Freedom like a Sunny Room
Freedom is in believing God’s promises more than our worries. It is in loving His commands more than our desires and trusting His truths, even when it mea...
Category: FAITH
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January 2018 : January 2019
Last week, I returned to the tranquil cottage where my daughter and I spent our first week out of the NICU. This time, I was taking a personal prayer retreat th...
Not by Might, but by the Holy Spirit
Love and obedience are inextricably linked. During the last supper, Jesus states the importance of obeying His commands quite clearly. This passage once intimid...
A Lesson After the NICU: Receiving Rest
After six weeks in the NICU, our baby’s going home day was set for January 3. At 3:00 AM that morning, our 3 year old climbed in our bed with a fever.&nbs...
A Lesson from the NICU: Interrupted by Tenderness
Through the past four months, most days were marked by a steady and unearned peace. But, as I have recounted in this series, some included bouts of fear and tea...
Lessons from the Hospital Bed IV: Counting on Promises
Our daughter was born eight weeks early as planned and has spent several weeks in the NICU as expected. While I took the respite of the decade in the hospital f...
Lessons from the Hospital Bed III: Redefining Perseverance
The doctors said our daughter could not survive labor. Thankfully they had a plan and I knew God would strengthen me for the five-month-long journey. I sought G...
Lessons from the Hospital Bed II: Refining Gratitude
I sat on my couch with kids piled up on my lap as long as I could, soaking up every moment before I left for the hospital. Closing the front door and ridin...
Lessons From a Hospital Bed I: Experiencing Peace
I have a rare and dangerous pregnancy complication with our fourth child. In a nutshell, our healthy little girl cannot survive even early labor. To ensure that...
Letters to My Children: Don’t Let Anything Dominate You
This letter to my son is part of the Letters to My Children series. Learn more about these letters here. October 2016 Son, As you grow into a man, you will navi...
Leviticus and Easter. God is the Same Yesterday, Today and Forever.
Once a week, summer camp staff woke before sunrise because, as tired as we were, we found Matt Lantz’s Bible studies more invigorating than sleep. I admit...
Story Time #5: Founding a Nonprofit Organization
This month, Love True launched its blog and invited me to join its crew of writers! For their first post, head blogger, Jackie, interviewed the founders (read R...
Jesus is the Bread. He is Enough at Life’s Buffet and His Commandments are Not Condiments.
I don’t know about you, but after communion, I want more bread. Maybe it is just because I come to church hungry. No, not figuratively- like literal belly-rumbl...
Shelve Fleshly Selfishness and Serve Unswervingly
Full of zeal, we may ask God to use us for some great purpose. “I’ll do anything,” we pray. But when the call to help a hurting neighbor is uncomfortably unpred...
God Does Not Hold Spontaneous Q&A Sessions
God does not hold spontaneous Q&A sessions. We shouldn’t procrastinate on prayer then dial in with awkward unfamiliarity asking for quick advice on a ...
Panicking Like A Hebrew
Patience is virtue that babies have yet to cultivate. Especially hungry ones. When I lift my son from his bed he wiggles all over with excitement. “I̵...
Spiritual Highs and Lows, God-sent or Self-induced?
As a youth, I experienced spikes in spiritual zeal after retreats, mission trips and concerts. Then I’d fizzle out like a flat Coke a week or few later. My peer...
God’s Visions Are Promises
When I discover a noteworthy truth, I like to paraphrase it and write myself into it. The exercise helps me swallow the passage and critically apply its lesson....
Resources: Bible Verses about Generosity
Jesus talks about money more than any other topic and much of the time, He brings it up in connection with doing justice. I have been compiling a list of these ...
Time for a Self-Worth Transplant
We all feel it- the need to know that we matter. Truly, each of us matters. A lot. We just can’t see the truth when we are looking for it in all the wrong...
How I Made Bible Reading and Prayer a Daily Habit
I can believe something without knowing it. For years sermons and accountability meetings nudged me to make Bible study a priority and I believed them, but I di...
Of Faith and Finances: Encouragement for Founders of Nonprofit Organizations
To the start-up starter uppers out there willing to work years as full-time unpaid staff because you are committed to a calling bigger than yourself, can I (alo...
Friendship and Kitchen Knives
I watched my mother do the friendship dance through my seven childhood moves. So when I married a military man turned graduate student five years and four apart...
One Thousand Gifts IV
I have been reading a borrowed copy of The Valley of Vision, a collection or Puritan prayers and devotions from John Bunyan to Charles Spurgeon. I recently read...
Discerning God’s Will Is Not the Nerve-Racking Puzzle I Once Thought It Was
Have you ever dreamed up a mission but wondered whether the idea came from God or from your own head? Obviously, discerning God’s voice correctly is essen...
“Big” is a Nebulous Term
“Son, look up into that huge dark sprawling 40-foot tree. Now look beyond the tree at the first star tonight. Did you know that that star is bigger than t...
3 Thousand Different Kinds of Beautiful
1) Sunlight on water can be a thousand different kinds of beautiful. Even over the same body of water, this East Texas lake for instance, every morning sky ref...
A Lesson in Patience and Perspective
20 hours ago we were packing ice chests by candles light because this time yesterday a sudden, angry, lake-sloshing storm blew pine trees into power lines. I l...
Buttricks, Buttresses and Back Roads: Entering Prayer Quiet & Confident
Does King’s College Chapel’s ceiling remind you of winter treetops on an unbending back road? Around here, where winter is long and tree-vaulted roa...