Category: faith & Spiritual Formation

With You Always: The God Who Co-Missions

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Photo by Erik, A van Dijk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/golden-morning-27421320/

There are moments in Scripture when Jesus speaks words so steady and so simple that they become anchors for our whole lives. Matthew 28:20 is one of those moments:

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20, NIV)

We love this verse. But it becomes even more powerful when we remember when Jesus said it — and why. He spoke these words immediately after giving His disciples the most daunting assignment of their lives. Before He promised His presence, He handed them a mission far beyond their human ability.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Matthew 28:18)
With those words, Jesus establishes His unmatched authority. Then He sends them:

“Go and make disciples of all nations… baptizing them… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19–20a)

A global mission entrusted to ordinary people. It’s overwhelming. And Jesus knows that.

So He ends with the only promise big enough to hold the weight of the mission:
“And surely I am with you always.” (Matthew 28:20)
It’s as if He’s saying, You cannot do this without Me — and you don’t have to. I am sending you, and I am going with you.

Jesus never commissions without co‑missioning.

This isn’t a new idea Jesus introduces in Matthew. This is who God has always been.

When God calls Moses to confront Pharaoh, Moses immediately feels inadequate: “Who am I that I should go?” (Exodus 3:11)
God doesn’t respond with a pep talk. He simply says, “I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) 

That’s the whole strategy. God sends — and God stays.

The same pattern continues with Joshua. When Joshua steps into leadership after Moses, he feels the weight of the task. God calls him to lead Israel into the Promised Land, a mission filled with uncertainty and danger. And God gives him the same promise He gave Moses:

“Do not be afraid… for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

Joshua’s courage isn’t rooted in his personality or confidence. It’s rooted in God’s covenantal presence. God isn’t asking Joshua to be brave on his own — He’s asking Joshua to trust the God who goes with him.

Jesus continues this pattern in His ministry. When He sends out the Twelve, He gives them His authority and promises the Spirit will speak through them:

“It will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:20)

When He sends out the Seventy‑Two, He sends them to places He Himself intends to go (Luke 10:1), gives them authority (Luke 10:19), promises provision (Luke 10:7), reminds them the harvest belongs to God (Luke 10:2), and rejoices with them when they return (Luke 10:21).

The pattern is unmistakable: God calls, God sends, God accompanies. God commissions — and God co‑missions.

If this is who God is — if this is how God works — then the question becomes: Do we believe Him? Do we trust that His presence is enough for what He’s calling us to do?

This is the same question Paul raises in Romans 8:31:“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Not meaning nothing will come against us, but meaning nothing that comes against us can overcome the God who goes with us.

God’s grace goes before us. God invites us to respond freely. God empowers us by His Spirit to obey. God’s holy love accompanies us in every step of the journey. Faith is choosing to trust the God who co‑missions.

And this co‑missioning isn’t just for the heroes of the faith. It’s not reserved for pastors or missionaries or evangelists. This is for all of us. I don’t know about you, but I need the Holy Spirit with me to go to Walmart. God is with us in whatever He’s calling us to do — teaching, parenting, spousing, peopling. In our work, our homes, our neighborhoods, our conversations, our commutes.

Scripture says, “Whatever you do… do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Colossians 3:17)
Whatever you do. God doesn’t just co‑mission the extraordinary moments — He co‑missions the ordinary ones too.

So what does this mean for your real life — your home, your work, your relationships, your calling?

It means you are never the one walking in alone. Whether it’s the workplace, the family gathering, the hard conversation, or the unknown future, Jesus walks in with you.

It means the weight you carry quietly is not carried quietly by you alone. He is with you in the questions you don’t voice and in the places where you feel unseen.

And it means whatever God is asking of you — in your family, your work, your healing, your next step — you are not sent alone. The One who calls you is the One who equips you, and the One who equips you is the One who accompanies you.

And maybe you know what it feels like to walk into a room alone — a job interview, a new school, a social gathering where you didn’t know a soul. That moment when you thought, “I wish my person were here with me.” You could almost picture the two of you strolling in together to your favorite walk‑on song, suddenly braver because you weren’t alone. Jesus is that presence for you. Your confidence isn’t in yourself — it’s in Him. And honestly, who could compare to that.

As you move into the days ahead, may you go with confidence — not in yourself, not in your strength, not in your certainty, but in the presence of the One who goes before you, beside you, and within you. Hear His promise as if He is speaking it directly to you:

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

And may this promise echo in your spirit:
He is with you. Always.

Please help me share the good news of Jesus and how He can change your life, and our world!

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Anchored in El Sali

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Photo by Alexey Demidov

Years ago, when I was leading a customer service department at a newspaper, I used to tell my team something that always surprised them: “I would rather have a customer call angry than have one who silently cancels.”

An angry customer is still engaged.
They still care enough to reach out.
They still want the relationship to work.

But a silent customer — the one who quietly walks away without a word — that’s the one you’ve truly lost. Because silence means disconnection. Silence means they’ve given up.

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years, especially when I read Psalm 42. Because the psalmist is not calm, collected, or cheerful. He’s overwhelmed. He’s hurting. He’s confused. But he’s still talking to God. He hasn’t silently canceled the relationship. And that alone is a powerful picture of faith.

Not perfect faith.
Not polished faith.
But faith that refuses to disengage.

The writer of Psalm 42 says, “My soul is downcast within me.” He feels forgotten and shaken. He says, “Your waves and breakers have swept over me,” describing life crashing in from every direction. But instead of letting the waves define who God is, he brings his fear and confusion straight to God.

That’s something many of us struggle with. When life gets heavy, it’s easy to let our pain tell us who God is. It’s easy to assume that if we feel overwhelmed, God must be far away. But the psalmist does something different. He names his feelings honestly, but he doesn’t let them become the whole story.

He keeps talking to God.
He keeps reaching.
He keeps holding on.

One of the most important truths in this psalm is something the writer never says directly, but shows in every verse: we are all holding onto something. When life gets hard, we reach for something to steady us — our emotions, our own strength, the approval of others, the stories we tell ourselves, or the distractions that help us escape for a moment. But none of those things can carry the weight of a human soul.

That’s why the psalmist keeps turning back to God. He calls God “my Rock” — in Hebrew, El Sali. It’s a name that means stability, safety, and strength. In the ancient world, a rock wasn’t a pebble. It was a massive cliff — a place you could hide, a place that didn’t move when everything else did.

So the psalmist is making a choice:
I will not anchor myself to the waves. I will anchor myself to the Rock.

And that choice changes everything.

There’s a moment in the New Testament where a father brings his suffering son to Jesus and says, “I believe; help my unbelief.” It’s not a confident prayer. It’s not a triumphant prayer. It’s the prayer of someone who is exhausted and afraid, but still reaching for God. Jesus receives that prayer. And that matters, because many of us think faith has to be strong to count. But Scripture shows us something different: faith that trembles is still faith. Faith that struggles is still faith. Faith that comes with questions is still faith. What matters is that we bring it to God.

Even Jesus prayed this way. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” He asked the Father if there was another way. He brought His anguish honestly, without hiding or pretending. And He stayed in the conversation. If Jesus — the Son of God — prayed that honestly, then there is room for us to do the same.

The psalmist ends with a line that feels like a deep breath: “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him.” He’s not saying everything is fixed. He’s not saying the storm is over. He’s saying, “I know who my God is, and I know this won’t be the end of my story.” That’s the heart of this psalm. Not that life is easy. Not that faith is simple. But that God is steady, even when we are not.

God is not shaken by what shakes you.
God is not confused by what confuses you.
God is not moved by what overwhelms you.

He is El Sali — the God who is your Rock.

Maybe you’re reading this from a place of exhaustion. Maybe life has been harder than you expected. Maybe you’ve been carrying more than you can say out loud. If that’s you, hear this: you are not standing in the storm alone. El Sali — your Rock — is steady beneath your feet. You don’t have to be strong. You don’t have to have the right words. You don’t have to pretend you’re okay. You can lean toward the One who is strong for you.

The same God who held the psalmist in his despair…
the same God who met the father in Mark 9…
the same God who strengthened Jesus in Gethsemane…
is holding you now.

And because He does not move, you can have real hope — not the kind you have to manufacture, but the kind that comes from being held by the God who will not fail you.

El Sali — God my Rock.
The One who holds me when I cannot hold myself.

Please help me share the good news of Jesus and how He can change your life, and our world!

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Come back and visit at ListenLearn.Live Ministries

El Roi – The God Who Sees Me

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Photo by Elif Kübra yaşar

There are moments in life when being unseen feels heavier than being hurt. You know the moments I mean — the ones where you’re surrounded by people but feel invisible, the ones where you’re carrying something no one else knows about, the ones where you’re trying to hold your life together with shaking hands. Every culture, every country, every generation knows this ache. It’s part of being human.

Into that ache comes one of the most surprising stories in Scripture — a story that speaks across borders, languages, and life experiences. It’s the story of a woman named Hagar in Genesis 16, and it reveals a God who sees what others overlook. A God who sees you. A God who stays. A God who meets you where you are, but loves you too much to leave you there.

This God has a name: El Roi — “The God who sees me.” And Hagar is the first person in the entire Bible to speak that name. Not a king, not a prophet, not a priest. A mistreated, pregnant, enslaved woman running into the desert with nowhere to go. That’s who God reveals Himself to. And that matters.

Hagar’s story begins with pain. She is used, blamed, mistreated, and finally driven out. She runs into the wilderness — not because she’s rebellious, but because she’s desperate. Many of us know that feeling. Running doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like shutting down emotionally, avoiding hard conversations, numbing ourselves, pretending we’re fine, or returning to old patterns simply because they feel familiar. Running is often a survival instinct, but it rarely leads us to healing.

And yet, this is where the story turns. While Hagar is running away from everything that hurt her, God is running toward her. Genesis says, “The angel of the Lord found her.” Not by accident. Not by coincidence. He went looking for her. And He goes looking for you too.

When God finds Hagar, He calls her by name. No one else in the story has done that. She has been treated like property, like a problem, like a burden — but God sees her as a person. He sees her pain, her story, her fear, her dignity, her future. And He sees the truth — the whole truth — about her situation. Not just the wounds she carries or the injustice done to her, but also the choices she’s made, the running she’s done, the fear that drives her. And He doesn’t turn away.

This is one of the most hopeful truths in Scripture: God sees the truth about you — and He stays with you. Most of us are used to people who stay only when we’re doing well, when we’re strong, when we’re easy to love. But God stays when we’re messy. He stays when we’re hurting. He stays when we’re running. He stays when we’re not at our best. He stays because His love is not fragile.

Then comes the part of the story that challenges us. God tells Hagar to return. It’s easy to misunderstand this moment. God is not sending her back into danger. He is not minimizing her pain. He is not saying, “Just go back and everything will be fine.” Sometimes people talk about obedience like it’s a shortcut to comfort — as if doing the right thing will make life smooth or painless. But that’s not the story the Bible tells, and it’s not the story most of us live.

The truth is that obedience is often hard. It may hurt. It may require humility you don’t feel ready for. It may lead you straight into the places you’ve been avoiding. Going back didn’t magically fix Hagar’s situation. It didn’t erase the tension. It didn’t guarantee that the people who hurt her would suddenly change. And the same is true for us. Doing what God asks doesn’t mean everything will get easier. Sometimes it gets harder before it gets better. Sometimes obedience feels like walking through fire.

But here’s the difference — and it’s everything: you don’t walk through the fire alone. You don’t walk through it in

Photo by Johannes Plenio

your own strength. And you don’t walk through it without purpose. God doesn’t promise ease. He promises presence. He promises grace. He promises strength for the step you’re taking — not the one you’re imagining five steps ahead. And He promises that on the other side of the fire, there is freedom. Not freedom from pain, but freedom from the patterns that keep us stuck. Not freedom from difficulty, but freedom from the fear that keeps us running. Not freedom from suffering, but freedom from the lie that we are alone in it.

Obedience doesn’t guarantee that bad things won’t happen. But it does guarantee that God will give you what you need to walk through whatever comes — and to come out more whole, more healed, and more free. Hagar didn’t return because it was easy. She returned because God met her in the wilderness, called her by name, and promised to go with her. And that’s the only reason any of us can take the hard path too.

So let me ask you gently: where do you need to hear, “God sees you”? Where have you been running? What step of obedience is God inviting you to take — even if it scares you? And who can walk with you so you don’t take that step alone?

Here’s the truth: you are not unseen. You are not forgotten. You are not alone. God sees the parts of your story you’ve never said out loud. He sees the nights you cried yourself to sleep. He sees the moments you almost gave up. He sees the choices you regret and the choices you never got to make. He sees the wounds you carry and the walls you’ve built to protect them.

And He does not turn away. He comes toward you. He calls you by name. He speaks into your wilderness. He gives you a promise alongside His command. And as you take the next step — even a small one — grace meets you where you are, and strength comes as you obey.

The God who sees you is the God who stays with you. Always.

Please help me share the good news of Jesus and how He can change your life, and our world!

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Come back and visit at ListenLearn.Live Ministries