When life hits hard, your theology will surface. What you believe about God, about suffering, about grace and truth—it all rises to the top.

In this episode, Blake shares the story of his wife delivering a stillborn child. In the aftermath, God didn’t hand them answers. But He gave them something deeper: a new phase of spiritual intimacy.

His wife’s grief brought anger, doubt, and raw questions. And instead of resisting them, Blake knew his role was to provide a safe space where she could bring those things to God. Trust didn’t return all at once. It was built, slowly, brick by brick.

That’s renewal. But it’s not always pretty.

Renewal isn’t just fresh vision or passion—it’s also a painful shedding of sin, pride, and your false self.

Just because God is calling you into something new doesn’t mean it will be easy. Like a seed buried in the dirt, the process of growth can feel like death before it feels like life. But that seed, if tended, can yield a mountain of fruit.

In Romans 1, we’re told that God’s invisible qualities have been made clear through creation. But sin distorts our ability to truly know Him. That’s where Scripture steps in.

Through God’s Word and the work of the Spirit, we can begin to see clearly. Salvation is not the end of the story—it’s the beginning of a transformation.

In biblical language, it’s an apocalypse—an unveiling, a new way of seeing everything. Old habits look different. The self-centered way of life begins to unravel. And yet, the old self still has to die. Daily.

Renewal Goes Deeper Than We Think

Throughout church history, Christians have understood sin in layers. There are gross sins—the kinds that both culture and the Church historically condemned: things like murder, abuse, and exploitation.

Then there are conscious sins—greed, lust, gossip. These are the sins our culture often tolerates or even celebrates. They’re socially acceptable but spiritually corrosive.

But renewal doesn’t stop with visible sin. It pushes deeper—into unconscious sins and idols of the heart. These are the trust structures beneath our behavior: the things we rely on more than God.

That’s where real revival begins—when God puts His finger on the things no one else sees. The places we justify. The places we hide. The places that feel harmless because we’ve learned to live with them.

It’s easy to stop at external change.

“I don’t do those things anymore.” But God says, “Let’s go all the way down.” Because to be holy doesn’t just mean behaving well. It means belonging exclusively to Him.

This is why worship matters.

Everything begins with doxology. Our knowledge of God is not meant to begin with self-help or theology textbooks—it’s meant to begin with worship.

When you see God rightly, you see yourself rightly. As theologians have said for centuries: the knowledge of God leads to the knowledge of self.

That awareness—of God’s holiness, and our own sin—creates the space for true renewal.

But awareness alone doesn’t heal us.

Where you take your guilt and shame will determine whether you experience transformation. Some of us still act as if we’re made right by performance. We think we need to punish ourselves more than God ever asked. But shame can only be healed in the presence of love. The only way forward is to step out of hiding.

From the very beginning, God’s been calling out: “Where are you?”

Renewal starts with people willing to let go of control, willing to come into the light, willing to trade shame for grace and build a life on truth that will hold up, even in the dark.