The Haven

No one has to convince us that suffering is hard. If you’ve lived any amount of time in this broken world you know what it means to suffer. No doubt there are different degrees of suffering, but suffering is universal. Nobody escapes it. Nobody grows out of it. Nobody can buy their way out of it or...

Recently I was speaking at a women’s conference where girls as young as ten years old attended. One of these young girls approached me after the conference was over and asked me a good question, What does it mean to walk with the Lord? I answered as succinctly as I could. We read our Bible. We pray...

Recently I had the opportunity to comfort another woman who was going through an unexpected trial filled with grief. As sorrow-filled words came tumbling out of her mouth I wondered how I might comfort her, especially since I had not experienced this particular kind of suffering. But by the end of...

Each day you and I awake to a world that is experiencing the effects of sin. Broken relationships abound. Financial hardships occur. Places are wiped out by fires, hurricanes, and tsunamis. People die from sickness and starvation. In light of all the sin and suffering, we are oftentimes silent,...

Anxiety. Everyone’s experienced it. Ask the child who gets bullied at school, the teenager who compares herself to others on social media, the college student preparing for exams, the young professional striving for a promotion, parents caring for an injured or sick child, and the elderly facing...

You and I make choices all day long—what we will eat, what we will wear, what we will seek to accomplish, who we will befriend, how we will serve our neighbor, and what route we will take home. Many of the choices we make our relatively insignificant. But there’s one choice we make that matters for...

How many times this week has someone told you, You’ve got this, after confiding in them about a difficult situation, work assignment, final exam, or important conversation that lay ahead of you? How many messages have you heard through advertisements, songs, or social media that have told you, You...

Do you remember show and tell when you were in school? I don’t recall what I took to show my classmates, but I remember that my classmates and I could bring in items that were meaningful to us in one way or another. We didn’t bring things that we didn’t like, or things that weren’t important to us...

When was the last time you considered your spiritual gifts? When you think about them, are you quick to recognize they were given to you by Christ for the edification, equipping and encouragement of the church, or were you tempted to think you somehow earned your spiritual gifts by way of education...

Although believers have received the promise of an eternity with the triune God in the new heaven and the new earth, we’re often tempted to lose an eternal perspective, whether during days of mundane matters or terrible trials. You may be single and dread facing another lonely night, or you may be...