Watch Out for Sparks

We live on a few heavily wooded acres that I call the Magic Forest. Part of life here involves picking up fallen sticks and eventually burning them. We’d hesitated to do anything with this year’s stack for fear that sparks might spread through the woods.

What made this year different, you ask? Well, conditions changed. A 100-year-old pine tree died suddenly on the edge of the clearing where we burn becoming a fire hazard. To be safe, we had a tree company out recently to remove it.     

Did you know that wildfires have already damaged nearly 1.9 million acres in America so far this year? Fire moves quickly and spreads rapidly anywhere conditions are hot, dry, and brittle, be it in forest, in grasses, or in human hearts...Read More

 

How to Live in the Midst of the Storm

Most of you, like me and my family, are experiencing an unprecedented storm, one filled with uncertainty and fear. We didn’t expect it, may have been ill-prepared for it, and certainly don’t know when it will all end.

It brings to mind another group of people who, too, were caught up in a sudden and dreadful storm, not a COVID-19 storm but... READ MORE .

How to Find the Road Home

Traveling with my mom as a child, we often found ourselves lost or at least on the wrong road. She'd start the trip off fine, but frequently distracted, would miss an exit or a turn. She wouldn't stop and turn around, even if she noticed the error right away. Her mindset was that as long as we were going in the general direction we'd be fine. Instead of a few minutes to correct our course,  her approach was known to take an entire day or two of extra travel. It drove me crazy. Once I reached adulthood, she was my passenger on road trips. 

Are you someplace in life you don’t want to be, feeling lost and frustrated? Perhaps you’ve been thrown off course by circumstances outside of your control, or maybe it’s because of poor decisions you’ve made. Either way, it doesn’t much matter how you got there, what’s done is done. You can’t ever go back and change the past. What matters is what you do about it today. You have the power to change direction. The future is up to you.  

You can stay where you are, wandering in the wilderness of life—unhappy, angry, and, frustrated—far from your desired destination, or you can choose to make a change. The power is yours. You can determine to move forward each and every day.

Whenever you find yourself somewhere other than where your purest self should be, simply turn.

Turn away from the dark and towards the light. Turn away from the mire of self-loathing, turn back from the pit of acting out, and turn and run from the chains of temptation.

You won’t reach your destination immediately, but if you continue to take steps of faith in the right direction, you will end up on the sweet road to home.

—Ann Wilds

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.'”
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭6:16‬a ESV

Called to More

You know, following Christ isn't an easy life. It is a blessed life, it is a grace-filled life, but it’s certainly not easy.   

Though we are His, our human nature didn’t just disappear. We still have our old habits and desires. Like every other human that walks the earth, we have tendencies to be self-focused and involved, more concerned with ourselves and our own comfort than anyone else’s. 

But God calls us to so much more.

For though our human nature remains, our spiritual nature is changed the moment we accepted Christ as Savior. The Holy Spirit now lives inside of us. And with that spiritual change comes the power for us to be different, to live our lives as a reflection of Christ. 

But for us to answer the call to be different than the world, we actually have to be different. We have to think differently, respond differently, and love differently. And that’s where things get hard. 

God calls us to things that are antithesis to our human nature. He calls us to: 

• Forgive readily (Colossians 3:23)
• Control our thoughts (2 Corinthians 10:5)
• Love our enemies (Matthew 5:44)
• Wait patiently (Psalm 37:7)
• Not worry (Matthew 6:34)
• Trust God (Proverbs 3:5)
• Put on love (Colossians 3:14)
• Bless our haters (Romans 12:14)
• Live humbly (Proverbs 11:2)
• Live at peace with others (Romans 12:18)
• Manage our mouth (James 1:26)
• Deny our flesh (Galatians 5:19-21)
• Be still (Exodus 14:14) 

Those are hard things to do. Yet, God is good. He would never tell us to do something that we didn’t have the capacity for. Like babies learning to walk, it may not be natural, it may not be comfortable, and it certainly may not be easy, but what He calls us to do is possible. And even when it seems beyond our power, it’s never beyond His. 

So, in whatever situation you face today where your human nature wants to respond differently than the Spirit living inside you, remember this. 

He doesn’t call us to do the easy, He calls us to do the hard. 

And though we may falter and fail, as I do daily, we never stop striving. So that through the power of prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit which helps us, we become transformed little by little into a life that looks less like us and more like Jesus.

—Ann Wilds 

Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus walked. —1 John 2:6