Don't Stop Believing

Today is the first day of Advent 2025, and I wish you and yours all of the blessings and peace of this lovely season of anticipation. This first Sunday of Advent actually marks the beginning of a new year in the Church calendar. I love that our annual rhythm starts fresh with the most hopeful and amazing occurrence in all of history—the coming of the Savior of the world in the most unlikely scenario of all! No person could have dreamed up the plan for redemption and restoration that rested in the heart of our Good God from the beginning. He is determined to have a huge, loving family to join Him in the tending of His beautiful garden, and this season of Advent commemorates the worth-the-wait longing in all of our hearts for that dream to reach its fullness. For we wait with HOPE: Jesus really did come the first time, and He really will return to make His blessings known far as the curse is found. 

A blessed Advent to you!

I am very grateful that my husband and parents and I were able to attend my sister‘s  birthday party this year. We may live states apart, but our hearts are forever intertwined with so many memories and so much love. One thing that happened at this birthday party was a little karaoke, and it was amazing! We have a hilarious family memory of a vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina decades ago when the beach strip first had a recording studio for passers-by. So what did the teenaged sisters of the mid-80s do? Why, we promptly made a fabulous recording of ourselves singing the theme to Flashdance, which was all over the airwaves at that time. The funniest part of the story is the fact that my father, a submarine officer at the time, took this absolutely atrocious recording with him on deployment once, so if any one of those sailors is reading this, I would like to extend my deepest apologies for the damage that might have occurred to your eardrums during that tour.


I guess I didn't learn anything from that original performance, because I still love karaoke, and my go-to song is Don’t Stop Believin' by Journey. It just so happens that Steve Perry and I sing in a very similar range, and it just so happens that that song is one of my favorites of all time—for myself and all of the other optimists out there, it is a kind of anthem! No matter how horrible or dreadful life might seem, don’t stop believing—hold onto that feeling that things can be better. I have spent some time this year talking about my love for music and how it has played an important part in my life, and I hope you can relate with your own meaningful songs. Music can carry such powerful memories and ideas, and it with this particular song that I would like to launch a few thoughts about spiritual warfare today.


This subject is met with widely varying opinion in Christian churches today. It just so happens that the flavor of church I have been associated with for the last few decades loves this topic. And I love it too. I will never forget the day that the first Frank Peretti book fell into my life, and I stayed up all night long finishing it. It gave imagery to something that I really suspected was true—there is a spiritual battle, and we are in it whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not.


I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone through some things that really defy all of my understanding about how the world works. Why do terrible things happen to really good, moral people? Why are there so many stumbling blocks and seemingly insurmountable walls in life? Why is there so much division and dissension and hatred floating around everywhere? These are difficult questions with an ever-present reality to be faced.

Sadly, for many of us, an unrealistic idea of a relationship with Jesus enters our thinking that looks something like this:

If I do/don’t do A,B or C, then God will ______________.

​This is simply not true. But when we hold that belief and encounter something in life that challenges this thinking, it can be really disconcerting and devastating. If we think God owes us something because of our actions, we are going to be surprised. 

I have recently been through something that challenged my beliefs to the core. And frankly, all of my understanding of spiritual warfare sort of flew out the window, and I was left looking for some new answers to questions I had assumed I understood correctly. I’m so grateful that God is so generous with answers and knowledge when we earnestly seek Him, and I’d like to share a few things that I have learned lately about engaging in the spiritual battle of life.

1. Prayer truly is a lifeline. One of the most beautiful things about going through something difficult is the way that it can, if you allow it to, push you closer and closer to God. I am so surprised to look backward in life and see that some things that I thought were the very worst thing of all time while they were happening, turned out to be some of the sweetest seasons in life. You just can’t know how amazing it is to be snuggled up to God in desperation until you’re desperate enough to snuggle up to Him. It is so wonderful to be close to God! This is what He wants, and this is one of the reasons He allows us to encounter difficult things in life.

He doesn’t give us more than we can bear, and He helps us through like nothing else in the world can. I faced a long-term illness as a younger woman, and I honestly look back with a little bit of wistfulness at how near I sensed God was at that time. I know He is always near, but you just don’t recognize it until you need Him. Opening up that strong connection to God in prayer is one of the most wonderful gifts in life, and it is a very powerful weapon in the spiritual battle. Praying for people, praying for our enemies, praying over terribly difficult situations, opening up a petition to God for very difficult things that we just don’t always see until we’re in them is such an important part of restoring this broken world. Don't be afraid of difficult circumstances: let God minister to you and through you in them. 
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2. We live in the upside-down world.  In this world, it’s you versus me, and scratch all you can out of life because there’s not enough for everybody. If you are against me, I am against you. If you hurt me, I’m going to hurt you even worse. The world is tough and mean and unforgiving.

But then, in the fullness of time, along came Jesus, who showed us exactly what God is like, which is so unlike anything we could have come up with on our own. The kingdom of God is so unlike the system of this world! God‘s kingdom is totally opposite the thing we are always building for ourselves—it is forgiveness, and love for people who hate you and are against you, and self-sacrifice, and turning the other cheek. It is allowing yourself to be wronged rather than fighting back in the world’s ways; it is absorbing the blow of injustice. God's Kingdom arrived with Jesus' first coming, and grows with everyone who believes in Him, and is absolutely subverting the empire of the world by moving in the opposite direction with faith, hope, love, and so much forgiveness.

So as believers in Jesus Christ, it is our privilege:
-to bring order and peace into chaos
-to bring truth against deception
-to bring beauty where there is ugliness and despair
-to bring forgiveness into every relationship
-to bring God's love everywhere we go

3. Don't Stop Believing. There is an amazing interchange between Jesus and His disciples recorded in John chapter 6 that we've been marveling over at church for a few months...

Then they said to Him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

All I have to do is believe God? Awesome, no problem. This sounds way too easy, and way too good to be true…until you realize how challenged your faith is each and every day of your life! 

Wait, someone I thought was a dear friend seriously betrayed me...now what?
There’s illness, there’s division, there’s brokenness, there’s hurt by people we love, there’s so much trouble and chaos and confusion in the world, and literally everything on earth is conspiring to make us doubt God‘s goodness.

Remember the enemy's old trick, “did God really say…?” That trick gets used every day, several times a day. And circumstances in our lives are sometimes so difficult that we are challenged to believe that God is as good as He says he is. Yet this is our job, to believe Him.

There are two times Jesus marveled at people’s faith in the Bible. Once He marveled at a woman’s amazing faith, also known as belief, and another time he marveled at a whole town‘s lack of faith, lack of belief. And at that latter place He could not do any miracles. This should startle us into paying attention. Jesus could not do miracles somewhere? Sadly, yes, when people don’t believe Him. This does challenge me. I want to open up channels of hope and healing into everyone I’m around...

-into my town that I love so much
-into my church family that I love so much
-into my own family that I love so much!

I want to believe God, no matter what. So the thing we’ve been discussing lately in our gathering is that there are three powerful things that serve to make our belief strong and flourishing:

Faith is looking back into the past and recognizing all of the amazing things that God has done and How faithful He is. Our belief grows when we place our faith upon Him alone, as He never fails.

Love is right now. We know that God is moving right now because He fills our hearts with otherwise inexplicable love. The world does not have this, but God absolutely overflows with it, and His kingdom overflows with right-now love. God loved us when we were sinners and His enemy, and He gives us the incredible ability to love our own enemies and this just astounds me, every time. He helps us overflow with love everywhere we go because He is so good.

Hope is looking forward into the future with the strength of faith and love. We can march confidently forward into the future with real hope, no matter how wild or terrible or devastating our circumstances seem, because God is with us and He really is as good as He says He is.

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So this season, as the people around us are engaging in our holy days with us, may God help us do a little spiritual warfare everywhere we go. Let's pray for those we encounter each day—who knows if anyone else is praying for the people God lays on our hearts? Let God use our lives and choices to right some of the wrongs in this world. And let's determine each day to BELIEVE that God is as good as He says He is, because it's true.  This season of waiting for the Christ is such a beautiful time to let our own faith and light shine in the darkness, and may the Lord's peace and joy fill our hearts as we choose to believe Him! 

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Friday Night on the Frio River