What God Was Trying to Say to Me through Hosea // Final Week

“The tendency for us to exchange the truth of God for a lie continually confronts each person. We have a startling capacity for self-deception.” –Chris Blumhofer I tried doing that thing where you pray on your knees. I thought it would come out more intentional and more spiritual that way. But my feet fell asleep […]

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Recreational Water // Hosea Week 10

Recreation// noun: the act of creating anew. Recreational water is a nightmare. When you grow up in Florida and you don’t know how to swim, you feel like an alien in a land of attractive flip-flop ocean dwellers with sea-salt waves in their hair. Yet there I was, agreeing to go on a complaint-free day […]

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The Prophets and Pixar’s Inside Out // Hosea Week 8

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.” –A.W. Tozer He would not stop crying. Even for someone like me, with high introverted feeling and […]

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God’s Crime // Hosea Week 7

  “Vicariously if not in fact, we all crucify God for the crime of loving us unconditionally. And when we do, we come face to face with the fact that we have failed to kill what we intended to destroy. “ — Eric Reitan, 2009 “He knows where you’re staying.” I put down the phone […]

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Why We Don’t Listen to the Prophets // Hosea Week 6

“Words are your gods, and somebody is insulting your religion.” –Words and Pictures, 2013 “Honey, you don’t have to talk to him. He’s such a conversationalist, he takes care of the whole thing.” “Fathers and sons are supposed to have conversations. They’re supposed to understand each other, look at each other, and smile. Walk along […]

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Identity Thieves // Hosea Week 5

“This explains so much.” –William Miller, Almost Famous   The best day of eighth grade was when I accidentally knocked Nathan Daley with my viola case, and he scoffed and called me an “orchadork.” I had finally made it. At last week’s Hosea study, Rebecca pointed out that God’s people were making idols out of […]

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Tainted Love // Hosea Week 4

“We’ve made elevator music of Jesus Christ. We’ve made Him the most boring, bland, blah person, and He was the most revolutionary man.” –John Eldredge “Wouldn’t it be funny if the doors didn’t open?” My mom and I were the only people left in her fancy business building. We were riding the elevator down 15 […]

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Juice of the Earth // Hosea Week 3

“So you can imagine my excitement when I arrived at the prophets. Because the prophets, they just punch everybody in the face.” — Jimmy Needham Brayden is probably full blood German. Unaware of the blood clot in his mom’s leg, the fatigue in his father’s voice, or the dog trained to keep his sister alive, […]

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The Man with the Corn // Hosea Week 2

“Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. They grow quietly, spreading underground, and erupt suddenly, all over the place.” -Brian Eno It was my first farmer’s market. I was seven years old when my family finally decided to embrace the Middleburg and seek corn. “Why can’t we just go […]

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If I Can’t Breathe, I Can’t Play // Hosea Week 1

“Getting punched hard in the face is a singular experience.” –Godless, Pete Hautman (2005)   I’ve never been punched in the face, but I have been hit in the gut. It was 1999 and Garrett Underhill kicked the soccer ball so hard into my stomach that I couldn’t breathe. I hunched over and stared at […]

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August 18, 2017