SamuelJon Media

There’s a version of faith that lives on a scoreboard.

Good day, you feel close to God. Bad day, you feel like you’ve forfeited Him. Quiet time in, temper kept, scripture read, blessing earned. Snapped at your kid, skipped the prayer, lost the morning to scrolling, blessing lost. It’s exhausting, and it’s not the gospel. It’s performance wearing a Bible verse.

Jerry Bridges named this trap decades ago in The Discipline of Grace, and the line has outlived every trend since: your worst days are never so bad that you’re beyond the reach of God’s grace, and your best days are never so good that you’re beyond the need of it.

That’s not permission to coast. It’s the only foundation strong enough to actually build on. You don’t get to earn your way in on a good day, and you don’t get locked out on a bad one. Grace was never a reward for performance. It’s the ground you’re already standing on.

Whatever kind of day you’re having, that hasn’t changed.

Three months ago I sat across from a family and asked them to tell me about their son.

Not how he was lost. Who he was going to be. What they'd already named him. What they'd already imagined for him.

That conversation became the first episode of A Seat at the Table, a documentary series I'm producing through Manny's Fund, a nonprofit my family started in memory of our own son, Manny.

Here's the part that still gets me. Before their own episode was even finished, that first family gave back. They funded part of a stranger's story, a family they had never met, simply because they believed the next one deserved the same thing they got.

That is the whole point of this series in one gesture.

We are now raising funds to film the next 10 families. Every dollar goes directly to production, nothing else. If you have ever lost someone and felt the world rush past that loss too quickly, you understand exactly why this matters.

You don't need to fund an entire episode. $10, $20, whatever you can do adds up alongside everyone else chipping in, and it gets us closer with every gift.

Would mean a lot if you took a look, gave what you can, or passed it to someone who might care.

https://gofund.me/a478a3dc2

More info at mannysfund.com.

Thank you for listening.