Category: Building Christian Character

I recently read that the best way to water your garden is through drip irrigation. The rationale is when the leaves and blooms of veggies stay wet, it creates and opportunity for diseases to grow or things like mold.

Drip hoses look just like other hoses except when you turn them on, water doesn’t shoot out the end. Instead, tiny dots of water slowly seep through the porous hose and slowly soak the plants. At first glance, it looks like it would take forever to get the watering done. Compared to one of those spray guns where water comes out in a fast, bursting stream, using drip irrigation looks inefficient.

The key is to turn it on a leave it running for a while and yes, it really does get the roots completely soaked. The roots are where the plant needs the water and nutrients anyway, not the leaves. You never fertilize leaves. You fertilize roots.

Drip irrigation works on the slow and steady principle. When I think about it, that principle works best with just about everything in life, from getting in shape, to losing weight, to building relationships, to making and saving money. Slow and steady takes longer, but the results are usually better and more permanent.

I think our faith walk is much the same. We’ve all met those people who are just “on fire,” for God. They are often new to the faith and they often burn out just as quickly.

Faith takes time to grow, just like a garden. We have to establish strong and deep roots. It takes prayer and Bible study and worship. It takes Christian community. It’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit, so it’s not something we can simply create. It takes patience and obedience. It takes time.

But, if we take the time to walk with Jesus and be patient, a little bit at the time. Our faith, the faith that can be the size of a tiny mustard seed, can move mountains. That makes me smile and gives me peace, because I can do slow and steady. I’ll bet you can too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂

My kids only have three days left before summer break, three short days. But, you would think it’s three months. They are dreading the last three days of school. They are tired and ready to be done.

My daughter has finals. She missed exempting one of them by three points on a test. She has an A in the class, but this particular teacher was more focused on a particular test than the overall grade. No big deal, right? That little situation caused hysterics.

Have you ever noticed that when you get very close to the finish line is the time that you feel most ready to give up?

I’ve noticed this phenomenon before. Whether you are getting ready to leave your current job, or move to a new house, graduate, or even if you are in training. The very last part often feels like the hardest. It seems like it really is the darkest before the dawn.

Our little church community has been looking for a permanent home for fourteen years now. It’s been a long hard road for them, but they have held onto the firm belief that a “church” is the people who worship together, who make a community, not the building. They have had several temporary homes, but an opportunity has recently materialized that looks to be the answer to years of prayers.

We are new members there. The entire process seems to be moving very quickly to our family, but there are members who are really starting the see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. They didn’t give up, even when it seemed impossible.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Galatians 6:9. “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Paul is talking about doing good  to our fellow man. Perhaps though, if we are in close relationship with God and listening for His voice and doing what He calls us to do, we can apply it to other areas in our lives as well. If we work hard and keep our eyes on Him, we will eventually succeed, even if our success looks differently than we thought it would. We succeed when we obey. Our success builds faith.

Could it be possible that when we are closest to success is when our enemy attacks us the hardest? When you think about it, we aren’t a threat at the beginning of a journey and maybe not much of one in the middle, but right there at the end, especially if our success will build our faith and glorify God in some way, that’s when we have the biggest target on our heads.

So, if you feel like you can’t take just one day more of your current journey, say a prayer and dig in, you might be in the home stretch. Success might be just around the next corner. Keep going, one foot in front of the other. Never give up! There might be a harvest on the horizon. You don’t want to miss it.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂

My mama was a city girl. She grew up in town and walked to school on sidewalks. My parents moved us out to the country when I was just learning to walk. Mama taught me as early as I could remember to run away if I ever saw a snake. My daddy and granddaddy felt the same way. I grew up with a natural fear of snakes, all snakes.

I married a man who grew up in rural Georgia who shared my healthy fear of snakes, but in the past few years, we have changed our minds about them.

Our yard is very wooded. We have lots of squirrels, birds and chipmunks and even though we don’t often see them, snakes. Several years back, a Copperhead snake bit our dog. We never saw the snake, but the dog required medical attention. She fully recovered, and I became very wary of poisonous snakes.

The snake in the picture above, is a Kingsnake. It was hanging out near our hot tub last weekend. My hubby ran up on it as he was getting ready to work on the tub. As I walked around the corner, he called to me that a snake was back there. I froze.

“What kind?” I asked with dread.

He said it was a Kingsnake and I breathed a sigh of relief. Those guys kill the poisonous ones. It would be really foolish of us to kill one. Still, old feelings die hard and I watched from a very safe distance filled with fear of it, even though I knew it wouldn’t harm me.

It made me wonder about what other misplaced fears I might be carrying around with me. We pick up all kinds of fears over a lifetime. Some of them are good and keep us safe. It was certainly wise of Mama to warn me and my siblings about snakes. It’s not like you want to trust a five-year-old to discern the difference between poisonous and nonpoisonous ones.

But, as we get older, I think maybe it’s incumbent on us to figure out what we should really be frightened of and why. Adults shouldn’t fear all snakes or all spiders either, for that matter. Christians aren’t supposed to fear much of anything.

The Bible tells us, “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7

What does that mean? Maybe it means that we need to ask ourselves what kind of fears are we carrying around. Unfounded fears simply hold us back from living in freedom. They imprison us. If we have needless fears, we can always pray about them and give them to God. He can replace them with peace and power and then we can live as we are supposed to, eyes focused on Him.

We may find through prayer, that most of our fears are nothing more than Kingsnakes, not Copperheads.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂

When I got called in yesterday to sub, I had no idea why. It turned out that it was for a teacher who had to have her dog put to sleep that morning. As I shared in a post last week, I recently went through that myself. When she arrived at noon, we talked about it a few minutes and shared stories. I hugged her and offered her some comfort that could really only come from someone who had “been there.”

Later, in the car rider line, I was talking to a friend of mine who had a serious struggle last year resulting from the betrayal of a really good friend of hers. That same friend had brought her into the Christian faith, so the betrayal hurt her very deeply. She and I have discussed many times why God didn’t work it out differently. I always assured her that He does have a plan and His own timing even when we can’t understand.

Well, it turns out that she had coffee with another friend of hers a couple of days ago who shared some things that were going on in her own life and in one of her relationships and my friend got it. She said it was like a light bulb moment, when she realized that the only way that she was able to  help this friend was because she had “been there,” herself.

The bad stuff from her past, all of the pain, suddenly made sense. She said she felt an amazing sense of peace and relief.

When we surrender our stuff to God, He can do amazing things with it. When I say stuff, I mean pain, betrayals, disappointments, failures and heartache. He can use those things and create something beautiful to help others along in their journey. It doesn’t matter whether or not we can see it; He can.

But, we shouldn’t limit ourselves or Him to the negative stuff either. He can also use our successes, strong healthy relationships, and joy too. His power is limitless. He wants everything in our hearts, good and bad and all He wants from us is to give it to Him and to trust.

Wherever we are right now, whatever we are going through, we never walk alone. He can redeem any situation and He always wants to hold our hand on the journey. The question is, are we willing to reach for His?

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂