This morning Craig and I visited a new church.
The worship music was beautiful. People were warm and welcoming from the moment we walked through the doors. There was joy in the room, real joy, not forced or performative. You could feel people genuinely wanting connection, wanting hope, wanting something deeper than the endless noise and division the world keeps feeding all of us lately.
The sermon centered around the parables of seeds. Not just one of them, but several of the seed parables Jesus taught throughout scripture. The pastor said something that stayed with me all day: many of the seeds God places in our lives are actually the answers to the prayers we keep asking for. The problem is that we often overlook them because seeds rarely arrive looking like miracles at first.
That landed deeply.
A seed looks small.
Insignificant.
Ordinary.
And yet inside a seed exists an entire future waiting for stewardship.
I think many of us spend years begging God for transformation while ignoring the seeds already sitting in our hands.
Seeds of discipline.
Seeds of honesty.
Seeds of stillness.
Seeds of forgiveness.
Seeds of courage.
Seeds of repentance.
Seeds of discernment.
Seeds of responsibility.
Seeds of boundaries.
Especially boundaries.
Honestly, the older I get, the more convinced I become that darkness absolutely hates healthy boundaries.
Seriously though, it’s true. Just think about it in your own life.
Psychologically. Emotionally. Relationally. Spiritually. Boundaries interrupt unhealthy systems. They expose manipulation. They force accountability. They remove easy access to someone’s energy, attention, resources, emotions, or peace.
That’s why people often become the angriest precisely when we stop participating in unhealthy dynamics.
I have seen this in relationships, friendships, family systems, churches, coaching dynamics, and even business environments. The moment someone says, “This no longer feels healthy for me,” the entire atmosphere can shift. Suddenly the person setting the boundary becomes “selfish,” “crazy,” “cold,” “unloving,” or “difficult.” Guilt starts flying. Accusations emerge. Revisionist history appears out of nowhere. Emotional manipulation intensifies because unhealthy systems tend to panic when access is removed.
And honestly? That overlap between psychology and spirituality fascinates me deeply lately.
The more I work on Everyday Demons, the more I notice how often destructive spiritual patterns move through profoundly human psychological mechanisms. Fear. Shame. Pride. Narcissism. Addiction. Rage. Victimhood. Compulsive distraction. Emotional chaos. Self-erasure. Manipulation disguised as love. Control disguised as protection. Spiritual superiority disguised as wisdom.
Darkness rarely announces itself dramatically in our lives.
Most of the time it simply whispers agreement.
Agree with the resentment and chaos.
Obsession and bitterness.
Agree with the ego or confusion.
Agree with the lie that peace is weakness and emotional volatility is passion.
One tiny agreement at a time.
That is why I no longer dismiss the importance of what we repeatedly feed in our lives. Scripture speaks about this constantly. Seeds. Fruit. Soil. Harvest. Christ understood human nature far better than many modern people give Him credit for. He knew environments mattered. He knew repetition mattered. He knew what we continually entertain eventually shapes us.
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” — Galatians 6:7
That verse feels almost uncomfortable to modern culture because we want freedom from consequences while still feeding unhealthy things daily. We feed anxiety while starving stillness. We feed lust while starving intimacy. We feed ego while starving humility. We feed outrage while starving wisdom. Then we sit confused wondering why peace feels distant.
Seeds always grow eventually.
That truth applies psychologically as much as spiritually.
Carl Jung once wrote, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I think about that line often now. Many people are living from unconscious wounds, unresolved trauma, unexamined fears, emotional compulsions, and inherited dysfunction while believing their suffering is entirely external. Meanwhile, their inner soil is crowded with bitterness, fear, envy, chaos, resentment, self-abandonment, and emotional fragmentation.
The fruit tells the story eventually.
Every single time.
One of the things I have become increasingly aware of is how modern culture rewards emotional performance while quietly starving the soul. We are encouraged to react instantly, broadcast constantly, consume endlessly, and avoid silence at all costs. Stillness has become terrifying to many people because stillness eventually exposes what is unresolved.
Silence reveals what noise hides.
That’s part of why The Hippie Christian became so important for me to write. Somewhere along the way, many of us lost touch with presence itself. We became disconnected from creation, rhythm, embodiment, contemplation, prayer, groundedness, and deep listening. We started treating spirituality like performance instead of communion.
And communion requires honesty.
Real honesty.
The kind that asks difficult questions.
What am I feeding daily?
What atmosphere am I cultivating inside my home?
What relationships leave me grounded versus chronically confused?
What thought patterns have become normalized?
What emotional patterns keep repeating?
What have I been entertaining that quietly steals my peace?
Those are not small questions.
These questions shape destinies.
One of the most dangerous things about emotional and spiritual dysfunction is that human beings adapt to it remarkably fast. We normalize chaos. We normalize confusion. We normalize emotional exhaustion. We normalize anxiety and overstimulation to the point that genuine peace can start feeling unfamiliar. Some people have lived inside emotional turbulence so long that calmness feels suspicious to them.
Peace is not boring.
Peace is healthy.
Peace creates space for clarity.
Peace allows truth to breathe.
Peace reconnects us to God, to ourselves, and to each other.
And no, that does not mean life becomes easy or painless. Christ never promised the absence of hardship. What He demonstrated was alignment. Groundedness. Integrity. Compassion without self-erasure. Boundaries without hatred. Love without enabling destruction.
That last part matters deeply.
Loving someone does not require participation in their chaos.
I think many of us need to hear that more clearly.
There is nothing unloving about refusing to water weeds that are choking the life out of your garden.
That’s stewardship.
The pastor said something else this morning that I have continued turning over in my mind all afternoon. He said that many people pray for miracles while overlooking the tiny seeds God already placed directly in front of them. A healthy marriage begins with tiny seeds. Healing begins with tiny seeds. Peace begins with tiny seeds. Faithfulness begins with tiny seeds. Wisdom begins with tiny seeds. Entire orchards grow from what initially looked insignificant.
Christ constantly spoke in agricultural language for a reason.
The condition of the soil matters.
And maybe that is the real question many of us need to ask ourselves right now:
What is growing inside me?
Not what am I posting.
Not what am I performing.
Not what image am I projecting to the world.
What is actually growing inside me?
Fear or peace?
Bitterness or compassion?
Chaos or groundedness?
Pride or humility?
Confusion or clarity?
Resentment or forgiveness?
Because eventually, every seed bears fruit.
And the fruit always tells the truth.
That question has been sitting heavy on me all day:
What is actually growing inside me?
Not the image.
Not the performance.
Not the curated version we hand the world online.
The real fruit.
The real atmosphere.
The real condition of the soil.
What we feed grows. Every single time.
So I’m curious… what part of this musing hit you the hardest today? What seed are you realizing you need to stop feeding — or finally start watering?
Drop a thought below. I read far more of these comments than people realize.
And if this stirred something in you, share it. Somebody you love may be watering weeds while praying for a garden.
As always loving and praying for you and our world,
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Rene’ Schooler(Author)
