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Love One to Another
Loving Like Jesus Recently, I began a series on the fruit of the Spirit entitled “Cultivating Fruit” and am continuing the series with the first fruit in the list, love. I have been taught and strongly believe every word in Scripture is there in its place for a specific reason. Therefore, when Paul listed “love” as the first fruit, he meant it needed to be first place. Showing our love to others is an undeniable fundamental in the Christian faith. Jesus was adamant His disciples were to show love to others. He taught unbelievers would know the disciples were His followers by the love they showed (John 13:35). In fact…
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Seasons of Turmoil
How to Face Trials If you have lived very long on this earth, then you recognize the fact that life has seasons just like the change in weather patterns we experience throughout each year. And just as we do not have the ability to alter the continual cycle of the weather seasons, we often have little control over the events causing us to enter a new season whether it’s a sunshiny, happy time or dark, dismal one. A friend or family member diagnosed with cancer – Will they make it through this?The death of a loved one – How will I face tomorrow without them in my life?The loss of…
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Called to Freedom
Probably my earliest memory of learning history in school was being taught about the pilgrims coming to North America on the Mayflower. Most on that voyage were looking to come to a land where a government would not tell them they had to practice a certain religion. It is why the Constitution of the United States starts out ensuring our religious freedoms with the first amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of…
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Cultivating Fruit
When my kids were in second grade, their class at school visited an area apple orchard for a field trip. The owner of the historic orchard was quite the story teller taking the students and chaperones on a wagon ride to give the history of the orchard and the events during the Revolutionary War that unfolded on the mountainous land itself. After buying the old orchard the owner and his family wondered if it would really be that hard to grow apples on the severely overgrown and neglected trees. Some of the heirloom trees were over 85 years old. They had been through floods and blight and freezes that had…
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United We Stand
“Working Together as a Local Church” Sometimes a particular idea or word will continue to pop up in your life whether it’s podcasts you listen to, sermons, your Bible reading, or whatever. A word that has been repeatedly turning up in my life has been “unity.” It’s something I have been praying for a lot lately in regards to the leaders of our church. Unity can be good or bad. Groups in our culture today unify against common goals that as Christians is against our moral and religious beliefs. Everywhere you turn it seems people are putting themselves in groups whether it’s things such as denomination or political party or…
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Follow Your Master
Growing up, we always had two dogs, a couple of cats, and we went through a spell where we kept Mallard ducks. My family lived out in the country, and when you live out in the country that is what you do – have animals. So after Wade and I built a house out in the country several years ago, I decided we needed a dog. (The cat quota was filled at the time.) All kids need to experience the love of a dog growing up, right? Because we had beef cattle, Wade said if we were really going to get a dog (Yes, we were, I had already decided…),…
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Holy Confidence
Recently, I read a book by Mark Batterson called Praying Circles Around Your Children. His Biblical ideas and methods for praying for your children were thought-provoking. I took several notes and have ideas I want to mull over again. I do not necessarily agree with everything he asserts, but I do know how to take a bite, chew, and spit out the bones. 😉 One concept Batterson introduced which I had never heard of was “holy confidence.” This is how he introduced it: “I’m not talking about self-confidence. I’m praying for holy confidence that comes from doing the will of God for the glory of God. It’s a confidence that…
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Removing Inhibitions
When we got our steers this spring, one arrived sick. It continued to get worse. Bad enough it had gone off on its own in a shady area, I figured, to spend its last days, maybe hours. My husband, Wade, had done everything he could to help it continuing to carry buckets of water to a small water trough he laid by it to ensure it was hydrated and to give it a chance to pull through. This steer had only been with us just a few days which means they are still skittish of the new humans, yet at one point while Wade was refilling its personal water trough,…
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Carbon Copy of Christ
Today’s post takes us back to the mid 1990s so I thought the title went along well since if you were born after 1995, you probably have no clue what carbon paper is… Almost twenty-three years ago (May 25, 1996), my new husband, Wade, and I left for our honeymoon. Our first night was in Nashville before heading the next morning toward Branson, Missouri. See, I had searched and found a bed and breakfast online…in 1996. For those of you who are old enough to know, the “world wide web” was still in its baby stages. Basically newborn stages. Statistics report there were only 100,000 websites in January 1996, yet…