Greg Surratt

Several months ago I asked you to pray for my friend being held by the Chinese government. We rejoice with his being released and reunited with his family!!

Pastor jailed in China freed after desperate plea to Trump: ‘Feels unbelievable’ | Fox News Video Grace Jin Drexel, Bill Drexel and newly freed pastor Ezra Jin Mingri join ‘Fox News Sunday' to discuss Mingri's imprisonment in China and emotional return home.

I'm grateful to be able to teach this weekend at Seacoast on the resurrection of Lazarus. I love this church and I'm honored to be a part of what God is doing here.

The definition of cool 😎

This morning Psalm 90:12 struck me:

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

I know my days are limited. But I don’t always live like they are.

So I’m wrestling with two questions today:

* What am I postponing that I would stop postponing if I really believed my days were numbered?

* And what actually deserves one of the limited days God has given me?

How about you? What would change if you really believed your days were limited?

Wonderful time for the electricity to go out

A song caught me off guard this week and made me think about something I don’t really like thinking about: someday, one of us will go first. After more than 50 years with Debbie, I realized I may sometimes be grieving a future loss that hasn’t happened. I wrote about what I’m learning about anticipatory grief, gratitude, and staying present with the life we still get to share today.

Link to the Substack in the comments below 👇🏼👇🏼

I’m not as strong as I used to be.

That sentence has been harder to say than I expected.

Lately I’ve found myself grieving what I can’t do as easily anymore, frustrated by new limits, and wondering whether this is something to fix… or a season to receive.

Then Proverbs 20:29 stopped me:

“The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old.”

Maybe aging with grace begins when we stop envying the strength of a previous season and start noticing the splendor God is forming in this one.

I wrote more about that here:

The Strength I Have Left Learning to receive the grace of the season I’m in, not the strength of the season I miss.

A clean manger sounds like a good thing. But sometimes it just means there’s no ox.

A memory from the first church that ever rejected me, 9–0, came back to me this morning while reading Proverbs 14:4.

It made me wonder: What if some of the mess in our lives is actually evidence that something fruitful is happening?

I wrote about it today on Substack. 👇

Some Thursday morning wisdom:

“Those who guard their lips preserve their lives.” — Proverbs 13:3

Wisdom is often found in the space between what you feel and what you say.

Not every thought needs a voice.

Can I get a witness?

I had a conversation in the foyer yesterday that marked me. It was a simple but powerful reminder of how much it matters to see people as people.

I wrote about it here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/gregsurratt/p/he-wanted-to-be-seen?r=ekkvc&utm_medium=ios