Learning when to stop pouring and start discerning One evening, I had the delight of picnicking at a neighbourhood park with my brother, his wife and their two small children. Four-year-old Marshall raced to finish his sandwich as he spotted a fully equipped play area in one corner of the park, not too far from […]
Redeveloped
What Are You Listening To?
Learning to recognize God’s voice when everything else is clamouring for our attention. It takes discipline to listen with intention and focus, but are there benefits in doing so? Why do we so easily lose our focus? Psalm 85:8 says in the New Living Translation: “I will listen carefully to what God the Lord is […]
Before You Spring Into Action
What young lions can teach us about seeking God first When I get a little too confident that my own abilities will carry me through, I can end up learning the lesson the hard way. Assumption has a way of sticking out its foot when I’m not paying attention. Psalm 34:10 says: “The young lions […]
Who’s Opening Doors For You?
Open doors and favour with people can be heady things to experience. But we need to remember who opened those doors and whose favour is getting us into places we’d never enter by ourselves. Psalm 121:8 says: “The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” When I originally sketched out […]
When Life Won’t Give You a Breather
Have you ever felt like a hamster on a wheel you didn’t volunteer to get on? You’re tired, you’d really love to step off for a while, but circumstances just keep coming. As soon as one thing gets dealt with, another one shows up like it had been waiting its turn. After reading David’s story […]
Before We Even Ask
The more I thought about toddlers, the more this verse made sense. Isaiah 65:24 (NLT) – “I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers.” Years ago, in my late teens and early twenties, I worked with preschoolers […]
The Measure I Didn’t Know I Was Using
What’s the Measure of a Man? Let’s go on a bit of an investigative hunt, shall we? I was reading Proverbs 16:7 recently. “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” As I pondered that verse, my first question wasn’t: How does God make our […]
Never Lose Your Sense of “I Wonder”
For years, I think I unconsciously thought of eternal life as something that began after we died. But Jesus didn’t give that impression in 1 John 2:24–25: “As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide […]
When “They” Became “We”
Daniel’s prayer reminds me that true repentance begins when I stop pointing fingers. Every once in a while, I’m reading through the Bible and something catches my attention that makes me stop and think, Hold on a minute… I don’t think I’ve noticed that before. That happened while I was reading Daniel chapter 9. Daniel […]