Can I make a confession? Sometimes I quit too soon. I’ve quit when what I really needed to do was press on and press through. Sometimes I’ve gotten tired of trying. Sometimes I’ve gotten tired of the struggle. And you know what? I’ve missed many blessings because I got tired of the battle. I don’t want to do that any longer. Read more…
It was an unusual phone call from my son, Steven. He was in his second week of his second semester, his third year in college.
“Hey mom, this is Steven. I just wanted to call and say ‘hello.’ I haven’t talked to you in a while and wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Hey bud,” I replied. Read more…
When I was eight years old, my prized possession was a collie dog named, what else, Lassie. Lassie was my shadow. She ran alongside me as I pedaled around the neighborhood on my pink-glittered banana bike. She slept outside the door of my one-room playhouse when my best friend, Wanda, and I “camped out.” She protected me from dangerous strangers, Read more…
Allan was a tough man. Raised by a single mom with five siblings, he learned how to scrape his way through life and climb to the top of humanity’s heap through sheer determination and grit. He married at nineteen, had his first son at twenty, then a baby girl at twenty-five. Over the next two decades he advanced from driving a delivery truck at a lumberyard to becoming part owner of a building supply company. Read more…
A sign was posted on a telephone pole by the grocery store: “LOST DOG with three legs, blind in left eye, missing right ear, tail broken, and recently castrated. Answers to the name of Lucky!”
Perhaps you feel just about as “lucky” as that lost dog. Hobbling along. Impaired vision. Broken tail. Well, you get the picture. There was a woman in the Bible who also felt like she was out of luck and had nothing to give. Read more…
My family growing up was one big mess. Fighting. Arguing. Yelling. Crying. And eventually, a lot of forgiving. If ever there is a place to learn about forgiveness…to practice forgiveness…to struggle with forgiveness…it is in the family. And interestingly, it is in the context of family where the word forgiveness first shows up in the Bible.
Let’s dig into Scripture today. Read more…
I am so glad that God gave us girlfriends who will struggle with us in prayer. I have loved praying for each and every one of you who have posted prayers on The Prayer Wall.
Paul certainly understood struggling together in prayer.
He wrote: “Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to join in my struggle by praying to God for me” (Romans 15:30 NLT). Read more…
Let me tell you a story about what it looks like to hang on to Jesus. It just might be what you need to do today.
Blondin” was the stage name for Frenchman Jean-Francois Gravelet. He was a young man who migrated to the United States with a troupe of acrobats employed by Master Showman P.T. Barnum. In 1858, Read more…
I watched a gaggle of eight-year-olds play a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. One was blindfolded, spun around in circles, and then pointed in the direction of a donkey posted on the wall. As she made her way toward where she thought the donkey was waiting, her friends yelled out which way she should go.
“Move to the right!”
“Move to the left!”
“You’re getting cold!”
“Now you’re getting warmer!’
“Go up a little!”
Some of the voices intentionally tried to mislead her, Read more…
There she lay in her beautiful box. A two-foot bride doll dressed in a white chiffon, pearl-studded wedding gown with matching veil. Her short-cropped, curly brown hair fell softly around her delicate face; her pink, plump skin felt amazingly soft; and her movable eyelids lined with thick black lashes opened and closed with her changing positions. The bride had perfectly shaped lips and crystal-blue eyes that appeared strangely real. Read more…