Dear Loved One,
It breaks my heart to see you suffering. I want to offer you comfort and I feel helpless. I’ve tried to make you happy. I can tell you that I love you and offer you kind words. I can buy you flowers and trinkets. I can send you funny pictures that I think will make you laugh. I can take you out for a cup of coffee and listen if you want to talk. These are all good things, and I’m happy to do them. I won’t stop. But I’m learning something. I might be able to bring a smile to your day and offer you a momentary amount of happiness, but I can’t take away your pain.
Read moreToday, I've got all kinds of pressing matters upon me, things like pulling the dryer out from the wall, to sweep behind and scrubbing the bricks around the fireplace. Rearrange the pictures on the walls? Yes. Suddenly the arrangement they’ve been in really bothers me. But sit down and write? I want to. I really do, but these words are not easy. Today’s topic is about trusting God when it really hurts. I tend to shy away from pain, both my own and other people’s. Jesus didn't shy away from pain though, so tough as it is, by His grace, neither will I.
Read moreIt wasn’t what we wanted. It would only be for a little while-or that was the idea. It ended up being eight years. The plan after college was to move to southern California. Instead, we ended up moving back to Wenatchee, Washington, our hometown.
Read more’ve written a lot up to this point on why God is trustworthy and how it helps us live a life of joy and peace when we put our trust in him, but today, I want to write about how trusting God is an act of worship that we can give to him. It’s hard to understand how much it means to God, for us to say, your sovereign hand will be my guide, until we understand how much he really loves us. Pause for a moment and think about this…. God loves you so much, that even if you were the only one on earth who needed saving, who needed his Son to die for your sin; he still would have made that sacrifice for you alone.
Read moreIf we learn to trust God with the everyday worries of life, then when the big stuff happens, we’ll be more prepared to handle those things too. Like a slowly dripping faucet, often it’s the accumulated “little” stuff that steals us of our joy. It’s easy to brush those things off as not important enough to bother God with- but that isn’t right.
Read moreUntil this point, I’ve mostly been writing about the philosophy behind trusting God, the big picture stuff. Now I want to narrow in on some practical everyday ideas to apply toward trusting God and putting worry aside.
Read moreThese last few posts have been about purpose. Our purpose, as God’s creation, is to glorify him. We do that through living in loving relationship with him and with his people, and by placing our whole-hearted trust in God. How that plays out in daily life is unique for each person. As Christians, we're called the body of Christ. As each part of the body serves a different purpose, that’s how we, who love God, are to see ourselves.
Read moreWe were created to glorify and worship God through a loving relationship with him. We were made to enjoy the type of loving relationship that is demonstrated in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But love isn’t love if it’s not given freely. With our free will, we chose to turn away from relationship with God, through sin, but God sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross and conquer death, to pay the heavy price that we owed and could never pay, and to bring us back into the relationship that we were made for.
Read moreAs I was writing that last post, about God’s purpose being about his glory, an old thought popped into my heard, a thought that I’d stuffed away until now, because it seemed too disrespectful, too terrible. I knew it was wrong, but I hadn’t entirely worked out why it was. That thought had to do with the idea that God wanting glory seemed kind of…egotistical. Have you ever thought that same thing?
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