Soul Sister Time

            Thanksgiving reminds us to be grateful.   If we wait until one time a year to think about what we are grateful for, we do a disservice to our souls.   Each day God hides opportunities to know Him more.   We have every reason to be grateful for every moment of every day.             The worst day of my life will surely be the morning I awoke to find my husband unconscious in our home.   Even on the worst day there was a long list of people and experiences of God’s love for which I could be grateful.   I was immediately surrounded by half the staff of ministers with whom Brian worked.   I only made one call to his assistant, and everyone came running to be by his side (and mine).   I’m so grateful that in the midst of my shock my sister-in-law had the good sense to buy Rachel a flight and get her on her way—she arrived just after lunch.   When I thought about my friends, I called one and gave her a list of those to call because I knew they would kill me for not knowing

The Lord’s Prayer — Thy Name , Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil               In our last section of the five requests in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to send us into the world with His protection.   This request does not mention heaven, but it is all about the heavenlies!             It is vital that we daily take into account what we can and cannot see.   It is what we cannot see that has the greatest power to affect the outcome of each day.   Sometimes we think our enemy is our boss, our spouse, our children—those with whom we have a conflict.   They are not our enemy.             As this prayer attests, we are up against something powerful each day.   It is called evil.   We are tempted to follow the path of evil.   The Pharisees demonstrate to us that sometimes the greatest evil looks like religious service.             God’s remedy to evil is Himself.   Notice Jesus doesn’t teach us to pra

The Lord’s Prayer — Thy Name , Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory , Thy Protection And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.             I don’t know about you, but I don’t think very rigorously about the things I do wrong to others. After all, I know they are done out of a good heart. I have all kinds of rationalizations about them.             But let me tell you. I can become very stern over a minor (in comparison to my sins) resentment.   I can let resentment crush my soul by rigorously detailing every wrong I endured.   I can be depleted of time, emotional energy and clear thinking when I put myself in a prison of resentment and throw away the key of forgiveness.   When I do this, I drink the poison of unforgiveness, rather than experience the supernatural experience of sincere, agape love for someone who has either carelessly or seriously offended me.             This phrase of the powerful Lord’s Prayer if prayed sincerely can become

The Lord’s Prayer — Thy Name , Thy Will, Thy Gift , Thy Victory, Thy Protection                                   In our five-part series on The Lord’s Prayer, we come to the gifts God gives us every day when Jesus asks us to ask for our daily bread.   The exact phrase:   Give us this day our daily bread.                 Why would something so basic be mentioned in a prayer so epic?   After all, we have started this prayer by wrapping our minds around how amazing and powerful our Abba Father is and that He is in heaven.   We quickly move on to establish the fact that no matter what we want or say in our prayer to Him we want it settled from the beginning that we only want His will to be done like it is in heaven.   So why stoop so low as to discuss the things of earth such as our daily bread?                 Here is where this prayer focuses on the earthly realities that we all face.   Jesus teaches us to be so intimate with God that we ask Him for our daily bread. Tho