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Facing Disappointment With Facts and Faith
Life is hard. Disease destroys precious loved ones. Injustice extinguishes innocent life. Dreams are crushed and die. Prayers remain unanswered. How do I accept the reality of pain and disappointment without losing hope? How do I trust that God might never answer prayer the way I want and still keep asking for a miracle? I’ve told myself all the usual answers: God is good and he loves me. He is sympathetic to my cry. He knows what he’s doing. Sometimes he answers, “wait.” Working behind the scenes, he will redeem the pain. I still believe these truths, but I need something more. Do I give up hope of ever seeing what I wish…
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What is it like to be “Unseen”?
Do you live your life wanting to be seen or unseen? Whether seated in an office maze of cubicles, standing behind a podium before a grand audience, or mopping up spilled milk and cereal for the third time today, we want to be acknowledged, understood, and liked. Our current world of social media has not helped our helpless and desperate desire to be noticed. These days if we do not post a photo of our dinner out, our vacation, our birthday, our promotion, or our child’s new accomplishment, it’s as though it never happened. Additionally, we want our online friends to see, like, or love our posts. Only if the…
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Blessed are the Driven
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken When Blessings Abound Series The Beatitudes Attitude: Passionately Pursuing Christlikeness Through Desperate Dependence on Him { Blessed are the Driven } Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. . . (Mt. 5:6) Hungry and thirsty people are driven people. When we are hungry and thirsty, the drive for food and water takes over, and nothing else matters. After all, food and water mean life and not death. So when Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” He was saying that our longing for righteousness and freedom from the death that sin and the shame bring is a blessing. That’s…
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God, What Do You Want Me to Do Today?
What would my schedule look like if God was in charge of it? Bill Hybels presents this probing question in his newest book Simplify. Somehow I haven’t been able to shake the idea from my mind. What if my day was ordered by, around, and for God? What if he was what I sought the most as I went throughout my day? We’re not the first people to resonate with such questions. Throughout scripture we meet brave men and women whose desire for God dictated how they lived—both in life-determining decisions and in daily to-dos. The writers of Psalms often penned their prayers and struggles with placing God before everything…
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Seasons of Sacrifice
Eight days with junior high kids on a mission trip in South Carolina may not sound like a blast to you, but they were for me in more in so many ways. Love for mission trips are part of my heart, my DNA, how God created me. I love serving on mission and being on mission, especially internationally. My first mission trip was in 2001 while in seminary. I served for six weeks in Freiburg, Germany. I fell in love with international missions. It was so hard to even return to seminary and learn old and “dead” languages such as Greek and Hebrew when I could be learning…
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Three Steps to Combating Power Struggles in Children’s Ministry
Power Struggles are as old as The Fall. In Genesis 2, the man and his wife worked as a team, one unit working together in trusting teamwork: the ideal for every children’s ministry to aspire. Only a few verses later, everything has changed. Man and wife have sinned, and the Lord pronounces the consequences of their actions. “To the Woman He said:….You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.” (Genesis 3:16). Four verses later, we see the first evidence of this phenomenon: “The man named his wife Eve….” (Genesis 3:20) . Verse 20 is often glossed over. Its significance is often missed. The Man had already…
