Love and encouragement from an imperfect mom and her fun teen daughters. We welcome you to live life with us.
articles on making and keeping friends
Insidious deceptions of Satan When we read “We take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ,” (2Cor.2:5), we assume we will recognize Satan’s blatant contradictions of Scripture. I wrote about this in my posts “So Many Negative Thoughts Planted by Satan” as well as “Yes, You Can Win the Spiritual Battle if You … Read more Take Every thought Captive:
As I studied Leviticus, I discovered God directly confronts the sin of codependence (though the Bible does not give it that name.) This sin causes well-meaning people to do things for others they should have done for themselves. This sin causes people to dwell in fear (extreme worry) about loved ones and even try to … Read more God confronts Codependence (Sin) in the Bible!
How can an evil person have good sides? Last week I talked about Luke Chapter 16, where the evil rich man had one good side. This rich man knew the beggar, Lazarus, was sick and starving to death, yet the rich man feasted luxuriously and watched this poor beggar die. Surprisingly, this evil man had … Read more Evil People can have “Good” Sides
(or your friend lacked one) God designed humans to have a safe, loving relationship with an earthly father (and mother, but today’s post is about dads.) What if you lacked this loving relationship in your childhood? While God has promised to be a father to the fatherless (Psalm68:5,) how can a gal (or guy) appropriate … Read more When you Didn’t have a Loving Earthly Father
Unhealthy neediness is ungodly and causes people to do foolish things, cling to people, make unfair demands and operate out of fear. In contrast, people can have healthy needs, such as babies, frail elderly people, and very close friends and spouses who let themselves express vulnerable needs to enable the relationship to grow. Neediness becomes … Read more Dealing with Needy Children, Friends and our Needy Selves
Last week I talked about how “idealizing” people or God is actually rejecting (or hating) them, not loving them. “Idealizing” people opposes God’s heart, because God sees the entire person and does not claim a person is all good or all bad. Initially the idealist only sees the person’s good qualities and denies anything bad … Read more “False idealism” hurts people and displeases God
To idealize another person, even God, is to actually hate the real person, while making unreasonable demands and never accepting the person or forgiving him or her. People idealize a person or God by believing the “idealized person” (or God) owes them and thus the idealizers create an image of a person (or God) who … Read more Idealizing not Loving People: from “loving” to hating a person—even God
We must recognize legalism and protect ourselves and others from its milder forms (forcing people to do what they do not need to do) and its dangerous forms (covering the sins of abusers, claiming they are doing God’s work). In its milder form, legalists mistake God for an angry boss and demand too much of … Read more Recognizing Legalism and its Hidden Dangers
People may complain life seems like an endless battle, yet this is not a complaint but the truth. Naïve people may also believe they don’t need to fight in this life. They will suffer for this false belief. We have a real enemy, the devil who hates us. If we pretend the battle does not … Read more Yes, You Can Win the Spiritual Battle if You Admit it is Real!
While there are good forms of pride, our sneaky flesh resists humbling itself before God and others. Our flesh is infested with self pride (“Look at wonderful me, not you,”) and zero God-pride (“Look at our wonderful God; let me love and serve you.”) We need to resist our pride yet not condemn ourselves, because … Read more The Sneaky Pride of Flesh