Improving on the Silence
There was this time, after a big move that took me far from everyone and everything that had normalized my life to that point, that I was feeling pretty desperate for some kind of connection. So I went to a …
The Disciplemaker Team
People Need Relationship
When God created Adam, he did so in a unique and personal way: “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” …
Feasting to Remember
One of the oldest traditions in my family is our annual “shepherd’s meal,” celebrated on Christmas Eve. Like the shepherds in the fields might have enjoyed on the night of Christ’s birth, we share in a simple spread of modest, …
A Woman Whose God Is Enough
Cynthia Heald is a woman for whom I hold the greatest respect. For decades her Bible studies challenged me to draw nearer to God. Becoming a Woman of Excellence introduced me to Cynthia, Intimacy with God caused me to love …
Wide Open Spaces
Our most recent NavPress catalog is very pretty. Most catalogs can’t say that about themselves and ours is no different because it is, as it happens, an inanimate object. But I say it without embarrassment. NavPress has a pretty, pretty …
God, Who Will Love Me Now? Are You There?
In my twenties, my world changed. When I ended a relationship that I thought held my future, I felt bereft and lost. Who will love me now? I wondered through my tears. And now I don’t have any friends, I …
Why Fasting Heightens Our Desires
We are created to experience God through our senses, and in that encounter, to come to know Him better and grow in love. And yet, even our senses themselves can become overloaded; the windows of our souls become covered in …
Becoming a Woman of Excellence
I was living in Mbabane, Swaziland, when I found myself in a fog of brokenness: a season of sickness with Hepatis A, Hashimoto’s disease, Epstein-Barr, and chronic fatigue. For the next several years, I would cry out to the Lord, …
Balancing Between True Hope and False Comfort
People are unreliable, but they die with remarkable consistency. As a pastor, I perform a lot of funerals. Weddings, too; for years I kept a mental tally of the marrying-to-burying ratio in my ministry, but given the nature of the …
Breaking Free From Painful Memories
There is an old saying that “time heals all wounds.” The idea is that healing for damaged emotions as a result of traumatic or distressing events happens automatically with the passing of time. The truth, however, is that time alone …