My soul waits in silence for God only; From Him is my salvation. Forty years have passed since the insatiable hunger took hold, propelling me to become an avid student of The Word. Early on, drenched with wonder at the imagery that fired my mind, a......
I remember the terror of the moment, just before I turned to lay my eyes on him. I was terrified because the dream I had dreamed two weeks before was now playing itself out, in every detail. I stepped onto The Quad, just like......
Sometimes a single moment imprints us so strongly, that it stays with us, challenging us to more deeply understand what God is saying through it. A moment like that unfolded for me in the cool quiet of predawn hours, as I was sorting through the......
Why do some of us clearly understand what God is saying to us, while others don’t? Why is God so real to one, and yet not to another? This is not a casual intellectual exercise for me; it is the anguish of my life, driving me to pound on......
My dad died in the strength of God, even though that strength eluded him most of his life. He loved Jesus. But a thousand times my heart was broken, aching for my father to win his battles, watching as he lost. But at the......
. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him… 2 Timothy 1:12 He came to me that morning, because the deep dread of disappointment was setting me up for despair, and......
Our best practice for life’s big storms is to find God’s way in the little storms, which are constantly coming. I’ve just weathered one, and getting to the other side with as little collateral damage as possible, struggling to find God’s way, has better......
My passionate desire–for myself, and for you–is an ever-deepening awareness of how God is speaking to us. In small and large ways God orchestrates circumstances to bring about parallel events that will speak to us. When these take place–and we recognize them–God breaks through......
Storms come. And no matter how little or how much warning we have, once they hit, we are stripped of control, finding ourselves at their mercy, holding on for dear life for as long as they last, having no way of knowing what depths......
It was a moment of sunlight burning through, penetrating her heart. She was a leftist lesbian professor, loathing Christianity and fiercely protective of her LGBT community. She was the most unlikely of converts. But when the question came, she paused . . . haunted,......
For all the good things the church is, to love her is to grieve and wonder over the lack of God’s power and presence in her midst. We say that we want the power of God in our life. And God tells us that......
Over the past several months, I’ve paused from writing, taking time to reflect and reassess the purpose of this blog. During this time of deep study, I’ve been gripped by what God has taught me . . . timely truth that could not be more......
God wants His presence, power and purpose to become real for you. But is it possible that we could come to the end of our life to find that what He meant-to-be did not come-to-be? Scripture burgeons with evidence that this possibility is very real. .......
We make a grave error, if we think that the new creation God has made possible will automatically become ours. We gain our inheritance only as we engage in a battle of putting to death whatever is keeping the new nature from being revealed......
There are places in every one of our lives, where we struggle, feeling frustrated and powerless, sometimes angry, ashamed, defeated and depressed . . . and yet we are told that, “whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory......
Have you ever cupped the wrinkled face of an elderly woman in your hands . . . someone who has forgotten her children’s names and the man who once shared her life, to summon forth the one who still lives and remembers on the......
You are being summoned to a journey that is unfolding in a divine dialogue, a dialogue that is meant to build your relationship with God, fulfilling the reason He brought you to life. Relationship with God is the most delicious, fundamental reality imaginable. It is also the difference......
God is summoning us to a journey we cannot fathom, because what we understand now is too small to encompass what we will know then. We have to grow into the ability to apprehend what He has for us in this life, here on......
Walking in the natural is feet on the ground with solid earth bearing our weight. We determine the direction of our journey by processing information. Is it time to move? Is this the right house to buy? The information we take into consideration will......
There is a change you ache for. What is it going to take for God to work that change? There is a wound you can’t get past. What has to happen for God to heal you? There is a word God gave you long......
Everything God does has the ultimate goal of bringing us into a love relationship with Himself — which is the only place — where we are kept by His power. Nothing is more precious to me, as I consider my children and loved ones,......
Everything God does in our life — everything — belongs to His concerted effort to draw us into collaboration with Himself, so that He can make Himself real in our life, as we recognize and respond to His initiatives toward us. Of all those whom The......
The vastness of a black night sky studded with heavenly lights is one of the strongest images in the Christmas story . . . shepherds watching their flocks by night, the glory of angelic hosts momentarily lighting the canopy of darkness, magi coming from......
The keen awareness that his time was short spread like pale light filling the dome of Jesus’ conscious mind. No decisions remained; everything was in order, and nothing was catching him by surprise. He was prepared. He understood what God was working for. I......
In the divine dialogue we don’t so much hear what God is saying — as we see it. We see the replication of patterns all pointing to the same message and we get it. This demands an openness to the supernatural, believing the extraordinary......
When Linda prays aloud, the air stills and light from heaven spills into those who listen. She is humble, shy, adorable and earthy. She loves the land and her garden, seeing God in every parable of seed and flower. She grows outrageous amounts of lilacs,......
Mount Sinai represents God’s most overwhelming display of His presence to the Jewish people, an experience like no other, making His reality clear and immediate. It was a moment when emunah suffused their beings [1] . . . faith . . . conviction of......
For months I’ve been asking God how we receive His power into our circumstances. In response He’s been leading me to Scriptures that have taken me deep into a landscape I’ve never seen before. This is how the divine dialogue unfolds between the Lord......
The kingdom of God is not advanced by our being the kindest person we can be, professing our faith in Jesus, and giving credit for our successes to Him. The kingdom advances as God makes His presence an indisputable reality in the lives of......
The greatest threat to our ability to walk with God — to be alive to Him — does not come from without, but from within. It is our tragic propensity to think wrongly about God, harboring false beliefs that erode our ability to relate......
A divine dialogue links the rise and fall of nations as surely as it threads the ups and downs of our lives. Sometimes its scale is so large that you can only understand what God is saying against the backdrop of centuries. Other times,......
Our religious arguments about God are not with each other, but with God Himself. We think we are searching for Him, when He is actually seeking us — sending us words, using the stuff of our life to draw us into dialogue with Himself . . . stirring us......
Most of us know that we are living far short of what we are meant-to-be. If our approach to this problem is to try harder, using self-restraint to ride out each trying situation, we are sentencing ourself to a temporary fix that has no......
What is God doing right now in your life? He is making Redemption real in you, setting you free from some form of captivity that will own you until He succeeds. An erosive episode and a heartbreaking rupture in one of my relationships sent......
If you are going to understand what God is speaking in your spirit . . . if you are going to draw on His power to really walk with Him. . . the essential you has to engage with God, in what He is......
The thing has happened: the new step has been taken and is being taken. The new men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some are still hardly reconisable: but others can be recognised. Every now and then one meets them.......
How we receive God’s power into our lives . . . My heart was heavy because I had failed again. I had thought we had turned a corner, that we were finally able to rest in our relationship with each other. But I was wrong.......
Before we leave Christmas to begin the New Year, a parting gift waits to be opened . . . the most important gift we will ever receive. Like the star crowning a Christmas tree, my last message was carefully set into place, capping 15 months......
When someone is offended at God, no matter how lovable that person may be, a leaden door seals them off from what God wants to do and be for them. . . is there any power that can get through to them, to change their......
In a dark hour, nothing is more precious than God making His presence real to us — verifying that He is with us. Psalm 91 describes the secret place of The Most High — where no plague, where no arrow can reach. The Psalmist......
I remember the telephone call like it was yesterday . . . my Mom’s panic . . . thinking she was pregnant, having every symptom, terrified of having a baby at the age of 48. The risks and responsibility of giving birth at her......
Is it possible in our relationship with God to know — not just how He is leading us — but how He is warning us when we are at cross-purpose with Him? Last week, I shared how my husband and I were led to......
On a long prayerful walk down the beach under a foreboding sky, the Lord impressed me that we were to sell our Florida home. My heart constricted. Bill and I adored our retreat there, but I “saw” a picture of the sales contract in my......
Those of us who have come out of Wicca, the occult and New Age spirituality carry a burden that most do not have to bear. Our burden is that we know how “real” our experiences were, how “natural” it felt as we thought we were hearing......
Few things bring humbler wonder, than to realize that God is piecing together a message for me . . . It is inconceivable that the God who created quasars and constellations should bend so low as to orchestrate circumstances to speak to us, but the evidence over......
Submission to God creates an atmosphere in which it is easy to hear and know God. When I find that I have lost the thread of His leading, the way back is always to locate that aspect of authority, which He has placed over......
Locked away in silent darkness where she neither saw nor heard anything, the little girl felt her way through a world in which she constantly stumbled, having no idea of the reality that lay beyond her comprehension. She is a picture of each of us,......
Drawn by God, he stepped out of his tent into the night, lifting his craggy face to behold the stars. From flickering points vast reaches away, the light culminated its long journey to record itself upon the old man’s eye. And He took him outside......
Every spiritual reality has its analogy in the physical domain. What we experience physically often parallels what we’re grappling with in the unseen, spiritual domain, which we inhabit as well. * * * In the 1940s the evolution of jet propulsion brought flight at the......
Strength for the Journey Brent and Susan’s wedding reception in the San Juan Islands drew friends and family from all over the United States. As the music rose on salted air their guests mingled. But I had eyes for only one. Where was she?......
On our own, we cannot understand what God is saying. Most of us fail to recognize that something supernatural is taking place when we understand what God is saying to us. We falsely assume it is a natural extension of our own thinking......
The cavalier assumption, “If there is something God wants me to hear, I will hear it,” masquerades as faith — but it is not faith — it is ignorance of how hearing God works. God’s word will come to us, no matter where we are; but......
The torrent of scalding anger had subsided, but hurt still stung my heart and rashly spoken words still hung in the air. We had fought the night before. Yes, I should have handled it better — but I was tired, fed up and didn’t......
. The actuality of God’s independent splendor shines with or without our acknowledgement. His capacity to fulfill all that He wants to be and do for us remains an eternal verity, untouched by our oblivion of it. The quiet thunder of His voice sounds, even if......
Last week we explored the staggering possibility that we can hinder what God wants to do and be for us from coming-to-be in our life. This week we will learn how the soil of our soul can keep us from hearing the message God wants-us-to-hear.......
Fury, hurt and disappointment coursed through me like a hot flood as my husband left without opening my gift. I couldn’t believe how easily he aborted what I had so carefully planned. But all too soon I would see the innumerable gifts God had prepared......
Nothing softens the heart like a baby’s eyes first fastening on your face. But a deep, core-to-core relationship with that tiny human being only becomes possible with its maturity. In the same way, our spiritual birth makes us alive to God; He comes into......
With three visiting grandchildren I rarely get to see, savoring a week with our daughter I am rarely able to embrace, I’ve asked my friend, Shella, to craft this week’s posting. She recognizes when God is speaking to her as clearly as anyone I......
There are some things that cannot be forced into being. Belief, respect, trust and love are four of them. Our chance to authentically experience these is lost, the moment anyone tries to force them. Guilt, shame, fear and intimidation can never produce what is......
We do not recognize the extent to which laws at work in us and around us are determining whether we will recognize God’s activity in our life. Very often we fail to experience Him, even though we want to, because our flawed preconceptions have shut......
A battle is being fought over us, to determine what we are going to be. For we are no longer what we once were, and “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.” [1] Long ago, the light of knowing God flowed in......
When I think of Scripture, I do not equate it with the Bible — but with the mind of God, the eternal words of God, the ethereal message from another domain coming to man — not originating here with men, but there with God.......
Until this lesson, I did not realize how potent a rhema is — a spoken word, coming like a slice of light from the mind of God — to instantaneously make us alive to Him. AND in thirty-two years of teaching, I have rarely sensed......
From ancient time, man has pondered the inexplicable organizing influence at work in the cosmos. Greek philosophers gave it a name; they called it the logos. Originally logos meant “word”, “speech,” “reason;” but it was gradually extended to refer to the underlying “order” or “reason”......
Last week I described my friend’s amazement to find God speaking to her through journal entries written in her own hand. Far from being silent, Jesus was speaking; she just hadn’t had the ear to hear. This week Julie describes that continuing transformation in her......
Even when I was at enmity with Christianity, contemptuous of all that Jesus is to me now, I knew His voice. I didn’t know it was my Redeemer speaking in me, but His voice filtered through my soul. “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that......
Slipping away from the tumult of her visiting grandchildren, she walked down the darkened hallway to her silent studio—catching her breath, startled to find someone waiting there. In a chair too big, in the middle of the room, her barely seven-year-old granddaughter sat waiting. “Darling,......
What is it that allows some people to experience an amazing flow of fortuitous events demonstrating their connection to God? Are they “special”? Is it “luck”? Do they have a “gift” we do not? The answer is—none of the above. What they have is a......
My friend and collaborator, David Cato, died early Friday morning, January 20th, 2012, at 2:00 AM of kidney failure. As an artist his work shines throughout this website; as a man the lingering beauty of who he was shines on in my heart. Humble, professional,......
No provision is more essential to experiencing God than faith. When faith is perfected in us, it coalesces into something extraordinary—the supernatural capacity to receive God’s supernatural power into our circumstances. The power to hear God, to see Him, to understand what He is saying......
No matter how we experience the divine dialogue, we are experiencing The Holy Spirit. The two experiences are indivisibly the same. When the Spirit of God moves on you, in you or around you, to whatever end or by whatever means, you are being informed......
As many of you know, my friend and collaborator, David Cato, was rushed to the hospital and given slim chance of survival the week before Christmas. Unconscious and non-responsive, already compromised by a tough recent bout with his autoimmune disease, this man with a huge......
Lest my words get in the way, they will be few . . . this week I share two videos, two brief moments of imagery and music to help you find that most elusive of places in the rush and clamor of this season—that place......
. Somewhere along the way we lost sight of what it means to believe. The promise is big—whatsoever we believe we will receive—but taking a close look at our results in life, \\is it possible we don’t know what this kind of believing looks like?......
. To Make Him More Dear She was an expert skier, out for the day sharing the sport she loved with her husband and a friend. They were skiing across a narrow ridge that fell off precipitously on both sides, when she lost her balance.......
If your goal is to understand what God is saying to you, know this—you already hear Him—you just don’t have the vision of God yet, with the corresponding soil of soul to be able to respond to what He is telling you. So His words......
Every week as I work to undergird your certainty that you can understand what God is saying to you— I have to go through exactly the same struggle you do—in order to understand what God is saying to me. No matter how many times we......
. We are fellow pilgrims upon the way—each of us experiencing it through our own eyes from our unique point of view, bearing in our backpack the private history we bring to be addressed. We journey the way by foot, which takes great effort. But......
Threshold moments solidify what God wants to be and do for us; they mark that crossing where we act on what we have heard. That threshold is where we cross over into the singularity where all assumptions, theories and calculations break down—but God—becomes suddenly, intensely......
. Construction on our home had begun, and our builder could be counted on to show up at the lot first thing every morning. Checking the clock, knowing that Rick was probably there, I dashed out the door hoping to catch him before he left.......
. He is with us I have been writing day and night, until the muscles in my back have frozen and my mind is numb. Often waking before three in the morning, torrents have streamed my mind, making it impossible to lie in the dark.......
. The beautiful young scientist has so distinguished herself among her colleagues, that she has been invited to join the permanent staff of the Arecibo Observatory, housing the largest array of radio telescopes on the planet. In Carl Sagan’s story, Contact, Ellie represents the fine......
. No matter where we are, the Word of God will come to find us, to bring us from where we are to where we are meant-to-be. Even in their mother’s womb the twin brothers struggled, so much so that the pregnant Rebekah prayed, “Why?” ......
In whatever way someone’s life tells the truth, his story belongs to us all—because someplace in our own life that same truth is telling itself as well. He was born about 4,000 years ago, in Ur of the Chaldees. Mesopotamia was flourishing near the apex......
What lies more impossibly beyond my reach than the thoughts God thinks? And yet, what if He was to bridge the chasm of His unsearchableness to make Himself known? What if He so wanted to bring Himself within my reach—that He chose to come low......
. I knew it was coming. Like a stretch of whitewater down a river, sometimes we hear the distant thunder or gain a glimpse of a coming event. Long before the fire’s occurrence, as if watching the preview of a movie, I’d seen the hot......