Just a few weeks before we got married, my husband and I adopted a golden retriever puppy. We named him Sparky, and I can say with full confidence that he has lived up to his name because there is never a dull moment when he’s around.
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What is your strategy when it comes to growing in your relationship with Jesus? In other words, do you have a plan for how you’re going to prioritize spending time with Jesus and growing closer to Him? One thing I’ve learned over the years is that if you’re going to be successful at something, you’ve got to have a game plan. You can’t just go through life winging it. You’ve got to be intentional and purposeful. Otherwise, you’re not going to be prepared when life throws you something out of left field.
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I have a love-hate relationship with assembling furniture. It always takes longer than you think it will. The instructions always seem to have 800 steps. And I get irritated enough to start lecturing the furniture at least once per piece. But I love the feeling when I finish putting it together and get to experience the finished product in all its glory. Knowing all of this, I tried to mentally prepare myself to assemble my new bookcases, but when the time came to put them together, it ended up being a much more frustrating afternoon than I expected.
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What’s your first instinct when you look at yourself in the mirror? Do you admire what you see, making a point to notice all of the things you like about your appearance? Or do you criticize yourself, pick yourself apart, and think about all of the things you would change about yourself if you could?
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Whenever I’m having a tough time, a bad day, or I’m feeling down, I open up my “words of affirmation jar.” I’m still working on the name, but that’s not important. My “words of affirmation jar” is a white jar that sits on my desk. It’s filled with tiny little folded-up pieces of paper, each containing an encouraging or affirming message from my husband. This was his Christmas gift to me three years ago, and he has continued to refill it ever since he gave it to me. I remember one particular afternoon when I was feeling down and discouraged, I opened up the jar and grabbed a piece of paper. When it opened it up, it contained one word, followed by a few numbers.
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Have you ever felt like God was telling you to do something or guiding you down a certain path, but you were hesitant to follow His lead? I know I’ve been there, far more often than I’d care to admit. Hurrying is not something I’m a big fan of. I’d much prefer to take my time and go about things at my own pace. But the longer I follow Jesus, the more I learn that when God tells you to do something, hesitation is not your friend.
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I know memorizing Scripture can be hard. It’s intimidating, and it’s a hard habit to not only implement but stick to. To be honest with you, this is a discipline I know I have plenty of room to grow in, but one I want to grow in desperately. When I have taken the time to memorize Scripture, it’s been incredible to see the different instances when God has brought His Words to the forefront of my mind when I’ve needed them most. I want to have more experiences like that. And friend, I want you to have more experiences like that, too.
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Ever since we bought our house a couple of years ago, I’ve developed an interest in DIY projects. I’ll never forget this one particular weekend when I decided to work on one particular DIY project, which required drilling holes into two-by-fours. Now, while my drill had quickly become one of my best friends, I had never drilled through wood before, but I’d seen it done on HGTV a million times and figured it couldn’t be that hard.
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As I pulled into our driveway after church one Sunday last spring, I couldn’t help but notice the overflowing rose bushes in front of our house. Our front yard was looking pretty bare not even a month before, and now all of a sudden we had dozens of hot pink roses brightening up the landscape. Taking in the beautiful sight of those roses, I remembered that those bushes weren’t always so big and fruitful. My mind flashed back to the end of the previous summer, right as we were moving into our new house in Northern Kentucky.
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