Faithful Writers

Suddenly, it’s too much. Sobs wrack your body as you think, I can’t do this. Why is all of it so hard? Then you hear it — the still, small voice you’ve been ignoring all day. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

I was discussing a prevalent view among the church and held by many Christians: the belief that a spouse can’t leave and divorce an unrepentant and abusive spouse. They got it all wrong, and I’m here to help.

However, there is a qualitative difference in those born of the Holy Spirit and those who pretend to believe and have not received the special anointing mentioned by John. Jesus told his disciples that one of the benefits of receiving the Holy Spirit is that He would teach them and remind them of everything Jesus had taught them.

I’d close my eyes, exhale, and then — bam — launch into a bullet-pointed list of wants, needs, and stressors. It was fast. It was organized. And it was empty. But for a while, I felt like I was fulfilling my prayer obligation of being a good Christian. (Sad to say).

When I read that verse or heard it from the pulpit, I thought it meant: Read your Bible. It’s the inherent, infallible Words from the mouth of God. In reality, it was intended to reinforce the notion that the preacher’s dogmas (called doctrines) represented God's word and will on the matter.

We usually come to God ready to unload.But good conversation starts with listening. Scripture gives us God’s side of the conversation — His tone, His heart, His repeated themes of mercy, justice, presence, and love.

Being prepared is very important for the house of faith. God provides in His word examples of some who actually faced and lived through Biblical prophetic times of woe and destruction. As bad as it was, God found a way to help his people survive. This is an additional assurance, while some await a pre-tribulation rapture to rescue, we have to be ready to face those days, should it be God’s will.

Doubt was treated like a disease. If you had doubts, you were either backsliding, disobedient, or not truly saved. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it was the process of dealing with doubt that I discovered a richer relationship with Christ.

Faith isn’t about pretending the mess isn’t there. It’s about finding God in it anyway.

I ran into this new to me term from an article that blew my mind with what the person was saying about God and miracles. To each their own, but they used the word “christian” to describe themselves, and I do lower case that because this is not Christianity.

Recognition. Reward. At least a little celebration. But it didn’t come. Instead, I watched people walk away from the church, come back, and get welcomed like heroes. I clapped on the outside. But inside, I was thinking: Really? That’s it? Just throw them a party and move on?

The loving Jesus you follow, and cling to certain teachings of, said this about the Old Testament: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Matthew 5:17

When the Disciples couldn’t cast out the demon, Mark 9:14–32, Jesus demonstrated that the way life is lived between prayer sessions is much more important than the eloquence of the prayers spoken — after all, He knows what you’re about to say before you do.

Revelation 20 seems an outlier among the Scripture narratives but, this is not unusual in Scripture as some of the most loaded messages with tremendous implications are very short.

There was a combination of cultures already being biased, superstitions, a serious lack of critical thinking, misreading of Scripture, and a

I’m not talking about our prayers. What about our daily conversations? Would God listen to the casual chats between you and your Christian bro or faith-filled gal pal? Yes. The proof comes from the Hebrew scriptures.

That’s the tricky part, right? Because the Spirit doesn’t always show up the way we expect. We want a booming voice, a divine sign, maybe something with flashing lights and a deep Morgan Freeman-esque narration. But more often than not, the Spirit’s help looks like:

Scripture became a tool for being “good.” Read your Bible, pray, go to church — repeat. But what if we stop treating it like a test or task? What if we drop the performance and crack open the Bible for real?

Your first reaction to a prayer request and your action says a lot about you and your relationship with God. 

I wanted to write Psalms 23 in a way so that when people read it, they see the beauty and meaning behind every translated word chosen for this prayer. And when they pray it next, it is not the mindless chant that it has become in churches. 

There’s a system-wide failure happening; I always used to only think of this term in regards to Pharaoh and Moses. I never thought of its application in this modern age

This transformation in me probably makes no sense to some, is hard to fathom, and goes against our very human nature. I truly do understand that and the difficulty of reading what I am writing about.

Concern is natural; it’s a safety system set up by God. We can take that concern to God and seek help before anxiety takes over.

He was led to believe at some point through an Evangelical church that 2 Kings 6:28-29 was proof that God condones us eating people. Yep, you read that right, all of us present had dropped jaws. Now I’m not dinging this gentleman at all. He is currently in the process of trying to unlearn and learn new things from the Bible and about God. He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, which is studying and asking a lot of questions.