Hot Tea and the Holy Spirit

When tragedy takes over the national news, Facebook lights up with the offering of prayer.  This response angers some. Many are quick to ridicule the prayerful as cowardly and feckless, calling for action over prayer. If prayers worked, they say, we wouldn't have these problems.  What's a Christian to do? PRAY. Do not believe for one second that prayer is synonymous with inactivity. Prayer is where we start.  We must pray for the families of those involved. We must pray for our own families. We must pray for our country and for the world. We must ask for comfort and for the peace that passes all understanding, but we must not stop there.  We must earnestly ask God how we can affect change. Maybe that means making sacrifices. Maybe that means we reevaluate our stances on things. Maybe that means we makes some calls and take some stands. I'm not here to tell you what that means. I'm here to tell you to pray about it.  Really, legitimately pray.  Don't just sa...

"Be the joyful one," I tell myself as I amble from the locker room to the childcare-pickup at my gym. These four words have become my mantra for this 50-yard journey past the fittest of the fit. It began one day when I could feel the comparison monster coming out to play and my insecurities rising. I felt like a champ during my workout, but as I progressed past the impressively muscled, zero-percent-bodyfat contingent of the gym, my strut subsided to a shuffle.  As I caught my confidence and countenance shift, I considered my insecurities. Why was I affected like this? The answer, I believe, lies in identity.  I am a relatively fit person. Nutrition, wellness, and physical activity are very important to me . . . but so is dessert. And couch-potatoing. Suffice it to say that while a lot of the people on this particular fitness floor look like they are prepping for a Baywatch-era Sports Illustrated cover shoot, I do not. And yet, fitness is part of an identity I have always att...

I don't know about you, but there are a lot of lies I buy into on a pretty regular basis.  These little gems are so incredibly tempting to believe because they are specially and specifically crafted for me by the master manipulator, the Father of Lies himself. You see, Satan cannot truly create, he can only twist and contort. And that's what a lie is: a truth contorted. In fact, if you think you've never been entangled in spiritual warfare, ask yourself, What lies have I been believing? Here are a few of mine: Lie #1: I am a horrible friend.  Truth: I drop the ball in my friendships sometimes. I care deeply about others, but I'm not always the best at showing it. I can be flighty and busy and self-consumed, and I wish I was better at meeting people's needs and being God's hands and feet. I am constantly inspired by and learning from others in this area. That's the thing though: I want to be better, and with the help of the Holy Spirit I will be. A truly horr...

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...