Spiritual Truth

Beware of Greeks Bearing Wi-Fi

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I watched The Odyssey recently, and it sent me straight back to one of the oldest stories in Western civilization, a story that, oddly enough, has never felt more relevant to the American family than it does right now.

You know the tale, even if you haven’t thought about it in years. After a decade of failed siege, the Greeks couldn’t break through the walls of Troy by force. So they got creative. They built an enormous wooden horse, hid their best soldiers inside its hollow belly, and left it at the gates as a “gift”, a peace offering, a symbol of surrender. The Trojans, weary from war and hungry for good news, hauled it inside their own walls. They celebrated. They let their guard down. And that night, the soldiers climbed out and opened the gates to the rest of the Greek army. Troy, a city that had withstood ten years of siege, fell in a single night — not because the enemy overpowered them, but because the Trojans invited the danger in themselves.

Here’s something interesting: the Trojan Horse barely gets a mention in Homer’s Odyssey, just a passing reference. Homer’s Iliad ends before Troy even falls. It’s actually the Roman poet Virgil, writing centuries later in the Aeneid, who gives us the full story we know today. And it’s Virgil who gives us the line that’s echoed for two thousand years: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, “I fear the Greeks, even when they bear gifts.” A Trojan priest named Laocoön said it, warning his people not to trust the horse. Nobody listened. He was right, and it cost his city everything.

I don’t think that line was written just for ancient Troy.

I think it was written for us.

The Gifts We Welcomed Inside

Think about what’s crossed the threshold of the American home over the last twenty years. The smartphone. The streaming service. The endless scroll. Each one arrived looking like a gift, connection, convenience, entertainment, a window to the whole world in your pocket. And in a lot of ways, they are gifts. I don’t believe a phone or a TV is inherently evil any more than a wooden horse is inherently evil. It’s just wood. It’s just glass and circuitry.

But a gift is only as good as what’s hidden inside it. And for years now, we’ve been wheeling these things through our front gates without asking the one question Laocoön asked: what’s actually inside this?

Because something got in. Quietly. While we were busy celebrating the convenience, the entertainment, the connection, nefarious actors climbed out of the horse and got to work. Not the device itself, but the people and forces using it with intention, working to reshape how our kids think, what they value, how they see themselves, and what they believe is normal. We didn’t see it happen because it wasn’t a battering ram at the gates. It was a gift we brought inside ourselves.

If that theme sounds familiar, it should. It was basically the whole point of the 2025 film that had families talking, the quiet, creeping way devices steal children from their parents’ laps and their families’ tables without a single dramatic moment marking the loss. No siege, no battle. Just a slow opening of the gates from the inside, one notification at a time.

More Connected, More Alone

Here’s the line that should stop us cold: we have never been more connected as a culture, and we have never been lonelier. We carry the entire world in our pockets, and yet deep, meaningful relationships, the kind that used to define neighborhoods, churches, and families are quietly disappearing. We’re tethered to hundreds of people online and estranged from the ones sitting across the dinner table.

That’s the Trojan Horse working exactly as designed. The gift promised connection but delivered isolation instead.

Say that one out loud. Sit with it for a second. Because that’s not just a clever turn of phrase, that’s the diagnosis. That’s what happened to Troy, and it’s what’s happening in living rooms across this country. The horse didn’t look like an invasion. It looked like a blessing. And by the time anyone realized what was inside it, the gates were already open.

What’s the Horse in Your Home?

I’m not writing this to make you throw your phone in the driveway or cancel every streaming subscription tonight. That’s not the point, and honestly, it’s not realistic. The Trojans weren’t wrong to want peace. They were wrong to stop asking questions the moment something looked like a gift.

So here’s the challenge: name the horse in your home. Maybe it’s a device. Maybe it’s a show your kids watch without you ever having watched an episode yourself. Maybe it’s the algorithm quietly shaping your teenager’s sense of identity while you assume it’s “just entertainment.” Whatever it is, don’t just wheel it through the gate and celebrate. Look inside it. Ask what it’s actually carrying, and who benefits from what it delivers into your family’s life.

Judeo-Christian culture in America wasn’t sacked in a single battle. It’s been a slow, patient siege and like Troy, the walls didn’t fall because the enemy was stronger. They fell because we stopped asking what we were letting inside.

Troy fell in one night. But it took ten years of exhaustion to get them to accept the gift.

Don’t be exhausted into complacency. Ask the question Laocoön asked. Look inside the horse before you bring it through the gate.

Dave Almgren – Two Pastors, Popcorn and a Movie Podcast

Stay Focused. Keep Going. Finish Strong.

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At seven o’clock on the evening of October 20, 1968, a few thousand spectators remained scattered across Mexico City’s Olympic Stadium. The air had turned cool and dark. The last of the marathon runners, spent and staggering, had long since been carried off to the medical tents. More than an hour earlier, Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia, the race’s eventual winner, looking remarkably fresh, had crossed the finish line to complete the 26-mile, 385-yard course. He was the reigning champion of the event, and he’d run like it.

The medal ceremony was over. People were gathering their things to leave. Then, from beyond the stadium gate, came the sound of sirens and police whistles. Heads turned. A lone figure entered the stadium wearing the colors of Tanzania. His name was John Stephen Akhwari — himself the reigning African champion, no stranger to finishing near the front of a field. But tonight he was hobbling. Somewhere around the 19-kilometer mark, in the chaos of jostling runners, Akhwari had fallen hard, dislocating his knee and badly injuring his shoulder. Dehydrated, disoriented, his leg wrapped in a rough, bloodied bandage, he had gotten back up.

Of the 79 men who had started that marathon, only 17 would finish. Akhwari was determined to be one of them, even if it meant being the last.

He circled the final stretch of track in visible agony, grimacing with every step. The remaining spectators rose to their feet and cheered him as though he were crossing first, not last. When he finally reached the finish line, Akhwari didn’t stop to soak in the applause. He simply walked off the field.

Afterward, a reporter asked him the question everyone was thinking: given the injury, and with no chance of a medal, why hadn’t he just quit?

Akhwari’s answer has outlived the race itself: “My country did not send me 7,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7,000 miles to finish the race.”

You were not put here just to start. You were put here to finish.

The Race Marked Out for Us

There’s a reason that answer still stops people in their tracks more than half a century later. It touches something true about the life of faith.

The writer of Hebrews uses this same image, a race, to describe what it means to follow Christ:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1)

Notice what the verse doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “let us start the race.” Starting is the easy part. Nearly everyone starts. Seventy-nine men lined up in Mexico City that afternoon, and every one of them believed, at the starting gun, that they’d finish. The verse says run with endurance, language that assumes resistance, fatigue, and the real possibility of quitting long before the finish line comes into view.

That’s because the Christian life was never sold to us as a sprint. It’s a marathon, and marathons have a way of finding your weak points. Somewhere around your own 19-kilometer mark, something is going to knock you down.

For some of us, it’s a health diagnosis nobody saw coming. For others, it’s a financial collapse, a business that fails, a job that disappears, a debt that won’t stop growing. For others still, it’s a marriage or a friendship that fractures, a wayward child, a season of grief that seems to have no bottom. None of us get to choose our injury. We only get to choose what we do after we’re on the ground.

Getting Back Up

Here’s what’s easy to miss in the Akhwari story: nobody would have blamed him for stopping. He had already lost. There was no medal waiting, no title, no reward visible from where he lay on the track. By every practical measure, finishing changed nothing about the outcome of the race.

And yet it changed everything about what his finish meant.

That’s the picture Hebrews is painting. We don’t run with endurance because finishing guarantees us a trophy in the eyes of the world. We run because we were sent 7,000 miles for a purpose bigger than the applause at the finish line, sent by a God who isn’t interested in how fast we started, but in whether we’re still moving forward when it costs us something to do it.

The passage goes on: “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus himself modeled this. He didn’t merely start toward the cross — Gethsemane makes clear how real the temptation to stop was. He finished it. And because He did, we have both a model and a source of strength for finishing our own race.

Finish Well

Maybe you’re reading this in the middle of your own fall on the track. Maybe the injury is recent, and you’re still deciding whether to get back up. Or maybe you’ve been limping along for a while now, wondering if anyone would notice — or care — if you just quietly stopped.

Akhwari’s answer is worth carrying with you: you were not put here just to start. You were put here to finish.

That doesn’t mean pretending the injury doesn’t hurt. Akhwari didn’t hide his bandage or his limp, he ran through the pain in full view of everyone, and that honesty is part of what made his finish so powerful. Faith isn’t the absence of a limp. It’s choosing to keep moving with one.

So take the next lap, whatever it looks like. Wrap the wound if you need to. Slow the pace if you must. But don’t leave the track. There is still a stadium of witnesses cheering, not because you’re winning, but because you’re finishing. And in the economy of God, that’s what it means to finish well.

Dave Almgren – Two Pastors, Popcorn and a Movie Podcast

Before He Was on the Dollar Bill, He Was Just a 22-Year-Old Who Messed Up

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I’ve spent years working with film and faith communities, and I have to be honest with you, I don’t get excited about every movie that comes across my desk. But Young Washington, releasing July 3 from Angel Studios and directed by Jon Erwin, is the kind of film I’ve been waiting for.

Not because it’s a patriotic story. Not just because the timing with America’s 250th birthday is perfect. But because it tells the truth about something we don’t talk about enough in our churches and our homes:

Failure is part of the story. Even for great men of faith.

He Wasn’t a Legend Yet

Here’s what most of us never learned in history class. George Washington was 22 years old when he made a decision that helped ignite an international war. A young man, not yet tested, not yet the face on the dollar bill, just a soldier who got it badly wrong at Fort Necessity.

And then he had to decide what to do next.

That question — what do you do after you’ve failed? — is the beating heart of Young Washington. And it’s one of the most relevant questions any family can ask around the kitchen table right now.

Even as a young man, Washington carried a gravity of character that put responsibility in his hands before most guys his age had figured out their direction. But gravity of character didn’t mean he was perfect. It meant he had the weight to keep going after he wasn’t.

A Man Who Talked to God — Long Before He Was Famous

This is the part of Washington’s story I wish more people knew.

Before he was a general. Before the Constitutional Convention. Before he ever set foot in a presidential residence. George Washington kept a prayer journal.

He wrote things like this:

“O eternal and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the lamb, and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit… daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son Jesus Christ.”

That’s not the language of a man performing faith for public consumption. That’s someone who actually believed he needed God to shape him, daily, personally, from the inside out. He wasn’t asking for victory or fame. He was asking to be made more like Christ.

And here’s what’s remarkable: he was writing prayers like that while he was still young, still being formed, still carrying the weight of his failures at Fort Necessity.

The spiritual life wasn’t something Washington added later, after he’d arrived. It was the ground he was standing on while he was still figuring out who he was.

Providence Doesn’t Wait for Perfect People

One of the most stunning moments in Washington’s actual history happened during the Battle of the Monongahela. He rode into a battlefield disaster alongside General Braddock, and by all accounts he should have died. Bullets passed through his coat. Two horses were shot out from under him. Every man around him was falling.

And he walked away without a scratch.

Washington didn’t chalk it up to luck. He wrote afterward that he had been “protected beyond all human probability or expectation” by the hand of God. He saw Providence not as a distant theological concept but as something actively at work in the specific circumstances of his life, including the painful ones.

Years later, a Native American chief who had been on the opposing side that day sought Washington out to deliver a message. His marksmen had tried to bring Washington down and couldn’t. They concluded, in his words, that Washington was “under the special guardianship of the Great Spirit” and that he “can never die in battle.”

Now, I’m not making a theological claim about that chief’s words. But I am saying that Washington’s sense of being watched over, protected, and directed by Providence was not something he invented after his victories. It was something forged in near-death, in failure, in the confusion of a 22-year-old trying to figure out what God was doing in a situation that had gone badly wrong.

In the film, we see Washington ask his mother about exactly that, how God could possibly be at work in something so broken. If you’ve ever asked that question yourself, you’re going to feel this movie.

His mother, Mary Ball Washington, gives him the answer that becomes the theme of the whole story:

“You can learn from failure. But if you don’t — you’ve failed twice.”

That line stopped me cold. Because it’s not just wisdom for a young soldier. It’s wisdom for every dad, every mom, every kid who’s watching their parents right now to see how we handle our own Fort Necessity moments.

When He Could Have Taken Power — He Walked Away

Here’s a moment that deserves more attention than it gets.

After the Revolutionary War ended, Washington commanded the most respected fighting force on the continent. His men were loyal. The country was in chaos. And there were serious voices urging him to step in, take control, and impose order. In the way Cromwell had done in England. In the way that powerful men have always been tempted to do when they believe they’re the right person for the moment.

Washington refused.

On December 23, 1783, he stood before Congress in Annapolis and resigned his commission. He said, “I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God.”

He gave the power back. And then he went home to Mount Vernon.

The man who could have been king chose to be a servant. That’s not a personality trait. That’s a theological conviction. He genuinely believed that authority belonged to God and was held in trust — not seized and kept.

That kind of character doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from years of prayer journals and Fort Necessity moments and asking God to frame him more and more into the likeness of Christ.

What This Film Is Really About

It’s about character formation. And character formation is almost never pretty in the middle of it.

As someone who spent nearly two decades in kids and family ministry before moving into faith-based film work, I’ve watched a generation of families struggle to find stories worth telling their kids. Stories that are honest about failure without being hopeless. Stories that show faith working in real life, not just as a feel-good tag at the end.

Young Washington is that story.

The film highlights traits we used to call virtues — humility, courage, accountability, perseverance, faith, stewardship. And it shows them being forged in difficulty, not handed out as rewards for good behavior.

A Few Questions Worth Bringing Home

I’ve had the chance to work through the Family Discussion Guide built around this film, and I want to share a few questions that struck me as genuinely conversation-starting, not the kind with easy answers.

What would you have done at 22, with everyone watching?

At Fort Necessity, Washington had four real options: openly admit the mistake and take full responsibility, blame the French and argue he was justified, walk away from military life entirely, or stay quiet and try to prove himself through future service. As a family, rank those from wisest to least wise, then talk about why you ranked them the way you did. You might be surprised where the disagreement lands.

Where do you see Providence in your own hard seasons?

Washington asked his mother how God could be at work in something that went so badly. Have you ever asked that? What did your family decide?

Who in your family is still being “formed”?

At 22, Washington wasn’t the man on the dollar bill yet. He was still being shaped. Who in your home is in that process right now, and what does it look like to support them in it?

That last question wrecked me a little, personally. I think about my own kids. I think about the teenagers in my community. We’re quick to celebrate the finished product. We’re less patient with the becoming.

Bring Your Whole Church — and Save 33%

Young Washington opens July 3, 2026, right in time for Independence Day weekend and America’s 250th birthday. There’s no better occasion to sit with your family, your small group, or your entire congregation and watch the story of the man who, by God’s grace and his own hard-won character, helped make that celebration possible.

Groups of 15 or more save 33% on tickets.

Get your group tickets now at angel.com/cherrytree — and make it an event your community will be talking about long after the credits roll.

If you’re a pastor who wants to preview the film before recommending it to your congregation, visit faithandfamilyflicks.com/young-washington-pastors for a private screening link.

This is the kind of story we need right now. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s honest. And in a culture that tends to either whitewash its heroes or tear them down entirely, a film willing to say he was 22, he failed, and God wasn’t done with him yet feels like exactly the right message for the right moment.

I hope your family — and your church — is there for it.

Dave Almgren is the founder of The Advance Team, a faith-based film marketing consultancy, and runs outreach campaigns through FaithAndFamilyFlicks.com. He’s also the host of the podcast “Two Pastors, Popcorn and a Movie.”

Start, Finish, Repeat

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What if winning at life isn’t about one big moment—but about showing up, finishing, and doing it all over again?

In NASCAR, championships aren’t won in a single race. Every driver knows that crossing the finish line consistently, race after race, week after week, is what separates champions from also-rans, (a racing term for competitors who finish the race but don’t place in the top spots). You might not win every race. You might not even come in second. But if you start, if you finish, and if you show up to do it again next week, the points accumulate. The momentum builds. And at the end of the season, the driver who finished the most races, not just the fastest ones, often holds the trophy.

The Apostle Paul understood this principle long before NASCAR existed.

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” — 1 Corinthians 9:24

Paul wasn’t talking about sprinting to a single finish line. He was describing a life of sustained, faithful effort—race after race, season after season—running with intention toward something worth running for.

You’re Already at the Starting Line

Here’s the thing about a starting line: it doesn’t care who you were yesterday. It only asks one question, are you ready to run today?

Maybe you’ve had seasons where you felt like you were spinning your wheels. Going fast but getting nowhere. Or maybe life’s circumstances have felt like a wrong-way sign on the road, pointing you in a direction you never intended to go. The enemy of a great race isn’t always failure. Sometimes it’s simply running in the wrong direction with tremendous effort.

The good news is that God’s grace is the great reset. No matter how many wrong turns are behind you, the starting line is always available. Every single day is a new race. Every new season is a fresh opportunity to line up, rev the engine, and go.

Hebrews 12:1 puts it this way: “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

The race is marked out. The course is set. The question is whether we’ll shed what’s slowing us down and step into it with intention, again and again and again.

Every Race Matters

Here’s where a lot of Christians get tripped up: they’re waiting for the big race. The defining moment. The dramatic turning point that will finally make their faith feel significant.

But championship seasons aren’t built on dramatic moments. They’re built on ordinary faithfulness. Showing up on a Tuesday when nobody’s watching. Finishing the hard conversation you started. Following through on the commitment you made when you felt inspired, even when the inspiration has long since faded.

Paul understood this intimately. “Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” — 1 Corinthians 9:26

Every lap counts. Every race in your series matters. The marriage you’re faithfully investing in right now—that’s a race. The integrity you’re maintaining at work when it would be easier to cut corners, that’s a race. The forgiveness you’re choosing to extend when every emotion tells you not to, that’s a race. Finish it. Then line up and do it again.

Finishing Well Is the Goal

There is perhaps no more moving picture of a life well-raced than the Apostle Paul near the end of his life, writing from a prison cell with full confidence in how his story was ending.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day.” — 2 Timothy 4:7-8

He didn’t say he ran perfectly. He didn’t say he never crashed or never doubted. He said he finished. He kept the faith. And at the end of a long series of races, many of them brutal, many of them costly, he crossed the final line still holding on to the One who called him into the race in the first place.

That’s the goal. Not perfection. Completion. Faithful, consistent, never-quit completion.

The Prize That Doesn’t Rust

Here’s what separates this race from every other competition the world offers: the prize isn’t a trophy that tarnishes. It isn’t a title that fades. It isn’t applause from a crowd that will forget your name by next season.

“They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.” — 1 Corinthians 9:25

Everything this world calls victory is temporary. Career success, financial achievement, public recognition, none of it goes with you. But every race you run in faith? That investment compounds into eternity. Every act of love. Every moment of faithfulness when no one was watching. Every time you chose God’s way over the easy way. It all counts. Every lap. Every finish line. Every time you lined up and did it again.

You are running toward something real.

Start, Finish, Repeat: Five Steps to Racing Well

So here’s the invitation: run. Not someday. Not when life calms down or when you feel more ready. Today. And then tomorrow. And then the day after that.

But what does that actually look like? Here are five practical ways to run your next race with intention:

One: Strip the weight. Look honestly at what you’re carrying that’s slowing you down. Is it unforgiveness? Fear? Shame about your past? Name it, set it aside, and run lighter. You can’t finish races carrying baggage that doesn’t belong to you.

Two: Know your lane. Stop comparing your race to someone else’s. God didn’t call you to run someone else’s course. Your lane is unique, and trying to run in someone else’s will only trip you up. Run your race. Finish your race.

Three: Find your pit crew. You were not meant to race alone. Surround yourself with people who believe in the prize you’re running toward—people who will speak truth when you’re tempted to quit and remind you of the finish line when the race gets long. That’s your church, your small group, your closest friends in faith.

Four: Fix your eyes forward. Not on the obstacles behind you. Not on the runners around you. Eyes on Jesus. Eyes on the prize. Every time your gaze drifts—and it will—redirect it back to what you’re running toward, not what you’re running from.

Five: Line up again tomorrow. This is the one that separates champions from quitters. When the race is done—whether you finished strong or barely limped across the line—show up again. Start again. The series isn’t over. The points are still accumulating. The season isn’t finished until God says it’s finished.

The crowd of witnesses is cheering. The course is marked. The prize is waiting.

And the God who called you into this race? He’s not watching from the grandstand. He’s running with you.

Start. Finish. Repeat.

David Almgren – Two Pastors, Popcorn and a Movie Podcast