Tag: Response to God
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Something New
(2-minute read) I’ve been trying to study to understand the crowd’s beliefs as Jesus spoke. Often, he put together what they already knew in a simple way that gave them a greater understanding. But he also taught something they found fresh and new. He spoke of the Kingdom of God. Jesus spoke to crowds about…
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View From the Tree
(2-minute read) It started out as a matter of curiosity. The reaction of the people to Jesus’s sermon on the mount seems different from what I expected, and I wanted to know why. What I discovered surprised me and has changed my life. Jesus was on the earth at a unique time in Jewish history.…
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Stay
(3-minute read) A week ago, our son, Stephen, asked if we would keep his dog, Luna, while he moved to a new apartment. He did an interesting thing. When he dropped off Luna, as he was leaving amongst all of the “be a good girl” comments, he said in a commanding voice, “STAY.” When he…
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Self-Deception
(7-minute read) The most difficult deception for me to detect is self-deception. In 1970, after only about a year of studying spiritual things, I felt the Lord wanted me to buy a reel-to-reel tape recorder, but I didn’t know why. I had never owned one and knew nothing about them. A man in our Bible…
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Genuine
(2-minute read) I discovered early in my work career that I needed to motivate myself. Often, I would decide something I wanted to do differently but just get caught up in the day’s routine and forget about the change I wanted to make. I started writing little notes and leaving them for myself. I’ve discovered…
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Obedience
(3-minute read) I asked God, “Lord, how much obedience do you want?” It took a while, but when the answer came, it was more involved than just complete, absolute, and total. When I was a kid, my father expected obedience. In his case, it was complete, absolute, and total obedience. But it only covered what…
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Dreams
(3-minute read) Where do my dreams come from? I don’t mean the ones when I’m sleeping but the dreams I have when I’m wide awake. After my sophomore year of high school, I asked my parents if I could attend art school during the summer break. There was something about art that always drew me.…
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Captive
(6-minute read) I attended an elementary school in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, when I was eight. After school, I would take a city bus back to my neighborhood. One day on the bus, a man started talking to me about the YMCA and everything to do there. He asked me if I wanted to go with…
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The Prayer Slump
(3-minute read) There was a time when I felt that my prayers were less effective than they used to be. I wasn’t sure what had changed or how I had possibly gotten off. I decided to return to the beginning, and one day I asked the Lord, “Lord, teach me to pray.” The first instruction…
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Dancing with the Lord
From my earliest childhood memories, I remember my dad occasionally walking into a room where music was playing, taking my mother’s hand, and they would begin to dance without saying a word. They wouldn’t dance long, usually not even an entire song, but the look on my mother’s face was always as if she was…
Walking the path 