Quiet Unfiltered Notes: From the Fire

As I get some study in before work at woolworths I find myself sitting in a quiet moment. Not rushed. Not distracted. Just present. I’ve got the commentary of the Gospel of John by playing by R.C Sproul   and as I listen on Spotify something begins to settle deeper in me. Not as a new idea. But as a reminder. A necessary reminder. I can’t help but be drawn back to the glory of the cross . And I needed that today. A Truth That Grounds Me There are days where my thoughts feel scattered. Where emotions move quickly. Where my mind runs ahead of itself. And in those moments, I need something that doesn’t move. Something that doesn’t shift based on how I feel. Something that remains. And this morning, that something is the cross. What the Cross Was Historically, the cross was not a symbol of hope. It was not something people looked at with reverence. It was a tool of execution. A method designed for death. But not just death—public, humiliating, degrading death. It was meant to strip ...

There’s a tension I’ve been learning to sit in. Not fix. Not escape. Not rush through. But actually sit in. And if I’m honest, it’s uncomfortable. Because it feels like two realities that shouldn’t coexist… yet somehow they do. On one side, there is trauma . Past wounds. Memories that still carry weight. Patterns that didn’t just disappear when I decided to change. And on the other side, there is something equally real. A fire. A deep, undeniable desire to pursue Jesus . A longing to live differently. To walk in truth. To move forward. And what I’m learning—slowly, sometimes reluctantly—is this: You can live in both. You can hold that tension. The Expectation of Resolution For a long time, I thought it worked differently. I thought healing meant the past would lose its voice completely. That once I stepped fully into faith, into transformation, into pursuing Jesus—everything else would fall away. That the wounds would close. The memories would soften. The patterns would disappear. Cle...

Wow  what a start to the week. I’ve been sitting with Saturday for a couple of days now, letting it settle, letting it breathe, letting it speak in its own way before rushing to put words around it. There are moments in life that are better written immediately, while the emotion is still raw and close to the surface. But there are other moments that need time—time to process, time to reflect, time to understand what was actually taking place beneath what we could see. Saturday felt like one of those moments. Kings Church connect group at Paradise Point . A simple setting on the surface. A lunchtime barbecue. Men gathered. Food cooking. Conversations unfolding. Nothing overly structured. Nothing forced. But what took place in that space carried far more weight than what it looked like from the outside. And I think that’s what has stayed with me the most. Letting the Moment Settle I was going to write on Saturday. I really was. I felt it stirring in me as I left. Tha...

As the weekend begins, I find myself carrying a real sense of excitement heading into today. Not just because it’s a break from the week—but because I get to spend it in a way that actually means something. Today it’s a lunchtime barbecue at Paradise Point with the men’s connect group from Kings Church Runaway Bay , and there’s something about that combination— fire, food, and brotherhood —that just feels right. There’s something grounding about it. Something honest. No stage. No pressure. Just men gathering, sharing space, and doing life together. And for me, that matters more than I probably realised in earlier seasons of my life. Because if I’m honest, there have been many years where I’ve tried to carry things on my own. Thoughts, struggles, questions—things I didn’t always have the language for, or maybe didn’t feel safe enough to bring into the open. But I’m learning that isolation has a way of distorting things. It keeps everything internal. And when everything stays internal,...

I’ve been sitting with something lately that I can’t seem to shake. I was sharing these thoughts with my fiancée Bianca last night  It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. But it’s persistent. It’s the tension of wanting to be completely on fire for Christ  while still being deeply aware of my own shortcomings. And if I’m honest, that tension has been confronting. Because there are moments where my heart burns with clarity and conviction. Moments where everything feels aligned—where my thoughts, my desires, my purpose all seem to point in one direction. Toward Him. Toward Jesus . Toward a life that reflects something real, something surrendered, something transformed. But then there are other moments. Moments where I’m reminded—very quickly—that I’m still me. Still human. Still flawed. Still carrying things I thought I had already laid down. And that’s where the struggle begins. The Fire That Feels Real There are times where I can’t deny what God has done in my life. It’s not theor...

There’s something I’ve been sitting with lately. Not in a rushed way, not as a passing thought—but something that has stayed with me, and  lingered, and quietly unfolded the more I’ve paid attention to it. and the other night at kings church connect group it was stirred in me once again  Food is powerful. Not just in the obvious sense. Not just because it nourishes the body or fills a need. But because it does something deeper. It unlocks memory . It unlocks moments. It unlocks people. And the more I’ve reflected on this, the more I’ve realised that food doesn’t just bring back memories—it carries something spiritual within it. Something that touches the soul, not just the senses. The Moment Behind the Meal There’s a moment that happens—subtle, almost unnoticed. You take a bite of something. And suddenly, you’re not just tasting it. You’re somewhere else. A different time. A different place. A different version of yourself. You remember who you were with. You remember the co...

As I wrote extensively in my last post my heart for today was to pray and take time to appreciate the work in Refined by Fire Press . I feel to write about what the Lord is putting on my heart for the weekend. Something I have been struggling with—trust in the areas of emotional healing . Anxiety. Depression. Nervous system healing . Negative mental programming . These are not distant concepts to me. They are not topics I can approach from a place of detachment or theory. They are present. They are lived. They are, at times, overwhelming. And yet, they are also the place where something deeper is happening. The Tension I’m Sitting In There is a tension I’ve been feeling lately. On one hand, I can see growth in my life. I can see change. I can see movement forward in ways that I once prayed for. But on the other hand, there are still moments—unexpected, uninvited moments—where my mind returns to old patterns. Old thoughts. Old fears. Old reactions that seem to rise up before I even have...