I joined the Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month Blog Tour due to personal experience. In my teens, my grandfather suffered a form of Alzheimer’s combined with dementia and ended up losing his home and much of his possessions before anyone realized he was unable to take care of them and defend himself from con artists. It was a terrible time and as he was living with my family we continued to be baffled by his odd behavior. Like many families who don’t understand the disease and/or don’t recognize the symptoms, my family operated under the mistaken idea that Grandpa could be persuaded to “buck up”Read More →

Christians like to argue over the nature of the thorn in the flesh, whether it’s physical disease or a demonic assault. My response: who says we can only have one thorn in our flesh? I have several of the chronic illness sort. Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome is a hormone problem that can cause depressive moods. On top of that, I have inattentive-type ADD, which can cause meltdowns, especially if I get over-stimulated, and I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which again has triggers that can cause me to regress back to the way I thought as a child. When that happens, I’m stuck thinking like an ADD child/teen inRead More →

Some fear Ebola. Some fear nuclear attacks on or our own governments attacking their own people. Some fear disasters like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Some are so afraid, they ignore that in Mathew 24 Jesus said such phenomena are not signs of the end, implying they’re instead the status quo on the way to the end. It seems to be getting worse since we get reports from further away, faster than ever. If these are “birth pangs,” the earth has been already having contractions for millennia, and we haven’t been measuring long enough, widely enough, to really have any idea how far apart the contractionsRead More →

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Whether Faith and Doubt are in mortal combat depends on what definitions of both words we have in mind. Faith, according to M-W.com, means: 1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyaltyb (1) : fidelity to one’s promises (2) : sincerity of intentions 2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religionb (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust 3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction;especially: a system of religious beliefs <the Protestantfaith> Doubt, according to m-w.com, means: a : uncertainty of belief or opinion that often interferes with decision-makingb : a deliberateRead More →

29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. (Phil 1:29-30) The Apostle Paul tells the Philippians here that grace has not given them the privilege of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, but also to experience pain, punishment, and distress–for his sake. The privilege is to be engaged in the cosmic war, doing our divinely assigned part to advance the gospel. The more suffering we endure in our calling, as a direct result of obeying clear  instructions from theRead More →