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How 2,000 prayers changed me
My love, Tonight we’ll pray our 2,000th prayer together. Something about that number feels special, and I want to take a minute to thank you for it. Thank you for leading our relationship in daily prayer and for choosing to love Jesus more than you love me. I never planned to be with you, but God had better plans. We started praying together because we wanted to see what God would do with the friendship we both desired. You intrigued me, and I guess I intrigued you. Somehow we started a friendship, and I think only God could explain how that happened. Praying with you became the highlight of my…
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God is good in every circumstance
Some people choose a word for the year. They surround themselves with the word, writing it in notebooks, setting it as their phone or laptop’s wallpaper, and meditating on it throughout the year. I don’t choose a word for the year, but for the past two years or so, a word or two chose me. It’s no coincidence that the message “Be still and know that I am God” surrounded me just before the COVID lockdown of 2020. God nudged me in that direction before I knew the virus existed. From songs and podcasts to books and conversations with friends, that message was emerging in late 2019, and it became…
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2020: Weeks 11-16 — Blooming where we’re planted
Your 2020 goals may have flown out the window when COVID-19 came in, but I hope you’ve been able to establish a new set of routines and rhythms. I hope your life is full, even if it looks different than you planned. At about the same time we received shelter in place orders, I saw two little orchid buds. I’ve never had one to rebloom, even though I have three orchids. One I’ve had for about two years, and the other two I’ve had for less than a year. It can take a long time for orchids to rebloom, so I’ve been patiently waiting. New roots and leaves have grown…
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2020: Easter in a different kind of world
It’s Good Friday, and I pray you’ve had a blessed one. If you are a follower of Christ, you probably spent part of the day remembering what happened to our Savior all those years ago. You may have been angry when Judas betrayed Jesus or when the crowd chose Barabbas to be set free instead of Him. Maybe you cringed when you read about the thorns, whips, and nails. Your heart may have ached to read about the suffering on the cross, and tears may have fallen when you remembered that the wrath of God poured out on Christ was for your sake. You may have grieved today as you…
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2020: Week 10 — Remembering
Do you take the time to remember milestones in your life? How do you mark them so that you don’t forget them? Some people, like me, are journalers. For others, photos mark their milestones. Maybe it’s a collection of something else. Whatever your method, I think it’s important to reflect on where we’ve been as we look forward to the future. This week, I finished up reading Numbers and started reading Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy opens with Moses recapping the past 40 or so years to the Israelites who are preparing to enter the Promised Land. As he describes how they got to that point, I can’t help but notice God’s faithfulness…
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2020: Week 8
This week’s personal Bible reading ended Leviticus and started Numbers, so it focused more on the law and the census. In my small group, we studied Hebrews 4:14-5, which discusses Jesus being a better high priest. I studied the laws for the high priest at the same time I studied Jesus being a better one. It shouldn’t amaze me when God lines up my studies, but it does sometimes. Much of my focus this week has been on God’s faithfulness to His promises and His mercy for my weaknesses. In the ’90s, Steve Green released a children’s album with songs that came from the Psalms. It was probably my favorite…
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2020: Week 7
This week’s theme has been gratitude. Take a minute and think of five things for which you’re grateful. I don’t think it will be difficult to do. The first five things that came to my mind are eyesight, warm robes and blankets, relationships, shelter, and food. I know I cheated counting robes and blankets as one, but they’re working together to keep me warm right now, so I couldn’t pick between them. This week’s Bible reading brought me to the end of Exodus and a little more than halfway through Leviticus. While I am not proud to admit it, this is the part of the reading plan where in years…
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2020: Week 6
If you’ve stuck with your New Year’s resolutions for these six weeks, let me be one of the first to say that I’m proud of you! We’re more than 10% through 2020, and I hope you’ve been able to see some growth. This week was a lot of fun. My Bible study group began our study on Jen Wilkin’s “Better,” which is an in-depth look into the book of Hebrews. We had our first week’s discussion Sunday night. The week had focused on Jesus being better than the angels. The author of Hebrews makes that argument in the first two chapters, so that was our focus Scriptures. At the same…
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2020: Week 5 (sort of)
This week is a little different because we’re now officially in February! And February is Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) Awareness Month. I think it’s been three years since I was diagnosed. The timeline is blurry in my mind because my retina specialist monitored it for about a year before RP became official. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t bore you with the details now. I don’t have any updates about my RP because it’s holding steady, praise God! I ask that you say a prayer for me, though. I’ll have my next appointment in March. I haven’t noticed any vision changes, which is a good indicator of little to…
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“So the homeless don’t count, right?”
I have loved teaching fourth through sixth graders on Wednesday nights for the past three years. The kids ask all kinds of questions without wondering what their friends might think. They go deep, like this one from last week: “Ms. Elizabeth, does God love Satan?” (Has anyone else had that question? It was a first for me.) This school year, we are walking through the Bible chronologically in an effort to understand the overall redemption story — the “upper story” if you’re familiar with Max Lucado and Randy Frazee’s “The Story.” The thread runs through the entirety of Scripture, and I believe seeing the story unfold will help these children…
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