Are you praying to God as if you know Him, or are you just throwing up some requests, not expecting much? If you want specific answers to prayer, make specific requests. Nehemiah 1: 8-9 – “Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell …
Pure Joy
Stress. That would be the single word that best describes the last few years of my life. So much so that when we rounded the corner into 2014, I began to pray, “Lord, will You please grant me a season of rest?” I was so weary that it didn’t seem like a selfish thing to ask for. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to keep going without some time to re-energize. Maybe I just wasn’t specific enough in my request… ‘cuz I was kind of thinking about several months, maybe even a whole year of rest! And initially, it …
In the Wandering
Have you ever found yourself stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night? Whether it’s to calm a crying child or to find your way to the bathroom, we’ve all had the experience of feeling disoriented and frustrated trying to navigate through a dark place. Arms outstretched, we feel our way through the dark for something familiar. We hope our eyes adjust while we look for some sort of light. And then it happens. We run into an unexpected wall or we choose a path we were sure was the right way only to find out it didn’t …
Soil of My Soul
I am going to be honest: I do not really know you that well. I don’t know if you are a 30-something mom, a divorced man, a hurting teenager or a heart broken widow. I don’t know what part of my testimony to offer you and what parts to withhold and keep guarded. So, as I write this I fully trust the Holy Spirit to intercede so that my words reflect God’s heart and encourage yours. Sticking to the theme of honesty, you do not really know me either. I am Katie. I just turned 30. I have experienced the …
Praise Him through the Storms
I once thought that God didn’t give us more than we could handle but I now believe the opposite to be true…He gives us more than we can handle on our own so we have nothing left to do but cling to Him. We cannot do it without Him. I have learned that He will provide if we just let Him and He will calm us so much during the storms that all we can do is praise Him. Exactly one year ago, my family weathered some storms. The details of those few months will be saved for another day, …
Becoming a Slave and Gaining Freedom
Freedom is, by definition, the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Slavery is, by definition, a relationship where one person has absolute power over another and controls his life, liberty and fortune. As a teenager I had been engulfed in a life of sin. I was captivated by its lure and enticed by its stronghold. I was a slave to sin, until freedom pursued me and I began to allow God to draw me to Him. As I entered adulthood, I aspired to be happy. I longed for all the normal …
And So We Wait
Waiting: stay where one is or delay action until a particular time or until something else happens; used to indicate that one is eagerly impatient to do something or for something to happen. A few weeks ago, I was up at 4am busily getting ready to travel to a conference. I had almost forgotten about the pregnancy test I had taken that early morning, but thankfully, I happened to glance at it before walking out the door. Expecting to see only one line, I did a triple take when I saw not one, but two obvious pink lines. I didn’t …
Lessons Learned: Abide in the Vine
A Repost from My Journey of Faith Magazine 2016 by Mollie Moncrief Moore that can be applied to your life for this year. Life Can Get Hard 2015 was bookend with bad news for our family. On January 3rd, just after the start of a fresh new year, my oldest son’s good friend died in a car accident. He was 18. In December we found out that my beloved Aunt has stage 4 cancer. She is 58. I have found myself asking “why?” I have prayed for these loved ones and cried with them. I began to be fearful of …
He Hears
It had been one of those weeks. Sometimes I had felt as if I could hardly breathe. I had been weepy and my emotions were raw. Usually, when I feel this way it is because I was tired from lack of sleep or exhausted from traveling or even tired from doing “good” things that I knew were worthwhile. Sometimes I felt something else was going on. It involved the spiritual realm; I knew God was up to something involving me in some way especially if I was being obedient to God’s leading. A spiritual battle was raging and I felt …
Prayer Changes Things…Beginning With Me
I can remember the day my sister called me with panic in her voice. As I sat in my office as a new temp hire at Stephens Inc., I remember her screaming to the top of her lungs that her then boyfriend had a gun to her baby’s head. As I visualized this scene, thoughts of this pattern of behavior that I had become accustomed to with her begin to play out in my mind. Such as the time she went to jail because she drove her car and ran over her then boyfriend, or the time her children were …
Prayers of Others for Help
It would be amazing to know the number of prayers made in my behalf, and even more surprising some who prayed them during my recent weeks of illness and other difficulties. According to Jesus’ Intercessory prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus prayed for me. He said, He wasn’t praying only for those who were God’s children, but He prayed for those who would become believers. That included me! Then in the book of James we have this promise: and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. Some may be thinking: “I prayed for my loved one and she died.” We are …
My “Anything” Story
Several years ago, I had just moved to Little Rock, Arkansas from Jonesboro, Arkansas where I spent my first year out of college teaching. Nothing in me felt settled there so I moved to Little Rock with full expectation to become settled, to become complete. I was moving into my second year of teaching in a wonderful school. My family was close by. Several of my friends were in Little Rock. Everything was going to be perfect (or so I thought). Instead, it was the opposite. There was a hole, a longing inside of me that I could not for …