My friendship with the Holy Spirit began when I was a teenager. Before that, I knew Jesus as my savior, but not as my friend. At the time I met the Holy Spirit, my life had been turned upside down, inside out. My parents divorced, my mom remarried: from Baptist to Pentecostal, from severe abuse to a new man in the house. I quit high school my freshman year, because of health issues, yet found myself forced to return to school, spending most of the first few months of my sophomore year… Read More

Cars, semis, pick-up trucks, and motorcycles zipped around us in a game of Russian roulette. At least that’s how Atlanta traffic feels to me. Yet, to our far left, the cars glided with ease at great velocity, speeding out of sight unhindered by the weaving, honking, frustrated drivers around us. “What’s that lane?” our new driver in the family Sarah, inquired. “The Palmetto Pass Lane,” her father said. “You pay a fee that gives you permission to travel down that lane.” As my husband spoke the words, another voice echoed in my… Read More

“Hold onto what you have so that no one will take away your crown,” (Rev 3:11) If you have been taught to live in sin-consciousness, I just stirred up guilt and fear of loss. How does that agree with a God whose perfect love casts out fear? Instead of life and peace that Jesus came to infuse in us, you may have been taught to believe in a God who is just waiting for you to mess up…again, so that he can take from you, punish you, distance himself from you. That sounds… Read More

Our identity as the Chosen of God is what allows us to partake of the abundant life Jesus paid for us to have.  Because it is critical that we grasp the fullness of our identity in Christ as God’s Chosen, it is the constant place of enemy warfare against us. To know how securely you are swaddled in the Love of God is no small thing.  It is what the whole structure of our armor in Ephesians 6 is designed to protect.   Every time we waver from this security, we fall… Read More

As a child, I went to the county fair with my uncle. The rides spun around with screaming teenagers, while children held tightly to their parent’s hand with one and a cone filled with sticky cotton candy with the other. Whiffs of roasted peanuts, funnel cakes, and saw dust filled the air. Fun houses perplexed me. I think I’ve only been through one once, because it terrified me.   The fun house effect, illusions, smoke screens, mazes, glass tunnel that spun around, floor that was at an angle, and mirrors that make your… Read More