LOVE YOUR SEAM RIPPER By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.” - Isaiah‬ ‭53:4-5‬  Lord, of late I find myself struggling with receiving what I have not earned.  With some recent medical tests, the costs are mounting and I feel uneasy, even guilty, that our hard-earned money is being spent solely on me.  There is no way, with the current busyness of my life, for me to take on a job to offset the costs.  Even if I had the time, I don’t have the wherewithal to do so.  I find myself wanting to pay for it all out of a bank account set up before we were married.  All of our finances are commingled now, so it is silly, but somehow it feels less selfish to pay for it all from an account that represented what I had worked for, instea

  THE CHRISTMAS STAR By: Julie Souza Bradley “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” – Luke 2:11-14 NIV More than two thousand years ago, there was a declaration of God’s love and faithfulness that hung in the starry night sky.  It was a proclamation of the good news that God had not forgotten mankind, but rather, He had been patiently waiting to present them with hope and the ultimate gift — a Savior to rescue them from sin and death — the singular sacrifice that would tear the veil, reconciling man with God. The angels told of the magnificent gift to shepherds that night, and indeed, when they approached the manger, they found the promised gift wrapped in swaddli

  A FAMILY RESEMBLANCE By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” - Ephesians 5:1-2.  We have all seen people that look like their dogs, and older couples that have spent so many years together, that they take on the same mannerisms, can finish one another’s sentences and look more like twins than husband and wife.   I don’t know about you, but I want that oneness with God. I want to be changed to think like He thinks, love like He loves and respond to the insults of this world with the same exuberant forgiveness.   Recent tensions have exposed a short fuse I had hoped was in my past.  It grieves me, because this vestige of decaying flesh smells more of Hell than of Heaven.  They say we become like those with whom we spend the most time.  So sadly, this revelation bears witness that I have spent too much time with t

Merry Christmas!

  WORSHIP THROUGH WEAKNESS By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly I was struggling and praying while on the treadmill this morning.  For eighteen months I have been hoarse from medication that I take for asthma.  As a worship leader, it grieved me that the gift that had brought me such joy, had been taken away.  I missed worshipping Him.  So, I cried out to the Lord, asking Him to return my voice. His response was swift, “Until now you have worshipped me from your strength. Now I want you to worship me from your weakness.” Just then I was finishing a hard workout when it dawned on me, that as I struggled with my weakness on the treadmill, doing something I disliked, He received the denial of my flesh as worship, because I had done it to honor Him in my body.  And earlier, when I had encountered someone difficult, He had received my held tongue and kind response as worship, too.  In our strength, the glory we offer is constrained by our ability.  But in our weakness, His power rests upon us, an

THE MYTH OF THE “PERFECT MOTHER” By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly Ask any mother of small children and she will tell you of days when she missed a meal, walked around with smeared peanut butter on her shirt or didn’t get a chance to even brush her hair.  We consider it nurturing to little Johnny’s social development for him to have 27 play dates in a month, but for us to take a 45 minute nap, or spend 5 minutes alone in the bathroom to brush the Cheetos out of our hair is somehow selfish.  Why is that?  I’ll tell you why.  We have bought in to a lie.  The image of the perfect mother is a myth. The enemy has dressed this lie in such noble clothing.  He has convinced us that the “Perfect Mother” should look like a Stepford Wife, bake like Betty Crocker, care for needs like Mother Theresa and solve the world’s problems—all while wearing our Wonder Woman cape.  No one can do it all. I am here to lift the weight of guilt off of your shoulders, Beloved.  God does not expect that of you.  The e

WINGS AS EAGLES By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” ‭‭– Isaiah‬ ‭40:31‬ ‭KJV‬‬ My favorite spot to vacation is Alaska.  And one of my favorite activities while there is to use my binoculars to scan the nearby trees for bald eagle.  Their bodies blend in with the trees, but their heads are clearly visible.  They look like so many ping pong balls dotting the trees.  They are such majestic and graceful animals, with powerful wings that lift them to soar among the clouds. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born with wings.  So, it has always perplexed me how a terrestrial creation, as myself, could possibly fly without them. The Lord led me to my concordance.  I found that the word, “WAIT,” does not mean to simply bide our time.  Wait means to “gather, bind together, expect, look, wait patiently.”  Waiting is

  SWEET WORDS By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” – 1 Thessalonians‬ ‭5:11‬ ‭NIV‬‬ My eyes opened this morning with a tinge of dread at what the day might hold. It has been a challenging few months, and I had started to feel like nothing would ever change.  I finished praying and picked up my phone, and there I found a single sentence that changed everything.  The message was from someone I didn’t even know, but their encouraging words put hope back in my heart. Words can be so powerful.  We may not be able to hold them in our hands, but they are tools of creation nonetheless.  In the beginning God spoke everything into being with mere words.  And made in His image, we have been given a similar power to create with our words, as well.   Scripture cautions us, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth co

  GUARD YOUR VALUABLES By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly “Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” – 2 Timothy‬ ‭1:14‬ ‭NIV‬‬ A while ago I had a disturbing conversation with a man who had been raised in church from the day he was born.  When the topic came around to salvation, I was shocked when he said, “I have heard about Jesus dying on the cross so many times, that I am getting tired of it.  It’s cheesy.”   Hearing that turned my stomach. How do we go from tearful gratefulness at the foot of the cross, to viewing the cross with contempt? If we are careless in guarding our perception of the value of our blessings, something precious can begin to be seen as commonplace and eventually contemptible.  It is an often unrecognized tactic of the enemy to steal our blessings (John 10:10).  By introducing the temptation of “new,” he attempts to plant seeds of discontentment, complacency and familiarity that can mature into con

FOLLOW THE PILLAR By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly We are in a tough season when, like God’s people in Exodus, we find ourselves extracted from familiar comforts to wander in the desert.  We are moving toward promise, but the journey is arduous. Things may look bleak, but take heart.  God in His goodness graciously does not abandon us there. “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” – Exodus‬ ‭13:21‬ ‭NIV‬‬ Day or night they needed to be prepared to move when the pillar did.  They were on a JOURNEY, not yet at their destination.  During a long wait, it might have been tempting to put down roots and settle in.  But the focus needed to be on following the pillar.  To resist following brought the risk of feeling alone and without light, in the dark, desert night. So it can be in life.  We zealously receive God’s assignment, but then shift our focus from

 MY ECLIPSE:  A Confession By:  Julie Souza Bradley Lilly We live out in the countryside.  Apart from the occasional goat escaping a field or coyote attacking a neighbor's chickens, we live a pretty quiet existence.  I was reading through an old journal today and came across entries about the eclipse that took place in August of 2017.   The previous week has been peppered with scores of news reports about the approaching total eclipse.  Until then, the most recent total eclipse visible in the continental United States was in 1918, when the moon slowly slid herself between the Earth and the sun.   On that day at our location, we had expected the sun to be obscured by approximately 88%.  Depending on their location, other folks in our nation would have see the sun completely covered for nearly two and a half minutes as their landscapes dipped into darkness. Watching the news that day, people were excited, giddy and somewhat emotional.  Others said that seeing the eclipse was a life

HUNGRY FOR BREAD By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly When I fast from food, about mid-morning my stomach starts to growl, and images of tasty foods begin to parade through my mind, in an attempt to coerce me to eat.  Similarly, when my cellphone is dead, it is surprising to me how often I think about reaching for it for one reason or another.   We develop habits and hungers in our lives, and they drive us to feed whichever belly is gnawing with emptiness.   We may fast from food for a period of time, but eventually going without will lead to our demise.  Food and water are necessary for survival.  And while I would never intentionally starve myself, I can’t help but think how often I have gone without regularly feeding my spirit.  Hollow cheeks in my mirror would remind me to eat food. I wonder how well-fed my spirit would look in a spiritual mirror. “Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”” – Matthew‬ ‭4:4‬ ‭

STEPPING OVER THE LINE By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly  “If angry, beware of sinning. Let not your irritation last until the sun goes down;” - Ephesians 4:26 WNT It’s interesting. The Bible does not tell us to not be angry, but rather, to be angry, but not to sin in the process.   Recently something happened and I became very angry, very quickly.  Like an uncontained wildfire, what started out small, quickly got out of control. In a split second, my heart changed from righteous anger out of love and desire to protect, to sin anger that wanted to punish, as the focus of my anger shifted from a circumstance to a person. Jesus had a very long fuse, but occasionally became angry, yet He never sinned.  He turned over the merchants’ tables in the temple in righteous anger over sin.  The difference is that Jesus remained in control of both the focus and severity of His anger.  He controlled it; it did not control Him. And in the process His love never wavered.  In this season we have seen count

  A THANKSGIVING CHALLENGE By: Julie Souza Bradley Lilly What are you thankful for? Those of us living in the U.S. are very familiar with the Thanksgiving tradition.  Every year on the fourth Thursday in November, friends and families gather around the table to enjoy a harvest feast and offer thanks to God for the blessings of the preceding year. It’s been an unusual and stressful year for us all.  So many things have cropped up that we never believed would happen in a million years.  Well, this year has been that one in a million—a year for the record books, but not necessarily in good ways. So what are you thankful for?  Where do you see God’s generous hand of blessing?  Without remembering our blessings and thanking God for them, peace slips through our fingers, because peace and thankfulness are inextricably linked. Scripture encourages us: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with THANKSGIVING, present your requests to God. And the PE