-
Shame, Jesus, and Me
This month I’m honored to invite my friend and teammate Christian Williams as my guest blogger. I love being in Christian’s company because one minute she’s making me laugh so hard I’m crying and the next she has stopped me in my tracks with a thought-provoking reflection. Christian is a Dallas transplant (Native Arkansan) and DTS student who loves communicating truth and building safe, authentic, purposeful communities. She feels God’s pleasure most when using her imagination, storytelling, teaching, and living in intentional relationships which yield growth and transformation. Dub: (verb) to give an unofficial name or nickname to (someone or something). I dub everything. From my period- I call her…
-
Find Healing for Hurting Hearts
What’s on your New Year’s Resolution list? If your list is a lot like mine, it includes returning to pre-holiday healthier eating habits and making time for exercise several times a week. Those are common resolutions regarding physical fitness. Not so common are resolutions pertaining to our emotional fitness. But I have a book recommendation that might help with your 2020 emotional goals: Healing Every Day: A 90-Day Devotional Journey by Mary DeMuth.
-
Surviving Abortion: An Interview
“One out of every four women has had an abortion,” Jane* explained to me.[1] She sat across the table looking down at the coffee cup between her nervous hands as she shared her heart and the heavy burden she’d carried for a number of years—she was a survivor of abortion. No, her birth mother had not tried to abort her. She, rather, had aborted two babies many years ago. She explained the circumstances, the scenarios, and her guilt. I listened and cried with her, saying little. I gave her space to tell me the details of her story. And then I told her that I loved her and that Jesus…
-
Hope Deferred—Observations from Hannah’s Story
She pushed herself up from the table and left the room. She did not have much appetite. The day had been long, and she could take the painful and provoking comments from Peninnah no longer. As she walked towards the temple, tears poured from her eyes and slid down her cheeks and nose, making a wet trail in the dust. Her lips moved as she prayed, but she did not utter a sound as she pleaded and begged the LORD for a child. To make matters worse, the priest believed her to be not grieved, but rather, drunk. (1 Sam. 1:7–14) Hannah suffered much because of her childless state. Many…
-
When Your Heart is Choked by Hurt
Today's guest post is from my friend, author & ministry leader Ally Holland. The darkness was thick and suffocating, like a heavy blanket had been draped over my entire body. I had been sitting alone in my office for several hours, contemplating my circumstances, knowing full well I should have chosen my words more carefully. Anger can cloud your mind as it did mine, and before you know it you have hurt someone you love. Hurts from family members run deepest of all. Time passes and your heart goes quiet with apathy and indifference. You put up emotional walls hoping to prevent further harm. You even start stiff-arming God.…
-
Healing by Medicine or Miracle?
Does God only heal through the medical profession today or does He still make house calls? (Mark 1:29-31) 0
-
Throwing Stones
Six hundred stones plopped and splashed as they hit the surface of the Sea of Galilee and then sunk, never to be retrieved again. Each rock signified something of importance. Some represented long-held unforgiveness and bitterness toward a family member or friend. Other stones symbolized a wayward son or daughter, or even a spouse. And yet others signified unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Though the meanings of each rock differed, the lasting results were the same. As passengers aboard the Israel tour boats released their stones from their hands, they also released emotional and spiritual burdens from their hearts. As I threw my stone into the Sea of Galilee, I quietly…
-
Don’t Just Survive
Today I'm happy to have as my guest Mary DeMuth, my dear friend who's an author and speaker. Her desire is to help people live “uncaged,” freedom-infused lives. She’s the author of fifteen books, including six novels, a memoir, and most recently The Wall Around Your Heart, from which today’s column is adapted. (It appeared in similar form at Crosswalk.com. I read the book and endorsed it.) After church planting in Southern France, Mary, her husband, and their three young adult kids now live in the ‘burbs of Dallas. To find out more about Mary, visit her website, facebook, twitter, or wallaroundyourheart.com, Some of us cope with relational pain by choosing to live in survivor…
-
A Touching Story
I called her “The Bloody Woman in Mark 5” for the longest time. I can think back to my childhood and remember hearing about her in Sunday school. I can even recall when my mind made the connection that her suffering involved bleeding — the vaginal kind. I grossed out and groaned in horror when I realized she suffered for twelve years. Whenever I read about her today, I still cringe. And I continue to feel sad when I see that she did all she could to make it better…instead it only got worse. Others rejected her since a bleeding woman was considered “unclean.” The last time I read about…
-
Healing Nasty Wounds
Memories of my childhood tell me that I constantly bore a wound on my body from a fall, burn, bite, or cut, primarily because of my clumsiness. However, the worse sores I recall seeing were on my sister who suffered a series of boils from a staph infection. No one knows where she got it or remembers exactly how long it lasted, but I recollect a number of weekly doctor visits for antibiotic injections. Emotional wounds require the same treatment as physical ones. Failure to deal with the underlying problem means that real healing doesn’t occur. I know all about ignoring issues instead of facing them, having done this myself…
