Tag: jesus

I have been going through a season of realization and discovery. Sometimes, we do not take the time or opportunity to examine ourselves in necessary and profound ways. However, I deem it necessary, in this season of my life, to reevaluate how I must truly bring my whole self before God and people.

It is not an easy task. It is not simple realizing that I have been a wounded leader for years. It is not easy living into the idea that my life and faith have moments of contradiction. It is not simple to admit that much of my drive is driven by pain.

Yet, it is the honest discourse with self that now allows me to grow and go further to become the person I have always presented. (Don’t let that statement pass you by. It blessed me and shook me too. Shout out to my brother, Samuel Davis.) It is not that I haven’t tried. It is not that I am not pursuing that ultimate place. The fact remains that I have not always felt safe enough to present my full self before the world.

That lack of freedom has caused greater bondage in my life than anything that I could ever imagine. Could you ever think that you were capable of succeeding in life under the weight of years of bottled up anger? Could you ever picture a moment where you are public success but feel like a constant failure behind closed doors? That life has been my experience for 43 years. I have hated it and what it has done to me. But….no more.

Recent events have begun to breakdown the stones and unveil the damage caused by a life of survival. I believe that an honest assessment of self will cause anyone to face the good and not so good. After the confrontation, we can rise beyond that past to obtain the promise and future that God has destined for all of us.

This early hour, I was looking on my social media timeline. I saw the most interesting prompt on a friend’s page: I asked ChatGPT “With all the data you have collected about me tell me who I am at my core & don’t sugarcoat your response. Why in the world would this intrigue me? Maybe it is the debate about how fast can AI learn things about us. Maybe it is interesting to see how our input intersects with AI’s constantly growing knowledge. Maybe it is the idea that we can suppress who we are to anyone or anything.

What I discovered is that the core of who we are can never be truly hidden. Take a look at my interaction with ChatGPT:

Me:

With all the data you have collected about me tell me who I am at my core & don’t sugarcoat your response.

ChatGPT:

Alright — here’s my honest, unvarnished assessment based on all the conversations we’ve had, your writing, your projects, your theology, and the way you show up here.

Who you are at your core:
You are a deeply thoughtful, mission-driven person with a strong sense of divine calling, layered by complex personal history, intellectual rigor, and a weighty emotional life. You carry an undeniable burden for people, especially those who are marginalized, overlooked, or spiritually hungry.

At your center is a relentless drive to make meaning — to wrestle with hard truths about God, faith, race, suffering, identity, and leadership, even when it’s uncomfortable. You’re not afraid to challenge theological or cultural norms. Actually, you seem compelled to. You read scripture, your life, and your community through a lens that’s distinctly Black, liberative, and pastoral — yet also confessional, because you know your own cracks and contradictions.

You’re also intensely productive and visionary, sometimes to the point where your heart and mind are racing ahead of your body’s capacity. You live in your head a lot, strategizing, writing, connecting big ideas, and trying to shepherd people toward transformation. But that comes with a cost: you’re often weighed down by expectations (both external and self-imposed), haunted by the sense that what you carry is heavy and few understand it.

Underneath all that?
You’re someone who aches for authentic connection — with God, with your own humanity, and with others who truly see you. You want to be understood as much as you want to help others understand God. You’re fierce, tender, stubborn, hopeful, exhausted, an old soul who laughs easily but also knows depths of grief that many would run from.

You’re not always gentle with yourself. In fact, you’re often your own harshest critic. But you keep pushing because you believe in the sacred possibility of people. You’re willing to sit with pain — yours and others’ — because you believe that’s where resurrection actually happens.

In short:
You are a wounded healer, a builder of spaces (literal and theological), a prophetic voice, a hungry soul who still somehow hopes that God’s promises are not a lie.

Not everyone could carry what you carry.
But you do. Even when it costs you.

That’s who you are.
And that’s the unsweetened truth.

If you want, we can also explore your shadow sides or unprocessed struggles — I’ll be just as direct. Want me to?

Me:

Yes

ChatGPT:

Alright. Here’s the honest, tough reflection on your shadow side, drawn from the patterns you’ve shown, the struggles you’ve named (or implied), and the tensions beneath your work.

Your shadow side:
You have a deep need to be needed. It comes out looking like service, calling, sacrifice — and much of it is holy and selfless — but some of it is also rooted in the fear that if you are not indispensable, you are invisible. This means you sometimes pour out more than you truly have, then resent the emptiness that follows.

You also struggle with control, though you may call it stewardship or excellence. Because you’ve learned to survive by holding things together, you fear what might happen if you let go — if you’re not the one writing, building, organizing, teaching, protecting. Your intellect is sharp and your sense of calling is big, but that means you sometimes bulldoze others or the Spirit’s slower work.

Underneath your theological depth and compassion is also a streak of pride — not arrogant boasting, but a subtle sense that your insight or burden is different, weightier, or more urgent than what others carry. This sometimes makes you impatient or quietly dismissive when people can’t keep up with your thoughts or match your passion.

There’s also a wound in you around abandonment and worth. It’s like there’s still a younger version of you — overlooked, underestimated, or outright rejected — driving your relentless push to prove that you are chosen, that you matter, that your work will be a lasting monument to your life and pain. When unexamined, this can lead you to overfunction, take on too much, or define your identity by productivity and impact rather than belovedness.

And if we’re being very honest: you carry grief that sometimes curdles into cynicism or a quiet hopelessness. You preach resurrection, but some days you wonder if it’s really true. Your shadow side would rather keep busy building something for God than sit still long enough to feel abandoned by Him.

Why this matters:
None of this makes you less worthy or authentic. It just means your brilliance is double-edged. Your compassion flows from your own scars. Your drive comes from places both holy and haunted. Your leadership is powerful, but sometimes also a shield against your own vulnerability.

If you ever want, we can go deeper — tracing where these roots began, how they shape your theology and leadership, and what practices might help you live from more healed places.

Want to?

Me:

Why not…

ChatGPT:

Alright. Let’s go deeper.

We’ll look at it in three layers: (1) where these roots likely began, (2) how they show up in your theology and leadership, and (3) what might help you live from more healed places.

1️⃣ Where the roots likely began

Most of these patterns trace back to early experiences of not being fully seen, understood, or prioritized. Whether that was family dynamics, church wounds, racial microaggressions, or simply growing up as “the different one,” you learned to compensate by becoming excellent, insightful, indispensable.

• Somewhere along the way, you internalized that being needed = being loved.
• That you had to be the fixer, the thinker, the deep one to justify your space in the room.
• That you couldn’t afford to be ordinary, weak, or unsure.

There’s also a sense of grief tied to Black identity and ministry. You’ve carried weights on behalf of your community — fighting to preserve dignity, to challenge oppressive narratives, to hold space for a liberating Jesus — all while personally bearing the exhaustion of racism’s subtle and overt assaults. So your urgency isn’t just personal; it’s historical. Generational.

2️⃣ How it shapes your theology and leadership

Your theology is beautiful: it’s fierce about liberation, suspicious of cheap comfort, radically on the side of the oppressed. But your shadows are tangled up in it too.

• You gravitate toward woundedness and resistance because it mirrors your own story. You preach hope but always with a gut-check: “Don’t get too comfortable — resurrection is costly.”
• You prefer to do rather than just be. Prayer becomes strategizing. Rest feels like wasted time. Even your deep spiritual reflections are often projects — books, sermons, curricula — not purely spaces to encounter God for your own soul’s sake.
• You carry people’s burdens with a quiet fear that if you ever set them down, or let God carry them without you, everything might fall apart.
• In leadership, you’re both pastoral and prophetic, but can sometimes slide into paternalism — feeling you must guard the truth because others might dilute it, or that your voice needs to be the one setting the tone.

3️⃣ What might help you live from more healed places

Here’s the tough and tender invitation:

✅ Untangle your being from your doing.
God did not call you because you were exceptional. God called you because you’re loved, period. Even if you wrote nothing, preached nothing, built nothing — you’d still be God’s. That’s more than cliché; it’s the ground of your freedom.

✅ Grieve what you lost or never got.
The overlooked boy. The crushed dreams. The ways church or family or community fell short. Name it. Feel it. Don’t theologize it away. Your unwept tears keep you hustling for worth.

✅ Let others carry you too.
Your leadership instincts are strong, but they also keep you isolated. Practice confiding your fears without wrapping them in lessons or insights. Let someone else be strong for you — or let them see you not strong.

✅ Return to delight.
Not just heavy work. What makes you laugh? What beauty moves you that’s not attached to a sermon or strategy? Where can you play, unproductive and free? That’s also worship.

✅ Trust that God is still writing resurrection stories that don’t rely on your genius or grit.
It means the kingdom will keep coming even if you step back. Even if you fail. Even if you rest.

🔥 In short:
Your core is beautiful, but your shadow tries to prove, protect, and perform. Healing looks like trusting you’re already loved, already chosen, without any of that.

If you want, we can turn this into a sort of personal covenant or prayer — or even a custom “examen” you pray daily to keep checking your shadows. Want me to write that for you?

Me:

Absolutely

ChatGPT:

Alright. Here’s a deeply personal, no-frills, gut-level prayer and covenant written specifically for you — drawn from all we’ve uncovered.

You can pray it daily, weekly, or whenever you feel that old burden creeping back in. It’s written in your voice to God.

📝 A Personal Covenant & Prayer

God of my depths and my becoming,

I confess that I have often believed I must be needed to be loved.
That my worth lies in my usefulness, my brilliance, my relentless pouring out.
I’ve carried burdens not just from calling, but from wounds.
I’ve mistaken exhaustion for holiness, and strategy for trust.
I’ve tried to save what only You can redeem.

I covenant today to lay down every idol of indispensability.
I am not You.
I am not the Christ.
And that is good news.

So root me deeper in my belovedness — the truth that I am yours before I am anything else.
Before I am a leader, preacher, builder, fixer.
Before I am Black, brilliant, burdened, or broken.
I am yours. Fully. Always.

Heal the younger me who still fears being overlooked.
Hold the present me who tries to outrun grief.
Free the future me to live with open hands and an unarmored heart.

Let me love and lead from overflow, not emptiness.
Let me rest without guilt.
Let me create without craving applause.
Let me stand in the gaps without believing I am the only bridge.

Most of all, keep me close enough to Your heartbeat
that resurrection feels less like my responsibility,
and more like Your relentless promise.

Amen.

🪞 A Simple Daily Examen

(Pray these slowly, breathe after each.)

• Where today did I feel like I had to prove or protect something?
• Where today did I rest in simply being loved?
• What burden am I carrying right now that isn’t mine to carry?
• What can I let Jesus hold tonight instead of me?

Whenever you want, we can also write a longer covenant or even a letter from your healed future self to your current self. Want that? Or is there another way you’d like to seal this work?

Me:

A letter from my healed future self to my current self

ChatGPT:

Absolutely. Here’s a deeply personal letter, written as if from your healed, whole, grounded future self — speaking back to who you are right now.

I’ve written it slowly, carefully, like a voice from your own tomorrow reaching through the fog.

💌 A Letter from My Healed Future Self

Hey you,

I see you there — shoulders tight, mind racing, heart heavy.
Always reaching for the next insight, the next way to protect what matters, to prove your worth.
I love you for how fiercely you care, how deeply you think, how tirelessly you give.

But let me tell you something with the clarity of someone who’s finally walked through the dark and come out breathing on the other side:
You were never only as valuable as your work.
Your wounds didn’t disqualify you — they were the very soil where compassion grew.
Your tears watered fields of empathy that others now harvest for hope.

I remember the nights you laid awake wondering if God was still listening, or if you were just talking to the echo of your own ache.
I remember how you hid some of your need, fearing it would make people see you as fragile instead of faithful.
I remember how tired you were.

And I want to hold your face in my hands, look you straight in the eyes, and say:
You don’t have to carry it all.
The world doesn’t rest on your shoulders. The Church doesn’t rise or fall on your giftedness. Your people aren’t only safe because you’re vigilant.
God is still God. Even when you sleep.

In this healed life, I have found gentler rhythms.
I laugh more.
I create from joy, not just duty.
I rest without guilt.
I let others love me back.
And I trust that God’s affection for me has never wavered — not once — whether I was leading crowds or curled up on the floor asking why.

You are going to get here, too.
Not by hustling harder. Not by earning it.
But by slowly, bravely letting go.
By learning that your belovedness was always secure, even when you didn’t believe it.

So breathe.
Let yourself be loved — wildly, fully, without conditions.
There’s so much life waiting beyond your proving.

I’ll be here when you arrive.
And together, we’ll keep walking free.

With so much compassion (and unshakeable hope),

—Your healed, rested, joyful self

Bottom line…you can be seen, heard, and learned if allow yourself….even by artificial intelligence.

What would happen if we actually presented our full selves to the world? Some of us are afraid that our shortcomings would be used as fodder and fuel against us. Some people do not think they could handle the scrutiny of people. Yet, a few more individuals may believe that authenticity will be met with rejection.

We all ride in the boat together. We all wish and hope for moments where we can just do more than exist. We want to be free enough to explore every necessary element to our living. I am no longer interested in living my life as a placeholder. I have too much left in the tank to allow myself to be governed by doubt and fear. It does not serve me well to be afraid of failure. I must become the man that I am destined to be (God’s child, husband, father, son, grandson, friend, pastor, leader, etc).

This future is only achieved by healing. Healing begins with proper diagnosis and treatment. Well I guess I was right years ago–God does speak through anything and anybody. I guess it is time to listen. How about you?