Recently, the Lord has put this one question on my heart and I can't shake it. “What does it mean to be the Bride?” Not just a bride but the Bride. His Bride. It is so easy to get caught in our Christian routines and rhythms, and we find we are actually enjoying God in these activities, but somewhere along the way we forget something so crucial. Simply stated by Solomon, “My beloved is mine and I am His” (Song of Songs 2:16).

People from our Western World who travel to some places like Malawi and other rural parts of Africa often talk about how they can feel the darkness, and they mean this in the literal physical sense.

Family is one of God’s greatest gifts. It is also one of our greatest responsibilities. As leaders, we are not just building businesses and careers — we are fostering godly legacies. The question of our Heritage is not if we are passing something on… but what we are passing on.

 As my life goes on and different seasons come and go, I am realizing that the seasons of my life that have been marked with the most growth in God have been the seasons of various trials that He has allowed in my life.

I became a mom roughly seven months ago. It has been the greatest seven months of my life. Yes, there have been challenges to work through and it has not always been easy or blissful, but God has shaped, refined, purified my heart in more ways than one. One thing He sure has shown me is the importance of being faithful in the everyday, unseen moments when the only eyes looking at me are my baby’s beautiful big, blue eyes.

Throughout Scripture, God often moves through individuals who carry a burden for His people and are willing to act in obedience even when fear and resistance stand in the way. One of the clearest examples of this is found in the story of Nehemiah.

When the Lord was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, He told Moses, “Tell the sons of Israel to move forward [toward the sea]. As for you, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, so that the sons of Israel may go through the middle of the sea on dry land,” [Exodus 14:15-16, AMP].

How do you respond when things don’t go the way you thought they were going to go? I heard a speaker ask this question several years ago, and every so often it will find its way back into my thoughts.

One of the greatest lessons we can learn from Jesus is in John 15:13 when He said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” As followers of Jesus, we are asked to lay down our lives — not only for Him but for others because this is the mark of love. As I have grown in my career, marriage, and now motherhood, I have seen the true beauty and fulfillment of laying down our life to serve another. 

We are so often quick to evaluate people or circumstances by external appearances that we miss the real heart of the matter. I believe this is what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians 5:16 when he says, “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!”

"…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God"(NIV, Hebrews 12:2). 

I grew up with an undeveloped faith.  I loved God, but was clueless concerning the Word. As a matter of fact, I found the Word dull and boring so it put me to sleep when I attempted to read it.  When I met with Jahan Berns several years ago, it became clear I needed the Word, but there was no activation.  So, I had to pray for it.  I told God the truth of what I felt, which of course He already knew and I shared with Him my desire to love and study His Word.I realized it was up to me to feed and water the seed He had planted in the vault of my being. I treasured it, I depended upon it, and I experienced it as my source of life. 

This is the Great Commandment, in which Jesus calls us to love Him wholeheartedly with all of our lives. He says this because this is how He has loved us. He spared nothing in His love for us, and He calls His people to do the same. He doesn’t want to be confined to the “spiritual” box in our lives, only meant to be uncovered when we do our daily devotional or when we attend church. God, in His fiery love, has much more for us than that. He wants to give us a new life, one that deeply satisfies, one that is exciting, and one where we truly experience Him in our everyday lives. 

There is something deeply uncomfortable about trust, especially when clarity is absent. We prefer explanations, timelines, and guarantees. Yet Solomon invites us into a different posture: full-hearted trust, not partial confidence mixed with self-reliance.

One of the toughest life lessons from the book of Jeremiah to learn is that there are consequences for actions. What we do or what others do,good or bad,will have an effect on us. Like a pebble dropped on the smooth surface of a pool, the consequences of our actions move outward like waves from the impact touching everything in their path.

Before I was born, my father was working in a factory creating bombs for WW2. He was 27, tall and handsome, with a head full of dark wavy hair. It’s easy to see why my mother fell for him. They had two little boys, Larry, six and Richard, just one year old. During his time at the factory, he was exposed to extremely toxic materials and prided himself on being one of the men who could stay the longest in contaminant filled areas without seeing repercussions.

Gentleness is often misunderstood in our culture, especially by leaders. Many equate it with weakness or passivity, but biblically, gentleness means power under restraint—strength that’s submitted to the control of the Holy Spirit. It is self-controlled strength expressed through humility, kindness, and grace toward others.

This verse has always stood out to me. The prophet Samuel is speaking the word of the Lord to King Saul, informing him that God has decided to remove him as king and has chosen someone else. Examine what God says about the person He intends to choose. God will use this to touch our hearts if we allow Him.

Do you make light of your sin?

The Holy Spirit has revealed to me how culture is numbing believers to the weight of sin. I see this all over social media, where even Christian influencers and accounts are posting “relatable” memes, which, at the root, endorse our sinful nature.

Some of the most important and useful insights in Scripture are found in this chapter and until now, I have missed them. God has given each one of us a stewardship that we must answer for one day. In verse 2 Paul writes, "Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful." That is, we must exercise great care to get the most out of what God has committed to us.