Today marks one year since I started working on a website for Chapter 3 Ministries. The time has flown by! I praise God that he has allowed me to do this work and that things are going well. Since my last update in July, I moved my site from WordPress.com to a self-hosted site, this one! The move gave me more control over design and a lot more features. Making this new site was fun. I really enjoy the website layout and design work for this ministry. Code is cool. The code files are just letters, number, and symbols; but when you go live with them, they shape the look and layout of the page. If you know what line(s) of code to change or what custom code to add, you can affect the changes you want. The first time I saw how it worked, I was amazed and hooked! [...]
A special thing happened at church this past Sunday. My husband and I had the chance to testify to the goodness of God in the midst of suffering. We shared about our life situation regarding my chronic health problems and how God has sustained us through it all. It was a real blessing to be able to attend church again and to testify. We are so thankful that we had this opportunity.
This came about because my husband Butch sent an e-mail to the pastor. The pastor is currently preaching a series on suffering called “Hope in the Midst of Suffering: The Gospel According to Job”. Without me knowing about it, Butch wrote to him to share our story with him and to thank him for the series. [...]
Counterfeiting is alive and well in America and across the world. The International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), an organization dedicated to fighting counterfeiting and safeguarding intellectual property, reports that the Department of Homeland Security confiscated counterfeit goods worth more than $1.7 billion at our borders in Fiscal Year 2013. The coalition also reports that counterfeiting is a major problem worldwide.¹ When I think of counterfeiting, I immediately think of money; but all sorts of goods are also counterfeited including car parts, handbags, watches, and jewelry. I wonder if 3D printing technology will open up a whole new world for counterfeiters. If so, the government and the IACC are going to be quite busy.
Being aware that there are fakes out there can go a long way in protecting us from being taken. This is true not only for consumer products but also for matters of faith. We need to look out for counterfeit Christianity. [...]
With 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and 31,102 verses¹, the Bible is a considerable read. I have seen word counts of approximately 780,000.² War and Peace “only” has 561, 304 words!³ Have you read The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy? Combined they are only 576,459 words.³ The Bible exceeds this by over 200,000 words! The Bible is a thick book, but it is wonderful. It contains words of eternal life and the greatest story ever told.
Since the Bible is so big, it is helpful to have resources that summarize things for us. [...]
Suffering is universal. It is experienced by all who live and breathe upon our planet Earth. It cannot be avoided or paid off or scammed. It comes and for some it comes often and brutally. There are many ways to suffer be it emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually. I would not dare to choose which is the easiest to deal with, because suffering is very personal. Some of us can handle physical pain better than emotional or vice versa. In my mind, neither the type nor the amount of suffering can be truly weighed by anyone but the person experiencing it. When people apologize for telling me about their troubles in light of my own suffering, I always tell them there’s no need to apologize. Their troubles are troubles to them. They experience whatever sorrow or pain they do in their own being. If they think it’s bad, then I want to be there for them. I don’t minimize any suffering in light of another.
What I do try to do is share what has helped me through my trials with suffering due to chronic pain. [...]
This past week students everywhere went back to school. New milestones were reached as some started their first day of kindergarten while others started high school. Our family reached our own milestone this past week. We have begun our final year of homeschooling! We started eighteen years ago with our daughter and now we are finishing with our son. He has begun his senior year.
It is not easy to describe what homeschooling has meant to me all these years. I believe it is one of the best decisions my husband and I have ever made. It was right for our family and has brought many blessings. [...]
Beth Moore is a name that many women are familiar with. She is the founder of Living Proof Ministries and the author of many books and Bible studies. Her name is familiar to me as well. I have heard her name off and on through the years, though I have not taken any of her studies. I do know women who have used her material. Some of those women participated in studies offered through the Women’s Ministry at our church. I never pursued her studies there because they didn’t appear to be the kind of studies that I prefer. Recently, I became a lot more interested in Mrs. Moore. This is because I learned that on September 13 our local church is going to be hosting a live Beth Moore simulcast. [...]
In my post God-Fashioned Living I mentioned that there are obstacles that can interfere with submission. Some come from the world around us and some come from within us. Not every wife will experience the same obstacles, but I think it’s safe to say that we all face them. Even when our heart fully desires to follow the Lord’s will, we can still face challenges that hinder our submission. Thankfully with the Lord’s grace and help we can grow in those areas.
This week I’d like to take a look at one obstacle that some wives experience: A Perceived Intelligence Gap. [...]
