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Showing posts with the label Ephesians 3:20-21

Influence

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It has been a long while since I have posted anything here. I have been busy completing three years toward my B.A. in English and my senior year is underway. My current class (Creative Writing) has finally given me the space to take off the tight harness of academic writing rules, and it feels SO GOOD!! After reading my first assignment, Mom and Daddy gave it their thumbs up and suggested I make it a blog post, so here it is. It is my story and their story. It's a little longer than my usual posts, but as with everything I have ever posted here, I pray it encourages you to run "up the sunbeam to the sun" (C. S. Lewis). "Follow my example,  as I follow the example of Christ." 1 Corinthians 11:1 NIV I sat above them on the stairs. Looking down through the window-like openings in the partition between the living room and the stairway, I listened to the basketball players, football players, baseball players, wrestlers, track athletes, both the lettermen ...
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When Lazarus Comes Home

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"Now the crowd that was with him  when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word." John 12:17 NIV1984 Two Sundays ago , I wrote of what was then an unfolding story , just three days old, that had thousands of people riveted to a "secret" group on facebook as we prayed for the life of Stephen Shaffer. What you didn't know then was that between Saturday night when I wrote that post and Sunday morning when I hit PUBLISH, Stephen had taken a turn for the worse. It was with trembling fingers that I posted what I had written the night before, trusting that God was going to continue to hold Stephen together, even when it looked like he was falling apart. Oh how we prayed, and many of you joined in and prayed too! Hour by hour during that next week, we watched and prayed! Last Sunday , I struggled to capture, in the craziest mix of metaphors you've ever seen, the incredible ups and downs we had witnessed as God wor...
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God Is No Dangler of Carrots

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-- Woody Allen is oft-quoted as saying, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." Now, Woody Allen is an agnostic on his best days and an atheist on his worst, but even Christians sometimes use this quote as though it were true. How many times have we all heard testimonies of missionaries or pastors that follow an arc something like this: "I never wanted to be a missionary/pastor; that's the LAST thing I wanted to be!" They sigh wistfully . . . remembering the passion they once had . . . and say, "No, I dreamed of being a . . . chef doctor artist teacher musician professional golfer writer business owner (fill in your own)" then, steeling themselves, carrying grimly on with their story they say, "but God had other ideas, and now I am doing His work. You should be doing God's work too!" What they don't say out loud, but fairly scream from between the lines, is, "God is a dream killer!" "Don't...
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