This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have

By: Smith, Joshua Luke

Published by HarperOne, 2026-07-28

“’This is the main event’ is the kind of phrase I’d like to tattoo on my arm—and my spirit . . . a thoughtful, artful, soulful meditation on life and faith and time and what really matters.” –Shauna Niequist, New York Times bestselling author
A simple mantra to change everything: discover how to encounter God in your everyday, and practice extraordinary presence in an ordinary life.
What if the life we long for isn’t elsewhere but rather right here, waiting to be discovered?
Joshua Luke Smith believes the greatest lie facing our generation is that the life we long for lies beyond the life that we have. We so easily learn to disdain the inconveniences and interruptions that infuse our everyday. But the real transformation happens when we look at our life as it is and dare to announce: This is the main event.
With devotional depth and prophetic wisdom, and interspersed with the author's original poetry and blessings, This Is the Main Event is your invitation to awaken to the sacred in your ordinary life. The pathway is through three spiritual practices, as Joshua commends, each proclaiming a transformative truth:
LAMENTATION: you are allowed to name your pain CONSECRATION: you are called to let grace change you ADORATION: you are invited to live in the wonder of God’s daily presence
It's easy to see the bills, packed lunches, traffic jams, dentist appointments as mundanity, but then again, God comes to you in the shape of your actual life. Joshua Luke Smith writes from the raw materials of his own ordinary life—toddler tuck-ins, recovery meetings, flat tires a mile from home—to speak to yours. As you'll soon discover, every moment becomes meaningful when you recognize the God who meets you in it—a holy encounter accessed in the everyday.