat.

“You sure?” I asked him.

He tapped his backpack. “I’ve got a bag of chips in here,” he said. “I’m okay. Thank you, though.”

I paid for everything at the counter and we walked out together.

The cold air hit us as we stepped onto the sidewalk.

The boy turned to me and stuck out his hand.

“I’m Dylan,” he said.

I shook his hand. He thanked me. The girl shook my hand too and thanked me.

I reached into my wallet, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and pressed it into Dylan’s hand.

“Take this,” I said. “And do me one favor — don’t be mean to each other. Okay?”

The words came out of my mouth before I had a chance to evaluate them, and the second I heard them I almost cringed. Don’t be mean to each other. What was I, a substitute teacher breaking up a recess fight? But it was already out there. And honestly — looking at the two of them under the streetlight — maybe it was exactly the right thing to say. Maybe sometimes the most grown-up advice is also the most childlike.

They both nodded. Slow and quiet. Both of them.

“God bless you,” I said.

I got back in the car. I closed the door.

The prompting was quiet now. The Holy Spirit had pulled me back to that parking lot for a reason, and it seemed I had done what He brought me there to do.

I hope they’ll be okay, I thought.

And I started the car, and I drove home.

I pulled into the driveway of my mom’s house — the place I was still living in until Arsine and I could find a home of our own — and sat in the car for a minute before I got out. I wasn’t sure why. Just a hot cocoa. Just a brownie. Just a ten-dollar bill and a handshake. And yet I felt full of something I couldn’t name.

I walked inside. I closed the door behind me. I set my keys down on the counter.

And the sound of the keys hitting the counter — that small, ordinary, everyday clink — hit me like a thunderclap.

I stopped, mid-step, in the entryway.

Because I had just realized something.

I had seen that couple before.

Tall. Blond. Skinny. Earrings.

A girl, a little heavier set.

The way he had run back for her.

The way she had clung to him.

The way they had moved together, like two people who only had each other.

I stood there in the entryway and felt the floor shift under my feet.

It was them.

It was them.

The two kids from the rooftop. The ones I had screamed at. The ones I had chased down a dark street in my slippers. The ones I had driven away from this very house a year ago.

And tonight, on a street I had no good reason to be on, at a 7-Eleven that didn’t even have what I had come for, the Holy Spirit had pulled me out of my car to buy them a hot drink and a brownie.

I hadn’t recognized them. They hadn’t recognized me.

But God had recognized both of us.

I was floored. Floored. I hadn’t moved since the keys hit the counter. I was still standing in the same spot with my jacket half off, trying to process what I had just realized, trying to fit a year’s worth of pieces into a picture that suddenly made too much sense. My hands were shaking a little. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry or sit down on the floor right where I was.

And then my phone rang.

It was Arsine.

I picked up. Before I could even say hello, she was already talking. Her voice was different — quieter, almost reverent — the way her voice got when she was processing something she couldn’t quite explain either.

“Hey,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

I genuinely could not imagine what could possibly be coming next. My night had already broken open in a way I was still trying to piece together. The 7-Eleven. The couple. The brownie. The recognition. What more could there possibly be?

There was more.

“I was reading your Bible,” she said.

The one she had asked to borrow that night in the Barnes & Noble parking lot. The one she had set in her lap before she prayed.

“Okay,” I said.

“There was a yellow tab inside it,” she said. “I don’t even know who put it there. I don’t remember putting it there. But it was marking a page.”

I waited.

“Shervin,” she said, “it was Matthew 7. Listen to this,” she said. And then, slowly — almost gently, the way you read something you don’t want to break — she started reading aloud over the phone:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

— Matthew 7:7-12

When she finished, neither of us said anything for a moment.

She was sitting in her parents’ house with my little Bible open on her lap.

I was standing in the entryway of my mom’s house with my keys on the counter and my jacket half off and the memory of a kitchen knife still hovering somewhere in the back of my mind.

And then I told her everything.

The rooftop. The knife. The chase. The two kids in the dark. The way the boy had run back for the girl. The way I had said let them go. The way they had disappeared into the night a year ago — and the way they had reappeared tonight on a sidewalk in front of a 7-Eleven that didn’t even have what I had come for.

We laughed. We cried. We prayed some more. We praised the Lord together over the phone — me in one house, her in another, both of us undone in our own entryways, both of us realizing at the same time that God had not been silent this whole time.

He had been working.

Two weeks later, Arsine and I were handed the keys to our condo.

And that verse.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

In its truest sense, this verse is about prayer. Jesus is teaching His disciples about the Father’s posture toward His children — about a God who is not stingy with His mercy. The asking, the seeking, the knocking — those are images of a heart at prayer, refusing to be silenced until the Father answers.

That is what the verse means. That is what it has always meant.

But God will sometimes take a verse you have read your whole life and place it inside a moment of your life so that its language lands in your chest in a way it never has before.

Knock and the door will be opened to you.

A year earlier, two kids had been knocking. Not on a door — on a rooftop, on a neighborhood, on the world. And the door I controlled, I had slammed shut on them.

And now, a year later, I was the one knocking. Arsine and I had been knocking on doors for months. Praying for a place to sleep. Praying for a roof, before our wedding day.

And no door would open.

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”

It’s all one passage. Ask, seek, knock — and do unto others what you would have done to you. You can’t separate them. The God who opens doors for those who knock is also the God who notices which doors you slam shut on the people knocking at yours.

That was the block.

I hadn’t known it was there. But God had. And He had been waiting, patiently, for a year, to untie it.

He gently, mercifully, put me back in front of them. A different parking lot. A different night. A second chance.

And the moment I pressed ten dollars into Dylan’s hand and asked him not to be mean to the girl he loved, the block came undone.

After that night, doors started opening.

The right listing. The right price. The right neighborhood. Paperwork that had been stuck began to move. Every door in Los Angeles that had been politely closed in our faces swung open at once.

We got the keys two weeks before our wedding.

And the condo that we would move into — this part still amazes me — was built by the SAME developer who had built my mom’s complex.

God had taken the house I had refused to share — and handed it back to me, redeemed, with His own hand. A new home. A new beginning. A clean page.

“Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

He meant it.

He always means it.

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This is something God has been speaking into my heart all my life. I have carried it quietly. I have sketched it in journals. I have whispered it to a few close friends. I have prayed about it, wrestled with it, second-guessed it, and returned to it again and again.

And today, for the very first time, I am sharing it with the world.

God has been showing me one of the most beautiful, most humbling, and most unifying truths hidden in plain sight — a truth that has changed the way I see myself, the way I see others, and the way I live with God.

What I’m about to show you is one of the most amazing patterns hidden in scripture, in science, in your own body, in the very fabric of creation itself.

And once you see it — everything makes sense.

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The Lie That Has Captured a Generation

To start off, let’s talk about the Big Lie that we have all come to believe.

We live in a culture that has convinced an entire generation of one of the most powerful — and most destructive — lies in human history.

The lie…

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