God Don’t Need Bashful

A hot take from a hotel room in Baton Rouge.

I’m sitting in a hotel room on LSU’s campus a couple days after I spoke to the Tigers, still doing one-on-ones with whoever wants to sit down and talk. And I’ve got a hot take I don’t feel like being careful about anymore.

I didn’t want any of this.

I’ve been kicking and screaming the whole way. And I love that about myself — that reluctant, resistant nature to refuse the call. Honestly, it’s been embedded in my heart for twenty years. It’s taken me the last ten just to lean in and accept where I’m supposed to go, what I’m supposed to say, who I’m supposed to be, the stance I’m supposed to take, the conviction I’m supposed to speak with.

And all of that is terrifying. Because I get worried about judgment. I never wanted to be “that guy” — you know, the one talking about spiritual stuff and healing online, the one I’d have judged myself a year earlier as a tool for it. But that’s just fear talking. That part of me was always bashful. Oh no, no, thank you. No, God, no. Waving it off. Staying small so nobody could accuse me of being full of myself.

Here’s what I’m learning, at least in this season: He don’t want bashful. He don’t have time for bashful.

He’s got time for people standing on business. Saying: this is who I am, this is what I’m about, this is the power I have inside me, and this is my ability to love, help, and guide you through some of the most painful seasons of your life. Not because I’m special. Because I lived it and breathed it for far too long.

I stood in front of two, three hundred men and women — players, staff, coaches — and just opened my heart. The hell I’ve visited. The depth of the pain. The stories underneath the stories. And then, most importantly, the resurrection out of all of it into a life of freedom. And somewhere in the middle of that, it clicked what kind of business I should actually be standing on.

I am a healer. I am a helper. I have experience to offer another human — not because I’ve got some secret book or I’m a super spiritual soldier, but because I’ve done my own work, and I can see the story underneath the story someone’s presenting me. I don’t fully know how I got here. But it’s a noteworthy thing, and events like this shine a light on what’s actually happening inside a person — the value they actually have to bring to the world.

I’m sick of not noticing that. Sick of “oh no, just grateful to be here” when it’s true, but it’s also half the story. The other half is: kick the door open. Here I am.

Call that ego if you want. I get it. But it’s not ego. It’s stupid confidence in the power of God living inside me. And I don’t care anymore what that sounds like to you.

God don’t need bashful.

That’s the whole shirt. Not a slogan somebody workshopped in a room — a hot take from a hotel room, after watching what happens when a man stops managing his image and just tells the truth about what he’s been through and what he’s for.

If you’re done being “just grateful to be here” and ready to stand on business instead: God Don’t Need Bashful — shop the shirt