Tag: faith
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For the Joy Set Before Him
Imagine you can have everything you’ve ever truly wanted. Deep, perfect relationships with everyone you love. Life with God, seeing Him face to face without any cause to doubt that you are fully known and fully loved. Freedom from fear, want, and pain. Access to every answer, every good opportunity, every wonderful place and experience….
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God Endures
I often read Hebrews 11 when I need a reminder that hard and perplexing circumstances can be endured by faith. It helps me to persist, seeking to honor God by faith when my sight feels dim. But. Recently it struck me that the “heroes of the faith” remembered in the passage weren’t the only ones…
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God is Sufficient for Your False Guilt
“I feel bad about…” I began. My husband joked it was time for my daily list of “things I feel guilty about that I probably have no control over anyway.” If only he wasn’t right! Too often, I find myself stuck replaying all the ways I could have done better, loved more, anticipated and therefore…
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Confirmation After Faith
Sometimes when we beg the Lord for confirmation or a sign, what we’re really saying is that: We don’t want to walk by faith- we want to walk by sight. We don’t find His direction in Scripture enough. We don’t take Him at His Word that He’ll always be with us. God’s leading often asks…
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Oh You Of Lasting Faith
Oh you of little faith,” Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 14:31. I get it. The guy was sinking. His succumbing to the waves, we’re explicitly told, is because he doubted. So yes, his failing faith left him flailing in the moment. But before that? Peter got out of the boat. “Jesus,” I want to challenge, “doesn’t…
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When It’s Not Over
“The end,” the story says. To successfully conclude the plot of a story, you must wrap up the loose ends. At the end of a person’s life, there is a service to conclude their time on earth. When you get sick, one of the first questions you ask the doctor is “when will I will…
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Three Signposts to Help You Stay on the Narrow Way
While rereading Pilgrim’s Progress, it struck me how simple were the instructions given to the main character, Christian. Just stay on the narrow way. Go straight. Yet time and again, Christian strays or is tempted to veer. The arguments for taking another path are often compelling and plausible. The same is true for us. No…
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Are You Acting Like a Wolf?
One of the questions we often ask when reading Scripture is “how does this apply?” We’re usually thinking in terms of what the Word means for our lives or what promises it holds. Sometimes we ask how it might comfort or exhort us. Scripture can also warn us about our own nature. Do you know…
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When Your Definition of Perfection Is Too Small
“You can never do anything all the way right.” It’s a line I wrote sarcastically while joking with a friend. The trouble is, it stuck with me and my perfectionist ways. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” backs up the notion (Romans 3:23) But those of us bent toward perfectionism…
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What’s in Your Closet?
For years, I walked around with holy socks. As in, socks with gaping holes in them. At first, it was because money was tight. Over time, it was just what I was used to (and I’m a creature of habit.) Even after someone gifted me new, thick, soft socks, I still wore the old ones….