Shadow Missions & Adaptations

It’s natural to avoid pain and chase pleasure — but when that drive outruns our love for God, it quietly becomes idolatry. In this episode, Blake opens Proverbs 4:23 (“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”) and names the hidden machinery beneath so much of what we do: the shadow mission, a wounded heart’s plan to find life apart from God, and the adaptations — the everyday behaviors we adopt to pull it off.Blake gets personal about his own shadow mission — to be loved and never rejected — and the people-pleasing it drives, then walks through the crisis of belief that comes when we set an adaptation down: will God really be enough? This teaching is drawn from his forthcoming book, Raise Them Right, releasing this fall.Follow Before the Lord on Facebook (@BeforeTheLord) and Instagram (@beforethelorddevo). Get devotionals delivered to your inbox at blakescrawford.com/sign-up, or listen anytime at blakescrawford.com/listen. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.