It’s Christmas-time and the holiday season is in full swing!
Have you noticed that Christmas has become a very in-your-face holiday? It seems like everywhere I look there is red and green, lights, jingle bells, and cheer. There are 24 hour Christmas radio stations, racks of Christmas attire in every store, and enough Hallmark and Netflix original Christmas movies to fill up a whole week.
Read MoreBut how did we go from two sided politics to the depth of angry rhetoric that is defining each election cycle in our country? Everywhere I look, it seems as if people are trading the common decency of treating others like themselves in order to point fingers, vilify, and hurt. The examples are endless, from our national leaders right down to our neighbors across the street.
Read MoreI had a friend the other day tell me I should read a book he was reading about the Bible, but his recommendation was encapsulated by a warning:
“You’ll probably hate it. It will make you mad,” he said. “But you should still read it.”
Read MoreFor me it is comfortable to rely on myself, my successes at work, my family and friends, my home, and all it holds. It’s comfortable but also fleeting. My confidence in myself can feel as solid as steel one moment and then slips through my fingers like that sand on the beaches of the Gulf.
Honestly, I get tired of the fleeting. The unreliability of my own flesh is exhausting in a way. That’s why trading my perspective to that of Paul’s has been an exercise in freedom.
Read MoreI don’t know about you, friend, but I tend to approach my life like I’m living through several movies back to back. As the hero of course (ha), I’m living life, and then a difficult circumstance hits like the climax of a film. I’m then thrown for a while. I may wallow in my emotions, complain, search for an escape, live in denial - you name it, all the bad ways of reacting.
Read MoreIt may be a bad day or week or year at work. Or I might get some terrible news about someone I know - sickness, death, loss, rejection - it all comes. Or maybe I am just in a time of personal suffering, where I don’t know what to do or where God is in it all.
It is then I begin to question my place and time in the world. Why me? Why now? Why this? And I lose sight of the idea that I am here on purpose, that God made me exactly for my right now.
In fact what I would rather do is abandon my right now and run in the opposite direction towards anything else. The last thing I want is to be made “for such a time is this”.
Read MoreOur resident creative genius Sarah Kate took over our blog today! Watch the video below to see how beautifully she conveys truth about the book of Esther!
Read MoreThere was a horrific school shooting two weeks ago in Florida, the details of which are hard to swallow for even the most desensitized or indifferent.
It was extremely hard for this teacher to hear as well. I found myself reading every article I could find, pulled into the black hole of the internet, scouring every detail.
Read MoreOur resident creative genius Sarah Kate took over our blog today! Watch the video below to see how beautifully she conveys truth about this incredible passage in Nehemiah.
Read MoreThe lies within us partner with our personalities or internal wiring and lead us right into sin. That gravitational pull to sin then paralyzes our hands, and we become ineffective for the kingdom, stymieing the work God has led us to accomplish.
The defense that we need, then, must be internal as well as external. We must combat our own selves, and Nehemiah gratefully gives a picture of where it must start.
Read MoreIn the Fall of 2014, I felt the Holy Spirit urging me to pray a specific and uncharacteristic prayer.
Before I lay it all out, I probably need to communicate what makes the prayer uncharacteristic. First of all, you need to know that I am not a visionary. Meaning, I’m not the one dreaming big dreams of the future with pie-in-the-sky aspirations. I'm more of a doer. I’m going to be the one in the trenches working hard to make someone else’s ideas happen. Second, I am perfectly happy with that. I like “the doing” just fine.
Read MoreSelf-realization comes in many forms but always seems to pop up when I am the least aware. I feel like I’m at a point where I feel comfortable understanding “me.” But then I deal with some unforeseen circumstance, and then something new surfaces.
Read MoreCheck out this amazing new video on the book of Ezra!
Read MoreWhether it is making sure you have a solid group of Christian friends, accountability partners, the right-fit small group, etc., the overwhelming message is a Biblical one. We’re meant to be a small cog in the wheel of doing life together, unified to the same goal.
But I wonder if after we’ve found our community and checked that box on our godly to-do list, we neglect an equally Biblical understanding of the role of the believer as part of the body - that of correction and instruction of each other in the faith.
Read MoreI feel like a lot of Christians have the heebie jeebies when it comes to Satan.
It’s like when the abused puppy rescue commercials come on, and everyone immediately turns the channel. People get squirmy when it comes to discussing Satan’s reality in our lives. Most would rather just turn the channel.
Read MoreI got lost in Prague this summer.
It definitely wasn't on purpose. I was not on a quest to "find myself" in Europe and somehow got "lost" in pursuit of higher understanding.
This was just your normal "I don't know where the heck I am" and "I don't speak the language," run of the mill lost.
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