Faith
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Can a Grieving Heart Worship?
Grief is defined as a feeling of deep sorrow. It is typically associated with death, but we also know grief can come from other circumstances as well – a broken relationship, the loss of a job, a health diagnosis, or an injury…the list goes on and on. I’ve been surrounded by grief for the past year and a half. My church family is shepherded by six elders, one of which is my husband. In the past sixteen months, all six of them and their wives have suffered extreme loss and experienced deep sorrow. Three of our elders have lost a parent or in-law. These deaths included a prolonged illness, a…
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New Book! “His Power, Our Weakness” is here!
Announcing the release of His Power, Our Weakness – Encouragement for the Biblical Counselor! His Power, Our Weakness is available through Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle e-book. With refreshing and often raw honesty, Beth Ann Baus pulls back the curtain on her personal life and long experience as a Biblical Counselor to guide other counselors toward more effective servanthood. She weaves the biblical narrative of Moses and the Israelites’ wandering in the desert into each chapter, deftly comparing their challenges and struggles to those of the modern day counselor. Each chapter includes practical sections on scriptural tools, encouragement, and questions for personal reflection. One need not be a Biblical…
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What we long for…
I realize we’re all past the initial excitement of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but there’s a line in the movie that I just can’t stop thinking about. It was a line that literally caught my breath in my throat and produced an audible noise! When I experience something like this, there’s only one logical thing to do…write about it. The line was spoken by Maz Kanata, a female pirate who is over a thousand years old; whose age old wisdom shows through in a short conversation with Rey. Assuming every reader has seen this movie, I’m sure you remember the scene. Rey had stumbled into a…
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Heidi, Zombies and My Heavenly Home
Thanks to the prompting of a friend, I recently read Johanna Spyri’s, Heidi. I really can’t believe I’ve made it this far in life without having read this most delightful tale. My life will forever be changed because of a child that lives only on the pages of a book. While reading Heidi, I often found myself stopping mid-sentence, resting the open book on my chest and getting lost, deep in thought. I found myself thinking thoughts like, “If Heidi were real, I would very much like to take her by the hand and stroll through tall grasses, admiring God’s wondrous creation.” If you aren’t familiar with…
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What’s Your Motivation?
I recently read a heartbreaking article written by an anonymous sister in Christ. In this article, the woman spoke about the Proverbs 31 woman and how trying to mimic this picture perfect woman is nothing short of exhausting! She said that simply reading Proverbs 31 made her want to give up, sit down and take a nap. She went on describing the many wonderful qualities of this wonder woman and in a rather sarcastic tone, talked about how she didn’t understand why any woman would do all these praiseworthy things! Where was the motivation? Then she came to the second sentence in verse 28, “and he praises…
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The painful side of Father’s Day
I recently had lunch with a friend that bluntly stated, “I HATE Father’s Day.” My friend, like many others I know, didn’t grow up with a kind, loving father. So, for her, Father’s Day is a reminder of the Hallmark type dad she didn’t have. If you think about it, all the cards on the rack for Father’s Day say really sweet things, praising wonderful fathers. Here are a few samples of card headers I saw in the store this year: To the world’s best dad… To my wonderful father… My dad, my hero… Then, you open them and find gushy words about how he set such a…
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Prayer for our most influential people
I heard on the radio today that TIME Magazine has issued their list of the most influential people of 2015. As usual, there were names on the list I didn’t recognize, there were names that made me smile and names that made me roll my eyes. But, there was one name in particular that got my attention…Kim Kardashian. Last November I saw two posts that caught my eye, “What you should tell your teen (and yourself) about Kim Kardashian” and “Things I plan to tell my teenage boys about the nude pictures of Kim Kardashian”. While I agreed with what these articles had to say, I was struck by how…
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“…those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.” – A. Lincoln
I read the following address by Abraham Lincoln every year before Thanksgiving; this year I wanted to share it with all of you. May the Lord bless your time with family and friends on Thanksgiving Day. May our country remember the One from whom all blessings flow. “It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are…
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Confessing our sins to our children…one mother’s perspective
If you are the owner of a preschooler, you may also be the owner of a Beginner’s Bible. My 5 year-old, Daniel has always been drawn to stories with battles and unlikely hero’s; his favorite being David and Goliath. My 4 year-old, Levi has always claimed the “no-no fruit” as his favorite. He has always found it hard to believe that Adam and Eve made such a “bad choice”. It wasn’t too long ago that we were reading this story together and he said to me, “Mommy, if God told me not to eat the no-no fruit, I would never ever eat it. I wouldn’t even go near it.” “Oh,…
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Do you know I’m invisible?
Do you ever feel invisible? I do. I’ve felt invisible in a crowded room and I’ve felt invisible in an intimate small group. When I feel invisible, I often think of Hagar from the Bible. (You can read her story in Genesis 16) What I think of specifically is her sitting by a spring, all alone and when she is visited by the angel of the Lord she says, “You are the God who sees me, I have now seen the One who sees me.” The Bible says that Hagar gave God the name, El Roi, which means, the God who sees. I absolutely love that. I love knowing that…