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Things of Heaven: Lessons From a Social Media Fast #1
No, not my fast, but my daughter’s. Although I don’t turn my phone sounds on till after my time with the Lord each morning, I’ve not ever done a week’s fast from social media or the internet in general. Well, except back in the pre-cell phone day and I was away from the house. Actually most of my years on earth were pre-internet! I asked my daughter if I could share some of her journals from a social media fast she went through recently. Perhaps you can identify with some of her feelings, as I did. Maybe you will choose to take a similar fast as well. She began her…
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The Aroma of Sacrifice
Many of you know I read scripture chronologically year after year. The beauty of repeatedly reading the Bible this way is that there are always new revelations, new principles I’d not seen before, and many new connections I see throughout scripture between the Old and New Testaments. The thread of the Gospel all the way through from Genesis to Revelation becomes much more obvious to me year by year. As I was recently reading Exodus 30 one morning, something struck me that I’d not noticed previously. Verses 34-38 tell us God gave very exact details for the formula of the incense that would be used in worship within the tabernacle…
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He’s In Our Boat!
The banner photo above looks lovely, inviting, serene, peaceful. I would love to be in that boat pictured here. But what about the boats that are in the middle of a storm, waves crashing over the sides? I would volunteer to jump in to the boat for that ride! I recently started the Angie Smith Bible study, Matchless: The Life and Love of Jesus. One of the miracles of Jesus that I studied was one I’m very familiar with. But reading it during the 2020 season we are experiencing, just days after this crazy election, it was a reminder of what I really do know…but needed to consider once more.…
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Overwhelmed, But Praying
You know, some days right now, after receiving another bit of news from a friend or loved one that is painful, sometimes I just want to give up. Right now the things I have on my intercessory prayer list include: a friend who has been in COVID ICU for 7 weeks, a friend whose 50 year marriage is in trouble, a child custody battle, job losses of those I care about, a friend whose husband just died suddenly, family grand-pet having to be put down, a friend with incurable cancer. And then add COVID pandemic, church reopening, politics and other issues in our country, the need for a huge movement…
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Are You Listening???
Do you ever wonder if God hears our cry for Him to do something? Perhap’s it’s been a long season of praying and not seeing any answers. Do you think, maybe He’s not listening, maybe He doesn’t know, maybe He doesn’t want to fix this? I think the real problem isn’t whether or not He hears us, but whether or not, we hear Him. Too often, I just miss His answers, or maybe I’m just not intentionally looking for them. And I too often look only for answers as I want them to appear! Daily we see people listening intently through ear buds of one kind of another. We put…
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Peter’s 3’s
Numbers are important in Scripture. The numbers 3, 7, 10 and 12 indicate completeness. Most of us who have read the Gospels, remember the 3 times Peter denied Christ after His arrest, even as Jesus was defending his own identity to the authorities. And this was after Peter swore he would follow Jesus anywhere. Peter told him, “Even if everyone falls away because of you, I will never fall away.” (Matthew 26:33) And many of us also remember when Jesus restored Peter on the shore in (John 21:15-19). He asked Peter if he loved him, not once but 3 times. And each time Peter was told to “feed My sheep”.…
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When We Fall Down
Beach Lesson #2, 2019 One morning while sitting on the beach, I saw a women walking down the shoreline. But on her return trip back, she appeared somewhat unstable as she walked on the edge of the surf right in front of where we sat. I kept watching her, and sure enough, she fell and began rolling in the water unable to get up. My husband and I jumped up and ran over to help her stand up and fish her sunglasses out of the water. Once she was standing again, we asked her if she was okay. She said yes and, after we advised her to walk on the…
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Have You Paddled Out Too Far?
Beach Lesson #1, 2019 On our first day of our fall beach vacation this year this happened…. I looked out our balcony to see 3 emergency vehicles towing jet skis with lights flashing. Of course, I was curious as to what was going on and went for the binoculars. I could see one of the rescuers also looking through binoculars but pointed toward the horizon. As I continued to watch, eventually a paddle boarder appeared…just this side of the horizon and very far from shore. A girl in a bikini with a hat on, and no life vest. When she got almost to shore, she got off her board and…
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Embrace God’s Faithfulness
This is last in a 4-part series on embracing God’s attributes. Here you can read part 1, part 2 and part 3 here. Everything that God has promised will come to pass. His faithfulness guarantees this fact. He does not lie. What He has said in the Bible about Himself is true. He will honor His promise that our sins will be forgiven and that we will live forever with Him. He will never leave us, no matter what. We are told in Deuteronomy 7:9, ”Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who…
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Embrace God’s Holiness
Today, in this 4-part series, I want us to look at how to embrace God’s holiness…not just know about it, but embrace it. You can read the first post here, on embracing God’s love and the second on here, about God’s forgiveness. Do you know what the most loved hymn is? As I was studying about God’s holiness I found out, it’s not Great is Thy Faithfulness or Rock of Ages. It’s Holy, Holy, Holy. There is something mysterious and wonderful about God’s holiness. I read, in Our Daily Bread(April 21, 1997), a story about a little animal called the ermine that lives in the forests of northern Europe and…
