o sleep. This happens a lot lately. At around 6, Sam woke up and we spent a couple hours talking and laughing as the sun came up behind the shades in our bedroom. As we were laying there, enjoying each other’s company I said something along the lines of, “This is one of the last moments we get to be just us two. Our lives are going to change forever any minute now.”

Before you ask, no, I have not had the baby. Last week’s lack of devotion wasn’t a silent announcement, it was just pregnancy brain. And in the past week, Sam and I have been learning a whole new lesson in patience and waiting for the Lord’s time. It’s not something we’re unfamiliar with. We waited on God to date. We waited on God to get married. We certainly waited on God to conceive this child. And now, we’re waiting on His appointed time for her to come.

Where is your treasure? Think about it. Take a pause and think about your life. Where is your time most spent? What are the things you absolutely cannot live without? What are your non-negotiables? Family? Friends? Career? Your home? Your lifestyle? Your politics? Jesus? Your list is completely valid, whatever it is you put on it. Your treasure is exactly that: yours. You may put value on something that I don’t, and that’s just the beauty of different perspectives.

I don’t think I’ve ever walked through a season of life where so much change was happening all at once. Not even when I was married, although there was a lot of change in that season as well. And I know, I have a decent amount of readers that don’t have kids and are probably tired of hearing me talk about being pregnant, but I can’t help it. It’s just where I am right now. Having your first child is a life-change like no other. Simultaneously, you’re growing a baby in an area that only you have occupied all your life. Every day, it seems like there are new changes, new aches, pains, growth, symptoms, and all the while, this child is reminding you that they are growing out of what once was next to nothing.

As I write this, I am officially 36 weeks along in my pregnancy with our first child. Each day is a mixture of wild anticipation and timid caution. Are we ready for her? What else needs to be done? Are we going to be good parents? How else can we possibly prepare for the labor, birth, postpartum period, and the transition into parenthood? Every way you slice it, it all feels like new territory. I’ve babysat before; I’ve watched my mom and dad raise my brother from a young age. But none have been fully mine– none of them have been a child grown in areas only I have ever occupied or borne of my body.

When I was in college, I joined a sorority. There was an awesome sense of belonging in that, knowing that I was in a community of women that I could call friends, and we could accept each other's differences simply because we were united by the same Greek letters of the sorority. Over those three years that I was an active sister, there was this idea drilled into us that we were “always wearing our letters.” In other words, we were always representing our sorority, whether we were wearing the Greek letters that designated us as a community or not. So wherever we went, whatever we said, however we conducted ourselves– it was a reflection of the sorority itself.

I haven’t mentioned this in a long time, but if you were keeping up on Soul Deep in February, you found out that I am currently pregnant. Right now, as I write this, I am 34 weeks along, so coming into the last home stretch. At this point, we’ve painted a nursery, set up the furniture, celebrated with a shower, and now Sam and I are nesting in full force. Every day, I tackle a small project getting ready for our daughter. One day, I wash, fold, and put away all her clothes, the next I set up her changing table, then sanitize and find a place for her bottles and pacifiers– every day is a new chore and I’m excited to do it. As I break down packaging, sort, sanitize, decorate, and find a place for everything, I pray. I ask God to grow her healthily inside me– body and mind. I ask Him to make my body ready for a safe delivery. I ask Him to give Sam and I the wisdom to raise her and the grace to teach her how deeply she is loved by God; to hold her close to His heart every day of her life.

Hey Pops, Thank you for always being steady, even when I am not. Even when the world is not. Even when my circumstances are not. You have always been over all, in all, and walking with me through everything. There was never a day where you weren’t there, holding me together. There was never a moment when you didn’t know the outcome. There was never a second where you were taken by surprise.

We are living in an age where social justice is one of the most important aspects of society. It’s seeped into everything. If you’re interviewing for a new job position, social media posts from 10 years ago can disqualify you for candidacy. Conversely, if a company is not perfectly politically correct or deemed “woke” by mainstream culture, they may struggle to find people to put on their payroll. In schools, kids walk around endlessly barraged by political and social agenda, being led to believe that if they think differently than the mob, they’ll be rejected and hated. Don’t even think about logging onto Facebook without coming across some kind of argument or call to cancel someone else.

Up until this point, we’ve gone through a lot of false gospels that run rampant in the charismatic or modern-day church, but we haven’t talked about the ways that traditional, old-school church can lead people astray from true, God-glorifying faith. Because the traditional church was so popular 50-60 years ago, chances are, you’ve been to at least one service and know what I’m talking about.

A pitfall of the American church is that it relies on carnal means to try and entice lost and worldly people into saving grace. The issue is, when we know real grace ourselves, we understand that there is nothing a person can say or do that can convince someone to sacrifice their worldly comforts to live a God-honoring life. Instead, we have to rely on God’s revealing Himself to someone in order to draw the lost to Him. And because we minimize that fact into a minor detail of church culture, Christians tend to strive in certain things in order to try and get imperfect people to see Jesus using imperfect means and methods.

As long as the church survives, there will be a conversation about growth, numbers, and membership. Pragmatically, for many of them, a church is not only a spiritual house, but a business. More numbers means more tithing and giving means more resources and that helps ensure that the church not only remains open and serving the community, but that it continues to glorify God– or so you hope. No matter where you go, what theology that church teaches, there will always be that goal: to reach unbelievers, new families, and trying to get more people to stay and engage. But over the past 20-30 years, with the addition of social media, globalization, and mega churches, that idea has lent itself to a whole new pitfall of false gospel: attractionalism.

In 2019, I left the church I attended my whole life. As a child, teenager, and young adult, it was a wonderful place to learn about and develop a relationship with God. The leadership was amenable to allowing youth to serve and be heard, and in turn, that made me and my friends excited to be a part of that body of believers for many, many years. But at the age of 25, I felt the Lord leading me into a new direction. In a lot of ways, that transition out of everything I knew was scary. I was comfortable in that church and it had a large hand in shaping me into who I was. I loved my pastor and the community that I’d trusted and gotten so used to. But once I left, I realized that up until that point, I didn’t really know my Bible. I had taken everything that was preached from the pulpit as gospel. And that’s not to say that my pastor was a false teacher or anything, but it is to say that I never really tested the full measure of scripture for myself, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself in the Word to me on a personal level.

Last week, we discussed the prosperity gospel– what it entails and why it isn’t gospel. Primarily, we focused on the financial side of the movement and how teachers of prosperity gospel twist the Bible to claim that God is the way to health, wealth, and material success. In my personal life as someone who wants to make freelance writing into a career, I follow a lot of freelancers or writing coaches to study their business models and tips. The weird thing is, without fail when talking about the “spirituality” or “mindset” of the lifestyle, they tend to mention that they subscribe to people that are known teachers of prosperity gospel: Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, and the list goes on.

Live your best life now. God wants us to live a life of health and wealth. Speak it into existence. Pray your way to a better life. I’m sure you’ve heard some of these taglines before. Last week, we spoke about the importance of knowing your Bible, and knowing the full counsel of God’s word so you won’t be led astray by false gospels and teachers that peddle an inferior version of the Way, Truth, and Life. Now, the Lord has been weighing heavily on my heart for some time that we need to meet some of these false gospels head-on. Unfortunately, the American Church is full of “gospels” that lead people away from Christ in droves, and it’s not because they are outwardly evil or obviously false. They often preach things that people love to hear and subscribe to.

You’re probably tired of hearing from me at this point, but it’s a concept we need to constantly be reminded of: The Bible is the only thing we need in order to understand God. Are commentaries helpful? Yes. Are there teachers out there that are helpful in taking scripture, unpacking it, and explaining it to us? Yes. What’s the problem with that? You can’t always trust people to be right in exegeting scripture, and you certainly can’t depend on a person to reveal the heart of God.