PLAYING TELEPHONE Are you old enough to have played “Telephone” as a child?  In telephone, the first person in a line whispers a phrase to the person standing to their right.  Each person repeats the phrase to the person to their right, until the whispered phrase has made it to the end of the line.  Then the last person repeats what they heard.  The results can be hilarious. Try as we might, our memories are imperfect.  We are unable to accurately remember every detail, so our well-meaning brains fill in the blanks with plausible created memories that we will believe are true. Watch any trial and you will see a variety of testimonies that are completely incompatible with one another.  The longer the time between the crime and the trial, the more likely facts will be embellished, altered or omitted, even if everyone is striving to be truthful. Why do I say all of this?  Because the enemy is bent on killing, stealing and destroying (John 10:10)...

DREAMING IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly What are you afraid of?  What is preventing you from pursuing the dreams that God has planted in your heart? It’s tempting to look at ourselves in the mirror and see how inadequate we are for our assignments.  The task appears beyond our sphere of influence, beyond our understanding, our strength and even our faith.  We see the gap between what we have and truly what is required to succeed, and the disparity prevents the dream from ever becoming a reality. Therein lies the miracle—the mystery of partnering with God.  He links His ability to our disability.  He confounds the wise with His display of strength in our weakness.  He takes the lid off the box of our imagination to illuminate the way where there seems to be no way. Beloved, if you are waiting to obey God until you are fully prepared, you will never begin.  Every assignment is designed to be done in partnership with Him...

FINISH WELL By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly Marathons can be brutal.  I once watched as an exhausted runner collapsed mere yards from the finish line.  My heart sank.  Few things are as heartbreaking as working hard, but not finishing. It is tempting to want to give up when we are exhausted, and when as far as the eye can see, there is only a long, lonely road in the desert.  Waning strength asks discouraging questions.  Why did we begin on this course?  Why not just give up?  Who would know? Is this you today, Beloved? Jesus was similarly tempted in the desert (Matt 4:1-11).  At the beginning of His ministry He spent 40 days fasting, with the tempting whispers of the devil as His only companion. The devil offered relief from His suffering for the price of disobedience to the Father.  Where would we be had Jesus succumbed to temptation?  We would be sheep without a shepherd and hopelessly lost without a Savior. Jesus ...

IT IS FINISHED By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly How old were you when you came to Jesus?  I was three, but I was insecure about my salvation for several years.  When I would sin, I would question all over again if I was saved and if God would forgive me. My mom gave me wise counsel.  She said, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He lived a sinless life and died for your sins?  Are you truly sorry for what you have done?  Do you want to be forgiven?” She continued, “If you are sure you mean it, go in your room, close the door and pray, ‘Father, I am sorry for what I have done.  I believe Jesus died to forgive all of my sins.  Please forgive me.  Wash me clean.  Come into my heart.  Be my Lord and Savior.  Change me.  In Jesus’ Name.’  Then get your Bible and write the date inside the front cover.  Any time the enemy whispers doubt about your salvation, show him that date as proof that you me...

WASHED CLEAN By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly‬ The enemy has only so many tools in his bag with which to discourage us, slow us down and get us off course.  For me, the tool he uses most often is guilt.  My tongue tends to get me in trouble.  When it does, my apologies come quickly and are genuine.  But even though I may have asked both the person and the Lord for forgiveness, there is a shame that often lingers.   This morning on TV, a cute, little duckling was getting a bath to remove dirt and oil from its feathers, and the Lord spoke to my heart.  “Like this little duck, you were covered in sin, but I have washed away your shame.” “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” – ‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭12:2‬ ‭KJV‬‬ I always thought that “despising” meant simply that he hated it.  After some...

 FLIP THE CANVAS By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3:11‬ ‭NIV‬‬ Sitting in church that evening, I was less than impressed with the guest artist who was bringing the message.  On stage was an easel and canvas.   He spoke about the transforming love of God, as he worked using broad strokes, with charcoal as his medium.  I’ll be honest, his “work” looked like a mess to me.  I couldn’t make heads or tails of his drawing. It wasn’t until he finished and flipped the canvas 180 degrees, that we gasped with amazement.  What had looked like a series of mistakes was transformed into the face of Jesus.  We could not see the meaning or beauty of his work, until we could view it from the artist’s point of view. Life can be that way.  We pray and pray, but the mess we are in appea...

THE TROUBLE WITH TWO SPEEDS By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly When speaking to me about my spiritual walk, the Lord has always used the analogy of riding a bike.  I don’t have the best balance, so riding a bike is exhausting and even a bit scary.  I much prefer walking. Today I was thinking about my old bike and wondering why they don’t make two speed bikes, when the Lord spoke to my heart: “You strive to live in two speeds—standstill and breakneck.” His message began to unfold in my heart.  I push myself to reckless speeds that force me to focus my attention on the task at hand, to the exclusion of everything else.  Then, in exhaustion, I collapse into restless sleep. At neither speed am I focused on Him. In one, I am focused on tasks.  In the other, I am unconscious.  There is no speed where I am both awake and aware.  He is revisiting something that I have yet to master:  Rest. “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over a...

HIDDEN BEAUTY By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “If our spines were visible from the outside, we would be much more likely to take good care of them.”   I repeated this phrase countless times over my 32 years in chiropractic practice—usually in response to a new patient lamenting having neglected their spine. Vanity causes us to put higher priority on what we can be seen over what is invisible. In 2019, beauty was estimated to be a $532 billion dollar industry.  Every year more is being spent on cosmetics, tooth whitening, plastic surgery, hair implants, fashion and the like.  We strive for an image that will attract what we desire, investing time and money to attain an appearance that is impossible to maintain longterm. We fight the visible aging of our bodies, while there are aspects of our lives that remain overlooked, because we can’t see them with our eyes.  We tend to place value on what can be seen, while discounting the invisible, neglecting it...

SHORE OF PEACE By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly Life is a series of choices.  We all make dozens of them every day—how to respond to comments, what to buy, how to spend our time, who to spend it with, what to eat for dinner and how many bites to take. Good or bad, every word we speak plants a seed.  Every bite of food can help or harm.  And every minute has the opportunity to change us.  Every choice has the power to strengthen or weaken our resolve. We commonly seek God for big decisions in life, but often it is the little decisions that have a greater cumulative effect than the big ones.  Little choices are powerful things.  Like sculpting tools, they shape our habits and add detail to our character.  Like lenses, they alter our focus and like a rudder, they shift our course. We need the mind of Christ for every decision, not just the big ones.  Without it, the unchallenged counsel of our bad habits, errant beliefs and past hurts ...

THE ROAR OF THE LION By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” – 1 Peter 5:8 Lions may be beautiful, but I wouldn’t want to come upon one in the wild.  They are agile and strong, with paws the size of a dinner plate.  And their roars can be heard up to five miles away.  The interesting thing is that usually it isn’t the roaring lions that are the most dangerous. Lions roar most commonly as a warning to intruders that they are entering claimed territory.  Often this role is delegated to old lions that are missing teeth or that are slow and no longer able to hunt.  They serve as sentinels to warn the rest of the pride. Roaring can also serve as a distraction.  Think about it.  Why would a stalking lion announce its presence when trying to sneak up on prey?  When hunting, a lion roars to frighten prey, prompting it to run in the o...

GOD OF ALL COMFORT By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles,” ‭– 2 Corinthians‬ ‭1:3-4 ‭NIV‬‬‬ I have a LOT of nicknames.  Generally I have earned them, because of something that I have done or a way that I am.  One of my nicknames is “Hot Hands,” because my hands become hot when I lay hands on people and pray. Looking at all some of the names of God, it is lovely to see what they say about Him.  They remind us of His nature and the many ways He comes to serve and comfort us daily. Reading through them, I am confident that I know Him well as my “Savior.”  The same is true of “Living Word,” “Friend,” “Joy” and “Wonderful Counselor.”  He has shown Himself to me by those names many times.  There are other names that I know Him by in my intellect—not intimately in my heart—“Healer,” “Deliverer” and “Prince of...

SAYING “YES” TO MIRACLES By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam.”  The man went and washed—and saw.” – John‬ ‭9:6-7‬ ‭MSG‬‬ Sometimes we pray and pray and nothing seems to happen. The blind man in our verse had been blind since birth. No doubt he had prayed many times for healing, but his prayers remained unanswered until he met Jesus.  In reading this passage today, the Lord brought something to my attention by asking this question: “What was required of this man that he might receive healing?” Before now, I had never considered that he needed to do anything. On second glance, I see that he needed to: 1. Ask in faith – in doing so, he acknowledged his belief in Jesus’ ability. 2. Be willing to look foolish – the prescription for his healing made no logical sense, but he   wanted to be healed more than h...