This is what Jesus nearly always does when he comes to mend those rifts in our hearts. He brings his comfort and mercy to those times and places where we suffered the shattering blow, and the heart in that place often feels the same age as it was...
READ MOREOnce we begin thinking of all the deceptions the Enemy is about with regard to our lives, we have a tendency to become obsessed with him, fearful of what he is going to do next. Once we take him seriously, he switches from his tactic of “I’m not...
READ MORE “Me, a princess?”
“You are the legal heir.”
“I never lead anyone.”
“We will help you to be a princess, to rule. If you refuse to accept
the throne then the kingdom will cease to...
We all have a way that we do life. We might call it our personality, or our natural bent — the way we handle pressure, the way we listen, the way we look for happiness, the way we control our world. We didn’t sit down one day and willfully choose...
READ MOREThe older Christian wedding vows contained these amazing words: "With my body, I thee worship." Maybe our forefathers weren't so prudish after all; maybe they understood sex far better than we do. To give yourself over to another, passionately...
READ MOREMaybe the most devastating limit is simply the idea that “Jesus doesn’t act like that anymore.” (Or, “Jesus doesn’t act like that with me.”) Sure —he was amazing in the Gospels. But that was then and this is now and things have changed. Or so the...
READ MOREThere is something forged in all of us that can only be forged through fire. Perhaps intense periods of struggle, pain, betrayal, persecution, and rejection are the times when the baptism by fire that Jesus talks about occurs. When we cling to...
READ MOREWe will never be happy as long as we are trying to live apart from ourselves or in disregard of ourselves, our hearts, our desires, our ache. Though happiness is never the highest goal, it comes to us naturally when the other aspects of our lives...
READ MORELet me say this again: the story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it. I hope you are beginning to see that more clearly now. Otherwise, much of the Bible will...
READ MOREYou cannot take your Question to Adam. You cannot look to him for the validation of your soul. But so many women do. If I have a man, then I’m okay. Then I’m loved. It happens around adolescence for women too. The time for her...
READ MOREWhen we were young, most of us loved adventure. There is something about the unknown that draws us, which is why we like stories so much. But I like to leave the theater at the end of the play, knowing that the dilemma of evil has been resolved...
READ MOREIn the years that followed the Fall and our exile from Eden, mankind got worse and worse. Cain killed Abel; Lamech threatened to kill everybody else. The wickedness of the human heart seemed out of control and unstoppable, even by the curses....
READ MOREWe women were given a huge capacity and need for relationship. It is our glory and a beautiful way that we bear the image of God, who enjoys perfect, intimate relationship. But our glory has been tainted. Because of human brokenness and sin,...
READ MOREForever and ever? That's it? That's the "good news"? And then we sigh and feel guilty that we are not more "spiritual." We lose heart, and we turn once more to the present to find what life we can. Eternity ends up having no bearing on...
READ MORECan there be any doubt that God wants to be sought after? The first and greatest of all commands is to love him (Mark 12:29-30; Matt. 22:36-38). He wants us to love him. To seek him with all our heart. A woman longs to be sought after,...
READ MOREIn heaven, things are not stained or broken; everything is as it was meant to be. Think for a moment of the wonder of this. Isn't every one of our sorrows on earth the result of things not being as they were meant to be? And so when the kingdom...
READ MOREGod is not “out there somewhere” in some dramatic way, waiting to commune with us by earthquake or fire or signs in the sky. Instead, he desires to talk with us in the quietness of our own heart through his Spirit, who is in us. It is his voice...
READ MORETherefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on...
READ MOREIdentity is not something that falls on us out of the sky. For better or for worse, identity is bestowed. We are who we are in relation to others. But far more important, we draw our identity from our impact on those others — if and how we affect...
READ MOREThis is a world at war. We live in a far more dramatic, far more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia or Star Wars or The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings is that...
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