Month: September 2014

You’re Doing Better Than You Think


My dear beloved friend:

– No one really has it all together yet. We force so many self-pressuring parameters on our performance that most of us are neurotic, twitchy, over-productive busybodies with no real destination. In a culture where we celebrate only victory and are scared to talk about defeat: please don’t measure yourself on an impossible grading scale. Don’t measure your private moments with everyone else’s highlight reels.

– Mistakes are how you learn. Everyone is afraid of failure: so we protect ourselves by bargaining with the teacher or begging for extensions or ensuring we never get a scraped knee. Such a pampered coddled culture will keep you feeling safe for a while, but it’ll also keep you sterile, shrink-wrapped, and cold. It’s a lifeless journey. It’s okay to make mistakes, and occasionally it’s even better. Scrape a knee, brush it off, get up and move on. Learn from the past and laugh with it too.

– You’re doing better than you think. You’re in the middle of your motion, so it’s hard to see where you are. But so long as you’ve been taking one heavy step forward after another, no matter how awkward your stumbling, then this is worth celebrating. Every moment you’ve done right is a miracle in itself.

– Be willing to pursue a new dream. Sometimes we try so hard to grab our old dreams that we’re not open to new ones. We look too long in the rearview instead of what’s ahead of us. I’ve missed a lot of opportunities this way. But keep your eyes open for open doors, and be flexible enough for a new vision that will be even better than the last.

– Dear Christian: Your confidence is in Him. We are works in progress looking towards the work finished, Jesus. We believe in a God who knew we couldn’t ever reach perfection, so perfection came to us. If you feel like you’ve failed today, the very reason Jesus came was to take on your failures, your ego, your pride, your pain, your sorrows, your sin. And He’ll keep working on you until glory. Everything good in you is God in you: and anything bad in you, He’s working on that.

This is His grace.

— J.S. from What The Church Doesn’t Talk About


Big Announcement Tomorrow.

JS Park cup cover

Hello wonderful friends!

Big announcement coming tomorrow.
It might or might not have to do with a book maybe.
— J.S.

Continue reading “Big Announcement Tomorrow.” →

Quote: Loving Someone


“Loving someone is a process. Whether that’s God, or that’s another sticky human, it’s a process. The movies will say it’s something different but— no matter how instant that first draw to someone is— love is a building process. It’s doors unlocking. It’s windows breaking. It’s the discovery of new rooms inside of yourself. It’s the dark. And it’s the light. And it’s dark and light all scrambled into one. At the root of it, it’s a slow, trusting, building process that starts with letting someone in.”

— Hannah Brencher


Foreword: A Better Place For You, by T.B. LaBerge

TB LaBerge prof

I’m thrilled to have T.B. LaBerge write my Foreword for my upcoming e-book, releasing next week (September 29th!).  He also reveals my first name.

Here it is.  Thank you, my amazing brother!

Continue reading “Foreword: A Better Place For You, by T.B. LaBerge” →

Trust, Faith.


I’m discovering that God must be so wise to know all the innumerable outcomes of our poor choices and still orchestrate all the tiny infinitesimal butterfly effects for our good.

I’m finding that God must be so gracious to know all our messed up motives and methods and selfishness and still offer grace at every step, every choice, every fork and branch in the road.

I’m understanding that God must be so compassionate to hear the prayers of billions of people at the same time and still answer them all with individual care at the same exact moment, even to two people sitting right next to each other who can’t stand each other, like a Father who wants us to get along.

I’m trusting that terrible uncontrollable circumstances don’t always need a moral spiritual lesson: but only need the presence of my ever-present Father who embraces me in my darkest shivering and my worst lament. It’s the difference between a friend giving me a lecture or a friend who is simply there. I can hear the lecture one day, but I just need Him first.

I have found that God has always had His providential loving hand in all the ways I’ve failed, entering into the fray like a divine crane to protect and provide and rebuke, writing His story into mine with many things I couldn’t understand then: but now I’m understanding them, even if only a small glimpse of His heart with my frail limited sight.

I’m seeing that His vision is bigger than mine.

— J.S.



Quote: For The Sake


“If I want to get closer to God, I have to stop walking in sin – not just because I don’t like the effects of sin but because I want to draw near to God and you cannot be sinful and get near God. Yes, God promises his rewards to those who diligently seek Him – but knowing Christ for the sake of knowing Him far surpasses rewards – the reward of knowing Him is more than enough. His grace is sufficient.”

— Matt Chandler


Seven Tips on Preaching and Teaching For the First Time

do-you-know-the-mustache-man asked a question:

So I’m speaking to my youth group this Wednesday (I’m 16 and this is the first time speaking at church) and I was just wondering if maybe you had any tips?

My friend, that is awesome. Woo!! Let’s first be grateful to God for this amazing opportunity that you’ve been given.  You and I never earned the right to preach or teach, but were given this honor by the Creator of everything so that others might know Him, be loved by Him, and love Him in return.  Please start there, in a place of humility, recognizing we are absolutely unworthy to teach others with our squishy tiny 3 lb. brains and our half-inch vocal cords, to other squishy fallen human beings from a wild variety of diverse back-stories — except by the grace of God.

I mean that’s really crazy, when you think about it.  I’ve never gotten over that.

I don’t want to give you a formula or checklist because then you might be tempted to follow that instead of Jesus.  So here just a few things to pray about and consider.  You’re not obligated to any of these nor to memorize them, so simply reflect and go forth, my friend.

1) Love your people.  This is obvious, but so very often I forget to love the people who are right in front of me.  Sometimes I’m so quick to check off my awesome agenda of great sermon points, that I forget these are real hurting broken struggling people who care less about my intelligence and more about their maker.  Every word and sentence and theme must be fashioned out of love for your people.  Let your group know that this is a big deal for you and that you’re available outside of preaching time.  If they know you care about them, they’ll remember that more than the message.

2) You be you.  My initial problem in preaching was imitation.  When I first started, I listened to a lot of James MacDonald, who is a fiery aggressive preacher with a booming voice and roughly twenty points in every sermon.  I even took on some of his tone and inflections.  Soon I learned, I wasn’t good at preaching like this.  My strengths were not a booming voice and twenty-point messages.  If you’re not naturally funny, you don’t have to try.  If you’re loud, use that to your advantage. Be comfortable with how God has made you.  Part of trusting God is trusting how He made you to be you in the world.  Let yourself out to play.

Continue reading “Seven Tips on Preaching and Teaching For the First Time” →

Of Stars, Of Dust.


Life is short. Time goes fast. Our youth is once. We fly, we crawl, of stars and dust.
We look back: and we wish to be back there.
But dreams are made to be chased.
We define who we are today.
I cherish all that has gone before me: the good, the bad, the stumbling.
And I look forward to future memories.
I trust God for the better story, for the huge scary audacious proposition of following Him into eternity.
And we are fellow travelers over dust, under stars.
We are never too far.
We are the chasers of dreams.
We will fight this good fight.
I will miss you, but love closes the distance.
We will finish this race: together.
Us. Together.

— J.S.



An Entire Life Told In 4 Minutes, 54 Seconds


I was at a funeral for an older gentleman and we were shown a video of his life from birth to death. We watched as he grew up from Kindergarten to high school graduation to becoming a barber and an Air Force pilot and a husband and a father and then his battle with multiple sclerosis, which took his life with a stroke.

It was amazing to see him as a handsome, agile young man with a head of dark flowing hair and the posture of a superhero. Most of us didn’t even know he was a barber. It was amazing to see the wedding photos, this couple growing old together, smiling all the way, his wife by his side to the very end.

The video was four minutes and fifty-four seconds long. An entire life, told through pictures, in less than five minutes.

As selfish as it seems, I wondered about my own video one day. I wondered how it would be be sitting in a building watching my entire life in a slideshow.

I thought about what they would say about me, if some would say “He wasn’t all he was hyped up to be” or “We really lost an amazing person today” or “We disagreed often, and I loved him for it.” I wondered if they would show that picture from third grade when I was at Disney World wearing a giant Mickey Mouse hat with my brother and pretending to eat him. Or that one the day after I got out of the hospital after swallowing a bottle of pills and losing thirteen pounds in three days over a girl. Or the one of me battling to the very last breath over some sickness, all youth behind me, my story at a close.

The pastor said every life cannot control the start or end of their book. But we write the in-between. It’s between us and God and all the merging stories we find of love, heartache, heaven, laughter, doubts, and goodbyes. And the many, many pictures.

It’s quick, you know. We only have so many highlights in that reel. I don’t want my head to be somewhere else when I’m here. I want to be here, now. We think we have forever, but really, it’s just a few minutes. We have a few snapshots, and then it’s gone.

Here’s to celebrating you, and for the memories.

— J.S.



A Faith Crisis: Crushed By Doubt, Questions, and Disconnection (And Some Good News)

Two anonymous questions:

– Hi pastor, i’m a 21 year old girl from philippines. i messaged you before about my doubts about God’s existence and my faith in Him. that was almost a year ago. Praise God that I was able to recover my faith and go back to normal living with God and i believe it became even better. but i feel so sad again right now because my doubts came back just a week ago. the desire to know God is still here but questions are bothering me. i still have lots of things to share. please help me. thank you!

– Hi:), i write to you because i think of you as an understanding and matured faith person so i thought maybe i could share with u my problem.. So, i have a big faith crisis now, like somehow i found myself drowning among doubts … I just started a biblestudy on God’s personality but somehow i found myself on a worst place. As i do the biblestudy something says these “cool things” should make an impact in me, but they dont, like my inner radar would be broken … i wanna thank u that you share things so openly!:)

Hey my dear friends: Please first know that I love you both dearly in Christ, and I know how hard it is to fall into this fog of doubt.  I appreciate you both being so honest and real about this, and I’m also grateful for your encouragement even in the midst of this harder time.

You see, the Big Christian Secret is that every Christian in the world runs into doubts, question, confusion, and frustration, because there isn’t anything wrong with you that isn’t already wrong with everyone else.  This doesn’t make you a bad Christian, but an honest one.

In fact, I would say that every human being who ever existed runs into doubts about their own worldviews, a sort of existential panic about what they truly believe, and it can be downright disorienting.

Here are three simple things we must know.  I have said them many times before and they could sound familiar, so please feel free to skip around.

Continue reading “A Faith Crisis: Crushed By Doubt, Questions, and Disconnection (And Some Good News)” →

Gritty, Messy, Clumsy, Unpolished, Raw.


The toughest thing is to see a person you love get to the edge of their resolve and quietly fall apart. It’s a slumping of the shoulders or a long hurtful sigh or a sarcastic remark or they blink away a tear. It’s different than hysterics. There’s a silent internal folding like a shot in the gut, a hollow feeling of resigned pointlessness: and it’s so deadly quiet.

In that moment, they may be too embarrassed to ask for help or to expose how weak they really feel. But I hope it’s that exact moment we rush in to hold them up. I hope we fill up that crumpled collapsed space with a word of life. To remind them of their value, worth, dignity, to show the progress they have made up this mountain. I hope we don’t simply plod along when we know there’s something wrong: but we fly in there with the audacity to rebel against their resignation, as gentle as a surgeon and until our voice shakes.

It won’t be pretty. Probably it’ll feel like you’re not even helping. Real love is gritty, messy, clumsy, unpolished, raw. It’s not at all romantic or like a scripted Hollywood epiphany. But our words do not need to be witty or wise or altogether right. We just need someone to fall on, to lift our heavy arms, to be close enough to feel our hot tired breath: even for one more step. We need the hope of vulnerability. And to be that for someone reminds us why we do anything at all. We remember that the fabric of life is together, a journey of side-by-side, so that even a failure is not the end of anything, but only a deepening of you and me.

— J.S.



So About Finding “The One”

givinghimglory asked a question:

Do you think it’s possible to know that the person you’re with is the person you’re going to marry? Even if it’s something that wouldn’t take place until maybe a few more years, is it possible for us to know that the person we’re currently with is the person we’re we’re gonna marry? Does God allow us to know that? And if so how would we know? I’m currently battling with trying to understand this better, and if there’s anything biblical that may go in line with this & your thoughts on this also!

Hey my dear friend, I have two thoughts on this that could make it harder for you to decide, but will hopefully also free you up to make a more informed decision.

1) I absolutely do not believe that “God’s Will” is a fixed straight line.

2) I believe that God is more concerned with who you become than what you do.  He cares about both, but God primarily sees your heart before your choices.

Whenever someone asks me, “Is the person I’m dating the one?” — I always wonder if this is born out of panic or desperation or the anxious urge to be not-single.  Because when you suddenly convince yourself that this person must be the only person for me: then what happens if this person turns out to be way different than what you’ve perceived?  What if they suddenly leave you?  What if they use you up and spit you out?  Are we then trapped by “God’s Will” to keep going?

I think the idea of God’s Will is way more flexible than our self-persuasion, and that it’s unwise to enslave ourselves to a singular picture of how things must work out.  I don’t mean to presume your motives at all: but I wouldn’t want you to get imprisoned by this either.  Some of us who fall for this “fixed blueprint” for God’s Will end up punishing themselves because they think they’re now running after Plan B or some lesser version of God’s plans.

Continue reading “So About Finding “The One”” →

Releasing Soon: My First E-Book


Hello dear wonderful friends!

So I’ll be releasing an e-book very soon on the Amazon Kindle Store. It’s a compilation of all the toughest questions that I’ve been asked through my blog: so it’s real questions from real people about real life. There will be new content, each chapter divided by topic, from sex to doubts to dating to conflicts to church. I’ll be selling it super-cheap (less than five bucks) and I would really love your prayers on this.  If you could pray even right now, for a few seconds, that would be so totally awesome of you.

Love y’all and I’ll be updating again soon!

— J.S.


Faith Mosaic.


Your faith won’t look like the faith of your neighbor. We love Jesus and we love people: but beyond that, God has wired us with a colorful diversity of connections to Him. All the people in the Bible experienced God in different ways through their varying personalities.

Moses saw the back of God’s glorious rear, while Elijah heard the still small voice of God after a mountain exploded.

Gideon was so doubtful he kept asking God to do weird things like burn up meat or throw water on a sheep rug; Jonathan was so confident that he provoked the Philistines to war without really consulting God.

King David was a pensive, ferocious poet with an ear for music and lyrics; Jeremiah and Habbakuk wept loudly for their people with tons of uncertainty.

Jonah hated ministry but went anyway; Isaiah said “Here am I, send me.”

Ruth bravely proposed marriage in hopes that God would provide; Leah desperately begged Jacob to provide her offspring. Noah was a drunken slob after all his trouble; Joseph re-affirmed God’s sovereignty though he had been left for dead by his brothers.

Peter was a brash thick-headed emotional hot-head who was ready for Jesus to unleash the Kingdom; Timothy was a sickly scared baby Christian who needed a lot of reassurance from Paul.

Martha was practical and efficient; Mary was relational and affective.

The Samaritan woman at the well needed a face-to-face encounter with Jesus; the Roman centurion trusted that Jesus had healed his sick servant from afar.

Nicodemus the Pharisee went to Jesus late at night to avoid peering eyes; all the blind beggars went to Jesus in front of everyone to have their eyes opened.

James & John expected Jesus to rain down fire on the enemy; Thomas doubted Jesus was ever the Messiah.

James the half-brother of Jesus was all about God’s commands and obedience; Paul spoke of grace abounding all the more.

Paul was the better writer but a weaker preacher; Peter was a fiery preacher for an ordinary fisherman. John was a loving patient sensitive man; Simon the Zealot was a political terrorist.

Matthew Levi had been a greedy tax collector who followed Jesus on the spot; Mark was there when Jesus was arrested and fled the scene naked.

In the end, Matthew and Mark wrote very different accounts of Jesus’s life and death, and so did Luke and John.

Yet each one fills out the other, just as so many different hues in a mosaic.

— J.S.


I’m In Eugene Cho’s New Book “Overrated”

eugene cho overrated ODW book Joon



Eugene Cho has just released a this week called Overrated: Are We More In Love With The Idea of Changing The World Than Actually Changing The World?  The foreword is also by one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, who wrote Blue Like Jazz.

One of the other reasons I’m so excited for this book is because Eugene Cho put in my testimony, about the time I gave away half my salary to fight human trafficking.  I’m just crazy honored and humbled to be part of his work.

Back in 2012, I wrote a check for $10,000 to the charity One Day’s Wages, and after an awareness campaign, someone anonymously donated enough to make a matching contribution of another $10,000.  If you want to see what the money does, check here.

It was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done, and I don’t say any of this to brag.  I say this to brag on God, who makes all this possible, and to brag on the millions of untold stories of real sacrifice, courage, and reckless grace.  In a world so hurting, there are still people fighting for real change.

— J.S.