Faith
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Renew Your Awe – Part 4
Of all the stories I’ve shared in women’s retreats, this is probably the one I’m asked about the most. It’s one of my favorites, because it shows how intricately God is involved in our lives. We so often bring the big needs to Him while keeping the small ones to ourselves. But He sees them all, and sometimes He likes to drop a surprise in our laps just to remind us that He’s there, He sees and He cares. This is the final video in the four-part series, “Renew Your Awe.” I hope this will inspire you to start building your own stones of remembrance. If you do, please come…
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Bondslave
I’ve been looking over my old blog (Windscraps) and noticed that a few are disappearing. Who knows how these things happen? Before they all disappear, I think I’ll move a few here to save. This one is a snapshot of life back on January 3, 2005. I had big plans for today. With Christmas vacation over, the kids would be going back to school, and I intended to put Phil Keaggy’s “Beyond Nature” in the CD player, pour myself an extra-large mug of hazelnut-laced coffee and work until noon on my second book. Plans change. My daughter woke with the flu; she’s lying now on the couch with her pillow…
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Renew Your Awe (Part 3)
After I published the second video in the series, “Renew Your Awe,” a friend commented and asked, “Perhaps you would consider a video of HOW to focus on God when spending time alone with Him. I struggle with distractions during devotion time.” Well, Suzanne, you are not alone! All of us struggle with distractions from time to time (or more often than not). The opposite of “distracted” is “focused.” But just telling yourself, “be focused!” pretty much never works. What does work is reading with a purpose. Instead of skimming along as you go through a passage, interact with it by asking yourself, “How would I categorize this verse?” For…
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Renew Your Awe – Part 1
Last summer I spent some time with a friend who was going through a time of despondency. She just couldn’t seem to pull herself out of her sadness, although there wasn’t any one thing in particular making her sad. But she also admitted her focus had been on herself, and she hadn’t spent much time in prayer or in the Word. After our conversation, I thought about how easy it is to spiral when we’ve wandered a bit from God. As I do so often when I’m processing something, I started writing down my thoughts. And when I looked at the many pages I ended up with, I realized it…
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Is it Biblical to prep? Should you be stockpiling food?
You really can’t spend two minutes browsing on YouTube without coming across a video on prepping. Or is it just me? Maybe it’s because I watch a lot of gardening, canning, dehydrating, and herbalism videos. I guess YouTube thinks it had better recommend some prepping videos to me to go along with all that. 🙂 For a long time, the word “prepper” had a kind of “oh, yeah–those crazy people with a basement full of rice and beans” connotation. Anyone who kept a surplus of food was Little Red Hen, clucking to all who would listen that the sky was about to collapse. I remember watching “Doomsday Preppers” and thinking…
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How to Conquer Fear in Troubling Times
Over the summer, I decided to start a YouTube channel and record some of the stories of times when God has revealed Himself to me, whether that was through a dream, a vision (I’ve had a few of each), or a provision so specific to my need and so on-the-spot timely that you could not deny God was behind it. Since I know He is always at the business of revealing Himself to us, and since the world seems to get darker and colder by the minute and we could all use some reinforcement, I thought I’d share those with you. Currently, I have about 20 videos on my channel,…
