Did you know that your thoughts affect your health? The type of thoughts we have can affect our breathing, heart rate, body temperature, and every cell in our bodies. Dr. Daniel Amen, author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, says that negative thoughts can create cravings for fattening, sugary or salty foods and rob your sleep. Stress can make you fat, wrinkled and sick! Does that motivate you to harness your thoughts?

I want to share a tool that I find helpful in renewing your mind and corralling the renegade thoughts and feelings that make us sick. REAP your thoughts. (Read More)

A young woman sat across from me wringing her hands. Carrie’s strained face revealed the misery of sleepless nights. Years before she’d fallen into an illicit relationship. Her guilt-stricken conscience had forced her to end the affair after a short time. Now years later she sat in my office unable to bear her guilt.

What do you do with guilt? Can anything really remove sin’s ugly stain? 1 John 1:9 promises, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Carrie had admitted her sin to God over and over and found no relief. What was wrong? (Read More)

Do you know that the Bible addresses true believers in Christ as saints? If that’s really true, then why don’t we feel or act like saints?

For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin–because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Romans 6:6-7

If we have been set free from sin’s grip, why do we still struggle? Why is there still a battle? Galatians 5:17 tells us there will be daily battles. The war has been won by King Jesus but there are the daily scrimmages with our defeated foe. Our old nature (the remnant of who we were) wants to deceive us into believing it still holds power over us and that nothing has changed. (Read More)

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17b-18

A wrenched back sent me hobbling to my chiropractor last week. While waiting in the lobby I picked up the Gideon Bible on the table next to me. As I read through Ephesians 1, I came to verse 4, “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world …” As I read that, I was reminded of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

What an amazing thought! In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but before the foundation of the earth, He chose me! I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel pretty special. (Read More)

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” 2 Cor. 6:16

The housing market of southern California was the most expensive of any place in the United States when Larry and I moved there the end of our first year of marriage. We had moved from the Midwest where you could buy a wonderful house for about a quarter of the price of the much less desirable homes in our new location. With the additional burden of 18% home interest rates, we were very bummed and feared we’d never find a home we could afford and like. (Read More)