As I was contemplating whether I should share something with someone or not, the Holy Spirit whispered to my heart: My grace in you helps you give grace to others. I immediately thought of 1 Peter 4:8, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.'” Love covers. Love doesn’t have ...
I think a lot about the tug-of-war between our spirit and our soul. The Bible helps us understand that humans are made up of 3 major parts: body, soul, and spirit. Much like an egg that has a shell, a yolk, and egg white, each part is individual yet together make a whole. Our spirit, soul, and body make up ...
Agitating passions. Moral conflicts. I don’t know why these two phrases jumped off the page to me, other than they perfectly described what I was looking for help with. Agitating. Like a washing machine. The dictionary says it means to move or force into violent, irregular action. Or we could say, rolling something over and over to the point of ...
Am I? I had to ask God, “Am I a hypocrite?” This isn’t a question we should be afraid of although Jesus was quite stern when He said: “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.Their worship of me is pointless, because their teachings are ...
Part 1 | Part 2 I recently posted a status on Facebook and Twitter that received a lot of attention: I can think some things… I can know some things… But I don’t have to “say” everything I think and know. #discretion This is an area I still want/need to grow in. It’s a crazy temptation to want to tell others ...
You know I care about helping people find a “self to live with” through an understanding of who we’ve been made to be in Christ. But I was quite surprised to discover the scriptures use the word self quite a bit in the negative–not the positive. For example, you’ll find words like: self-confident, self-seeking, self-condemned, self-sufficiency, self-imposed, and self-willed. Yuck. Those ...
“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) CONSIDER THIS Recently, my emotions got the best of me. I was more than a little frustrated. But very quickly, my spirit yanked me up by the collar and said, “Reel that in…” and I did. A short time later, my husband and I drove an hour to our son’s ...
When Jesus marvels at anything, we should sit up and pay attention. In the story of the centurion who wanted Jesus to heal his servant, the Bible says Jesus heard his request and marveled at his understanding of authority (Matthew 8:5-10). More specifically, Jesus marveled because at His simple and sincere reply that He would come heal this man’s servant, ...
Did you ever see the television show called “On the Fly”? My daughter and I caught an episode once. It was a reality show about airports and how people handle delays and other airport-related dilemmas. It was interesting to me because my mom was a flight attendant for 20 years. But in one clip I watched, a gentleman in a ...
I know the title is a bit gross, but you immediately had a mental picture didn’t you? I don’t think I need to explain what vomit is, but I might need to explain why Jesus used this terminology. Both Matthew and Mark recorded Jesus’ rebuke to the Pharisees when His disciples were questioned about why they didn’t wash their hands ...
“They treat you like an animal so you’ll act like an animal, so they can kill you like an animal.” When I was a child, I remember hearing a lot of talk about a TV mini-series called Roots, but I was too young to watch it. I’m now a fan of historical events of any kind, so when I saw ...
You’ve probably heard the saying, “Practice makes perfect.” But this isn’t entirely true… only perfect practice makes perfect. So a good question is: what are you practicing? Because you might not want to be perfect at everything. For example, the Apostle John said, “Everyone who commits sin practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). The Bible teaches us that sin no longer has power over ...