Perhaps the biggest threat to thriving is apathy.

Have you found this to be true?

Stop reading your Bible and your hunger for it dissipates.

Stop listing gratitude and it’s harder to find gift in the hard.

Stop praising God and fear settles in.

Stop praying and God feels farther away.

Stop investing in your marriage and it begins to fray.

Stop your workout rhythm and it’s difficult to pick it back up.

Stop your healthy eating habits and old cravings come back.

The law of inertia comes into play when we pause forward momentum in anything. We either keep learning, growing, becoming–or our gains begin to dissolve.

There is no stand-still.

It’s forward or backward.

Growth or regression.

Thriving or declining.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

We enter autumn a bit unsteady. Feeling behind but also needing soul stillness. Burning candles as we grasp for inner peace.

So for both you and I, here are ten fall-back-on truths to anchor us this autumn season.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

That longing you can’t silence for community–to know and be known–is neither superficial or selfish. It’s the evidence of God’s heart for you.

Belonging wasn’t your idea first. It was His. Before the first created man had breath in his lungs, God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit existed in perfect community. As Jennie Allen says, “Our God has been relational forever. It means that He created us out of relationship for relationship.”

And we feel it sharply when we’re out of sync with God’s design. While we’re created for community, many walk around feeling lonely. No matter the number of people in our periphery, aloneness is often internal. Even in a crowd of people, many feel like an outsider.

Perhaps that’s how you feel today. Like few know the actual you. Like you’re the only one without a “best friend.”

Researchers tell us the percentage of people without close friends is rising at a concerning rate. But it’s not a statistic when it’s your own life. Your own ache.

You might downplay what’s missing by staying busy. Filling your life with God-honoring activity. Trying to grow “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). But still you crave relational depth . . . and there’s a reason why.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.

2. For my top friendship deepening tips–applicable to both neighbor and non-neighbor friendships–grab the free download HERE.

3. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

We’re hearing ripples of revival. Seeing fresh hunger for God in unexpected places. Feeling the stirring within our own souls.

God is on the move, as always. But we’re noticing it now.

The cracks in our culture—the very things that deeply grieve us—let the light of Christ in. Light is always brightest when the dark is darkest. And isn’t it like God to bring uncontainable hope alongside the hard-to-reconcile and still-being-redeemed?

The holy rumble of God’s kingdom coming here “on earth as it will be in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) begs the question: how do we fan the fire?

What will keep our hearts expectant? How can we nurture this new hunger for God?

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

I see it in your eyes that can’t mask the tiredness, hear it in the cracks in your voice, feel it with you in the hurried steps and anxious scrolling: life feels fractured. Unsteady. At times, unfathomable.

We quiet our questions, assuming God sees coming redemption before we can glimpse it. But we can’t hush the disquiet in our souls. Is there a way to thrive no matter what life throws our way? To grow resilience that keeps hope alive?

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.
2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

Grace is a trust equation: our nothing plus God’s everything equals ripple-effect redemption.

God’s grace, according to my friend Jennifer Sakata–and host of Living the Grace Life Podcast–“is that forward movement that restores connection and rebuilds relationships.” How perfectly this line summarizes 2 Corinthians 5:19!

It is central to our good news that God was in the Anointed making things right between Himself and the world. This means He does not hold their sins against them. But it also means He charges us to proclaim the message that heals and restores our broken relationships with God and each other.

The Voice

There’s better up ahead—relational wholeness between God and us, us and others–and grace gets us there.

Links mentioned:

1. Grab the Enneagram Neighboring Lists (available both as phone wallpaper and as a printable pdfs).
2. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.
3. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

An others-first mentality seems rare these days. Maybe that’s why “charity of the heart,” as Paul describes it, always makes my gratitude list (1 Cor. 8:1). Life can feel like a race in slow motion, where making space for someone else comes at a cost.

But you and I get to be the sort of people who normalize uncommon rhythms–like noticing the people in front of us, getting to know our neighbors, and building others up.

We are those who love because we’re outrageously loved (1 John 4:19). Who serve because we copy the One who serves us (Matthew 20:28). Who go lower, not higher. Who build up, not tear down, each other with our words. Who let others go ahead while we look out for their blind spots.

Have you caught the shift in your heart when you put someone else first?

Making someone else’s day makes yours better too.

Encouraging someone else lifts your spirit as well.

Building others up also builds you up.

But perhaps you need some fresh ideas, relevant to your life and your neighborhood. Here are eight practical ways to build up others.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.

2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.

To the one doing the work while someone else gets promoted.

To the one diligently practicing, who hasn’t been picked yet.

To the one quietly faithful, serving in selfless and unseen ways.

To the one holding up the team but never getting credit for it.

To the one behind the brilliant ideas, the one always building others up, and the one quick to assume responsibility but not the praise.

To the mama making sacrifices no one will ever know about.

To the beautiful soul who carefully avoids the spotlight.

To the neighbor offering snacks, rides, toys, or encouragement, never expecting a thanks.

Here’s good news: the praise that matters most is already coming–from Him.

Links mentioned:

1. To get a short, doable tip in your inbox every week to help you get to know your neighbors, sign up HERE.

2. Read the written version of this episode HERE.