enLIVEn Devotionals

Abiding in Jesus - Overflowing His Spirit

The Gift

Every time the Lord speaks to me any bit of wisdom or sends me a message through someone else, I think of it as a gift to me. If someone gave me rubies and gold, it wouldn’t mean as much as one piece of wisdom from my Lord. I received a gift today. I feel like I say that so much to myself. Each gift seems better than the last -- each so bright and shiny, each has its own niche and characteristic. Today’s gift was so special because God used my exact wording to speak a message to me. While watching Joyce Meyer this morning, Joyce used the same words I have been using in my private prayers ... Read the Post

A Sister in Worship

This past weekend was our annual Women's Conference. I had invited friends, neighbors, my mom and sisters. While walking the dog the first morning, I prayed for God to free me and my sisters and Mom of any ailment that might threaten to keep us from receiving what God had in store of us at the conference. I prayed that I would be more concerned about "being" than about hosting while my family was here. My sister and I barely got out of the house for the first night of the conference on time to meet my friends for dinner at a local bistro. We had to leave my husband with instructions for my ... Read the Post

His Watchful Eye

Teenagers are a bit crazy. It’s a well-known fact. My sister and I proved this one summer as we traveled by bus from Northeast Texas to Charleston, West Virginia. We were eighteen and sixteen, on the road for thirty-six hours to visit close family friends. It was the first time my parents had sent any of us on this kind of trip. We’d all gone away to camp at one time or another. I had spent the summer away when I was fourteen. But this was different. This was before the cell phone (there was life before cell phones?) so there was no way to keep in contact along the way. They put us on a ... Read the Post

Seasons

It was a brisk March morning as I walked along the tree-lined sidewalk near our home. My dog snuffled along beside me, his nose intent on anything and everything squirrel. Florida winters are milder than much of the rest of the country, so our fall season happens about mid-winter. I noticed each live oak we walked past was at a different stage in its seasonal cycle. Some of the trees were completely bare -- their spindly, gray-brown branches naked -- and I shivered from the bold reminder of winter. Other trees were already decorated with tiny, bright mint-green buds of new life. “Here’s ... Read the Post

Happy in Any State

For most of my life, my family moved. A lot. I’ve lost count of how many times but I can still recite most of the addresses and a few of the phone numbers. The summer I turned sixteen, my family made a major move. We lived in a rural area of central Pennsylvania. My father wanted to finish Bible college to get his degree to pastor. After months of prayer, God led him to a Bible college in northeast Texas. Yes, you read that correctly. We moved from Pennsylvania to Texas. If there can be more polar opposites than those two places and still be in the United States, I haven’t seen them yet. ... Read the Post