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“with your blood you purchased for God    persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.  You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,    and they will reign on the earth.” Revelation 5:9-10 NIV I’m a fan of the Enneagram—an ancient personality profile with nine distinct types. While the Enneagram has helped me understand…

How much is enough? Advertisers create demand for a product or service—and often, that serves us well.  But other times, it can feed the flesh.  Proverbs 30:15-16 reads,  “The leech has two daughters.    ‘Give! Give!’ they cry. “There are three things that are never satisfied,    four that never say, ‘Enough!’:      the grave, the barren womb,    land, which is never satisfied…

Psalm 81 begins with miracles of God’s deliverance and ends with more He longed to do—except.  Except He couldn’t. Verses 11-12 tell us why, “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” God surrendered Israel to…

My husband and I love sports stories, stories where, in spite of great obstacles, the athlete triumphs. Netflix is full of them. However, in Deuteronomy, we find the opposite: great deeds met with distrust and rejection.  “In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 1:32 NIV “This” is the list of miracles God…

Some people like to stir it up. Add some drama, then watch the fallout.  Reality TV thrives on this kind of strife.  In real life, the entertainment value drops. Significantly. If you have stirrers in your family, you know how much prayer goes into family get-togethers. Please God, let there be peace! “For as churning cream…

Favorites. We mesh with some people like puzzle pieces snapping into place. Seamless. Easy. Click.  Others jar us, grate our rough edges, and stretch our patience. Uncomfortable. Difficult. Scraaape.  The apostle James gives no quarter, “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism . . . If you really…

If you want to teach spiritual principles to your children, look no further than the book of Proverbs. King Solomon graciously supplies us with word pictures and object lessons. Check out Proverbs 10:26 (NIV), “As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so are sluggards to those who send them.” Let’s examine Solomon’s word…

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you study God’s Word? One verse at a time. Though I’m a fan of reading through the Bible, for study purposes, one bite can make a meal.  One of my early assignments in seminary was to take one verse and come up…

Have you given much thought to practicing your faith? I mean—the practice part.  As kids, we practiced a lot of stuff. Piano, soccer, multiplication tables.  But faith? Not so much.  Oh, we attended church each week, but that’s not the same thing. What if we practiced our faith the way we practiced our favorite extra-curricular…

Faith or Fear? Two opposites compete for space. Remember when we could go to a store and shop? Numerous choices stretched before us. Seersucker. Denim. Silk. We chose what to wear. Likewise, we make choices spiritually regarding what we wear. Social media and the news offer fear. Concern over the economy and disease. The new normal…