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Are You Allowing Christmas to be Personal?
In the life group Bailey and I are in, there is a couple who just had a baby. Over the past nine months we have experienced the excitement of their announcing they were pregnant, the gender reveal (in true mermaid fashion if you know Kyndel), the baby growing, baby showers, and finally the arrival of Miss Noël! Leading up to her birth, we talked...
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God Knows Your Mess and Accepts You
-written by Betsie Richards I’m sitting in an ICU waiting room, wishing I wasn’t here. To distract myself, I people watch. I’ve caught myself wondering the stories of all these people and their families. How did they end up here? What’s wrong with their loved one? Do they feel like we do? I could go up and introduce myself and get to know them...
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Can God’s Timing Be Perfect In My Struggle?
But when the right time came, God sent his son, born of a women, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. – Galatians 4:4-5 God, in His perfect timing, sent Christ into the world to rescue us from the penalty of sin....
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Glory in Our (Not So?) Failure
God’s timing is funny. I meet weekly with 3 other ladies to talk about our relationships with Christ. We discuss the assigned Bible reading, recite the memory verse to each other, share our struggles, and confess our sins. The week of Thanksgiving Offering, we read about Joshua and the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the promised land. As they crossed, each tribe was...
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Have You Limited Your Generosity?
I remember the first time I saw him put a check in the offering plate. I was sitting next to him in the choir. He didn’t make a big deal about it; just quietly took the check out of his pocket and dropped it in the plate. I have no idea what the amount was. But I wanted so badly to be able to...
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Stewardship Is More Than Money. It’s Everything.
Stewardship. What does this word make you think of? For me, my mind always goes right to church and managing money. Yes, we do say it in church and yes, we do steward money, but there is more to it. Stewardship is simply the conducting, supervising, or managing of something. While managing or stewarding money is a big part of our lives, there’s a...
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How Can You Be Content With Less?
I think most would agree being content is not an attitude that comes easy. I wish I could just wake up content, but I think the opposite is true; I wake up wanting. I believe this is why Paul tells us in Philippians 4:11 he has “learned how to be content with whatever I have.” Have you ever seen an advertisement suggesting, “Don’t worry,...
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But Its My Gift and I Don’t Want to Share
Remember the first day you got to drive a car? Alone? Maybe you were lucky enough to get a new car that day. Or maybe you were just grateful to be able to borrow the family car. Either way, you were given the gift of freedom. You didn’t have to depend on anyone to go where you wanted anymore. You could just go. I...
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Do You Know the Secret to Generosity?
-written by Matt Clotfelter One of the all time greatest Disney movies is “Cool Runnings.” It is enticing–the struggle to overcome unbelievable odds. One of the climactic scenes of the movie has the two main characters discussing purpose. Derice, the bobsled driver, asks his coach, Irv, why he had cheated when he competed. Irv responds, “It’s quite simple, really. I had to win. You...
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What Do You Think You Deserve?
Have you ever admitted to yourself that you don’t deserve something? In most situations and circumstances in life, we tend to tell ourselves we deserve it. Whether we say it aloud or not, our actions show this is what we think. I deserve this new job. I deserve a pay raise. I deserve my family. I deserve this house. I deserve a new car....
