About FWIW

Jordan’s stories and the conversations he and I have on FWIW are a product of reflections on lives lived trying to follow Jesus.  We’re not trying to be Bible scholars.  We’re just trying to share some of the things we’ve learned about God and some of the lessons He’s taught us.  We are trying to be honest and open about our walks with Jesus, about being husbands and Dads, about failure and doubts, and about ways we’ve seen God work in our lives.

Just like yours, my life is messy, beautiful, sometimes painful and often crazy.  My walk with Jesus has rarely been a steady stride toward Him.  It’s more often a stumble or an awkward crawl, and if I’m honest it’s sometimes been a hard sprint in the opposite direction.  But I have grown closer to God over the years, or probably a better way to say it is He has brought me closer to Himself.  I’ve also learned the answers to some questions that I believe say a lot about what the heart of God is like.  

Questions like:

• Why did Jesus have so little patience for those that were trying to enforce the rules of religion on others?
• Why did Jesus pour out so much love and grace on those who were considered the worst sinners of their day?
• Why did Jesus choose the “nobodies” and “sinners” to be His disciples?
• Why throughout the Bible does God consistently work through people who are considered failures and insignificant?

As I started to be able to answer these questions, I began to see that the real God of the Bible is often completely upside down compared to what we have been taught or have assumed to be true.  I’ve learned that God doesn’t want me to be more religious, instead He wants me to love Him more.  He doesn’t want me to follow more rules, He wants me to follow Him more closely.  He doesn’t want me to be so afraid of falling off the straight and narrow path, He just wants me to reach out and grab His hand more quickly when I wander off and get lost.  I’ve learned that things like status, money, appearance, and talent don’t matter to Him.  In fact, I am more useful to Him if I have none of those things, but instead have humility, gentleness, patience, and love.

Jesus turns the way of the world, and even the way of religion upside down.  Religion says that the way to heaven is to do this and not to do that, and at the end if you’ve done enough of this and not too much of that, then God might accept you.  Jesus says, I am the way to heaven and I have done everything you could never have done.  Now follow Me because I love you.

My hope in creating FWIW was that the messages and conversations help point anyone listening toward the God of the Bible and away from all the fake solutions we see all around us that never fix our problems. I hope FWIW can help us see that we don’t need a new set of rules.  We don’t need to try harder. We don’t need a new religion.  We don’t need a new diet or a new drug, a new hairdo or a new wardrobe.  We just need Jesus. 

-Ryan Kohlmeier

I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home where the gospel was presented to me at an early age. That certainly was a blessing, but somewhere along the way I confused the grace of Jesus with my own good works. I slowly drifted away from the truth of the gospel and became someone who subconsciously believed that God was lucky to have me, not the other way around.

A big part of that mess was thinking that following the rules was the point of faith. I allowed myself to believe the lie that God was more interested in having my obedience and submission than having my heart. This made me into a rigid and judgmental person who had very little grace for others. I really was a modern-day Pharisee! I had forgotten that Jesus didn’t come to enforce rules, or decide who was “worthy” of Him because of their actions. He came to seek the lost, and He did it by meeting people where they were at.

I’m overjoyed to be a part of the For What It’s Worth ministry because I think it reflects the heart of Jesus. While the gospel is the most important news any of us can hear, this ministry is about way more than a transfer of information. It’s about sharing struggles, observations, and questions that pop up in my faith in everyday life. My hope is that through the simple stories people are able to see just how good and beautiful God is, and that people who don’t know Jesus will realize that following Him really is worth it!

-Jordan Stineman