Do you live from or for identity?
Think about that question. Are you living for identity, trying to prove that you are good, righteous, and holy, or are you living from identity, rooted in the reality that you have been made good, righteous, and holy by Jesus?
Read MoreI don’t suppose there is any more relevant topic for this present moment than that of fear. 2020 was a year full of fear for many people, with illness, political turmoil, and racial tension at all-time highs. Now we’re in 2021, having survived the snow and ice catastrophe of a couple weeks ago, and still feeling afraid. But now it’s fear of the impact of all this intensity, the long-term effects of all these things upon us, our families, and our communities.
Very early in human life, a baby bonds with its mother. There are few things in nature as strong as this bond. A baby is absolutely dependent on its mother and other caregivers for everything—food, warmth, security—everything. When all of these needs are met, the baby experiences a secure bond, and that, to the baby, is love.
Read MoreA couple of my coworkers just led me through a prayer session. I have been through every kind of prayer we do here, and, every time, I feel like God speaks identity over me. I’ve wondered if people who haven’t heard God’s voice are curious about what people hear when they come to ONE and learn how to listen to God. I want to share my experience in hopes to give people insight into why we do prayer here.
Read MoreIn a recent text thread, my friend Martha West wrote this about the scripture above: “We are all such unique expressions and wonders to honor and behold. There are times when we need to have the Artist’s eyes to see the inherent beauty when it becomes so broken or tarnished.” As I was pondering her comment, I got a picture of an attic in an old house with objects covered in years of dust and decay.
Read MoreJesus’s selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love—even for our enemies—is the model for us to embody. This way of sacrificial love doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to injustice or ignore reality, but it does mean the way we interact around polarizing issues and the way we treat each other as human beings must change. The change is not toward shaming, fear mongering, or choosing a side, but toward love as our daily reality.
Read MoreRevelation 1:17-18—When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
Read MoreAh, rest… We long for rest because that is the state we were created to live in and from. And rest is connected to oneness, to communion with the One whom our heart loves.
I am discovering that rest is also connected to surrender.
I recently found myself lying in a hospital in intensive care, facing a life threatening health situation unexpectedly. Honestly, in that moment I felt unprepared to face the possibilities.
Read MoreOne day, a very obvious truth occurred to me. We heal. We are made for it. Healing is happening all the time on a cellular level in our bodies, and usually we are unaware of it.
When I started working at ONE (then Christ Healing Center), a friend expressed skepticism and questions about healing and whether God really healed people today. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that we were debating a naturally occurring reality: we were made to heal by our Healer.
Read MoreBut Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. Then they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.”
Read MoreConfession: The ideal of Oneness wears me out!
Your freedom is my freedom.
Your pain, my pain.
Your joy, our joys.
Your sorrows, our sorrows.
As a child, I must have prayed some form of the salvation prayer over 100 times! Why? I wasn’t worried about God’s side of things, I was concerned about me - had I gotten it right?
How would I know that it worked? Was Jesus really there, “in my heart?” The nebulousness produced a constant low level “salvation-anxiety” state for me.
Read MoreThe holidays were approaching and as each day ticked off on the calendar I was slipping further and further into a funk. Though I longed to be reunited with certain loved ones, the prospect also filled me with a degree of dread. These gatherings, fraught with family dynamics, often left me feeling hurt, misunderstood, and disconnected.
Read More“I don’t know why I always feel so old and tired. Oh, wait. That’s right. I am old and tired.”
It was a joke that never failed to get a laugh from groups I spoke to. Except I wasn’t really kidding. In my late 50’s I felt washed up, out of touch, and irrelevant. Add to that my complete inability to adapt to technology and I felt… obsolete.
Read MoreAs parents, we have the incredible privilege of partnering with God to help our children discover who God made them to be. A simple place to start is by researching the meaning of your child’s name.
In Biblical times, naming children was not taken lightly. People strongly believed that names influenced identity and destiny, so simply saying the child’s name became a declaration and a reminder of who they were.
Read MoreWhat are you waiting on in order to get on with your life?
If our hearts were accounting ledgers there would be red ink next to the names of those who hurt us. The pain they caused cost us something. But the fact is, the people who owe us can’t pay us back. Even if they tried. There’s no way a person can pay fully for past pain. They can’t repair a soul. That is the work of God.
Read MoreBack in the early days of my faith I was in a church culture which taught that if I prayed the right prayers, made the right declarations, repeated the right Scriptures, and used enough authority in the whole process I would avoid trouble. My child wouldn’t be sick, my finances would flourish, my marriage wouldn’t struggle, every door would open for me.
I look back now and don’t know whether to call that faith or magic.
Because Jesus said there WILL be trouble in this life. It’s right there in John 16:33. “In this world you will have trouble.” Some translations say many troubles. Some say trouble and sorrow. You get the idea.
Read MoreIt was 2:30am and I was 5 years old. I had barely been able to fall asleep earlier, knowing that I would be awakened now. My dad and I stood on the dock surrounded by the night's emptiness. The cool, salty breeze of the Texas coast brushing my face promised adventure to my young heart. The poor shrimp we used as bait didn’t stand a chance as we hurled them into the feeding frenzy below. In 20 minutes we had caught our legal limit of fish for the day. Salty and euphoric, we fell back into sleep and dreams just before the sunrise.
Read MoreYears ago, my husband and I had a young woman living with us who needed help growing into the person God created her to be. Because of the pain of her childhood, relationships were a constant struggle for her and it was no different with us. She struggled to connect with both me and my husband, sometimes becoming defensive or feeling wounded. We were trying to negotiate a particularly thorny issue when, all of a sudden, I had a revelation and saw the problem clearly: she had all walls and no boundaries. In that moment, I was aware that the primary thing she had had to learn growing up was how to defend and protect herself.
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