Hope and Joy While Taking Care of Home
Bible study, prayer, and the hard questions of Christian life — written by a pastor and chemistry teacher.
Blog Categories:
Recently On The Blog…
7 Life-Changing Lessons from the Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5 through 7, is the longest teaching of Jesus we have. It begins with "blessed are" and ends with a call to build on rock, and everything between those two points is Jesus describing what a person looks like when God has genuinely changed their heart.
Moses and the Burning Bush Story for Kids: When God Calls the Unready
The Moses and the burning bush story for kids is one of the most important moments in the Bible, not because Moses was ready for what God asked of him, but because he wasn't. God called him anyway. And what He said to Moses at that bush is the same thing He says to anyone He calls: I will be with you.
Why Am I Stressed for No Reason? Your Brain and the Bible
Feeling stressed for no reason is more common than most people realize, and the reason it happens has to do with how the brain is designed. The nervous system runs a continuous background scan for threats, and when that system stays activated without a clear target, the result is a low-grade, sourceless anxiety that feels disconnected from anything visible in your life.
What is spiritual discernment?
Spiritual discernment is the ability to distinguish between what comes from God and what does not, applied both to the teachings we encounter and to the direction of our own lives. The Bible commands all believers to discern, not just those with a particular spiritual gift.
Noah's Ark Story for Kids: Faith, Waiting, and God's Promise
The Noah's Ark story for kids is one of the most familiar in the Bible, but it is not primarily a story about a flood. It is a story about a man who walked with God when no one else understood why that mattered, and a God who remembered him when the waters rose. That is a part of the story to be sure to teach our children.
Bible Verses About Relationships, Love and Marriage
When the Bible talks about love, it means more than romance. From 1 Corinthians 13's description of love to Ephesians 5's call to husbands and wives, Scripture gives a portrait of love that is demanding of itself, patient with others, costly, and ultimately shaped by how God loves us. The goal isn't a feeling to chase but a way of life to grow into.
Stand Firm: What Ephesians 6 Teaches Us About the Armor of God
The armor of God, described in Ephesians 6:10–18, is a set of tools God gives His people to stand firm against the unseen battle every believer faces. Each piece, from the belt of truth to the sword of the Spirit, is not something you manufacture yourself but something God provides. You put it on by trusting Him and staying rooted in what He has already declared true.
Creation Story for Kids: What Genesis Says About Who Your Child Is
The creation story for kids isn't just a lesson about how the world began (although it absolutely is that). It is one of the first things God wants your child to know about themselves: they were made on purpose, by a God who looked at everything He made and called it very good. That changes everything about how a child sees themselves, and how they live in a world that will tell them something different before long.
Who You Are When You Belong to God
Our identity in Christ is not something we earn or have to work to maintain. The Bible tells us throughout the New Testament tell us who we already are because of what Jesus has already done.
David and Goliath Story for Kids: Faith, Fear, and Five Stones
If you're working through the Bible with your children, this is one of the first stories to tell. Not because it's exciting (though it is). But because it shows them, early, how God tends to work: through people who don't look like the obvious choice, filled with a courage that comes from somewhere outside of themselves.
10 Bible Stories to Talk About with Your Kids
In Deuteronomy 6, Moses exhorts the Israelites to weave God’s word into their conversations with their children. Every aspect of life, Moses says, is an opportunity to teach our children about God. We teach them what He wants from us and we tell stories about what He has done. The goal is not that children would know the stories as facts to recall. It is that they would grow up with a sense of God’s centrality to their lives. They’ll be used to God being connected to every part of their lives, so that when God shows up in their own lives they already recognize Who He is and how He works.
What Does Meek Mean?
In the Bible, the word meekness means submitting whatever strength or power we have to God. It’s power under control. In everyday English, meek has come to suggest timidity or passivity. Most people use it as something like a synonym for weakness. The Greek word we translate meek (praeis) describes the character of a powerful animal trained to act under direction. It’s as strong as it ever was, and that strength is channeled outward in service rather than inward for self-service.
When Your Faith Feels Weak, God Will Make You Stand
When your faith feels weak and you're not sure you'll make it through whatever season you're in, the Bible carries a specific and personal promise: God will make you stand. Not because you become stronger or because you find better spiritual disciplines but because He is able to make you stand and He will do it.
Jesus Wasn't After Better Behavior. He Wanted a Changed Heart.
If anyone in Jesus’s day was famous among their peers for righteousness, it was the Pharisees. Their whole brand (so to speak) was that they were the ones who did the right things.
We Are Called to Praise God in the Middle of Our Suffering
The living have a calling the dead do not. When Hezekiah survived a terminal illness, his first response was not relief — it was praise. He understood something that every suffering believer needs to hear: we who are still alive have a unique and irreplaceable calling to worship God, not after our suffering ends, but from inside the middle of it.
Freely You Have Received: Why Salvation Changes How You Love
God's love for us did not begin with us. Before we ever reached out to Him, He loved us first, and He proved it by sending Jesus as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
As He Is, So Are We: How God's Love Changes Everything
God loved us before we ever loved Him, and that prior love is not just a theological fact — it is the source of our ability to love at all. When we truly experience what God has done for us in Jesus, we are changed. We become people who love, because love is what God is, and He is transforming us to be like Himself.
How Do We Know It's God's Spirit? What 1 John 4 Actually Tells Us
Not everything that sounds spiritual is from God. John gives us a direct, practical test in 1 John 4: the Spirit of God will always confess that Jesus Christ — fully God, fully human — has come in the flesh. Any message that falls short of or contradicts that is not from God, no matter how convincing it sounds.
What It Means to Be Called Children of God — and How It Changes Everything
Being called a child of God is not a casual religious phrase. According to 1 John 3, it describes a real relationship — one rooted in God's lavish love, marked by a transformation already underway, and aimed at a final completion when we see Jesus face to face. We are His children now, and that changes how we live today.
Why We Can't Love God and the World at the Same Time
We cannot love both God and the world. John makes this plain in 1 John 2 — not as a harsh command delivered from a distance, but as a protection. God loves us the most. Everything the world offers is passing away. The only thing worth giving our whole hearts to is Jesus, and John pleads with his readers to remain in Him.