Speed & Intensity

Crash, Burn, Surrender

I haven’t written in months.

Not because I didn’t want to. I did. There were moments where I’d sit with a blank page, heart stirred, fingers on keys… and nothing would come out. Or worse, something would come out that felt off. Too polished, too weightless. Like I was performing, not confessing. Like I was showing up to prove, not to be present. I was performing.

So, I’ve been sitting in my thoughts. Pacing myself with excuses. It’s a busy season. Or, God already knows what’s on my mind.

And that’s when I realized—I had drifted.

Not into heresy. Not into burnout. But into the much quieter danger of hiding behind the work. Writing had become a platform, rather than a conversation. Rather than a daily journal that I kept with my creator. Leadership became a persona I wore, not a cross I carried. And somewhere in the mix, I stopped being formed… and started trying to be followed. It sounds gross when I type it out. But it’s true.

It crept in quietly. It always does. The slow pull to be seen. To be fruitful. To be respected. To make impact. Not evil desires. Not outright rebellion. Just subtle self-promotion. The kind that wraps itself in “calling” but drinks deeply from insecurity. And even envy.

God didn’t rebuke me in a storm. He didn’t crash through the noise with fire or fury. Instead, He spoke to me from “the secret place of thunder” (Psalm 81:7). Not with volume, but with weight. And He did the thing that’s harder for me than discipline, harder than confrontation:

He slowed me down.

And when you’ve lived most of your life at a full send, with “speed and intensity” as a mantra, slowing down feels like dying. I don’t mean this in a melodramatic fashion, although it sounds like it. Going against your will, because His will is always done, strips you away. It is a kind of suffering. To die to yourself. It’s a suffering that I’m learning to rejoice in.

Zone 2

I run. It’s become a prayer cave. I think here. Breathe here. Preach to myself in the quiet between footfalls. I let my mind go where it desires but within the confines of my cadenced breathing. Sometimes it’s in the seams of my Spotify playlist, the best times are in the silence. Recently, the tough times have been in the silence of slow running.

Zone 2 running exposed more than my fitness. Z2’s not complicated. You stay below your threshold. You train your aerobic base. You move slow, uncomfortably slow, to build long-term endurance. It’s discipline, not intensity. Capacity over hype. It sometimes looks like walking. It feels not good. Not satisfying.

The first few runs, I hated it. Today, I still dislike it. Not because it was hard on my body, but because it was hard on my ego. I felt weak. Small. Out of rhythm with the world around me. People pass me on shared routes. Runners I knew I could outrun. Walkers are going just as fast as I am sometimes. But this wasn’t about them. It was about restraint.

And that’s where the real tension started: I wasn’t used to training without validation. I wasn’t used to moving without proving. I wasn’t used to showing up with nothing but presence. Every step felt like confession. Every breath exposed something deeper. When I look down at my watch and see my heart rate climb, I deflate at the thought that I’m not even moving fast enough, worthy enough, to slow down. I’m not suffering enough to earn some ease.

I can’t help but think of Paul, the spiritual marathoner. What did he really mean when talking about the race? How did he see it? Why do I push so hard? What am I chasing when no one is even watching?

That tension—Z2 tension—started following me off the trail. Into the jungle. Onto the mountain. Into the barn. Into my home. It started coloring the way I looked at everything I thought I was doing “for the Lord.”

Echoes from the Forge

Like fingerprints I hadn’t noticed before. In places I thought were about mission, I started seeing mirrors. In the field. In the canyon. In the demolition dust of someone else’s loss. It’s like God had been weaving these slow revelations into my life all along; and I had missed the pace He was speaking in. Thank You, Lord.

So when I look back at the last year, I don’t see milestones of ministry anymore. I see echoes. Echoes of Z2. Moments when God dialed down the volume, pulled me into discomfort, and whispered, “This is where I want you.” I hear You.

It wasn’t always obvious in the moment. It rarely is. But now, on the other side, I can feel it. Each place left a mark. And truthfully, it always seems to come at that point where my pace of “speed and intensity” has pushed me to the edge—crash, burn, surrender. It’s a familiar feeling. And so is the silence that comes after. So, I reflect…

The Slow Down

We moved through the jungle village in silence. The air was thick with mist and woodsmoke. I was already emptied before I got off the plane. Grief still raw from my mother’s funeral, my bag repacked before I had even unpacked it from the last trip. I didn’t have strength to offer, only obedience. The dirt path bent through fruit trees and wooden homes on stilts, and somewhere between one cracked road and the next, I realized I had come to serve, but I was the one being broken open.

We prayed with strangers whose names I have written down somewhere but whose faces I can never forget. We laid hands on elders and children, spoke through interpreters, and sometimes not at all. It didn’t matter. The Spirit moved anyway. The deeper we went, the more I could feel it: God didn’t need my eloquence. He wasn’t asking for energy. He was asking for presence. Not a performance. Just presence.

And it kept happening, in different forms, like He was trying to make sure I didn’t miss it.

Months later, I’m in The Canyon. We’d named the adventure Exodus Fire. The Rim-to-Rim hike, twenty-three miles from South to North in one day. We started in the dark, headlamps bobbing like quiet resolve along the trail. And I brought with me more than a pack. I brought that same impulse again; to lead, to be strong, to earn the respect I hadn’t realized I was still chasing. Even there, in the beauty of ancient stone and whispering creeks, I was calculating my worth by pace and posture.

The canyon didn’t cooperate. On the final climb out along the back rim, rain found us. I had secretly prayed for it. The rock turned slick, our clothes soaked through, and the wind pressed in like resistance. Every step slowed; not from fatigue, but as if God Himself was telling us to pay attention.

That’s when it hit. Not the storm, but the voice beneath it: “Just love Me. See Me.” Not conquer. Not impress. Just see. Let the rain fall. Let the cold sting. Just walk… surrendered.

We kept moving. Not faster. Not harder. But something holy was unfolding in the slowness. I was reminded to stop trying to lead. Be with the ones beside me, and with the One above. Stop measuring effort and notice the wonder again.

And somewhere in all of that, I knew we had to bring this to the young men.

So in the spring, I took seven high school seniors into the Western North Carolina mountains. No podiums. No platforms. Just packs and scripture. We named it Iron Forge. They showed up eager, strong, loud. Still unaware that the trail would shape them more than anything I said. I gave them notebooks, asked one question—What does it mean to be a man of God?—and let the silence do the teaching.

The first few miles, they surged ahead. Confident. Buzzing. By mile four, it quieted. Breathing turned heavy. Jokes faded. Darkness fell, and with it came something deeper. Their pace slowed not from weakness, but from weight, the kind you carry inward. At Butter Gap, we built a fire, but no one needed to speak. They knew. Something sacred had been passed to them, not through words, but through distance and strain. Sacred suffering.

And I remembered what Mike had told earlier during the ride up: A man doesn’t set his pace for himself. He sets it for those he leads.

That line hasn’t left me.

Not because it’s catchy, but because it cuts. Because it’s true. Because that’s what this all has been. TeZulay, the Grand Canyon, the Art Loeb trail. Each place a pace check. Each moment a mirror. And in all of them, God was asking me to stop striving long enough to be shaped. Z2.

Unseen & Unrushed

So here I am writing again.
Not because I’ve figured anything out.
Not because the fog has lifted or the pace feels easy.
But because it’s honest.
And maybe that’s enough for now.

I’m still learning how to let go of the hustle.
Still learning what to do with my hands when there’s no performance to hide behind.
Still retracing my steps in places that felt like mission but were really mirrors.

The jungle. The canyon. The mountain.
Each one pulled something to the surface.
None of them fully resolved it.

I’ve been thinking of Paul’s words to Timothy:
“But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience…” (1 Tim 1:16)

Paul isn’t just reflecting on mercy.
He’s pointing to his weakness.
His past, his failure, his ongoing imperfection; and saying,
“This is where Jesus shows off His patience.”

That hits different.
It doesn’t feel like an endpoint.
It feels like the inhale I forget to take.
The pause before grace meets me again.

And maybe that’s what these months have been.
God letting me run out of words.
Letting me sweat in the slowness.
Letting my strength fall short… again
until I finally look over and realize:
He never stopped walking with me.
Not once did He hurry me up.
Not once did He ask for more output.

Just presence. Ok, Father…

A holy patience I still don’t understand.
But one I’m learning to trust.

What if it’s the slow, unseen miles that shape me most

the silence, not the attention, where I’m really formed

and weakness, not strength, that puts His power on display?

Soli Deo Gloria.