Blog

gENTLENESS AND sTRENGTH

11/3/2020

One of my dear author friends, Sandra Mansfeild Wright, just released two new books. One is titled Strength and the other is titled Gentleness.

What a perfect time to release these books. We all need words of strength and we need to practice gentleness, not just with ourselves but also with others.

Many times through the days I need extra strength, not just for physical duties but I need emotional and spiritual strength.

We all get hard on ourselves, expecting things of us we would not expect of others. Maybe, we could be a little more gentle with ourselves.

Let us remember, God is with us all throughout the day and will see us through.

Isaiah 41:10 (ESV) Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

This book will help rekindle our conviction, revive our faith, and encourage us to stand strong in Christ. Remember - God is in control, so believe and stand strong!

How can we be gentle and at the same time stand strong in our Christian faith? This book gives us keys as to how to live in this turbulent world without losing our gentleness.

Being Vulnerable

6/26/2020

Through the years I have used journals to write my thoughts, words, and ideas. I have written scriptures that meant something special to me and prayers to help me. Perhaps you do to. I have kept these journals through the years.

Writers seem to always have ideas, thoughts and words follow them around.

I especially like to write things down, not just to remember good things that happen, but also write things that were not pleasant. In all honesty, we learn a great deal more from things that were not pleasant or things we were concerned about.

When reading my Bible, many times a scripture would pop up and I would write it down. More times than not, the scripture would speak to what I was experiencing.

Through different times in my life, I would use the scriptures and write the prayers that would speak to my heart while going through different situations.

I have about three boxes of these journals. When I retired as Editor-in-Chief of Southern Writers Magazine, I felt the Lord leading me to share some of these prayers with others.

To be honest, it took some convincing for me to let others read my prayers.

I pulled out my journals, and prayerfully considered the ones to share. I sent these to several of my friends and from their responses, I knew it was time to publish some of the prayers, hoping they would benefit others.

My book, God’s Prayer Power was born!

My dilemma was how many prayers? There are many. But I felt fifty-two was the right number. This way each prayer, scripture, and exercise would be something people could use to delve deeper into their prayer life.

The exercise in the book is the one I used to find out what God was saying to me through the scriptures which led me to be able to write the prayers.

It has been my experience, when writing devotions or prayers that you can tell when God is supplying the words.

There have been some great devotional books written through the years, and when you read them, they touch your heart, and many of them give you comfort––or perhaps wisdom to see the answers you seek.

Some of those devotions are Embraced: 100 Devotions to Know God is Holding You Close by Lysa Terkeurst; Worry Less, Pray More by Donna K. Maltese; Grace Overcomes Today by Sharilynn Hunt; Growing in Hope by Sandra Mansfield Wright; and of course Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, to name a few. There are hundreds of others and thank God more will be written.

Being In Place

6/4/2020

One I have always been able to entertain myself, even as a child, so when they told us we would have to stay home...that didn't frighten me. I am quite content to work on the computer–writing, and love to read. So I knew I would not have any problems. Plus my husband was here, and we love being together. So no problem. But after part of March, all of April and all of May, I confess, I would like to get out and see some friends and fortunately, for us, we were able to visit our kids two weeks ago, as they too were at their home.

I am grateful for the technology we have, Zoom and Skype, which we use to visit, but it isn't the same as getting to meet up at Starbucks for coffee and a chat!

One of the things I do have more time for, besides my writing is reading the scripures and studying about patience, perseverance and how to be fruitful even in these times.

I pray God will help each one of us during this specific time, to become more in touch with our relationship with Him. To spend more time reading His word and talking to Him about the help we need, not to just be patient, but to think of others, and what they are going through.

I find Psalms 1, comforting during times like this.

Grateful

5/29/2020

Being grateful is something we must decide to be. I try to always thank God for my blessings first before I tell Him what my needs are. I find that if I start off praising and thanking Him, by the time I get around to telling Him what I need, I find my need is more specific. By then, a scripture comes to mind concerning what I need. Not to say a scripture always comes to mind, but a lot of the times it does.

I leaned some time ago how important it was to pray God’s word. His word is powerful, and He always does what His word says.

Over the years I have tried to remember to pray His word.

Even though we are going through this pandemic, there are still things to be grateful for. Let us look at what is good.

A dear friend said if you always look at what is wrong, you never see what is right.
Good advice.

What are you grateful for?

May 29th, 2020

5/29/2020