Focus on the Family selected my interview featuring Empty Nest, What’s Next? for their YouTube Channel. 🤗
Check it out here!
Empty Nest Freebie 🤗
In anticipation of Focus on the Family adding my interview from Empty Nest, What’s Next to their YouTube Channel on the 24th, Christian Book Distributors is offering a free giveaway.
Follow the link for yours! 🤗
Love – The Opposite of Fear
Interesting study this week on the correlation between sinful fear and selfishness by Lou Priolo.
Here goes —
People who are selfish tend to be fearful.
People who are fearful are necessarily selfish.
The opposite of (and remedy for) sinful fear is love. First John 4:18 explains, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”Love is also antithetical to (as well as the antidote for) the sin of selfishness. According to 1 Corinthians 13:5, love “does not seek its own.” It is not selfish. Try looking at it as an equation.
Love is the opposite of Fear.
Love is the opposite of SelfishnessNow see what remains when you “factor out” love from the equation.
Fear
SelfishnessFear and selfishness are corollaries.
Love is being more concerned with what I can give than with what I can get.
Selfishness is being more concerned with what I can get than with what I can give.
Fear is being more concerned with what I might lose than with what I can give.
Read that through a few times…and if you’re like me…you’ll agree that Priolo’s definition hits the mark.
It also hits me square in my heart and I have to ask myself how often I allow selfishness (in its many forms) stop me from truly loving another person.
Get Busy — Waiting
When today’s season of life is immeasurably sorrowful or burdensome, is it any wonder that many moms often wonder how they’ll survive?
Looking ahead can be a daunting prospect to be sure. And still, everyone needs the reminder that as the writer in Ecclesiastes says, “…For everything there is a season…a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…” So it is with great hope that those who are now mired in any kind of pain can rest assured; it is only for this season of their lives…not the sum total of their life’s existence.
Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges to meet during these emotionally wrenching times is the ability to be present in the moment. Certainly, we look ahead and make plans. However, when moms are so discouraged and wounded, we frequently get stuck in our pain…unable to see the value in the present. Nor are we “present” in our family’s lives. And if we can’t “see” the good, how will our kids?
Author Donna-Marie Cooper O-Boyle in her book, Grace Café, coins a term she calls “busy waiting” for that sacred place moms position themselves. It is that dynamic interplay between getting “busy” with the task at hand despite how they feel…while simultaneously looking ahead in hope.
This wonderful ability to “busy wait” enables a mom to do what must be done, for herself and her family, even when the season is pretty arid or barren.
The key here is to remember it’s only a season and it will pass. As O-Boyle reminds women, no matter how painful or challenging today is, “…these are the present moments of our lives that cannot be duplicated in the future.”
Today Is the Day of Salvation
This morning was one of those beautiful intersections between the human and the divine. We sat and listened to two men’s stories of surrendering their lives and hearts to Jesus after lives filled with addictions, grief and loss. Their stories broke me. I wondered why it takes us (every single one of us) so long to abandon our pride and self-driven pursuits before we humbly bow before our God and ask Him for forgiveness, redemption, and new life?
I kept thinking… today is the day of salvation!!!
O Come to the Altar
Are you hurting and broken within
Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin
Jesus is calling
Have you come to the end of yourself
Do you thirst for a drink from the well
Jesus is calling
O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ
Leave behind your regrets and mistakes
Come today there’s no reason to wait
Jesus is calling
Bring your sorrows and trade them for joy
From the ashes a new life is born
Jesus is calling
O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ
O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ
Oh what a Savior
Isn’t He wonderful
Sing alleluia, Christ is risen
Bow down before Him
For He is Lord of all
Sing alleluia, Christ is risen
Oh what a Savior
Isn’t He wonderful
Sing alleluia, Christ is risen
Bow down before Him
For He is Lord of all
Sing alleluia, Christ is risen
O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ
O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ
Bear your cross as you wait for the crown
Tell the world of the treasure you’ve found
Living Bravely Review – The Old Schoolhouse Magazine 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
Woohoo!!! The Old Schoolhouse Magazine is featuring Living Bravely in their current issue.
Read it here!
🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
I’m Fine and You? (and other lies we tell)
With thanks to David Jeremiah I’m happy to share this excerpt from his book, Journey.
Day-Tight Compartments
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:34
The most widely-read book of the twentieth century on the subject of anxiety was Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, in which the famous self-help expert suggested thirty ways to overcome worry. Carnegie’s first rule was: “Live in day-tight compartments.” While we should plan for the future, we shouldn’t worry about what tomorrow may hold.’
Carnegie said, “You and I are standing at this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live in either of those eternities…but, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let’s be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime.”
Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and the psalmist said, “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
Just take life one day at a time, trusting God’s grace from sun up to sun down.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. Thomas Carlyle
