Being stuffed is not necessarily a bad thing. Just be aware of what fills you up. Take time to be aware of grace, peace, faith, love, hope, joy and other good things…and let the busyness, stress, commercialism, selfishness and all other bad stuff go. Be filled with awe and peace this Christmas. Be stuffed with the heavenly joy. Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient…
We are called to be one in Christ…but we are not succeeding very well, are we? Living in unity seems like a balancing act sometimes. How can we who are so different live in harmony? How can we respect everyone and allow each other freedom in Christ? These are the questions I’ve been mulling over lately. Blessedly I learned five things about walking in love from Romans 14:13-23. 1) We need to stop criticizing at once. Everyone we meet is…
How are your Christmas preparations coming along? Are you stressed out about what to wear or how to get everything done on time? Maybe it is time to take time out. Maybe it is time to see what really matters. Maybe it is time to make sure we’re not oblivious to God. But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze…
Are you on the way to meet Jesus? Like the wise men? Without waiting for 100% proof? The wise men must have been on the road to pay homage to the new born king for quite some time now. They most likely had known about the prophecy of Daniel and were familiar with the astronomy. But they were on the way to meet Jesus by faith. They did not wait for 100% proof before starting their journey to Jesus. It…
Have you experienced Flow? I have to admit that when I am writing I can burn all the cooking even if I am just 10 feet away! The writing process is so exhilarating that I can’t help it. My husband knows this and he calls me on my cell to wake me up from Flow when I need to tend to some everyday stuff in the midst of my writing time. According to Wikipedia “Flow is the mental state of…
God has been speaking to me lately about the importance of community. It is quite uncanny sometimes how God gets the same message to you over and over again until you take notice. On Monday I blogged about how the only way to be fully alive is to live openheartedly and in community. Today Kurt Bubna reminds us in his new book Epic Grace, Chronicles of a Recovering Idiot that we are not meant to live alone, how we need…
Forgiveness is hard. Living forgiveness is ever harder. But we don’t have much choice if we want to have tender hearts and live fully. And the Bible is pretty adamant about forgiving too. This is what Jesus told us: “Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct him. If he responds, forgive him. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times he says, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’…
What matters in faith journey is what we do when we fall short. Do we deny our shortcomings and start pretending to be what we are not? Or do we run to Jesus? Why is this so important? Because if we keep from admitting that we are sinners, we harden our hearts. Blessedly this is not the end of the story. God can change our hearts, we just need to ask God for forgive our sins. And I will give…
Living out faith seems fun and easy when things go well. But what are we supposed to do when things don’t go so well? Still keep going strong? But how is it possible? The trick here is….we are not to lean on our own strength…but on God’s strength. We are not to thrive on our own…but to let God empower us. Then it’s not about good times or tough times. It’s about kingdom living. It’s about Christ living in us….
Do you wear glasses regularly or do you need reading glasses? What a blessing it is to have a way to see clearly, isn’t it? Otherwise everything is a bit blurry. Hard to focus, hard to see. That’s exactly the way it is in our spiritual life too. It’s hard to focus, hard to understand what’s what. We need spiritual reading glasses to see clearly. Especially when we read the Bible. Otherwise we miss the wonderful things in it. Let…
