There are some seasons of life when deep, regular Bible study isn’t feasible. Now, as someone who believes that studying Scripture is vital to our growth in Christ, even writing that statement feels awkward to me. Ten or fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it, But the deeper I go into my forties, and…
perseverance
Revisitation
The year I turned eleven, my family packed up our belongings and left the neighborhood where the bulk of my childhood memories were held in a little yellow house with rose bushes growing against the backyard fence. After five years, we’d outgrown that yellow house and my parents had plans to build a larger home…
You Can Always Come Back to Church
After a four-month absence, I went back to the gym this morning. I had a significant surgery on my hand in early December, and the recovery was slow, but truthfully? I quit going before the surgery, and I could have gone back weeks ago. I also could have made accommodations for my hand and found…
Preparing for the Storm
As I write, the entire state of Missouri is bracing itself for a giant winter weather system that will bring a significant amount of freezing rain and ice with it. Where we’re located just south of Cape Girardeau, we find ourselves in this position often. My young son is praying for snow because we so…
Tornadoes, Trees, and the Family of God
I was on a plane when the tornado hit our town last Sunday. My phone buzzed with notifications while I stood in line to board my connecting flight to California. My husband, sister, brother-in-law, and I had been planning our trip to the West Coast for six months, and I stood with indecision before boarding…
When God Takes His Time
I started praying for healing about fourteen years ago. I started praying for a baby twenty years ago. Of all the things I have prayed for in this life, those two things have topped my prayer list the longest. With an autoimmune disease that has only fairly recently been tamed, I’ve spent many agonizing nights…
Wherever He Leads, He’ll Go
In the Baptist church of my childhood, every Sunday service ended with an altar call. My pastor stood at the front of the church in case anyone needed prayer or wanted to make a profession of faith in Jesus. During that time, the music minister would lead the church in a hymn from the Baptist…
You Could Be Faithful with Your Frailty
“You could be faithful with your frailty.” I was walking the track at the gym like I do every morning before my workout, and the lyrics from the Christian hip-hop artist were so quick I almost missed them. You could be faithful with your frailty.[1] He’s speaking, I think, to our inability to make our…
Hope for the Slowly Sanctified
Do you ever look at your life and think, “This isn’t who I thought I’d be by now?” Maybe you thought you’d be more faithful, more studied, more patient, more self-controlled, wiser, holier, kinder. Maybe you hoped that after all these years some of those things you really hate about your old self had stayed…
What We Regard as Little
Sometimes I think it might be easier to be faithful to Christ when life is hard. Do you know that feeling when you get to the other side of a crisis and once you finish basking in the way everything held together, you wonder what it will take to recover your tight-fisted grip on the…