Restoring the Joy of Your Salvation
When we are first born again, we begin the Christian life with an explosion of joy. Ah, what peace we experience when we truly grasp the reality of salvation—that our sins are forgiven through the precious blood of Christ and that our eternal life is secure. But our enemy does not want our joy to […]
Why Physical Prosperity—Without God—is Actually Poverty
In a world that often equates wealth with prosperity, the tragic ends of men like Adolf Merckle and Thomas H. Lee serve as reminders that prosperity without God is fleeting and empty. Merckle, once a German billionaire with a net worth peaking at $9.2 billion, built a vast empire in pharmaceuticals, cement, and more—yet when […]
Why The Gift Can’t Satisfy Us Like The Giver
Sometimes I realize that the gift of peace I find in creation can suddenly become disordered. Instead of letting the beauty of the mountains or the stillness of nature lead me into deeper worship of God, I begin to treat creation itself as the source of what my soul needs: God’s presence. My soul begins […]
Running With an Inner Flame
“Then I said, ‘I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name.’ But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not.” Jeremiah 20:9 In an interesting Runner’s World story published recently, the writer […]
The Only Purpose That Truly Makes Life Matter
For many years, I tried to find purpose and value the same way most people do—by improving myself, building relationships, pursuing self-improvement goals, and even trying to make a difference for others. These are not unwholesome pursuits, but before I accepted Christ as my Savior, they never satisfied me like they do now. Even as […]
Make God’s Name Great
For most of my Christian life, I gave God a bad name. In other words, while I called myself a “Christian” which implied I belonged to Christ and I followed many of the religious rules, in real life, I was a vain, selfish, proud, ambitious, uncaring, anxious person. This reflection was in no way a […]
A Recipe for Excellent Spiritual Health
If you had cancer, would you knowingly inject your body with more cancer cells? Of course not. You would do everything possible—surgery, chemotherapy, whatever it took—to eradicate the disease. Intentionally reintroducing the lethal disease into your body would be unthinkable! Yet while we are often vigilant about our physical health, we can be surprisingly careless […]
Finding Peace When Forgiveness is Hard
I recently was struggling to forgive someone who was bent on hurting me. The more I thought about the situation, the more my peace slipped away and was replaced by anxiety. I was losing this remarkable promise of God: “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You.” (Isaiah 26:3) I […]
Training For Every Season
“Final hours of warmth before dangerous wind chills return tomorrow morning.” That weather alert flashed across my watch late yesterday, predicting strong winds that would send temperatures from the seventies into the teens overnight. I couldn’t help but think, “I’m grateful we’re heading to Texas, where the cold won’t be quite so severe.” My husband, […]
Write Your Biography of Miracles
Is there anything written in the story of your life that you can point to and say, “Only God could have done that?” You know, something so far beyond your natural ability that it stands as clear evidence of His power? If not, it is NOT because God is unable. Most often it is because […]