Quiet Unfiltered Notes: From the Fire

Yesterday Bianca and I were driving to get her car fixed. It was one of those ordinary moments that should have passed by unnoticed. Nothing dramatic. Nothing profound. Just two people in a car driving across the Gold Coast dealing with the normal responsibilities that come with everyday life. Then out of nowhere she asked me a question. A simple question. The kind of question people ask casually. The kind of question that normally gets a quick answer. "What age would you like to revisit?" I don't know if it was the frame of mind I was already in. I don't know if I was tired. I don't know if I was emotionally vulnerable. I don't know if God used the question to expose something that had been sitting quietly beneath the surface for a long time. But as soon as she asked it, something happened. It felt almost cinematic. Like a movie reel suddenly started playing inside my mind. Images. Memories. Conversations. Faces. Places. Moments. Entire chapters of my life f...

   There is something real specific about a hospital hallway at midnight. Approaching the end of my shift at the Gold Coast University Hospital The walls sort of narrow in on your mind. The flat fluorescent lights blur everything together until it feels like it could be any hour, any decade, or any century, if it weren't for the machines blinking along the walls, keeping their quiet little vigils. It was right there, that this thought hit me with the quiet weight of something I'd always known but never quite put into words.   We burn so much energy trying to boss time around. We bend it, twist it, and stretch it to fit our jobs, our projects, and our schedules. We look at the calendar and try to squeeze in holidays, birthday dinners, and deadlines. We talk about "making time," "saving time," or "buying time" like it's something we can trade in a market. We colour-code our digital planners. We negotiate deadlines. We slash hours from one thing j...

Wow, what a way to close out my Sunday night with Bianca and I attending the King’s Together event at the Gold Coast Turf Club in Bundall here on the Gold Coast . King’s Together is a special Sunday where all the King’s campuses gather together in one location as one church. Inspired by the Scriptures where believers gathered together in one place and in one accord, the entire night carried this beautiful sense of unity, worship, and shared vision. Different locations. One heart. And Jesus being glorified above everything else. As I stood there tonight worshipping the living King, I genuinely felt the Lord speaking both corporately and personally into my spirit. And what I felt so strongly was this: This is only the beginning of what God is going to do. That sentence landed deeply inside me tonight because if I am honest, I carry a real hunger for revival . Not hype. Not emotionalism. Not people chasing experiences for the sake of experiences. I mean genuine revival. The kind where...

As I sit here finishing my last cup of coffee before getting ready for my afternoon shift at Gold Coast University Hospital , I keep thinking about peace. Not shallow peace. Not the kind that comes because circumstances suddenly improve. I mean the kind of peace that makes no sense being there at all. The kind Scripture speaks about when Paul writes: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus .” Philippians 4:6–7 I have read that verse so many times over the years. Quoted it. Highlighted it. Heard sermons preached about it. But there is a difference between admiring a verse and reaching a point where you desperately need it to be true. Lately, I have needed it to be true. Because if I strip everything back and speak honestly, this season has stretched me harder than I expected. New ...

There are moments in life where exhaustion and gratitude somehow sit in the same chair together. This morning is one of those mornings. As I finally sit down to write, I do not say this very often, but after surviving my first week at Gold Coast University Hospital , I am proud of how I handled such a high stress week. That sentence alone feels strange to write. Not because the week was easy. Not because I walked through it without anxiety. Not because I suddenly became fearless or confident overnight. But because there are seasons in life where simply enduring is its own form of victory. I sit down this morning with a strong coffee beside me and my two rescue cats loving the fact that I am finally home for the day. Tired in body yet strangely clear in spirit, I find myself reading and meditating on the book of colosssians . And the deeper I read, the more I realise something that perhaps I have spent years slowly learning: Christ does not merely meet us in peaceful places. Som...

There are songs you grow up with. Songs that live in the background of your teenage years like old furniture always there, always familiar, part of the architecture of who you were becoming. And then one day, without warning, without invitation, one of those songs reaches off the shelf and grabs you by the throat. And suddenly it isn’t background noise anymore. It is the loudest thing in the room. That happened to me tonight. With Pearl Jam . With Eddie Vedder . With four lines I have heard a hundred times and understood, I thought, completely. I did not understand them at all. I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life I know you’ll be a star in somebody else’s sky But why, why, why can’t it be Oh, can’t it be mine?  Eddie Vedder, “Black” (Pearl Jam, Ten , 1991) I have been sitting with those four lines for most of tonight Turning them over. Reading them forward and backward. Sitting in the silence after the song ends and asking myself why four lines written by a man I have never...