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What Now?

What Now?

Three Important Questions to Ask Ourselves We’ve had our lives tossed upside down like a trailer in a tornado. Which way is up, where is the exit? How do I get off this crazy ride? Disheveled and desperately craving carbs, we crawled out of the rubble to see what was left standing. As our country begins its long-awaited reopening, we dust ourselves off and look around at what the world has become. This feeling of displacement is unwelcome and uncomfortable. For those of us wh

Where Am I Going to Church?

Where Am I Going to Church?

I often get asked where I’m going to church, *smile* I’ll get to that. When we left the church in 2000 that we had helped plant in 1996 (let me be completely honest, we were kicked out for disagreeing with the pastor and “causing discord”), I was so hurt. I felt discouraged, displaced, and completely destroyed. I have to add here…there was a day when I couldn’t admit that we were kicked out, I was ashamed and I would feel the need to explain, but not anymore. I will explain i

When the Journey Is Not What We Expected

When the Journey Is Not What We Expected

I look at my life and never could have imagined the journey that brought me to this place in my life. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t love every twist and turn and re-route along the way. I took some detours and jumped right into a few ditches along the way. BUT I love that God has been with me through it all and when I look back on even the most confusing and painful times in my life, I see Him. I see His hand, I see where He was loving me and guiding me towards His plan. Ta

Courage Calls Us Out of Hiding

Courage Calls Us Out of Hiding

She pours her insecure heart out for all of us to see and bravely shares what so many of us would rather hide. The post: Praise and Coffee #womensministry #friendship #PraiseandCoffee #denisedykstra #encouragement #PraiseandCoffeeNights #connection #fear

Get Out Of The Wake

Get Out Of The Wake

When our kids were teens we had a 17 foot speed boat and took them tubing every summer. It became quite an adventure. What began as a fun family time quickly turned into “combat tubing” which included four tubes behind the boat, high rates of speed and acrobatics involving jumping over each other as we cornered and landing on top of the other tubers. The wake was their friend and often used to launch them into the air and Mom into a nervous break down. Thankfully it only made

When You Think You’ve Gone Too Far

When You Think You’ve Gone Too Far

As long as you’re still taking breaths…you haven’t gone too far away from His love. No matter where you’ve gone or what you’ve done, He’s been pursuing you with His love. Stop running… Fierce: /fi(ə)rs/ Adjective: having or displaying an intense or ferocious aggressiveness. 1 John 4:9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. John 15:13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life

Take Your Stand

Take Your Stand

Freedom: the condition of being free, the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints. Does fear keep you restrained from stepping out with power to do the things that burn in your heart? If fear did not hold you back, what would you do? What would you say? What would you create? Freedom always costs something. Jesus came and paid for our freedom from the power of sin and death. I’m hoping you’ve experienced that freedom. But even after receiving s

Fear Sits At Empty Tombs

Fear Sits At Empty Tombs

Don’t let fear keep you sitting in front of an empty tomb, the joy came as they ran to be in His presence. Fear, apprehension and anxiety will keep us stuck in a stale, dead, hopeless place. Jesus promises a full life to those who will seek Him and rest in His presence. Are you sitting at a tomb that is keeping you from having the joy a relationship with Jesus can bring? Maybe you need to get up and run from the person, place, memory, fear or vice that keeps your life stagnan

Emotional Survival Isn’t Living

Emotional Survival Isn’t Living

Galatians 4: 4-7 4 But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. 5 God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. 6 And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” 7 Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir. Orphanages have an ov

Don’t Give Up

Don’t Give Up

A piece of what I’ve been working on… It’s new life, a new day. It’s hope. Please don’t give up. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. Romans 4:18 The Message And be careful not to paint hope with one just color and brush, often new life looks different than we imagined it would. I have experienced this kind of hope, I’d love to hear your stories of new life if y

Defining Who You Are

Defining Who You Are

From my study: Becoming Me Through Him… Labels. Maybe the key to becoming me, becoming you, is to face the labels instead of fighting them. Face our weaknesses, faults, sins and past. As I studied the story of Rahab, I was bothered to see that Rahab is still called a prostitute in Hebrews. How is that fair if she had changed her ways? Why does it seem that she cannot shake this title? Shouldn’t God want her story to be about how her life is new? I don’t want to keep calling h

I’m Still a Recovering Pharisee

I’m Still a Recovering Pharisee

I’ve noticed something lately. I suppose it’s not a recent “thing” but it seems to be ramping up, or at least I’m just seeing it more. NickMom calls it “Other Mothering.” Jon Acuff calls it Jesus Juke. I refer to myself as a recovering Pharisee. It takes on many forms and has been around since the dawn of man but I think that social media has propelled it to a whole new level. It’s that attitude of needing to right all the wrongs (or in the Christian community-spiritualizing

Introducing An Online Study

Introducing An Online Study

Do you ever struggle to know where you fit? Do you feel like your relationship with God is flat and you want more? Are you tired of religion as you know it and ready for a deeper walk with God? I want to invite you to join in an online study that I will be leading: “Becoming Me Through Him” Unashamedly waking up to the woman God created you to be. I’ve shared this message for about 5 years at retreats (and I’ll be sharing it again this weekend), it’s based on the story of Rah

Hold On To Hope, Even In The Deep Stuff

Hold On To Hope, Even In The Deep Stuff

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 Hold on to hope, even in the deep stuff. #womensministry #faith #encouragement #fear #SueCramer

Your Life Is Waiting For You To Let It Happen

Your Life Is Waiting For You To Let It Happen

Why do we fight so hard to hold on to a life that is far less than what it could be? Old customs, habits and relationships that are stagnant and lifeless, yet we cling to them like worn blankies because they are comfortable. What are you clutching that needs to be released? Is it ideas about what will make you happy, but have failed to for years? Is it hope that the past could have been different? How about today, you decide that even though the outside world hasn’t changed,

Overcoming Fear

Overcoming Fear

How many decisions do we make based on fear? What will they think? What if I fail? What if…? There is only one solid way to overcome fear… “God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fe

The Summer 2013 Praise and Coffee Magazine, Our Last Issue

The Summer 2013 Praise and Coffee Magazine, Our Last Issue

The Summer Praise and Coffee Magazine is here! Click here to read: Summer 2013 It’s filled with great articles by amazing women. The topic is freedom, and we tackle it from all angles. Freedom from our past, freedom to forgive, freedom from debt and more. Our last issue… It was a little harder to press “publish” on this magazine. As you will read, it is the last magazine for an undecided amount of time. I tell you about the decision on the last pages of the magazine. We’ve ha

When bad Guys Change the Day

When bad Guys Change the Day

What a beautiful awful mess of a world we live in. A thousand miles away, bad guys change our day. I learned of the terror walking into a restaurant to celebrate my husband’s birthday with our 8 year old. It was impromptu so our grown kids were not there. It was just the three of us, hoping for some great steak. We watched the screens from our booth and the questions poured from Lauren’s quivering lips. We distracted as best we could, but our eyes were nervously drawn to the

The Tomb is Not Forever

The Tomb is Not Forever

The season is hard. You feel tired, empty, spent. Nothing is blooming; it is the winter of our hearts. You wander lost, wondering how you will go on. A life that once seemed so full is now confused and broken. Take heart. Like the day between Calvary and the resurrection, life is at a crossroad. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely

The Trap of Self Rejection

The Trap of Self Rejection

This quote is for all of us who have struggled with feeling unimportant and abandoned. The sacred voice knows the truth. Hold on to it through every storm and sunny day. “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-r

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