If there is one axiom I come back to more than any other—one I find myself saying out loud when things start to tilt—it’s this:

Jesus is with me.

Not it’s not over.
Not if I die, I die.

Those are good words. They’ve got grit in them. But this one goes deeper.

This one holds.

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When I’m over my skis.
When the diagnosis lands and everything shifts in a moment.
When a relationship fractures in ways I didn’t see coming.
When the darkness gets loud and starts telling its stories—

There is one truth that can carry the full weight of that moment:

Jesus is with me.

Because when that is true—and it is—what else is there?

What nightmare, what victory, what valley, what fire could possibly outshine the simple, steady reality of what He said:

“Lo, I am with you always.”

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About That Word

Now I know—lo doesn’t technically mean what I want it to mean.

It means behold.
Pay attention.
Look here.

But when I hear it, I can’t help it—I think of low places.

I think of valleys.
I think of those stretches of life where you can’t see ten feet ahead of you, where the road drops out and you’re left feeling your way forward.

And somehow… He’s there too.

I don’t know how this day is going to work out—but Jesus is with me.
I’ve got that conversation I’ve been putting off—but Jesus is with me.
I don’t know how the end of my story will unfold—but Jesus is with me.

That’s the secret hiding in plain sight at the end of the Great Commission.

We read the command—go, make disciples, baptize, teach—and then we tend to rush right past the final line, as if it were a closing formality instead of the whole foundation:

“And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:20

It’s not our talent that carries us.
It’s not our intellect, or our abilities, or our strength—or even our best intentions.

It’s not our looks—thank the Lord.

The secret is the traveling companion.

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One Word

There’s a story about G.K. Chesterton that I’ve never been able to shake.

He was stopped on a London street corner by a reporter who asked him:

“If the risen Christ appeared right now and stood behind you—what would you do?”

Chesterton didn’t hesitate. He looked him in the eye and said:

“He is.”

That’s it.

Not a theological argument.
Not a carefully framed answer.

Just a quiet correction of reality.

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Waking Up to What’s Already True

Teresa of Ávila, a 16th-century nun who spent her life learning how to pray, wrote these words in The Interior Castle:

“We know quite well that God is present in all that we do.
Our nature is such that it makes us lose sight of the fact.
But the Lord, who is near at hand, awakens it.”

That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?

We don’t conjure His presence.
We don’t summon Him with the right tone or the right words.

We wake up to it.

This isn’t magic.
It’s memory.

It’s the soul shaking itself awake to what is already, permanently, unchangeably true.

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Say It Out Loud

There is no mountain, no fire, no villain, no diagnosis, no setback, no conflict that I will ever face alone.

Not because of who I am—

—but because of the One who is with me.

So when the day comes apart—and it will—say it out loud.

Say it in the car when you’re gripping the steering wheel a little too tight.
Say it when the phone rings and you already know it’s not good news.
Say it when you feel like you’re fading, like you’re disappearing into the noise of everything.

Say it until your heart catches up with your words:

Jesus is with me.

Not as a wish.
Not as a hope.

As a fact.

Lo. He is.

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A Prayer

Jesus—

You said it plainly, and You meant it:
I am with you. Always.

Not until it gets too hard.
Not until we fail one too many times.
Not until we wander too far.

Always.

Teach us to live inside that word.
To say Your name in the dark and mean it.
To stop looking for You somewhere out ahead,
and realize You are already here—

already with us,
already enough.

Amen.

We can approach Him. To do so is to be rescued from the typical  and baptized into the extraordinary. We can come boldly because He replaced the burden of our shame with the throne of grace. May we not miss the bliss of God’s pleasure and purpose in our calling. We can run to him for mercy in our time of need. Unlike some who treat God as an angry tyrant, we know the truth. He is Abba, our loving Father. He is both perfect and good. Again, we can approach Him.

Perhaps the greatest mystery is when we realize that God wants us, as profoundly flawed as we are, to approach Him. The greatest adventure known to man is revealed when we say, “I want to know Him.” Our hearts yearn for His advent, and we are captivated by his holy purpose in our lives. Every step we take toward the sunset of our days will bring us closer to him. “Come close to God and He will come close to you.” Again, approachable. 

And what devastates every smallish notion of God is this: The God who created everything-the One who crowned Kilimanjaro with snow and taught each cardinal to fly, is approachable.

This is the mystery of our Great Divine Savior.

We can approach him in our grief, joy, shame, destitution, poverty, ecstasy, loneliness, or thanksgiving. We were created to approach, to enter into the gravitational pull of the glory surrounding His presence. But we must come to him as little… always little. When we come little, His glory is seen as great and exalted.

Beware: Approaching Him is not safe. We approach through sandpaper corridors that rub out all the things that we once held dearly. But the closer we get, the more we realize the shaping brings transcendence and purpose which is what our hearts yearn to find.

Some hide out in the far reaches of the garden like Adam, grasping for fig leaves and folly. The fallen world instinct betrays us. We labor in our workshops, sweating away, trying to construct our own significance. It’s a fool’s occupation.

Do not hide.

Approach.