I have this t-shirt. . . 

I have a t-shirt-it’s really more like a muscle shirt, that is black and has flames across the chest. It says “girl gang“ next to the flames. It has rips, tears and holes all over it that were intentionally put  there.

I had forgotten I had it and rediscovered it this week and I learned something—not much has changed when it comes to the response I receive for this shirt. I get a lot of compliments of people liking my shirt each time I wear

God’s Grace cannot be trumped by our goodness. His grace is scandalous and pardons what we can’t fix and I think this is a beautiful, but peculiar aspect to His Character.

I love it!

Our obedience is a form of adoration, but it is not the instrument of His portions.

He gives…
He gives…
He gives….

Because HE Lives!

We may fall…
But He will rise!

Doing good and being good are good. But what stirs God’s heart is when we love good.

God doesn’t need our effort to advance Himself, but by the power of His love He includes

Spiritual fitness is a bit like physical fitness. Health, wholeness and healing come to all who expose their being to possibility.

Mind

When we exercise our mind and free expression we open our world and it becomes larger. One thing I’ve always said college can do for a young person is give them a bigger world view and expand their deductive reasoning abilities.

Body

When you work a muscle with resistance training you explore the possibility the muscle fibers offer. Will I get stronger? Will I grow bigger? Will I

Yesterday I came across a photograph of my boys that was maybe from 7 years ago. Kids change so much so quickly, it’s beautiful and painful at the same time. Bitter sweet I guess you would call it. I just sat drinking in the picture. They were all huddled up close to one another, laughing, the baby on my 2nd oldest son’s shoulders—they were so happy. I  am so grateful that their early and middle childhood years were happy years for them.

When my kids were really little we would sit on

I once met the sweetest lady at the gym. She was always smiling and friendly…always faithful to her workouts….and did I mention she was 80 years old? She would speak to me sweetly and say a blessing over my health. I want to be like that when I’m 80!

It breaks my heart to look around the American society at large and see people popping every prescription drug imaginable in an effort to manage a diagnosis or buffer some pain. There is a place for medicine, but we’ve gotten out of

Lord,

I invite you into my Tabernacle of Hope.
I have been sifted deeply and completely;
But within it all you have never left my side.
You bore my stain that I might gain something intimate, something lovely,
something created for my goodness sake.
Then your Love walks in, radiant and bright. Your Love walks in and it has worn a path on my heart and stains the soil of my pen—

I will never be the same again.

You never leave me forlorn.
You’ve bore the scorn.
You took the sting of rejection and turned it into

“This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him.” 1 John 1:5

God is nothing but Life, Light, Joy, Goodness, Grace, Love and all things Hopeful. He can do all things; the imaginable and the unexplainable seemingly impossible. He is the ultimate Possibility Thinker, Way Maker, Bondage Breaker and the Friend like no other friend, loyal to the core.

For three days He became darkness to absorb all of ours. Like a