The Lord recently reminded me of a time I struggled with a damaged relationship. I asked Him "How do I let go of hurt and bitterness? What would You say to me?" A list of everything I was NOT exuding flashed through my mind: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Sound familiar? It's the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. I turned to the famous chapter and found another list before that one.

I've absorbed teachings on fasting this week as we prepare to invite our church into a corporate fast. One pastor calls fasting "whole body hungering for God". Another scholar says it's "a way of praying with your body".

Fasting has become a trending health practice in the modern world because of the undeniable mental and physical health benefits. I practice intermittent fasting daily as a tool to manage my blood glucose levels. The practice of completely denying food for spiritual purposes, however, might seem extreme to some and has hardly been taught to the generations we will pass the Church to.

I am cautious about miracles. Don't get me wrong... I know miracles intimately. I've witnessed bodies heal while my fingers still interlocked, while my mouth still formed the "Amen". I've seen finances and families resurrected against all odds. My own life's story is marked by miracles, big and small.

Those visible miracles are so very spectacular, like the fireworks of faith. If I'm honest, they can easily become the prize I run toward or a measuring stick I use to see if I'm pleasing to God. The miracles are not the prize, the portion or my salvation. Jesus is.

I begin my “40’s” today. I remember thinking life had peaked at 17 when I was my high school’s head cheerleader. Then again, at 21, when I was one signature away from a dream job after graduating university at the top of my class... And then I heard God speak.

He spoke from the ashes of my childhood home, surrounded by the charred remains of every physical marker of life to that point. His words were the beginning of climbing down the ladder of success as the world might see it. I declined my job offer and took out my very first student loan. I drove a moving truck across the country on my 22nd birthday and enrolled in seminary to study Marriage and Family Therapy.

Our five-year old's brain functions differently than most. Lately, he's been showing all the signs that the pressures of daily life are closing in on him. We could see what wasn't working but didn't know what would bring relief. We decided to change his rhythms, surrender the process to God, and see where He took us.

Our son's play school is geared toward kids with special needs and meets him right where he's at. He still needed a break, even though it's a good thing. We reduced his school hours significantly for the week.

In 2010, I found myself on a bumpy, creepy-crawly 18-hour bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia to a remote village on Lake Tanganyika. I saw the brightness of the stars in the complete absence of electricity for a month. I learned to "grocery shop" at the market, and how to turn two skinny, living chickens into dinner for 20.

I am speaking to a group of moms this weekend about parenting in this high-tech, digital age. I'll cover the basics of brain development to empower moms to decide how to support their children in each stage of life. Humans are born soft and underdeveloped. Meanwhile, hoofed mammals are walking and baby baboons are clinging to their mother's hair as she swings through trees within hours of birth. Human brains are 25% developed at birth, with just the lower portion of the nervous system "online". The frontal cortex is the is the last part of the brain to fully develop in our 20's and is responsible for judgment, impulse control, decision-making, and insight.

Brittanica encyclopedia defines "amen" as "an expression of agreement, confirmation or desire". The ancient word's Semitic root means "firm, fixed or sure" and is related to the Hebrew verb that means "to be trusted". Jesus' words "Verily, verily" or "truly, I say to you" in the Gospels is written in Greek as "AMHN, AMHN".

My post-prayer amen can often be translated as , "This is me, God, signing off!"

It had been seven years of unfathomable oppression. To make matters worse, God's people brought on their oppression with their own idol-worshiping hands. Desperate Gideon, the youngest in an insignificant family from a small tribe, was quite literally in a low place. He was doing chores below ground. Grain was typically threshed on a hilltop so the wind would blow away the chaff. Gideon was threshing wheat in a sunken winepress to protect it from the locust-like Midianites. He might have been wondering how things got so bad, even though his father's had idolatrous shrine loomed above him.

I am a song repeater. It is not unusual for me to continuously listen to one worship song for a season. I find that, with repetition, the very first chords of the anthem draw my heart to God no matter what's happening around me. I am currently listening to "Gratitude" by Benjamin William Hastings again and again. That's the song I shared in last week's call to worship. Friday friend, I must confess that I've been ignoring a nudging…

I've dealt with blood sugar imbalances my entire life. Doctors said I was destined for diabetes, obesity, and was unlikely to have children due to the hormonal imbalance at the root of it all. They were the experts, so I accepted my fate... until I couldn't anymore. In my late 20's, I was alone in the South African bush. My world was closing in on me. I needed hope in something beyond what I could see and faith that my fate wasn't sealed by a broken endocrine system.

Does anyone else find themselves trying to just survive the week to get to the weekend? Or get through one season of life to get to the next? There will always be something on your path to "survive" if that is what you're looking to do. Alternatively, there are rich blessings to find on that very same road.

Our uniquely wired 5-year-old loves music. More often than not, we listen to one or two worship songs in our van before he says, "MOM, CAN I SING?" That's my cue to turn the music off so he can sing his own song.

I'd call our son's genre a fusion of "delightfully five" and "deeply worshipful"…

The human olfactory sense, or sense of smell, is considered to be the most emotionally intimate of the five senses. An article in the Harvard Gazette explains smell is the only sense that fully develops in the womb, and smell and emotion are stored as one memory because of the brain's anatomy. We may not understand the science of the olfactory bulb sending signals to the limbic system, but something stirs within us at the smell of cookies baking in the oven…

Yesterday, I was part of a "hike" with a pair of five-year old best friends. They had a map, binoculars, super hero figurines, and the electrifying energy of friendship in the wild. Their hearts were set for adventure. They would seek it until they found it. In fact, everything was an adventure because they were looking for one. The same paths they've walked since they could walk played out like a symphony in their spirits - the songs of the Cape frogs, the moss-covered climbing rocks, the slippery bridge and twisty trees, and the cold waterfall foaming into the perfect rock-throwing target.

Cape Town's wintery, rainy school holidays are fast-approaching. My sons are already stir-crazy. The long holidays can feel like an episode of Survivor with all the pent-up energy. It's not realistic to just "get through" a school holiday or season, waiting for the abundant life around the corner. Jesus didn't enter into extreme adversity so we wouldn't have to, but so we could thrive amidst it.

Yesterday, my youngest sons and I had to run for cover from the rain. We sat together in the back of my beloved van. When the rain passed and they jumped out, the van’s bumper went down with them. I don’t know what caused the initial incident. It wasn’t those tiny little feet. But there was definitely a problem.

Eagles were common in the Biblical climate and are often referenced in Scripture. You may have heard if you hope in the Lord, you will "soar on wing's like eagles" (Isa 40:31), but there's much more!

A couple of week ago, I had a sick child whose needs were extremely high from very early in the morning. My toddler decided to even out the score by staying awake all through the night so I could also spend time with him. I only remember a flurry of medicines, meals, and unread messages that week. I didn't have a quiet moment to read my Bible or sing a worship song. Though my stomach was sick from exhaustion and surviving on coffee and peanut butter crusts, I knew, deep down in my sleepy spirit, this was the only place God woud have me in that moment in time.

I love to listen to people's stories and understand why they tell them the way they do. We all have a timeline, speckled with highs and lows. But it's the narrator, not the timeline, that tells the story.