I cringe when I hear the word holy used in slang. God is the only One entitled to have the word holy used before His name….not cows or other more inanimate items. Our greatest shortcoming is not realizing how pure God’s character is. There is an infinite gap between the highest in us and God. [...]
Phyllis Johnson
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Compassion means suffering with another… In Psalm 86:15 David describes God as full of compassion. The hardest part of trying to comprehend God’s compassion is that we filter it through our human minds and hearts. We are limited in our compassion and we project those limits onto God’s compassion. Try as we might, we can [...]
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In my world, the biggest fears I face are within. I react like a spooked horse when a past memory clouds my hope. A verse that Christian retailers love is Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a [...]
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Last night I went to see the movie, Secretariat. It is the true story of a horse that won the Triple Crown in 1973…the year I was a senior in high school. I KNEW how the story ended. So did most of the people in the audience. Still…I was on the edge of my seat, [...]
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Just like anything, even language succumbs to fads. I recently attended a leadership conference and afterward laughed with our Executive Pastor about how many times I heard the phrase “unpack this” which just is a cool way of saying “take a close look at this and understand it.” Obviously “purposed” is the cover word if [...]
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Perhaps you have seen the object lesson where a glass of water gets bumped. If the water is dirty…dirty water sloshes out. If the water is crystal clear…clear water sloshes out. It illustrates what happens when we get bumped by life. I had lunch with a friend recently. During our conversation she referenced a beautiful [...]
The past five years have been an intense time of introspection and reflection for me. At one point I became acutely aware that I suffered from shame based living. I had a vague but constant sense of hating my personality. The voices in my heart grew in volume and repeatedly told me that authentic Godly [...]
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I am an irresponsible gardener. I love flowers. I love to tend to them. I love to look at them. I love to pick them. I love to put them in quaint, delicate vases throughout my home. I love the way they announce freshness! I love to leave work, arrive, park my car by the [...]
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I have a dear friend who is gravely ill with a brain tumor. While she fights for her earthly life, she is acutely aware of the majesty of God who brings life out of death. Watching her journey has focused my attention on the splendor of death processes. Living through dying places is quite the [...]
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I worry. Worry is a sin. I don’t want to sin. Worry begins as a slippery, benign thought that worms its way into your soul (after it has morphed into a weird little brain train in your head) that ends up being heart palpitations and insomniac nights. My son is taking his three little boys [...]
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