​I grew up in the home of a pastor and have spent all my life in the church. I remember from an early age hearing my Sunday school teachers tell us that we needed to read our Bibles and pray every day! The song we sang told us that then we would “grow, grow, grow.”

These necessities—Bible reading and prayer—were taught and modeled in my home and in my church. But, the older I have gotten, the more I realize how vital they are, not to make me a better Christian, but, much more importantly, to enrich and deepen my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. There are myriads of passages in Scripture that explain the need for these disciplines in our lives.

​It seems that this year through my personal Bible study and preaching I have heard that God is teaching me some practical things I need to learn and apply when it comes to my prayer life.

Have you ever been reading in one of the books of Kings or Chronicles and wondered what in the world was going on? Maybe like me, you get lost, at times, in the kings of the divided kingdoms and know that you need to spend more time setting all that straight in your mind.

But every so often, I find that even after being saved for more than thirty years and reading through the Bible several times, that same chapter, verse, or principle just jumps off the page and grabs me like never before! This, my friend, is the wonderful nature of the Living Word we have in our possession today.

​Paul said it this way in Romans 11:33: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” It is like digging for treasure every time we open God’s Word. Let’s look at one of these treasure passages I found recently in 2 Chronicles 20.

I think I have mentioned before that I am a single missionary serving the Lord in Peterborough, England.

There are not many days that I don’t encounter some kind of adventure. It might be learning something about the culture of England or navigating through a new city driving on the other side of the road or maybe dealing with a “flat” battery in my car. Just a normal day in the life of a single missionary, right?

​It was on a recent Sunday morning that I walked to my frost-covered car and found that the battery was dead or “flat” as we say here.

Thankfully, I made a few phone calls to cover my responsibilities at church and was met with the offer for a lift to the service and help later in the day to jump-start the car as well as help to get the battery replaced. 

This is a special time of year as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I took a Scripture writing challenge this month with some friends using different passages about the coming of Christ at His birth. I find the prophecies of the Old Testament about Christ’s birth so fascinating. Isaiah and Micah, along with other prophets, prophesied exact details about Christ’s first coming which Jesus fulfilled to the letter.

These prophecies prove the inspired Word of God in ways that no man could have planned on his own. It always excites me to think that if God planned and fulfilled those prophecies so precisely, how much more precise His Second Coming will be!

In this Scripture writing challenge, I have been looking at some of the prophecies the Holy Spirit led Isaiah to share with us.

It was an early morning in November 2011 when my sisters and I sat with our dad in a surgical waiting room. Just a few short weeks before, our mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer found during a routine yearly mammogram.

I sat there that morning recalling the events of the weeks since the day we heard the dreaded “C” word. There had been a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, scans, blood tests, and consultations.

I remember when the breast cancer specialist told us in a family consultation that the best course of action for the type of cancer my mom had was a mastectomy—a radical amputation of my mom’s breast. It was a shock, but none of us argued that day in the doctor’s office because we trusted she knew the best course of action to eradicate the cancer in my mother’s body. 

What does “normal life” look like for an almost 37-year-old woman in today’s Christian culture? If the first thoughts in your mind deal with being married and rearing a family, you are probably thinking as most folks do in our churches and in our world today. What goes through your mind when you meet someone like me—37 years old, “unattached,” and never been married? I have had all kinds of comments from people within the church ranging from “Don’t worry…you’ll find someone someday,” to “So, do you even want to get married?” and everything in between.

The world kind of leaves people like me to our own individuality on most fronts. Some unbelievers make invalid assumptions about people like me, but I can get past those assumptions quickly because they are unbelievers and don’t understand my heart and desire to honor God in EVERY aspect of my life. ​

Have you ever had someone ask you, “How are you?” knowing full well that the person really doesn’t want to know how you are. It is just a polite thing to say, right?

It seems that in the midst of the events of recent months with “stay-at-home” orders and canceled church services that I have easily felt very disconnected and even isolated at times. I live by myself in a little house on a normal little street in England. I know that some of you American readers may think that it is quite the adventure, but really it is just real life for me.

​Over the past several months, I have had to ask the Lord to help me to purposefully stay connected with my neighbors, friends from church, and friends and family in America. It is easy in times like these to slip into a mindset of forlornness and host a massive “Pity Party for One!”