This week our children were asked “How would you describe yourself?” as part of an assessment in their kindergarten. Our daughter answered “I am beloved and I don’t pick on my brother”. That got me thinking. If I felt this delighted to hear that my child knew she was loved…how much more our Heavenly Father would be delighted if we truly embraced his love and grace? How wonderful it’d be if all God’s children could say with confidence “I am…
Spiritual hunger is a very unpleasant traveling companion. As pilgrims we have a long way to go and our path will not always be easy. So we need to make sure we are as spiritually healthy as we can. In order to prevent spiritual starvation we need to stay close to God and bask in his presence. When we are spiritually well fed it is so much easier to take any rough patch on the road. If we include God…
One of the biggest blessings in my everyday, ordinary life is God’s presence. Faith is not an abstract theological construction but an on-going conversation with God. Faith and life are meant to be intertwined. God is with us as we peel potatoes and as we converse with our neighbors. When we pray as we go God is in small details of our lives. Psalm 15 gives us a glimpse what faith in ordinary life could look like. God, who gets…
Do you want to live fearlessly? Good for you. Because fear cripples and cramps joy out of living. And joyless living is only surviving from day to day. We are meant to thrive, to enjoy the days we’ve been given. How then can we achieve the state of fearlessness? The first step: PRAYER! Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a…
Are you in need of life-giving, life-nourishing words? Do you feel dragged down? You’ve come to the right place. I want to share with you a gem in the Bible: the chapter 55 in Isaiah. We need to read and re-read this every time we feel spent, tired or over-whelmed (or all three at once). Because here God offers you love, grace, and joy. All three at once. “Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you…
Do you have prayer requests? Good news! We have a prayer hearing God who lovingly responds to us. One day he was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said, “Master, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” So he said, “When you pray, say, Father, [How wonderful it is to approach God as Father! This never happened in the Old Testament. What a gift it is to be a child of…
Waiting is -as we all know- hard. But if we see it as an art form or a spiritual practice it gets easier. Not easy but easier. I find it helpful to use the distinction found in the New testament between chronos time and kairos time. We are familiar with chronos time, something we can measure with clocks and calendars. But kairos time is more essential when we learn to practice the art of spiritual waiting. Kairos is the God’s…
Are you on your way to heaven? Do you know how we are supposed to spend our time waiting for the second coming of Jesus? Let’s find out! I don’t think, friends, that I need to deal with the question of when all this is going to happen. You know as well as I that the day of the Master’s coming can’t be posted on our calendars. He won’t call ahead and make an appointment any more than a burglar…
We all know God is love. But God is also Joy! All the joy in the world derivatives from God. And there is no joy apart from God. No matter how hard people try to tell you so. All the attempts to have fun are poor substitutes for joy. God was, is and will be JOY. “God sovereignly made me—the first, the basic— before he did anything else. I was brought into being a long time ago, well before Earth got…
As we enter this fall season I invite you to do little self-examination: How is your relationship with God? Hopefully not on the rocks! Where is God in your life in this season? Hopefully not in the margins or in the back of your mind! (But even then remember God is only a whisper away. A fresh start is always possible!) I’ve come to understand that if we approach God only when we need something from him our relationship with…
