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Category: Personal

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 &#8217…