Fear is the direct result of mistrust. Maybe we don’t trust a person. Maybe we don’t trust ourselves. Maybe we don’t trust that all things really do work together for good. Whatever the reason, the fear comes because we aren’t…
Holiness is Full of Good Things!
Holiness has gotten a bit of a bad rap in the church in recent generations. That’s mostly because it’s been misrepresented. Growing up, whenever someone talked about holiness, they usually meant the “Pentecostal-Holiness” version of the word: In other words,…
Cultivating Incorrigible Hope
“Isabelle would think of me in the present tense [I thought]. She was incorrigible when it came to hope.” It’s a line from the book I’m currently editing (shared with permission). The narrator is “presumed dead,” but she knows her…
Taking Responsibility for God’s Word to Us
If we want to see God come in power, we need to take responsibility. It’s not that God can’t come if we “flunk out” on the responsibility side of things, but taking responsibility for ourselves and our experiences gives us…
The Secret to a Humble Life
Humility is a difficult trait to pin down. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines it as, “freedom from pride or arrogance: the quality or state of being humble.” In some ways, the definition is useful in that it tells us what humility is…
Shine Bright!
There’s a song I’ve enjoyed for a while now. It goes something like, “Gotta shine like stars in the universe, Be a different kind of crazy, a different shade of crazy*.” It’s based on Philippians 2:15: “That you may show…
Can You Relate?
There are some people you just relate to instinctively. Whether it’s because you’ve had similar enough experiences in life, you’re facing similar challenges, or there’s just something similar between the way you both relate to your different experiences in life,…
The Beauty of Free Will
One of the amazing things about walking with God is to find His pleasure in your free will. God created mankind with a will of their own – even in the Garden of Eden, before the fall, we see Adam…
Faith Doesn’t Have to Be Loud
What does great faith in action look like? The problem with trying to define faith is that we mostly see its outcome rather than what it looks like during the “in between” – the time between when the faith is…
Beautiful! – And Our Heart’s Response
If you follow current Christian trends, you’ve probably run across the idea that God sees you through the blood of Christ as beautiful, righteous, holy, already approved, and so many more positive attributes. Every one of these claims has a…