When you see yourself as an inherently good person, and some of the more obvious struggles—lust, greed, drugs, alcohol addiction, or other patterns people easily recognize as destructive markers of sin—have not taken hold of your life in an obvious way, it can be easy to assume you are in good standing with the Lord. Especially if the idea of God you have has been formed by the world to be "long ago and distant."
Nothing could be further from the truth. But that was me.
From a young age I always believed in God. I loved the Lord the best way I knew how, cared about doing what was right, and I even looked forward to one day sitting in Heaven with the Father, having a conversation with Him and asking all the questions concerning "what really happened" with the universe.
As I began learning to walk with Him and discovering the importance of a secret place to pray, the Holy Spirit lovingly realigned my sincerity and my intentions with the truth.
In Scripture, I began to notice a pattern: obedience is His love language.
So, what is a love language? A love language is the way someone most naturally expresses, interprets, and receives love, affection, admiration, and care. My own love languages are quality time and acts of service. Loving God is more than believing in Him or having good intentions, though. It is trusting Him enough to obey Him.
The first Scripture to capture my heart was Isaiah 43:1, "Don't be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I am calling you by name; you are mine." At the time, I didn't understand why those words resonated so deeply or why they were accompanied by such an overwhelming sense of being loved. Nor did I realize that the verses which followed—
"When you pass through water, I will be with you; when you pass through rivers, they will not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire, you will not be scorched—the flame will not burn you. For I am Adonai your God, the Holy One of Isra'el, your Savior... Because I regard you as valued and honored, and because I love you..."— would one day become a prophetic reminder of God's faithfulness through some of the hardest seasons of my life.
What I did see...was the Father's heart. Then, in Jeremiah 3, I saw His heart for His people... for me... and how the things I was doing without a second thought grieved Him. Ambition and striving had become my gods, and vanity was quietly making its way in as well. For the first time, I began to see obedience as love expressed back to the One who first loved me.
Romans 10:2–3 put words to the conviction I was feeling: "For I can testify that they have zeal for God, but it is not based on accurate knowledge. Since they ignore God's way of making people righteous and try to set up their own, they have not submitted themselves to God's way."
This word set me free.
And I feel called to share that freedom with others who also have affection for the Lord, but may not fully understand what it means to surrender to Him, to be led by Him, or to receive His righteousness instead of leaning on their own sense of goodness.
Because I was not rebellious in the way people often imagine rebellion. At the height of my own destruction, I thought I had everything I could possibly salvage for my life: a good income, my dream car, safety with someone who loved me... Yet there was still a gaping hole in the depths of my soul.
One night, about two years ago, while driving home down a winding road, reflecting on life, I asked God, "What am I missing?" His reply? "Me."
It had been years since I had heard the Lord so clearly.
Not long afterward, He began revealing what I couldn't yet see. I was an idolater—smoking marijuana, living in monogamous fornication, and being led by my own understanding—with a little bitty mustard seed in my pocket. And God, in His mercy, began to show me the difference when I sought His face. But seeking God was also a foreign concept to me.
In the infancy of Anointé, the comfortable life I was living began to slowly burn down. My business waned—so much so that the excess income which had funded most of my marijuana indulgence, as well as the research and development for cultivation, came to a halt.
The R&D for what is now Anointé, however, was full steam ahead. Interesting, right?
I began asking God for help with branding. There was enough fear of the Lord within me to know that if this was going to represent Him, it needed to represent Him well. Not long afterward, the Lord directed me to a weekly Bible study for entrepreneurs, and it became one of the first means He used to reshape my understanding.
I knew I needed Him, but I did not yet fully understand what it meant to seek Him. I thought I did, but Scripture began to show me something deeper. In Jeremiah 29:13, we are told, "You will seek Me and find Me, when you will search for Me with all your heart." To seek God is not casual. Nor is it a distant belief that leaves Him on the edges of your life. It is an intentional turning of the heart toward Him—to search for Him, inquire of Him, desire Him, and allow Him to lead.
Psalm 27:8 says, "My heart said of You, 'Seek My face.' Your face, ADONAI, I will seek." The word translated as seek is the Hebrew word bāqash. It carries the sense of searching after, pursuing, and longing for God, especially in worship and prayer. This is not a casual glance in God's direction. It is the posture of a heart that turns toward Him with intention. Another Hebrew word often used for seeking is dārash, which speaks of inquiring, consulting, searching carefully, and looking to the Lord for understanding. In the Greek, zēteō means to seek, desire, search for, or strive after, and ekzēteō deepens that meaning, carrying the idea of seeking out carefully and diligently.
Together, these words reveal that seeking God is more than believing He exists. It is the active pursuit of His presence, His wisdom, His will, and His leadership.
First, I had to learn that seeking God is not the same as simply believing He exists.
James 2:19 says even the demons believe, and Matthew 7:23 says, "Then I will tell them to their faces, 'I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!'" Those Scriptures stopped me because they made something very clear: belief alone is not the same as relationship, and relationship with God is not built on admiration from a distance. It is built through surrender, obedience, trust, correction, and being known by Him.
One by one, the misguided beliefs I had been holding tightly began to be dismantled. Sometimes it happened through online sermons. Other times through podcast conversations that caught my attention. More often than not, it happened when curiosity led me back to Scripture to compare what I had heard with what God actually said.
As the truth of God's Word began to be written on my heart, I also kept coming across passages in James that confronted two areas of my life I had rarely given much thought before: the way I spoke and the condition of my heart.
James 1:26 says, "Anyone who thinks he is religiously observant, but does not control his tongue, is deceiving himself, and his observance counts for nothing." Then James 3 continued the correction: "For we all stumble in many ways. If someone never slips in what he says, he is a mature person, able to bridle his whole body."
My foul language no longer felt harmless. The words coming out of my mouth were revealing what was still living in my heart. At the same time, I kept encountering Peter's repeated exhortation to be sober-minded.
In 1 Peter 1:13: "Therefore, get your minds ready for action; keep sober, and set your hope completely on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Yeshua the Messiah." And again in 1 Peter 5:8: "Stay sober, stay alert! Your enemy, the Adversary, stalks about like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."
Those passages became loving warnings from the Father. I began to understand that an intoxicated mind is not spiritually neutral. It dulls discernment, weakens self-control, and makes it harder to recognize the voice of the Shepherd.
The more I read, the more I realized God wasn't trying to take something from me. He was protecting my mind so I could hear Him more clearly and walk more closely with Him. I did not just need to believe that God was real. I needed to let Him become Lord over what was real in me. So, first things first—I let the marijuana go.
Marijuana wasn't just recreational fun, though. What had once helped soothe my anxiety and the physical aches of long days behind the chair as a hairdresser had quietly become counterproductive. About a week into detoxing, I woke up with every joint, every muscle, and seemingly every cell in my body aching. Half awake, and without hesitation, I told Yeshua. His response? "Let Me heal you."I asked, "How?" The Lord replied, "With the faith of a mustard seed. Do you believe Me?" I said, "Yes." It wasn't long before I felt what I can only describe as a light blanket of warmth settle over my body. That kind of pain has never returned.
Christ spoke to me in the depths of my sin. As dirty as I still was, letting the marijuana go was pleasing to Him. I would later come to understand why, how Yeshua had been speaking all along— I simply hadn't yet learned to recognize His voice.
And that changed everything.
