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December 16, 2022 - February 6, 2023
Dependence is cultivating an appropriate reverence for God’s goodness and ability (the fear of the Lord).
Dependence is choosing to trust God before we see any change in our circumstances (believing in faith).
Dependence is walking in faith that God is completely good, and believing that His love guarantees the best outcome for our situation (even when it’s not on our time frame).
You don’t have to like your circumstances to depend on God in the midst of them. Faith and happiness are not synonymous. But you can have perfect peace and consistent victory when you take the step of faith in God’s goodness. He sees you. He already knows your situation. He is present with you. You can trust Him.
How can we trust Him for our eternal destiny and not trust Him with our present fear?
Faith is a word we throw around a lot in Christianity, so here’s a working definition: trust in God’s goodness and ability. When we call ourselves Christians, we’re saying we believe God is both good and able—not just eternally, but presently as well.
a consistent lifestyle of anxiety paired with no effort to submit these emotions to the Lord or believe His promises points to a problem with trust.
Have you ever considered that true courage is choosing faith in the face of fear? It takes courage to battle anxiety with the truth of God. Women of God have an inner strength not because they are never tempted to control or feel afraid and anxious, but because they fight back.
Fight fear with faith. Each time an anxious thought comes into your mind, recognize what’s happening. Stop, address the thought, and pray it back to the Lord. Commit each and every anxious moment to Him in a continual conversation about your fears.
Perhaps this book isn’t about application. Perhaps this book was included to show us it’s okay to grieve, to be full of questions and pain and disappointment. Maybe Job is here not to enhance a systematic theology but to show us God’s kindness for the brokenhearted.
how Christ meets us in our loss, and not just how to face grief, but how to experience it as He did.
Job, too, was frustrated by empty platitudes. Though his friends joined him in his suffering and attempted to empathize, they had a discouraging view of suffering. Not only did they fail to encourage him, they cross-examined Job for unexposed sin, insinuating he was to blame for his dire circumstances. Job’s story teaches us many things, but one thing is for sure: Our fellow humans can never fully empathize with our loss.
My walk through sexual sin is what made me so passionate about the victorious Christian life. I spent too many years living below God’s calling, not understanding the power and forgiveness He offers.
when our desire for love is reduced to a desire for physical closeness alone, we have missed the point entirely. Sexual sensations are a product of sex—but they aren’t the purpose.
So how do we know the difference between lust and godly sexual desires? Lust is an almost obsessive attention on attaining something. It is not patient or willing to give up its rights. A lustful mind is more focused on its desire than on the consequences of that desire; it is both sensual and insensitive. In contrast, godly sexual desire honors others. The desire may be recognized, but it is not acted on until the appropriate time. It is characterized by love (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Lust also satisfies itself first. Lust is focused on satisfying a want that it perceives as a need. The desire
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Some people try to fix their sexual problems with more rules. You’re looking at the queen of boundaries in dating. I tried everything. What I discovered is that the question is never, “How far is too far?” but “Do I really desire to be holy?” Holiness keeps us at peace with our holy God. We are called to be holy, set-apart people, but when our hearts don’t desire what God desires for us, there is no rule we will not break. Physical standards don’t work if your heart doesn’t love what God loves.
Community takes time, effort, and—worst of all—risk. Being friends with other women exposes us to potential hurt, and as we go deeper and our most vulnerable parts are brought to light, shame. Isolation is so much easier!
Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is set a firm boundary.
Would you live avoiding the hurt, living in an ivory tower of isolation, if it meant avoiding the very life God had for you? Abundance with Jesus requires stepping out into risky waters—including the risky waters of relationships. We can’t always trust people, but we can always trust Him. He is our confidence and our healing, and He empowers us to have relationships that defy everything we’ve known before.
It’s funny when I look back to see how intensely I hated rejection—or even the potential for rejection. Though I never said it in so many words, I truly believed that being the one who did the rejecting meant I was in control. I could protect my heart, protect my vulnerability. But when you hate something that much, it reveals a hard truth: The thing you hate controls you.
When we allow our desire for man’s approval to control our decisions, our whole lives are open to the deceit of the Enemy.
The Samaritan woman believed Jesus’s words more than the condemnation around her, and it broke her yoke of shame. She is an example of what life can look like when we don’t just believe in Jesus, but actually believe Him.
We have a part in our own freedom story: to daily choose His unshifting approval or to live captive to fear and bitterness.
Shame comes from something we believe within ourselves, so searching within ourselves for answers doesn’t make sense. We can’t be completely free from the shame of what we’ve done by learning more about who we are.
The Bible is very clear: Jesus did not die so we could identify as broken. He died so we could be reconciled to a holy God.
We the church have strayed one of two directions: unwillingness to give up our hurts, habits, and hang-ups for the victorious life or unwillingness to believe what Scripture says about who we are in Jesus. Instead of embracing victory and speaking it over our lives, we rehearse all the ways we are sinners. And apart from Christ, that’s what we are. But in Christ? We are more than conquerors.
Embracing God’s grace over my sin wasn’t a onetime thing. I didn’t just repent one day, believe God for my freedom, and never struggle with guilt again. No, each day I must ask myself, “Do I believe what God says about who He is, who I am, and what I’ve done? Do I trust Him enough to cast myself on His mercy? Will I let faith silence condemnation?”
Stop using “broken” terminology to define yourself. In Christ, you are not broken. You are whole. Speak life over your days, your body, your relationships, and your work. Words matter. You have an identity that is whole and complete; that is who you are.
We change our communities, not by hiding away and preparing ourselves to emerge in religious perfection, but by changing in, with, and in front of our communities.
For months before sharing the gospel with the bus driver, I’d been spending my mornings studying the Word, really digging into it for my own personal understanding. I may not have planned what to say, but everything I needed to say was already inside me. When it came time to share, the Lord used those truths and the Spirit declared them through me (John 16:13). Just think: What if all I’d been consuming for the last year was superficial theology? What if that man had poured out his soul’s deepest questions, and all I’d been reading was a quick devotional? The best answer I could have given
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In John 8, Jesus’s words to His first followers confirm what we have discussed through this entire book: that the Christian life is one of freedom and power, but we have a choice in how much freedom we experience. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (verses 31-32 ESV). As a Jewish rabbi, Jesus was expected to have disciples. Rabbis, like pastors today, would interpret God’s Word for their followers. Jesus was unique in that rather than adding His interpretation to the
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Do we want to be loving? Abide in Him. Do we want joy? Abide in Him. Do we want peace? Abide in Him. The deeper we go with God, the more fruit we bear. The more fruit we bear, the more we preach Christ in our communities. And the more we preach Christ, the more fulfilled we are, because we’re doing exactly what Jesus made us to do. This is the kind of Christian life worth sharing. This is abundance. This is living water for thirsty souls.
