By Kristyn Perez
Staff Writer for The Daily Grace Co.
I was sitting with my friend at the local, college coffee shop as she anxiously gripped her steaming coffee mug. She struggled to look me in the eyes. Nervously, she fiddled with her hair and glanced side to side around the room, almost as if to make sure that he wasn’t there. …
By Emily S. Davis
Guest Contributor
It’s not that I meant to wander. It’s not that I purposefully determined in my heart to stray from my first love. It was the sinking revelation that I had made the Lord familiar, commonplace. When had His name stopped being so very precious to me? When had things that once moved me suddenly fail to move me anymore? When had that passion for Him become an unrecognizable flicker?
Over time.
Slowly, without purposed intention and devotion and priority to fuel the once passionate heart of mine, my soul slowly withered, and Jesus became a familiar aspect of my life, commonplace and taken for granted, when He is anything but common.
Tricked by life’s busyness and Satan’s cunning patience to slowly lead me away, I didn’t recognize myself as a wanderer until I reflected and realized I had strayed from my first love. This wanderer stood in her pit—with a name that no longer seemed precious, with a hardened heart that wasn’t so easily moved, and a passion in crisis.
The book of Hosea also describes the story of a nation’s wandering status. The people of Israel were God’s own people, and He had not just become familiar to them—they decided He wasn’t enough for them.…
By Sarah Morrison
Former Staff Writer for The Daily Grace Co.
I was once given the advice to “steward your disappointments.” I thought that I understood it then, but I more certainly understand it now. I don’t have to talk about my own sufferings or disappointments in order to convey to you the weightiness and distress that come alongside difficulty.…
By Inonge Siluka
Guest Contributor
What do you do when you just don’t want to hang out with your church family? When you find it difficult to foster relationships in church? Or if you just find church life a bit mundane? Perhaps you’re a new Christian, and you walk into a church full of people you have little in common with, and you don’t know how to relate to them; or maybe you just feel like you never quite fit in anywhere, no matter where you go. It can be hard to deal with these struggles, especially when we know that church should be something good, a blessing, and an important part in our Christian life. The struggle is real. I have been there.…