A battlefield that is strewn about with a lifetime of scattered pieces A man walks among the ruins and looks with compassion, in the midst He sees His daughter She cries as she is lost but the man doesn’t see someone broken He sees her rightly and in purity He runs towards her and sits down next to her in the midst of the ruins He wraps his arms around her and together they weep for a long time There’s no rush The gift of tears is a precious one Eventually, they lift their heads and sit and watch as the ruins get covered in dense beautiful greenery They laugh for a long time There’s no rush It ..read more

There is a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson that says, "Don't judge a day based on the harvest you reap but based on the seeds you plant." Someone told me that saying a few months ago and it is written on the front page of my journal. The Lord will show me a quote, scripture or sometimes even a painting at the beginning of a season and I will have no idea what it means. If I do think I have an idea, I am usually completely wrong. I love Jesus! I started this season believing in the prize rather than the journey. My mindset was to forget the journey, I just want the prize; the freedom. I didn't ..read more

Lily: More in Jesus At the end of many of my days, I feel like I could’ve done more, I could’ve been more. I feel like sometimes I need a time machine or something to go back and be the "more" that I should’ve been. But I don’t have a time machine. So I have to learn to be more, to think more of how I can serve Jesus, my Lord and Savior. But yet I still seem to struggle with that. One evening, when I really felt bad about my day, I begged Jesus to help find a way to be the more I needed. And as I was getting ready for bed, a thought popped into my head, love. Of course I was confused, what di ..read more

I want to fall in love with Jesus all over again every single day. As I have sat in coronavirus isolation, it became something unexpected and really wonderful. This is mostly how my days have been looking. Go to bed early and wake up just whenever I wake up, no alarms blaring; sometimes I wake up to the sound of rain hitting my window. Each time I wake, I can just feel the Lord's delight. The warmth of His deep love and the power of His nearness seeping through my being. Jesus! I have just been falling in love with Jesus afresh every morning and it feels like an adventure. It's taken me a rea ..read more

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word "child." Jesus says His children will receive the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 19:13-15, Matthew 18: 2-5). Not only will the children of the Lord receive the kingdom of Heaven, but they will be the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. As I learned and thought more, the question the Holy Spirit brought to my heart was what does it mean to be a child of the Lord. I knew well what it meant to be a child of the world because I think we all learn that lesson fairly early. So, I went there first and started to think about what it means to be a child of the world ..read more

I just really wanted to write a blog post on how alive and thriving the Holy Spirit is. In the Bible it talks about how the Good Shepherd will speak to his sheep (John 10:27-28). The past three years I have found this sweet verse in the Bible to be so valid and so true. His word does not return void. I would hear people talk three years ago starting sentences with, “I feel like the Lord said…” and then inserting what they felt He said. I was curious and wanted to know how in the world they talk to someone that I saw then as more of an authority figure than a friend. I started to pray consiste ..read more

You have turned my mourning into dancing. I sat and really truly puzzled this simple line in Psalm 30. In that moment, a lot of things in life just looked pretty disappointing…they didn't seem to be covered in Jesus, and just pretty hazy. I sat there and almost laughed at the fact that Jesus could turn my mourning into dancing. I thought to myself, “It’s not that easy.” As usual Jesus would prove me wrong. Jesus is someone who is always there to celebrate. He is always there to bless us and laugh with us. He is such a happy guy! Truly! But MAN he is always there in our pain. He is there to co ..read more

There are so many different kinds of love in this world. There is the love for our really cute dogs. The love for our favorite late time snack. The love for the people that mean the most to us, like friends and family. And then there is this type of love that I’m sitting here trying to wrap my mind around: holy love. This kind of love was created by the greatest act in history. This kind of love was created by a Father sending his beloved son to die for everyone else. The word holy love oozes out of every corner of the resurrection story and out of our own stories. Our stories, our testimonie ..read more

This Hawaiian island had my name written all over it. Locals know it as the “Garden Island,” and it really does embody its name. As soon as you get off the plane, you step into a quaint open-air airport and can smell the freshness of the air and hear the stillness of the town. We stayed in a magnificent house that overlooked waves crashing into huge rocks. When I think of Hawaii, this is definitely what I had in mind. On our first night there we went to a Luau. I had never been to one before and loved how they greeted us with beautiful, fresh smelling leis and a Hawaiian smile. They had local ..read more

I think that something that the enemy is really good at is twisting our vision so much that we can’t see our situations how Jesus sees them. The enemy is especially loud in our seasons of waiting. He wants us to believe that the only words that come along with the word “wait” are draining, fearful, drowning, difficult, and so much more. It’s easy to believe that waiting for something can be a bad thing. Today’s world seems to be on a fast track with one goal in mind: no more waiting. I think that Jesus loves the word “wait.” (: In Psalm 84:11 it says that Jesus will withhold no good things fr ..read more