Seconds, weeks, years slide by. All that time you keep your eyes shut to the bleak, hopeless reality. All that time you keep your mind open to God. He tells you that it's okay you see no way forward and to not focus on that. He tells you that it's okay you see no way back and to not focus on that. God says, "Just be here with Me." It's hard to just "be here", to not do or know anything about what you thought would happen. It is very hard to know so surely that God brought you

You were in hopelessness. You were in brokenness. God started to provide some glimmers of hope. You thought those sparkles would lead you somewhere amazing . . . but they led you somewhere different. They led you to dark mountains. You followed God's glimmers of hope to where the small lights faded in the towering shadows of impenetrable, unscalable mountains. Now you see no way forward, no hope ahead, and you know only death lies behind you. A small, fearful realization whis

When in your hopelessness you turn to God for hope, He provides. Everything may be shattered, but when you ask God for help, He starts picking up the pieces. If you weren't so hopeless and so desperate for any ounce of light, you probably wouldn't notice because God doesn't magically fix everything in one big blazing bang. Instead God lets a refraction bounce off one of the shards surrounding you. You notice it, hungry for light in your darkness, and stoop to pick it up. As y

Sometimes when you're running with God--and you just start to run well--life steps from the shadows and punches you in the gut. You lay on the ground trying to reclaim the air that has been knocked out of you. When you finally find oxygen, you sit up and lose it again. Life didn't just knock you down, it shattered everything. You're sitting in a dark field full of brokenness, hopelessness, death, and defeat that stretches beyond your range of comprehension. Seeing it, you sud

Have you ever really wanted God to do something? Maybe it was something you felt anxious about, like a sick family member who you really wanted to God to heal. Or maybe it was something you felt excited about, like one of God's amazing promises finally coming true. Either way, if you ever wanted God to do something, you likely felt strongly about it and wanted God to make it a reality soon. When you talked to God about it, though, He didn't seem to hear. Maybe He didn't give

God has a mission: He wants all people to choose Him as God. Everything is part of God's mission to bring all people into and deeper into a relationship with Him. Everything that happens occurs to direct people to God. Also, every person that lives exists to join God's mission. Unlike time, events, and nature, though, people have a choice of if they will join God's mission. God gives every person the freedom to choose to work with or against Him. He does that by using everyth

I had heard God tell me to just start and go wherever He led. We started a run together. Our run through the countryside was easy, eye-opening, and lovely. When I first set eyes on the mountains, I temporarily panicked and forgot to follow God's lead. God calmed me and returned me to His side. Our run continued through the mountains. I wondered where we would end up but kept my eyes on God. The run through the mountains just started to feel natural, when suddenly, I froze. I

I feel like giving up. And I'm one of those Exodus 2- 6 Moses types who when life gets intimidating, I run and hide in the farthest reaches and hope no one and those problems I'm running from can't find me. I get scared and run away but can't really run away because the problem is really in me. Thankfully, God is still the God He was to Moses in Exodus 3. God still finds me wherever I hide and tells me what I need to hear. God tells me that He already knew this problem would

Jesus and His disciples faced a huge crowd. The disciples knew that the crowd was hungry and that they could not possibly feed the crowd. So the disciples suggested to Jesus that they hand off the enormous responsibility to numerous others actually equipped for such a task. Jesus, though, told His twelve disciples, "You give them something to eat." In my mind the disciples gawked open-mouthed at Jesus. They may have thought, "Why did Jesus answer like that? He knows there's a

We all hit roadblocks. We all find ourselves at points where nothing seems to be moving forward at all and so we wait. Waiting feels like doing nothing. When we find ourselves waiting and doing nothing, we usually either try to escape the roadblock by doing anything we can think of to spur forward movement or settle down and give up trying at all. Both approaches stem from misconceptions about waiting. Waiting is not doing nothing. Waiting is having silent, still time to cons

Doing something different stretches far beyond trying to "do your own thing". It is normal for everyone to try to stand out just enough to fit in with everyone else doing life how they each see fit. Normal life is generally a balance of doing what you and everyone else feels is best. Doing something genuinely different, though, means not doing what you want or what any person feels is best. It means breaking away from every voice and waiting in the quiet for God to speak. It'

When I first started writing Anelthalien, it was the first time I stopped trying to write Anelthalien. I had been trying to compose a story, but it never meshed together. When I had been doing something else and God told me to start writing, I began a journey I never had nor could have imagined on my own. When God says go and we start running according to His moment-by-moment direction, we fly. We not only speed through beautiful scenery we've never seen before, we also get t

God wants us to never forget what drew us into His love. God wants us to always hold on to what taught us that He loves us dearly. Often we try to forget. We don't try to forget God but the circumstances that compelled us to go to God because often those were not good circumstances at all. We want to push those dark circumstances into the depths of our minds so that we never see them again and unconsciously end up stifling that spark that started our love for God. God doesn't

Lately I've been hearing that I really am just a pebble in the ocean. I've been trying to do all the things they say to do to become well known so somebody might hear of me and might buy my book. I've been hearing that right now I'm "obscure" and no one will read what I write unless I amass a huge social media following or pretend to make friends with a whole bunch of bloggers. I felt obscure when I went to church yesterday, as if my words would never reach anyone. Then God d