This website began as a private place for me, Mike Mahaffey, to study, write, and think—a running journal of my spiritual journey. Over time, it became clear that the content needed to be public. If just one person wrestling with their faith finds what I found here, this site has done its job.
Ultimately, this site exists for one primary purpose: moving from simply knowing about God to actually knowing God through a real, daily, moment-by-moment relationship with Jesus Christ.
My Story: Moving from Religion to Relationship
I am from Mississippi, a man in my seventies with more life behind me than most people would want to claim. For roughly 40 years, I lived as an on-again, off-again Christian. Mostly off.
The pattern was always the same: when things got hard, I’d call on God. I’d get religious. I’d try various methods and approaches to get closer to Him—and when the pressure eased, I’d drift back. I gave my life to Christ at twenty years old, and that experience was entirely real. But knowing I was saved and knowing how to live like it were two entirely different things. For decades, I could not close that gap, and it eventually cost me everything.
When my family left, something in me finally stopped arguing. I knew something was wrong with me at the root—not just behaviorally, but spiritually. I started going from church to church, denomination to denomination, looking for answers. I tried willpower dressed up in church language. I read, I prayed, I showed up every time the doors opened.
Yet, no matter how much I strained, the same anger and self-centeredness remained. I was fully conscious of my sins without them actually leaving. It was a miserable, carnal existence. I was working hard at religion while bypassing the very thing that makes the relationship work.
Discovering the Message of the Cross
The turning point came when I encountered the Message of the Cross—the foundational truth that the Apostle Paul preached throughout his ministry. Through intense, focused study of the Scriptures and resources like the Expositor’s Study Bible, the Gospel started coming off the page. Not a version of it shaped by human tradition or denominational rules, but the truth itself: Christ and Him crucified as the ongoing basis for everything, not just the entry point of salvation.
I finally understood why faith placed specifically in what Jesus Christ accomplished at Calvary is so crucial to the daily walk. I knew my sins were forgiven, but I hadn’t realized that the Cross purchased everything required for daily life.
I am not a perfect man today, but I am a completely different one. Sinful habits that owned me for decades have disappeared—and not one of them left because I overpowered it. They left because the more I placed my faith in the finished work of Christ, the more room the Holy Spirit had to work. The old Mike faded, and the Holy Spirit began conforming me to the image of Jesus Christ, bit by bit.
What You Will Find Here
I built this site because I know people. I know sincere, good believers who have been in church their whole lives and still cannot find deliverance from the things that bind them. They want to change, but the advice they receive is always the same: try harder, pray more, be better.
The answer they are missing is the one this site is built around. This is not a platform for any specific ministry or denomination; those are just messengers. The message belongs to the Word of God. Christ and Him crucified is the only basis on which the Holy Spirit works to produce genuine, lasting change in a human being.
Through decades of lived experience and deep scriptural exploration, I take it one verse, one question, and one thought at a time. Every post goes deep into a single topic, with the goal of moving biblical truth from a concept in your head into actual everyday life.
The thread running from Genesis to Revelation is Jesus Christ going to the Cross. Because of His blood, you have continual access to His presence, power to overcome, and the absolute assurance that you are never walking alone.
“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” — Colossians 1:13-14
Take what helps you on your journey, and leave the rest. If you are looking for the peace and joy that Jesus promised in John 14:27, I invite you to walk down this path with me, day by day.