One year ago today, I launched brandonjadams.com.

Unexpectedly, it launched me. My sanctification.

At first, the blog was a disaster. I just chuckle at some of my old posts (a lot of them have been polished since then). Scattered, dense, overthought, narrative jukes that could send even the tightest reader spinning off a cliff. I discovered very quickly that classic blogging tip: come back to a finished article two days later, read it over again with frsh eyes, and you’ll be in a position to make it twice as good.

Of course, the moment I realized that, the commitment angle raised its head. Suddenly it was hard to keep up, hard to maintain the enthusiasm. I’d get a great idea in my head while I drove around delivering pizzas, and of course the moment I found a keyboard it would sink back into the cerebellum, reluctant to be pulled back out. I’d coax it and plead with it and retrieve it piece by piece like a frozen piece of string cheese, but it would never be as epic as first conceived. How discouraging. Most of the winter and spring saw me underperform in the number of posts I wrote.

Then there was the small matter of being relevant, being relatable, being something that  a reader could walk away with and apply in their daily lives. And coming up with a decent title – enough to reveal the subject, not enough to give away the entire blog – which is half the battle of any post. And self-promotion, firm yet tasteful. And good site design. And guest posts. And SEO. And…

…I’m boring you.

Okay. Here’s the most interesting part.

Satan.

The man loves to lie.

Who do you think you are, Brandon? You aren’t smart enough, experienced enough, authoritative enough, to do this. You haven’t been to Bible school. This is incredibly pretentious of you. Leave the teaching to your pastors. After all, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Just quit.

All the time. Week after week.

But the week after that, it might be:

You’re timid. Cowardly. Withholding your best ideas. Your audience has gotten bored with you and they’re just too polite to tell you. But you can’t get too bold because then other people might leave. Just quit.

And sometimes it’s:

You just suck wastewater as a writer. Not enough metaphors, not enough indirection, not enough grace. You’re as blunt and boring as a hammer. You’ll never be as good as (insert epic Christian author here). And do you even have your exegesis squared away? This is all a lot of pressure. Just quit.

See a pattern?

Funny how Satan contradicts himself. He never sticks to one line. As an old saint at my church put it, “Satan’s weakness is overplaying his hand.” He gives himself away by throwing around illogical thoughts and hoping that we don’t notice, or that we won’t be able to distinguish his voice from our own.

Because that voice could be me. Satan has bludgeoned, harassed, accused, and pestered me enough over the years to where part of me has started sounding like him. This often happens in our younger years. It’s a sinister scheme, designed to deflect us from what God wants us to do.

What’s so sinister is that he isn’t entirely wrong. I could be pretentious. I could be timid. People might leave. And I’ll certainly never be the church’s best writer. This is all true. After all, the most effective lies are the ones with a little truth mixed in.

I do not say all this to fish for praise. Far be such an ungodly motive from me. I renounce it in Jesus’ name and give it no claim to my life. All glory to him.

I’m just saying this out of joy that God, during my blogging journey, is revealing the solution: him. Spend more time with him. Hear from him. Know his language by reading his Scriptures. And when Satan handily provides us with his agenda, turn straight into the wind. Walk against it. Bring the lies of Satan before God’s feet, and ask him what to do with them.

I want to know what he thinks of me. Only there will life be found.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)