The scene is burned into my memory. It’s been fifteen years, but I remember the day I began to doubt God’s love for me. It was a Sunday. It was that window of fellowship after church just before people start heading home for lunch and naps. I stood in a circle of women, listening to…
Knowing God in His Own Words
Future Discipleship: Perseverance Now Means Perseverance Later
A few hot summers ago, the first week of August found me in the early stages of marathon training. For accountability’s sake, I had already signed up for the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis, Tennessee, and paid my registration fee. My financial investment was the impetus for faithful training. I’d spent the previous year working…
Secure in His Love
Sometimes I want to believe lies. “Fake news” is tantalizing and volatile, emitting knee-jerk reactions from even the most diplomatic of observers. We react, we make plans, we form opinions and theories around what might be true. We hold on to those things even when the facts are shown to be false. We struggle to…
Let January be a catalyst for Bible study.
January 1st dawns cold and bright, heavy with the weight of restriction for many of us. We use the birth of a new year as an opportunity to scale back our indulgences, tighten up our budgets, and pledge our allegiance to structure and discipline after a season of feasting and unrestrained consumerism. Many Christians will…
{Leaving the Room}
It’s nearly 7 a.m. when I close my Bible, put the notebook aside, drop the pen in the coffee mug that holds its mates on my desk. I could use fifteen more minutes, but my time is up. My kids are stirring across the hall, and the serenity of this pale blue room, dimly lit…
{I can’t read the Bible when the baby is crying.}
Maybe you’ve said these words before: “I can’t read the Bible when the baby is crying.” I know I have. When people tell me that their babies started sleeping through the night at six weeks old, I kind of want to punch them in the face. (The parents, not the babies.) If they tell me…
{the beauty of the dry spell}
(originally posted July 14, 2016) It snowed early that year, before Thanksgiving even. Every morning the skies were bleak and cold, and the trees had long given up any pretense of fall. Those frozen mornings when the sun didn’t have the will to shine brightly enough through the thick gauze of gray were reflected in…
{Bible Study Methods + VLOG demo}
If you’ve ever treated your Bible like a Magic 8 Ball, raise your hand. Flip your Bible open at random, point to a verse, read it. Make some sort of connection to your life. Close Bible. Walk away. Let’s all agree this is NOT the way the Bible was meant to be read. No shame…
{the morning person myth VLOG}
(Originally posted June 30, 2016) My husband, William, joins me for our very first VLOGGING experience. He has some strong feelings on why you should read the Bible in the morning. *I apologize for the abrupt ending of the video. I lost a few posts when I recently migrated my blog to a new web host,…
{know Him because we need Him}
Years ago, I sat in a small circle of believers as we shared our life experiences about studying the Bible. We all fidgeted a bit because it seemed we were collectively on the brink of disclosing something very secret and incriminating. One sweet woman in her 70’s confessed to the group, “I’ve been in church…