Knowing Him Daily

05.March.2026

Five days in. And if you have been honest with yourself through this process, really honest, you are probably starting to feel it, like going to the gym. Not just the encouragement, but the weight of it. The internal confrontation of looking at your own life and asking hard questions. That is not condemnation. That is the Holy Spirit doing exactly what He promised He would do. Stay with it. This is where things get real.

Today we are talking about relationships. Specifically the ones that are either propelling you forward or quietly pulling you under. But before we go there I want to start somewhere a little closer to home. Because before you can honestly evaluate what is growing around you, you have to be willing to look at what is growing in you.

What are you doing in your private moments?

Can I be transparent with you for a moment?

I have enough going on in my own life that distraction is not a distant, it is a daily reality. And since I am being completely honest, there are days when I have to stop and ask myself a question that does not feel comfortable to sit with. How serious am I really? About Him. About His Word. About actually slowing down long enough to get quiet and hear His voice instead of just filling every available moment with noise and motion and the next thing on the list.

Because here is what I have learned about myself. I can talk about faithfulness. I can write about it. I can encourage someone else toward it with complete sincerity. And still find myself at the end of a day realizing I never actually stopped long enough to let Him get a word in edgewise.

That is not a confession I make lightly. But it is a true one.

I have had to challenge myself. Not my readers, not the people around me, myself. To follow through. To show up to the secret place not out of obligation or routine or because I know I should, but because my relationship with Him actually depends on it. Relationships do not survive on good intentions. They require presence. They require time. They require choosing the other person even when a hundred other things are competing for your attention.

He deserves that from me. And if I am being honest, so do you. Because what I pour out here is only as rich as what I am taking in there. In the quiet. In the Word. In the moments when I put everything else down and let Him be enough.

So if you are struggling to be consistent, if distraction is winning more days than you would like to admit, you are not alone. I am right there with you, working it out one day at a time, choosing Him again even when I did not choose Him well yesterday.

That is what faithfulness actually looks like from the inside.

“He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much.” Luke 16:10, NKJV

Faithfulness in private is the root of everything that becomes visible in public. You cannot separate them. What you are doing in the secret place, in the quiet moments, in the undisciplined corners of your day, that is what eventually shows up in your relationships, your calling, your fruit. Proverbs 23:7 says as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Your private world is shaping your public one whether you are paying attention to it or not.

And here is where the anointing enters the conversation.

Isaiah 10:27 tells us the anointing breaks the yoke. Acts 10:38 tells us that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and He went about doing good. The anointing is not a feeling you chase on a Sunday morning and lose by Monday afternoon. It is the permanent, yoke-breaking, life-changing power of God that lives in you and should be evident in the way you move through every single day. It should be said of you the way it was said of Jesus, that you went about doing good because God was with you.

But here is what nobody tells you. The anointing has an attitude. And it is not a passive one.

What Paul had was great. What we have is even greater. We are not operating under the old covenant trying to earn what God promised, we are living under the new covenant with the Holy Spirit Himself living inside us. That is not small. That is not something to be timid about. That requires a confident attitude, not in yourself, but in whose you are and what His blood purchased for you. His blood put you in position. Your confidence is not in your track record or your consistency or how well you performed this week. It is in what He already did. You take that by faith and you hold onto it in love.

But confidence without conviction is just noise. Daniel 6 tells us that Daniel had an excellent spirit. He was disciplined. He had absolutes in his life that he was not willing to negotiate regardless of the cost, and he did not wait until the pressure came to decide what he stood for. He had already decided in his private moments long before Darius ever signed that decree. That is the kind of conviction that holds when everything around you is trying to get you to compromise.

We cannot live undisciplined. We cannot live without convictions. And we absolutely cannot afford to be ungrateful.

Ungratefulness stifles the anointing. Read that again. “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 

1 Thessalonians 5:18, NKJV Everything. Not just the easy things, not just the answered prayers and the good days, but everything. Gratitude is not a feeling you wait on, it is a posture you choose. And when you choose it consistently it keeps the anointing flowing in your life in a way that nothing else can replicate.

Now. With all of that established, let’s talk about who you are doing life with.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” Matthew 7:1-2, NKJV We are not called to judge hearts. That is God’s territory and we need to stay out of it. But in that same passage Jesus said something that does not get quoted nearly as often: “You will know them by their fruits… Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” Matthew 7:16, 20, NKJV Not by their intentions. Not by what they say about themselves. By their fruit.

There is a significant difference between judging a heart and inspecting fruit. One is overstepping. The other is wisdom. And God expects us to walk in wisdom especially when it comes to who we allow close access to our lives, our assignment, and our faith.

“Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.” Luke 6:44, NKJV You do not have to be harsh about it. You do not have to make an announcement. You simply have to be honest with yourself about what you are seeing. Because what surrounds you shapes you whether you intend for it to or not.

“He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” Proverbs 13:20, NKJV That word companion is not talking about the people you encounter or the hurting ones God sends across your path. It is talking about your inner circle. The voices that speak into your life on a regular basis. Those voices matter because over time they become part of how you think, how you see yourself, and how you see God.

This is not permission to write people off or stop loving the ones who are hard to love. You can love someone deeply, pray for them faithfully, and still recognize that they do not belong in your inner circle right now. Reaching the hurting and protecting your assignment are not opposites. They coexist. They must.

So today the challenge is twofold. First, what are you doing in your private moments? Be honest. That is where the real fruit inspection has to start, with yourself, before you ever look at anyone else. Second, take one close relationship and hold it up to the light. Not to condemn, not to cut and run, but to simply ask, does the fruit I see here line up with where God is taking me?

You are allowed to ask those questions. You are actually required to. 

Father, show me what is growing in my private moments and give me the courage to tend it honestly. I want the anointing to flow freely in my life and I know that requires discipline, conviction, gratitude and wisdom. Show me who belongs close and give me the grace to love everyone well without losing the ground You have given me. His blood put me in position and I am not taking that lightly.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

Make today count and see you tomorrow.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​