What faith looks like when nothing is happening
There’s a version of faith people like to talk about.
It’s steady.
Certain.
It works out.
This isn’t that story.
This is what faith looks like when you’re buried in debt, exhausted, and wondering if you’re going to make it through the week.
This is what it looks like when you keep going, not because you feel strong, but because stopping feels just as scary.
This is what it looks like when you almost give up.
We went all in.
No safety net.
No investors.
No backup plan.
Just a belief that God was telling us to move.
So we did.
We built Chordii. Funded it with money we didn’t have. Put it into the world and trusted it would work.
And it did… kind of.
That’s what made it so hard.
If it had failed, we could have shut it down.
If it had taken off, we could have breathed.
Instead, it lived in the middle.
Every month, a little growth.
Every month, just enough hope to keep going.
But never enough to actually pay the bills.
So we kept pushing.
We opened new credit cards.
We took out loans we shouldn’t have taken.
We told ourselves, just one more month, we’re close.
But we weren’t close enough.
Eventually, the credit cards stopped working.
Loan applications started getting denied.
And we ran out of options.
There were nights my wife and I just sat there.
No plan.
No solution.
Just both of us knowing something wasn’t right, and neither of us knowing how to fix it.
We fought.
We cried.
We sat in silence.
You can only carry that kind of pressure for so long before it starts breaking things.
We had to borrow money from her dad just to stay afloat.
That’s a hard place to be.
As a husband.
As someone who thought he was stepping out in faith.
It didn’t feel like faith anymore.
It felt like failure.
And if I’m being honest, there were moments where I didn’t want to keep doing life like this.
Not just the business.
Life.
I was depressed.
I was angry.
I felt stuck in something I couldn’t fix.
Back in October, we went to Worship Innovators.
It’s a conference for worship leaders, musicians, and creators. People building things to serve the Church.
There were influential voices there. People and companies with real reach.
Sunday Sounds was there. So were other large organizations in the worship space.
It felt like we had stepped into a room we weren’t supposed to be in yet.
But we were there.
We had conversations that felt important.
There was talk, even if it wasn’t formal, about the possibility of being featured in a large worship company’s Christmas email.
A “top gifts for your worship team” kind of list.
That kind of exposure could change everything.
It wasn’t guaranteed.
But it felt close.
Close enough to believe.
And then something happened that felt almost too perfect.
A fire alarm went off during one of the sessions.
Everyone had to evacuate the building.
We walked outside with everyone else, not thinking much of it.
But when things settled, we ended up standing right next to a group from CCLI.
They noticed our sweatshirts.
They started asking questions.
And just like that, we were in a conversation.
One of them told me I should fly out to Washington and meet with their executive team.
Just like that.
No pitch deck.
No formal process.
Just a moment that felt handed to us.
We left that conference full of belief.
Those were seeds.
Real conversations.
Real moments.
Real hope.
October passed.
Then November.
And as December got closer, that hope didn’t fade. It actually grew.
Because this is how it works, right?
You plant.
You wait.
And then there’s a season where it all comes together.
December felt like that season.
We started ramping up.
Ordering more inventory.
Preparing for volume we hadn’t seen before.
Talking about what it would look like when it finally turned.
We believed we were about to sell out.
Not someday.
Now.
And then my dad died.
Out of nowhere.
Everything stopped.
All that momentum.
All that expectation.
All that hope we had been holding onto.
Gone in a moment.
Grief doesn’t just sit beside your life.
It moves into it.
It makes everything heavier.
The business.
The pressure.
The debt.
The doubt.
And on top of that…
Nothing happened.
No Christmas email.
No feature.
No breakthrough.
Just silence.
That’s a different kind of disappointment.
Not just things not working.
But things almost working.
Things that felt like they were lining up.
Moments that felt like they had to mean something.
And then… nothing.
It felt like I had been standing in a garden, working the soil, planting seeds, believing something was coming.
And then winter hit.
And everything went quiet.
I kept going.
But I wasn’t okay.
And nothing changed.
The weight didn’t lift.
The questions didn’t go away.
It just sat there.
Every day.
Hope started to feel different.
Not like something carrying me…
but something almost taunting me.
Like it kept whispering, you’re close,
while everything in my life said otherwise.
There’s a kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.
That’s where I was.
I didn’t have answers.
I didn’t have energy.
I just had to keep showing up
and pretending I was fine.
And I didn’t know how much longer I could do that.
Then Easter came.
We went to church as a family.
The service was good. People were celebrating. Music, baptisms, everything you’d expect.
And I played my part.
I smiled when I needed to.
I stood when everyone stood.
And I did what I had learned to do.
I held it together.
I had gotten pretty good at that.
At the end of the service, the pastor came back up.
He said, “I feel like there’s someone here who’s hurting and hasn’t said anything. I’ll be up front if that’s you.”
I knew it was me.
I didn’t move right away.
I waited.
Maybe someone else would go first. Maybe I could just slip out and deal with it later. Maybe I’d reach out during the week.
I knew I probably wouldn’t.
I stood there watching.
No one went.
So I walked up.
He was alone.
I walked up… and just stood there for a second.
He didn’t say anything.
He just waited.
And I tried to hold it together.
I really did.
But I couldn’t.
It all hit at once.
I started crying.
Like, full-on crying. The kind you can’t control.
It was embarrassing.
I’m standing there in front of him, in a church, and I can’t even get a sentence out.
I tried to talk.
Nothing came.
Just trying to fight back something I couldn’t hold in anymore.
So I just stood there… crying… while he waited.
And eventually, words came.
Not clean.
Not thought out.
Just honest.
I told him I just needed to know God was still real.
That He still saw me.
That this wasn’t all for nothing.
Because I didn’t feel Him anymore.
He listened.
Then he said something that stopped me.
He said when he was on stage, he had a picture.
A man in a garden.
And the message was simple.
Keep going.
It’s about to sprout.
Then he paused and laughed a little.
He said he almost wished he had told me the vision before I spoke, because it would have been more believable.
But he didn’t.
And that’s what made it undeniable.
Because he had no idea what I had been carrying.
And it was exactly what I needed to hear.
Then he said the word.
Oligopistos.
“You of little faith.”
Not as a rebuke.
As an invitation.
He prayed over me.
And asked for a blessing now.
Tomorrow morning.
Monday came.
Nothing.
Tuesday came.
Nothing.
But I didn’t fall apart this time.
I just kept going.
Then Wednesday came.
A video went live.
David from Sunday Sounds had posted a video featuring Chordii.
Not the company with the Christmas email.
Not the path I had imagined.
But one of the seeds from that same conference.
Two days after that video went live, we did more in sales than we had in the previous two months combined.
Pause and let that sink in for a minute.
Months of nothing.
Months of wondering if anything was happening.
Months of standing in a garden that looked completely empty.
And then suddenly…
Something broke through.
The garden didn’t grow overnight.
It just looked like it did.
That’s where real faith lives.
Not in the moment of growth.
In the waiting.
In the silence.
In the disappointment.
In the moments where everything looked like it was about to happen… and then didn’t.
I don’t have everything figured out now.
The business isn’t magically fixed.
The debt is still real.
Life is still heavy in ways.
But something changed.
Not around me.
In me.
I stopped needing proof every day.
I stopped staring at the dirt wondering why nothing was growing.
I remembered that seeds don’t grow where you can see them.
For months, I thought nothing was happening.
But it was.
It just wasn’t visible yet.
That garden didn’t start growing the day the video went live.
It started back in October.
In conversations.
In moments I almost forgot about.
In seeds I kept watering even when I couldn’t see anything.
And maybe that’s what faith really is.
Not certainty.
Not results.
Just continuing to show up
when everything in you wants to stop.
If you’re in that place right now…
Where it feels quiet
Where it feels late
Where it feels like nothing is happening
You’re not crazy.
You’re just in the part no one talks about.
So keep going.
Even if it feels small.
Even if it feels pointless.
Don’t quit in the dirt.
That’s where things are actually happening.
Keep going.
Oligopistos.
It’s about to sprout.
