Affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. Romans 5:3–4.
Humility is the earmark of God’s genuine servant.
I’m not saying everything else is unimportant. I’m just saying that I’ve learned to see everything else as optional.
Let Him tell you you’re worth wanting, loving, even liking, pursuing, fighting for, and, yes, beloved, keeping.
Do you not know that if you offer yourself to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey? Romans 6:16.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and His robe filled the temple. Isaiah 6:1.
Can any of you add a cubit to his height by worrying? If then you’re not able to do even a little thing, why worry about the rest? Luke 12:25–26.
If you’ve lived your life looking for someone to take care of you but you always end up taking care of everyone else, your search is over. God has what you need, and you’ll never wear Him out.
Because showing requires going. It assumes presence. Accompaniment. I can send you somewhere and not go with you, but how can I show you something without being present?
When you begin to feel lifeless in Him, look for the tourniquet that’s cutting off the life flow. Most often we’ll find it in earthly ties that are cinched too tightly.
Nothing haunts us more than our search for, finally, a sense of place. As it turns out, true belonging is found only in the sovereign palm of God. There alone we find our place, even amid the seasons of moving, planting, uprooting, and replanting. It’s only when we find our place in Him that we find rest. David said it with beautiful simplicity: I am at rest in God alone. PSALM 62:1, CSB.
MATTHEW 5:43-46 Love God. Love one another. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. That about covers it. In Christ’s meticulous census, the community exempt from the love of Christians has a population of exactly zero.
Jesus loves us. He is not scandalized by our failures. He is not limited in what he can do with what’s left after family disasters. Nothing is beyond his redemption when he is invited in. No one with a whit of breath left is beyond the reach of his grace.
In our day and age, the Samaritan woman might have been someone we would condemn. Maybe we would point out the error of her ways rather than reach out to her in love. But what did Jesus do? He loved her enough to talk to her – and then listen. He acknowledged her as a person. Then, and only then, did He begin to instruct her.
Try to resist copying a blueprint from another person’s ministry.
We all want to feel like the most beautiful girl in the room, to be chosen and loved forever. The Cinderella story gives us hope of our impossible dreams becoming true.
Cinderella was made for more than sweeping the floor.
The world promises you so much... and leaves you empty. God’s promises are for real and forever.
If the Word of God is about anything at all, it is about God’s will rather than ours. Our liberty is paradoxically discovered through the will of God rather than our own.
I’ve spent much of my ministry apologizing to people for what appears to be a rather odd show of taste on the part of the One who called me. I have no idea why in this world God has risked His name on someone like me. I will never comprehend such grace and stubbornness of will to teach a woman with a penchant for ditches how to walk a higher path.
We’re all looking for a quick fix, but God is after lasting change – a lifestyle of Christianity.