Earth Is Crammed With Heaven-Live Barefoot!

The LORD is speaking to my heart today about "self-control". If I'm honest, this is an area that I have struggled with for most of my life, primarily when it comes to overwhelming emotions.  I'm a Gen‑Xer. And with the rise of social media, freely accessible information, and the ability to openly share our experiences, a lot of people from my generation are starting to be late‑diagnosed with some form of neurodivergence. Or, like me, have yet to pursue a diagnosis but are contemplating the possibility. My husband and diagnosed daughter have “teased” me for years about having “a touch of the ’tism.” But recently, all of us have started to feel like it might not be a joke at all, but a very real possibility. This increase in awareness has led to a wave of newly diagnosed individuals, which in turn has sparked a lot of discussion about neurodivergence — especially how difficult it can be to distinguish genuine neurodivergent traits from the effects of trauma or other men...

"For though a righteous man may fall seven times, he still gets up; but the wicked stumble in bad times." Proverbs 24:16 BSB I was scrolling my Facebook memories today, whenever I came across a post I had written last year on the topic of stumbling, which came from the verse-of-the-day, that said, "Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble ." Psalm 119:165  Towards the end of my post, I made note of the above verse in Proverbs that seems contradictory. Do we stumble, or don't we? I think the answer lies in the fact that there is a literal difference in the words being used, in English and Hebrew. Full confession: I'm down in the dirt as we speak. So, I felt that this would be a good topic to meditate and study this morning.  My go-to form of study is always word study.  So, I began looking at the word translated as "fall", or  naphal , in Hebrew. It's used to describe what that looks like for a righteous man. The ...

 Yesterday, my study time and subsequent blog post was about fasting and mastering sin and selfish ego-driven desires. I was shown how in Scripture, this is most commonly seen using "light shining in the darkness" imagery, and how this is an ongoing process, with rhythms and structure, or a more common word--habits.  I was also given the connection to the Hebrew idiom of the "evil eye" that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 6 and also of the practice of twice weekly fasts dictated in the Didache, which was the "instruction manual" of the early Christians during the first century.  I've mentioned before that I follow Nate Bramsen on social media. Yesterday, he shared a short video on a connection made with Jesus' words in Matthew 6:6 on the topic of prayer and the prophet's words found in Isaiah 26:20 and I took mental note of this so I could come back and dig in today because of the word he focused on.  But before I ended up here, I was meditating ...

 “Why are you angry ,” said the LORD to Cain, “and why has your countenance fallen ? If you do what is right , will you not be accepted ? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it.” Genesis 4:6-7 (BSB) “I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.” ~Unknown "...for man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness that God desires." James 1:20 (BSB)