What is it to have faith, exactly? The Bible tells us that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). It’s believing that God is going to do what He says He will do, even before you have seen the evidence of it. Faith is not some magic saying of words or believing for what you want to happen. It is listening for the Lord’s voice, praying what He says to pray,…
My husband’s channel surfing finally landed on the History channel recently. The program listed the world’s resources; gold, oil, and water, among other things. At the end of each segment, they stated the dollar amount of each resource in today’s market. At the end of the hour, they estimated the world’s total riches in so many quadrillion dollars. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get my head around that much money. All I can understand is that’s one…
There is none so deaf as he who will not hear, none so blind, who will not see, none so lame as those who choose their own destiny headed for utter darkness, alone, for all eternity. In this day of increased knowledge, theories abound. People who embrace these ideas consider them new and enlightening. In essence, these are the old lies dressed up in new clothes. Satan has been at this deception since the beginning. He told Eve to go…
Recently I spent the day with one of my granddaughters. She’ll be a senior in high school next year. We spoke of many things, but one stands out in my memory. She told me of accompanying a friend to a Planned Parenthood facility. Her friend’s mother instructed her to go there to get a pregnancy test. I’ll let you hear the conversation we had. “Mandy’s * mother was out of town so Mandy asked me to go with her.” “Why…
In God’s Little Miracle Book II I wrote a story told to me by a life-time friend, Grant Besley entitled, “My Unforgettable Night.” Grant was the Captain of a United Airlines 747 jet on a fourteen-hour flight from Los Angeles headed for Sydney, Australia, on September 11, 2001. He got the word about the ongoing tragedy in the east as they flew in the dark over the Pacific Ocean. They discovered terrorists aboard their plane. He told me, “I wondered…
I never cease to be amazed at how the Bible is woven into every part of our every-day lives, many times unnoticed. I spoke with a writer friend the other day and showed her last week’s blog about the “if” and “then” in the II Chronicles 7:14 scripture. (“If the people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their…
“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him” (Lamentations 3:35 NASB). I marvel at what God does when we wait on Him in prayer. When we listen to His heart and then pray His desires, we see mighty things happen beyond what we could ever dream or expect. In late February and early March this year, the Lord began to urge me to pray for Him to “reveal hidden things.” When I…
Over a year and a half ago, Ardythe Kolb and I decided to write a 365 day devotional. We have been friends and sisters in Christ for over 40 years. We divided the project this way: I sent Ardythe the scripture and the ending prayer, then she wrote the devotional and sent it back to me. I formatted it and in November 2012 we published it. Near the end of the year I helped her write some of the devotionals….
As a young mother, I remember looking out my basement window watching a tornado snake across the sky a few miles south-west of us. At the time, I didn’t know about the power of the name of Jesus. As I watched, the white tail turned black as it picked up debris from a school and a church in the suburban Kansas City neighborhood. Years later, I learned as a believer in Jesus Christ, He had given me and all His…
The day after the first installment of History Channel’s new series The Bible, I read Bill O’Reilly’s discussion with the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. Bill stated that “some of the Bible is allegory, like Jonah and the whale.” (The Bible doesn’t call it a whale, only a big fish). Bill went on to label other accounts as allegory. The pastor replied that since Jesus referred to Jonah and the big fish as fact it must not be…