All posts tagged: peace

He is Known in Praise: Lifting Up the Name of Jesus

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“In Judah God is known; His name is great in Israel. 2 In Salem also is His tabernacle, And His dwelling place in Zion. 3 There He broke the arrows of the bow, The shield and sword of battle. Selah” ~PSALM 76:1-3 When I read Psalm 76:1-3 recently, the Lord immediately led me to look up what He was saying via the translations of each of the places mentioned in verses. What I discovered by doing the word study was that our God is revealed and known in praise! We already know that He makes our praise His dwelling place (PS. 22:3), and thusly in His presence is fullness of joy and pleasures evermore (PS. 16:11). All of this is obviously beautiful, but it only comes as a direct response of closeness and closeness comes by communication, communication is a fruit of praise. KNOWING HIM IN PRAISE Here is the breakdown of the verses using the meanings of each location’s name and outlining the significance of each. v.1a In Judah God is known: God has …

He Remains Faithful: Trusting Christ Beyond the Winter

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“If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we persevere, we will also rule with Him. If we disown Him, He will also disown us. IF WE ARE FAITHLESS HE REMAINS FAITHFUL, FOR HE CANNOT DISOWN HIMSELF.” ~II TIMOTHY 2:12-13 Today, I just want to encourage you all in the love of our Savior and Shepherd, Christ Jesus. Although we are just shy over a month and a half into the new year and decade, many of us are still in the winter of our lives and we see nothing but the frozen images of what life used to be and the scattered images of what we hope it to be. But we are unable to see with our natural eye what soon will be. And because of that truth, we need to remain in Trust, knowing that Christ Jesus is indeed working on our behalf, perfecting what He began in and for us (PHILIPPIANS 1:6) even though we may not see it, feel it, or hear it. For just …

Thanks in Everything: The Art of Thanks Giving by Briana Lassiter

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Lately, the Lord has really been dealing with me on thanksgiving. Really it’s been about a straight year of Him actively teaching me about this topic and I kind of thought I had the hang of it until a couple weeks ago when He asked me to start thanking Him for the things that are not in my life. As a child of God there are things that God daily keeps from entering your life and harming you. In Psalms 91 He says that He gives His angels charge over you lest you strike your feet on a stone. He also says again in Psalms 121 that He is your keeper, He keeps your life and He keeps you from all evil. Sometimes it’s really easy to focus our prayers on the facts that we aren’t where we want to be yet or we still have healing to receive in certain areas that are causing us pain, and we forget to thank Him for the things that He has kept or removed from us. Whether …

Cultivating Steadfast Trust

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“You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.” ~ISAIAH 26:3 Steadfast. The word itself may evoke the feeling of self-effort, that you have to exert some strenuous force in order to accomplish some task or goal. And unfortunately, man has made the things of God, things meant to be freeing, into things that bind with the yoke of self-effort and righteousness. But the peace that I gain in this word, having steadfast trust, is birthed out of the truth that steadfast trust comes from a mind that is focused on the Lord. When we love someone, it is no great effort to gaze upon them, to sit in their presence. It is no great thing or effort to bask in their love and devotion and give that in return. The Lord Jesus invites us to abide in and with Him (JOHN 15). He tells us that He stands at the door of our hearts and wishes to dine with us (REVELATION 3:20). Just by reading these passages, we can’t help but see that the …

Abiding Fruitfulness Series Up Until October 13th!

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Hello, Creatives! I don’t know if you had the chance to journey along with us in our first ever recorded series, Abiding Fruitfulness: 40-days of Resting to Success. If you did, that is fantastic! But if not, no worries. We will be having the videos and other content available until SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2019.  Now is the perfect time to spend some time in rest and reflection as you contemplate your ‘start‘ for the coming new year. There also may be some merch available soon to help remind you of the importance of your rest for success. Keep your eyes open!

This One Thing: Faith for Creatives

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“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind…The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole man.”~ECCLESIASTES 1:14;12:13 The book of Ecclesiastes was inspired by the Living Spirit of God and written by not only the wisest man to ever live–besides our Savior, Jesus Christ–but the wealthiest man of all creation; King Solomon. In his lifetime, he had tasted of every indulgence he could, wealth was in abundance, nor did he lack the company of women. There was nothing under the sun that was denied him. And yet, after running around the mountain of indulgence and want, whether of Godly pursuit or in the attempt to appease the longings of his own flesh and desires; he came to the simple and yet profound conclusion, that nothing, NOTHING else was of true value, all was as chasing the wind, except loving God. The word “fear” used in the scripture in regard …

Letting Go: A Moment of Meditation

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Updated from August 2, 2015 “You’ve brought me to the end of myself. This has been the longest road. And when my ‘Hallelujah’ was tired, you gave me a new song. Now I’m letting go.”        ~Steffany Gretzinger, Letting Go  It was August 2, 2015, that I first heard this song and felt led to share it. And now, nearly four years later, the same prompting whispers to my heart to share this song with this community. I feel like many of us are seeking a place of rest and abiding with the Lord, a place of peace and fruitfulness. Yet, there seems to be a struggle meeting us at the point of our best efforts. The blessing is the battle is not ours but the Lord’s and all we, His children and sheep of His pasture, need to do is surrender our weakness to His strength. Allowing our souls to be quite in such a hectic world can prove a very difficult thing. But let us all take the time to press in …

Learning To Relax: Abiding Fruitfulness

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“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.” ~A.W TOZER  The word of God instructs and comforts us in Isaiah 40:31, that they that wait on Him shall have their strength renewed. But most of us seem to struggle in our fast pace world to not only slow down but even to wait. We find the urge to rush ahead, to be hurried in not just the seemingly grand things in life but even the small and simple things. We rush to get dressed in the morning, rush through prayer, rush to get the kids fed and off to their activities, all so that we can achieve some goal, that even once we have met it we still don’t quite feel fulfilled. The truth is even though our Heavenly Father has called us to abundant life, abundant life, contrary to what today’s culture says, is not found in rushing and striving, but in resting and abiding. Christ knows …

He Bought the Farm by Candice Coates

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He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t the type to do so, but he was the kind to slip away to think. He needed to think. Milo, his four-legged shadow followed him, nestling close by, gazing back at the house as if he too was weighing his options. Blake scratched behind Milo’s warm fuzzy ears earning himself a grateful dog-grin. “What do you think, buddy? What should we do?” As usual, Milo had no answer. He only licked his chops, gave a contend yawn, before bedding down deeper into the grass. Blake smiled. Maybe that was Milo’s answer. He was happy right where he was. Truth be told, so was Blake. They’d, Blake his wife Paisley and Milo, had happily moved out to the quiet country nearly five years ago. Happy may have been an overstatement. They not so simply needed a change of pace, a change in their reality. Past decisions had caught up with Blake leaving an unrelenting stain on Paisley’s career. Her employers had said as much, she was guilty by association. She needed to distance …

Gaining Status: Faith for Creatives

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“If you are always seeking a certain status to validate who you are, you’re never going to have peace. You can’t climb up to find yourself. You have to find yourself so (that) you can climb up! You have to know who you are so you can climb to status.” ~ Bishop T.D Jakes In all that we do, in every attempt to succeed, we are inherently challenged with the idea of “Status.” Even with something as simple as social media postings, we find ourselves judging our positions, condemning ourselves for not having X amount of followers or X amount of likes or views. “The proof is in the pudding, the validation is in the numbers“, we tell ourselves. We allow this wrong mindset to convince us that we are not worthy of what we are doing. This becomes our sad gospel when in reality these things are not completely relevant. Consider King David. He was a youth between the ages of twelve and fifteen when he was anointed by the Prophet Samuel as King of Israel (I Samuel 16). …