Luana Ehrlich's Blog, page 7

Now That’s Good Advice!

[image error]Here are four pieces of advice I wish I’d been given much earlier in life.

1. Your greatest asset isn’t your own abilities. While you may have been told all you need to do is work hard and keep on keeping on, don’t believe it. Your greatest asset is your utter dependence on God. “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” John 15:5.

2. Your desire to have applause isn’t in keeping with the gospel. While our sinful nature is bent toward making much of ourselves and looking out for our own interests,...

Secrets Are The Best!

[image error]Everyone loves a secret. Whisper a secret to a group of children, and immediately their eyes light up. However, children don’t have a corner on the secrets market. Adults love to hear secrets almost as much as children love to tell them.

God has secrets—boy, does He have secrets! As if we didn’t know this already, the Bible tells us so.“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this...

Feeling a Little Blurry Around the Edges?

[image error]One of the great things about the cell phone cameras we use today is the automatic focusing feature. I’m old enough to remember using an actual camera that required fiddling with a bunch of dials before snapping the picture. Most of the time, those waiting to be photographed weren’t very patient about this process, and, oftentimes, after all that effort, the photo turned out to be out of focus after all.

As children of God, it would be nice to have this automatic focusing mechanism built into...

What Story Will You Tell?

[image error]All of us have a story. It may be  your parenting story, your pregnancy story, your career story or the story of your life. A story I’ve always enjoyed hearing is the story of someone’s salvation—all the details surrounding how a person came to faith in Christ.

When we lived in Indiana back in the late 1980’s, the editor of our denomination’s weekly state paper, The Indiana Baptist, asked me to do a weekly column on a different individual each week and emphasize the details of their conversio...

What’s Your Name?

[image error]Deciding what to name a child can be challenging. While I’ve passed the stage of naming babies, today, I’m faced with what to name a character in a book. That too can prove challenging.

When a character enters a scene, the person’s name usually pops in my head at the same time. However, before accepting this moniker as the appropriate tag for the person, I do a little research just to make sure it isn’t the name of a celebrity or a politician or some other famous person.

I also want a villain...

By His Stripes We Are Healed

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of black and blue
and red
of gashes and slashes
and stripes
of hits and harm
and hurt

He stumbles and bows
and falls
He crumbles and bends
and kneels
He gasps and cries
and moans

for healing and help
and teaching
for blessing and loving
and keeping
for hoping and holding
and saving

Isaiah 54:4-5
A Devotional Poem by Luana Ehrlich

This Might Work!

[image error]As I continually seek to be a student and teacher of God’s Word, I encounter many different methods, programs, and suggestions about how I should memorize, use, remember, and put into practice what I’ve studied and taught, and it usually doesn’t take me very long  to recognize if something will work for me or not.

More often than not, I find myself thinking, “I will never do this” or “I can’t even begin to understand how this would work.”  However, here are three helpful suggestions I’ve come...

Being Afraid of God

[image error]Be afraid. Be very afraid. Being afraid of God seems foreign to those of us who view God as the Lover of our Soul, who sing of His blessings, and who trust Him with our eternal soul.

Yet, one can’t read the Bible without encountering the oft-repeated admonition to “fear the Lord.” Throughout the Old Testament, there are numerous examples of God’s children receiving a blessing because they fear God. Also, because of fearing God, they do what He commands them to do. (Genesis 42:18; Exodus 1:17;...

A Day of Hope

[image error]Goodbye, 2018. Hello, 2019.

January 1st is a day of promise. To many, it holds the enticing thought of a brand new start, a day to wipe the slate clean, to begin anew.

January 1st could rightly be renamed The Day of Hope.

We hope to lose weight, get more sleep, eat healthy. We hope to be more productive, not procrastinate, get organized. We hope to get a better job, earn more money, buy a new house.

But, so much of what we hope for tomorrow will just be wishful thinking.

There’s a different...

I’m Not A Messy Person

[image error]I’m not a messy person.  Seeing things in disarray and disorganized makes me uneasy.  For my own peace of mind, I like to have things organized and in order. The only exception to this rule took place a few years ago when I made Christmas cookies with one of my grandsons.

After getting flour out of my hair, sweeping away the sugary sprinkles from the table and scrubbing icing off the kitchen floor, I asked myself what felt so right about the “messiness” of this activity.

I realized it was the...