Encouragement For Women

Patience Pronunciation: 'pA-sh&nt Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English pacient, from Anglo-French, from Latin patient-, patiens, from present participle of pati to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pEma suffering 1 : bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint 2 : manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain 3 : not hasty or impetuous 4 : steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity (Courtesy of Merriam-Webster ) Sometimes when we pray God answers immediately and sometimes it seems we wait and wait and wait and an answer seems to never come. Often times we may miss the answer because we were expecting a certain answer and a different one came.Or perhaps we get an answer and we don't like it...so we ask our question in a different manner as if we might challenge the Lord our God. In the January posting I mentioned my waiting on God's promise for my marriage. Indeed I am waiting...and each day brings new hope and healing. As...

Bonjour! Bienvenidos! Wilkomen! Howdy y'all! I am so happy to have computer time again! I just recently moved and was without a computer for almost a week...and these days that is just crazy talk! In the midst of this enormous move and all the chaos that goes with it, I failed to prioritize a few things. One being getting this issue of EFW written and sent before February approached. So, please accept my humble apology for the tardiness. Also, to those of you who prefer the email format- another apology for this month. The past two days I have been thinking a bit about conditionals. You know, those statements that go like this, "If _____ , then _____." "If you take out the trash, then I'll get all t he recycling". Or perhaps, "if you clean your room in time we can read three books for nigh-nigh." There are a number of conditionals in the Bible as well. God loves us amazingly unconditionally as he looks at us through Christ's redem...

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12 It is good, really good that God doesn’t always give us the things we hope for. Wehave all longed and hoped for things that would be beneficial, inspirational, self-serving, injurious to self or others (Job 6) or just good old fashioned revenge (Romans 12:19). These are the things that I praise Him for not giving me. But there are the hopes and longings of our heart of hearts, those things we must continue to hope for, not giving up our confidence in Him (Hebrews 10:35-36). Renewed hunger for God’s word (Psalm 119:48, 88, 119, 167), living loving lives (John 14:15, 15:10, I John 2:3), our relationships healed, rest when we are weary and the like. If we fail to trust God to be committed to taking care of our every need, then we have lost all hope. There is no heart need that cannot be fulfilled by the loving God we serve. I am coming to grips with this trust are...

Here we are at the end of 2006, well almost. This year has been an incredible journey for me and I believe for many of you it has been also. As we reflect on the way we lived in 2006 and how we want to live in 2007, may we pray this for ourselves and for all the women we know – “Lord, help me/us to keep my/our eyes fixed on Jesus. Because I/we know, nothing else satisfies.” React versus Respond “Jesus didn’t react, he responded” is what I heard one Sunday morning as my tired wandering mind finally focused. Since then it has been bouncing around in my head. You know me by now with my interest in etymology and definitions, so you might be expecting a little Merriam-Webster action – I won’t disappoint. To react is from Latin re- + agere to act whereas to respond is from Latin respondEre to promise in return, answer. Responding is with thought and intent and to react is just simply acting. I am a reaction waiting to happen; I would like to be a responder. ...

The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion ; proclaim among the nations what he has done. (Psalm 9:9-11) I am beginning to know the Lord as my refuge and a stronghold. I am learning more names of God, like my provider, my redeemer, my salvation, my strength, my comfort, etc. and my heart at the same time is beginning to open up and trust him. This issue I wish to touch on the topic of trust. We all trust God for and with different things. Sometimes we trust him with everything and sometimes we trust him with a few things. Sometimes we test him to see what we can truly trust him with. Miriam-Webster lists some synonyms of the word trust as; confidence, credence, faith and stock. Then lists some antonyms as; distrust, mistrust and near antonyms as; disbelief, incredulity, unbelief; doubt, dubiousn...

Hola! Welcome to the October issue – again, sorry it is so delayed. How goes your reading adventure through the Bible? I confess to have let some dust accumulate on mine from time to time! Lame, but true. I’d like to share this month with you about surrender. One definition of this verb, surrender is; to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another (according to Merriam-Webster). I’ve chosen this subject because I seem to have a really difficult time with this one. I think the life of a believer in Christ could be summed up simply in this one theme. Not my will, but thy will be done. Jesus prayed that in the garden of Gethsemane as he was seeking God’s face before facing the Cross. I’d like to pray that more often! When God reveals something to me through his word, I am so ecstatic. That is until I realize what it usually will require of me. The actuality of surrendering my heart, my emotions, my plans, my hurts, my rights ...

Welcome to the September issue! How are you doing on reading through the Bible? I’m sidetracked and reading a portion of Ezekiel… This month in EFW I want to share something I learned from a toy that my son has. My son loves trains and has a train set. It has two trains and a locomotive front loader. One train collects “rocks” and transports them to the front loader. The front loader scoops them into the coal bin of another engine, which dumps them into a hopper for the first train to collect. As the trains work together, their individual work keeps the whole set in harmony. Then my son takes all the “rocks” and keeps them in his hands while the engines and front loader aimlessly go through the motions basically wasting batteries. I tried to convey to my son that the engines and front loader are sad when they can’t do their work. Then he began helping them to do their work by manually dumping the “rocks” for the front loader, which I relayed to him made th...