A Gift for Your Journey
An Exclusive Excerpt from
Grace in the Questions
We invite you to experience the first footsteps of this walk. Below, you will find an excerpt from Chapter One and a formative reflection designed to help you remain with the Word.
Intriduction
When the Questions Begin
Many of us know what faith is supposed to say, yet still wonder how those words reach the places where life actually presses. We receive language for God, frameworks for Scripture, practices meant to steady us, and truth sturdy enough to hold. These gifts matter. They give shape to faith and help us speak about realities too large for easy words.
Yet even true answers do not always reach the places where fear tightens, grief lingers, ambition drives, or prayer feels unanswered. In the Gospels, formation often begins more slowly. Again and again, Jesus meets people in moments of confusion and recognition, when they draw near and when they drift away, beside water, along roads, in storms, around tables, and near places of failure and grief.
Such openness can unsettle us. We know how to move from uncertainty toward resolution. We often treat questions as useful only until the right response appears. Jesus moves differently. His questions deepen conversations, drawing hidden things into the presence of grace before they are forced toward conclusion.
Many of us live here, even when we rarely say so plainly. We carry faith sincerely, yet still feel divided within. We may know the right words and still carry unanswered prayer, restless ambition, quiet fear, spiritual fatigue, grief we have not known how to name, and love tested by failure. The questions of Jesus meet us there, not as another demand to perform faith correctly, but as a merciful summons to tell the truth in his presence.
Jesus’ questions are not traps. They draw what is already present beneath the words we speak into the open. What is exposed is not meant to be corrected, defended, or explained away too quickly; it is meant to be brought before him. This is grace: Christ meeting the truth of the human heart without turning away.
The questions of Jesus return in different seasons, often with new weight. “What are you looking for?” may first meet us as a question about desire, and later as a question about ambition, exhaustion, or prayer. “Why are you afraid?” may come to us in a storm, but also in silence, loss, uncertainty, and the places where control begins to fail. “Do you love me?” may sound like restoration after failure, yet it becomes a daily call to follow again.
Across these twelve chapters, each centers on a single question from the Gospels. Most chapters center on questions Jesus speaks directly; in one place, we also listen for the searching question implied by his response. Rather than explaining the question from a distance, we enter the moment in which it is spoken or revealed: the people, the tension, the silence, the setting, and the desire or fear already stirring within the scene. Each chapter then follows the question as it exposes the heart, gathers an echo from the wider witness of Scripture, and invites one embodied response in ordinary life. God has always formed his people along the way; Jesus’ questions become another means of grace on that road.
This book is not meant to be rushed. Each chapter may be read as a meditation, a weekly practice, or a companion for prayer, journaling, or group conversation. The formation practices at the end of each chapter are not exercises to master, but invitations to remain with Jesus’ question long enough for it to meet ordinary life.
To follow Jesus is not only to learn what he taught. It is to stay near enough to be shaped by how he speaks. His questions reach into the places we would rather leave unexamined: the desires we disguise, the fears we manage, the hungers we misread, the loyalties we protect, the failures we cannot undo. What is uncovered there is met, not with contempt, but with grace.
This does not mean answers are absent. Jesus teaches. He reveals. He calls. He commands. He promises. Christian faith is not built on vagueness. But in the Gospels, Jesus himself remains the center: present, attentive, truthful, merciful, and still asking.
So the way forward is simple: let the questions do their work. Notice what they uncover. Receive what they open. Pay attention to what begins to change as you continue walking with Jesus.
You do not need to settle everything that has been named.
You are not asked to arrive.
You are given a way to follow.
Chapter One
When Desire Wakes
When the Heart Begins to Follow
Some questions pass quickly. Others stay. They follow us home, settle beside us in the evening, and return when life shifts in ways we did not expect. The first question Jesus asks in John’s Gospel is that kind of question: “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38). Belief and readiness are not where it begins. It begins with desire.
This frames the whole journey. His first words to the disciples are not a request for explanation, theological precision, or proof of sincerity. He turns toward the movement already stirring in them. Before they can name what they want, he notices that they are seeking. Here the Gospel gives us a first grammar of grace. Life with Jesus begins not in performance, not in spiritual fluency, and not even in the ability to answer well, but in the honest admission that something in us is reaching beyond itself. The question becomes the first doorway of discipleship: not a demand for certainty, but a gracious summons to bring desire honestly before him.
John places us near the Jordan the day after John the Baptist has pointed toward Jesus and said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36). Two disciples hear the words. Something in them leans forward. No decision is announced; no place in the group is requested. They simply begin walking after Jesus, close enough to keep him in sight and far enough to remain unnamed.
There is an awkward tenderness in that distance. They are near enough to be noticed but not yet bold enough to speak; drawn forward but unsure whether they belong. Their steps say what their mouths have not yet learned to say.
Then Jesus turns. That turning matters. Before they ask anything of him, he sees them. Before they know how to speak, he speaks first. The distance they have kept is not shamed, and the first small movement toward him does not have to be justified. They are not bold. They are not certain. They are not yet disciples in any finished sense. They are simply there, following with an unfinished hunger, and he meets them with a question.
“What are you looking for?”
The question awakens before it instructs. Jesus draws attention to the desire beneath their steps. He notices the fragile turning of the heart before it has strength to speak plainly. Discipleship begins here: not with a polished answer, but with a longing that has started to move toward him.
I have seen people come to faith this way more often than through a clean, dramatic moment of decision. A widower slips into the back pew because the house has become too quiet on Sunday mornings. A woman opens a Bible after another late night of work leaves her strangely empty, letting the page remain open before she knows what to ask. Someone sits through a small group with arms folded, saying very little, while a longing they cannot yet name rises beneath the resistance. A college student returns to chapel not because his questions have been settled, but because the songs have begun to tell the truth about his hunger. Faith often begins before it can explain itself.
The disciples are already moving, though they cannot yet explain what has set them in motion. Longing has drawn them onward. Scripture does not treat this as a problem to correct, but as one of the places where faith begins.
So the question meets us at the level of beginning. What has started to move in you? What longing has taken a step before your words have caught up? What hunger, ache, restlessness, or hope has quietly turned your attention toward Jesus?
Here is the grace of the first question. It receives us before we can offer a finished version of ourselves. The first movement of discipleship may be less like arriving at conviction and more like discovering that, somehow, our hearts have already begun to follow.
When the Heart Comes Into the Light
Once desire wakes, Jesus’ question begins to uncover it. “What are you looking for?” does not merely acknowledge movement; it brings the hidden center of that movement into view. It asks us to notice not only that we are seeking, but what has been guiding the search.
Most of us live at a distance from what we most deeply want. We act on desire, organize life around it, defend it, and sometimes baptize it with faithful language, yet we do not always pause long enough to recognize it. A life of steady achievement may be carried by a deeper need to matter. A crowded calendar may hide a restlessness no activity can quiet. Careful responsibility may conceal fear. Service may be tangled with the need to be needed. Even our most admirable habits can hold more than one thing at a time: love and anxiety, obedience and avoidance, generosity and hunger for approval. Jesus’ question is merciful because it does not flatten the heart into one motive. It allows honesty to emerge in layers.
Here the question becomes specific. It is not, “What should you be looking for?” It is not, “What would sound faithful if someone asked?” It is, “What are you actually seeking?” What desire has been carrying your decisions? What longing has shaped your reactions? What fear has disguised itself as wisdom, strength, or obedience?
The question is gracious but not vague. It reaches the places where our motives are mixed and our longings are not as holy as we wish they were. Yet Jesus does not begin by condemning desire. He notices it. That distinction matters. Condemnation drives the heart into hiding; the presence of Jesus draws the heart into truth. He asks where we are safe enough to be honest and known enough to stop pretending. Even tangled longing can become available to grace when it is brought before him without disguise.
A person may serve faithfully for years and slowly realize how much of that service has been held together by the fear of disappointing others. The work was not false. The love was not unreal. But beneath it, another ache had been asking to be seen. Jesus’ question makes room for that kind of truth, where grace can hold both the gift and the fear without confusing one for the other.
To bring desire into the light is not to accuse it. It is to tell the truth about what is there while refusing to turn away. The heart is seen before it is managed, corrected, or defended. Jesus’ question does not turn us into a project. It makes us available to grace.
Scripture holds this kind of seeing with quiet honesty: “Search me, O God, and know my heart…See if there is any wicked way in me” (Ps. 139:23–24). Immediate repair is not the demand. It is a willingness to be known. It trusts that what is drawn into the open can remain there without fear.
We are not used to that kind of honesty. When something in us comes into view, our instinct is to fix it, defend it, spiritualize it, or move past it quickly. We may turn confession into a project plan. We may try to explain the ache before we have allowed ourselves to feel it. But urgency can pull us away from the slower work of formation. Jesus’ question creates another kind of space. It allows desire to be seen before we try to manage it.
Patterns begin to appear. We see where we reach for control, where we look for affirmation, where we avoid being known, and where we confuse comfort with peace. The light tells the truth without turning truth into shame. And Jesus stays near. He stays close enough for truth to remain within relationship.
At this point, the work is not to change desire by force. It is to see it truthfully. The disciples have followed. Now the question lets their longing stand in the light. What is seen in the presence of Jesus can begin to be formed. This is why honest seeing is never merely psychological. In the Gospels, truth is always relational. We are not exposing ourselves to an idea. We are being known by the One who turns toward us first.
Formation Pracrice
Noticing Desire Before You Answer
Set aside three unhurried minutes. Place both feet on the floor. Let your hands rest open, if that helps your body tell the truth. Picture the scene near the Jordan: two disciples following at a distance, Jesus turning toward them before they know what to say.
Ask his question slowly: “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38). Do not reach first for the answer that sounds most faithful. Let the real desire surface, even if it is mixed: peace, approval, control, relief, belonging, recognition, safety, or simply a place to begin again.
Choose one specific moment from the past twenty-four hours: answering a message, entering a room, making a decision, reacting to criticism, reaching for your phone, or saying yes when you were already tired. Look at that moment gently. What were you seeking there?
Now hear the invitation that follows the question: “Come and see” (John 1:39). Imagine bringing that particular desire one step closer to Jesus. Do not repair it first. Do not explain it away. Let it be seen where grace can begin to form it.
Reflective Questions
What am I looking for today, not what sounds faithful, but what is actually shaping my choices?
Where did that longing show itself most clearly in the last day: in a reaction, a silence, a hurry, or a need to be seen?
What would it mean to bring that desire near Jesus before I correct, explain, or hide it?
Breath Prayer
Inhale: Jesus, you see what I seek.
Exhale: Draw my desire toward you.
Closing Invitation
Choose one ordinary moment today before reacting, explaining, entering a room, or saying yes when you are already tired. Pause there and ask, “What am I looking for?”
Let the real desire come honestly before Jesus. Walking with him begins here: not with a fully formed answer, but with the heart turning toward the One who has already turned toward us.