The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
The Wait is Over
The last time I wrote, I talked about God’s call for me to step down and wait. God made it clear that I was entering a new season in my life. I didn’t know what that would look like, but I knew it would include recovery from something.
In June I discovered my new season quite suddenly when I had a heart attack while on vacation. After five days in the hospital, we cancelled the remainder…..
Psalm 27:14 speaks in new ways to me at this point in my life: “Wait on the LORD. Be of good courage and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the LORD.” After several years of continuous writing, publishing, and marketing, I have come to a crossroads. The Lord seems to be redirecting my ministry.
Recently someone called this place “God’s Waiting Room”. In God’s waiting room is Bible study, reflection, and prayer ‒ lots of prayer! And…..
At the church in which I grew up, a wide wooden plaque hangs above the platform in front of the sanctuary. It is an illuminated text patiently crafted by one of the founding members of the church in 1949 and big enough to be read from the back of the room. “That in all things He might have the preeminence. Col 1:18.” As a child I assumed it was the entire thought of the Bible passage and a stand-alone verse……
After three consecutive scans that were clear of cancer, my husband had his chemo-port removed this week in his fifth fully-anesthetized procedure in a year. Over this past year of chemotherapy, we couldn’t see a clear mission like we had with our other two experiences of cancer in 2006 and 2018. Until, that is, after his treatments were done.
The first contact that mentioned the need of encouragement for another person with a similar cancer to Dan’s 2018 melanoma, was…..
In Colossians 3:23-24, we are admonished with “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance. for ye serve the Lord Christ.” To glorify God with a singular focus on serving Him is the primary purpose of our lives as Christians.
The admonition to do so also appears in:
1 Corinthians 10:31 – “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,…..
It’s winter. Of course, we get snow and rain in winter. Where we used to live we frequently heard the saying, “If you don’t like the weather in Susanville, wait five minutes.” Besides the daily measurement of precipitation, each April 1 the western states measure snowpack depth and characteristics on mountain heights to determine the amount of water we can expect from the spring melt-off. This measurement determines whether drought conditions will exist and what mitigating efforts will need to…..
In the past two weeks two different people have called what I said, on two different subjects and at two different times, heretical. Both came as a shock since I have never been accused of heresy in the more than six decades that I have been a born-again believer. Heresy is a very strong word and my understanding of the biblical term is that of taking someone outside to stone them to death. My first reaction was prayer: “Is this…..
These devotionals are by no means comprehensive, but an appetizer for further study of the Word of God. The material I have written in these last four weeks merely scratches the surface of a topic that would require several thick volumes of commentary to cover fully.
We find comfort in the idea of our dead relatives and friends in Heaven in the company of loved ones who have died before. And it appears they will all be recognizable to us,…..
While some information about Heaven appears throughout the Bible, the book of Revelation gives us a fairly clear picture. Like Isaiah who was also given a vision of Heaven, John expressed in human terms something that could not possibly be understood outside the spiritual context in which he saw it. What he witnessed was prophetic and hectic in that his vision was of things to come. In the middle of all the end-of-the-world activity, however, snippets of Heaven in the…..
The Bible doesn’t give us much information about what we will be like in Heaven. However, in Luke 16:19-31 Jesus tells the story of two men who died which gives us some information about the spiritual realm which we will inhabit. This story is not prefaced with any designation, like “parable”, that would indicate it is anything but the truth.
In the story, the destitute and starving condition of a beggar named Lazarus is contrasted with the rich robes and…..