#6 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections God Is Faithful to Flawed People – Elijah After the Fire ________________________________________ He had outrun the king’s chariot. That part alone should have told him something was off. Men do not normally run that far, that fast, after a day like the one he’d had. But adrenaline has a way of borrowing from tomorrow, and Elijah had spent everything. The day before had been clear. Public. Decisive. He had stood alone on Mount Carmel while hundreds of prophets cried out to a god who would not answer. He had rebuilt an altar that had been neglected, drenched it in water, and prayed a simple prayer. And fire fell. Not the kind a man can explain away later. The kind that ends arguments. The kind that makes people fall on their faces and say, “The LORD, He is God.” By the time it was over, the prophets of Baal were gone, the drought had broken, and the sky had opened with rain. If there were ever a day to feel certain—this was it. Then a message arrived. No army. No ambush. Just a sentence carried by a messenger: By this time tomorrow, you will be dead. And something in Elijah gave way. He didn’t stay to reason it out. Didn’t gather evidence from the day before. Didn’t rehearse what he had just seen with his own eyes. He ran. South. Out of the region. Past Beersheba. Far enough to leave his servant behind. Far enough to be alone. By the time he stopped, there was nothing left to carry him forward. He found a broom tree—one of those desert shrubs that offers just enough shade to make you think it might help—and he sat down under it. And then he said it plainly. “It is enough.” No audience. No performance. Just a man admitting that he had reached the end of himself. He lay down and slept. ________________________________________ When he woke, there was no thunder. No fire. No replay of yesterday’s victory. Just an angel and a meal. Bread. Water. Enough to keep going. He ate, drank, and went back to sleep. And then it happened again. Another touch. Another command: “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you.” No correction yet. Just provision. ________________________________________ It is easy to admire Elijah on Mount Carmel. It is harder, but more necessary, to understand him under the broom tree. Because that is where most people eventually find themselves. Not in open rebellion. Not abandoning God outright. Just… exhausted. Spent from doing the right thing. Worn thin by the cost of obedience. Surprised by how quickly fear can follow faith, and how fragile clarity feels the day after conviction. And this is where God’s faithfulness becomes unmistakable. He does not meet Elijah with disappointment. He does not say, “After all you’ve seen, this is how you respond?” He meets him with care. Food before correction. Rest before instruction. God deals with Elijah as a man who is tired, not as a prophet who has failed. ________________________________________ Only after Elijah has been restored enough to stand does God begin to speak. And even then, He begins with a question. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah answers honestly, but not accurately. “I alone am left.” It feels true. It is not true. Exhaustion has narrowed his world to the size of his own experience. God does not shame him for that. He expands it. “I have reserved seven thousand.” You are not carrying this alone. You were never carrying this alone. ________________________________________ And then God does something that settles the matter completely. He sends him back. Not to prove himself again. Not to earn restoration. But because his place in God’s work was never dependent on his strength to begin with. ________________________________________ We tend to divide our lives into moments that “count” and moments that don’t. Mount Carmel counts. The broom tree feels like an interruption. Scripture refuses that distinction. God is just as present under the broom tree as He was on the mountain. And for many of us, that is where we will learn it. Not when the fire falls. But when we are too tired to stand. ________________________________________ #HolyWitSidecar #GodIsFaithful #Elijah #GordonMcGinnis

#5 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections God Is Faithful to Flawed People – Peter The Man Who Said “Never” There is a particular kind of confidence that sounds very noble at first. It uses strong words. Loyal words. Words like never and always. It does not hesitate. It does not hedge. It speaks as if the future has already been decided and, conveniently, decided in its favor. Peter had that kind of confidence. “Even if all are made to stumble… I will never.” You can almost hear the sincerity in it. He means it. He is not trying to deceive anyone. Least of all himself. If you had asked him at that moment whether he loved Christ, he would not have paused for even a fraction of a second. “Yes,” he would have said. “Of course I do.” And he would have been telling the truth. Just not the whole truth. Because love, as it turns out, is not the same thing as strength. We tend to assume that if our intentions are good enough, our follow-through will take care of itself. That if we feel strongly enough, we will stand firmly enough. That if we say “never” with enough conviction, reality will politely cooperate. Reality rarely cooperates. A few hours later, Peter is standing by a fire, and a servant girl — not a soldier, not a judge, not a threat of any real consequence — says, “You were with Him.” And Peter, the man of “never,” says, “I do not know Him.” Three times. It is difficult to overstate how quickly a man can go from certainty to collapse. One moment you are pledging your life. The next you are trying to avoid eye contact with a stranger and hoping the conversation moves along. There is something almost uncomfortably ordinary about it. We like our failures dramatic. If we must fall, we would prefer it to be under heroic pressure, in circumstances that at least justify the weakness. But Peter does not fall in a blaze of tragic glory. He falls in a courtyard, near a fire, among people who are mostly just passing the time. Which is, if we are honest, how most of us do our worst work. And then comes the part that no one plans for. “The Lord turned and looked at Peter.” No speech. No lecture. No raised voice. Just a look. It is the kind of moment that rearranges a person internally. Not because it is loud, but because it is accurate. Peter sees, all at once, what he said, what he did, and what the Lord had told him would happen. And he goes out and weeps. Not politely. Not symbolically. Bitterly. There is a version of Christianity that prefers to skip this part. It would like to move directly from confidence to usefulness, from bold declarations to effective ministry, without the uncomfortable interruption of being shown what is actually inside the heart. Peter does not get to skip it. Which turns out to be one of the kindest things that ever happens to him. Because the man who said “never” needed to meet the man who would say “I do not know Him.” And until those two versions of Peter collided, he was not ready to be trusted with anything heavier than his own opinions. We tend to think that usefulness comes from strength. Scripture suggests it comes from truth — specifically, the truth about ourselves. And Peter, having been thoroughly introduced to himself, is now in a position to be restored. Which, in its own way, is even stranger than the failure. Because the risen Christ does not avoid him. He does not reassign him. He does not quietly suggest that perhaps a less public role would be more appropriate going forward. He asks a question. “Do you love Me?” Three times. It is not an interrogation. It is a restoration. Each question reaches back into Peter’s denial and pulls it forward into the light, not to shame him, but to heal him. The past is not ignored. It is addressed, directly and personally, by the One who was denied. By the third question, Peter has stopped making speeches. “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.” That is a very different sentence from “I will never.” One is a declaration about Peter. The other is an appeal to Christ. And that difference is the beginning of wisdom. What is most striking, perhaps, is what happens next. “Feed My sheep.” Not “Sit this one out for a while.” Not “Let’s see if you can behave yourself first.” Not “We’ll revisit this after a probationary period.” Feed My sheep. It seems that Christ is not nearly as nervous about Peter’s past as Peter might have expected. The failure was real. The pride was real. The denial was real. None of it is minimized. But neither is it final. Which is unsettling, in a way. Because it means our worst moments, as defining as they feel, are not actually the last word. It means that being thoroughly wrong about ourselves does not disqualify us from being used by God — provided we are willing to stop insisting that we were right all along. Peter will later write, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” He does not add, “And I read that somewhere once.” He knows. He has been resisted. And he has been given grace. Not abstractly, but personally, memorably, and in a way that probably made sitting by a fire for the rest of his life a somewhat reflective experience. It is a peculiar comfort. Not that we will not fail. That seems well established. But that we are not left alone with our failure, nor allowed to remain the sort of people who think “never” is a reliable word when applied to ourselves. God is faithful to proud people in a very specific way. He lets them discover that they are. And then He teaches them how to stand without pretending otherwise. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #GodIsFaithfulToFlawedPeople #Peter

#2 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections God Is Faithful to Flawed People – Jonah The Man Who Bought a Ticket the Wrong Way There was a man once — not a wicked man, not a foolish man — just a man who knew exactly what God wanted and decided, with remarkable efficiency, to go the other way. He did not drift into disobedience. He did not wander off accidentally. He packed, made arrangements, paid the fare, and boarded a ship headed in the precise opposite direction of obedience. That takes a certain kind of clarity. If you had asked him, somewhere between Joppa and Tarshish, how things were going, he might have said, “Well enough. Bit of travel. Needed a change of scenery.” He might even have convinced himself that distance would solve the problem. It often feels that way. If the calling is over there, and I am over here, then perhaps the matter will quietly dissolve between the two points. Of course, the sea has a way of correcting that sort of thinking. The storm did not announce itself as judgment. It did not come labeled. It simply arrived — wind, waves, sailors shouting, cargo flying overboard — the sort of chaos that forces a man to reconsider his travel plans. And there, in the middle of it all, Jonah was asleep. Which is almost impressive. Not peaceful, restful sleep, but the kind that comes when a man has outrun his conscience just far enough to get a few hours’ rest before it catches up again. The captain woke him, which is often how these things go. Someone else has to point out what we are trying not to notice. “Why are you sleeping?” A fair question. Jonah knew the answer. He always had. And before long, the sailors knew it too. It is one of the quieter humiliations of the story that pagan sailors end up praying more earnestly than the prophet. They handle the situation with more fear of God than the man who had received His word directly. Eventually, Jonah tells them the truth. “I am the problem.” That is not a sentence people enjoy arriving at. But it is, in many cases, the first honest one. They throw him overboard — reluctantly, respectfully, almost apologetically — and the sea settles as though it had simply been waiting for that particular correction. And then comes the fish. Which is less a punishment than a very uncomfortable rescue. Three days and three nights is a long time to sit with one’s thoughts, especially when those thoughts have nowhere else to go. No distractions. No alternate routes. No ships headed in promising directions. Just a man and the undeniable fact that he has been wrong — not in ignorance, but in resistance. And there, finally, Jonah prays. Not eloquently. Not impressively. But truthfully. “Salvation is of the LORD.” It is remarkable how simple the truth becomes when all other options have been removed. The fish delivers him — not to comfort, but back to the conversation he tried to leave. And then comes one of the gentlest, most stubbornly faithful lines in all of Scripture: “Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time…” The same call. The same mission. The same God. As though the detour, however dramatic, had not altered the destination at all. So Jonah goes. Nineveh hears. And God does what Jonah feared He would do all along — He shows mercy. Which, oddly enough, is where Jonah becomes most upset. He had run from the mission, endured the storm, survived the fish, obeyed the call — and now he is angry because God is being God. He sits outside the city, waiting, hoping perhaps that mercy might still be reconsidered. It is a strange picture: a man faithfully positioned in the right place, doing the right thing, with a heart that still does not quite agree with the One who sent him. And God, again, does not abandon him. He teaches him. A plant grows. A plant withers. The sun beats down. Jonah feels the small discomforts of loss and relief, and God gently draws the comparison: “You care about a plant… Should I not care about a city?” And there the story ends — not with Jonah’s resolution, but with God’s question hanging in the air. It is tempting to read Jonah as a cautionary tale about disobedience, and it is that. But it is more than that. It is a study in divine persistence. God is faithful not only when His people obey, but when they resist, reroute, and argue. He is faithful in the storm — not merely to interrupt, but to redirect. He is faithful in the depths — not merely to correct, but to preserve. He is faithful in the second call — not merely to use, but to restore. And He is faithful in the aftermath — not merely to accomplish His will, but to shape the hearts of those who carry it. Jonah obeys eventually, but not elegantly. And that is perhaps the most recognizable part of the story. Because most obedience, if we are honest, arrives a little rumpled. It comes after negotiation, delay, reconsideration, and the occasional trip in the wrong direction with a fully paid ticket. Yet the striking thing is this: God does not seem surprised by that. He does not rewrite His purposes around our reluctance. He does not discard His people because they hesitate. He does not lower the call to make it easier to accept. He remains. He pursues. He corrects. He recommissions. And somewhere along the way — sometimes in the storm, sometimes in the quiet after — the reluctant begin to understand that the God they were avoiding is the very one who has been holding them together the entire time. Jonah’s story ends with a question. Ours, mercifully, continues with an answer. God is faithful — even to those who would prefer, at least initially, to go the other way. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #GodIsFaithfulToFlawedPeople #Jonah

#1 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections God Is Faithful to Flawed People – Judges 6:11–16; 6:36–40; 7:9–15 Poor Gideon. People tend to remember him as the man with the trumpets and torches, which is fair enough. If a person goes into battle with fewer men than common sense would recommend, carrying clay pitchers and lanterns in the dark, and somehow winds up routing an enemy camp spread out like locusts across the valley, that is the part that gets remembered. Victories always do. Nobody makes a stained-glass window of the fellow sweating in uncertainty behind the barn. But Gideon did not begin as a grand figure of confidence. That should be said plainly. He begins hidden. Not charging downhill. Not summoning the tribes with a voice like thunder. Not polishing his sword and telling somebody to alert the men. He is threshing wheat in a winepress, which is the sort of detail Scripture includes so that nobody can mistake the mood. A winepress is not where a man should be threshing grain. It is where a frightened man goes when he has learned that open spaces cost too much. The Midianites had pressed Israel hard. They came in and took the produce and stripped the land and made ordinary life feel hunted. And Gideon, like many decent men under long strain, had adjusted himself downward. He was still working, still doing what needed to be done, but he was doing it in hiding. That is where the Lord found him. And that is what makes Gideon so useful to the rest of us. Because many believers imagine God is especially interested in impressive material. They think He prefers the naturally stouthearted, the ones with a square jaw of the soul, the kind of people who hear a hard command and answer, “Certainly,” before anyone has even finished the sentence. But Gideon is not built that way. He is hesitant. He is doubtful. He has questions. He knows the stories of old deliverance, but he looks around at present misery and wonders where all that mighty power has gone. Then he looks at himself and sees only the smallest clan and the least likely man in it. Which, to be fair, is not nothing. There is a kind of honesty in fear that at least knows its own size. Gideon is not boasting above his station. He is not one of those men who are all confidence because they have never yet met reality in a dark alley. He knows his weakness. He feels the pressure. He understands danger. If anything, he understands it too well. And yet the Lord comes to him and says, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor.” That must have landed with a certain bewilderment. One can almost imagine Gideon glancing around to see whether someone else is meant. Because fearful people know exactly how unlike heroes they feel. They know the sensation of second-guessing. They know the private arithmetic of dread. They know what it is to imagine twelve bad outcomes before breakfast and to call it prudence. If courage is a fire, they often feel themselves to be damp wood. But the Lord was not speaking nonsense to Gideon. He was speaking covenant truth. He was not praising Gideon’s natural nerve. He was declaring what becomes of a fearful man when God determines to be with him. That is the key to the whole story. Gideon’s strength is never really Gideon’s strength. It is borrowed strength. Gifted strength. Strength drawn from the faithfulness of God, not from the sturdiness of Gideon’s temperament. And even then, Gideon does not move from fear to fearlessness in one clean leap. He asks for signs. He lays out the fleece. Then, having received the sign, he asks again in reverse, the way anxious people often do when reassurance has arrived but the heart is still lagging behind. It is all very human. He knows what God has said, and yet he wants confirmation that the ground beneath him is truly as firm as it sounds. It is fashionable in some corners to speak of Gideon’s fleece as if it were a bold method of discernment. But really it is the trembling hand of a weak man asking the Lord, as respectfully as he can manage, whether mercy might stoop low enough to reassure him again. And the astonishing thing is that God does. Not because fear is noble. Not because hesitation is holy. But because God is patient with weak saints. That is one of the quieter glories of the passage. The Lord does not say, “I have already told you once. Why are you still this way?” He does not throw Gideon aside in exasperation and go looking for somebody made of sterner timber. He bears with him. He answers him. He gives enough light for the next step. Then later, when the battle is near and the nerves are no doubt humming again, the Lord says, in effect, if you are still afraid, go down to the camp and listen. Still afraid. There is comfort in those words. Because it means the Lord knows that yesterday’s reassurance does not always remove today’s trembling. He knows some of His people need strengthening more than once. He knows courage often comes in installments. So Gideon goes down, hears the enemy recount a dream about his own defeat, and at last something steadies in him. He worships. Then he rises and acts. But even there, the story does not turn into a celebration of native bravery. Gideon does not finally discover that he had been a lion all along. He is not a self-help pamphlet in sandals. He is a fearful man strengthened by a faithful God. That is much better news. Because most of us are not looking for a hidden inner giant. We have looked around enough by now to know better. What we need is not a flattering speech about our untapped reserves. What we need is the word Gideon received at the beginning: “Surely I will be with you.” That is what changes things. Not always all at once. Not always with a great rush of emotion. Not always in a manner that leaves the knees entirely steady. But enough. Enough to obey. Enough to take the next step. Enough to move out of the winepress and into the task appointed. Poor Gideon. He was not fearless. He was not naturally grand. He was not made brave by a slogan. He was met by God. And that, for fearful people, is everything. Because the lesson of Gideon is not that fear is harmless. Fear narrows a man. It pushes him into winepresses. It makes him thresh grain in places meant for grapes. It teaches the soul to live bent over and half-hidden. But the greater lesson is that fear does not have the last word when the Lord comes near. Gideon reminds us that God does not wait for fearful people to become naturally brave before He uses them. He comes near, strengthens their trembling hearts, and proves faithful in the very place of their fear. Which means some of the truest acts of faith on earth are done by people who are still afraid. People who ask one more question. People who need one more mercy. People who would rather not be standing where obedience has placed them. People whose hands shake even while they lift the lantern. And yet they go forward. Not because they have ceased to be weak. Because God has not ceased to be faithful. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #GodIsFaithfulToFlawedPeople #Judges61115

# 14 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections I Am With You – A Final Word The Quiet Companion It was still dark when the man started the drive. Not the gentle gray of morning, but the hour before that — the hour when the world feels unfinished. The truck’s headlights cut two narrow tunnels through the fog as he worked his way down the road. He had driven this road many times before. Usually the trip meant something simple: errands in town, supplies for the house, maybe coffee at the little diner where the waitress had long ago stopped asking whether he wanted cream. But this morning was different. This morning carried weight. There was a decision ahead of him — the kind that sits in your mind like a stone in your pocket. Not impossible, but heavy enough that you feel it every few minutes whether you want to or not. He had been turning it over in his mind for days. Every angle examined. Every risk considered. Every possible outcome imagined. None of the thinking had made it easier. The road curved along a stretch of cottonwoods, their branches black against the pale sky. Somewhere out there a dog barked once and then settled again. The man slowed the truck and pulled onto the shoulder. He turned off the engine. The silence arrived all at once. He sat there for a moment with both hands resting on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at nothing in particular. It was the sort of pause people take when they are hoping for clarity. Or courage. He wasn’t asking for an answer anymore. That part had already been decided. What he needed was the strength to move forward. And that is when a strange thing happens sometimes. Not a voice. Not a vision. Not anything dramatic enough to put in a book. Just a quiet awareness. A sense that you are not as alone as the empty road suggests. Scripture has a phrase for that moment. “I am with you.” That promise has followed God’s people through centuries of difficult roads. When Moses told Israel to be strong as they prepared to enter a land filled with enemies, he did not promise easy victories. He promised something better: the Lord your God goes with you. When Joshua faced the burden of leading an entire nation, God did not give him a detailed battle strategy. Instead He gave him a truth that would outlast every campaign: “I will be with you wherever you go.” Later, when three young men were thrown into a furnace so hot that soldiers died approaching it, the king looked into the flames and saw something he could not explain. There were four men walking in the fire. And Daniel, lowered into a pit meant to end his life, spent the night with lions whose mouths God Himself had shut. The pattern is unmistakable. God does not promise His people a path free of danger. He promises His presence on the path. That truth stretches all the way through Scripture until it reaches its clearest explanation in the gospel. Because the real distance between God and humanity was never geographical. It was spiritual. Paul writes in Ephesians that we were once far off. Not just wandering. Not temporarily distracted. Far off. But then he adds the words that change everything: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near.” That is the quiet miracle beneath every “I am with you” promise in the Bible. God does not shout encouragement from across a canyon. He brings His people close. Through Christ, the distance between God and sinners is crossed. The door that once stood closed is opened by grace. The presence that once seemed unreachable becomes the defining reality of the believer’s life. Which means the courage Scripture calls for is not the courage of self-confidence. It is the courage of companionship. The courage that comes from knowing the road ahead is not traveled alone. The man in the truck eventually started the engine again. The fog had begun to lift, and the first line of morning was stretching across the eastern sky. The decision ahead of him had not become easier. But something else had become clearer. He did not have to drive the road by himself. And that realization — quiet as it was — turned out to be enough. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #IAmWithYou #GodsNearness

# 13 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections I Am With You: Courage Rooted in God’s Nearness – Ephesians 2 The Distance Between The man stood at the edge of the property line, hat in his hands. It wasn’t a grand place — just a farmhouse with a wide porch and a field that sloped down toward a line of cottonwoods. The gravel drive curved in from the road and stopped neatly in front of the house. A dog slept somewhere in the shade. The afternoon was quiet enough that you could hear the wind working its way through the grass. The man at the edge of the yard had not always been welcome there. Years earlier he had done the sort of damage that makes distance necessary. Words spoken that couldn’t be unsaid. Trust broken in ways that don’t heal quickly. No court had been involved. No police report had been written. But everyone involved knew what had happened, and for a long time the result was the same simple arrangement: he stayed away. Distance can become a habit. Not a dramatic distance. Just a quiet understanding that certain roads are no longer yours to travel. But then one day a letter arrived. It was short. No speeches. No rehearsed sentiment. Just a few lines written plainly. “You can come back now. The gate’s open.” So there he stood at the edge of the property, unsure how far the invitation actually went. The gate really was open, but open gates do not immediately erase old memories. He could see the house, the porch, the path leading up to the door. But years of distance had taught him that seeing a place and belonging there are two different things. He shifted his weight and looked again. The door opened. The owner stepped out onto the porch and raised a hand. “You don’t have to stand out there,” he called. “Come on up. You’re not far off anymore.” And that — in a small human way — is the movement Paul describes in Ephesians 2. Except the distance in his letter is infinitely greater. Paul says that humanity was not merely outside the gate. We were far off. Not temporarily estranged. Not waiting for the right apology. Far off in every direction that mattered — spiritually dead, separated from the promises of God, without hope and without God in the world. It is one of the most uncomfortable descriptions in the New Testament. Because it means the problem was not that we were struggling to find God. The problem was that we were nowhere near Him. And if that were the end of the story, Scripture would be a very short book. But Ephesians 2 turns on two of the most beautiful words in the Bible: “But now.” “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Notice the direction of movement. Paul does not say we found our way back. He says we were brought near. That is the quiet miracle behind every promise in the “I Am With You” passages we have been studying. When God tells Joshua not to fear because He will be with him… when David tells Solomon to be strong because the Lord will not forsake him… when Isaiah reminds weary believers that God carries them even into old age — those promises rest on something deeper than human resolve. They rest on reconciliation. God does not merely shout encouragement from across a canyon. He brings His people close. That is the work of the gospel. Through Christ, the distance between God and sinners is crossed. What we could not repair, God restores. What we could not approach, God opens. The door that stood closed is opened not by human effort but by grace. Which is why Paul says salvation is “by grace… through faith… not of yourselves.” If the return journey depended on us, we would still be standing at the edge of the property, hat in our hands, wondering if we were allowed to take another step. But grace changes the geography. The gate is opened by Christ. The distance is closed by Christ. And the voice from the porch calls us forward. “You’re not far off anymore.” And that is why the promise “I am with you” is not merely encouragement. It is the restored reality of a relationship that grace has made possible. God’s nearness is not a reward for the strong. It is a gift for the rescued. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #IAmWithYou #Ephesians2

#12 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections I Am With You: Courage Rooted in God’s Nearness – Daniel 6 The Window That Stayed Open The law had been signed before Daniel ever bent his knees. A group of officials — men who resented his integrity and feared his influence — persuaded King Darius to issue a decree. For thirty days, no one in the empire could pray to any god or man except the king. It was presented as loyalty. It was crafted as flattery. It was, in truth, a trap. The punishment was not symbolic. Anyone who violated the decree would be thrown into a den of lions. Daniel knew. The text tells us plainly: “When Daniel knew that the writing was signed…” He was not unaware. He was not careless. He understood exactly what obedience would cost. He went home. He went upstairs. He opened his window toward Jerusalem — the city of promise, though he lived in exile — and he knelt. He prayed. He gave thanks. As he had always done. The officials were watching. That was the point. They caught him praying. They reported him. The king, bound by his own irreversible law, ordered Daniel to be cast into the den. A stone was rolled across the opening and sealed with the king’s signet. That night the king could not sleep. Daniel could. The lions were real. The danger was real. The stone was real. But so was God. That’s the story. And most of us remember the lions. But Daniel 6 is really about the window. The decree did not create Daniel’s faithfulness; it revealed it. He did not suddenly become courageous when threatened. He simply refused to alter a long-established pattern of devotion. He did not organize resistance. He did not denounce the king. He did not pray louder. He just kept praying. There is something almost unremarkable about that — and that is precisely the point. Courage in this chapter is not spectacle. It is consistency. We tend to imagine courage as a surge of boldness in a dramatic moment. Daniel shows us that courage is often the continuation of quiet obedience under new pressure. The next morning, the king rushed to the den and cried out in anguish. Daniel answered calmly: “My God sent His angel and shut the lions’ mouths.” Notice the emphasis. Not “I stood firm.” Not “My discipline saved me.” Not even “My faith was strong.” “My God…” The miracle is not about Daniel’s resolve. It is about God’s presence. This is where the “I Am With You” thread runs straight through the story. Daniel’s courage was not rooted in confidence that he would survive. It was rooted in confidence that God was near — in the upper room and in the den. The same God who heard him through an open window met him beneath a sealed stone. Most of us will never face literal lions. But we will face decrees of a quieter kind — moments when faithfulness costs comfort, reputation, or advancement. The temptation will not be to roar back. It will be to close the window. Daniel leaves it open. Not to prove himself righteous. Not to make a statement. But because that is who he has been all along. And when the stone is rolled into place — whether in Babylon or in our own smaller trials — the promise is the same: The God who was with us in prayer will be with us in the dark. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #IAmWithYou #Daniel6

#9 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections Be Strong and Courageous (I Am With You: Courage Rooted in God’s Nearness – 1 Chronicles 28:20) ________________________________________ The shop lights were already off when he realized he’d stayed too long. The building was quiet in that way only empty places get—too quiet to be comforting. The kind of quiet where every sound feels like it’s auditioning for significance. He stood there with the keys in his hand, staring at the unfinished workbench. Tools laid out carefully. Measurements written down. Half the job done, half the job looming. Tomorrow, people would expect progress. Results. Something that looked finished enough to justify confidence. Tonight, all he had was the weight of not yet. He locked up, stepped outside, and paused. There’s a particular moment at night when courage feels theoretical. When you’re not actively failing, but you’re also not succeeding. You’re just standing between promise and completion, wondering if you’re equal to what you said yes to. That’s where Solomon stood—only with a nation watching. David didn’t give his son a strategy session. He didn’t sit him down with a contingency plan or a risk assessment. He gave him something far more unsettling and far more solid: “Be strong and of good courage, and do it.” Not understand it all. Not feel ready. Do it. Because courage, biblically speaking, is not a mood. It’s obedience with shaky hands. Then David names the reason Solomon can move forward without being paralyzed: “For the LORD God—my God—will be with you.” Not might be. Not if you do this right. Will be. David doesn’t pretend the work is small. He doesn’t minimize the pressure. He grounds courage where Scripture always grounds it—not in the strength of the person doing the work, but in the nearness of the God who called them to it. That’s the turn we often miss. We read “be strong and courageous” as a personal challenge, when it’s actually a theological statement. Strength is commanded because presence is promised. Courage is reasonable because abandonment is not on the table. “He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work.” Until. Not just at the beginning, when enthusiasm is cheap. Not just in the middle, when momentum carries you. Until the work is finished. Which quietly exposes one of our favorite misunderstandings: we assume God’s presence is for moments of crisis, when in fact Scripture insists it is for endurance. For finishing. For staying when novelty wears off and fear starts asking better questions. Solomon’s task was holy, but it was also exhausting. Sacred work almost always is. And God does not promise to make it easy. He promises to stay. That is the courage Scripture keeps returning to—not the kind that rushes forward, but the kind that remains faithful when the work stretches longer than expected. And here’s the deeper comfort for us reading this side of Christ: the promise David spoke finds its fullest weight in Jesus. “I am with you always,” He says—not as a metaphor, not as encouragement wallpaper, but as covenant reality. So if you are standing in front of unfinished work tonight—calling, obedience, repentance, faithfulness that hasn’t wrapped itself up neatly yet—this passage does not tell you to look harder inside yourself. It tells you to look where David pointed Solomon. To the God who stays. To the God who does not leave midway. To the God whose presence makes courage possible—not because you are sufficient, but because He is near. And that, inconveniently and gloriously, means you should probably go back tomorrow… …and do it. #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #BeStrongAndCourageous #IAmWithYou

#6 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections Behold Your King: Christ in the Old Testament – Psalm 2 The Meeting God Didn’t Attend ________________________________________ They were very pleased with themselves. The meeting had been called quietly. Invitations sent discreetly. Everyone important showed up. Kings. Rulers. People who knew how power worked. They shut the doors, leaned in close, and agreed on the plan. Enough of this God business. Enough of His rules. Enough of His claims. Enough of being told what bonds we wear and whose cords restrain us. Psalm 2 captures the moment perfectly: “Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.” It is the sound of collective confidence. The tone of people who assume authority naturally gathers where they sit. What they did not do was check the agenda. Because while they were speaking in hushed tones on earth, heaven was not holding an emergency session. No angels were scrambling. No alarms sounded. Scripture says simply: “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh.” Not a nervous laugh. Not a mocking laugh. A settled one. The kind that comes from knowing the outcome before the discussion even begins. God does not argue His case. He does not negotiate His authority. He does not rework the plan to accommodate resistance. He states a fact: “Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.” The meeting is over before anyone realizes it began. That is the quiet shock of Psalm 2. Human rebellion is real — but it is never ultimate. Christ’s kingship is not reactive. It is not provisional. It does not wait for approval, consensus, or cultural momentum. The King is already installed. Which means the final words of the psalm are not a threat so much as a mercy: “Be wise… Kiss the Son… Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.” There is still time to stop resisting. Still time to bow without being broken. Still time to discover that the King you feared would crush you is the only refuge strong enough to hold you. The nations may rage. Meetings may be called. Plans may feel airtight. But the throne is not vacant. And blessed — quietly, unimaginably blessed — are all who stop fighting long enough to take refuge in the King who reigns. ________________________________________ #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #ChristInTheOldTestament #Psalm2

#5 Holy Wit – Sidecar Reflections Behold Your King: Christ in the Old Testament – Psalm 110 The One Who Never Hands You Off ________________________________________ He had learned the pattern early. You explain your situation once. Carefully. Politely. With just enough honesty to be taken seriously but not enough to make anyone uncomfortable. The person across the desk nods, makes notes, assures you they understand — and then, inevitably, says the phrase that means everything is about to reset. “I’ll need to pass this along.” Different office. Different person. Same story — told again, slightly more tired this time. By the third retelling, the problem feels heavier, not because it has grown, but because you have to carry it from hand to hand. No one is hostile. Everyone means well. But no one stays with it long enough to see it through. That’s when Psalm 110:4 begins to sound less poetic and more startling: “You are a priest forever.” Forever means no handoff. No rotation. No shift change. No, “Let me introduce you to someone else who can help with that.” The Levitical priests did their work faithfully. They truly did. But even at their best, they had to step aside. They aged. They died. Their work continued, but they did not. The system moved forward by replacement. Christ does not. Melchizedek blesses Abraham and disappears. Aaron’s sons serve and are buried. But Christ stands — not because He refuses to leave, but because there is no reason for Him to. No one else needs to be brought in. Which means when you come to God — with the same confession again, the same weakness, the same failure you thought you’d outgrown — you are not explaining it to someone new. You are not reopening a case file that has gone cold. The Priest already knows it. He was there the first time. He is there this time. He will be there when you are too tired to explain it properly. That’s what “once for all” actually feels like on the ground. Not dramatic. Not flashy. Just mercifully uninterrupted. Christ does not save you and then assign you a number. He does not forgive you and then forward the request. He does not intercede and then step away to let someone else manage the follow-up. He stays. And for people who have spent their lives being passed along — misunderstood, delayed, rescheduled — that may be the quietest and strongest mercy of all. ________________________________________ #HolyWitSidecar #GordonMcGinnis #ChristInTheOldTestament #Psalm110