I cried real hard today.
And I have to tell you why.
It started in January of last year, 2025.
An email popped up in my inbox, a property listing in Big Bear. And the moment I saw it, something in me gravitated toward it.
But then reality set in.
Who was I to want this? I couldn’t afford a cabin in Big Bear. I’ve been a youth pastor for ten years, on a youth pastor’s salary. It made no sense at all. So I just closed the email, and I didn’t think about it again.
Or so I thought.
I live in Los Angeles, and Big Bear sits about 2.5 hours up the mountain from me. Close enough to reach, far enough to feel like another world.
The next morning, I dropped my kids off like I always do and my plan was simple.
Drive home, prepare my lesson, get through my seminary reading.
But when I reached the intersection where I always turn right, something felt different. A quiet pull in the other direction. Almost without deciding to, I turned left.
And it made no earthly sense.
I had to pick my kids up later that day. That meant 2.5 hours up, and 2.5 hours back, nearly 5 hours of driving crammed into the hours I had. It was going to be tight. Almost impossible. Every practical bone in my body said turn around.
But I didn’t. I kept going, all the way up the mountain toward Big Bear.
I took the long drive as a chance to pray and to worship. And as the road climbed and that great expanse of mountain and sky opened up in front of me, something rose up in my chest. The beauty of it, the nearness of God in it, it just overtook me. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face, and I couldn’t have told you exactly why.
When I got there, I saw the house from the email. It belonged to a family with the last name Schäfer. Do you know what Schäfer means?
It means shepherd in German.
A man pulled off his ordinary road, weeping without knowing why, standing in front of a shepherd's house. I couldn't shake it.
Standing right there, I called my wife. I told her, maybe we can take a loan and do this. We could put it up on Airbnb, let it help cover the bills, maybe even turn a small profit. And without hesitating, she said, if that’s what you want to do, I will fully support you.
And strangely, the moment she said it, I felt more afraid, not less. Because now it wasn’t only my step to take. Her trust was resting on me. And I did not want to let her down.
Then I turned around and drove back down the mountain, and somehow, amazingly, I made it in time to pick up my kids.
By February, the house was ours.
Now, I know how this sounds. A youth pastor taking a loan on a mountain cabin. To be honest, this was not an emotional decision. It was a spiritual one. I felt compelled, and I felt at peace. But it also terrified me. Because it made no sense.
And I keep finding, when I read my Bible, that this is exactly how God tends to work.
He told Abraham to leave everything and go to a land he’d only see later, and Abraham went, not knowing where he was headed. He called a frightened man named Gideon, hiding in a winepress, and sent him out with far less than he wanted. He called Peter to step off the boat and onto the water. Over and over, God says go, before He ever says where. And the ones who trust Him step out anyway.
So I stepped out.
And this is the kind of decision the world simply doesn’t understand. There he goes again, they’ll say, with his prayers and his promptings, making a choice that has nothing to do with reality.
But I knew Who told me to turn left.
After we bought it, something started happening almost on its own.
I found myself furnishing it with faith. A mat by the door that said Bless This Home. Framed art on the walls, The Lord Is My Shepherd. Little things, scattered around, each one quietly pointing to the One I belong to.
I didn’t have a name for what I was doing yet. I was just decorating a house the way my heart is decorated.
The numbers caught up with me almost right away. Between the taxes, the insurance, the cleaning fees, I wasn't turning the profit I'd hoped for. A year of it. Every month, money I don't have leaving my hands for a house that was never going to pay me back.
On paper, it makes no sense.
And yet, I kept coming back to one promise. The name on that house was shepherd. And my Shepherd had told me once,
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” — Psalm 23:1
I didn’t understand where He was leading me. I couldn’t see the end of it. But I knew His voice, and I chose to trust Him, even in the dark. I shall not want. Not because the numbers made sense—they didn't—but because the Shepherd was the one leading.
So this morning, I made the drive I’d been dreading. I had resolved in my heart to sell the house. So I headed up the mountain around 8am, one last time, just to give this house some love before I let it go.
I had one last renter coming in August, an older woman who’d booked the place for a full month. She would be my final guest. And I wanted her stay to be comfortable. So I packed her some water, treats for her dog, coffee pods, a little chocolate. Quiet ways of saying she was cared for.
And then two more things. My guitar, so the cabin would hold a little music.
And a Bible.
On the drive up, I tried to make my peace with selling. And I reached for Scripture to steady me.
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he would later receive as his inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” — Hebrews 11:8
Abraham obeyed, not knowing where he was going. But he went.
And later, when God told him to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham raised his hand, and the moment he did, God stopped him. The obedience was the offering. The having was never the point. The willingness was.
So maybe buying the place was my Isaac, I told myself. Maybe I was only ever meant to obey for a season. To buy it, to hold it for a year, and now to lay it down.
Maybe the buying was never about the keeping at all.
But if I’m honest, the peace never quite came. I’d made my decision, and I was going to walk it out in faith, trusting, hoping, that it was right. But my heart wasn’t settled.
And I began worshiping in the car.
And that’s when it happened again. Just like the first time I drove up, the tears came. I cried real hard. And into those tears, the Lord began to speak. He started painting me a picture.
Not a mat by the door. Not one little sign that said Faith over Fear. I mean walls.
Every wall in that house, covered in Scripture. Reference Bibles and commentaries on the shelves. Prayers printed on canvas. Crosses everywhere. A house where you couldn’t look anywhere without meeting the Word of God.
And I saw them.
Travelers, coming up for a night or two, standing in front of those walls. Seeing something in Scripture they had never seen before. I imagined them arriving weary and leaving changed. Coming to the Good News House, and having their whole life take a turn.
Yes. That would be the name. The GOOD NEWS House.
And I wept harder. Because I was holding that beautiful dream up against an impossible fact. I can’t afford this house anymore.
And I cried out, God, what are You doing to me? What do You want from me? I can’t do this.
So I kept worshiping. And into that ache, the Lord brought me another image.
The Bible. The one sitting on the seat beside me, the one I was bringing for my last renter. And I started wondering. Where do I leave it so she’ll find it? By the bed? On the shelf by the fireplace?
And right there, that question opened a door in my mind.
I started thinking about a Bible that YOU AND I have seen a thousand times and never really thought about. You know what I’m talking about. The one in the drawer of every hotel room.
It’s everywhere.
Every hotel, every motel, in room after room, even in hotels owned by people who don’t believe a word of it.
Free. Just waiting there.
But why? Have you ever wondered that?
Well, this is how it all started.
You see, there were two salesmen.
In 1898, John Nicholson and Samuel Hill got stuck sharing a crowded hotel room in Wisconsin.
Two strangers, both traveling men, both far from home.
They discovered they shared a faith in Jesus, and they prayed together that night. Out of that cramped inconvenience, a friendship was born, and then… a mission.
Because they knew something about the road. They knew what it was to be a traveling man, alone in a strange city, far from your wife, far from your children, far from anyone who knew your name. They knew the loneliness of a hotel room at night. They knew the temptations that come knocking when no one’s watching, and the despair that can settle over a man in the dark.
So they had an idea.
What if there was a Bible waiting in every one of those rooms? A quiet companion for the lonely traveler, the tempted man, the one on the edge. Something to reach for at the exact moment he needed it most.
A decade later, they began placing Bibles in hotel room drawers.
And they called themselves…
THE GIDEONS!
After Gideon. The frightened man in the winepress I mentioned earlier. The least of his family, from the weakest clan, hiding, overlooked, sure he was nobody.
And God walked up to that man and called him a mighty warrior. God saw the small, the hidden, the overlooked, and He called him by name.
And that, I realized, is exactly who walks into those hotel rooms.
The small. The hidden. The overlooked. The traveling man or woman far from home.
Maybe at the end of their rope. Maybe just alone in a quiet room where temptation comes knocking and no one would ever know. And there in the drawer waits a Bible, and through it, the same God who found Gideon finds them. Calls them by name.
And when they open it, when they answer, their whole life can change.
There are people who checked into a room to end their lives and opened that drawer instead.
There are marriages saved, addictions broken, souls pulled back from the edge, all by a book somebody left behind.
Over TWO BILLION Scriptures placed. Two billion quiet invitations, waiting in the dark for someone who feels small to discover they were never overlooked by God at all.
And that’s when it all came together, right there on the mountain road.
The Bible sitting on the seat beside me, the one I was bringing for my last renter, it wasn’t a Gideon Bible. It was just my own worn NLT. But I was about to do the very thing those two salesmen did.
Leave the Word where a traveler might find it, and hope God would meet her there.
Without ever knowing the word for it, I had become a Gideon.
And the house?
The house I’d spent a year quietly filling with Scripture, the walls I’d just seen in my mind covered in His Word, that was the same thing, only bigger.
Not one Bible in one drawer, but a whole house of them.
A place where someone could walk in weary and, maybe for the first time in their life, meet God. Hear His Word and finally understand it.
A well up on the mountain, where anyone who came up thirsty could drink.
The Good News House
And right there on that mountain road, through the tears, I began to pray.
Was this Your plan all along, Lord?
To take this little cabin and make it a Good News House? A place where travelers arrive, carrying every kind of ache, and find themselves in a room soaked in Your presence, surrounded by Your Word?
Your will is good, and pleasing, and perfect. And though I don’t know where this is headed, whether to sell this house or hold on and keep filling it with Scripture, just show me, Lord.
I’m sure John Nicholson and Samuel Hill reached a moment like this one. Two tired salesmen who simply took the first step, and then the next, without seeing the whole road.
So that’s what I’m doing. Taking baby steps, not knowing where God will lead.
And here’s the honest truth.
I don’t have a tidy ending for you.
This happened just today. I drove up that mountain ready to sell, and I’ll be driving home with a vision to turn it into a Good News House.
Because look at what God chooses. A frightened man in a winepress. Two weary salesmen in a crowded room. A little cabin in the mountains. A post you almost scrolled right past.
“God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” — 1 Corinthians 1:27
So consider this article a message in a bottle.
I’m casting it out to all of you, asking for your prayers, and for any advice you could send my way.
Perhaps somewhere out there, God will bring me my John Nicholson, my Samuel Hill.
And perhaps…
This is the beginning of Good News Houses all around the world.
Please pray for me. I'll keep you posted.
Love you guys. 🙏
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