Walking His Call

My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.  ▪︎▪︎▪︎ The mountains remind me of how big Our God is. ▪︎▪︎▪︎ Most mornings (unless the clouds are obscuring my view), as I sit and have my quiet time, I can gaze out at Pikes Peak and remember... my help comes from the LORD. It is a daily, tangible reminder for me. ▪︎▪︎▪︎ It is my opinion that we all need something that can re-anchor our souls into Him when life goes sideways. ▪︎▪︎▪︎ What is your focal point for re-anchoring? Where is the place you go to? What do you read? Is there a song that you sing?  ▪︎▪︎▪︎ What helps you look back into the eyes of your Savior instead of the storms of life raging around you? ▪︎▪︎▪︎ My challenge to you is this: if you don't have that thing - establish it. If you do have it - make sure you are using it!  ▪︎▪︎▪︎  Shifting our focus back to Him doesn't calm the storm around us, but it DOES calm the storm within us! 

It's been a while since I've made a post, and for good reason. In August I started an unexpected journey into seminary. It is one I never dreamed of, but God opened the doors in ways that only He can - so I walked through them. I'm now pursuing my Masters in Applied Bible and Theology. It has been an exhilarating and terrifying ride, but oh so good! In my first semester I'm taking the two hardest classes of my degree: Intro to New Testament and Christian Ethics. What a ride it has been! When God called me into ministry in 2000, I promptly told Him that I couldn't be in ministry because He made me a girl, and girls can't be leaders in ministry. To this He told me that I should read His word and get back to Him on the subject.  Up to this point in my life I was, as my upbringing had dictated, a strong complementarian. What exactly does that mean? www.theopedia.com defines it like this: A generally patriarchal view of the family (the father is responsible to lead,

Over this space in time we have been living in I've become a bird watcher. In order to enable me to see more birds I've put a hummingbird feeder in my back yard.  They are fascinating little creatures.  Did you know that while hummingbirds may be small they are mighty? They are highly territorial; the males stake a claim to a feeder and drive off any other male that comes along - they will also do this to other species of birds. They also get to know "their human" (the one that comes to fill the feeder), and will let them know when the feeder is empty or the nectar needs to be replaced.  I actually had my little guy fly up to my sliding glass door and stare at me! It was pretty cool.  Because of my fascination with my winged friends, I've started paying attention to their feeder everyday. After all, I want to make sure they have what they need. But an odd thing started happening. I would fill the feeder all the way up in the morning, and by the next morning it wou

Any of you who have been following my blog know that I preach, regularly, that most things are choices. We choose what we are going to do, how we are going to do it, the attitude we are going to have, etc. Sometime it's really easy to make the right choices... other times... not so much.  I find myself, as many of you do (I'm pretty sure of this assessment), in a place of having to make the hard choice of being joyful . Why is it so hard? Because we are living in difficult times. There seems to be an overwhelming sense of sadness, unrest, oppression, disfunction, etc. everywhere we go. Things are different. We have to wear a mask everywhere we go (that is a debate all by itself; one that I am not entering into here). It seems like EVERYTHING takes longer to do. The things that we once did to pass the time we can no longer do. Yep! Everything is difficult, and it sucks - a lot. (No sense in sugar-coating it!) Because things are so difficult, it is SUPER easy to allow ourselves t

(I was going to make this into a video for you all, but today is not the day - it would have been SO long! I promise the whole article isn't a downer, but let's go into the pit and acknowledge it for what it is, then turn our face to the source of our hope! )   Crisis fatigue, combat fatigue, compassion fatigue, ________ fatigue, etc... Whatever name you want to put on it, it is a very real thing and MANY of us are sitting in this space. I want to tell you this: WHERE YOU ARE IS REAL, AND YOU NEED TO PAY [SOME] ATTENTION TO IT!  Fatigue: weariness from bodily or mental exertion. Anyone else in this space?  14 weeks ago we were introduced, quite violently ( definition: intense in force ) to what I "lovingly" referred to as The Rona. Life as we knew it ceased. We were working from home - if we still had a job; we couldn't leave home. Our churches were closed, and folks bought ALL the toilet paper! We had an "unseen enemy" that seemed like it wanted to kil

Be still and know that He is God - He will be exalted! The LORD will fight for you - you need only be still! Everytime the LORD tells us to be still its because HE is about to do something big and HE needs us to sit on our hands...do nothing...and WATCH what HE is about to do! (Basically HE needs us to stay out of the way!) We'll most likely have a role in the fight, but not until it's our turn. He will eventually give us the words to say or the things to do, but we must FIRST wait for HIM to fight on our behalf.  The waiting is hard. Harder if you are a doer; harder still if you are a justice driven personality! But this waiting is a sweet spot. While "sitting on our hands" waiting for HIM, our faith us built. This is not a time of complete idleness, though. This waiting in not like sitting is the waiting room at the doctor's office where you are reading 3 month old magazines; this waiting is like that of a child waiting for Christmas! It is a time of eager expec