All posts tagged: peace

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). …

Rejecting the Burdens of Sin & Shame by Bri Lassiter

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This is what the Lord says of you, “You are cleansed, you are clear, you are clean you are free. Walk in victory” Sounds amazing, but a lot of times we agree with what the Lord says of us in our heads but not in our walk. We hear Him and nod our heads, that’s nice Jesus, now back to me. Here’s my checklist, can you fix this, this, this, and this about me? And the Lord just facepalms a little bit because we missed it. It’s done. We are already fixed. We have the ability and the right to walk in victory. We are free to receive our free gift of righteousness now. We don’t have to work for it, we don’t have to beg, we don’t have to be subject to shame in the areas we are still learning how to walk it out yet, we just have to believe what the Lord says and receive as we walk with Him. This is a bit different from the religious way of thinking, the …

In Awe of Him: A Moment of Musing

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Today, like many days, the Lord woke me up with a song of worship in my head and heart. The song that He deposited into my heart this morning was “Let Me Trade You,” sung by Mahalia Buchanan. If you’ve not heard the song before, I encourage you to click on the title above and take a listen. But the greatest beauty of the song this morning was the fact that I hadn’t listened to the song in nearly a year, but when I listened to it sparked such amazing joy. Why? The words are sung as if it is Christ Himself singing them, the Precious Lamb of God, the Mighty Lion of Judah, singing unto His creation, calling the lost unto Himself, offering healing, love, hope, wholeness, joy, and so much more in exchange for…our brokenness, our weakness, our anxiety, our sin. Meditating on this brings tears of awe to my eyes and such a love in the well of my being. It makes me stop and really think about the ‘fear of the …

A Heart at Peace: Pt 1 of Pursuit of Passion

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“The life of the body is a heart at peace, but envy rots the bones.”~PROVERBS 17:22 WMB Passion is a gift, be it passion for creative arts, passion for relationships, passion in your walk with Christ. The beauty of passion is that it is unique in design even if it bares similarities in concept with the passion of others. Just as there are an innumerous amount of snowflakes, each one bares a singular pattern unique in its form in comparison to others, so too is the design of your God-given passion and the drive and direction with which you pursue it. Unfortunately, many of us find our feet tangled in the trap of the enemy and the lies that come along in the game of comparison. We wonder if our process and pursuit should be like that of others. We question if the reason why our fruit is taking so long to manifest is because we are not following the plan and path of others. We judge, not only our dream but the plan with …

Be Loved: The Passion of Christ’s Pursuit

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“I can touch more than the hem of Your Garment. I can touch Your heart.” ~Candice Coates Messiah Yeshua, Jesus Christ, the Mighty Right Hand of God, God Himself, the Creator of all and the Lord of all, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, The Mighty King…made Himself humble just to be near to us. How great the depth of His love, often misunderstood, often misrepresented. But His light is too fierce for darkness to overshadow. His love is too tenacious and open for us all in Spirit, Grace, and Truth to be denied. His passion on the cross is the evidence of His pursuit of you and me. Even in our sins when we were counted as enemies Christ chose to step into the darkness to draw us back to His heart with His cleansing light.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” ~ROMANS 5:8 NIV No matter where you may find yourself, be it on the outside of faith looking in, secure …

Weapons of Thanks-Giving by Bri Lassiter

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By Bri Lassiter I love Thanksgiving. It’s great, okay. I love the idea of taking a whole day to be thankful. I like a whole day of celebrating with food and family. It’s polite and reasonable. Anyone can take one day of the year to be thankful. But I want to talk for a minute about the heavy kind of thankfulness. This one’s messy and not pumpkin bedazzled. It can be ugly and painful and powerful. This kind of thankfulness is the kind you fight with and the kind you win with. This kind of thankfulness is a practice and a difficult habit to form on the inside of you. This is the kind of thanking you do to your Father when life sucks. When you are at THE END. When there are no answers from anywhere for you. When life is beating you up and only He knows. When you’re carrying around sorrow and pain or you’re still in the ‘not yet’ part of seeing your healing. When you’re fighting hopelessness and you’re not …