Daughters of promise

God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend.  Job 37:5

From early December through the middle of March, I walked through a bewildering ordeal with my hands. Several fingertips began turning white, then blue, and eventually broke open into painful ulcers. The pain of exposed nerves constantly begged relief. My days narrowed to pain management—making bandages, keeping my hands elevated, keeping my fingers warm, trying to protect what felt increasingly fragile. The simplest acts became impossible: having my hands in water, cooking, washing and drying my hair, typing, playing the piano, and even design work at my computer.  No doctor or specialist could explain what they were seeing.

In that forced stillness, I began asking God whether there was a spiritual parallel, something He was trying to tell me.  And in time, He did speak. Some of what He revealed has already found its way into earlier devotionals. I yielded my voice and my pen to new things He wanted to say through me. Once I did that, the scabs and ulcers peeled up, fell off, only to reveal new pink skin underneath.  I’m watching regeneration in real time.

Lately though, I’ve been speaking to God with a bruised honesty. “I thought I walked closely to you.  I thought I listened well to your voice.  I’m struggling with how long the season was with my fingers, the level of pain, the fear of amputation, and the extent of medical expenses incurred.  Why did you have to talk to me so harshly?”  Beneath the question a trembling effort to understand the severity of His dealings with me. After many days, He was merciful to answer.

“The severity in My speech, the length of time the testing lasted, and the level of pain that accompanied it reflect the weight of the message. I wanted you to know how strongly I feel about it, so you would know how much weight and attention to give it.”

His answer gave it context. It was neither random suffering nor divine carelessness. He was pressing something weighty into me. There are times when His whispers are enough, and there are times when He speaks with a firmer hand because what He is saying must not be lightly handled.

Something in me has been altered. My voice is clearer now. My pen is yielded. And my healing fingers seem to be preaching their own sermon.  When God wounds with purpose, He also restores with tenderness.

Lord, when Your voice carries weight, give me grace to endure and to yield quickly. Amen

By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though they were on dry land. When the Egyptians attempted to do this, they were drowned.  Hebrews 11:29

The children of Israel walked between walls of water and came safely to the other side. The Egyptians entered that same path, but for them the walls did not hold. The sea became a passage for one and a grave for the other. What made the difference?

Israel recognized Moses as God’s appointed deliverer. They followed his God beneath the shelter of the cloud and stepped into the divided sea, trusting the path opened by the breath of Yahweh. What looked like certain death became a corridor of mercy because they believed the One who made a way where there was none. Moses, of course, was only a shadow cast forward by Christ. His lifted staff points me to the greater Deliverer and to what is required of me if I am to leave my own Egypt behind. I do not walk out of slavery by grit or self-reinvention. I come by faith to Christ’s finished atonement and step into the impossible opening His cross has made.

And what of the enemies that pursue me? Like Pharaoh’s army, they come with noise and force, bearing down as though they will surely overtake me. I may hear the rumble of chariot wheels behind me. I may feel the cold spray of fear on my face. Old accusations, old bondages, old griefs can rush at me like a flood, certain they still own me. But if I am hidden in Christ, what threatens me will not finally possess me. My Deliverer will bring me through.

That is the mystery of redemption: the very waters that swallow His enemies become the road beneath the feet of His redeemed. What looks like chaos becomes a threshold. What seems ready to undo me becomes, in His hands, the place where He proves that He alone is Savior. The sea does not decide my future. The One who parts it does.

Oh Lord, the traumatic memories of slavery in Egypt no longer line my face. Thank you.  Amen

“For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.”  Isaiah 44:3

Holy Spirit, be poured out upon those who do not know You and upon those who have no desire for You yet. Chase down the dead in sin and raise them to living faith. Draw near to the brokenhearted, and come tenderly to those who have grown disillusioned, offended, or weary in soul.

Be poured out upon the dry bones within us, the hidden places where death still clings and old sorrow has not yet lifted. Be poured out upon the Word we have heard, studied, and prayed, and yet have somehow kept at a distance from our deepest places. Lay Your hand upon our barren fields where nothing seems able to grow. We are the dry earth, and You are the river. Amen.

I am like the mighty cypress; from Me comes your fruit. Hosea 14:8 

God is aware of the language barrier that exists between the spiritual realm and the physical. Because we are earth-bound and our ability to comprehend His greatness and glory is compromised by our mortality, He is willing to tell us what He is like in terms we can understand. He is quick, throughout Scripture, to say….“I am like a _____________.” He employs the use of illustrations and metaphors that are common to our everyday life. 

What is the significance of God saying that He is like the cypress tree? He is telling me something about His strength and permanence. The cypress tree is renowned for its durability. The doors of St. Peter’s in Rome are made of cypress and even after 1200 years, they show no decay. The cypress groves of Lebanon are well known and referred to in the book of Ecclesiastes as ‘trees which grow up to the clouds.’ 

And then He says something even more intimate: “from Me comes your fruit.”

Whatever fruit in me is alive with beauty and built to last does not rise from striving, but from His life flowing through mine. It comes from Him. What He builds in me will carry His nature. What He reveals will not decay with the passing of years. What He births in my surrendered life carries the scent of eternity on it.

I know what it is to lose sight of that. There have been seasons when my confidence in the eternal was shaken. Loss was stitched into my story, and at times I limped through my faith more than I walked in it. But God has been teaching me to lift my eyes again, to stop grieving as though decay gets the final word. He is inviting me not merely to survive, but to live with young-hearted confidence—to believe that what comes from Him in me is not doomed to wither, and that the deepest things He has spoken over my life are still alive.

Lord, You are everlasting—unchanged by time, untouched by decay. Let my life be rooted so deeply in You that whatever grows from me bears the mark of Your strength and the beauty of what endures. Amen

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?  If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”  Galatians 1:10

Encounters with God change a person permanently. We can not come near Him, hear His voice, and remain as we were. His words do not skim the surface; they pass through us and find the deepest place to land. And as holy and beautiful as that is, it is also costly. Because once God has touched me there, I cannot so easily return to my old ways of relating, hiding, and surviving.

Sanctification is, in many ways, God speaking directly to what is broken. In His presence, my beliefs and perceptions are rearranged. What once felt necessary begins to feel false. If I learned to survive by blending in, by becoming agreeable, by shrinking the truest parts of myself to remain likable, then healing will require more than comfort. It will require surrender. God may ask me to lay down the very strategies that once protected me. And often, the places that were ridiculed, silenced, or misunderstood become the very places where His voice now longs to speak with power.

That is what makes His work so unsettling and so freeing. He calls me out to be the person He created, before I adapted to fit in. And living authentically is not self-expression for its own sake. It is obedience to the person God says I am.

This is where the cost becomes deeply personal, especially with those who have known me for years. Will I let their memory of me become my identity? Or will I be obedient to the fresh call of God on my life? There comes a point when I must decide that fear no longer gets to edit me. I must let the Spirit of God fan into flame what fear taught me to mute.

Lord, give me the courage to be who You created. Not a lesser version.  Whatever you made, You call ‘good’.   Amen

I have recurring dreams that take me back to school, and often, something is wrong. I’ve forgotten an assignment. Forgotten the combination to my locker. Forgotten to study for a test. The dream always carries the same emotional weight. I am unprepared.

At times, that same theme followed me into ministry. One dream in particular has stayed with me.

In it, I woke up one morning relieved to have an open day ahead. But then I glanced at the calendar on my desk and felt my stomach drop. I was scheduled to speak that afternoon at a church several hours from home. I had completely forgotten. There was no time to prepare. I threw on clothes, grabbed one of the Bibles from my desk, and hurried out the door. As I drove, I remembered the topic I had been assigned. I was to describe the Word of God using three words that began with the letter P.

I arrived just in time. I had fifteen minutes before the program would begin. I slipped into a side room, hoping to gather myself, pray, and sketch out a bare-bones outline. But when I reached into my bag for my Bible, I realized that I had grabbed a Bible with the tiniest print. Even with glasses, it would be difficult to read, but then I realized I had forgotten my glasses, too. Everything in me said, Oh no, this is a disaster.

The chairman of the event came toward me, smiling warmly, and said how much she was looking forward to hearing what I would share. I smiled back, but inwardly I thought, Me too.

There was nothing left to do but surrender. I walked to the front, sat down, and felt something unexpected settle over me. Peace. I realized that I was being driven back to the one place I most love to live ~ where I listen for the Spirit. What had been laid up quietly over the years would rise like water from a deep spring.

And it did. The first word came without effort.

The Word of God is priceless.

Then the second word came.

The Word of God is precise.

Then the third word surfaced.

The Word of God is personal.

When I woke up, I realized that some of the best sermons are not the overmanaged ones, polished to perfection and controlled from beginning to end. They are the ones delivered in complete dependence on the Spirit. Rivers of Living Water rise from the deep and saturate the parched landscapes of desperate hearts.

Holy Spirit, it’s not about my emptiness, but Your fullness. Not about my panic, but Your river. Amen

When I was four years old, I had a red pair of play glasses. I would put them on and declare that I could read any book. I couldn’t actually read a word, of course, but that never stopped me. I told stories for hours, believing those little glasses carried some kind of power. In truth, the glasses had nothing to do with it. The charm of it lay in the freedom of a child who had not yet learned to be embarrassed by her gift.

But because I was being raised in a world that felt traditional, measured, and reserved, that kind of bold imaginative expression seemed a little too much. I remember being teased about those red glasses, and in my child-heart I translated it as rejection. I threw the glasses away and pulled in the reigns to my free spirit. I morphed into someone more mainstream. I silenced what was wild and bright and God-breathed in me.

And yet God.

I had a dream a few years ago that has never left me. I was walking alone, and instead of staying on the main road, I veered off to wander where I pleased. Just beyond a stone wall was a large open field. Then suddenly, there it was—an open grave. Inside were the full remains of a dead man. I gasped and asked Jesus, “Who is this?”

He answered, “He’s my child.”

I said, “It’s too late for him, isn’t it?”

And then He said, “Wait. What am I teaching you? What are you to do when you enter a place full of dead men’s bones?”

I answered, “Speak the Gospel to the bones and let You breathe over them.”

“Right,” He said.

I have never forgotten that. Daughters of Promise is the field God carved out for me. It’s the place where I speak to bones:

~ To women who are technically alive but feel dead inside.

~ To women who have been functioning, serving, smiling, enduring, while something essential has gone silent beneath the surface.

~ To women who buried their red glasses years ago and have almost forgotten the sound of their own God-given voice.

What are your red glasses? Where have you traded your gifting for acceptability? Where have you surrendered your authentic self in exchange for belonging, approval, or safety? Where did you begin editing what God wrote, toning down what He made vivid, burying what He called good?

God is not intimidated by the distance between who you are now and who He created you to be. He knows exactly where that girl is buried. He knows how to call her forth. He knows how to reveal, validate, and strengthen the daughter He imagined before the foundation of the world. He is not asking you to become someone else. He is asking you to simply come alive.

Lord, help me stand up straight and let you rebuild what fear dismantled. Amen

When Jesus saw him and knew he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”  John 5:6

A man lay beside the Pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years, unable to walk. When Jesus walked up to him, He asked: “Do you want to be well?” That can sound strange until we remember how costly healing can be. For this man to be made whole, it would mean leaving the place he had known the longest and surrendering an identity shaped by ‘being the man who could not walk.’

And with that question, Jesus also exposed where the man had been placing his hope. The answer came back in logistics: “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred.” He did not yet see that for thirty-eight years; he had fixed his eyes on the pool.  Jesus had to shatter his illusion that the pool was his savior.

The man thought his deepest need was obvious: I need to be healed so I can walk. But Jesus knew there was something more important, something beneath the visible crisis.  Forgiveness. That is often the way of God. What we call the crisis is usually only the surface ache.

Over the last three months, I have faced a health situation involving the potential loss of fingertips. They weren’t receiving enough oxygen. Painful ulcers formed, tissue deteriorated, and the pain was relentless. They are healing now, but only after God got my full attention and gently exposed a corresponding spiritual issue; something old that needed surrender. And when I yielded it, scabs and ulcers began to fall away. Pink skin emerged. Tender skin. New skin.

You will, most likely, see a difference in what comes from my pen.  More to come on all of this.  I’m able to type these words today, instead of dictate.  To God be the glory.

Lord, I am learning that when I come asking you for relief, You reach deeper for something I long ago set aside. I trust you.  Amen