hmdavis02

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Why Do We Still Suffer?

Wednesday night at my church, our pastor asked an interesting question regarding 1 Peter 1:5. The passage reads, “…who, by God’s power, are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Pastor John asked us how we would respond to someone asking why Christians still suffer if our God is guarding us through faith. In other words, if God is so powerful and…

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Where Else

When a person’s best efforts to serve God faithfully fall short; when life feels lonely and purposeless, your back is raw from cross-carrying, and the ministries you poured your heart and soul and everything into crash and burn, it’s tempting to wonder if the Lord really does care. Do our efforts really matter? Is all the sacrifice really worth it? At such times, only one thing stops me from…

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By Any Other Name

Several hundred years ago, young men from a war-ravaged city found themselves captives in a foreign nation. The conquering king ordered the very best of them to be brought into his service, specifically requesting youths who came from the noble classes of the subjugated nation. To prepare these young men to serve their new king, they would endure a three-year reset, receiving instruction in the…

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40 Day Feast

I tried something new over Lent this year. Rather than fast from food, I fasted from social media, which is not novel in itself. The new part was adding in a Lenten feast. For forty days, I replaced any entertainment (fiction books, movies, shows, etc.) with reading God’s Word. All of it. I had a 40 day feast on the Word of Life. The number 40 appears in several places throughout the Scriptures,…

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Talk about Transformation: Jacob

This one is for the sisters who are going through Warren W. Wiersbe’s devotional, Becoming New together. Day 15 of Wiersbe’s book touches on the life of Jacob, but I would encourage each one of you to read the patriarch’s entire story from his birth recorded in Genesis 25 at least through the death of his father Isaac at the end of Genesis 35. You can read it all in less than half an hour, and…

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Less Popular Perspectives on God's Call

Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.…

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Lament

A week into 2025, and I’ve yet to write a single post. If I’m honest, it’s a bit of a struggle to write at all. I’ve been seized by the most astonishing discouragement, and writing has lost its luster. Some few decades ago, I had an earnest hope of making a living by writing to help my poor, overworked husband. In the spirit of, “you have to spend money to make money,” I upgraded to a paid…

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Christmas Adam Ruminations

Today is “Christmas Adam” (because Adam comes before Eve, as my offspring have informed me). It’s not a bad time to turn our thoughts from the first, humble advent of Christ as an infant to the future second advent when He will come in unassailable power and glory. Indeed, speaking for myself, most of my bad attitudes or wayward thoughts can be corrected by this very meditation on any day, be it…

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Half a Century | A Reflection

On March 10, 1974, a tiny human protested the forceful eviction from the warmth of her first home into a cold shock of light and noise. That is to say, this past March, I turned 50. Oddly enough, checking the box labeled 50-59 doesn’t make me feel as old as the day one of my kiddos (then in middle school) exclaimed in utter disbelief, “You were born in the 1900s?!?” (emphasis unfortunately…

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Choice and Consequence: A True Story

It happened in the spring of 2000; the moment that changed the trajectory of my life. I was in my mid-20s; an aimless young woman with no real plans. At the time, I was an avowed atheist and had bought into the pervasive lies hookup culture sold my generation at bargain prices, choosing to treat sex as a mundane social transaction. And now I was faced with the consequences: two dark pink lines…

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Choosing Life

Moses was nearing the end of his substantial ministry, preparing to hand leadership off to Joshua, and getting the descendants of Israel ready to take possession of the land promised to Abraham many generations before. In light of his, Moses had just finished reiterating the entire covenant between God and His chosen people so they would go in with a clear understanding of what it looked like to…

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Darkness, Light, and Subjective Morality

As our 8:45 p.m. flight took off, I watched the ground fall away through the airplane window. The ambient brightness of the city at ground level faded quickly. Night encroached. In my bird’s-eye view, large pools of light pushed back the darkness as we gained altitude, soaring over stadiums, shopping malls, office complexes, and street lights. The further from the city we journeyed, the more…

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Homeschool Advice Part 8 | Stay Engaged

Once again, this advice is for all parents, not just homeschoolers. Whether your kids are never out of your sight or you hardly see them; whether they receive their schooling directly from you, from a public school, private school, or a hybrid; literally no matter what is going on in your life with children, the advice is the same: stay engaged. I know firsthand how tempting it can be to zone…

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Jesus Didn't Come for the Righteous

. . .He said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”(Matthew 9:11-13) The above statements by Yeshua (Jesus) were made shortly after He called a man named Matthew to follow Him. Because Matthew was both Jewish and a tax collector employed by…

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Homeschool Advice Part 7 | Read Aloud and Read a Lot

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury If you do nothing else in your homeschool, teach your children to read. Basic math is also a must, and thinking critically about what they read is equal in importance, but reading itself is an incredible skill that cannot be overstated. Since reading the Bible should be the foundation and…

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Homeschool Advice: Part 6 | Failure

In the early years of homeschooling, I began to re-evaluate the role of failure in life. I’d spent a good portion of my adult years berating myself for stupid mistakes, wasted time, and the like – to the ironic point of wasting more time stupidly dwelling on past mistakes. It changed when I noticed my ungodly habit rubbing off my kids and recognized the absolute desolation of refusing to learn…

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A Theology Built on Suffering

My walk with the Living God is not your typical Southern I-was-raised-in-church story. Although I did attend church with my family as a child, I didn’t “get it.” Nothing in my childhood Sunday school classes penetrated to the core of my will and reason, and so I was unprepared for the inevitable hardships of life in a sin-wrecked world. I had no theology for suffering. As a teen and young adult,…