Let Your Light Move Faster Than Your Fear

It’s our last day in Tampa.

This morning started slower. Grounded. Craig and I walked into 9am Mass at Sacred Heart, the kind of place that carries history in its walls and quiet in its bones. No rush. No performance. Just presence. After a weekend full of voices, ideas, movement, connection, we stepped into stillness again. And something about ending a trip like this in that kind of space… it settles things differently.

We grabbed coffee at Oxford Exchange after, sat for a bit, not saying much at first. You know those moments when conversation doesn’t need to be forced? It just comes when it’s ready. Then we walked the Riverwalk, sun warming up the morning, the city coming alive around us, and the conversation opened.

Last night a storm rolled in. Real one. Thunder. Wind. Rain hitting the windows. And inside that storm, we had one of those conversations you don’t plan for. The kind that just finds you. We talked about our pasts. The people who shaped us. The books. The voices. The moments that left a mark long before we understood why they mattered.

And then it moved forward.

What are we actually building?

Not just for us. Not just for right now. But for our children. Their children. The people we will never meet. The ones who might cross paths with something we create and feel seen, understood, or stirred to move.

That’s legacy.

Not what we leave behind.

What we set in motion.

And somewhere in that conversation, I kept thinking about something from last week. I took my youngest boys to see the Michael Jackson movie. Two things hit me hard watching it. The first was his mother. The way she spoke over him. Constantly telling him to let his light shine. Not casually. Not occasionally. Consistently. She saw something in him and refused to let him forget it.

And he held onto that.

The second thing was how seriously he took what came through him. There’s that scene where he’s floating in the pool, eyes closed, not engaging with what everyone else is doing. His brothers are asking him what he’s doing, why he’s not participating, and he says, “If I don’t listen to this, God will give it to Prince.”

It made me laugh, but it also hit something deeper.

He understood something most people don’t.

What comes to you… isn’t always for you.

And if you don’t move on it, it doesn’t just sit there waiting forever.

It moves on.

That’s the voice of the Spirit. The nudge. The idea. The download. The thing that lands on your heart out of nowhere and won’t leave you alone. Most people are too busy to hear it. And the ones who do hear it? They talk themselves out of it just as fast.

We stay distracted.

We stay comfortable.

We stay in motion so we don’t have to sit still long enough to actually listen.

And if we do hear something, we hesitate.

We overthink.

We wait.

And that waiting costs more than we realize.

God loves speed.

Not recklessness. Not chaos. But responsiveness.

Movement.

Obedience when something is placed in front of you.

I write like that. When something comes through, I don’t sit on it. I don’t wait until it’s perfect or polished or convenient. I move. I grab it while it’s there, because I know if I don’t, I’ll either lose it or it will lose its edge.

And I was reminded of that again this weekend.

Through the conversations.

Through the silence.

Through the storm.

John Maxwell spoke yesterday. Someone who, even though I’ve never met him in person, has impacted my life for nearly three decades. And his message was simple, but it cuts deep if you really hear it.

There comes a point where it’s no longer about your roots.

It’s no longer about your tree.

It’s about your fruit.

And your fruit isn’t for you.

It’s for others.

That’s the shift.

Because most people spend their lives trying to grow something for themselves. Their success. Their comfort. Their recognition. Their security. Their name. Their platform.

Self-centered shining.

But real impact… real legacy… comes when what you produce feeds someone else. When your life becomes something that multiplies, not just accumulates.

You don’t build a legacy by protecting your tree.

You build it by planting an orchard.

And that requires a different mindset.

It requires you to stop asking, “What can I get?” and start asking, “What can I give that actually matters?”

That’s where most people stall out.

Because giving like that costs something.

It requires you to look at your life honestly. To ask where you’ve been shaped. Where you’ve been broken. Where you’ve been refined. And then to stop hiding those places and start speaking from them.

Calling is found in two places.

The pain you’ve moved through.

And what you can’t ignore in the world around you.

The storms matter.

Not because they were hard.

But because they changed you.

And now you can speak into someone else’s storm in a way no one else can.

That’s not accidental.

That’s assignment.

And then there are the things you see out in the world that just don’t sit right with you. The places where you think, this shouldn’t be like this. This could be different. There’s more here. There’s light that could exist here if someone would just bring it.

That’s not random.

That’s direction.

Michael Jackson saw something in his own backyard. Gang violence. Division. Young men choosing sides and living inside cycles that were destroying them. He didn’t just observe it. He felt it. And out of that came the song Bad. Not just a track. A statement. A reflection of what he was witnessing and a challenge to it.

But he didn’t stop at writing it.

He went into those spaces.

He brought opposing groups together.

He had them stand in the same room, move in the same rhythm, exist in the same frame.

He used what was in him to create a moment where division paused and something else stepped in.

That’s not just artistry.

That’s alignment.

That’s the same pattern we see with Jesus. He didn’t avoid broken spaces. He stepped directly into them. Sat with people others rejected. Spoke into places others ignored. Brought together what the world kept separate.

Light doesn’t wait for perfect conditions.

It enters darkness and changes it.

That’s the model.

That’s what we’re all being invited into, whether we realize it or not.

Not a 9 to 5 that drains you.

Not distractions that numb you.

Not entertainment that fills your time but empties your life.

Something that matters.

Something that multiplies.

Something that outlives you.

You already know what that is for you.

You might not have all the details.

You might not see the full picture.

But you know the direction.

You know the pull.

You know the thing that keeps coming back no matter how many times you push it away.

That’s it.

That’s the thing.

Let your light shine.

Not for attention.

Not for validation.

Not for status.

For impact.

For change.

For people.

For something bigger than you.

And it doesn’t happen by waiting.

It happens by moving.

By listening when it comes.

By acting when it lands.

By trusting that what you’ve been given isn’t random.

It’s responsibility.

We don’t need more time.

We need more obedience.

We don’t need more clarity.

We need more courage.

We don’t need more ideas.

We need more action.

That’s what this weekend has been about.

Not just learning.

Not just connecting.

Not just being inspired.

Deciding.

Moving.

Becoming the kind of person who doesn’t sit on what they’ve been given.

So, as we close this out, walking along the water, coffee in hand, conversation still unfolding, there’s one question that matters more than anything else.

What is your life actually producing?

And who is it for?

Because legacy isn’t built someday.

It’s built in what you choose to do next.

Stop scrolling for a second.

What is the thing you know you’re called to do… but keep putting off?

Say it. Own it. Drop it in the comments.

No hiding. No polishing it up. Just truth.

And if this hit something in you, don’t keep it to yourself. Share this with someone who’s been playing small, staying comfortable, or waiting on “the right time.”

Because the world doesn’t need more spectators.

It needs people willing to stand out and actually move.

As always loving and praying for you and our world,

Rene Schooler

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This post was previously published on medium.com.