Ad copy

Nona Jones says you don't have a relationship with God. You have a relationship with church. And she says most Christian women can't tell the difference until it's too late. Nona Jones is a preacher and a bestselling author who has spoken everywhere from churches to the United Nations. And she came to God in a way almost no one does. She grew up unwanted. There was no one at home to explain God to her, no one to hand her a faith. She walked into a church for the first time at eleven years old and, in her words, felt wanted for the first time in her life. And because she had no one to interpret God for her, she had to go and meet him herself. "I did not have an intermediary. I did not have an interpreter. I was forced to understand the presence of God on my own." She read the Bible herself. She asked her own questions. She met God on the page, with nobody standing between them. And that's exactly why she can see the thing most women can't see in themselves. She stood in front of a room full of churchgoing women and read them the hardest verse in Revelation. The church that did everything right. Hard work. Perseverance. Sound doctrine. And God says: I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Then she asked the question that went through me like a current. "How is it possible that you can do the things of God but not be in the presence of God? How is it possible that you can have a level of faith that is performative, that men think is amazing, but God ain't even impressed with it?" Because I was that woman. I want to tell you about a specific Sunday. I was standing in the third row, where I always stand. I knew the song. My mouth was moving. I'd already taught my group that morning, already texted three people back, already been the one everyone leaned on. And somewhere in the second verse I realized I felt absolutely nothing. Not sad. Not moved. Just empty, going through the motions of a faith I could perform in my sleep. I did everything right. I never missed. I served. I knew my verses better than almost anyone in that room. And I could not remember the last time I had actually felt close to God. And here's what's underneath that. I'd been a Christian for years. But Nona named the exact thing I'd never seen about myself. I had a relationship with church. I had never actually had one with God. I knew all the things around him. The songs. The verses. The schedule. The role. I was excellent at the things of God. But I had only ever met him secondhand. In a service. Through a preacher. In a song someone else wrote. On a Sunday, when someone up front told me to. Nona said most Christians only ever pray or open their Bible inside a church service. And the moment they walk out, they've got nothing of their own. That was me exactly. The second I left the building, I had no him. Because I'd never once gone and met him myself, on the page, in his own words. I'd forsaken my first love and I hadn't even felt it leave. That's the one thing even Nona can't do for you from a stage. She can tell you your faith has gone performative. She can't go and meet God for you. She said it herself. Worship was never a song. It's a heart posture. The presence of God is as near as your worship of him and as far as your rejection of him. Only actually going and knowing God yourself, the whole of him, in his own words, can bring the first love back. That's what changed everything for me. A 52-week guided study that walks you through the entire Bible, one week at a time, from Genesis to Revelation. Where you finally meet him yourself, with no one standing in between. Before each week, it tells you exactly what you're walking into. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening at the time. So it stops being the things of God, and starts being God. The Gospels: where you finally meet Jesus himself, not the version preached at you, the real one, in his own words, and remember why you loved him in the first place. The Psalms: where you stop performing worship and learn what it actually is, a heart laid bare before God, the closeness you've been missing for years. Revelation: the very book Nona read that room, where God begs a busy, faithful, exhausted church to come back to its first love. Written, it turns out, for you. For the first time in my life, it wasn't performance. I wasn't doing the things of God anymore. I was finally with God. Verses I'd known by heart for years suddenly meant something, because I was finally meeting the One they were about. I'd open it in the morning and not want to close it. And the emptiness I'd been standing in every Sunday slowly filled back up. Not because I started doing more. Because for the first time, I actually knew him. Nona came to God with no one to hand him to her, and found the realest thing in her life. I'd had church handed to me my whole life, and somehow never met him at all. Until I finally went looking myself. And to the woman doing everything right and feeling nothing, hear this. Your faith isn't broken. You've just never actually met him, only met the people talking about him. This is the year you go back to your first love. Right now it's up to 62% off, and every order comes with a free pen pack. Don't spend another year performing a faith you can do in your sleep. Don't spend another year knowing about him instead of knowing him. Go back to your first love. Tap below and grab yours before they sell out.