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The Gifts of Christmas That Last Forever
Several years ago, I hosted a neighborhood Christmas luncheon. When I got out my decorations, I asked myself, “What message do I want to give to the women as they come into my home?” Decorating is work; I wanted it to be meaningful! Over the years, I had collected a bunch of odds and ends stuff—mostly things given to me by my mom, our kids, or found in the attics of houses we bought. Recalling a book I read years ago called “The Gifts of Christmas” by Rachel Hartman, I remembered the author had taken the parts of the biblical Christmas story and considered them to be gifts (music, wonder,…
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Trust God’s Choice in Addressing Your Pain
This year has been painful for many of us. Because of Covid-19, we haven’t seen loved ones for months because they live far away. Travel is risky for older folks because of their vulnerability to the disease. We keep praying for it to go away, and it just won’t! The flu at least ends after a few months. This thing is persistent and wicked. This pain is affecting our lives in new and challenging ways. I was in a Bible study recently talking about how pain affects our lives and our perspective of God’s goodness to us. We were studying the Mark 5:21-43 accounts of the woman who had been…
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Jesus as Lord Deserves Our Loyalty
Loyalty is the quality of devotion or attachment to somebody or something. It’s both a feeling and an action. Some of us by nature tend to be loyal. Others of us are more skeptical, preferring instead to be mavericks out on our own. Loyalty is being tested everyday in homes and businesses and human relationships across this planet. Who demands your loyalty or has the right to it? Do they receive it from you? How good are you at remaining loyal? Loyalty affects how you approach life—God’s way or the world’s way. We can’t know all that’s ahead for us, but we can choose to declare, “Jesus, I am YOUR woman.” By that,…
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Saintly Superstitions Are Substitutes for Christ
The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who demonstrated through His life and His words that He was fully God. All God’s powers and attributes are in Jesus—nothing missing. There is nothing more of God that we can get apart from Jesus. Jesus Christ is over everything. Evil is under His feet. As we sit with Him in heaven, evil is under our feet. So, when life’s challenges hit us squarely in the face, why do we turn to substitutes? What happens when you get tired of waiting for God to answer your prayer? What happens when you don’t see Him rescuing you from a tough…
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Trusting Jesus to Make Decisions
Making decisions is hard for me. And, I’m talking about simple things like choosing bathroom rugs. I go back and forth between two or three options, finally decide, then second guess myself for weeks or months. Do you do that? So, when I started studying Acts to teach at my church this fall, I ran across Acts 1:21-26 where Peter led the group to choose a replacement for Judas through casting lots. Can I get a “Casting Lots” kit from the local Christian bookstore? That would be so much easier than wondering if I made the right decision. I did what most of you would do. I searched “casting lots”…
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Adorn Yourself with Godliness
Godliness is devotion to God expressed in a life that pleases Him, that reflects Him, that represents Him well. Every Christian woman who understands God's amazing love and grace toward her will want to adorn herself with godliness.
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Two Aspects of Trusting God
Has God placed something in your heart for you to do? It could be correcting sinful behavior in your own life. It could be serving someone else. It could be speaking up in a situation where a voice with biblical principles needs to be heard. Whatever it is involves two aspects of trusting God. (1) You must trust him as you step forward and do your part. And, (2) you must trust him to do his part in the areas over which you have no control. Those two aspects of trusting God are necessary to act on what God has placed in your heart to do. Esther’s story in the…
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Want to try that again?
Christians over the years have learned that certain practices (daily devotionals, dedicated prayer, giving, etc.) help to keep the heart turned toward God. These are often called ‘spiritual disciplines’. Such disciplines may heighten your sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s work in conforming your inner and outer self to look more like Jesus. 0
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4 Truths to Overcome Fear
We can learn a lot of things from our experience with the novel coronavirus and how it has affected our lives. We can learn the value of considering others as more important than ourselves as we choose to let self-sacrifice win over self-centeredness. We can learn how to be creative during our “shelter in place” time. We are learning how to love our neighbors from six feet away whenever we are able to do so. We’ve repeatedly scrubbed our hands, sprayed doorknobs and light switches with Lysol, worn gloves to go to the grocery store and wiped down every item brought into our house, and disinfected even our mail. And,…
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Release Your Expectations of Acceptable Outcomes
The headline I recently read was this, “Sinkholes leave Florida neighborhood looking like cratered wasteland.” People of a Central Florida neighborhood are stuck in a nightmare after a dozen sinkholes opened, forcing the evacuation of a bunch of homes. Residents said the holes burst open as water started exploding into what looked like a geyser shooting out of a now-empty pond. Central Florida is sinkhole alley with porous limestone resembling Swiss cheese close to the surface. The holes in the limestone existed long before the neighborhood was built. Apparently, no one called in geologists to extensively examine the underlying soil and rock before all those houses were constructed. What strikes me is…
