Freedom to Step Into Something New

This week I have started to think about what a high value I place on freedom.  It’s so easy to become tangled and to become trapped.  We become trapped in anxiety, insecurity, fear, doubt, sin, and small thinking.  I think lately I have realized that you can become trapped in a web of unfulfilled dreams and circumstances that you don’t understand.  Right now, I’m in a season where so many chapters are closing.  While I’m […]

Continue Reading

I’m Friends with the Monster: The Importance of Renewing your Mind

The mind can be a scary place.  I’m of the opinion that the majority of our problems are in our head.  That’s not to say that we don’t have problems that are real and that demand attention.  I know alot of us are facing some really hard stuff.  What I am saying is that our problems have the tendency to become intensified in our mind.  What started off as one problem lends itself to fear, […]

Continue Reading

What you and a diamond have in common

Lately, I have been reflecting on the importance of knowing our own worth.  Honestly, do you understand how valuable you are?  Probably not.  We all go through it right?  The feeling of not being enough, of being a hot mess, of not having our act together all the time.  We are hyper aware of our weaknesses.  And no matter how many cheerleaders we have in our lives, it is probably the voice of that one […]

Continue Reading

Known Fully Yet Loved Completely

Have you ever been through the frustration of feeling like someone didn’t really know you?  They just couldn’t understand you?  There is a deep hunger in every human heart to be known fully and loved completely. I love Psalm 139, because it depicts the God who knows me.  It says He has searched me.  Stop and think about it for one second.  The God that created the universe took the time to search you out […]

Continue Reading

Something Beautiful

Beauty.  We all long for it.  We long to see beauty.  We long to have beauty in our lives.  We want to be beautiful and we want to be seen as beautiful.  The chorus to my favorite song goes like this: “Hey now, this is my desire.  Consume me like a fire, cause I just want something beautiful to touch me.  I know that I’m in reach, cause I am down on my knees.  I’m […]

Continue Reading

Being Stamped by God’s Image

I look just like my mom.  Everyone constantly tells me this.  “Theresa, I met your mom today!  You look just like her!”  We have the same face shape and the same eyes.  We share many of the same facial expressions.  I bear her mark. In Luke chapter 20, the teachers of the law and the chief priests try to back Jesus into a corner by asking Him a tricky question.  At the time, Israel was […]

Continue Reading

Guard your heart: What the heck does that mean anyways?

If you grew up in the church, there is no doubt that you have probably heard the phrase “Guard your heart” at one time or another.  It comes from the well-known verse Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”  We usually hear this in regards to relationships.  When we seek out advice about that particular cutie we are crushing on someone is bound to remind us of […]

Continue Reading

The Pain in Promise: The Joseph Story

Lately, I have been reading up on Joseph.  Joseph was a person who had been given great promises by God, but had to endure great pain and difficulty to get there.  Have you ever been there before?  You just know that God has given you a dream, so you place it in God’s hands, asking him to bring it to fulfillment.  But then in a series of unfortunate events, you are led on a painful […]

Continue Reading

Who do you say I am?

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”  They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  “But what about you?” he asked.  “Who do you say I am?”  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16) Jesus poses the question to His disciples, […]

Continue Reading

You Complete Me

Incomplete.  Do you ever feel incomplete?  Like something is missing?  Like you are waiting for something to make you whole?  I think we have all felt this way at one time or another.  There are times in our lives when we sincerely believe this twisted lie.  If I just had this one thing, the missing piece, I could be truly happy.  For me personally, there have been seasons where I have bought the lie in […]

Continue Reading