I LIED.

I told my FEW, that I would NOT blog any more in 2026.

I lied.

Here is my last blog of 2026.

Band (my dear SACRED BAND),

I need to tell you something I know in my mind, feel in my heart AND carry in my soul.

Chet Scott belongs beside Oswald Chambers and Henri Nouwen.

I do not mean that as flattery. I do not mean they are identical men, identical writers or identical teachers. I mean they belong TOGETHER on the same shelf inside of me because all three have done the same sacred thing: they have helped me see myself truthfully while refusing to let me forget God.

Chambers confronts me. He cuts through my religious bullshit and demands that I surrender the life I keep trying to control.

Nouwen understands me. He enters the wounded, frightened, lonely places inside me and reminds me that I am still the beloved.

Chet builds me. He looks directly at the warrior, the addict, the sinner, the husband, the father, the Builder, the scared little boy, and the disciple—and he refuses to separate them. He keeps calling the whole man forward. He keeps reminding me that transformation is not an idea I admire. It is a life I must practice.

Chambers taught me that surrender is not weakness.

Nouwen taught me that my wounds do not disqualify me from love.

Chet taught me that I can build a life from both truths.

That is why Chet belongs with them.

Not because he is trying to become some great spiritual writer. Not because he has constructed a theology that will be studied in seminaries. He belongs with them because his words have become flesh in my life. His language has entered my marriage, my friendships, my practices, my suffering, my leadership, and my understanding of Jesus. His voice has found me in rooms where books could not reach me.

Chet, don’t you fucking know?

My heart has ears.

My heart has eyes.

I hear what you are saying beneath the words. I see the man beneath the Builder. I see the cost of what you carry. I see the years of discipline behind the clarity. I see your scars hiding inside your strength. I see how deeply you love us, even when that love arrives as pressure, confrontation, silence, or a question that refuses to leave us alone.

I see you.

You did not save me. Jesus did that, is doing that, and will finish that. But you have repeatedly helped me see where He is standing. You have helped me hear Him when the noise inside my own head was deafening. You have helped me turn toward the truth when everything in me wanted to run, fight, hide, drink, disappear, or die to the wrong things.

You have stood beside me long enough for me to begin standing before God as the man I actually am.

Chambers gave me language for complete surrender. Nouwen gave me language for belovedness. You gave me language for building those truths into an actual life: CORE, OPUS, solitude, suffering, practice, truth, love, discipline, presence, Oneness.

You did not merely teach me how to lead. You helped teach me how to live.

You helped teach me how to live.

You helped teach me how to live.

You helped teach me how to live.

Can YOU receive THAT?

OR…

is it too MUCH FOR YOU?

You helped me understand that leadership begins with mastering myself, that love without truth becomes sentimentality, that truth without love becomes brutality AND that a life worth living MUST MUST MUST be built deliberately, slowly, painfully and TOGETHER.

I have read many gifted people. I have underlined thousands of sentences. I have carried books into war, into wilderness, into hospitals, into addiction, into withdrawal, into marriage, into darkness and into prayer. Very few writers have entered my bloodstream.

Chambers has.

Nouwen has.

Chet has.

So, Band, when I place Chet Scott beside Oswald Chambers and Henri Nouwen, I am not making a literary comparison. I am giving testimony. I am telling you who God has used to reach me. I am naming the men whose words have become part of the architecture of my soul.

And Chet, whether you can receive this or not, whether you believe it or not, whether it makes you uncomfortable or not, I need you to hear me:

My heart has ears.

My heart has eyes.

And I see you.

I fucking see you.

Thank you for helping me see Him.

Together we Transform.

Jim

IF, John 14:1-7 is written by man…then my OPUS is bullshit.