There’s a Mother’s Day meme that says, “Mom, we’ve hired a few people to fill in for you while you relax on Mother’s Day.” The picture is crowded with eight people — from a taxi driver to a chef — trying to do everything a mother does! A young husband laughs at that funny meme. But then, at some point, he tries to actually fill in for his wife and do all that she does for their young children, and the meme feels more like reality.

With six kids, I used to dread our church’s women’s retreat. I can still recall the long days of warming bottles, changing diapers, getting my kids dressed, getting breakfast and lunch and dinner on the table, attempting to clean the kitchen, helping with homeschool assignments, getting to sports practices, resolving conflicts, dealing with discipline problems, and trying to comfort tears. It was nonstop from Friday to Sunday and left me exhausted. The tales of a mother still being in her pajamas by mid-afternoon were too true of me. After counting the seconds until my wife got home, I’d jokingly tell her, “Honey, I have to give you a raise.”

Don’t get me wrong: I love all six of my kids, and I love being a dad. But trying to be mom was the hardest weekend of the year for me.

Young husbands, your wife needs you to know something: While it is her great blessing and joy to be a mom, often it is also her heaviest burden. You need to know that in order to husband her well in this season of your marriage.

A text comes to mind that, while not a direct parallel to your situation, provides principles to help you become the kind of husband who helps his wife through the wonderful but tiring years with young kids. In Luke 7:11–17, a woman walks past Jesus in a large crowd during a funeral procession. Luke tells us she was a widow whose only son had just died. In the ancient world, for a woman to be deprived of both husband and son was cataclysmic. Consider what Jesus, the good shepherd, did, along with three principles from his actions that can help you better shepherd your wife.

1. See her deeply.

Luke tells us that, out of all the people in the crowd, “the Lord saw her” (Luke 7:13). I love the simplicity of that statement. Before you can shepherd anyone well, including your wife, you have to see her.

Family life gets exponentially more complicated when you start having kids. During the honeymoon phase of marriage, it’s easy to see your wife; she’s the only other person in your home. Hers is the only voice you hear. Hers are the only concerns you have to address. She’s the only person you have to please.

But once you add kids into the equation, especially if they start coming like they’re on a conveyor belt, it can be way easier to see the kids and their concerns than your wife. After all, kids are loud, not ashamed to yell until you hear them above the crowdedness of your home. They aren’t considerate; they’ll push their little bodies past your wife to stand in front of you. They don’t care about your privacy and the intimate time your marriage needs; they’ll climb into your bed right between you and your wife.

What can a husband do? Look through the crowd in your home and make sure you see — really see — your wife. Do you see a worried, weary, or defeated face? If you see anything other than a face that radiates, “I’m great!” then roll up your sleeves and get to shepherding. The maxim that compares a wife to a thermometer and a husband to a thermostat contains real wisdom. Your wife’s countenance communicates volumes about how you are shepherding her — and how she needs you to shepherd her.

2. Connect with her emotionally.

Luke adds that Jesus “had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep’” (Luke 7:13). Marriage is a wonderful gift from God (Proverbs 18:22), and children are his blessing (Psalm 127:5), but we don’t live in Eden. Outside the garden, children can bring pain, sometimes great pain. Do you try to understand what your wife is experiencing? Do you try to connect with her emotions? Or does she feel isolated and alone? Does she know that you genuinely care?

You may not have your wife’s emotional intelligence, but it will mean the world to her if she can share her deep feelings with you and know you will sincerely listen. She knows you’re not Jesus and you can’t do miracles, but does she also know that you will bear her emotional burdens with her — that she doesn’t have to carry them alone?

Don’t fall asleep every night oblivious to her struggles. Love her enough to pray for her, about her, and with her. Like a priest in the home, intercede for her and your children. Remind her that you’re there for her no matter what — and better yet, remind her that Jesus is with her.

3. Help her practically.

Finally, Luke tells us that Jesus acted (Luke 7:14). That’s what men want to do, right? Well, not always, and especially not during the season when kids are small. A lie swirls around in men’s heads that women are natural nurturers, so it’s okay to let them do all of the nurturing themselves. Don’t believe it, young husband! Go to your kids when they cry. Listen to them when they are afraid. Know when they are uncomfortable; change their diapers; burp them. Give your wife breaks. My flesh struggled with the anticipation of our church’s annual women’s retreats, but my heart rejoiced to give my wife a weekend away.

If you want to help your wife and kids grow into Christlikeness, then model Christlikeness to them. Take on his mind and consider your wife and kids as more important than yourself (Philippians 2:4–5). In giving, you will receive; in dying, you will live and rejoice. So, serve your wife well when your children are little — and when they’re big.

My six children are all young adults now. When we get together, we tell old stories and laugh. When they were small, it all seemed overwhelming financially, physically, and spiritually. But one thing I can tell you, young husbands: God is always faithful, and Jesus is always enough. The little years don’t last forever. So, enjoy God’s good gifts in your wife and children. Trust Jesus and love your wife well, especially in a crowd of young kids.

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“I just never got around to it.”

This must be one of the worst thoughts of those tormented in hell who heard the gospel in life. They passed through church doors a few times. Maybe they even admitted they were sinners. They were open to being saved — really, they were — and even planned on getting around to it. They did wish to escape the sinner’s fate and be numbered among the great seashore of the blessed; they just never got around to it. Soon — always very soon — they would finally repent of their sins and follow Christ. But death’s arrow didn’t wait.

Charles Spurgeon, preaching on 2 Corinthians 6:2 (KJV) — “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” — paints them with a trembling brush.

The great mischief of most men is that they procrastinate. It is not that they resolve to be damned, but that they resolve to be saved tomorrow. It is not that they reject Christ for ever, but that they reject Christ today; and truly they might as well reject him forever, as continue perpetually to reject him “now.”

These wretched souls missed what so many in the land of the living miss today: Christ is an urgent Savior rescuing from an imminent demise. They heard the gospel but never knew it as an earnest gospel, a gospel not promised to be offered again. They never understood, until it was altogether too late, that they frolicked through life upon a tightrope stretching across two mountain peaks with a swirling lake of fire beneath.

Were these people at all afraid? No. Though at any moment, for almost any reason, they could have plummeted to a total demise, though a slight wind could have knocked them down to their doom, though one false step could have undone them, though a single second could have unmounted them forever, they scrolled and laughed and chatted and made halfhearted resolves about tomorrow as though death could never find them and hell could never reach them today.

Though God’s very Son was offered to them, though he plunged the depths below to save them, though he would have saved them, still they would not be saved — at least not yet. These hearers lingered, halted, let the day of salvation pass by for months and years on end. “You go on ahead,” they said. “I’ll be there soon,” they promised. But death closed on them before they closed with Christ. Now was never the right time. Salvation always stood as close, yet as far, as tomorrow.

They delayed following Christ, they neglected their souls, and so they fell into a doom without mercy or relief.

Testimonies from Below

Who would do such a thing?

Who would lazily cast themselves into a lake of fire, consigning themselves to weep and gnash their teeth world without end, all because they never prioritized their own souls or received the free gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ? Who are these spiritual sluggards who starve to death because, though they touch the plate from time to time, they never bring the Bread of Life to their lips and eat? They have different names and different excuses but the same end.

Let us survey a few such characters we find in Scripture, and try to hear their testimonies rising from the other side.

Mr. Choose-His-Death (1496–1523)

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (James 4:13–14)

I knew I would die eventually, but when I would die always seemed distant. I thought seriously about the first life, never much about the next one. Always one open to religion, I vowed to myself and my Christian family to set aside time for it in years to come — when life slowed down, when I felt a midlife lull, when I wasn’t busy with other things. I fully expected to live long enough for that time to come.

With great plans and a full calendar and expectations of seeing many more tomorrows — I died. Darkness engulfed me, life abandoned me, and before I could even think, I am dying, I was gone. Gone away. Gone here. Never to leave again.

Lord Ox-and-Field (1842–1925)

A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is now ready.” But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.” And another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.” (Luke 14:16–19)

In that life, I was a successful businessman who never missed an investment opportunity, though I missed more than a few for philanthropy.

After the untimely death of a young protégé, I began to have uncomfortable thoughts about where that youthful spirit might be. I remember visiting a church once or twice and even recall weeping as I heard of the Savior who died to offer me life. But on the doorstep of greater exploration, an urgent business trip carried me away before I closed on the offer I heard. The great business of this world captured my heart; the great business of my soul I kept putting off.

I died with great wealth and much acreage — a pitiful price for a soul.

Mr. Newlywed (1939–2005)

Another said, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” (Luke 14:20)

I remember, very briefly, contemplating the claims of Jesus Christ before I married. I always meant to return. Born beyond the walls of a believing home, the claims of religion held no sway with me. I was mostly content with my own way and tried to be kind to those who were kind to me.

Yet my friend James was different. I couldn’t deny it. He said it owed to him being a follower of Jesus. Something about this man intrigued me. He invited me to study the Bible together, and I found myself touched by the Jesus of John’s Gospel. He was wise and bold and persuasive. But around that time, I met Claire. She made it clear to me from the beginning: She was not interested in religion. With marriage and kids, Jesus fell to the wayside.

After a long life together, one I then considered happy, we both died, hopelessly in love.

Ms. Never-Convinced (1955–1999)

Among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3:6–7)

I passed away mid-study.

I stood upon the door of eternal life but never crossed; lived upon the border of the promised land but never entered. All can bear witness that the Bible fascinated me in the final decade of my life.

I had a past; everyone knew it. My sins plagued me, weighed me down, and so I sought distraction in the endless pages of endless books. I don’t know. Maybe this had something to do with why I was ever bedeviled with questions and curiosities but never with decisions and faith. For my part, I assumed that the pursuit of truth stood near possessing the truth. Nearer was my word; I moved toward Jesus as an asymptote — ever nearer, never arriving.

I arrived here instead.

Sir Bury-His-Dead (1863–1915)

Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:21–22)

I wager that few men walked the earth with better posture. I took pride in being the very definition of traditional — by the book, respectful. My manners were unimpeachable; my conduct was well-ordered and duly proportioned.

Mine was the misfortune of burying both my mother and father as a younger man. I prized my father best. I can still watch his once lion-like countenance slowly wither from this world. The last words on his lips told me of his love for God and pleaded with me to follow Christ.

I had begun to investigate the teachings of Christianity with him before he died. I meant to return, but alas, mother grew sick around the same time he passed. After taking care of them, my child was born with disabilities, and my wife sank into depression. I would have followed Jesus, but family matters consumed my attention.

I was a moral man, a family man, and a most devoted son. And now . . .

Tomorrow May Be Too Late

There is no end to such haunting testimonies. Consider, these men and women were entirely insensible to the fact that their lives were held above an unending nightmare by nothing other than the sheer kindness and forbearance of God — the God they continued to ignore and offend. He held out his Son to them day by day; they refused to receive that Son every today. God’s patience was meant to lead to repentance, not away from it.

Reader, repent and believe now. Cry out to God for mercy. Plead with him to make you born again. Give him no rest until he answers. He will answer. Delay, neglect, put off no longer. Christ is an urgent Savior, ready to rescue you from imminent demise. His gospel is an earnest offer — but it has an expiration date. Today is the day of salvation. You are promised no other.

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Acts 15 records the most important meeting in the New Testament. The debate strikes at the heart of the gospel. Paul and Barnabas are brought into sharp dispute with those who want to add to the salvation Christ has purchased, and so the church in Antioch appoints them to go to Jerusalem and hash things out.

The distance between Antioch and Jerusalem is about 350 miles. It’s probably not a route marked in the back of your Bible as a “missionary journey.” Nevertheless, Luke intentionally includes this stretch of travel in the book of Acts. And instead of simply writing, “They went up to Jerusalem,” he highlights a revealing detail: Along the way, Paul and Barnabas share stories of God’s work among the Gentiles to strengthen other believers (Acts 15:2–3). They don’t use the time to criticize or stir up division; they lift the church’s eyes by testifying to God’s grace.

Over the years, I’ve tried to do the same — to make believers glad by opening their eyes to the wonder and reality that God is doing a million things in the world, and we probably know five of them (and misinterpret four).

We’re so easily discouraged by the news. And sometimes we’re even discouraged by other Christians. Our busy lives narrow our focus to the day in front of us. (As it turns out, it does have enough trouble of its own!)

But God is at work around the world in ways we can scarcely imagine. So, let me encourage you and make you glad by sharing three stories of God’s grace.

Three Hundred Missionaries

In 1978, the Kachin Baptist Convention launched a remarkable missionary effort, recruiting three hundred men and women to carry the gospel into hard places. They trained for forty days and then were sent out in teams for a three-year commitment.

I first heard about this movement while standing in front of a statue built to commemorate their work. The base of the statue is covered with the names of all three hundred missionaries. As I read the names, one of those very missionaries, Hkalam Samson, stood beside me, quietly telling me his stories.

Samson — who has himself been imprisoned on false charges of terrorism, unlawful association, and inciting opposition — pointed to a name etched in the stone and said, almost offhandedly, “Do you see that name right there? That man was raised from the dead after being stoned. You can go visit him if you’d like.”

I stared at him, stunned.

And yet — incredible as that claim is — the heart of the story isn’t the miracle. The heart of the story is that the gospel was preached and people were changed. Through the work of those missionaries, it’s believed that as many as 6,200 new believers were baptized in a single day — what may have been one of the largest baptismal services in the history of the church.

Be glad. God is at work.

Indigenous Bible Translation

In 1999, Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International recognized that, at the then-current pace of Bible translation, it would take until the year 2150 for every people group on earth to have God’s word in their own language. That may seem disheartening, but it’s not the end of the story.

Rather than relying solely on foreign workers, local churches around the world have increasingly taken up the work of translation themselves. For example, the FJKM Church in Madagascar mobilized three hundred volunteers to translate the Bible from the national Malagasy language into a range of local languages. Through this grassroots effort, four New Testament translations were completed in just five years — and four more are on the way.

Did you know there has been a 70 percent increase in indigenous translators around the world?

Be glad. God is at work.

Beating Drums and Demons

My friend’s father (let’s call him John) told me stories of how he would travel from village to village with a drum, beating it to draw a crowd. He would then preach the gospel to anyone who gathered.

In one village, two demon-possessed women began speaking out as he arrived, discussing aloud whether they should leave because, as they put it, “Jesus is here.” Before long, the village leaders came and demanded that John leave. They wanted the ancestral spirits to remain in the village. Those two women, in particular, were a source of income for the community.

John refused to back down. He cast out the demons, preached the gospel, and both women came to faith in Christ.

Be glad. God is at work.

Stoke Your Fire for God’s Global Work

Most of us don’t naturally stumble across stories like these. They don’t tend to trend. The algorithm isn’t optimized for them. But they are out there — in abundance — for those willing to look. Here are a few places to start.

Read missionary biographies. The church has a long memory, and much of it is stunning. Books like Elisabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor, Don Richardson’s Peace Child, Brother Andrew’s God’s Smuggler, John Piper’s 27 Servants of Sovereign Joy, or Ruth A. Tucker’s From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya are not just history — they are testimonies to the same Jesus who is still at work today.

You can also read books that chronicle the advance of the gospel today. I recently wrote a book, Witness, to connect the story of Acts with the work God is doing right now. Tim Keesee’s A Company of Heroes or Dispatches from the Front bring to light new stories of missionaries serving in some of the world’s hardest places. Books like these are an on-ramp for anyone who wants to see the global church with fresh eyes, to be stirred rather than just informed.

Watch films that document the work of God in the nations. I played a part in creating Jesus in Athens, a documentary chronicling the powerful ways Jesus has worked among immigrants in Greece. Frontline Missions’s series Dispatches from the Front also shows some of God’s amazing work in the far reaches of the world. These and others are available for free on streaming services.

Subscribe to missionary newsletters. Most missionaries send regular updates — honest accounts of struggle and breakthrough, of slow years and sudden harvests. Ask your church leaders for a list of supported workers, and get on their mailing lists. You will be surprised how quickly the world grows when someone you know and pray for is living among another people group for the gospel’s sake.

Let Your Heart Be Glad

Whether through these or some other means, take time to be freshly convinced that Jesus is alive and at work. Don’t let news headlines have the final word. Seek out stories of God’s grace. Testify to his work among the nations.

Like Paul and Barnabas, be glad and bring others into your joy.

Dear Michael,

It’s so good to hear from you again. It stirs my heart to hear of your thrill in discovering Christian Hedonism. Yes, we glorify God when we enjoy him! Yes, our deepest desire and God’s highest aim are in harmony. Yes, we must (but as John Piper would say, not that kind of must) pursue our joy in him.

I, too, experienced the freedom of these truths like the first sunrise over Eden. It is all too good not to be true.

Yet you say a question has lately haunted you: “Do I enjoy God enough?” You admit that thinking about God sometimes leaves you unmoved, like “a car that can’t get traction.” Making matters worse, you find it easy, almost unavoidable, to enjoy other things. Your fiancée’s smile, In-N-Out, pickup basketball, olives (which I find baffling), even video games bring you such delight that you often feel “a fog of guilt” around enjoying them. You’re anxious that God is less glorified in you because you find satisfaction in things that aren’t God. You wonder if you need to take the chainsaw of asceticism to any pleasure that rises “too high” (whatever that means).

Let me see if I can help you by examining the logic of gratitude.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The test of all happiness is gratitude” (Orthodoxy, 74). He means no one can be hugely happy who is not hugely grateful. And Chesterton is referring to Christian happiness, the kind of happiness in God that you’re hunting. Before his conversion, Chesterton marveled at the gift of “two miraculous legs,” but he had no one to thank for them. Like his thick thighs (GKC was a big man), his gratitude remained on the ground. His delight ended with the gift, and so his happiness remained incomplete. In other words, there is an inseparable connection between deep joy and gratitude.

You remember Lewis’s word about praise? It applies equally well to gratitude, which is a particular kind of praise. “The humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praise [or thank] most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praise [or thank] least. . . . praise almost seems to be inner health made audible” (Reflections on the Psalms, 94). Paul certainly highlights the latter half of this quote in Romans 1. What are the features of the unrighteous there? They refuse to honor God “or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). Ingratitude, it seems, is a defining mark of God-ignorers, idolaters, and the generally grumpy.

But why? Why do unhappiness and ingratitude go hand in hand? The question answers itself when we consider the definition of gratitude. Gratitude is joy in the goodwill of a giver occasioned by a gift. Gratitude is a kind of happiness that begins with a gift and ends with a giver.

Imagine that every gift you receive from God (the chief among them being salvation and special revelation) is a firework. It starts out on the ground, but — unlike Chesterton’s “two miraculous legs” — it was never meant to stay there. Someone designed it to fly up into the sky and detonate in a dazzling kaleidoscope of colors. Gratitude lights the fuse; it ensures that the gift doesn’t abort on the ground but rather draws your eyes upward. Gratitude makes the gift what the Father of lights always intended it to be — a flaming arrow to heaven.

Without gratitude, both the gift and our joy remain inert. Here’s the rest of that Lewis quote: “I think we delight to [give thanks for] what we enjoy because the [thanks] not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation” (Reflections on the Psalms, 95). Without thanksgiving, we will never be anywhere near as happy in God as he means us to be. Like bungee jumping off a bridge, giving thanks takes us as deep into the gift as we can go, then bounces us back to the immovable Giver.

All this goes a long way toward explaining why, when we come to Scripture, we find an almost frantic impulse among the saints to thank God for his gifts. Their hearts especially erupt with gratitude at the gifts (and, yes, they are gifts) of his word and what he has done to save us (e.g., Psalm 9:1; 136:1–26; 119:1–176). Those who aim to be happy in God, those most filled with the Spirit of divine joy, not only give thanks often; they give “thanks always and for everything to God the Father” (Ephesians 5:20). “Always” — are you kidding? “For everything” — really? For Paul, all roads don’t lead to Rome; they all lead to God, paved in thanksgiving.

I’m reminded of your favorite book, Moby Dick, and the monomania of Captain Ahab. The man could not be distracted from the white whale. All the convoluted hallways of his mind ended on Moby Dick. No matter which way the Pequod’s prow pointed, no matter what weather heaven handed him, no matter whose company he kept, his heart’s compass always wheeled on the whale. Ahab is synonymous with obsession. And yet if we take Paul seriously, he commends an approach to gratitude every bit as locked in as Ahab.

Why? Because Paul knows gratitude goes right to the core of being happy in God. They cannot be separated. The man says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18). Notice the direct connection between joy and thanks. He makes the ultimate object of this joy explicit elsewhere: “Rejoice in the Lord always. . . . In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:4–6). In both cases, Paul commends thank-filled prayers as a means of actively rejoicing in God. The irrepressible muttering of genuine joy is thanks.

Do you see what this means? If gratitude gets right near what it means to rejoice in the Lord, and if gratitude is always occasioned by a gift, then joy in God and joy in his gifts are not at odds. Godwardness and giftwardness do not compete when gratitude tethers them together. As we would expect, Paul beats us to the punch here: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). It turns out, we need not reconcile gifts with the Giver since they are already fast friends. Idolatry may try to separate them, but idolatry cannot survive in a heart full of Godward gratitude.

When you receive God’s gifts with gratitude, two things happen. First, you are positioned to receive them as God intended. We have a whole instruction manual for God’s gifts in his word: sex, but only if you have a ring; wine, but not to drunkenness; food, but not to gluttony; work, but with rest. All things within their limits, governed by your conscience, the good of others, and glory (Romans 14:5; 15:1–21; 1 Corinthians 10:23–31). Only those far too easily pleased, not nearly hedonistic enough, ignore God’s designs and guidelines. But within those boundaries, guided by love, go hog wild.

Second, your enjoyment of the gift never ends with the gift (even when the gift is God’s word and ways). Yes, you should enjoy the thing simply for what it is — as God intended. But gratitude ensures the delight never ends there. Gratitude elevates your delight to the Giver. And here’s where God’s design is truly breathtaking. All his gifts are anamnetic: They remind us of him. Their goodness is a glimpse of his, their truth an inkling of his, their beauty a beam of his. Your fiancée’s smile is a miniature of God’s gigantic joy. And because all God’s gifts taste of God, because each one uniquely declares his glory, because they bear the fingerprints of that right hand at which there are forever pleasures, because they smell like Eden, they all can and should lead us to marvel at God himself. Godly gratitude always ends in adoration.

This brings us back full circle to Chesterton. Even before he found God, he realized everything around him was a gift. But of course, reason demands that gifts must have a Giver. A gift without a giver is just as insane as a son without a father, a story without an author, or magic without a magician. For Chesterton, to recognize the gift as a gift infallibly led him to the Giver. And that’s exactly how God designed the world to work.

So, maybe your wheels have been spinning on God because you’ve been ignoring his gifts as gifts. Lewis reminds us that the good things of this world give us “‘bearings’ on the Bright Blur,” who is God, making him “brighter but less blurry” (Letters to Malcolm, 122). The normative way God designed us to enjoy him is through his gifts — his world, his word, his work, and his people, mediated by his Spirit.

Brother, you can’t escape God’s gifts. He plunged you into a world full of them. You eat gifts, breathe gifts, listen to gifts, love gifts, walk on gifts, play in gifts, work with gifts, laugh at gifts, live by gifts. Every day, all day, you encounter nothing but gifts from God. So fully enjoy God’s gifts for what they are: gifts, not God. Then let gratitude rocket your joy sky-high. Let thanksgiving consummate your delight in the Giver.

For the sake of your joy and God’s glory, next time you find your wheels spinning on the question, “Do I enjoy God enough?” try giving it some traction by asking, “How can I be more Captain-Ahab grateful?”

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