Grace Moments

Memories can be powerful things. They help us stay connected to deeply impactful parts of our stories and who we are. God designed our physical brains to be able to store and pull up important images, feelings, sensory experiences, and sounds that help us tap into things, people, and places worth remembering and learning from. But what about the memories that you'd rather forget? What about the th...

Psalm 23 is one of the best-know and well-loved passages of Scripture. Many quote it or recite it in moments of difficulty. Many learned it as children. But how many of us have actually stopped to do a deep dive into the truths contained in this short but powerful few verses? There are many cordials of comfort here for us to glean from, particularly in times of uncertainty or pain in our lives. In...

As we've just rung in a new year, many people are setting goals for themselves - New Year's resolutions - for 2023, and most of those goals include variations of trying to live a healthier, less distracted, more focused life. However, weeks down the road, a lot of folks have fallen back into their old routines and given up on the objectives they set for themselves. Every person, if they were hones...

Many mental health issues stem from an unhealthy relationship with boundaries - either an established boundary has been violated or there never was one put in place to begin with. Most of us have never been taught the valuable impact of having healthy limitations in our lives, particularly relationally, that guard our limited yet precious inner resources and help us operate from the best of oursel...

All of us have storms we go through in life, some easily passed and others, endless. But either way, they are inescapable. Sadly, many don't ride out the storms that well and end up nearly drowning in their force. As we begin a new year and mark two years of Grace Moments' episodes, today's episode gives you a unique insight into how you can not only survive these powerful upheavals in your life b...

Last year, my New Year's episode centered around a metaphoric "pile of stuff" I personally had to tackle come 2022. In that podcast, I shared about all the things I emotionally and mentally had to overcome in order to be "ready" to do the hard thing and close a bittersweet chapter in my life. I also challenged you to tackle your own infamous pile of stuff in the new year in hopes that we could kee...

Welcome to a special Christmas episode of Grace Moments, where we'll discuss the reasons why the arrival of Jesus in human form so long ago gives us both hope and strength for the personal challenges we face today. The simple fact that God loved humanity enough to send His own Son to earth in order to accomplish redemption's plan is proof that there is no length He won't go to in order to be with...

So many of our struggles can be traced back to fear on some level, and most of us aren't taught how to properly engage fear in the way it deserves. Today's episode is going to take a look at the life of a man who knew about fear on a massive scale: multiple threats to his life, political upheaval, captivity... he saw it all. Yet, he understood how to combat his fear with truth, and there's a lot w...

In many situations, assumptions equate with a certain level of trust - by assuming something, we're placing some confidence or assurance in it. However, when it comes to the ways of the human heart, assumptions can be deadly. Where it involves the core relationships between ourselves and others or ourselves and God, assumptions can literally destroy trust and create distance between us and those w...

For many, the holidays are a special time of celebration and tradition, of joining with loved ones and making memories that only come around once a year. Unfortunately, others don't have quite the same relationship with this season, and there is a lot of sadness, loneliness, depression, or confusion that comes with it. Past experiences or current hardships have made it difficult for them to apprec...

Welcome to episode #100 of Grace Moments! Thank you to everyone who has tuned in and supported it thus far. Cheers to many more! When life is relatively easy, thanks can be a fairly obvious response. When God's gifts come in the form of answered prayers and favorable outcomes, we can quickly sum up the gratitude due to Him for working on our behalf. But when life gets hard and what comes from God'...

The human brain and heart is wired for love, created for attachment and affection at its most basic level. God made us with the ability to desire closeness and acceptance. Sadly, many of us experience failures in this quest for satisfaction and turn to things like sex, money, careers, food, or even substance abuse to fill the longings of our heart that only God can meet. We've turned His good gift...

As we've discussed many times on previous episodes, your thoughts are extremely powerful...and not always very productive or positive. How you manage your mental attitude and the beliefs and information you allow into your brain on a daily basis determines what kind of person you're becoming - for better or for worse. Most of us don't realize the role that we play in being a sort of gate-keeper or...

Grief is such a complicated and difficult process. Anyone who has encountered loss knows that it can be such an unpredictable, challenging journey as you try to make sense of what has happened and somehow figure out a way to move forward. But something many circles fail to address is the role that our core beliefs we bring into that loss inform and shape how we view it. Depending on whether they a...

Pain is a harsh but factual reality in all our lives. Yet many of us struggle to properly accept it or know how to develop an honest relationship with it. We find ourselves wrestling with the paradox that we can't escape it while also realizing that it has the capacity to help us grow and transform. Understanding how to relate to and harness the existence of pain in any form is a tough but necessa...

Words are powerful! They have the ability to wound or to heal, to lift up or destroy, to enforce lies or to speak truth. Within the God-made vehicle of communication exists an entity that can either help us move our stories forward or keep us stuck in our past - can either kill or resurrect, speak death or speak life. Whether these words are aimed at ourselves to toward one another, the principle...

Most of us admit, at some point, that we want to change something about our personal life. We all make resolutions to "do better" and may even follow through for a bit of time. But realistically, many don't have the discipline nor the determination to actually stay the course and allow our lives to be transformed for the better. We can talk a good game but then fail when it comes to sticking out t...

Everyone has their version of what the ideal life looks like. Everyone wants a "happily-ever-after" ending to their story when it comes to love, meaning, and personal success. Yet so often, we are confronted with the reality that we don't always get the perfect outcome that we wanted. Sometimes we must face and accept the painful fact that the hopes and dreams we had have cruelly fallen apart. Thi...

Like all trees and shrubs, pruning is a necessary aspect of keeping our souls thriving. This sometimes involves painful and difficult situations that we'd rather avoid. But unless we are willing to welcome the refining work of God in our lives, none of the suffering we endure will make sense and we won't develop the strength to cut away things out of our own lives that no longer fit the larger pur...

In order to really understand people and know how to help them through a time of crisis, we have to be students of them. We have to learn how to read the subtle because there will be times when others hide behind a mask and are afraid to tell us the truth. Becoming a pursuer and not a pry-er is a delicate yet necessary thing. Today's episode discusses how to observe and learn to pick up on the sil...

Part of discovering mental wellness is learning to get honest with yourself, others, and God about the un-named things in your life - the things that are uncomfortable to talk about, painful to remember, and that carry with them so much embarrassment, shame, and guilt. Today's guest has personal experience with this on a level most of us couldn't imagine. She's a college student, a rape survivor,...

Most of us have moments when we just don't like ourselves. We get tired of dealing with our own drama and the complicated inner workings of our deepest souls. We get discouraged at ourselves, angry at ourselves, impatient with ourselves and this frustration can spill over into how we treat those around us too. In a word, we can often feel - untamed. Like untrained animals with wild sides we don't...

Knowing when to walk away can be one of the hardest things to ever figure out. Whether it be in relationships, employment, ministry, or personal achievement, making the decision to quit can feel like failure. But what if learning how to walk away could set us free? What if giving ourselves the option to let something go in favor of a better thing held the key to maintaining healthy boundaries and...

Handling criticism and judgmental attitudes plays a big role in mental health. If we trend toward being critical or judgmental toward ourselves and, especially toward others, that's a reflection of some unhealthy patterns in our brain and emotional well-being. If we've been the recipient of it, it can cause damaging effects on our self-confidence, peace of mind, and overall quality of living. Know...

Surprises are fun when it involves something pleasurable or desired. But when surprises come in the form of tragedy, loss, or unexpected pain, we often look for a way of escape. We like the unanticipated when it's something we find enjoyable but we'll fight it just as quick when it arrives in a way we don't like. Seems our response to surprise is mixed. But what if we began to look at all of it -...