Storms Outside. Joy Inside.

Twenty-seven years ago, on June 26, 1999, Sondra and I stood before God, our families, and our friends and promised each other forever.

It was a stormy day.

Sheets of rain fell from the sky. Thunder shook. Lightning flashed through the darkness. If you judged our wedding by the weather, you might have wondered whether it was an omen. In many ways, it was.

Not because our marriage would be dark or miserable, but because that day became a picture of the life we would build together.

Outside, there was every indication that the day would be gloomy. But inside, every room was filled with something entirely different. Family gathered. Friends laughed. There was joy, anticipation, celebration, and the quiet confidence that something beautiful was beginning. The weather outside never determined the atmosphere inside.

Looking back over twenty-seven years, I realize our marriage has followed much the same pattern.

Jesus promised His followers, "In this world you will have trouble." He never promised storm-free living, and He certainly didn't promise storm-free marriages. We've experienced disease, death, broken relationships, personal attacks, career disappointments, financial struggles, and seasons that tested us in ways we never anticipated. The storms have been real, and at times they've been fierce.

But by God's grace, the storms have mostly remained outside and inside our home, the overwhelming story has been one of joy.

God entrusted us with three incredible children, each one uniquely reflecting His creativity. Our Jaybird is now in Wichita Falls pursuing his dream of flying fighter jets. This year God expanded our family even more by giving us our wonderful daughter-in-law, Emma, and our first grandson, James Wade Hinton III. Watching Jay become a husband and now a father has been one of the greatest joys of our lives.

Josie is a sophomore at Ole Miss with aspirations of becoming a criminal prosecutor. She has always possessed a strong sense of justice, and it has been a joy watching that calling mature as she prepares for the future God has for her.

Then there's our thirteen-year-old caboose. Louie. He's an old soul with a perspective on life that keeps us laughing almost every day. He has a delightful way of seeing the world and has brought a unique joy to our family.

Together, our children have given us countless memories through ballgames, school programs, church events, recitals, family vacations, ordinary dinners around the table, and a thousand moments that didn't seem extraordinary at the time but have become some of our greatest treasures. We have been blessed to create them, raise them, and now begin launching them into the world like arrows from a quiver. And now, by God's grace, we get to watch another generation begin.

Through all of those years, our marriage has remained remarkably steady. It has required work, intentionality, humility, forgiveness, and constant adjustment, but it has never felt crushing. Christ's words about His yoke being easy and His burden being light have proven true in ways I never understood as a young husband. Marriage has not been effortless, but walking together has made even the heaviest seasons bearable.

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself asking a simple question: after twenty-seven years, who is this woman I married?

Peter instructs husbands to "live with your wives in an understanding way." I've spent nearly three decades trying to do just that. The funny thing is that while I know Sondra infinitely better than I did on our wedding day, she has somehow become infinitely more mysterious, more fascinating, and more alluring at the same time. The deeper I've gotten to know her, the more I realize there is still more to discover.

As I've tried to distill her into a single word, one keeps coming back to me.

Fierce.

At first glance, that word can sound harsh, but I mean it as one of the highest compliments I know how to give.

Sondra is fiercely loyal. Once you're hers, you're hers. She loves her family and friends with a steadfastness that refuses to let go.

She is fiercely determined. Obstacles don't discourage her. They become another challenge to overcome.

She is fiercely protective. She has spent twenty-seven years creating a home where our children have always known they were loved, defended, and believed in.

She is fiercely resilient. I've watched her endure heartache, disappointment, exhaustion, uncertainty, and loss without allowing those things to define her.

And yes, she is fiercely stubborn. Anyone who knows her will smile at that one. But I've come to realize that her stubbornness is conviction in action. It has anchored our family when circumstances tried to move us.

She is a powerful force of life.

When the storms have raged outside our walls, she has been one of the primary reasons there has continued to be laughter, peace, warmth, and hope inside them.

If I had to choose one person to stand beside while the wind howls, the thunder crashes, and the rain falls, I would choose her every single time.

Because that's what twenty-seven years have taught me.

The goal of life isn't to eliminate the storms. Jesus already told us they were coming.

The goal is to build something on the inside that the storms cannot reach.

Build a marriage where grace is abundant. Build a home where laughter is common. Build a family where Christ is the foundation beneath every decision and every season. Build relationships that become shelter for one another when life becomes difficult.

The rain will come. The thunder will roll. There will be seasons of darkness. But storms don't have to define the atmosphere of your home.

Twenty-seven years ago, we were married on one of the stormiest days I can remember.

Looking back now, I wouldn't change a thing.

The weather was telling the truth all along.

There would be storms outside.

But because Christ has been faithful, there has been joy inside.

Happy 27th Anniversary, Sondra.

Thank you for standing beside me through every storm, for building a home that has always been warmer than the weather outside, and for being exactly the kind of woman I would want with me when the skies grow dark.

I'd marry you all over again.

Walk Humbly with God in an age that worships self

 

Walk Humbly With God In an Age That Worships Self

“…and to walk humbly with your God.” — Micah 6:8

There is a progression in Micah 6:8 that I don’t think is accidental.

First, we learn to do what is right according to God’s standard rather than our own.

Then, once we begin to understand how often we ourselves fall short of that standard, we begin to understand mercy — not merely receiving it, but loving it.

And eventually, both truths lead us somewhere unavoidable:

Humility.

Because anyone who truly understands God’s righteousness and God’s mercy eventually comes to the realization that His ways are higher than ours and His thoughts are higher than ours and you stop placing yourself at the center of the universe. You stop assuming your perspective is perfect. You stop believing your judgments are infallible. You stop acting as though you are qualified to sit on the throne that belongs to God alone.

That may be one of the greatest spiritual problems in our culture today.

We have not merely drifted away from God’s standards. We have increasingly attempted to replace Him as the standard altogether.

Modern culture constantly encourages people to determine truth for themselves, define morality for themselves, construct identity for themselves, and then pronounce judgment on anyone who fails to affirm their conclusions.

In many ways, we have elevated ourselves into the role of judge, jury, and executioner. But those roles were never ours to begin with.

When human beings become their own highest authority, humility disappears.

And once humility disappears, cruelty is usually not far behind.

That progression works in reverse just as clearly as it does in Micah 6:8.

When people do what is “right in their own eyes,” they inevitably begin measuring everyone else by their own constantly shifting standards. Mercy becomes scarce because self-righteousness always demands punishment for those who fail its test.

That mentality thrives in outrage, vengeance, public humiliation, and eager condemnation of others. And perhaps most dangerously, it often disguises itself as moral superiority.

People become quick to pronounce judgment and slow to recognize their own need for grace.

But walking humbly with God changes the posture of the heart.

Humility is not weakness. It is proper perspective.

It is recognizing that God alone fully defines what is right, judges perfectly, sees motives, and God alone possesses both perfect justice and perfect mercy.

Walking humbly with God means living with the awareness that we are not Him.

It means approaching others with less arrogance and more grace.
Less outrage and more patience.
Less self-exaltation and more surrender.

The humble person understands something prideful people often forget:

If God dealt with us strictly according to what we deserved, none of us would stand.

Humility grows when we recognize that every breath we take, every kindness we receive, every second chance we are given, and every hope we possess ultimately rests upon the mercy of God.

And perhaps that is where Micah 6:8 was always leading us all along.

Doing what is right according to God’s standards.
Learning to love mercy because we desperately need it ourselves.
And finally, recognizing that both truths leave no room for pride before a holy God.

Love Mercy!!

Love Mercy — In a World That Prefers Revenge

“…and to love mercy…” — Micah 6:8

A few days ago, I ran a red light.

Not intentionally. I zoned out. I glanced to my left, saw that the cross traffic had a green light, and somehow my brain completely failed to process what that meant for me. I just carried on through the intersection like everything was fine and nearly collided with another vehicle.

The other driver made his displeasure known, which was completely justified and probably exactly what I would’ve done in his position.

My first instinct was to raise my hand in the universal “I’m sorry” gesture.

My second instinct was to check my mirrors and look around for blue lights flashing somewhere behind me.

My third instinct was relief that I was apparently going to receive mercy for my transgression.

As I filtered that experience through Micah 6:8 later, something uncomfortable occurred to me.

The man I nearly hit was probably hoping there were blue lights nearby. He probably wanted justice. Honestly, if the roles were reversed, I probably would have too.

And that realization exposed something deeper in me. I love mercy when I receive it. I’m just not always sure I love it quite as much when other people receive it.

That’s what makes Micah’s wording so challenging. The command is not simply to show mercy occasionally. It is to love mercy.

That changes the conversation entirely.

Most of us love mercy when it benefits us.
When we make the mistake.
When we need the second chance.
When we hope consequences are softened.
When we want understanding instead of punishment.

But loving mercy means something deeper than appreciating forgiveness for ourselves. It means rejoicing when mercy is extended even to people we think deserve the hammer.

That is much more difficult.

Even justice without mercy is cruelty.

And if we’re honest, there’s something in human nature that enjoys seeing people “get what’s coming to them.” We may not say it out loud, but we feel it. We celebrate public failures. We feed on outrage. We quietly enjoy seeing arrogant people humbled, reckless people punished, or enemies exposed.

Yet the Gospel consistently moves in the opposite direction.

Jesus demonstrated a kind of mercy that frustrated both the religious and the rebellious. He forgave sinners. He restored failures. He ate with people society despised. Even while hanging on the cross, He prayed for the people killing Him.

Mercy does not mean pretending evil is good.
It does not mean removing accountability.
It does not mean consequences disappear.

But mercy does mean refusing to let vengeance or even a thirst for justice harden our hearts.

The truth is, each of us deserve the wrath of a Holy God which means we all are shown his mercy more than we realize.

We all want grace for our own failures while quietly demanding stricter justice for everybody else’s. But Micah calls us higher than that. He calls us to become people who genuinely love mercy because we recognize how desperately we depend on it ourselves.

Maybe the clearest evidence that we understand the mercy of God is not how grateful we are when we receive it…

…but how willing we are to celebrate when others receive it too.

 

Do Justly! In a World That Makes Up Its Own Rules

“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly…” — Micah 6:8

We live in a culture that increasingly treats “right” and “wrong” as flexible ideas.

What is acceptable changes depending on the moment, the audience, or the advantage to be gained. One person’s truth becomes another person’s offense. Standards shift. Lines move. Morality becomes negotiable.

But Micah reminds us of something foundational: God has already shown us what is good.

The command is not to invent morality for ourselves. It is not to reshape truth around preference, politics, convenience, or personal desire. The command is much simpler — and much harder:

Do justly.

Act right.

Not according to our own shifting standards, but according to God’s.

That sounds simple until acting right costs us something.

Doing justly means telling the truth when lying would benefit us. It means honoring commitments when breaking them would be easier. It means treating people fairly even when we dislike them. It means refusing to manipulate, exploit, flatter, or deceive for personal gain. It means doing the right thing even when nobody notices.

The opposite of acting justly is not merely criminal behavior. Most often, it is compromise. Small compromises. Quiet compromises. Respectable compromises.

The kind we justify because “everybody does it.” The kind we excuse because they seem beneficial. The kind that slowly reshape our character over time.

Human beings have always had a tendency to redefine righteousness according to what feels good, profitable, popular, or convenient. Scripture repeatedly shows what happens when people abandon God’s standard and replace it with their own:

“Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

This verse from Book of Judges is not presented as freedom. It is presented as collapse because when every person becomes their own moral authority, truth eventually becomes impossible to find.

Micah pulls us back to something stable.

God’s character defines what is right. Not culture. Not emotion. Not power. Not majority opinion. Not personal preference.

And because His character does not change, His standard does not change either.

Doing justly is ultimately about integrity and aligning our actions with what God says is good, even when it seems every one around us is choosing otherwise.

The real challenge is not whether we know what is right most of the time.

The real challenge is whether we are willing to do it.

How well do we know ourselves? Why is that important?

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a friend about the difficulty of being authentic and letting people REALLY get to know you.

Afterward, I walked away thinking about two questions:

Who really knows me? And maybe more importantly… How well do I even know myself?

We spend a lot of time trying to simplify ourselves. We create manageable versions of who we are for social media, for work, for church, for politics, for friendships, even for family. We like neat categories and understandable narratives because they make life easier to process.

But human beings are rarely simple.

Walt Whitman wrote, “I contain multitudes.” That line resonates because it’s true of me and I believe we are all contradictions at times. Strong and insecure. Confident and uncertain. Compassionate and selfish. Faithful and doubtful. Brave and afraid. Sometimes all in the same day.

The truth is, most of us are far more complicated than we are willing to admit and that complexity is not necessarily hypocrisy. Often, it’s just humanity.

And yet, many of us spend our lives carefully controlling access to who we really are. We let people see the polished version. The capable version. The version that feels safe. We protect weaknesses, insecurities, failures, fears, and the parts of us that still feel unfinished.

Maybe that’s pride? Maybe it’s fear? Maybe it’s self-preservation? Probably some combination of all three. I'm still trying to find out the answer to these questions myself.

But there’s a cost to never letting people all the way in.

It is impossible to maximize our potential if we do not honestly know our strengths. At the same time, it is impossible to truly grow if we don't know our weaknesses. Growth requires exposure.

That’s why Scripture says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” But iron only sharpens iron through CLOSE contact, friction, and pressure. Real sharpening does not happen at a distance. It happens when people are close enough to challenge us, question us, encourage us, correct us, and sometimes even wound our pride.

The problem is that many of us want the benefits of deep relationships without the vulnerability required to create them. We want to be understood while hiding pieces of ourselves. We want accountability without transparency. We want growth without discomfort.

But the people who have shaped me the most in life are the people who were willing to ask hard questions — and the people I trusted enough not to run from those questions.

That kind of honesty is rare. And valuable.

One of the things I’ve learned is that self-awareness rarely happens in isolation. Sometimes other people can see patterns in us long before we can see them ourselves. Trusted voices help reveal blind spots, strengths, fears, motivations, and habits we would otherwise ignore.

That is why intentional leadership development and personal refinement matter.

Because at the end of the day, the goal is not simply to be known by others. It is to become honest enough to truly know ourselves — and courageous enough to let the right people walk that journey with us.

Palm Sunday: A Tale of Two Kings

 

A Tale of Two Kings: The King We Want vs. The King We Need

I’ve always found it difficult to think about Palm Sunday without first thinking about David’s conquest of Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 5.

That may seem like a strange place to begin when the church calendar is focused on palm branches and Hosanna, but years ago I heard Sandy Wilson briefly connect those two stories, and ever since then I haven’t been able to separate them in my mind.

In many ways, Palm Sunday really is a tale of two kings.

David was the king the people had always wanted. He was strong, decisive, victorious, and powerful. Jerusalem sat high and fortified, never having been conquered, and the Jebusites mocked him by saying that even “the blind and the lame” could defend it. But David found a weakness, entered through the water structure, and took the city. It became the city of David, the political and symbolic center of Israel’s power.

This is what the people had long desired — a king who could conquer, establish greatness, and make them significant among the nations.

And that desire did not begin with David.

Back in 1 Samuel 8, the people had asked for a king “like the other nations.” God’s response was clear: in asking for a king, they were rejecting Him as their King. Yet He allowed them to have what they wanted.

That desire for a visible, powerful, earthly king was deeply ingrained in the hearts of God’s people.

So when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it is no surprise that the crowd interpreted the moment through the lens of David.

Everything about the scene looked royal. The crowds gathered. The city was stirred. People lined the streets.

And yet, from the very beginning, something was different.

He came riding on a donkey. No army. No weapons. No war horse. No visible plan to overthrow Rome. The whole scene had the appearance of triumph, but it was a very different kind of triumph.

The people’s expectations, however, were unmistakable. They cried out, “Hosanna.”

That word is often heard as praise, but it is actually a cry for help: “Save us now.” And what they meant by that was not hard to discern.

Save us from Rome. Restore David’s kingdom. Make us a great nation again. Give us back our significance. Be our next David.

They were not praising Jesus. They were defining their expectations of him.

This is where Palm Sunday becomes deeply personal for us. The people were not confused just once. They misunderstood consistently.

Even the disciples, who had walked with Jesus and heard Him repeatedly say that He would suffer, be rejected, and die, somehow still held onto the expectation that He was about to establish a political kingdom in Jerusalem.

Their expectations were so strong that even clear truth could not break through.

They had a severe case of expectation blindness. And if we are honest, it is not just their problem. It is ours as well.

Scripture warns us that it is entirely possible to know the Bible, follow Jesus, and still miss Him because our expectations are louder than His words.

We all have expectations of what God should do. We assume He should solve the problem in front of us. We assume He should remove our suffering. We assume He should restore what we think has been lost.

And sometimes, when He does not do those things, we begin to question whether He is really at work.

But Palm Sunday reminds us that Jesus often refuses to meet our expectations because He is after something deeper.

The crowd wanted Him to march toward Rome. Instead, He marched to the temple. He drove out corruption. He confronted the heart of their broken worship.

And then, in one of the most beautiful contrasts in all of Scripture, the very people who had been pushed to the margins in David’s story (2Sam5:8) — the blind and the lame — were welcomed and healed by Jesus in the temple.

David took the city. Jesus came to redeem it. Not just the city. The world.

That is the King we needed.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd welcomed Him like a conquering king, not realizing that His victory — and theirs — would come not through a crown, but through a cross.

The King they needed had to die, not reign.

And that remains true for us.

We are still prone to creating a god in our own image, a version of God that feels manageable, familiar, and predictable. We want a king who exists to meet our needs, solve our problems, and validate our expectations.

But sometimes the very thing we are asking God to remove is the thing He is using to transform us.

As James 1 reminds us, trials produce endurance, maturity, and wholeness. So when Jesus does not meet our expectations, it does not mean He is failing us. More often than not, He is forming us.

That is why Palm Sunday leaves us with a question we all must answer:

Do we want the King we have imagined?

Or do we trust the King who actually came?

 

When the burden is heavy

​Ever spend a night wrestling with sleep—your mind running laps around a big decision, a looming deadline, or an unbelievable pile-up of life events?

Yeah. Me too.

Jesus once said, “Do not worry about your life—what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.” That feels almost unrealistic in a world like ours. Not because we don’t believe Him—but because we are absolutely drowning in information.

The modern problem isn’t scarcity of knowledge. It’s overload.

We are exposed to more opinions, warnings, predictions, and “urgent” threats in a single day than most people in history encountered in a lifetime. Everyone has a megaphone. Everyone is telling us what the next great danger is. Everyone wants us alert, anxious, and ready to react.

And slowly—almost imperceptibly—we begin worrying about things far beyond our daily needs. We carry concerns we can’t control, outcomes we can’t influence, and futures we were never meant to manage.

At some point, something has to give.

At some point, we have to say: enough is enough.

I’m going to identify what I actually need to focus on today—and I’m going to dismiss the rest. I’m going to steward what’s in front of me, not everything screaming for my attention. And even more importantly, I’m going to place my trust where it belongs.

In the One who actually has control.

In the One who supplies daily bread.

In the One who sees every detail and is fully able.

Jesus didn’t say that needs don’t matter. He said worry doesn’t help. It doesn’t add a single hour to our lives. It only steals peace from the hours we already have.

There’s a quiet freedom in letting God carry what only God can carry.

And when we do?

“You will lie down and your sleep will be sweet.”

That promise still holds.