And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? ~Esther 4:14b

Last weekend I attended the Girl’s Night Out retreat, where Woman’s Ministry’s Tana Miller shared with me and 200 other teenaged girls a message titled “Born For This”. It was a wonderful message that inspired me and showed me the mind-blowing reality of God’s destiny for me.

The book of Jeremiah says that God has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (verse 29:11). This means God intends to help us grow and mature, and promises us a future full of hope. God has a good and perfect plan because He is a good and perfect God (Psalm 18:30a). After all, He is the creator and master of everything. So let me ask you something:

Is is just a coincidence that God…

      Psalm 34:17-19 (NLT)

            Before becoming saved I never really put too much thought into the fact that God was always at my side.  I was always told “God only gives you what you can handle no matter what it is” but what I didn’t know was that he truly was and will be there to help me through all the troubled times not just some of them.  And yes, God does only give us what we can handle and certain things he allows to happen in order to strengthen our faith.  I have to admit when I am being stretched…

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.…(James 4:13-14)

Recently, I was listening to an oldies radio station, when the Beatles’ song, When I’m 64, played.  I suddenly realized that in a little less than four weeks, I, too, will turn 64.  When I was younger, little did I know what my life would be like when I finally reached that age.  So many of the things that I had planned for my life when I was in my teens simply never materialized.  Other areas opened up that I could have never imagined.  Part of that was because I didn’t come to know…

This morning on my way to the gym, a radio advertisement brought up the idea of recency bias with regard to investments.  Many people panicked at the beginning of 2014 when the Dow lost 326 (2.1%) points on February 3rd.  This came after a January which saw the Dow lose 5.3%.  What people forgot, was that the Dow had earned them 27.36% during the previous year–2013.  The point was that people have developed a tendency to only remember the latest overly inflated negatives.  Look at your local newspaper or listen to one of the televised newscasts.  Compare how many uplifting positive reports there are to the number of reports there are regarding things that are illegal, immoral, or simply discouraging.  It will be no contest.  The negative reports will outweigh the positive. …

So we continued the work with half the men holding spears, from the first light of dawn till the stars came out. ~Nehemiah 4:1

Nehemiah was a man with a vision: to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. He gathered a large group of men to come down with him from Persia to Israel to rebuild the lost city of God’s chosen people. However, Nehemiah soon found opposition and the men working for him had to defend the wall as they worked on it. Groups were sent to attack the city and try to kill Nehemiah. However, Nehemiah’s men soon adapted, half of them guarded the wall while the other half built it, and everyone had to guard the city at night.

This is a great image of how we need to live our lives: by doing our work for the Lord but being prepared for the attacks of the enemy. As…

Have you ever wondered what it means to die to one’s self?  When I was first saved I used to think why does the Pastor keep saying that?  I mean really, if  you think about it how can one die to one’s self?  I know this is silly but this was going through my head at the time, that is physically impossible. You certainly would not be around to talk about the experience because you’d be dead!  So just what was the Pastor talking about?

One of the benefits to being in a bible preaching church the Pastor  explains his comments because he knows there are new eager believers hanging on his every word. Yes, I admit I was one of the new eager believers, well not so new now but none the less still eager to learn.  This is how it was explained to me; repent of your old ways…