Articles

How do I forgive myself? The simple answer to how to forgive myself is, we forgive the same way we forgive others. Unfortunately, simple and easy aren’t the same thing. This is an all too familiar story. Perhaps the main reason we don’t forgive ourselves is because we don’t understand forgiveness. Suppose you owe $10,000 on your car. You lost your job three months ago. You’ve juggled accounts, wiped out your savings, and have no prospects of a new job. → Read more

Conviction: Fellowship in the Gospel From the very beginning, we were created to share in community with one another. God created Adam and then determined a suitable companion would not only be good, but necessary. And so it was; God created Eve. Adam and Eve set the stage for living in community - sharing in the joys of God's gracious and abundant provision as they lived in the paradise no man has since known. I imagine their conversations centered around → Read more

Courage: The Strength of the Vulnerable Heart The vulnerable heart learns when and how to trust instead of being defensive and closed. There are levels of trust we have with different people. We are created to be in connection with each other and warned of the danger of not being in relationships, especially for Believers. "Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. → Read more

Clarity: Vital Connection in Community "Misery loves company." There is more to that line than meets the eye. We typically read it as, "when I'm miserable, it's nice to know I'm not the only one suffering." But there is another way to look at it that is more in line with how our minds were intended to work: "when I am suffering, it's nice to have others come alongside me to lift me up." That's because of one undeniable truth: → Read more

When the Question Why Isn’t Important Important scientific discoveries and life-saving medical advances are the result of answering "why." It is an important question when driven by curiosity and the desire to know - to understand. But life doesn't always give us the reason why things happen or don't happen. That's when it must take a back seat to something greater. When our daughter Debbie was five, she had a small yellow skateboard, a simple version not to be confused → Read more

The Power of Praying in Specifics "God, please help me to find a job." "God, please bring relief and healing." "God, I pray that I would find a husband." If our God is a personal God, then our prayers - our very conversations with God - should be nothing less than specific. But for many of us, we tend to keep our prayers quick and vague. While I'll agree that it's better than nothing, our relationships with God could be → Read more

There is No Such Thing as a Stupid Question. There is no such thing as a stupid question. Since elementary school, we've all had that drilled into our heads. And it's true, to be honest. But that doesn't mean there are no wrong questions. "Stupid" questions still do their job: they allow information to be revealed. And, since we're already riding the Cliché Express, "knowledge is power." If you ask enough seemingly irrelevant, inane questions, you will probably solve your → Read more

Conviction: Allowing Covenant to Guide us from Life in the Present Towards Life Eternal During my freshman year of college, a group of us piled in to a friend's car and headed downtown to the only tattoo parlor we were familiar with (and by familiar, I mean that we passed by it before). Half of us entered the doors to get a tattoo while the other half was there for the excitement, thrill, and moral support of it. I was → Read more

Clarity: When Covenant Takes Courage There were many covenants in the bible, but for our purposes today, we will focus on the new covenant - the one that we entered into through Jesus. Jeremiah prophesies about this new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34. "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day → Read more

Finding the Courage to Change from the Inside Out As a public, we have become cynical and untrusting of what people tell us. There are more stories than we would like of politicians, public officials, and even church leaders who have been exposed as frauds. They appeared to be honest and trustworthy on the outside, but on the inside they were greedy and manipulative. This is not a modern phenomime. Jesus addressed it in a point-blank manner toward the religious → Read more

Waiting on God vs. Waiting on an Answer At the beginning of the year, my husband and I began making strides towards becoming homeowners, with the goal of having our own address by the end of the year. We met with a realtor and called several lenders to get a better understanding of the market and set our sights on what we thought to be a realistic down-payment goal. The adrenaline pulsed through us as we started to receive daily → Read more

Clarity: Do you know where you are? The first recorded question God asked man was "where are you?" That question was not for God, for God knew where Adam hid. Perhaps God asked the question because He wanted Adam to know where Adam was. In life, I have found it is very difficult for me to move forward unless and until I have taken stock of where I am. It's possible I could bury myself deeper into a hole, quickly → Read more

Clarity:We Are What We Repeatedly Do "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."-- Will Durant At 62 years old, my father is suffering from increasingly advanced dementia. In October of 2016, I had the good fortune of spending 11 days with him, and while the disease was evident, he was perfectly lucid. In fact, I'd call it the best time I've ever spent with him. Now, a handful of months later, he → Read more

Courage: Discovering the Courage to Sail Rough Seas Max Lucado recounts about ancient ocean maps that were so incomplete in the 1400s that sailors wrote notes on the unchartered areas of the maps. Not knowing what's ahead on an ocean is especially fearful when there is no land in view and no knowledge there will be. They wrote things like, "Here be dragons," and in another place, "Here be demons," and "Here be sirens." A master mariner who was a → Read more

Conviction: Leaning into the Reminders It was just past 6 o'clock on a Friday night and I was laying on the couch with tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes to match. I put on a comedy in attempts to brighten my mood, but the effects were minimal. There was a knock on the door and in rushed my sister-in-law with a package in tow. "I saw the shipping confirmation and I knew you'd be needing this for tomorrow, so I wanted → Read more