The Ingredients of a Divine Beauty Treatment

This is the divine recipe for the bride’s beauty treatment: otherworldly love that compelled a King to sacrifice himself on her behalf.

Grasping for Enough: the Empty Promise of Idols

We need to preach the gospel of freedom in Christ to ourselves. We need to remind ourselves daily, hourly, moment by moment, how merciful and patient the Lord is with us.

One More Day

Opportunities come and go in our lives. Most poignantly, they happen in small slices of time. A moment’s hesitation and a job prospect is gone. One second more and that car would have sideswiped you. The phone sounds its last ring and you grab it in time to hear the apology you’ve been praying for. You crest the hill at exactly the same moment the sunset sky reaches its most glorious and spectacular release of color and light.

Found, Redeemed, Welcomed

My husband describes the moment that he realized I was the one he’d been looking for this way: “It was like spotting a fugitive on the street whose wanted photo you’ve been carrying around for months.”

It’s not the only time I’ve been sought out.

Abandoned: Me

I spent a lot of years doing this kind of running—from one deception to another, from one sin to another, from one emotional entrapment to another, abandoning myself to sorrow and sin and despair at every turn. There is a better kind of abandonment.

The Otherworldliness of Biblical Joy

Here is the shared experience of those who travel Christian’s road, whether new or old in the faith: wrestling with “right” decisions, fighting doubts, putting off behavior and thoughts of the old man that do not honor Christ, grappling with understanding theology and God’s commands. These struggles threaten to steal any joy from living this life, and they don’t even come close to the battles that thousands upon thousands of worthy Pilgrims fight every single day for the sake of the gospel.

Do You Hear the Whistle Calling?

The Shepherd’s call is so particular and so unique to his own sheep, that other sheep would not respond. In fact, it is the call itself that transforms the sheep, that gives them this new identity as HIS sheep, and it is so powerful and persuasive and contains all the mystery of the ages and the glory of heaven, that it draws these newly transformed sheep to their loving and caring shepherd — our wonderful Savior.