Joy and Strength (Christian life and music)

I have stayed on in unbearable circumstances out of obedience to Christ.  But in all honesty, I am not always 100% sure if He wants me to stay or not when I am in those situations.  You see, I see all of life, as a Christian, as Jesus forming me into His image.  And it is never the happy times that do such a thing, but always the hard times, the trials.   This is more than mere "character-building."  This is Christ forming His very nature in me. If you don't think this forming is hard work, think again!  Yes, we are to rest and abide in Him while He does the work in us.  But we must cooperate.  We are to obey.  That is where the rubber meets the road in our lives as Christians. Most will simply walk away from an unpleasant situation before the Lord has fully done the work He wants to do in them there, in the muck and the mire. Especially these days where "boundaries" and "rights" are all the rage.   But many times, our most fruitful and productive time

Old Testament Joseph is one of my favorite people in the Bible. Joseph was a big dreamer.  He had a dream that his brothers, and even his parents, would one day bow down to him. When God gives you a dream, He doesn’t mess around.  God knows the future.  God has a plan for your life.  God knows where He is sending you and how to get you there.  God has ways of accomplishing things that we could never imagine.   The dream wasn’t about Joseph’s “greatness.”  But that’s how his brothers misinterpreted Joseph’s dream. NOTE: not everyone will understand your God-given dreams. The dream was about how God chose Joseph for a specific role in life, and not just in his family’s life. God sees the big picture.  That is so comforting to me.  That character quality alone makes me want to worship Him.  He is omniscient.   God planted the dream inside of Joseph.  I’m guessing that Joseph might have thought about how he  was going to make that dream come true.  God simply smiled. Do you have a dream?  

Spring has sprung and it is gorgeous. We've been in our current neighborhood for seven years.  There are two trees down the street that bloomed with gorgeous white flowering blooms the year we moved in. Since then, when I go for a walk around the neighborhood, I have looked for the same trees to bloom every spring. They haven't.  Until this year. And they are as beautiful as the first time I saw them bloom seven years ago. But I waited seven years to see them bloom again!  The other similar trees bloom faithfully every spring.  But for some reason, these two side-by-side trees only bloom every seven years. It got me thinking.  There are dormant stages in our spiritual life, too.  We don't always see the "bloom" in our own lives.  We give our all, obey the Lord best we can, wait on Him, step out in faith, and still no "flowers." What is happening during those dormant years?  I have no idea, really.  But I do know that God makes every tree for a purpose an

"It's too late," you may think. But we are not to think as the lost think.  Because when you belong to God, are obedient to Him and want nothing but His will, it is never too late. At Calvary, the disciples thought it was too late to build an earthly kingdom without their Royal Leader, Jesus. It all ended not as they had imagined it would.  Their Teacher, their Rabbi, their Lord, the Son of God, hung on a cross and with Him, all of their limited hopes and dreams. The disciples, though discipled by the greatest of all, still didn't get God's purpose in sending His only Son to die for their sins and the sins of the world. He told them over and over how His Kingdom was not of this world.  He told them that the Kingdom of God would now be within themselves, in their hearts. So you see, it was their short-sighted "plans" that were too late to accomplish.  But God's plan was just beginning!   It was too late for their miniscule plans, but not too late for

Throughout the Word of God we see His people being defeated.  But not for long!   And even when it seemed "permanent," it wasn't.  Why?  Because as Christians, even when we lose our lives, we win!  So if we take it to that extreme - the seemingly worse "loss" of all - there simply is no way we can lose as Christians! If we die, we are with the Lord!  This is THE biggest win of our lives! If we lose the occasional spiritual battle, it teaches us to know better the next time around. If we lose all of our possessions, we still have Christ!  And He provides better. If we lose our reputation, man's opinion matters not anyway because we belong to Christ and our true character is known by Him alone. So many seeming "failures" in my life were ordained by my loving Heavenly Father.  A good parent doesn't want their child to succeed before they are ready to handle it.  And the Lord is our perfect Parent.  Only He knows when we need to learn from failure,

Designing a life.  Building a better life.  In the New Year, we are always trying to reinvent ourselves, or so we are told we should. So I recently picked up a book called,  Design Your Life  (affiliate).  I'm a few chapters in and keep saying to myself, I could have written this!  This is so much like my story!  It is not so much about "forging a path" as it is about waiting on God, listeneing to and obeying God, and letting Him lead the way. People hate change.  People like change. People avoid change.  There are varied responses regarding how we view change in our lives.  Some welcome it, others not so much.  Some changes are beyond our control - i.e. a pandemic. Yet all of these New Year's resolutions we're encouraged to make - each one is about change!  As if the lives we are already living are somehow not enough. Now there is always room for improvement, right? But the pressure of needing to change every New Year is a bit much.  Hence, I no longer make New Y

The slow healing from God.  Sigh. Sometimes, God seems to take an inordinately long amount of time to heal someone.  Why, I don't know. It can either be a faith crusher or a faith builder, depending on how we respond to the seeming lack of interest from God. But God cares about the minutest details of our lives.   "Indeed the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Luke 12:7 "How precious to me are your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand..." Psalm 139:17-18a Remember when Lazarus died and the first words out of Martha's lips when Jesus finally showed up?  “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." (John 11:21) In other words, Martha said, "Jesus, You're late." How could Jesus let her beloved brother die?  Why didn't Jesus come right away?  Didn't he care?  Didn't He love Lazarus?  Martha? Ever been there?  Maybe no one died, but your

Jesus is not Santa Claus.  This may seem an obvious statement.  Yet how often do we request things of God and expect Him to deliver what we want, when we want, in the same way that a child expects of Santa Claus? Is your faith more grown up than that?  Are you sure? What happens when we pray to the Lord asking Him to provide a healing, or deliverance, or provision but our answer does not arrive by "December 25th?" Or we think because we've been "nice" girls and boys that God owes us.  C'mon.  You know you've done this.  We place deadlines on God! We could have all the faith in the world, but when God does not  provide when and how we want, our faith is deflated.   Now don't get me wrong.  Jesus loves when we come to Him with our requests - it shows our faith and childlike trust in Him.  But when we choose date markers of our own, well that is not what faith is about. Why would a loving Father have us wait?  And wait and wait to give us what we think

Years ago, someone once told me that my music was for a time.  I took that to mean a time when people are broken, lost, suffering, and hurting.  A future time when life would be harder than it is now.  The Lord seems to inspire much of my songwriting in a prophetic way - lyrics to soothe, exhort, and call to Christ for a time in the future, collectively. But there are always hurting people around us.  Oh they may put on a good show, but God knows the pain they carry in their hearts.   I asked someone the other day what her "takeaway" from the pandemic was and her answer stunned me with its shallowness. She said something about wearing a mask, or some such thing.  Wow.  To be fair, I had only just met this person, so maybe she didn't feel comfortable opening up her deepest feelings to me.   But there was gold to be mined during this pandemic!  Did we turn to Christ more?  Did we see His hand in all of this?  Did the isolation force us to realize our need for others that mu

  There is a saying that dreams have no expiration date.  I find that especially true in God's economy.  God has forever to work out His plans for our lives.  He knows that the works we do to "make this world a better place" are temporary.  After all, the world itself has an expiration date - and it will have nothing to do with "global warming" or "climate change" but only to do with the Sovereignty of God.  He alone declares "game over."  His dream for us is everlasting and goes far beyond this temporal life.   So keep dreaming but remember that the fulfillment of any earthly dream will never compare with the glory that awaits us and the fruition of all we could ever hope for, ask, or imagine. From 2 Peter chapter 3: 7 But the heaven we see now and the earth we live on now have been kept by His word. They will be kept until they are to be destroyed by fire. They will be kept until the day men stand before God and sinners will be destroyed. 8