In the 10th issue of the “All‑Star Superman” series, there is a beautiful scene that —I believe— speaks to many Christians on their spiritual journeys. In the scene, Superman stops a sorrowful teenage girl named Regan from jumping off a skyscraper, offering her comfort and saying these very words to her: “It’s never as bad as it seems. You’re so much stronger than you think you are.” Although this isn’t a movie scene, I still feel the need to share this because it displays the sheer humanity of this character, which is deeply connected to Jesus himself. I trust that there are a select few out there who are feeling like Regan in this panel: stressed, sorrowful, and one minor inconvenience away from asking God to take their life. If that someone is you, I trust that God wants you to get up. Something like this is shown in John 8:1-11, when the Pharisees and other religious leaders went to Jesus with a woman who had committed adultery. Rather than condemning the woman—like what the Pharisees wanted— he told her, “Go and sin no more.” Both of these stories show that God, unlike people in this world, will not condemn you or ignore your pain when you are at your lowest. Instead, He will lift you up and walk with you like the loving Father that He is.

If you’ve been a Christian for a while, you’ve probably heard this verse before: “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. On earth, you will face many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” This verse, which is from John 16:33, has been one of the many verses that are plastered all over your feed, even in this brotherhood. While it is a good verse when it comes to talking about God’s vindication and how He could be a present help, a lot of us downplay the fact that He said we will face trials in this world. During my Christian walk, whenever I heard this verse —or any verse similar to this one— I always perceived the “tests” and “trials” that God is referring to as just a period of minor discomfort, not knowing that God’s testing seasons can last much longer than a few days. The path of a Christian isn’t always blessings, breakthroughs, and revelations; sometimes it involves burdens, anguish, and persecution, both physically and mentally, through lengthy periods of time. All of the individuals in the BIble that God used in a major way had to go through a harsh testing season: Job was covered in boils, Lazarus caught a fatal illness, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego went through a fire, Elijah wanted to die, David was chased by a king who wanted him dead, and the list goes on. These people went through the most painful things known to man, yet they always emerged victorious because of God’s presence. The Apostle Paul explains this well in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need. My power works best in [your] weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.” Sometimes God lets us go through hard times so we learn to depend on Him alone for our sustenance. God bless.

Although this post might seem a little early, I felt the Holy Spirit urging me to share this message as soon as possible. For this week’s quest, one of the things that I planned on fasting from is mindless consumption. When I say that, I don’t necessarily mean the consumption of food, but rather the consumption of content, or doomscrolling, as some of y'all would call it. During my Christian walk, I noticed that my social media intake, or mindless consumption of content in general, has been causing me to stall in developing my relationship with God. Even while I was watching Christian content, the amount of sermons, warnings, and prophetic messages from God started to slowly but surely supersede the time that I was supposed to spend praying, reading my Bible, fasting, and engaging in creative hobbies. By no means am I suggesting that watching Christian content is bad, nor am I considering stopping watching these YouTubers entirely, but I am saying that it became an issue for me when they began to serve as excuses to procrastinate on the responsibilities that God had called me to do, which is why I made mitigating my social media use a priority during this week. Let me be completely honest: for the first two days, I had no idea how I was going to initiate my fast and didn’t really take these days seriously because I slowly felt complacent while doomscrolling. It wasn’t until Wednesday that I set a clear plan: I would initially use a feature called “Downtime” on my iPhone. This feature allows me to block all of my apps instead of my Bible apps and other actually important apps. Once I’m done with that, I try to continuously hide my phone in areas in which I know it will be harder to find. Rather than put it in another room, I decided to take it one step further and place it inside some random box in my room; out of sight, out of mind. As of now, I’m still stuck on the creation aspect of this week, because there are times when I get caught in the trap of the social media algorithim. There are still times when I am urged to watch Christian content before doing anything, and because of the autoplay feature (which I forgot to mention but I turned off), I started to revert back to square one. I’ll still work on this, and I trust that God’s going to get me through this week.

I see this all the time. Christian creators will drill it into your head that "you only have to win once" or push the "once saved, always saved" narrative. But the moment you fall into a season of repeated sin—when you are so drained, exhausted, and broken that you can barely pull yourself out of bed—those exact same people flip the script. They look down from their pedestals and tell you: "You aren't following God anymore. You should be ashamed." Let me make this crystal clear: Life is a continuous battleground. It is a brutal, daily struggle. You are bound to hit seasons so dark that sin feels like all you know, and God becomes your literal oxygen. I am zero percent impressed by people who wear a cross necklace just to broadcast a "perfect" life to the world. Anyone can fake a clean slate. Anyone can hide their secret battles. The people who actually impress me? - The ones who get back up, no matter the sin, the relapse, or the humiliation. - The ones who are brutally honest about their flaws and struggles. - The ones who stay consistent in the dirt, which most people are too proud to do. The greatest, most impactful people are not the ones who do it perfectly. They are the ones who remain consistent despite being imperfect. Keep fighting. Jesus loves you. 💪👑

One of the most common misconceptions that are prevalent in the lives of many beginner Christians is that all forms of secular behavior — like watching non-religious movies, listening to non-worship music, reading books that aren’t part of the Bible, etc.— are demonic. I’m here to tell you that it’s simply not true; not every piece of media that doesn’t praise God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is unclean. Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 encourages us to “be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can” and “enjoy the fruits of their labor [because] these are gifts from God.” Heck, sometimes biblical messages show up in secular content, which is the whole gist of my “Christian Scene Analysis” series. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with watching Christian content. If you prefer to only consume Christian media, that’s completely fine. I also believe we should guard our hearts, just as Proverbs 4:23 teaches. What I am trying to say is that it’s also okay to watch secular content, as long as you invite Jesus into it. Philippians 4:8 puts it well: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”