By Angela D. Thomas, DrPH, MPH, MBA You're supposed to be collecting receipts. A season of preparation is not a season of doing nothing. It's the season where God grows the wisdom, the strength, and the favor you'll need the day your purpose finally goes public. So you pray for those things on purpose, and you let Him build them in you now. Yesterday we said you're not late, you're in preparation, and that Jesus spent thirty years getting ready. Today I want to get practical,

You cannot do it perfectly. But you are not alone in the attempt. God never gave you a commandment without also giving you help to carry it out. The Holy Spirit is that help. And learning to depend on Him is how imperfect people give the most extraordinary love the world has ever seen. We have covered a lot of ground this week. Four types of love. Match them to the right relationship. The giving versus receiving distinction. The commandment to Agape love unconditionally. And

Because you are still jumping like the lid is on. Christ removed it. But if nobody ever told you the lid was gone, or if you have been hitting it so long that your body just adjusted, you will keep limiting yourself to a jar that has no ceiling anymore. You know God has more for you. You believe it. You have confessed it. You have prayed about it. And yet here you are, in what feels like the same place, the same ceiling, the same invisible wall that you cannot quite push past

Because it is. The Bible calls you to live by a completely different set of rules than the ones your culture handed you. And when those two sets of rules collide, it is going to feel like you are rowing against the current. That is not a sign something is wrong. That is a sign you are taking the Word seriously. If you have been walking with God for any length of time, you have probably felt this tension. The world tells you one thing and Scripture tells you something that sou

The Bible was written in a different time, a different culture, and a different language. When you read it through a 21st century Western lens, some things are going to feel confusing or disconnected. That is not a faith problem. That is a lens problem. And the good news is, lenses can be cleaned up. You open your Bible expecting clarity. You know the stories. You have heard them your whole life. And yet sometimes you walk away from a passage feeling more confused than when y

Because betrayal and disloyalty are not signs that you're doing something wrong. They are signs that you are walking in purpose. Jesus experienced both from His inner circle, and Scripture shows us exactly how He handled it and what that means for us. This one is personal for a lot of us. You're doing the work. You're showing up. You're trying to walk in what God called you to, and then someone close to you, someone you trusted, someone you invested in, hurts you. Betrays you

Because what you're able to receive is directly connected to what you've been prepared to hold. God is not withholding from you. He is being strategic about the timing of every reveal, the same way Jesus was strategic for three full years before showing His disciples who He really was. You want clarity. You want God to just show you the whole picture, the full plan, all the details, right now. And when He doesn't, it can feel like He's holding out on you. Like the information

Because what God is building in you during the process is just as important as what He's building through you after it. You can't skip it because you are the material being worked on. And unfinished material cannot hold what's coming. If you're honest, you probably don't just want purpose. You want to get there faster. You want to skip the part that feels slow, the part that feels hidden, the part where you're doing real work and nobody seems to be watching. The part where yo

Jesus didn't rush to the cross because purpose requires preparation, not just arrival. The three years before the cross were not filler. They were the foundation that made the cross mean something. And the season you're in right now? It's probably doing the same thing for you. You know God has called you to something. You can feel it. You've seen glimpses of it. And still, things are moving slower than you expected, doors haven't opened the way you thought they would, and you

God always knows when what He's looking at is not the original. Not because He's watching to catch you, but because He's the Designer. And designers can always tell. There's something about the counterfeit industry that gives it away every time. You could be walking around completely confident with what you think is the real thing. Feeling good. Looking good. And then the designer walks in the room. And within seconds, they know. Not because you told them. Not because you con

Something is off. Not with you as a person, but with the version of you that was shaped by pain, by the fall, and by an enemy who is more strategic than most of us give him credit for. The original you, the one God designed before any of that happened, is still in there. Scripture shows exactly when the counterfeit showed up and why it feels so much like the real thing. You love God. You're trying. You might be showing up to church, reading your Bible, doing the things. And s

Faith without action cannot produce what God already created in you. Scripture shows a clear pattern: God creates in spirit first, formation requires action second, and faith is what carries you in the gap between the two. We've already seen how words create. Now here's the second reality Scripture shows us, and this one is where a lot of us get stuck. Actions form. What Does the Bible Say About the Difference Between Creation and Formation? We already saw it. God spoke man i

If you were created in the image of God, your power was settled before you were ever born. Genesis shows that God spoke your design into existence in spirit before your body was ever formed, and that design included dominion. The question was never whether He gave it to you. The question is whether you know it. I get it. You love God. You read your Bible. You might even be serving somewhere right now. And still, there's a question you don't say out loud, because saying it out