Hot Tea and the Holy Spirit

While I am not a very techy person and only recently discovered how to pause a Facebook story long enough to read it before it crosses over to the Internet abyss, I do enjoy me some social media from time to time. Facebook is my favorite. I have two Facebook friends we shall call Cindy. While they do in fact share the same first name, it has been changed for the purposes of this post to protect the innocent (and lend cadence to my Dickensian title).  One Cindy is the most vocally liberal Facebook friend I have and the other the most vocally conservative.  I often giggle at "the two Cindies" in my Facebook story feed and how their shared name seems to be their only similarity.  But in truth, the politically charged posts of both Cindies are full of passion, conviction, love, and hate. They are two sides of the same coin.  Sometimes I admire their boldness. Sometimes I agree wholeheartedly with what they have to say. Sometimes their posts make me want to throw my phon...

Who do you listen to? There have never been more voices vying for your attention and allegiance, and the number increases every day.  For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.   2 Timothy 4:3 I think about this verse ALL. THE. TIME.  This is our present reality. We can hit up the interwebs at any moment to find support for nearly any idea we might have. We can find "experts" who agree with or refute any view. We leave this experience feeling justified and bolstered by the congruent opinions and feeling justifiably superior to and irked by incongruent ones.  I think it would be very easy for any Christian (young, old, conservative, progressive, mainline, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, you name it) to use 2 Timothy 4:3 to condemn another. Surely we all believe our doctrine is sound, but how do we k...

Abortion. I live in a state (and probably country) where how you feel about this issue determines whose house you're invited to. I am pro-life.  BUT-- before you go adding me to or crossing me off your guest list--let me explain what I mean by that. I am in favor of life--my life, your life, the lives of people in all manner of places, situations, demographics, and, yes, the lives of the unborn.  But it's not as simple as all that.  As Christians, it is our job to speak up for the unspoken for. But if we become singularly obsessed with defending the rights of the unborn, putting all our energy and resources into fighting abortion (and into the campaigns of candidates who promise to do so), we are drastically missing the point. The question I want to ask today is THEN WHAT? Say you outlaw abortion--or on a smaller scale, convince someone not to have one--then what? What happens to the child who isn't raised in a loving, capable family? Or the parents struggling to put food...

If you've ever heard me say, "You have to find your truth," I was probably being ironic.  I like to say it to belligerent toddlers in the midst of semi-comical meltdowns. Truthfully, it's not my favorite saying because it implies that Truth for you can be one thing and Truth for me another. But the truth is we may have beliefs that are mutually exclusive, and one or both of us must be wrong.  And yet, God is a god of diversity. And just like He paints the world we see with colors and textures too numerous to count and too glorious to fully appreciate, He paints the world we don't see with an equally grand palette, inspiring and drawing us to Him in different ways. The way he speaks to you may be completely different from the way he speaks to me. And that is okay. Just the other day I read a beautiful post from a Facebook friend who felt like God was calling her to cover her head when she was out and about and especially during prayer. She felt like doing so was dr...

I am a parent.  Five kids in, you'd think I'd have things figured out, but moments of clarity quickly give way to moments of mind-crushing chaos.  I struggle with the duality of administering grace while remaining consistent in the application of rules that are in everyone's best interest.  Voices, some with faces I know and some a mere amalgam of things I've read or assumptions I've made, fight for dominance in my mind: "You can't let her get away with that." "Oh no he didn't!" "She better not have said what I just heard her say." If you've seen the animated movie Inside Out, you can imagine my blustery red Anger getting all fueled up and ready to spew fire, ready to lay down the law. Often it gets to that point because I let the rules get squishy in the name of grace (or convenience), and consistency goes out the door. Limits get tested, feelings get hurt, vocal chords get strained.  When I consistently apply the rules we ...

 As Christians, sometimes we become so obsessed with protecting the Gospel that we end up dragging it through the mud.  We are afraid of what viewpoints different from our own will do to God's word if allowed to interpret it. We are so intent on being gatekeepers that we forget that He is the Gate.  But King Jesus is still on the throne.  And He has given us a job to do: Love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  When Peter confirmed his love for Jesus three times in John 21, Jesus' responses were, "Feed my lambs," "Take care of my sheep," and "Feed my sheep." (NIV) "Judge my sheep," "hold auditions for the flock," and "take the place of the Holy Spirit in the lives of my lambs," are conspicuously missing.  Until we are more consumed with feeding His sheep than we are in controlling them, until we are more consumed with reflecting Jesus' ministry than m...

Welcome to Hot Tea and the Holy Spirit!! My goal with this blog is simply to have a space to write out and work through some of the things God puts on my heart.  I hope it will be a place of encouragement for anyone who stumbles upon it.  I wrote the following essay a few years ago and never found a home for it. I re-read it today and decided it needed a place to live.  It speaks to my heart, so here it is, just in case it speaks to yours. Girl, Wash His Feet Recently I read--okay, devoured--the Rachel Hollis bestseller Girl, Wash Your Face . Witty, relatable, empowering, it was hard to put down. As a motivational tome for women, it lived up to the hype. And yet, as I gobbled up the pages, there was a check in my spirit. Every time the book mentioned God, Jesus, religion, spirituality, etc., it seemed like something was missing. Hollis encourages women to rise above the lies they believe about themselves and take ownership of their potential; to dream big and follow those...