The Dangling Shoe- living victoriously for God in an unpredictable world.

Yesterday I read a post where many Moms were honestly confessing their struggle with parenting adult children. I'm one of them. They're adults. They are your children. You are their parent. You can't 'undo' any of those roles, but the way you operate in those roles changes significantly as your children become adults. How do you go from teaching, nurturing and guiding them, wiping noses  u have to listen to me because I'm your mother' way. You still soothe hurts, but kissing the boo-boo doesn't do the trick anymore. As I thought about it, the Lord began to form an idea. Praying for our children is so, so important. But praying for our adult children is going to look a bit different. The Psalms is a great place to start. I'm going to begin praying the Psalms for my daughters and son...and in the process, I believe I'm going to begin to understand better how God wants me to relate to, encourage, and share wisdom with them. This week I...

Hezekiah’s prayer in Isaiah 37:14-20 is a powerful moment in history.   The backstory is the King of Assyria was threatening to destroy Jerusalem.  He was a king to be feared- Assyria had already wiped out other nations and people, Scripture uses the terms ‘laid waste’.  It’s not hard to envision what that means. The Assyrians already visited Jerusalem, threw out some threats, and to add insult to injury, they did it speaking Hebrew, so all the people around could hear and understand the threat.  It was a dire situation. Then, Hezekiah received a letter from the Assyrians outlining what they planned to do and how they would do it.  It wasn’t enough that they came in person to taunt and threaten, but then they put it in writing. Hezekiah knew things looked bleak.  Every other nation that faced Assyria was now a part of Assyria, their people dead or enslaved, their resources commandeered, their land absorbed ...