One of the main reasons I wrote my new minibook, Why Should I Pray? was to help believers experience prayer as fellowshipping with our loving Father, more so than getting stuff from our Father. This shift makes all the difference in the world. My memories of prayer as a young believer aren’t the happiest ones. Prayer felt more like a duty than a delight—a spiritual discipline I wasn’t good at but...
Over the past year, I have dedicated much of my ministry work to parents. I have not sought to provide guidance on how to parent but rather to bring comfort for the many distressing emotions parents experience. One of the more challenging emotions parents experience is regret. When parents struggle with regret, we review and rehearse the choices we made. When we have played a role in a...
Do you remember what it felt like to be a little kid at Christmastime? There’s nothing quite like the anticipation of Christmas morning. But the holiday can lose its wonder as we wake up to the many hard things going on in our lives and in the world. We’ve certainly experienced this at some point as adults but think back to when you first felt that loss—the first time Christmas didn’t seem as...
The language of bullying is used in media, movies, and in the classroom. As a parent, you are understandably concerned and want to better prepare your children. When your child comes home and tells you that they were mistreated or saw mistreatment toward someone else, you may be asking yourself if this the beginning stages of bullying, an act of unkindness, or a more serious pattern of behavior...
It’s become a seasonal joke for our family—that time my mom sarcastically wailed in a fit of frustration at Christmas, “We’re all so merry . . . merry, merry, merry!” Although it wasn’t funny in the moment, my mom, brothers, and I can look back and laugh about it today. What’s more, I can sympathize. As a married mother of three myself, I know that merry moods can be hard to come by during “the...
