I write to remind you to stop keeping score. You are living under the code of grace and grace alone. This performance-driven, you-earn-it, you-deserve-it record you’re keeping has been obliterated. You no longer function in a framework where you get what you deserve. What you did or didn’t do today has no effect on how God sees you….
[sərj-iz pē].
If you know me at all, then you probably know Sergis P. [pronounced: sərj-iz pē]. He’s our six-year-old, 80-pound English Bulldog who is sitting beside me, currently staring at the ceiling, licking the air. He’s our shining star, that Sergis P. When Serge snores, it sounds like a Boeing 747 is landing in our living room. When Sergis runs, it’s like…
To look for the one.
I’ve spent the past couple days being overwhelmed by God’s love for us. It sounds cliché. But for a performance-obsessed, results-driven person like myself, sobering reminders of God’s intoxicating grace and undignified love for me stop me dead in my tracks. That God would chase after us. Like a shepherd who leaves his ninety-nine sheep…
My advocate on high.
Christ is our advocate. When we’re wrongly accused. When we want to defend ourselves. When we feel mistreated. When someone doubts us. When someone speaks ill of us. When someone misunderstands us. When someone mistreats us. When someone believes negative information about us. When we want to explain why we took a certain course of…
For the Lord.
It’s freeing to remember who our boss is. Because if you’re anything like me, you wrestle with a perpetual desire to please. This desire for approval, often insatiable and dangerously all-consuming, rears its ugly head in nearly all of my relationships and endeavors. And it does so quickly and quietly and mostly subconsciously. But lately…
Higher, deeper, longer, wider.
I’m so relieved to remember God is not limited by our limitations. Why is this good news? Because we live with a laundry list of limitations. Limitations you put on yourself. Limitations you put on God. Limitations you were born into. Limitations you later developed. Limitations related to your physical, emotional, or mental state….
The danger of a God that’s too big.
What is just as dangerous as making God too small? Making God too big. We often emphasize the problem of making God smaller than we should. But what about when we perceive God as too great for life’s boring or trivial problems? The problems that worm their way into our day-to-day routine and make themselves…
When our love abounds.
Waiting on an answer from God is surely one of the most painful processes. At least, I make it so because I generally want God’s answer yesterday. And I want that answer to include a dramatically defined change in my position or some measurable progress that fits the parameters I gave God. There are times that I’ve…
To be here.
Most of our lives, we’re either entering or exiting a wintry chapter. If this resonates with you, don’t let that chapter be in vain. As I emerge from my own fog, I fight feeling calloused, disoriented, or even purposeless. But I’m reminded of this: I’m still here. This reminder orients me to a God who has…
Paige Pippin 