As Mary and I are preparing to kick off our first ever online Bible study offered by Only By Prayer called The Simple Life, I’ve naturally been doing some reflection on what I think the simple life looks like. I’ve come to the conclusion that I definitely know what the simple life doesn’t look like based on past and current experience. I can tell you that it doesn’t look like any of the following things, all of which I’ve done at some point in my life.

• It doesn’t look like working until 9:30 p.m. every weeknight grading students’  English papers.
• It doesn’t look like staying up until 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. every night writing an e-book.
• It doesn’t look like doing household chores all day Sunday to try and prepare for the next week.
• It doesn’t look like skipping my devotion time repeatedly because I’m too tired to get up in the morning.
• It doesn’t look like watching the whole summer pass by with the realization that I’ve only sat down twice in the evening on my deck to relax and read a book.
• It doesn’t look like my children and I only seeing my husband every other weekend for the duration of six months while he works across the country.
• It doesn’t look like wading through a house filled with too much junk!

I’m pretty good at knowing what the simple life isn’t; it’s what it is that I need to figure out.

Now, I know that life has its seasons, and some seasons just have to be endured, but when you realize it’s gone from a life season to a life pattern, then it’s time for a life change!

So far, in my early prestudy ruminations, I’m beginning to see that simply doesn’t necessarily mean easily. Here is what I think I want the simple life to look like: To me, the simple life means 1) sitting at the feet of Jesus 2) undergirding everything with prayer 3) being intentional with my time and resources, and 4) pursuing and listening for God’s next thing for me.

Now I just need to learn how to do all that! How about you? What do you think the simple life looks life for you?

Would you like to join us in exploring The Simple Life ? There’s till time for you to sign up.

Welcome to podcast #2 in our Walking In Truth series on the book of Colossians. Today Mary and I discuss Colossians 1:9-12. We’ll discover that God wants us to increase our relationship with Him, and that far from being alone, God  is very present with us in all our circumstances of life. We can count on Him to give us the grace and strength we need for each situation we are in and for every work He gives us to do.

Just click on the above arrow to listen. We’ve also included a listener guide for you to fill in as you listen to the podcast to help you glean the most information as possible from this teaching.

We pray you are blessed by this series. Feel free to leave your comments and questions below.

Here is the link to the page for the entire series. I will be updating the page with new recordings over the next few weeks. Walking In Truth

Image courtesy of Panpote / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How we live our lives is extremely important. If you are a believer in Christ, God has anointed you to do very specific works on earth. By these works, He shall be glorified.  Equally important, is how we face death. If we keep the faith and fight the good fight, God will be glorified through our death as well. To do the study, “A Matter of Life and Death,” please click on the link.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Life can be confusing.

The world says one thing, but God’s word says another. Who should we believe? What if our facts don’t seem to agree with what God says we should do? What if our feelings tempt us to go in a way that’s contrary to God’s truth? Who has the final say–our feelings or God’s Truth?

Join Mary Kane and Jane VanOsdol as they discuss the facts versus God’s truth dilemma.

To download a free Bible study on this topic, just click the link below. To listen to the podcast, scroll below and click on “Listen to Podcast of Article” or choose “download” to download the podcast to your computer or mp3 player.

My Facts or God’s Truth Bible study

“And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’” Exodus 3: 14

“And He said to me, ‘It is done!  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.’” Revelation 21:6

Don’t you just love how God settles everything?

With these few words, He gets to the root of the matter. As I came across the Exodus verse in my Bible reading today, I had to stop and think about it. I realized that because God is who He is, then I can be who He made me to  be and can do what he made me to do.  Everything I am and do rests on me cooperating with Him and following His plan for my life.

That is the very thing that can be a stumbling block for many people. They don’t want to give up control of their lives, thinking that if they do, they’ll be stuck in a drab, dreary life of boredom, or worse yet, doing something they don’t want to do.

The verse in Revelation should settle those fears. Jesus says that He will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. I was curious about the word life, so I looked up the connotation of the word life in Blue Letter Bible.

The Greek word for life is zoe, and I love it’s meaning. Here are a few of its definitions: a full life; possessed of vitality; absolute fullness of life; active and vigorous; devoted to God, blessed.

This doesn’t sound like a dry, unexciting life to me! On the contrary, a life lived out surrendered to God is a life of passion, fullness, and vitality. Yes, we will also experience tribulations as Jesus did, but it’s a life that is full and rich of meaning and purpose and will reap a harvest for God’s kingdom.

I can trust God to be my I AM in this adventure, especially when I am not …

•    the bold speaker He has asked me to be
•    the attentive wife He has called me to be
•    the brave witness He has asked me to be
•    the leader he has asked me to be, and so on

Because He is I Am, I am too.

Pray on!

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3

This has been a favorite scripture of mine, ever since I lost my 11-day-old daughter 22 years ago. God used it to encourage me during a difficult time.

What I found to be true is that God doesn’t leave our hearts in shambles, but that over time He heals us–if we let Him. He is able to put back together even the most splintered, shattered pieces of ourselves that the old nursery rhyme tells us are beyond repair. He binds up our wounds and is able to make us whole again.

Sometimes this is an infinitely slow process. It’s an excruciating day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute choice to believe that He is working, that life will not always be this hard, or hurt this much. As we hang in there with God in the nitty-gritty pain in our lives, our hearts begin to mend. God’s radical soul surgery, when viewed on a daily basis, may not seem to be making much of a difference.We may feel stuck, stagnant, and frustrated, blinded by the darkness in our souls.

But when looked at over the course of weeks or months, and definitely years, we can see the evidence of a skilled surgeon who is setting the broken bones and stitching together the unraveled edges of our lives. We emerge with some scars. But what we become is a person made stronger, deeper, and richer, with a depth of maturity that was not there before.

If you’re in despair of where you are now, just make the decision for one more day to get up and believe again that God is working. One more day to care for your family, go to work, clean the house. And then do it again the next day. Your heart will mend, because you’re not being operated on by the all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, but by the King of Kings. He alone can put all of us Humpty Dumptys back together again.

Pray on!

By Denslow’s_Humpty_Dumpty.djvu: W. W. Denslowderivative work: Theornamentalist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons