People can sometimes talk as though becoming a Christian magically changes life’s difficulty setting from Nightmare to Easy. As if, when you give your life to Jesus, the birds start singing and every parking space you need becomes available. The trouble is, Jesus never promised Easy mode.

Life before Jesus is hard. Life with Jesus is hard too. Following Christ does not remove every temptation or painful Thursday afternoon. In some ways, it reveals battles you did not know needed fighting. I was talking about this recently with a guy from church when a sentence came out of his mouth that I have not been able to shake:

“It’s a battle, but it’s a better battle.”

I’ve got some exciting news.

Rough Around the Halo can now live on your phone or tablet like an app.

No App Store. No Google Play. No downloading 247MB of something just so you can read the latest article.

You can now save rougharoundthehalo.com directly to the Home Screen of your iPhone, iPad or Android device. You’ll get the Rough Around the Halo icon alongside your other apps, and one tap takes you straight to the site.

It means the latest articles, devotionals and whatever else I decide to inflict on the internet are never more than a tap away.

Church should be one of the safest places in the world.

It should be where wounded people find healing, lonely people find family and those carrying heavy burdens find people willing to help, and at its best, it totally is. Sadly, sometimes the place that should help us heal becomes the place where we are hurt.

Church hurt cuts deeply because the people who wound us are often the same people we trusted to protect us. We prayed together, worshipped together and may have shared parts of our lives that almost nobody else knew about.

If someone is rude to you in Tesco, you can avoid that checkout for a while. When someone hurts you while claiming to represent Jesus, it can leave you wondering whether Jesus is safe.

Christians are exceptionally good at being serious.

We know how to serve, sacrifice, persevere, pray, fast, give, carry burdens and keep going when things get difficult. Ask a Christian how their week has been and there’s a decent chance the answer will be, “Busy.” We say it with a strange mixture of exhaustion and accomplishment, as though busyness somehow validates the previous seven days. I’m absolutely shattered, therefore I have used my time wisely.

But ask someone what they’ve done purely because they enjoyed it and suddenly we can become a bit awkward. I know I can

There are Sundays when church feels like home. Then there are Sundays when getting through the door feels like a spiritual version of Total Wipeout. The foyer is loud, an enthusiastic welcomer is approaching with both arms open, and somebody on stage says the 6 most terrifying words in modern Christianity: “Turn to the person beside you.”

When your mind is already fighting you, church can feel like one more place where you are failing. I have lived through depression and panic attacks. I know it is possible to love Jesus, believe deeply in the church and still find your mind refusing to cooperate. Sometimes belief is not the thing you have lost. You have lost the capacity to participate in all the ways church normally expects.

So what do we do when mental illness and church stop feeling compatible?

A little while ago I wrote an article called Does God Change His Mind? Yes, No, Maybe? I finished it reasonably happy with where I’d landed. Then my brain did what my brain tends to do and found another problem.

If God knows everything, if He doesn’t change His mind in the way that we do, and if His character is the same yesterday, today and forever, what are we supposed to do with those moments in Scripture where God announces judgement… and then doesn’t do it? Because He knew He wasn’t going to do it. And if God knew He wasn’t going to do the thing He said He was going to do, surely what He said was… a lie?

Obviously, I’m not foolish enough to suggest God is a liar. Apart from being a fairly catastrophic theological hill to die on, Jesus describes Himself as the way, the truth and the life. Titus tells us God does not lie. Hebrews goes further and says it is impossible for God to lie. So I’m fairly confident the problem isn’t with God. Which means, rather inconveniently, it might be with my argument.

But the argument seems logical. God knows the future. God says something will happen. God knows it won’t happen. It doesn’t happen. Therefore God said something He knew wasn’t true. Surely that’s lying… right?

Nothing makes a room full of Christians suddenly fascinated by their own shoelaces quite like somebody saying, “Let’s talk about money.” We’ll happily discuss beasts in Revelation and whether drums are biblical, but mention bank accounts and everyone braces for an offering thermometer and urgent references to the church roof.

It’s often said that, after the kingdom of God, money and possessions were Jesus’s most talked-about subject. The exact ranking depends on how we categorise his parables, but the point stands: Jesus returned to money because it competes for our trust.

Money moves far beyond currency. Most of us exchange forty hours or more every week—chunks of our limited lives—for it. We once received scraps of metal and paper; now we get a number on a screen which shrinks after Tesco and a strange noise from the boiler.

There is a dangerous moment in many Christian conversations. Someone tells us something painful. Their marriage is falling apart. Old trauma has resurfaced. Their mental health is unravelling. They are frightened by something happening in their body.

We care. We want to help. Then, somewhere between, “I’m so sorry,” and, “Let me pray for you,” we accidentally appoint ourselves marriage counsellor, trauma specialist, medical consultant and, occasionally, minor prophet.

Christians are capable of extraordinary compassion and extraordinary confidence after one podcast and half a book. Give us a Bible, a mug of tea and somebody in distress, and we feel an irresistible need to produce an answer.

It comes from a good place. But you can assemble an IKEA wardrobe with a loving heart and still put the doors on backwards. Sincere advice can also cause damage when it travels beyond our ability

A while ago, I wrote an article called God Doesn’t Need, You But He Wants You based on a song I’d written called You Don’t Need. It was about a truth I find both deeply humbling and wonderfully freeing: God doesn’t need us, but He absolutely wants us.

Today, I felt compelled to reflect on another one of my songs. This one’s slightly older. I wrote it just under a year ago, and it’s called Let the Father Speak (Listen Here).

The song came out of something I’ve had to learn and re-learn more times than I’d care to admit: I am very good at asking God to speak while simultaneously making it almost impossible for me to hear Him.

I can pray, “Lord, would You speak to me?” and then give the Creator of the universe approximately twelve seconds before checking my phone. Nothing yet, Lord? Fair enough. Instagram it is.

But Let the Father Speak isn’t really a song asking a reluctant God to say something. It’s about learning to quiet a noisy, striving heart long enough to listen. Because God has always been a speaking God.

A few weeks ago, my mate Andy, an elder in one of our church plants in North Wales, was telling me about a book he read about a fella called John Harper.

I came home, and as I read more I was blown away. I mean…wow…what a guy!

Harper was a 39-year-old Scottish Baptist pastor, a widower and father to six-year-old Annie Jessie, known as Nana. In April 1912, he boarded the Titanic with Nana and Jessie Leitch, who helped care for her. They were travelling to Chicago, where he had been invited to preach.

On the night of 14 April, the Titanic struck an iceberg. What he did next is a remarkable example of devotion to Christ.

God knew when to stop creating.

Michelangelo knew when to put down his chisel and declare that David was finished.

Leonardo da Vinci is a less convincing example. He appears to have kept fiddling with the Mona Lisa for years. You can almost hear someone saying, “Leonardo, mate, the smile is fine. Put the brush down.” Perhaps he belongs with the rest of us.

Because we are often rubbish at knowing when enough is enough.

We squeeze another commitment into a groaning diary. We carry responsibilities after the season has ended. We continue working on things that were perfectly good three hours ago. We say yes because there is a need, a gap or an awkward silence in which nobody else volunteered.

Then we stagger home exhausted and ask God to bless the life we constructed without consulting him.

If I could go back ten years and give myself some advice about raising teenagers, I wouldn’t tell myself a thing. Because if I’d known what was coming, I’d probably have moved into the shed.

There are extreme sports, and then there is raising teenagers. Skydiving. Base jumping. Free climbing. White-water rafting. All activities involving significant risk, occasional screaming and the possibility of wondering why on earth you agreed to this in the first place. Amateurs. Try innocently saying something to a teenager and discovering that, unbeknown to you, you’ve just wandered into an emotional minefield. “It’s not funny!” “You’re being mean!” “What? What did I say?” Apparently this is the wrong question. So in an attempt to defuse this emotional landmine you try explaining what you meant. Wrong button. Perhaps humour will defuse the situation. Definitely the wrong button. You defend yourself. Worse. You offer a hug. Absolutely not. Eventually parenting becomes the emotional equivalent of pressing random buttons on a nuclear reactor and hoping one of them turns the alarm off before the whole thing goes critical.

Christians have never agreed about everything.

Give two believers a Bible, a pot of coffee and enough time, and eventually they will disagree about spiritual gifts, women preaching, what heaven is like, whether Christians should drink alcohol, and whether the latest controversial politician is the Antichrist or merely an unpleasant prat.

Some disagreements matter enormously. Others matter, but not enormously. Some barely matter at all, although you would never know it from the number of angry Facebook comments they generate.

The challenge is knowing the difference.

Exhaustion is a surprisingly convincing liar.

It doesn’t simply make us tired. It distorts how we see ourselves, other people and God. Temporary feelings begin to sound like permanent facts. Minor problems become catastrophes. By 10:30 p.m. we’re considering quitting our job, leaving the church and moving to a cottage in Scotland where nobody can ask us to organise anything ever again.

When we’re rested, we can recognise that our thoughts may be slightly dramatic. When we’re exhausted, every thought arrives wearing an expensive suit and carrying a clipboard, with all the confidence of Harvey Specter from Suits.

“You’re a fool if you cant see this is true,” it says. But quite often it’s persuasion far from true.

There is a certain glory to a good beard.

Some are majestic, cultivated with patience and wisdom. Others look like someone fell face first on the floor of the barbers and hoped for the best. And when you picture the great men of faith, it’s hard not to imagine spectacular facial furniture. Moses? Definitely beard. John the Baptist? Surely he needed a risk assessment for his wild whiskers!

Now, before anyone gets twitchy, this is not a theology of beards. And just to be clear, this is not an attack on young men. It is an encouragement towards godly manhood. Not a finger pointed in condemnation, but a hand of brotherhood extended by a middle-aged geezer who wishes he had learned some of this stuff much sooner in life.

But here’s the point: facial hair is not the same thing as maturity

Some questions sound simple until you actually try to answer them. Then you realise they are less like a tidy little theological puzzle and more like trying to untangle Christmas lights that were clearly packed away by someone who wants to make you suffer. Too soon for a Christmas reference?

“Does God change his mind?” is one of those questions, so don’t expect me to have a nice tidy completely satisfactory answer in this short article, but I’m going to give it a crack anyway.

You see, in number of places in the Bible, God seems to change course. Moses prays, and God relents from judgment. Nineveh repents, and God does not bring the disaster Jonah preached about. Hezekiah prays, and his life is extended. There are moments where God seems to respond, reconsider, relent, and act differently because people pray, repent, or cry out to him.

But then, on another page, the Bible says God does not change. “I am the Lord, and I do not change” in Malachi 3:6. “God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind” in Numbers 23:19. Then Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

So which is it?

Most of us would never claim to be the centre of the universe. It doesn’t take long to notice that an annoyingly large amount of it keeps failing to organise itself around our preferences.

The traffic is too slow. The coffee is too weak. The weather is too hot, or too cold. The sermon is too long. The worship is too loud or not loud enough. The person sitting in front of us has raised both hands and is now blocking the words on the screen (I think I’m often that guy for those sat behind me).

Even our prayers can sound as though God has been invited into our story as a supporting character. His role is to open doors, remove difficulties, improve our circumstances and help the plot reach the ending we had already chosen.

There is only one small problem…You are not the main character!

There are few things in life better than a BBQ on a beautiful day. Mates in the garden, burgers on the grill, an ice-cold beer in hand, and one man standing proudly over the flames like he’s finally found his calling. It’s legit the only kind of cooking most fellas actually want to do. Put the same man in a kitchen and he’s “just keeping out of the way.” Put him in front of a BBQ with a set of cheap BBQ tools and suddenly he’s Gordon Ramsay in cargo shorts.

And honestly, I’m here for it.

There is a famous moment in The Apprentice when Lord Sugar leans forward, points across the boardroom, and says, “You’re fired.”

In that world, being fired means you’re out. Opportunity gone. Dream over. Time for the awkward taxi ride home while pretending this was all part of your “personal growth journey.”

But Acts 2 gives us a very different kind of fired…

I love church planting. I love the vision. I love the faith. I love the stories of lives transformed, communities reached, and new gospel communities established in places that desperately need them. Church planting matters because people matter. Every church plant represents the hope that more people might hear the gospel, more disciples might be made, and more worship might rise to God from places where it previously did not.

But there is a side of church planting that rarely gets talked about.