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Discovering Steadfastness in a Shifting World
“I the LORD do not change.” Malachi 3:6 NIV In a world that is ever changing, in a culture ever shifting, where do we plant our feet? Why would we want to? Is freedom found in receiving the perpetual motion of change? Or is ultimate freedom found in anchoring oneself to that which does not change? One, a floating, if you will, the second an anchor while all else floats around you. If truth is relative to the lens of the truth teller, is it truth? The questions flow through my mind not unlike the shifting world around me. It’s tempting, isn’t it? A life lived receiving ever changing truth,…
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Trusting the Heart of Jesus; When our Faith in the Promises Falters
“His (Jesus) heart was gentle and lowly toward us when we were lost. Will his heart be anything different toward us now that we are found?” Dane Ortlund, Gently and Lowly I wonder at times if I will forever want my own way. It is possible to obey Jesus but at the very center of your being, want your own way. It festers, like a bad secret, a precursor to bitterness. I know this because I sometimes live it. I would like to write, I sometimes lived it, but that would lead you to believe that I used to experience this nagging desire, and now I do not, which would…
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Expectant; When Faith is Tangled with Disappointment
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 Expectant was my word for 2022. Expectant, wow! Who wouldn’t want this to be their “word”? My word in 2021 was brave, which made sense going into 2021, living through 2021 and looking back on 2021. I got it, I understood. But expectant? Honestly, I was afraid of it. Tentatively, I did what word of the year writers, content creators do with their word. I wrote it, I thought it, I prayed over it, but mostly I questioned it.…
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Whirly-Gigs and Wheezing; Now is the Time to Think Ahead
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 The ground is covered in sprouting whirly-gigs, millions of them. Like a soft carpet, another billion tiny particles of fine yellow pollen blanket everything. They’ve got me shut inside, windows tightly closed, medicated around the clock, sipping on tea spiked with local (supposedly anti-allergy bursting) honey, breathing in and out with an albuterol inhaler close at hand. It’s finally springtime in West Michigan. And I am allergic, miserable, and short of breath. A few months ago, it was late summer in West Michigan and I received an…
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Five Things You Need to Know Today to Get Through the Five Things You Need to Know for Today
I reach in the darkness, tap the snooze button, and close my eyes hoping 9 more minutes will make a difference. If I’m to start my day in the best way possible, after 9 minutes I will immediately open my heart and mind to prayer and sink my teeth into the Word. If I’m to start my day in a less than best way possible, after 9 minutes I will tap the screen on my phone and immediately open my heart and mind to the world, reading the words in the headlines which often start like this, “Five things you need to know for” such and such day. The things…
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Leave Fine Behind; Letting Go of the Fine Facade
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gently and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 ESV I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Only we’re not. Not only our default answer to the dreaded inquiry but secretly the response we are hoping to receive when asking a fellow human how they are, how their family is, and how their life is progressing. A global lot of fines walking and breathing through a world that’s gone amuck. We maintain our fineness even when the…
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Expect the Unexpected; When God Doesn’t Fit in Your Box
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV It is a tidy thing to put God in a box, limit his grace, his mercy and his love not just for us, but also for others, by our own understanding. We pray tiny whisper prayers, with specific outcomes in mind, and find ourselves fumbling in the land of disappointment because our prayers have not been answered. Again. Well, what if they have been answered but our thoughts…
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When we Cannot Trace His Hand, Trust His Heart
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Genesis 22:1-2 Let’s take a walk with Abraham. He has the legs and the spine of an elderly man, and moves cautiously up the mountain. His son Isaac is with him, carrying the wood for the offering upon his young back. This son, Abraham and Sarah’s delight, a gift of youth given in the last years of…
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Engaging in a Prickly World
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 ESV It seems the world is a bit prickly lately. Perhaps this is my observation and it only applies to southwest Michigan, but for some reason, I’m thinking it’s endemic. Plenty of confounding reasons for humans to be wound a little tighter than days past, so many in fact, I am not even going to list them. You can find them for yourself by typing the letters “Daily News” into your favorite search engine. It is possible to avoid…
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When Your World has Shifted; Is Restoration Possible?
I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, and the great army, which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. Joel 2:25-26 Like a student waiting out a tornado warning in the dark hallway of a school building, there are times when it is safer to pull in tight, cover your head with your own hands, and be still while the ties that bind your world snap one at a time. Life is not very tidy. And quite…
