Faith to Witness 99

Episode 97. From Him, Through Him, and Back To Him (I am a Glory girl)  God gives us what we need to bring His glory back to Him. I have never thought this before. I did not know this until He put it on my heart.  My life purpose is to be obedient to what is from Him, and take the “from” to serve others through Him, so His glory returns to Him.  I am a Glory girl.  I have His Son to make God’s rec...

Episode 96. I Know God by His Revelation (my soul stirs for reconciliation of the heavens and earth) I spend a good portion of BUOY in the scripture. I believe it’s the most powerful place to hang out together. I suspect I lose humans long before I say “His grace, my gratitude...” because of all the scriptures I note. But I do so as if studying the stars, like the shepherd David. The more I study...

Episode 95. What I Keep Asking God to Give You (the mystery of Christ) Ephesians 1:9-10 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. Paul starts with the “mystery of His will” for the purpose of what? “To bri...

Episode 94. The Questions Jesus Gives Us to Ask (because He never met a stranger) Jesus has never and will never meet a stranger. I am following the man who knows everyone. And it is through His eyes I want to see those who I do not yet know. The Gospels give us the roadmap for how Jesus did it, and how we are to do it. The beauty of asking the question that speaks to someone’s heart beyond what t...

Episode 93. Eve’s Apple and God’s Question (I fell with her—separated from my Creator)  Choices shape our spiritual journey. What happened in the Garden is part of the DNA of what happens in our lives.  We are part of The Fall. In my life today, I accept that when I stand in front of the tree that makes me my own god, I need to do this: Pray for clarity. Seek God’s truth. Seek spiritual consequenc...

Episode 92. Give God Your Problem Through Praise (a DIY Psalm for bringing your humility to His solution)   What % of your time would you say you hold on to your problems, every day? 10% or 75%, 30% or double that, at 60%?   This scenario is something God frees us from. Seems appropriate to think about during freedom week of 2024. I hadn’t thought about freedom in the context of praise until this...

Episode 91. I Lost Someone Twice (who I am not done loving in Christ Alone)   ...think about the emotional shards in your relationships that leave parts of your life broken, bleeding, splintered by conversations unspoken, dialogues that went downhill, moments and memories on hold, and for some, the abrupt call of mortality to cut it all short. Think about how you are not done loving. ... it is in...

Episode 90. I Rode the A Train to Eternity (a garden conversation at The Cloisters that stirred my soul) Earthly life teaches us what part we each have in the story of God’s Genesis. How we work through  our mortality  in God’s story about  His eternit y.  And the one most jarring earthly collision with the soul, that feeling of spiraling isolation when death is at someone’s door. Someone you love...

Episode 89. Solus Christus. In Christ Alone (I am not alone). What “in Christ alone” means to me and how I fight it with the futility of my human nature. I know that sounds a little too weighty.  Maybe this. I fight it with trying to help Christ save me. As if He did not.  I think of “casting shade” as not living as if Christ has completed the story. Bringing things like fear, anxiety, worry in to...

Episode 88 When You Feel Like Jumpin’ Ship (honor the struggle of God’s work in You)   Life is full of wanting to abandon the struggle. A struggle that is tethered to, grounded in, conversations, memories, love, respect, honor, collaboration, laughter, crying, caring, sharing the intimacy of human nature.    I am talking about the human cargo in every relationship.   So you are on your boat, you a...

Episode 87. Obedience is the Path to God’s Presence and Provision (enough said)   I think obedience is how we know God more deeply, how we connect to His presence. When He asks us to obey His commands, He is literally asking us to obey His nature. He created us in His image. This is a promise: that we take on His attributes when we do the things He does.   When we are obedient, we are so because w...

God’s Providence through His Presence  ( His nearness  is  the provision for my future)   The corners I put God in, are because I only see in part. I corner God when I can’t understand His presence, His reach, His provision for my life. I put my timeless, eternal God in timeout. I won’t belabor this.  When He asks me “Am I only a God nearby?” Even though He references hiding, which I know people m...

Episode 85 ... do something from what you see. Do something for someone who needs more than they asked for... one time I helped get a spicy pepper product for a lady in a wheelchair at Costco, and when she said “this is the only pepper to use when frying chicken” I spent the next 15 minutes getting her recipe. Just time being with her, hearing about her chicken-frying technique that made everythin...

Episode 84. Who is Willing to Consecrate Themselves to the Lord Today? (calling all broken spirits and cedar logs)   Psalm 51:17 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;     a broken and contrite heart     you, God, will not despise.   I am layer upon layer crazy about this... that the thing we can give to God through the agency of our free will, are the things that come from a broken spirit. A...

Episode 83. I Sing to the Lord a New Song (wake up to His faithfulness)  Turning our face toward God, toward Jesus, focusing on His faithfulness, is the best possible training for singing to Him. We are made in His image, so our faith comes from His faithfulness. When we look to Him for the lyrics to a new song every morning, and throughout our day, it comes when we acknowledge His faithfulness to...

Episode 82. I Pray Beyond the Healing (my suffering is parenthetical to His Glory)  So, what is so important to me,  and for you, human , is to praise how God stabilizes us, so we can do His will for His glory.  I pray every morning— because this is one of my diehard fears ,  that something like vertigo will stand in the way of His purpose for my life —so I pray that God will manage my health. Tha...

BUOY Episode 81. God Gives Me a Willing Spirit ( when I bring my broken spirit to Him )   Psalm 51: 11-12   11 Do not cast me from your presence     or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation     and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. When I drift, I lose my joy. It’s the first thing to go... I remember having had it, I know it is still there, but I can’t f...

Episode 80. .... It does mean we all make one binary choice. God, or man. God, or things, God, or fame. God, or fortune. God, or followers. Am I trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? There is a timely moment in your life, human, when you decide to take that one-way all-in ride to your abbey, your purpose according to how your Creator intended you to live. And a thousand moments in...

Episode 79. What we want is often not what Jesus was sent to do. Or for the purpose for which He was sent. Jesus asks me to get clear, be honest about what is in my heart, be honest about why I am approaching Him. Jesus is not the Savior of our selfish purposes. He is the Savior of our selfish nature.  Jesus is not the Lord of our self-proclaimed life. He is the Lord of our eternal life  with Him...

It was just before the Passover Festival; Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world. He had just washed their feet, predicted his death for a final time, and predicted Peter’s denial three times before the rooster crows. (John 13) This was his last night with his disciples before his death. To comfort, to assure, to inspire, to teach, to enlighten... to prepare them.   Jesus ha...

Revelation 22:12-13 12 Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Jesus was with God in the beginning, and He proclaims that He is the one who conquers the ending to God’s story. His Heavenly Father’s story. The Omega is the death, burial, and resu...

The new covenant we have with God through His Son, lives in every moment.  I love that God’s nature is timeless. That His presence doesn’t require a special day or a particular moment to do what He plans to do. He is always, constantly,  going before me . Clearing a Psalm 139 path for my earthly ascent to a heavenly home. Jesus always “goes before and beyond” what we see, hear, or could imagine. B...

Episode 75 I Have a Covenant with My Creator (sealed with the blood of the One)   Hebrews 8:10   10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel     after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds     and write them on their hearts. I will be their God,     and they will be my people.   What a powerful way to stay in His presence. To walk in His covenant me...

Episode 74 I am Worthy of His Calling (because He is worthy)   Give me a minute more human, to witness why this is mind-blowing to me... I can intellectually check all the boxes Maclaren lays out. That I am unworthy, that I can commit to not striving to be worthy as if by my own power, that I can accept my life on God’s terms – that it is all a gift from Him, and that I can desire it, I can give m...

Episode 73. The love God gives us is a divine, selfless love. My spiritual commission is  to be  clear and convicted,  to remain clear and convicted about the Jesus who has resurrected my heart, so I can wrap my heart around the lives of others in my path. That I embody the death of Jesus, and His resurrection through my life and actions.  That’s the power of sharing the “unseen.” And so, it is no...