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Christian Life Courage Hope Knowing God Victory

When You’re Fighting a Losing Battle, Trust the Victorious One

When You’re Fighting a Losing Battle…God is Victorious “The horse is made ready for the day of battle,    but the victory belongs to the Lord.”  (Proverbs 21:31 ESV) I just can’t win, I thought. I’m fighting a losing battle. In my wildest worries, I never expected to find myself struggling as a newly single mother of two college-age […]

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Courage Hope Trusting God

When We’re Desperate for Courage

(This blog first appeared as a guest post for restore-ministries.net under the title “Courage” in February, 2016.) Not too long ago I received a gift from a couple of my friends. It is a Willow Tree “Angel of Courage,” a simple six-inch statue of an angel with wire wings. Her fists are clenched and her […]

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Christian Life Hope

Spreading Hope in Barren Places

When Tragedy Strikes When tragedy devastates the landscape of our lives, where can we find hope? Recently, while traveling in Alaska, I rode past an area that had been ravaged by wildfire.  The spruce trees that once dominated the landscape had been reduced to charred skeletons. But the sight that kept my camera clicking was […]

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Hope

Announcing…Good News

Announcing….some good news for a change! Today I stumbled across this awesome announcement in I Peter 1:6-12. God has prepared “gracious salvation” for us. When I read this passage from the New Living Translation, the words seemed to jump out at me. Like the first century Christians, some of us are enduring hard times. But—good […]

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Hope

Are You Living in Expectation?

“As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”(Luke 3:15-16 ESV) Risking Disappointment As a kid, I […]

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Hope Knowing God Peace

Quieter of our Souls

When you feel troubled, God is…the Quieter of our Souls The Lord your God is in your midst,    a mighty one who will save;he will rejoice over you with gladness;    he will quiet you by his love;he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV) When I was the mother of a newborn, I was always on […]

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Hope Knowing God Loneliness

When You’re Lonely, God is Omnipresent

When you’re lonely, remember God is… omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? (Psalm 139:7 ESV) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Those are some fancy theological terms you can file under: Attributes of God. God knows all things, can do all things, and […]

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Hope Knowing God

In an Uncertain World, God is Never-Changing

When everything around you is changing, God is…Never-changing.  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17 (ESV) God is not man, that he should lie,     or a son of man, that he should change his […]

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Hope

Holding on to Hope and Holding Out for Joy

I put up my Christmas tree before Thanksgiving because… well, why not? I notice others are doing the same thing. While Thanksgiving signifies thankfulness for what God’s don in the past, Christmas gives us hope. And this year, we all need a huge dose of hope.