Well. 🙂 For those of you who don’t know me personally, let me do a quick update: my husband lost his job in November. We have been seeking where God would have us apply, be, etc., over the last few months, and God has been gracious to clearly guide us in one particular direction. As…
Author: Jess Connell
5 Questions About Your Spiritual Growth
We have a bush, a beautiful bush that used to grow in our yard. (It was a Japanese Barberry— love them!!) But that was exactly the problem. It grew in the yard-– it had been planted in the middle of the grass. For two years, I mowed AROUND the bush, week in, week out. So earlier this…
5 Things To Do When Your Heart Aches
There is a level of heartache that goes beyond the normal highs and lows of life. It cannot be quantified. Words don’t do it justice. It keeps you up at night, doggedly chasing you, taxing your mental reserves all day long. Even if you’re not an emotional person, tears threaten to fly down your face without…
Do You Rightly Value the Whole Body of Christ?
Can you imagine if your whole physical body was a clamorous, jibber-jabbering mouth? Or if it was a big lumpy wad of knuckles? What if your whole body was made of tendons, with no bones, muscles, or tissues? It is such a gift to have all our myriad body parts, so that we can rightly…
8 Verses That Help Me Fight For Contentment
There have been so many different seasons of my life when I’ve had to *FIGHT* for contentment. 7-months-pregnant in a grimy, coal-heated, 80’s-era-floral-couched, bugged (not the insect kind) apartment in China Months later, when my husband got gravely sick, and we went YEARS with tons of investigation but no medical answers or reasons what had…
Modern-Day Chariots: What Are You Trusting In?
In King David’s day, it went like this: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” ~Psalm 20:7 What are our modern American “chariots?” What do we trust in? I have some ideas. Scan them and see if any of them strike a nerve…
Romance is Unique, Not Universal
Have you heard the message? Every Valentine’s Day, our culture screams that romance is: teddy bears chocolates a pink-and-red-and-white card flowers a date night written on a particular calendar square Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these, but it does make me wonder. How many women and men are being held hostage to a…
6 Challenging Questions For Your Marriage
Here are 6 of my favorite Bible passages about marriage… each passage challenges me, instructs my heart, and keeps me grounded in the beauty of how and why God made marriage. At the end of each verse, I’ve written a question for wives to consider. It helps to understand the significance of each if you…
The Lie You’re Telling Yourself About Time
Pastor Matt Chandler says, “I would contend, no one has lied to you more than you have.” One of the biggest lies I think we tell ourselves, is, “I don’t have time for that.” We haul this whopper out whenever we hit something that we know would be beneficial but we aren’t actually doing it….
What Is Happening In Your Heart When You Yell?
Last week, I shared how yelling is connected to my stress level, and many of you identified & shared your own struggles. Today I want to dig deeper. A common theme, for me and from you in the comments, was that we tell ourselves lies about the yelling that we do. We lie to minimize the…