I recently returned from my second mission outreach in beautiful Belize. I say beautiful because the people and children there have stolen my hearts many times over, and although there are certainly beautiful, breath-taking parts of Belize, the area I traversed is extremely poor---the children are often without electricity, water and only manage to eat, on average, one meal a day. I spent all day Saturday teaching on fruits of the Spirit to the amazing women who had gathered in Belmopan and on Sunday I found myself sitting on a simple wood bench in the tiny chapel of Mahogany Heights,…

God makes the impossible possible. I was recently studying Psalm 134, the last of the Psalms of Ascent. The psalmist encourages the people to bless the Lord but ends with, "May the LORD, Maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion." Something about the Psalm left me troubled and I finally figured out why. I can bless God all day, meaning I can acknowledge and thank Him for who He is, but my praise pales in comparison to the way He blesses me. I can come to God with all that I am and surrender every fragment of my…

For each new year, I pick a word to meditate upon, a word to help me dig deeper into the truths of God's love. 2014's word was freedom. After much thought and prayer, my word for 2015 is 'joy'. God has recently impressed on me that our human emotions are rarely in a state of consistency. We are beings that fluctuate. In anything, whether hate, love, boldness, fear, diligence, bitterness or hope, we can either grow 'more and more' or 'less and less'. It depends on what we feed. So for 2015, I choose joy! "The joy of the LORD…