Bless Your Heart and Home

by his grace, through his word, for our joy, to his glory.

comfort, encouragement, and suffering

2020: Sing

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Its path obscured by winding turns and shadowed horizons, the new year stretches out before us. As if we’re facing a bend in a wooded path, the calendar hides its entries from us, only to be revealed day by day as his grace meets us new each morning. 

But around that bend into the year’s unknown, we can “fear not!” For there is Stability that goes before us, a Rock that follows us, and a constant Friend who will be our refuge and strength. So in dependence on that Rock of Ages to be who He says he will be and do what he’s promised he’ll do, why don’t we sing in 2020? Sing to the Rock. Sing in his shelter. Sing to remember that he is with us and near us and loves us. 

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Am I Doing Enough for God?

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“Do you ever feel like you’re not doing enough for God? Do you ever feel guilty, like you should be working harder for him?”

Many of the ladies in my Sunday School class nodded in response to the questions. Our teacher had struck a chord that resonated with us.

We were studying 2 Samuel, and in chapter 7 we read how David had a plan to do something wonderful for God. He would build God a house. David’s desire to do this work for God flowed out of his love and worship for God….

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Three Truths for When We Don’t Feel God’s Faithfulness

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Is God really faithful? Is He going to take care of us? Does He love us? What do I do when my feelings tell me that God is not intimately involved in my life today? Or when the early-morning-crazies make me feel like I don’t want to face another day? Or when well-deserved mommy-guilt makes me feel like I’d better get my act together if I want God to keep up His end of the bargain? What do I do when my feelings question God’s faithfulness and dismantle my doctrine? I preach God’s word to my feelings.

The fight for “feeling” is a fight for faith. Our feelings betray us, and our hormones deceive us, and our emotions doubt and drift from truth, so we recount to our feelings the promises of God and choose to believe His word rather than trusting our hearts’ doubts and fears.

God IS faithful, and here are three truths to hold on to when you wake up tomorrow and need to be reminded that He really is faithful….

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The Daily Inconvenient Path to Joy

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My five-year-old and I recently started some seeds indoors that we will transplant later this season into our garden. Every morning, he wakes up and goes to check on his seeds to see how they are doing.

After we first put them under the soil, my son told me he didn’t know where his little seeds had gone. He had buried them away underground the week before, and now he wasn’t quite sure what had become of them. Now we can see the little shoots, and we anticipate a bountiful harvest in the coming months. But for a while, they were nowhere to be seen.

God designed the seed’s cycle of death and life in such a way that he could demonstrate the gospel to my young son. The plant cannot live and bear fruit unless the seed is first buried away to die. Then, once the seed relinquishes its life, a plant can emerge with the promise of yielding fruit….

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When You Need an Escape

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Do you ever wish you could just escape it all? Press pause for a while, stop the world, and get your bearings before the next deluge of needs and demands and pressures?

I was reading about Noah and The Flood yesterday (Genesis 6-8), and a truth in this short phrase brought such cheer to my heart:

“And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.” Genesis 7:7

Maybe you’re in a stormy trial, or you’re walking through a struggle where you see no soon escape. Maybe the demands and pressures and expectations of those around you leave you desperate for rest and relief. If you’re fighting for joy, needy for grace, and looking for a place of respite, escape into the Ark Himself, Jesus Christ….

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