I’m driving my recently widowed, 83yo mom to Midlothian, TX at 1:00pm today. She has not been able to eat without pain for ~10yrs and is getting the upper dental implants installed.
I would be very grateful for Christian prayer, that her body is strong and her jaw receives this disruptive procedure well. She goes by Mom (or Barb!)
Thank you.
Prayers appreciated. My son, whom I live with, has bad back problems. He's been out of work since Dec. He's returning. Medical bills are high. Now his car is having more problems and the mechanic gives no hope. Too much wrong. We need prayers for a solution to all. SDG!
Everywhere I look, I see more division. People turning against one another. Arguing over everything. Choosing sides. Choosing anger. Choosing offense.
And the enemy is pleased by it. This is exactly what he wants. Scripture tells us he comes to steal, kill, and destroy... BUT God comes to give life, and life more abundantly.
Yes, we are called to expose evil. The Bible is clear about that. Darkness must be brought into the light. But how we do it matters. Truth spoken without love stops sounding like truth at all.
When exposing evil turns into swearing at one another, name-calling, mocking, and stepping outside of Godly character, we have to stop and ask who is really being glorified. God does not need us to abandon holiness to defend His truth.
God never told us to hate our brother. He never told us to curse our enemy or tear people down with our words. He told us to love our neighbor as ourselves and to pray for those who oppose us.
The Bible is playing out before our eyes at an accelerated rate. This is not the hour to be deceived. This is the hour to stay anchored in the Word, fixed on Jesus, and led by the Spirit.
Discernment is not optional right now. It is essential.
Keep your eyes on Christ. Stay in His Word. Walk in love, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
"The next 48 hours are critical for 17-year-old Dilynn Turner, who is fighting for her life after a traumatic brain injury sustained in a car accident. Following surgery to remove part of her skull to relieve brain swelling, Dilynn remains in a medically induced coma. Her family, especially her mother Jessica and stepfather David, are asking for our prayers during this crucial time.
They are praying for her brain swelling to decrease, for her vital signs to remain stable, and for her body to heal without complications. They are also praying for wisdom for the doctors and nurses who are working tirelessly to save Dilynn.
Please join us in lifting Dilynn and her family in prayer. Let’s surround them with love and support as they navigate this incredibly challenging journey.
The very first recorded words of Jesus’ public ministry are explosive:
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17)
There is enough weight in that single sentence to occupy a lifetime of prayer, study, and repentance. These words are at the heart of the overarching story of Scripture.
But one word, in particular, rises to the surface and refuses to be ignored:
Kingdom.
For many of us the word “kingdom” has often been flattened into something distant and abstract like some far-off spiritual realm, light-years away from earth, largely disconnected from daily life. A place you go after you die. Certainly a future hope, but not a present reality.
Or more tunnel-visioned yet is just to see Jesus’ pronouncement only pertaining to a future thousand year earthly reign of Messiah.
But that is not how Jesus meant it. And it is certainly not how His first hearers would have understood it.
At its core, “kingdom” means the active reign of a king…the exercise of authority, the ordering of life under a ruler’s will. It is not merely a location, nor merely a feeling or state of being. It is both realm and rule. Presence and power. Authority made visible.
Like a good sheriff riding into a lawless Old West town: “Hi y’all. There’s a new sheriff in town.”
Kingdom! Active rule!
By using this word, Jesus was deliberately tethering His announcement to the deep soil of Old Testament theology. The kingdom of God was not a new idea He was introducing; it was an assumed reality…long promised, deeply anticipated, and repeatedly prophesied as eternal, righteous, and victorious (Daniel 2:44; Psalm 145:13).
So when Jesus stood before a Jewish audience and declared that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, they would not have heard poetry. They would have heard a claim: ***The rule of heaven’s King is now breaking into the physical world.***
No wonder it would have sounded electrifying.
For a people living under Roman occupation, this announcement could easily have been heard as political hope. Perhaps heaven’s rule would finally overthrow Caesar. Perhaps God was about to reassert His authority in visible, national terms.
But Jesus’ vision both includes and transcends that expectation.
What Jesus was revealing was that the kingdom Israel had been taught to expect “someday” had arrived now. Not in its final fullness, but in true power. And this demands a response.
That response, Jesus says, is repentance.
This is not accidental. Repentance only makes sense if there are competing kingdoms, competing rulers, and competing loyalties. Jesus’ command assumes something unsettling but true: humanity does not begin neutral. We begin aligned elsewhere.
Scripture describes this plainly. The default posture of the human heart is not submission, but resistance. Not loyalty, but rebellion. We attach ourselves unwittingly to rival authorities: ideas, desires, nations, identities, powers. Even *good* things, when given ultimate allegiance, become acts of treason against the rightful King.
Jesus’ call to repent is merciful. It is the announcement that the true King has arrived before judgment, offering amnesty before conquest. Repentance is not groveling; it is realignment. A turning of allegiance. A laying down of rival banners.
And here is the grace in Jesus’ opening words: there is no escaping the advance of this kingdom.
He does not say, “Prepare for a kingdom that might come.”
He says, “The kingdom is at hand.”
Heaven’s rule is moving toward its appointed victory. The cosmic story is underway and will not be thwarted. And because resistance is futile—not in a cold, mechanical Borg-like sense, but in a redemptive one—Jesus offers practical, tender counsel:
Repent. Come home. Switch sides while mercy is still on the table.
The kingdom of God is not just a future destination—it is a ***present invasion of grace into hearts.***And repentance is the door flung open ahead of us, welcoming us into the family Kingdom. Grace!
I’m a Christian with stage 4 cancer. 10 months ago I was told I had about 6 months to live.
I’ve been fighting cancer for about 29 months total at the time of this post. I won’t lie. Humanly speaking, it’s been a pretty awful ordeal filled with losses, instability, and straight up pain.
The Christian claim is not that faith removes suffering, but that it
relocates it - placing it inside a larger story where death does not get
the final word. To belong to the household of God is not to escape the valley, but to walk it tethered to the One who has already walked through death and come out the other side.
I've come to see my suffering not as a random tragedy, but as part of a
much bigger war - a cosmic conflict between good and evil that runs
through every human story.
I believe we live in a created world that was desecrated by a foreign
evil - a corruption that entered through sin and rewrote the goodness of creation with malignant code. Cancer isn't from the heart of God; it's a symptom of the serpent's vandalism. My good cells were
hijacked, re-scripted by the de-creative power of the curse.
But in Genesis 3:15, right after the fall, God gave humanity a promise -
that a Deliverer would come, one who would crush the serpent's
head. That Deliverer is Jesus Christ. Through His death and resurrection, He secured a sweeping cosmic victory over death, sin, and hell. The whole Bible tells the story of how this Ultimate Good defeats evil. All evil. And all of its accoutrements!
“Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” Hebrews 2:14-15
That's the true story I'm living in. My suffering has meaning because it's
tethered to His victory. What was meant to make me fear death has
instead made me long for resurrection and love Him more. What was meant to silence my faith has only amplified it. The cancer that was supposed to destroy me has become my vehicle to glorify God. My valley has become my weapon - because I'm part of a story that cannot end in darkness.
The cancer that was supposed to get me to “curse God and die,” has instead been used to humiliate the enemy that thought cancer was his to wield against me.
I have experientially felt the truth of Paul’s words: “when I am weak, He is strong.”
My suffering has not been removed, but it has been relocated.
And so, dear reader, I invite you into that same sweeping victory.
Connect your pain, your questions, your suffering to the One who
conquered death itself. His name is Jesus. Through Him, every valley ends in light.
After all, none of us are suffering from anything that a good resurrection won’t fix.😬
If you find in yourself even a faint longing for that kind of hope - not a quick “fix-it,” not guarantees, but a Person to trust - then that longing
itself is an invitation. Jesus does not ask you to clean yourself up,
perform belief, or pretend certainty.
He just asks you to come to Him.
He asks you to come honestly,
with your fear, your questions, and your wounds, and to humbly entrust
yourself to Him. Faith, at its core, is not a formula. It is a yielding - placing your life, and yes, even your suffering, into the hands of the risen Christ. And those hands still bear scars that say "you are loved indeed.”
Please pray for my cousin Stephanie. She has battled a rare cancer for years and has finally moved into hospice care. Her pain is horrible. She is just a few years older than me, a single mom with a young boy. My heart is broken💔My greatest comfort is that she follows Christ 🙌🏻
My wife Annabelle has cancer, we found out this morning.
She is scared, but handling it ok.
Pray for her won't you saints, and that her faith in Jesus would increase?
It's at stage one as of now.
For about a week, my friend Tammy (in the middle) has been on my heart. Her daughter is my niece, and we’ve known each other since middle school. I have been praying for her and I wasn’t sure why.
My mom just called and said she is having surgery today for 2 brain aneurysm’s and it’s dangerous.
Never ignored the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and if someone is on your heart suddenly, pray for them!
Please pray for my dear friend if you feel led to do so🙏
Please pray for Abby... she has a low grade fever, a nasty cough & her head is stopped up. She never cries but she's been crying for the past 4 hours... please pray we don't end up at the hospital 😔