Real, true Jesus-following is daily leading yourself to depend on the Lord, to acknowledge the Creator and Savior, to thank Him and ask Him and bless Him and cry to Him. To run to His Word for life, guidance, comfort, and help. To turn your eyes from false, flimsy, or short-lived sources of hope and run to the true and living source. To live and breathe prayers, so you can see how very ever present He is, how generous He is, how involved He is, how real He is. Not because good Christians do this stuff or because you need to go through the motions to keep up good appearances but because you need these things to live. The fruits of the Christian life are only phony when we look for them in the wrong places. 

God is only always real and good. Sometimes, in my weakness, I struggle to believe that’s true. 

Christians don’t move on from experiencing God, so I don’t want to fake it for my family, fake it for my friends, fake it for my readers. I want the real thing today, with Jesus. And I want to hear from Him again tomorrow.

I hope that if you woke up sad and hopeless feeling today, you are able to remember and repent and return and rejoice. That is so the Christian life. Remember…repent…return…rejoice. Remember…repent…return…rejoice. 

I currently live on a farm and there are a bunch of animals outside that will die if I don’t give them food and water. I don’t always feel farmer-y, but that doesn’t mean I stop taking care of them. In fact, I don’t feel very farmery right now. But, when I walked outside to look at some model number thing on our broken AC Unit, Jake the donkey hee-hawed at me because he was ready to be let out of the stable. What if I said, “Sorry Jake, I don’t feel like being farmery. No grass for you today”? 

For Jake, for me to stop farming “because I don’t feel farmy” is absurd. If I want to be farmy, all I really need to do is just keep living the farm life. Keep letting Jake out. Keep feeding the chickens. Keep filling the water troughs. And not because I need to sustain some charade in front of others. But because this little farm world needs these rhythms to live. 

In the same way, we don’t take our eyes off of Jesus because life isn’t what we want it to be or because we don’t feel “Christiany” today. I mean, we can. And sometimes, we do. But, how miserable is the Christian who isn’t walking with Jesus…who isn’t living the Christ life? 

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” – John 15:4-5 ESV 

Abiding is returning to His Word, His presence, His church, His people, even when we don’t feel like it. Especially when we don’t feel like it. Even when the sadness feels crushing, we can still abide. We can keep showing up to the water, especially when our roots and our hearts are dry. We can keep receiving the nourishment of the Word, particularly when our weariness finds its craving for stability and strength at an all-time high. Not because we need to keep up appearances, but because we need—now more than ever—these rhythms to live. Because we need God. That’s not phoniness. That’s just self-control and wisdom. That’s not going through the motions. That’s running to the right place for comfort and sustainment when you’re about to collapse. That’s not fake; that’s the Christ life. 

But, maybe you have kids or coworkers or fellow small groupers at church that you feel like you need to put on a hope-filled face for. To that, I’d say, let’s ask the Lord to turn our phoniness into faith. Let’s keep trusting Him to turn our wandering to worshiping. Let’s be real. And seek. And find. And fix our eyes on Jesus, the “founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” – Hebrews 12:2 

I don’t know if you’re sitting down to work on a Christian book today or hunching over to chase a toddler or clocking in at a job that you kind of hate. Whatever it is, God is with you today and you can come to Him with your faith-tank full or with a heart that feels empty and let-down. He knows how to comfort. He is the river. He knows you. He is more than able to heal you and lead you back to worship through the power of His Spirit who lives in you and marks you as not just legitimate, but his own. He is the real thing and wants you to have the real thing. He wants you to have Him. And those who seek Him do. 

“Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” – Matthew 7:7-8 

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Excerpted with permission from”Hopeful-ish” by Scarlet Hiltibidal. Copyright 2025, B&H Publishing.)