The House You're Building

Prepare Your Heart:   Prayerfully read Romans chapter 12.   Though this passage doesn’t explicitly discuss marriage, it is full of ways we should treat others, especially our spouse.   As you read and pray, reflect and ask God to show you things about your marriage through this study. We are continuing our study of being peacemakers and this week we turn to a specific relationship: marriage.   You may be a woman who is not married for a variety of reasons.   Perhaps you are divorced, engaged, dating, widowed, or have chosen to remain single.    My hope is that you will still take something away from this as a way to support others in their current marriages or glean knowledge for that stage of life in the future.   Recently my small group has started a video series on marriage.   As I’ve listened to the teacher, I’m not sure that his view of marriage is a biblical one.   (As I’ve shared before, test all teaching against the words of th...

Prepare Your Heart:   Read Hebrews 12:12-29.   In prayer consider His holiness, consider your calling.   As verse 15 says, is there a root of bitterness in you that causes trouble in your relationships? Ladies, thank you so much for coming along this far with me on our journey toward becoming the ministers of reconciliation that God has designed and called us to be.   Have you accepted His ministry so far?   What results have you seen?   I pray that you will know that even taking small steps will lead you in the right direction. By now you should be very familiar with chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians.   My husband has recently started a memory verse memorization with my kids at home and guess what the first verse he chose was, 2 Corinthians 5:17!   I knew where it was when they started to read it as I have been reading it so much.   I hope you’ve had the same experience and have seen the practical outworking of His word in your life. Today we wi...

Rend your heart and not your garments.   Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.   Joel 2:12-13 I hate religion.   So did Jesus.   It seems pretty clear if you read Matthew 23:23-38.   He says of the religious leaders of the day in verse 23 of this chapter, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees , hypocrites ! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish , but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence .   So how clean is the outside of your cup?   My kids are old enough now to help with the dishes—old enough for helping means it usually takes more work for me if I let them.   They often put dishes away without looking at the inside, where sometimes food likes to leach on.   Dried on food is the worst!   I think that’s why on the eighth day God created Pampered Chef scrapers.   Kids walk around with different eyes and they don’t see. How often do ...

Prepare Your Heart:   Read 1 Corinthians 1:17- 1:31 and pray about how often you rely on your own wisdom and worldly status to feel secure, valuable, and accepted.   When does the good news of God’s grace enter in the deep places of your heart? Today we are going to be putting our entire focus on verse 20 of 2 Corinthians chapter 5.    Hopefully by now you’ve picked up on the fact that the theme of this chapter is reconciliation.   Our ministry ordained by God.   The more I’ve studied this chapter, the more I see the importance of another word: ambassador.   Without a clear understanding of this role we have, we can’t minister the way God intends us to.   So let’s take pause and reflect on the term itself.   What is an ambassador and what does he/she do?   They live in a foreign land.   They are a physical reminder of the people and culture that they came from.   They speak the words the ruler calls them to speak, not their ow...

Prepare Your Heart: Read Matthew 18:21-35, then talk to God about your quickness to forgive others in light of the debt you have been forgiven.   When I first read 2 Corinthians chapter 5, this one word drew me into this study: reconciliation.   The Holy Spirit speaks to us personally through Scripture when a word or verse or chapter jumps off the page.   It’s a quiet moment, but you sense a connection and urgency within you that is nothing short of divine.   Pay attention, that quiet voice whispers to the woman God is changing you to be.   The insight grabs and begins the transformation. The call is to stop, study and think on what God wants to say to you in that heart-tug.   In my everyday life, this word has two meanings for me.   One is dealing with money.   I use money software to balance my checkbook.   If I hit control-R I reconcile my account.   I’m matching up what I’ve spent with what I have.   I’m validating if I owe an...