fearless

My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.
— 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
 
I was watching Lanterns when Hal Jordan said something that stopped me:
“I’m not fearless because I’m brave. I’m fearless because I’m broken.”
Whoa.
We usually think fearless people are the brave ones—the ones who aren't afraid of anything. But maybe being fearless isn't about having no fear at all.
We've all been broken somewhere along the way. We've been hurt, disappointed, knocked down, and scared. And sometimes we've discovered something in those broken places: We weren't alone.
Paul learned that God's power wasn't greatest when Paul felt strong. God's power was made perfect in his weakness.
Maybe that's where our fearlessness comes from too.
Not because we're brave enough, not because we're unbreakable, but because we've been broken before—and discovered that God was still there.
 
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible

come near

Come near to God and He will come near to you.
— James 4:8 (NIV)
 
Saturday, Randy and I had a couples massage. For a little while there were no errands, chores, phones, work, or places we needed to be. We simply stopped, relaxed, and spent time together. Over thirty years into our relationship, we still need that. A strong marriage doesn’t stay strong simply because two people have been together a long time. It takes time together. It takes attention. It takes choosing each other again and again.
Our relationship with God isn't so different. We can know Him for years, go to church, pray before meals, and still become so busy doing life that we forget to simply spend time with Him.
James gives us a beautiful promise: Come near to God, and He will come near to you.
Sometimes the best thing we can do for a relationship is simply stop everything else and make time for the One we love.
 
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible

generations

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
— 1 Peter 2:9–10 (NKJV)
 
We love naming generations.
The Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression and fought World War II. The Silent Generation helped shape the Civil Rights era. Baby Boomers changed culture. Gen X—hey, that’s me!—were the latchkey kids who learned independence and watched the digital age begin. Millennials, Gen Z, Alpha, and now Beta each have their own defining moments too. Every generation will eventually be remembered for something.
But Peter gives us a different name: A chosen generation. And this one isn’t determined by what year you were born.
God chose us to be His people—not because of what our generation accomplished, invented, survived, or changed, but because of His mercy.
Whatever generation your birth certificate puts you in, if you belong to Christ, you belong to another one too.
You are chosen.
Called out of darkness and into His marvelous light.
And that’s a generation worth being part of.
 
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible

developing

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope.
- Psalm 130:5 (NIV)
 
The other day I was sitting in our bedroom when a random image flashed through my mind: my husband peeking around the corner with a camera and taking a candid picture of me. I have absolutely no idea why I thought of it, but apparently that was all my brain needed to head down the rabbit hole of the evolution of photography.
Remember film cameras? You bought a roll of film with a limited number of exposures. Every picture counted. You took the picture, advanced the film, and that was it. You had no idea if it was good.
You couldn't look at a screen to see if someone's eyes were closed. You couldn't immediately delete the blurry one and take another. You couldn't take 47 pictures hoping one would be perfect.
You waited.
First, you waited until you'd used the entire roll of film. Then you took it somewhere to be developed. And waited some more.
Eventually you got that little envelope of pictures back and finally discovered what you'd captured. Some were great. Some were blurry. Someone inevitably had their eyes closed. And occasionally there was that mysterious picture of somebody's shoe.
Then came instant photography. I remember my mom having a camera in the late '70s with one of those little cube flashes. The picture would come out, and she had something in a tube that she rubbed across it while it processed. It seemed almost magical. The picture was right there! But even then, we still had to wait for it to develop.
Today?
We don't wait for anything. Our phones are always within reach. We take a picture and instantly see it. Don't like it? Delete it. Take another. And another. And another. Somewhere along the way, I wonder if we've gotten so accustomed to instant results that we've forgotten how to wait.
Especially on God.
We pray and want an answer. Click. We have a problem and want a solution. Click. We need direction and want God to show us exactly where we're going. Click.
But God doesn't always work like the camera on our phone. Sometimes He works more like that old roll of film. You know you pressed the shutter and you know something happened, you just can't see the finished picture yet.
“I can't see it yet” does not mean “God isn't doing anything.”
Waiting isn't easy, especially when we've become accustomed to everything being instant. But some things take time to develop - sometimes circumstances are developing, sometimes relationships are developing, sometimes an answer is developing, and sometimes, while we're waiting for God to change what we're looking at, He's developing us.
So if you've prayed about something and you're still waiting, don't assume the picture is blank just because you can't see it yet.
God is still working - give it time - it may still be developing.
 
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible

forged in fire

These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
— 1 Peter 1:7 (NIV)
 
A little way past the chapel at Camp Eagle Rock is a blacksmith shop. Now, this isn't a huge, fully functioning blacksmith shop like you might picture from an old Western movie. There's a forge, some tools, and a great instructor who teaches us how to take a seemingly ordinary piece of metal and turn it into something beautiful.
A cross.
With our own two hands. The process starts with fire. That plain piece of metal goes into the forge until it gets hot enough to work with. Then comes the hammer. Heat it, hammer it, turn it, heat it again, hammer it some more.
Little by little, something begins to take shape. I watched the people in our group take flat pieces of metal and create crosses that weekend. None of them were exactly alike, some bends were a little different. Some hammer marks were deeper, some were smoother than others. Each one carried evidence of the process that created it.
And as I watched, I couldn't help thinking: we're shaped by the flame, too. Peter wrote about faith being refined by fire. I think most of us would prefer another method. I'd personally like to request the comfortable chair, cup of coffee and gentle encouragement method of spiritual growth. Unfortunately, some of the greatest changes in us happen when life gets hot.
Hard seasons, loss, disappointment, illness, uncertainty, plans that didn't work, prayers that weren't answered the way we expected, times when it feels like life has put us back into the fire again.
And sometimes, just when we think we've survived the heat...here comes the hammer.
But watching that metal being shaped reminded me of something important - the fire wasn't destroying it, the fire was making it possible to shape. And the hammer wasn't randomly beating it - every strike had a purpose.
The instructor knew where the metal needed to move, when it needed more heat and when it was ready for another strike.
Our lives aren't quite as simple as a piece of metal in a forge. Not every painful thing happens because God sent it, and suffering isn't evidence that He's standing over us with a hammer. But Scripture reminds us that the difficult things we walk through don't have to be wasted.
God can use them.
The season that nearly broke you may have deepened your compassion. The disappointment may have redirected your path. The struggle may have strengthened your faith. The thing you never would have chosen may have shaped something in you that comfort never could have produced.
And just like those crosses, none of us comes out looking exactly the same - we carry marks from what we've been through.
That's okay, those marks are part of the story.
An ordinary piece of metal went into the fire.
After heat, hammering, patience and the hands of someone who knew what he was doing...it came out looking like a cross.
Maybe there's something beautiful in that, too.
Because when life puts us through the fire, my prayer isn't simply that I come out untouched, it's that when I come out, I look a little more like Christ.
 
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible

He knows them

 
For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine.
- Psalm 50:10-11 (NIV)
 
You never know what you're going to find at Camp Eagle Rock. Over the years, we've encountered some interesting residents. There was a little iguana, a beautiful koi pond, a chameleon, and one year, there was a lovely tarantula.
I use the word lovely very loosely - I am terrified of spiders. Apparently Camp Eagle Rock believes spiritual growth sometimes requires facing your fears.
This year, however, we arrived to discover some new residents: goats and a donkey. Now, let's establish something else, I'm a little afraid of goats, too. But these guys were pretty hard not to like. They had their own pen, but much of the time they happily wandered around outside the main hall making friends with anyone willing to pet them. The donkey apparently believed he was a very large cat. He would walk up and rub against your legs looking for attention—and nearly knock you over in the process. The goats were quite convinced that whatever we were eating inside the dining hall should also be available to them. The children (and a few adults) wanted to take a goat home. No goats came home with us, as far as I know.
What struck me, though, was listening to the people who care for these animals talk about them. They know them. Not just the goats or the donkey. They know their personalities, their habits, which one will wander where, which one wants attention, what they need and how to care for them. These aren't simply animals wandering around the camp, they're known, they're cared for.
And standing there listening to people talk about how much they care for each one reminded me of something about God.
God knows His creation, not generally, personally.
If He knows the birds in the mountains, He knows the donkey rubbing against someone's legs. He knows the goats trying to sneak into the dining hall. He knows the fish in the pond. He even knows the tarantula. I'm going to trust Him to keep track of that one without my assistance.
But more importantly... He knows me, and He knows you. He knows our personalities and our habits.
He knows what makes us happy, He knows what frightens us, He knows when we wander, He knows when we need attention, He knows what we need before we even know how to ask for it.
Sometimes we can look at a world filled with billions of people and wonder how God could possibly notice one person and one problem in one little corner of it. But that's because we're thinking about God's ability to know us through the limitations of our ability to know each other.
God doesn't look across humanity and see a crowd, He sees His children.
Individually, personally, completely.
The people at Camp Eagle Rock don't just have some goats and a donkey, they have animals they know and care for.
And you aren't just another person wandering around God's creation either.
You are known, you are cared for, you are His.
And if He knows every bird in the mountains...
He certainly hasn't lost track of you.
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible

the kickstand

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
 
Let me tell you about the motorcycle ride I took this weekend.
I went approximately zero feet.
Camp Eagle Rock is set up so several groups can be there at the same time. Our CMA group gathers at Gray Fox Lodge, where we have cabins, a big conference area, room for the kids to play while the adults do Bible study, a kitchen for snacks and—most importantly—a coffee pot.
The wonderful staff feeds us three very good meals every day and provides activities around the camp. Since everything is spread out, we use ATVs and dirt bikes to shuffle people back and forth. I was in the final group to go axe throwing. When we finished, we had three adults, one kiddo, two ATVs and Randy's Honda TransAlp.
Easy solution: I'll ride the TransAlp. After all, I ride a motorcycle. I've had my motorcycle license for years. This wasn't exactly my first time on two wheels. I climbed onto the bike, centered myself on the seat and leaned over to pick up the kickstand.
Except...I kept leaning. The kickstand never came up. And neither did I. I just flopped over onto my left side, effectively wedging myself between the TransAlp, an ATV and the ground.
I never started the motorcycle, I never put it in gear, I never moved an inch, I never even got off the kickstand.
The problem wasn't that I didn't know how to ride a motorcycle. The problem was that this wasn't my motorcycle. The TransAlp is taller than what I normally ride. Its weight felt different. Its balance was different. Where my feet landed was different.
I approached it thinking, I know how to do this. And technically, I did. But knowing how to ride didn't change the weight of what I was sitting on.
I think we do that in life, too. We look at something in front of us and think: I've done this before. I've handled hard things, I know how this works - I've got this. Until suddenly we don't.
Something shifts.
The weight is different, our footing isn't where we expected it to be. And before we've even gotten started, we find ourselves thinking, How in the world did I end up down here?
Maybe there's a reason God never asked us to prove that we can handle everything.
Paul asked God to remove something he was struggling with, but God's answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
God didn't tell Paul to try harder, He reminded Paul where his strength came from.
There's nothing wrong with experience. There's nothing wrong with confidence. And there's certainly nothing wrong with knowing how to ride your own motorcycle.
But sometimes we encounter something that reminds us that our own strength has limits.
And maybe that's not failure - maybe it's an invitation. An invitation to stop saying, “I've got this,” and start saying, “God, I've got You.”
Because there will be things in life that are taller than we're used to.
Heavier than we expected, different from anything we've handled before, and occasionally, we may discover that before we've even gotten off the kickstand.
When that happens, we don't have to pretend we're strong enough. His grace is sufficient. His strength doesn't depend on ours, and sometimes the first step forward is simply admitting:
This is heavier than I thought.
 
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Daily Inspiration from the Bible