Christians for Rent: Application Denied

The Lord has been dealing with my heart.

It hasn't been subtle. It hasn't been convenient. It hasn't been the kind of “dealing” that feels like a warm breeze and a hymn on a quiet morning.

It’s been a breaking. A burning. A stripping away.

Like a character I might write—cloaked in shadows, standing at the edge of a great, haunted woods—I’ve found myself faced with choices of allegiance. But this time, the fiction bled into the real.

Not fantasy, but my soul. My heart. My walk with Christ.

And what He showed me was hard to look at: I have been a Christian for rent.

My loyalty to Jesus was not fully mine to give because I hadn’t fully surrendered it. I offered Him parts of me—Sundays, when I felt spiritual; prayers, when I was in need; praises, when things were going well. But in the trenches? In the battlefields of compromise? In the hours of temptation or indifference?

I rented my heart out to other masters: comfort, fear, ambition, pride. And worst of all? My own meager ability and selfish desires—knowing full well that it was His grace and mercy that gave me breath for a new day.

The truth is, many of us have learned to live this way. We wear the name of Christ like a borrowed garment—holy on the outside, but easily removed when it doesn’t fit our current plans. We rent out our allegiance to Jesus by the hour. And when the rent is due—when loyalty costs us something—we disappear into the shadows, hoping grace will cover a heart we never fully gave.

But the Lord is calling for more.

He’s calling for ownership—not convenience. He doesn’t want partial possession. He wants the whole heart. And He’s worthy of it.

He’s been calling me deeper into knowing Him—not just the Jesus of the gentle manger, but the Christ of the Garden, sweating blood for my soul. The Lamb of the Cross, whose sacrifice was never rented, never half-given, never convenient.

The paradox of writing dark fantasy as a Christian is that I constantly dwell in the tension of shadow and light. But isn’t that exactly where we live spiritually? In a broken world, constantly pulled between loyalty to our King and the seduction of self-rule? Do we not stand at the top of the temples of our lives, looking out onto the glittering world of power, money, sex, position, opportunity, and ask ourselves what we would give for more of it?

My soul asks questions, screaming a battle cry of need, of understanding in things that I cannot voice. In the things that my hands cannot accomplish, I must fail, and address the limitations of the flesh that lies to me, promising things it can never deliver.

And yet, despite my failures, the Lord still calls.

He still wants me. Still waits for me. Still offers the fullness of His presence—if I will only stop giving it away to lesser things.

So here I am—no longer for rent.

I want to be owned by Christ, fully and forever. I want to burn with a devotion that isn’t seasonal. I want my faith to be a deed, not a lease.

Above all, I want to be a worthy, willing sacrifice—not out of guilt, but out of love. I want to live a life that shines with the light of Jesus, even when the setting is dark. Even when the road is hard. I want to walk in a way that honors the blood shed for me—not casually, not conveniently, but completely.

Because He deserves nothing less. And He has already given everything.

And I know—not everyone will agree with this. Not everyone will like it. Some may see it as too intense, too narrow, too certain in a world that praises ambiguity. That’s okay.

Because whatever we believe, none of us gave life to ourselves. We did not originate our own existence. We are all part of something more ancient, more mysterious, more beautiful than we often dare to acknowledge.

Each soul matters. Each heart carries a purpose. And whether we recognize it yet or not, there is a deep, divine invitation extended to every one of us—to see broader, understand deeper, and pursue a truth that brings ultimate freedom.

That truth is a Person. His name is Jesus. And He is worth everything.