God Is an On-Time God is a part of a quote I read in Kelly Balarie’s book Take Every Thought Captive, and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for just five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 28 of Lent 2025 – April 1

I was the book launch manager for Kelly Balarie’s Take Every Thought Captive in 2023. I read her powerful book, as I always do with my clients’ books, and it resonated strongly with me.

I’m glad I reread my highlights from it this year. This quote about God’s timing is good for me to remember. I feel like I’m in a long season of waiting for God to redeem all that the locusts have eaten in my life. I want him to rebuild goodness in my relationships, finances, and faith – areas that have been shaken in the past three years.

Kelly’s quote reminds me to trust in God’s timing. I also think about Joseph, the Bible person with whom I most closely identify. In one moment, he was lifted from prison and set into a high position of authority. The Bible even records that he took time for a quick shave (Gen. 41:14). I think about Joseph shaving off his long beard as a sign of shedding off the old when he was getting ready to step into the new. Actually, he stepped into the prophecy God had spoken over him 13 years prior to that moment (Gen. 37:5-11).

Here’s another great quote from Take Every Thought Captive:

Disappointment makes us feel blocked, but trust in God delivers hope that good can come out of bad.

As I wait for God to fulfill promises he spoke to me in the Sunbeams chapter of this book I wrote, I must intentionally fight disappointment and impatience by focusing on hope. This builds my trust in God and heals my relationship with him. I’m grateful for God’s Word which gives me hope, along with all the Christian books I read for my edification.

Get your copy of Take Every Thought Captive HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

The Person Waiting to Offer Himself is a part of a quote I read in Asheritah Ciuciu’s book Delighting in Jesus, and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for just five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 27 of Lent 2025 – March 31

I ordered this book because I need an infusion of joy into my life. What I appreciate most about it is how Asheritah weaves neuroscience into her spiritual encouragement. She talks about our brain’s fear center as well as its joy center. As I’ve written about in this book, the more we focus on Scripture to reprogram our thoughts, the more joy we can have in our lives.

In the past three years, severe trauma has impacted all aspects of my life, including my spiritual health. As I’ve written before, I’ve felt a sense of betrayal in my relationship with God that I want to repair. This book is helping me do that. I appreciate both the practical and spiritual approaches in this book. She lays out the five rhythms of delight: worship, word, whisper, wonder, and walk. I’m exploring the one on worship right now. I like her suggestions for carving out personal worship time each day. This will help me heal and recapture the joy of living the Christian life.

My Bible reading has felt more wooden at certain times in my recovery process. Though I kept up with reading devotions every day with scriptures in little bites, sometimes reading the Bible itself felt too painful. But I believe that season has passed, and I’m grateful that it’s over. As the quote states, I want to recapture my delight in the personhood of Jesus through my daily scripture readings, rather than just looking at Bible reading as another thing to check off my to-do list.

Sometimes we need a friend to help us recapture our joy and delight, and Asheritah serves that purpose in Delighting in Jesus. I encourage you to get your copy HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

God Brings Laughter is a part of a quote I read in Janet McHenry’s book Looking Up, and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for just five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 26 of Lent 2025 – March 30

I was honored to be the book launch manager for Looking Up, a book written by my friend Janet McHenry. Because it’s her birthday today, I chose to feature it on my blog post today. It’s an encouraging 365-day devotional I am also proud to endorse. Here’s my endorsement:

As a melancholy person by nature, I need devotionals that help me focus on joy. This book is the perfect solution. Janet McHenry has written bite-sized devotions that don’t deny the hard facts of life. Yet she points you toward joy through engaging personal stories, meaningful prayers, and affirming declarations to help you look up into your Heavenly Father’s face every day of the year.

Today’s quote focuses on the gift of laughter that God provides. Because I am a serious person, I must seek humor outside of myself. In my healing journey these past three years, I’ve tried to be intentional in seeking times of laughter to lift my spirits. The most common way I’ve done this is watching sitcoms from the 1990s with my daughter. I also find humor when playing with my dogs. Humor has been a gift that has even pushed tears of grief to the surface when I was laughing. I could feel the grief welling up because it needed to get out.

After listening to my story of trauma for the first time, one of my coworkers suggested laughter as a solution. He is an enneagram 7, a personality type who seeks fun. He had heard that some Native American tribes intentionally use jokes at the end of emotional healing rituals to balance out the seriousness. I thought about all this deeply. If even unbelievers know the value of laughter for healing, certainly I can use the gift of laughter God gives me for my healing.

I’m grateful for Janet’s devotional that encourages me to look up every day and even laugh with the Lord when I find opportunities to do so. Here are more encouraging quotes from Janet’s devotional:

• We are not victims of circumstances but vessels of God’s grace.
• Abundance comes through the filter of God’s fingers.
• Being thankful is the easiest offering we can give.
• Praising God for his faithful character is the best way to start a day.
• We can pray in all seasons that God will make our lives meaningful.

Get your copy of Looking Up HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

If You Couldn’t Pray for Thirty Days is a quote by Paige Benton I read in Nancy Guthrie’s book The One Year Book of Hope, and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for just five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 25 of Lent 2025 – March 29

I read this quote in Nancy Guthrie’s book, “The One Year Book of Hope.” It has been my morning devotional for several months, and you can buy a copy of the book HERE. It’s the only book I’ve quoted twice in this series of Lenten posts, and I thought the quote was too good not to share.

If You Couldn’t Pray for Thirty Days

As mentioned in Nancy’s book, here’s the context for this quote by Bible teacher Paige Benton. Because Daniel was a righteous and prayerful man in the time of King Darius, ungodly kingdom administrators were envious of his influence. They devised a law prohibiting anyone from praying to other gods besides Darius, who was believed to have divine powers. For thirty days anyone caught breaking the law would be thrown to the lions.

What did Daniel do when he heard about this law against prayer? Let’s look at Daniel 6:10 NIV to find out:

Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

Paige Benton adds that Daniel was only asked to give up prayer for thirty days. He was not asked to renounce his faith in God. She said, “We give up prayer so quickly and easily because we don’t get any public credit for it.”

Considering your current prayer life, would it make any difference if you couldn’t pray for thirty days? I think this may be the most provocative quote I’ve found in this Lenten series, and that’s why I want to explore it with you today.

If I Couldn’t Pray for Thirty Days

In this Lenten series, I’ve mentioned that the past three years have been extremely difficult for me. My faith has been shaken to the core with all kinds of severe trauma and resulting complex PTSD. I have gone through a long, challenging dark night of the soul. Sometimes, the struggle was minute-to-minute, especially after a stalker approached me.

However, in that whole time of suffering, I prayed every single day. Prayer was the unbreakable cord that tethered me to God. My prayers were not pretty. At times, they were angry rants. Other times, they were heartbroken cries. I questioned God, yelled at him about the unfairness, and desperately pleaded for justice and deliverance. Those wild, emotional prayers were the way I bore my heart to God in my suffering, and I don’t regret a single word I spoke during that time.

Another type of prayer I prayed was intercessory prayer. Praying for others gave me a sense of purpose when everything else around me didn’t make sense. I also chose to praise God despite my suffering, mostly through songs that expressed my feelings better than spoken prayers. The song Defender became my anchor in my darkest moments, and God, Turn It Around became my frequent petition.

The bottom line: I could not have survived the past three years without prayer. It was as essential to me as breathing. If I had to go thirty minutes without prayer, my life would have been insufferable. Thirty days without prayer would not have been liveable. If I had been under the same pressure as Daniel, I would have prayed anyway – that’s how important it is to me.

The Great Gift of Prayer

Today’s quote has moved me to praise God for the great gift of prayer. It has been a treasure to me, not just in the past three intensely painful years but for my whole life. It’s the channel through which I have developed an intimate relationship with the Lord.

In my days at Covenant College, we would use one day per semester as a Day of Prayer. All classes were cancelled for the day, so we had time to pray over our futures. This beautiful practice stuck with me as a way to stop everything, connect with God, read his Word, and seek his direction. I haven’t taken a whole day of prayer for a long time, yet I’m glad I can stop anytime during the day for a few minutes, connect with God through prayer, and gain a greater sense of peace.

I’m grateful God has taught me to seek him in prayer ever since I was a child. I pray today that if you’re reading this, you will also recognize the great gift of prayer and be moved to pray more. Since prayer can be a confusing and challenging topic, I’ve compiled the best books to help you on this journey HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!

Living in the now is a portion of a quote I read in Ruth Chou Simons’ “Now and Not Yet,” and I’m pondering it with you today.

For Lent 2025, I’ll be writing new blog posts every day. I’m writing for only five unedited minutes on a quote of the day to deepen our faith in this Lenten season.

Day 24 of Lent 2025 – March 28

I love Ruth Chou Simons’ books, and I even got to interview her years ago on THIS POST. Her book, Now and Not Yet, is great encouragement for those of us waiting through a season we’d rather not endure, like I am now. I must admit, I bought it last year because I knew I should read it, but didn’t want to read it. I’m picking it back up now to be obedient to the Lord as I try to wait well in the now-and-not-yet season.

David’s Story of Living in the Now

I’m pondering the concept of living in the now as I watch the House of David series on Amazon Prime. As I watch David struggle with frustration in the space of being anointed as king, yet still subjected to living as a shepherd and musician, new life is breathed into familiar Bible stories I’ve known since childhood. I see David’s great potential even as a young man, similar to my story as a gifted student talented in the arts. In the series, I see the hidden strengths he’s perfected in the lonely wilderness, like the ones I’ve had myself against my will.

As a young man, David struggled with living in the now, just like me. Yet we can see from the Scriptures that God used that lonely time in the wilderness, before David was ever anointed as king, to shape him into a man after God’s own heart. In those lonely spaces, David honed his musical skills and writing talents, which we still enjoy thousands of years later in the Psalms. He also gained courage, physical strength, and poise as he fought lions and bears, which paid off in his epic battle with Goliath. All these benefits came from the season David would rather not have endured. They were shaping him to be the mighty king of Israel who was a forebearer of Jesus – that’s why God said his kingdom would have no end.

We know the end of David’s story, but he didn’t know what was ahead of him. He struggled with frustration, anger, impatience, and sadness as recorded in so many Psalms. I’m glad the scriptures show him as a real, imperfect human being, so we can relate to him in his struggles.

Living in the Now

Ruth’s book is a wonderful companion to help us learn to live in the now with hope and peace rather than resistance. Through her own stories and Bible stories like David’s story, she talks about the purpose God has for us in our seasons of waiting, even when we don’t see it. I can shift my thinking from seeing this as a season of surviving to a season of thriving, just in different ways, like David experienced in the wilderness. I’m grateful for her writing that points me toward positivity rather than the natural negativity I feel as I keep waiting.

Here are a few more quotes from Ruth’s book:

• It’s hard to live on purpose in the present when your expectations take you somewhere else.
• God is indeed purposeful right here, in the midst of it all.
• The core belief of restlessness stems from thinking I can’t truly rest until I secure everything I think I need.
• If our desire is to experience more of God’s purposes and plans for our lives, then a posture of rest in the God we trust – free and unhindered- is exactly what we must cultivate right now.

Get your copy of Ruth’s book HERE.

Join me again tomorrow for another reflection on a different quote. I encourage you to share your thoughts about today’s quote in the comments below.

Find all my additional resources for Lent on this page.

Are You Looking for a Book Launch Manager or Virtual Assistant?

If you’re launching a book in 2025 or beyond, be sure to book a call with me HERE to discuss your book launch. I’ve had over 50 clients since 2022, and I’d love to speak with you soon. I’m also taking on new VA clients. You can learn more and book a call with me on THIS PAGE.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!

Also, if you make a purchase from any of the links on this post, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I send my weekly newsletter Tea on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. Central time every Tuesday.  I write an exclusive devotion for you each week that I share with you first.

To receive the newsletter, please subscribe below. I can’t wait to share personally with you each week!