Tag: #authenticjoy

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When God Shows Up

If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you would know that I am passionate about the pursuit of a tangible experience of God. I believe it is what the Bible evidences and advocates. It is my reality. Apostle John says it well:

1 John 1:1-4 (NLT

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

John speaking after Jesus’ ascension said, “…our fellowship IS with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.”

This blog is simply meant to stir up my heart for more of God and hopefully to stir up yours too. I want to share with you 3 of my favourite encounters recorded by ordinary people. The first from Blaise Pascal:

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.

He kept this account of His encounter with the FIRE of God sewn inside his jacket. A constant reminder of the reality that he touched.

The second quote is from Frank Laubach as recorded in Letters By A Modern Mystic:

May 24, 1930

This has been a week of wonders. God is at work everywhere preparing the way for his work in Lanao. I shall tell you some of the wonders presently. But just at this moment you must hear more of this sacred evening. The day had been rich but strenuous, so I climbed “Signal Hill” back of my house talking and listening to God all the way up, all the way back, all the lovely half hour on the top. And God talked back! I let my tongue go loose and from it flowed poetry far more beautiful than any I ever composed. It flowed without pausing and without ever a failing syllable for a half hour. I listened astonished and full of joy and gratitude. I wanted a dictaphone for I knew that I should not be able to remember it – and now I cannot. “Why,” someone may ask, “did God waste his poetry on you alone, when you should not carry it home.” You will have to ask God that question. I only know He did and I am happy in the memory.

Below me lay the rice fields and as I looked across them I heard my tongue saying aloud, “Child, just as the rice needs the sunshine every day, and could not grow if it had sun only once a week or one hour a day, so you need me all day of every day. People over all the world are withering because they are open toward God only rarely. Every waking minute is not too much.”

My final encounter is recorded in 1922 by Sadhu Sundar Singh in his book At The Master’s Feet:

When I rose from my prayer I beheld a glowing Being, arrayed in light and beauty, standing before me. Though He spoke not a word, and because my eyes were suffused with tears I saw Him not too clearly, there poured from Him lightening -like rays of life-giving love with such power that they entered in and bathed my very soul. At once I knew that my dear Saviour stood before me. I rose at once from the rock where I was seated and fell at His feet. He held in His hand the key of my heart. Opening the inner chamber of my heart with His key of love, He filled it with His presence, and wherever I looked, inside or out, I saw but Him.

I hope these God-encounters have blessed you. Each of these men has made an indelible mark on history as they walked with God and served humanity. They have served as a constant reminder to me that the God of the Bible still walks among us today. Jesus is not some historical figure existing only on pages of scripture to be studied from afar. Jesus speaks, touches, invades, overcomes, arrests… He is REAL and PRESENT.

Copyright 2026, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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The Path Of Eros

I love carnival. I love the pulsating rhythms of soca music. I love the creative wonder of hundreds of steel drums chanting a melody while the whole stage vibrates with joy. I love to dance. I love to be a part of the sea of masqueraders moving their bodies with celebratory abandon. I love that moment when everyone’s favorite song starts, and we jump, put our hands in the air, or throw our arms across a padna’s shoulder. I would even go so far as to say I love the human form. I love the curvaceous feminine allure that my grandfather would call ‘feminine pulchritude’. I even appreciate (with some jealousy) the gym buffs with their chiseled abs and gladiatorial lats.

The problem is that my flesh also loves lust, licentiousness, and lasciviousness (it sounds less immoral if you use big words). I envy my friends who can partake in the beauty and celebration of carnival and remain untouched by this darker side of it. As the prophet Voice would say, “Ah cyah behave mehself”.

The deeper I go in my faith, the more I realize that the path up is also the path through our dark side. I spent almost a decade as a young Christian trying to repress, ignore, and side-step my darker side. I threw scriptures at it. I covered it under layers of church activities. Until one day, like the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings, it erupted as though shouting, “I will not be ignored!” I gave up the fight. I did not have anything in me that was more powerful than this powerful force. This force propelled me in an endless search for beauty and pleasure. I said to myself, “You can’t fight this. This is who you are. You are a hedonist.”

Deeper and deeper I went, until one day, after many years of fleshly indulgence, I hit the bottom. At rock bottom, I realized the answer wasn’t there either—the answer I needed – the thing my soul longed desperately for… it wasn’t in sex and parties either. I was still empty. I cried out in desperation to the God I never stopped believing in and who never left me, despite my rebellion.

Then…. He answered. Jesus walked into the room. Divine Liquid Love washed over me and through me in waves. The God of Scripture became a deeper, more tangible reality in my life. My heart was apprehended instantly, and all its desires and longings knew that this… this!… this is where all satisfaction was to be found.

Looking back, I realize that it was only then that I was ready to receive the Answer. I needed to go down to go up. I needed to know that I was poor.

Matthew 5:3 (NLT

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

Thus began a fiery, passionate love affair with the Lover of my soul. Thus began a real relationship with a Higher Power (as quoted in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps). Only then did I experience any hope of becoming truly holy. Because the Spirit in me was more powerful than the darkness. And only His Presence was more attractive than sex and revelry.

John Piper’s Christian hedonism philosophy interpreted this revelation for me in those days: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” The drive inside of me for pleasure was not something wrong with me. It was something put there by God that drives us to search and search until we find Him. Some call this drive eros. It is powerful. Try to ignore it, numb it, or kill it, and your soul will die from starvation. Try to fulfill it with earthly pleasures, and your soul will die from junk food.

Unfortunately, my taste for debauchery did not just disappear when I encountered God. I often wish it did as it has for some people. My process of sanctification has been slow and long. It has been more like a steady change of diet. I used to love soft drinks and hamburgers. My taste buds still love them, but the way my body feels without them is so much better. It is a deeper pleasure – a wholeness. That’s kind of how I feel about carnival. I started this blog with a confession of my love for many aspects of carnival, but I am on a search to find a truer, deeper pleasure. I’m not trying to deny this deep desire in me for pleasure. Up to last year, I felt frustration and disappointment that I still struggle with the same old temptations after so many years.

But not this year. I’ve come to realize that in this eros is pointing me toward God. I’ve come to realize that with Jesus and in Jesus, I can find a truer me and a deeper experience of God that my eros is pointing to. Rather than beating myself up for the fact that I still feel for a Coke, I’m asking myself, “What experience am I yet to discover that will surpass and make irrelevant what a Coke has to offer me?” Three books have served as voices of interpretation for this season:

  • The Journey of Desire – John Eldredge
  • Spiritual Wanderlust – Kelly Deutsch
  • The Holy Longing – Ronald Rolheiser

As I type this, I can hear the music from last lap in the distance, but there is a peace in me that is different. A peace that echoes with the Psalmist (Psalm 16:9-11 ESV):

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

What I’ve discovered is that there is a joy that is fuller than the most orgasmic sexual encounter. There are pleasures that continue forevermore – long after the carnival is over. Ive discovered that only this reality in the Presence is more powerful than the pleasures of this world. But I can’t get there by trying to deny or kill the eros. It is that very desire that will take me to the Holy Place, if I do not settle for the cheap thrills along the way. In the struggle, as I bring it to Jesus over and over again in our daily heart-to-heart conversations, I emerge, a truer version of myself.

Copyright 2026, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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There Is A Bigger Story

Have you ever seen a leaf caught in an eddy current at the side of a river? It doesn’t matter how fast and powerful the main river current is flowing down the centre; the leaf circles close to the bank. Sometimes the leaf even floats backwards!

Meditating on the miracle of Christ this season has been a powerful awakening for my soul to the bigger story. Too often, in 2025, I have been living out of my small story. My financial challenges, my work trials, my unused gifts, my struggles with sin… small, small, small. It feels like I have been that leaf floating in circles, when I should have been plumb in the centre of the eternal current, hurtling downstream in the unfolding glorious eternal story that God is writing across the cosmos.

Christ is with us! Emmanuel is with me!! He has invaded my small existence and drawn me into His eternal plot. It is no longer about me. It is about Him and His reconciliation of all time and space to Himself. All is being reconciled to Christ. And I get to be a part of that!

But oh Lord, my eyes so often drift from His greatness to my smallness… From His infinitude to my lack. Oh Lord, I drift to the edges and get stuck in a little circling current… round and round but going nowhere.

My heart’s prayer for 2026 is to live out of the bigger story.

After the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the mundane events of life must have taken on a new significance for the family… A new sacredness. Feeding and cleaning their baby boy… sacred. Teaching him to talk and watching him explore the world… sacred. And what about the normal challenges of life? Feeding a family. Finances. Paying taxes. I imagine there must have been a deep sense of God-with-them, that everything would work out because God had His hand on their lives. I imagine that the things that might have seemed like big things before were now trivial in the shadow of stewarding the arrival of the Messiah. They knew they were a part of something eternally monumental.

That’s what I mean by living out of the bigger story. The things that are big things for those who do not walk with God should be trivialities for those of us who do. Otherwise, who is Christ to us? Job security? Trivial. Mortgage payments? Trivial. Political upheaval? Trivial. We are stewarding the Presence of God in this world. We are stewarding the second coming of Christ! Are our eyes on Him? Are we attending to His plans? Are we tending to Him? I know I am guilty of living out of my small story way more than the Eternal Current.

Oh Jesus, keep me in the centre of the river! Hold my face in Your hands that my eyes may ne’er drift from Your face. Let me be aware of your Presence in the marrow of my bones that all the affairs and challenges of this temporality may grow dim in comparison to Thee. Smite me with Your love. Aflame my heart for You only. Burn to dust every distraction and rogue desire that tempts my eyes from Thy Beauty. Oh, unmake me until my soul is a song of worship to You only; an eternal haunting ballad written in flesh, primal and pure.

Let my song be a drop in the river; one of a billion drops, making playful melody over smooth pebbles, interludes building suspense in shadowy pools, and pore-raising crescendos of glorious cascading waterfalls. Until we all empty our lives into the Sea of Eternity.

There is a bigger story, my friend.

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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How Is Waiting Changing You?

This Advent, I am stirring my heart up for Jesus with the aid of a series of Advent meditations from John Mark Comer and the Practicing The Way community. Their first meditation is by Gemma Ryan and comes from Luke 2, where Simeon encounters the baby Jesus in the temple.

As I meditated on this man Simeon, I wondered what made him different from his peers.
Between Malachi and Jesus’ arrival is the 400-year period known as the ‘silent years’ because God did not speak to His people during that period. It is this 400-year wait in silence from which the Scribes and Pharisees emerged. Four hundred years without a word from God. Four hundred years waiting for the Messiah to deliver them from oppression. So, what did they do? They doubled down on what they did have – the Torah. They dissected it, memorized it, debated it, and built culture around it. All the while, drifting further and further from God. To the extent that when the Messiah finally arrived, for all their knowledge of and dedication to the laws of God, they had no ability to recognize Him when He stood right in front of them.

But Simeon was different.

Whereas the Pharisees pressed into practices that relied on their cognition, reasoning, and intellectual ability, Simeon was a man of the Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit was upon Simeon, and he was led by the Spirit. In a time before the Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh! Somehow, Simeon has stepped into a dimension of relationship with God that was uncommon among his peers.

While the Scribes and Pharisees depended on knowing the Law, Simeon depended on knowing the Spirit. The Bible says that he was righteous and devout. I believe these words are significant. I believe the word righteous suggests that Simeon was probably as dedicated as the Scribes and Pharisees were to observing the Law. However, I believe the word devout indicates that he also had a commitment to and holy reverence for God Himself. Simeon was not just devoted to knowing the Law; he was devoted to knowing God. He engaged not only in cognitive practices but spiritual practices that honed his ability to host, be led by, and know the Holy Spirit.

Without a live connection with God, knowledge makes us puffed up, self-righteous, overly confident in our knowledge, and ultimately unable to recognize God because He isn’t recognized through intellectual reasoning but through spiritual discernment. That’s why the Scribes and Pharisees couldn’t recognize Jesus. They were using all the wrong senses and looking at all the wrong measures. They were concerned with whether He healed on the Sabbath, or which town He came from, or His outrageous claims to be the Son of God. We too have our boxes just as they had theirs, and if it doesn’t fit in the box, then it cannot be an authentic move/person/word of God.

However, Simeon was led by the Spirit. All Simeon desperately wanted was to see Jesus, and He was utterly dependent on God to orchestrate and define that encounter. There was nothing Simeon could do to achieve it; he just had to wait and be open to receiving Jesus, however He chose to show up.

What challenged me the most in this meditation was the idea that waiting changes you. There are many promises that I feel that I have been waiting on for some time in my life, and particularly in this season. And I’m wondering… am I becoming a Pharisee or a Simeon?
Am I engaging in practices that are making me puffed up and self-righteous? Or am I engaging in practices that are attuning me to the Spirit and what He is doing now while I wait? Am I waiting on God or on an outcome? Is my hope in Jesus or in the thing that I’m waiting for? Will I even recognize Him when He turns up in a way I didn’t expect or prefer? Will I still be happy to see Him if He doesn’t come the way I think He should? If He doesn’t deliver me from my ‘Roman oppressors’, will I still rejoice? Can I wait on God as an act of surrender that acknowledges everything will happen in His time and on His terms? And can I be joyful in that? Can I be full of joy and hope while I wait?

I think that that is the purpose of waiting – to change us. To shift the locus of our hope from something to Someone. To shift our dependence from self to God. To shift us from natural discernment to spiritual discernment.

If our hope and trust is in Jesus, we will never be disappointed. Because He always turns up, just not always how and when we want Him to. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s better!

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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Living Horizontally

I have been on the receiving end of leaders abusing their power a few times in my life. I came away from these experiences with serious questions about whether the models that I saw in the church were Biblical kingdom models. How would Christ lead a local church? In fact, He is building His church right now, so a better question is – How is He leading His church right now? A cursory look at the church leads me to the undeniable conclusion that Jesus is not demanding our obedience. Jesus has an unwavering commitment to respecting our free will, to non-punitive leadership, and to leading with love instead of fear.

This path of sacred respect for people’s free will is not a popular way to live in the business world and especially not in the church world, ironically. And it is not just the clergy; it is not popular with the laity either. In fact, most times I find the members of a local church are very much part of protecting the authoritarian leadership culture in the church. It seems that people do not want the shared responsibility or ambiguity of more distributed power systems. We like the simplicity and clarity of being able to put all the responsibility (and blame) for what happens in our community on someone else in exchange for our unquestioning obedience.

The doctrine of ‘divine rights of kings’ asserts that a monarch is not accountable to any man because their right to rule is derived from divine authority. While this governance model is rightly a relic of the past, the same value system very much informs our church leadership models today.

In the church, our frames of reference for understanding power in interpersonal relationships are all hierarchical, based on a very Old Testament model of judges, prophets and kings where there is one man assigned by God at the top of the pyramid. We seem to interpret our New Testament texts through this lens. We interpret ‘wives should submit to their husbands’ to mean that the wife is accountable to her husband, and the husband is only accountable to God. We interpret ‘obey your leaders and submit to them’ to mean that the congregation is accountable to the pastor and the pastor is only accountable to God. Any checks and balances we institute involve adding more layers to the hierarchy. The husband submits to a pastor. The pastor submits to an apostle. And so on.

However, I do not see this hierarchical model in the Trinity or in Christ. What I see is mutuality. I don’t see pyramids. I see circles. I see a power model that is less vertical and more horizontal. Where the husband and wife are mutually accountable to each other and to God, and likewise the pastor and the congregation.

Despite the unlimited power at Jesus’ disposal and the legitimate and divine right to rule over us, He gave up His divine privileges and took on the humble position of a human being (a baby at that). Consider that Jesus (God) was subject to His earthly parents.

I rather think that this is the mark of a mature Christian – that he or she is able to submit to those in a lower position. Really, it is submitting to the Christ in people, regardless of rank.

Ephesians 5:21 (ESV)
submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

What would it look like if husbands could also defer their will to the will of their wives or children in reverence for Christ? What would it look like if church leaders could also submit their will to congregation members in reverence for Christ? I think it will look like true love, humility and leadership.

I believe mutuality is the way forward for true followers of Christ. What virtue is there in following orders because someone has a position? The heathens do that. But can we perceive Christ in the suggestions, counsel or correction of a peer or a junior and receive it? That is true virtue.

Of late, I have had my fill of spaces where the conversation is all vertical and one-way. I have had my fill of conferences, services, and webinars. Instead, I have been pressing more into the mutuality of groups and meet-ups where everyone has a voice, and it has been so refreshing! Whether it is a date with my wife, a moment of connection with my children, a meet-up with a friend, a family visit or an online discussion group, it has been like a balm to my soul. It feels like health. It feels like really living in connection with others. The steady stream of invites to attend this or that keep coming, but saying, “No thank you,” has become easier and easier (at this point it is a joy to say no frankly) and I have been becoming more and more enjoyable to be with.

Recently, my wife has remarked on the transformation she has been seeing in my life. I could not name what was happening until now. I am enjoying people more. She has been experiencing me as a more pleasant servant to our family. I have just been enjoying my family more. The two go together, apparently.

This way of being of vulnerability and openness to the gift of each person in front of you and real meaningful connection with real people is revolutionary. Make no mistake about it. It is counter-cultural both to the media onslaught of disembodied voices clamoring for our attention and to the value system that gives more weight to positions and titles than hearty souls. But it is BETTER. There is a richness of life in it that your soul needs. It is slower, less contentious, more restful, less frenzied, deeper, fuller, richer.

I highly recommend this way of horizontal living. I think you will enjoy it. BTW, I hope you also enjoyed these smiling faces of beautiful humans as much as I did 🙂

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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New Devotionals!

We have 4 new devotionals on the YouVersion app!

This plan was created for those yearning for a heart revival! If you are desperate for your heart to burn again for Jesus… If the bumps and bruises of life have left you a bit weary and worn… This plan brings together 30 scriptures where God speaks life directly to your heart in first person. I’m praying and believing that you will receive healing, encouragement, and refreshing through His promises for you!
We all want to grow, but spiritual maturity often seems elusive, and we can become frustrated. Becoming Mature is a transformative resource for believers seeking real growth and a deeper walk with Christ. It goes deep into the nitty gritty of becoming more like Christ in the face of life’s challenges and our brokenness. Whether you’re a new believer, battling stagnation, or seeking more of God, this series of plans provides practical tools to unlock deep and lasting growth in your life! This plan is Part 1 in the series and covers Defining Maturity.
We all want to grow, but spiritual maturity often seems elusive, and we can become frustrated. “Becoming Mature” is a transformative resource for believers seeking real growth and a deeper walk with Christ. It goes deep into the nitty gritty of becoming more like Christ in the face of life’s challenges and our brokenness. Whether you’re a new believer, battling stagnation, or seeking more of God, this series of plans provides practical tools to unlock deep and lasting growth in your life! This plan is Part 2 in the series and covers The Spiritual Growth Journey.
We all want to grow, but spiritual maturity often seems elusive, and we can become frustrated. Becoming Mature is a transformative resource for believers seeking real growth and a deeper walk with Christ. It goes deep into the nitty gritty of becoming more like Christ in the face of life’s challenges and our brokenness. Whether you’re a new believer, battling stagnation, or seeking more of God, this series of plans provides practical tools to unlock deep and lasting growth in your life! This plan is Part 3 in the series and covers The Spiritual Growth Process.
Check them out!

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Will We Choose Love Or Hate?

In Matthew 5:21-22 (NLT), Jesus says this:

21 “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ 22 But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.

In Jesus’ eyes, hate is as heinous a sin as murder. So, I’m asking myself and I’m asking you, my brothers and sisters: Are we who call ourselves followers of Christ guilty of murder?

On September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah. On the same day, there was another school shooting in Colorado, where 2 students were shot. In the same week, Israeli military operations in Gaza, Yemen, and Qatar killed over 110 people, including some civilians. Also, in the same week, a Russian airstrike killed 24 elderly Ukrainians collecting pensions, and Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally, attended by over 110,000 people, saw 26 police officers injured. (Sources: CPR News, Al Jazeera, MSN, Democracy Now, The Telegraph)

In the face of all of this death, I find myself becoming alarmingly numb to the loss of life. I’m also observing the surge of emotions going through my heart as I see the comments on social media in response to Charlie Kirk’s death, and I’m asking myself: Am I guilty of murder? I may not have killed anyone, but am I just as guilty of contributing to the violence in this world?

In the same sermon in Matthew 5, Jesus said (NLT):

9 God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.

And:

43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.

Our very identity as children of God is not that of a warrior fighting for Christian values through political power or social media influence. The image of the Christian hero battling a human enemy is absent from Jesus’ teachings and example. Jesus taught and modelled not an earthly power struggle but a love that sacrificially persists in the face of hatred, persecution, and even violence.

We have become embroiled in an unholy battle. Whether we fight through social media tirades, in-person debates, political rallies, or online watch lists, we must disentangle ourselves, repent, and get back to the foundation of Christianity – love.

The very first step in loving one another is listening. We need to really listen with our hearts to those with whom we disagree and put ourselves in their shoes. We don’t have to agree with them, but if we are to be peacemakers, we must be willing to empathize with them.

It doesn’t matter where we most naturally lean toward on the political spectrum; the people on the other side are human just like us. They are human beings looking for love, acceptance, and respect.

I firmly believe that the key to de-escalating most of the social conflict in the world today is the eradication of shaming. Nobody likes to be told that they are bad people. Nobody. The activism of the LGBTQ+ community and pro-choice activists is, I believe, at the root, a response to decades of shame. They have been told repeatedly in many different ways that they are bad. That is not how God sees them, and as Christians, it was our job to love them, and in the main, we failed. We failed, and Satan stepped into the void to create bitterness, resentment, anger, and hatred.

It is the same with people of colour in America. We have been told for decades that we are less than the white man. Again, the Christians of European heritage who were supposed to love their brothers and sisters of African heritage have largely failed.  Sometimes their silence in the face of our suffering has been deafening. Again, Satan has stepped into the void to the point that there is now a pervasive layer of anger in the heart of much of the black community toward white people.

However, more recently, the pendulum has swung the other way. The shame finger has been pointed at males, particularly the white male, and those who hold to conservative values. I wonder if, at the heart of white nationalism, is a desperate cry to stop being told that everything about the Western white man is bad. Maybe the whitewashing of the museums and educational system is just a cry to be told something good and noble about their heritage. We, the black Christian community, have also failed to love the white man. And again, Satan is stepping into the void as we speak.

‘You are bad’ is not a message anyone of any race, gender, or sexual orientation wants to hear pounded into them over and over again. And more importantly, it is not a Godly message. It is, however, exactly what the evil one wants to pound into our hearts. It is a tactic with one goal in mind – death and destruction.

But THIS is the battle, my brothers and sisters, that we must fight – the battle to love every person no matter who they are, what they believe, the values they have, or the background that they come from, with unconditional love. Can we tell people about their goodness? I’m not saying to hide the truth, but can we also remind people of the best of themselves?

Can we arise with such radical love as this for our enemies? We are the only ones who can! Jesus Christ – Love – lives in us! We can say to the women and men, blacks and whites, immigrants and nationals, straight and gay, cisgender and transgender, conservatives and liberals that maybe we don’t see eye to eye on some issues, but we want to understand your perspective… and even if we have to agree to disagree, we still LOVE YOU unconditionally as a precious human being made in God’s image!

So, as I watch my social media feeds fill with an escalation of hatred in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death… as the keyboard warriors double down on their positions… I want to leave you with this: The choice my brothers and sisters, for us… (not for the world) …but for us as ambassadors of Christ… is not between liberal or conservative but between hatred or love of our enemies. That is the only choice that is important; the only choice that has the power to overcome the real enemy of our souls and change the world.

There is hope, and that Hope resides in us!

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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Reflections On Christian Leadership With Henri Nouwen Part 2

To start my second instalment of this blog, here is the quote from In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen that resonated with me:

“Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which “service” takes place in a one-way direction. Someone serves, someone else is served, and be sure not to mix up the roles! But how can we lay down our life for those with whom we are not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life. We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Therefore true ministry must be mutual.

Oh, how I feel these words in my bones! In my area of interest, discipleship, I have become totally disinterested in preaching, teaching, and ministry that is devoid of the minister vulnerably opening his/her soul to his/her brothers and sisters. I have little interest in your expositions on Moses or Elijah or Paul, but I am keenly interested in how these Biblical examples intersect with the outworking of your personal salvation. I am not interested in what you read. I am interested in what you are living. It has almost become an obsession of mine – a search for a people on fire for God who are willing to live in mutuality and vulnerability.

I have generally found that the discipleship model in the church is a teacher-student/s or mentor-mentee/s relationship where the teacher or mentor is the expert who takes the student/s under his/her wing. All of the learning is assumed to be one-way. The student bares all the intimate details of her soul, while the teacher gives wise advice and remains closed and inaccessible.

What did Jesus say? He called His disciples friends on account of the fact that He wanted a more mutual relationship – one where He shared His plans with them (John 15:15). Jesus even invited three of His disciples to be with Him in His moment of deepest travail in the garden of Gethsemane.

I am thirsty for a space where disciples gather together to seek Jesus in heart-to-heart community. Where the numbers are small, the sharing is deep, and nobody is trying to fix me, save me, or heal me. I long to get together with a small group of individuals who are on fire for Jesus, hungry to seek Him with all their heart… but who are also hungry to be knit heart-to-heart with their brothers and sisters.

My wife and I have embarked on a bold experiment to create spaces such as these. This is what shapes the way we do our workshops and, more recently, what birthed our discipleship groups. It was first a desire that we had for community for ourselves before it was a desire to provide community for others. We get as much, or more, from our workshops as we give.

All true ministry is mutual. All true ministry comes from a relationship with our fellow man that, at the deepest level, recognizes the other as of equal value. We are all students, and there is one Teacher. We are all in the same boat. The minute we see ourselves as higher than the other is the minute we step out of the heart of Christ, who emptied Himself of the glory of heaven and became a man like us in order to save us. Who came down to our level and lifted us up with Him. Who took the lower position of a servant to mankind as the path to ministry and influence.

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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Reflections on Christian Leadership with Henri Nouwen Part 1

I recently picked up one of my favourite books to read AGAIN – In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen. It is one of those books where the impact of the truths contained in it is not diminished with repetition. This time, particular parts of it collided with my current experience with such eye-widening relevance that my impulse to process and memorialize in writing was aroused.

I will start this mini-series with the first quote that struck me from the book:

“But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relavistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.”

“Willing to confront without being offensive”. This phrase aptly describes the crux of my current struggle at work. I’m pretty good at the confront part (and there was a time I did not know how to confront people), but I am not as good at the not being offensive part.

If I’m honest, I have been bad at this for a very long time. But I feel like there comes a time when God says, “OK, you cannot take this malformation any further. You need to work on this now.” Or maybe there comes a time when one has the maturity and tools to deal with the problem. Either way, I know I have to deal with this in this season.

Actually, and this just came to me: Nouwen points to intimacy with God as the enablement to walk this line of confrontation without offense, and it is quite probable that I did not have the level of intimacy with Christ that I now have to be able to cross this hurdle. (Ahh, the therapeutic gift of writing.)

The way I see it, the challenge is to be able to authentically say to someone, “I think what you are doing is bad,” without saying, “I think you are bad.” This is not easy, at least not for me. I never shout or curse or demean people, but my wife says, “Just because you say something in a soft voice doesn’t mean that you are not being harsh.”

Honestly, I thought it did mean that I wasn’t being harsh! I mean, c’mon… I don’t curse… I don’t raise my voice… I’m always polite, even when people are impolite and raise their voice at me. What more do you want? Well… as it turns out, what God wants is nothing less than loving my ‘enemies’ even while confronting them. That goes heart deep, below actions, below words, below tone… deeper.

That kind of love can only come from intimacy with Love. Love must dwell in me. Overflow from me. It must be felt. Holy Spirit, help me. I write today not as one having mastered love but as one in the throes of struggle to become more like Jesus and often getting it wrong. I have no advice to offer.

I offer only the consolation of knowing that if you struggle too, you are not alone. Pray for me as I pray for you: Jesus, for every one of your disciples who reads this, give them the gift of a deeper encounter with your ferocious, unrelenting, cleansing, healing, breathtaking love. As they wrestle in their souls, may all malice, bitterness, envy, and unforgiveness die by the power of the cross! May love win the day! May their hearts burn for you and may your love emanate from their lives, from the very centre of their Jesus-enflamed hearts.

Amen.

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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Training Versus Trying Part 5 – Community

Welcome to the last instalment of our Training Versus Trying series! Today we are talking about Community.

A training approach recognizes that as spiritual athletes, we grow fastest when we train with others. However, it is a particular type of community that we need to grow. One that is not very common. When we think of community in a church setting, we normally think of the brothers and sisters with whom we attend church or maybe those who are a part of a ministry that we serve in.

However, the type of community that I am talking about is a training community – a small circle of people with whom we share our inner lives. It is a community committed to walking together in pursuit of God without trying to fix, or save, or advise each other. Often, as Christians, we try to force our training regimen on everyone else without honoring the unique person that they are and the unique work that God is doing in their lives.

This is something I have with very few people. Most Christians, in my experience, do not have deep conversations about the things that matter, or if they do, it is in the context of giving advice or holding each other accountable. Some even think it is their job to condemn and shame. However, what I have found is that what most people need is actually just a safe space to talk about the deep inner things that truly matter without being judged, reproached, corrected, or Bible-verse-slapped. In a supportive and safe environment such as this, there exists the ideal conditions for God to speak. Or to stick with our analogy, for God to coach us as a group.

I’m not saying that God cannot use another person to correct us or to give us feedback where we may have a blind spot. He does use people in our lives like that. I’m saying that in a training community, that is a small part of why we get together, and it is accomplished more indirectly through vulnerable sharing, asking each other probing questions, and discerning God’s voice together.

In a community of Christians-in-training there is safety and freedom to talk about what new training techniques we are trying, what is not working, and what we are working through with our Coach. In that kind of community, we are celebrated, encouraged, inspired, and supported. In that kind of community, we can give a voice to our soul and hear the heart of others in ways that bring redemption, healing, and transformation.

Well, we have come to the end of this little series. I hope it has been helpful to you.

Train well, my fellow disciples of Christ!

Copyright 2025, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.