One of the most important life lessons is to learn to deal with disappointments. They are part of life and we need to learn to deal with them in order to live well. If we don’t…well, we become bitter and do not live well. When other people disappoint us, we get frustrated. When we disappoint ourselves, we get depressed. And when circumstances work against us, we get discouraged. How could we learn to stay hope-filled in the midst of disappointments?…
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…
Somehow I had always felt sorry for Leah because she was the unwanted bride. Her relationships with her father, her sister, and her husband were difficult to say the least. But as I dug into the story of Leah little deeper, I found out that there was no need to be sorry for her. Leah was quite a woman of faith despite of all the rough circumstances in her life. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened…
Openhearted living is what God wants for us. He wants us to be fully alive, living in grace and loving him and each other. The enemy wants exactly the opposite. He wants us to be separated from God and other people. He wants us to build walls around our hearts. He wants to kill an destroy all the goodness in our lives. The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have…
Do you know it is possible to hope even when there is no hope? I was stunned by this discovery as I was once again reading the fourth chapter of the letter to Romans. That’s where Paul reminds us of Abraham as an example of faith. How Abraham did not focus on his impotence but on God’s competence. Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping (NLT). Hoping against hope, he believed (NRSV). For Abraham, human reason…
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….
Did you know that the color red is in the core of Christianity? I was checking out verses including the word red. When I was going through those verses I realized red was indeed in the heart of the Gospel. Let me explain. As Oswald Chambers has said “Sin is not weakness, it is a disease; it is red-handed rebellion against God and the magnitude of that rebellion is expressed by Calvary’s cross”. We all are rebels against God and…
Life is sometimes really yucky. Sometimes it really feels that all we do is shoveling dirt. How could we conquer the mount of dirt in our lives? How should we respond to all the dirt thrown our way? One thing is certain. If we store inside of us all the accusations or wrong doings we’ve experienced, we will burst or, at least, feel yucky. We need to learn to deal with the dirt in our lives. Otherwise we will drown…
Spiritual blindness seems quite an extreme idea. Somehow we are quick to toss away that idea. If we know God, we are not spiritually blind, right? Not so fast. Look again. This is not an either/or matter. We are not either spiritually blind or have a 20/20 vision. We can also be spiritually shortsighted. What to do then? How can we ensure that we are not spiritually shortsighted? First of all we need to remember that it’s not about us…
