The very first night, Wally came home saying, “I wish you could have been here tonight, just so you could have heard Virginia pray.”

Week after week, Wally repeated those words until finally whatever commitments kept me away dissipated, and I was finally able to join him. 

Not long after we arrived, familiar faces greeted us and one another, taking their seats in the cushioned folding chairs that were arranged in a horseshoe in front of the windows in the sunlit room. 

Our pastor told me a couple of weeks ago that he thinks our church is best described like Rudolph’s “island of misfit toys.” We all know we’re a bunch of misfits who have tasted the goodness of the grace of God. 

Many of the students I worked with at French Camp felt like misfits too. Brokenness and dysfunction in families left many of them feeling rejected or excluded in one way or another. Maybe you can relate? 

One of the Lord’s sweetest blessings (among many) in moving us to the Jackson area is getting to stay connected with girls I got to know from French Camp. Each week they come for soup and dessert, thanks to our wonderful Madison Heightsyouth leader Molly Hertel, then we chat, look at a portion of God’s Word, and pray.

“The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord.” Amos 8:11

When the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, grocery shelves became bare and even staples like milk, bread, and toilet tissue were sometimes hard to find. Most of us in the United States understood for the first time the experiential fear of the word famine.

But can you imagine a famine of the Word of God? 

It’s hard to envision not being able to access God’s Word when I look around at the hard copies of several translations at my fingertips. And that doesn’t include the access I have to online versions and Bible apps. 

If you get addicted to The Scripture Typer app, you won’t need to play any other computer games. You can get the Pro version for about 10 bucks, which allows you to import whichever version of the Bible you want. Or, if you’re like me, and you’ve memorized verses over the years in KJV, NKJV, NASB, ESV, NLT, and NIV84, you can import a combination of texts.

For 25 years of pastoral ministry, the Sunday night “feeling like quitting conversation” was nothing new. He’d laughingly said he talked himself out of quitting every Sunday night for years. I’d found encouragement from other pastors’ wives who shared in private conversations that their husbands went through the same thing. And then there are those friends from seminary and our younger days in ministry whose marriages and lives we’ve seen torn apart—those we thought had the perfect marriage. Life has taught me that life is hard and there’s no such thing as perfect. It’s broken people helping broken people looking to a perfect Savior.

Then looked at me and said, “I think I’m done.” Without blinking, I asked him what that meant. He said he didn’t know, that he didn’t know what else he could do.

Just as your relationship with your spouse or close friend will grow more intimate as you spend time talking and listening to each other, so will your relationship with God. And just as your relationship with your spouse or close friend will suffer from neglect, so will your relationship with God.

The most important thing you can do is plan a set time you will spend time with Him each day. Be realistic. Don’t start with too much and set yourself up for failure.

Don’t beat yourself up when you miss.

Satan is the accuser. That voice telling you if you were really a Christian or really loved God, spending time with God wouldn’t be such a chore, or reading the Bible wouldn’t be so hard or dry or dull, or prayer wouldn’t be such a burden is the voice of your and the Lover of your soul’s greatest enemy.

May my prayer be set before You like incense… Psalm 141:2a

A favorite prayer tool: a fragrant candle. Each time I start my time with the Lord, as I light a candle and smell that wonderful fragrance, I imagine Him taking in the perfume of my prayers and saying, “Mmmmmm. That smells good.” And it helps me want to pray.

Candles have now become a budgeted item. Favorite candle fragrances (so far): Frazier Fir by WoodWick, Red Currant and Island Grapefruit by Votivo, Mango Dragon Fruit by Bath & Bod

Shrinking from the Suffering of Job

Oh Lord, I did not want to read Job 1 this morning. But that is where the plan had me reading. I knew what was in it. And how my heart shrinks at the thought.