fierce faith

Be strong and courageous… for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.— Joshua 1:9

The year ahead may hold blessings, surprises, and challenges you can’t yet see. Here at MELCHEE and in this work, we know firsthand about such things. But our God is the God of every tomorrow! And a spirit of fierce faith is what will get you through all of the all. An unwavering confidence that God is who He says He is will always prove to be the right path.

To walk in fierce faith is to anchor your heart in His promises, even when the winds of life blow hard. It’s choosing worship over worry, obedience over hesitation, and trust over fear. It is believing that if God brought you this far, He won’t leave you now.

As you step into the new year, may your faith rise, and may you walk boldly into the many blessings God has in store. Decide to believe!

reinvented.

Behold, I am doing a new thing . . . Isaiah 43:19

There have been three moments in my life where the starting over has been very marked . . .

The first was in 2015 when my then-husband and I miscarried our 6-week-old angel. The pregnancy had been a surprise because we’d been told conceiving would be hard—though not impossible—for us. After conceiving, the morning sickness was also hard, but I committed to the disciplines God led me to despite how I felt. While the life inside me was ultimately lost, I felt mine was just beginning. So I pledged to God to do just that: start over, keep Him first in all things, and get back to living. You can read about my experience in this blog post from January 2016.

My second moment came not too long after the aforementioned pledging. In August 2018, I was working for a local nonprofit and began to sense the what next point in my career in the nonprofit sector. The Lord led me to found my own work line, as I called it then, where I’d service nonprofits as a freelancer and have my own base of clients. Fast forward a few years, and after a few revisions to the original founding, MELCHEE formed into a thriving and meaningful pathing in Christian media and nonprofit support. The journey to now hasn’t been easy, but it’s been so worth it.

My latest “moment” has involved more of just my own personal evolving, coming more into myself as a 50+ woman, and learning daily, it seems, what matters and what doesn’t. Life has been “life-ing,” as the saying goes, and it hasn’t all felt good. I feel like I’ve started over more times in this season than in any other so far. But is that a bad thing?

I think that with each new day, we’re given a chance to start again, to leave yesterday behind, and focus on the now. We can awaken to a version of ourselves appointed with new mercies and grace, favor, clothed and in our right mind, with the full armor of God bestowed. We can choose to lean into divine reinvention and do so with each dawn, at each hour, minute, or second of the day, after each hurt, victory, loss, or at every place of joy. Start over, realign, and get back on the potter’s wheel as many times as needed, and allow God to reveal Himself to you in ways above all that you could ask or think.

He’s just that kind of God.

wonder and be astounded

spring 2025 | marking 10 years of blogging . . .

In the midst of uncertainty and struggles, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or even question God and what He’s doing or seemingly not doing. Ask me how I know . . .

Last summer when I was fired from my job, why is what mostly occupied my thoughts, followed by how am I going to make it. But I turned to the Scripture that I’d centered on at the start of the year: “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told”(Habakkuk 1:5, ESV).

Centered. Finding myself at loss, God began His work (He never stopped, actually), reminding me that He’s always at work, even when we can’t see it. The Habakkuk verse calls us to step back and marvel—to look for the signs of His movement in the world and trust that He is orchestrating things for a purpose, above and beyond what we can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). Even in challenging times, He is doing something amazing, and if we keep our eyes open, we’ll see it unfold. Trust His perfect timing and know that He is at work in ways that will leave you speechless.

So, keep your heart open, stay faithful, and watch in awe as God’s will manifests in your life and in the world. I never thought that after my termination the Lord would lead me to one of the most fulfilling roles I’ve ever had, working in ministry, growing and learning in new gifting, tying it together with what I do on MELCHEE personally, and enjoying it all immensely. Wonder and be astounded.
-Melchee Johnson