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Patience is a Hard Discipline
Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a co... -
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Waiting: Leaning into the Pain
With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s... -
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Sometimes trust takes time. We all love to be in control, but when you start to give some of that up, it's freeing. Start with some of the little things. Give those things up to the Lord. -
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Surrendering a Daughter to God’s Care
Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca... -
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When Fire Makes Things Grow
Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib... -
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Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. -
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When we see how God is able to show his power in our weakness, not in spite of our weakness but because of it, we are no longer ashamed or afraid. When we see the expansive task at hand and instead of... -
liturgy
Merciful God, We come before you with
Merciful God, We come before you with thankful hearts. Thankful for the many gifts you have given us. You have clothed us and given us shelter. You have given us food to fill our stomachs, friendship... -
liturgy
Heavenly Father, we confess that our trust
Heavenly Father, we confess that our trust in you wavers and that we are fickle in our reliance. We see you provide great things where we see little possibility; but when storms come in life, we quic... -
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Do You Know Where You’re Going?
Pastor Matt Chandler describes a humorous encounter with his daughter that illustrates the absurdity of assuming we know better than God. Just as a small child couldn’t possibly know better than a par... -
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How Our Limits Help Us
We must learn to see our limits as the entrance into the good life, not what bars us from it. But as we grow older, waiting feels like an inconvenience or affront. We take out our phones when we’re... -
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Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. -
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Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer. -
liturgy
Lord, forgive us for the times when we
Lord, forgive us for the times when we have chosen safety and comfort over fidelity to you. For the times when following you requires us to stretch, grow, and be challenged, give us courage. Renew our... -
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We must cease striving and trust God to provide what He thinks is best and in whatever time He chooses to make it available. But this kind of trusting doesn't come naturally. It's a spiritual ... -
liturgy
Lead Me Out of My Doubts and Fears
Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ... -
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The Connection between Trust and Happiness
Ruut Veenhoven, the Dutch sociologist known as the “godfather of happiness research,” maintains the World Database of Happiness. And when he looked at all the countries of the world in terms of happin... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Psalm 46
“Historical insecurity” and “cosmic instability” are the ingredients of existential fear that inspire this Psalm of Trust, according to James Mays in his Interpretation Commentary series on the Psal... -
liturgy
Lord of all, the only thing that truly
Lord of all, the only thing that truly matters is staying connected to you. As we remain in you, you give us life. We are sorry, Lord, for squandering the gift of incredible love that you have given u... -
liturgy
King Jesus, We confess that we are
King Jesus, We confess that we are quick to put our hope in places other than You. We are often more driven by our fears than by our faith in You and Your Kingdom. We place our trust in health, jobs, ... -
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We are invariably made for faith, to operate out of a need to trust something we cannot control. -
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Ratatouille and Surrendering to God
When we watch cartoons, it is fun to see the way we can so easily allow some of the craziest stuff to just be taken at face value. Movements that don’t follow the laws of physics? Sure. Talking animal... -
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Trust is like blood pressure. It's silent, vital to good health, and if abused it can be deadly. -
liturgy
As the people of Judah cried out to God
As the people of Judah cried out to God in their time of catastrophe, we remember that we, too, can bring our burdens before God. Let us join together in confession, confident that God hears us. Lord... -
liturgy
Trusting God's Strength Over Ours
Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls. We have served the god of self-preservation. But ... -
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Pruning Strengthens: A Botanist's View on Pain
Any experienced gardener has heard of a botanical term called Apical (ah-pick-ul) dominance. In most plants that grow from a central stem, from maple trees to bush peas, whatever branch is at the top ... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Matthew 14:13-21
Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the... -
liturgy
Heavenly Father, we confess that we often place
Heavenly Father, we confess that we often place our hopes in the powers that we see in the world, allowing ourselves to be lifted and brought down by people and institutions that are flawed and fleeti... -
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Warning: May Cause Suffocation
When we focus on saving our own life we lose sight of the source of life itself—it’s as productive as trying to conserve our air supply by breathing into a plastic bag. Just as our lungs need a consta... -
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Deceitful Hearts and Desert Shrubs
We may find it hard to believe Jeremiah’s words that the heart is “deceitful above all things.” We would rather look outward and think, Yes, others may be quite foolish and misguided. But I have a ...
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