There are times in my life where I’ve been a part of something really special, moments that have felt almost take-your-shoes-off holy....

02 November, 2017

I led a group of high school girls for four years, and there was a time that I was sure one of them would be married before I was. I felt stuck in my singleness, and it was just a matter of time before one...

26 October, 2017

When you first enter college it feels like a never-ending season—as if those four years will last forever. Graduation seems a lifetime away as your attention narrows in on classes, organizations, and new relationships. Then one day you find yourself walking across a stage to...

20 October, 2017

The summer after I graduated college I did two things that challenged me in very positive ways. One was spending ten days in Tanzania, Africa, where I encountered true joy and thankfulness in a way I’d never seen before. The third world is an incredible...

19 October, 2017

“As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them.” —Exodus 14:10. I’m not going to lie: if I stood where the Israelites were standing, pressed between the sea and the mountains (both equally impassable) and saw...

12 October, 2017

Amid a trial or a difficult season, it can be challenging to remember the Lord’s faithfulness. When I feel like I am struggling or being tempted, my initial response seems to sound more like, “God, where are you? Why are you being silent?” rather than...

05 October, 2017

Discipline has never been my forte. I prefer to identify as free-spirit driven, or self-control challenged. I’m not one of those crazies like my best friend who pops eagerly out of bed at 5:30am when someone suggests a 10-mile jog (Why would you do that...

29 September, 2017

I am not a gamer. I wish I were just being self-deprecating, but I've been telling my brother for years that I think there's some brain connection that allows you to work a controller, and I was not born with it....

28 September, 2017

After Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas area earlier this fall, one of the eeriest things I heard about was the floating ant mounds that were being spotted in the floodwaters....

22 September, 2017

At this point in the Exodus narrative, the first three plagues have occurred over the land of Egypt, and Pharaoh has not budged in his stance of holding the Israelites captive (Exodus 7:3-5)....

21 September, 2017

Lee and Joy Foster began visiting Grace Church with their three sons a little over two years ago. Their two oldest boys, Sam and Myles, have autism, and the church setting had been challenging for them in the past. Myles, 13, was apprehensive about joining...

18 September, 2017

When I think about the different, clearly defined stages of my life thus far—middle school, high school, college—I can easily see how in each of those stages I had identifiers: things that I clung to with everything to ensure consistency and stability in my understanding...

15 September, 2017

When I see clear evidence of God’s power and direction, it’s easy for me to trust and believe Him. Exodus 4:29-30 begins with the miraculous signs Moses performs to show the Israelites God’s power, authority, and control. And the Israelites respond appropriately to this display...

14 September, 2017

When we get older, we often see the events of our past with folly and foolishness compared to where we are now and where our thinking is. What is powerful to me, though, is to see how God is working on and developing us in...

07 September, 2017

I somehow made it into my thirties without a major tragedy in my life. My adolescence was peppered with significant trials, suffering, pain, and the like, but I had no battling experience with a mighty all-consuming tragedy. Then last summer the sky opened up and...

31 August, 2017

“Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done" (Exodus 1:8). Historically and culturally, Ancient Egypt is fascinating to me. It was home to one of the oldest civilizations on Earth and was a major...

24 August, 2017

Our community group recently finished sharing life stories. The process is challenging as we seek to be transparent—to focus less on what has happened to us and more on where God has been moving and drawing us to Himself....

10 August, 2017

I had always considered myself an open book; I was always “open” about my struggles and willing to tell anyone anything—that is, until my deceived heart convinced me that my struggles were now “too big” for me to ever fully expose in front of anyone....

17 July, 2017

Last week I decided to do some cleaning which entailed cleaning out my closet. In the process of that daylong chore, I found two things that I would have sworn were gone forever; a pair of earrings and my journal from the college years....

13 July, 2017

We just finished studying the book of Hebrews as a church where arguably the main point of the entire book can be boiled down to: Jesus is better. The author uses Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, the Tabernacle, and more to make the point that Jesus is...

29 June, 2017

For about a decade of my life, between middle school and college, my best friend and I frequently wrote to each other. (She’s now my roommate, so our letter-writing has somewhat dwindled.) At my best, I could turn out a good 20 pages effortlessly. It...

22 June, 2017

When I was in elementary school, our summer mornings consisted of waking up and running out to the kitchen to see if the counting jar was on the counter. The counting jar was the brilliant invention of my wise mother, who knew that if my...

15 June, 2017

I have pretty vivid memories of my childhood—Summer days by the pool spitting watermelon seeds, the first time I tried riding my bike down the neighborhood hill with no hands, teaching my dog to play fetch in the backyard. They come up in waves of...

08 June, 2017

The term “already but not yet” is something that sunk in for the first time when I started coming to Grace Church, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since we started our study of Hebrews. This is the very...

25 May, 2017