Blog
4 Areas to Create Margin and Find Abundance
Holly Hawes writes about creating healthy margins in order to find the abundant life Jesus offers.
Desperate for God
We don’t need much to serve God – we need willing hearts and open minds, but as with most things we complicate it. Recently, it feels as if I’m spinning plates and failing miserably. As long as I have breath, I plan to live my life to the fullest with God’s help. So there’s new goals, new adventures, new tasks even at this stage of the game. One thing I’ve learned, I’ll never perfect my walk with Christ this side of heaven. It’s one of the only things I know for sure. I realize that I need to keep leaning on Him. That abiding in Him produces fruit in a way that I can’t explain (John 15:1-15). This is my secret. I want to be so desperate for God, that the only thing that quenches my thirst is Him – His word, His pea...
fly
Doubt queries her,hawk eyeing its prey.Is this good enough?Unique enough?Lovely, worth noticing?Her very life a question,wingless bird in her hands.And yet majesty of truth,strength in being small,are Poor in Spiritturned right thereon its head.Pivot! Breathe!Open your fists!And the bird,its wings solid andstrong, turns its faceto the sun and flies. This post appeared originally at jenniferjcamp.com
Managing Marriage and Ministry
www.insideoutwithcourtnaye.org I’m going to start this post by saying that managing marriage and ministry is NOT easy. Yet, it can be done. Personally, I’ve been married for nearly 16 years and been saved and active in ministry for over 20 years. So, I know from experience that this can be done. However, no matter how long we’ve been married and in ministry, for you and me, it’s still going to take prayer, personal discipline, love, and respect to manage them both, well. In this post, I’m going to be sharing with you so...
10 Things Christians Argue about That Won’t Matter in Heaven
Freedom is in knowing who you are in Christ and being able to let things go. It’s refusal to walk in offense and being quick to forgive. It is in the being slow to speak and even slower to anger. Freedom is in knowing that you don’t hold a grudge from a wrongdoing in the past that would potentially weigh you down. It is truly, truly, truly a freeing feeling to know that you don’t need to always be right. My precious elderly aunt once told me that her more than sixty year marriage had lasted because she long ago gave up her right to be right. Sadly, when I began this article, I realized I could write about twenty or thirty thin...
the crack
You see the crack in the cup,the jagged scar like lightning piercing stormy sky.Fingers trace the lines etched from collisionof counter and ceramic and stone.But it holds still, my coffee steaming,and I remember how beautiful are scars that tell a storyfor I like the way you tell it, the untwisting oftruth until it straightens outand it is all I ever see. —jennifer j. camp This post appeared originally at jenniferjcamp.com
Trusting God When Things Are Uncertain
www.insideoutwithcourtnaye.org I can admit that trusting God is not always as simple as it seems when things are uncertain (especially when you’re staring the problem right in the face and you can’t see your way clearly through). I know, because I’ve been there so many times. I’ve been there in marriage. I’ve been there with my children. I’ve been there in finances. I’ve been there with life’s circumstances. Are you there now, sis? Are you facing uncertainty right now? Are you struggling to trust God, because you don’t know what He is doing? There are so many situations and circumstances that occur in our lives as Christians where Go...
3 Scripture-based Tools to Help You Persevere through Anxiety
We sat at a stoplight as the children engaged in trivial debate behind me when dizziness invaded. I tried to shake it off, but the adrenaline had already been released. My pulse quickened; looking for the danger my sub-conscience had decided was imminent. Breath was hard to catch, ache diffused across my chest, and my eyes struggled to find focus. I pulled over at a park – our commute home interrupted by trepidation. “Surely if I just sat in the crisp air for a minute while the children played all would return to normal.” Or so I thought. I get off-balance sometimes, and had just discovered I was anemic after two years of extreme fatigue. I was on a new medication to help relieve some of the symptoms created by my body’s lack of iron; I knew it was most likely the cause of this chaotic epi...
the path
It is your way I follow whenthere are no parents aroundno sages, no wise mento direct the cause of conviction– just a meandering bumping towardsome place unnamed and unbargained for. For you make paths for my feet,my heart soon to follow.And the mountain casts shadows herethat are remarkable, and I am small.I will not be afraid when my toesstumble and the turns don’t show up on any map.I yet follow, convinced it won’t be long ‘tilyou find me behind you, not even strugglingso hard to keep up. —jennifer j. camp This post appeared originally at jenniferjcamp.com
Meditating on God’s Word
by Ken Puls I love God’s Word and delight in its truth. Yet too often I find that after reading my Bible or hearing a sermon, the truth, so necessary to the wellbeing of my soul, can too easily slip away. The truth that had for a moment captured my attention and my affections can quietly fade amid the clutter and noise of the day. One of the best ways to remedy this is to practice the spiritual discipline of meditating on God’s Word. It is a discipline that takes time and intention, but one that brings great benefit to the soul. We need to carve out time to lay hold of the truth of God’s Word. It is a bewildering paradox of our day that the Bible can be so accessible and yet so marginalized. On the one hand our technology has brought God’s Word close at hand. It’s on our phones and tablets...
Manhood Restored
Eric Mason is the pastor of Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia and the author of Manhood Restored: How the Gospel Makes Men Whole, I first met Eric when he served on the advisory council for The Gospel Project. He’s a powerful preacher who loves his church, his family, and his community. Today, I’ve invited him to the blog for a discussion about God’s vision of manhood. Trevin Wax: Men’s movements have been a permanent fixture in the evangelical landscape for the past two decades. Why? Eric Mason: The absence of men in churches. Even where there are men present in local churches, there seems to be a passivity of presence. In light of the absence of leadership, there has been everything from Promise Keepers to some of the new manhood movements – Dr. Evans’ Kingdom Man,...
God as Father and Our Prayer
When you listen to believers talk about the Christian life there is a common theme: prayer is important and difficult. This is not a new phenomenon, even the earliest disciples requested some classes on prayer (Luke 11:1). Therefore, it is encouraging and instructive to hear Jesus’ teaching on how to pray from what is called “The Lord’s Prayer.” What is interesting to me is the way he begins: “Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9). In this Jesus calls us to the family room for a conversation with our heavenly Father. Before we go further, however, it is important, even imperative to acknowledge and overcome a major obstacle that this opening presents. We all have the tendency to project a concept of fatherhood upon God instead of to receive the image that he ...
