The House You're Building

I was listening to a podcast the other day, and they said that recently the clothing company H&M admitted to using computer generated people to showcase their clothes in advertisements.  Why?  Because real human bodies, the kind they want to showcase their clothes in don't exist!  I've seen several video-shorts where they show how every cover model is airbrushed, erasing wrinkles, cellulite, whitening teeth, slimming down parts of the face.  Image is everything and in a world where everything is digital, nothing seems to be real anymore. I want to be someone who measures beauty the way God sees it, by studying the character of the people around me.  By seeing the generosity and joy of the women around me; their beauty comes from within and makes me more beautiful too by how accepted I feel when I'm with them. Let me tell you a story about one of my dear friends.  Last night I got a text from her asking "does anyone want this Clinique eyeshadow kit?"...

Blog Readers, Taking a break from sharing my audio format to share something I wrote in my journal a few days ago. This blog was never about producing content but only sharing when I felt I had something to say, when God prompted me to share.  This is one such entry.  I hope you've been enjoying the audio content but am heart I feel I am a writer, not of books but of spiritual thoughts and journey-sharing.  I hope this connects with your journey... It has been months since I have sat down to write.  I wonder why I've been avoiding it.  Just to start this entry makes me feel a little raw--like things I don't want to face might come slinking out.  God started us on this journey of trusting Him about this time last year.  It's hard to describe how you can be the same person yet a completely different person to those that haven't experienced the upheaval of changing your whole life willingly yet afraid.  Right now is the lost time. ...

Even the LORD, the God of hosts, The LORD is His name. Therefore, return to your God, Observe kindness and justice, And wait for your God continually.                                        Hosea 12:5-6 A key to returning to God is knowing who He is. Returning to God is not changing location.  God is everywhere and if you are a child of His, you are always with him.  Psalm 139 says Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from yur presence?  There is no place we can go where we can get away from Him.  As His child this should bring words of comfort, that we are always safe.  Yet there are times when we want to hide from God.  When we are nurturing a pet sin.  When we are pursuing a lifestyle apart from Him.  When we enjoy His blessings without acknowledging Him.  During those times, in the spiritual sense we are fa...

While reading Hosea 7 this morning, Kay Arthur shared some great cross references in her book Finding Hope When Life Seems Dark .  I wanted to share this title to give her credit and not plagiarize.  She is a teacher I return to over and over, as she guides me in going to the word of God and letting the Spirit highlight what His personal word for me is, which in turn prompts me to share on this blog.  Check her inductive study method out! The Israelites (the tribe of Ephraim who was left in the land after the Assyrians captured the other tribes) were stuck in sin and lying to themselves that God couldn’t see it.  What conviction I found with these words this morning as just minutes before doing my study I was playing around with a sin in my mind.  Like a cat toying with a mouse, I was fantasizing about a conversation I could have and if I said this, how would it make me look?  Forgetting of course, that God can see all the things I think and that He care...

Hosea chapter 4 &5 If you want to study along with me, before reading my devotional, read chapters 4 and 5 of Hosea.  Try to summarize in your own words what each chapter is about.  Write down your questions, see if you can answer those after you read my thoughts by cross referencing other verses, reading a commentary, or reading the first three chapters of Hosea.  Our verse to look at closely today: Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land.  There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery.  They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.  Therefore the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear.  My people are destroyed by lack of knowledge   Hosea 4:...

I'm starting a study of the minor prophets and hope to share with you some of what I'm gleaning. Hope you are blessed by it! For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’ (Hosea 2:5-7 ESV) Have you ever heard someone say that when God closes a door He opens a window?  Usually that statement is shared a friend  is explaining that if God didn't allow that, He has something different in mind.  Often we assume that when God prevents something from happening He has something...

Hi blog readers!  It's been so long since I posted.  I apologize if you've missed my posts but know that this space was always meant for me to be a place to share what God is teaching me when He prompts me to share it with others.  Seems like there are seasons when He has more of that planned.  Rest assured I have been hearing Him speak into my life often, but for whatever reason have not felt called to share it.  So don't worry if you don't hear from me regularly; God willing I'll be back with more of what He speaks when He asks me to share it. Today He asked me to share so here I go... But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 1 Corinthians 15: 10 ESV  Let's take this a phrase at a time and break it down, reading it slow to suck out everything we can! We are what we are by grace.  Do you e...