Humans are attached to outcomes. We feel certain how things should turn out. We *say* we trust God, but behind the scenes we work our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like we expected; we question God when it doesn't. Which aspects o...

Feeling the pain is the first step toward healing the pain. To progress toward healing, we must make some holy exchanges. We want God to take away our pain; God wants to develop our character. We want God to make our circumstances better for our own version of good; God wants to take our healing ...

We can encounter a long season of disappointment because of problems placed on us (the hurts and pain others inflict on us), or problems within us (our own sins and failures). Both the problems placed on us and those that come from within us find their ultimate solution at the cross. Jesus offers...

Sin breaks trust. Therefore, we can’t expect God to entrust a calling to us before we go through the four steps of restoration: full confession, cleansing, having a new heart created in place of our broken heart, and calling. When trust has been shattered, it has to be rebuilt with believable beh...

The enemy wants us to have an eroded trust in God and an elevated trust in ourselves. Often it's fear that leads us into temptation regarding our perceived needs (lust of the flesh), misplaced desires (lust of the eyes), and things we think we deserve (pride of life). We fear God won't provide wh...

*Kingdom-minded* means there's a purpose to your pain here and now that has implications for God's kingdom. You may never know the answer to "Why?" in this lifetime, but two of the may possible purposes for your pain are to make you mature and complete (James 1:2-4), and to equip you to comfort o...