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Word of the Year 2026
We’ve hit the ground running in 2026, and even though I’ve known what my word would be for this year for a while, it’s taken time to get all my thoughts together! When I started thinking and praying about my word for this year, lots of ideas kept floating around in my head. I had…
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Refuge: My One Word from 2025
Well, looking back on this post from the beginning of the year, I had high aspirations for all I was going to learn about depending on God’s strength this year. Different months brought their own challenges, and I had to be constantly reminded to take it all back to God over and over again. How…
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Restoration, Resurrection, and Repentance Part 3
If you missed Parts 1 and 2 of this series on Acts 3, start here. To get to the point of faith there is a step we have to take: repentance. Mitchell Chase says, “Sin brings judgment and death. Repentance is the way to life and restoration.” Kevin DeYoung defines repentance as sorrow for sin…
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Restoration, Resurrection, and Repentance Part 2
If you missed Part 1 of this series on Acts 3, you can read it here. Remember the scene. Peter in the temple, so it is Jewish men he addresses in this message. They have just been amazed and astounded by a miracle, wondering what kind of power it is Peter and John have. So,…
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Restoration, Resurection, and Repentance Part 1
In women’s Bible study this year we’re going through the book of Acts, the only book of history in the New Testament. I had the privilege of teaching Acts chapter 3, which begins with Peter, John, and a lame beggar at the temple at the hour of prayer. The hour of prayer would have been…
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Flesh or Spirit?
I recently heard this question on a podcast, and it has stayed with me. We know Jesus said to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, ” The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). But why is that? The woman on the podcast went on to answer her own question:…
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Luke 14:7-14 – The Least
“One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. . . . Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, ‘When you are invited by someone to a…
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Luke 13:22-30 – The Last
“He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, ‘Lord, will those who are saved be few?’ And he said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once…
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Jesus: God’s Son Part 2
If you missed last month’s post on what it means for Jesus to be refered to as God’s Son, you can find that here. Luke chapter 4 picks up with Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. This is the last event that prepared Jesus for his public ministry. We usually say Jesus’ baptism was the start…
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Jesus: God’s Son
Have you ever thought about what it means for Jesus to be referred to as God’s Son? Many of us are familiar with the Christmas story, where the angel tells Mary, “‘And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and…
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Word of the Year 2025
Two weeks and one snow storm into the new year, I figured it was time to write about my word for 2025. This one actually came to me relatively quickly when I began thinking about it last year. Starting a new job & having one child start pre-k in “big girl school” and one child…
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Surrender: My One Word from 2024
As the year winds down, I’ve been doing some reflecting. One thing I’ve been thinking about is my word from this year. If you’re not familiar with that idea, you can read my post about it here. This past year, the Lord laid the word surrender on my heart, along with Matthew 16:24: “Then Jesus…
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Our Advocate and Propitiation
1 John is a beautiful letter (or some might say sermon) from the apostle John to the churches in Asia Minor. These believers were being enticed by false teaching, but he speaks with authority and affection the truths he learned from Jesus, encouraging the people to stand firm in the truth and not be led…
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A Prayer Strategy
For a long time I struggled with prayer. I read a lot of books and thought a lot about it, but spent little time actually doing it. I have tons of journals from my single years full of prayers I’d written, but as life got busier, I found my prayers slowing down. I knew something…
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The Forgotten Part of the Easter Story
I know what you’re probably thinking. “Easter was over a month ago. Why this post now?” Well, it was 40 days ago, to be exact, and 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead, something important happened that doesn’t get a lot of air time when we summarize the gospel. If I asked you to…
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Salvation through the Red Sea
The Exodus story, when God parts the sea and the Israelites cross though on dry ground, is a pretty familiar story for most of us. At the end of the story, in chapter 15, Moses and the people sing a song to the Lord. They’ve just experienced this powerful deliverance, so singing a song of…
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God WILL Deliver
This semester in our women’s Bible study at my church we are studying the book of Exodus, and I have had the privilege of teaching a few of these lessons. What I want to share today comes from Exodus 6, after Moses has encountered God in the burning bush, been commissioned, and sent back to…
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The Fruit of Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away…
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Community for the New Year
Happy New Year! January is a time when many people (myself included) like to reevaluate and set goals for themselves. But too often (and this is probably a product of our Western culture) we can be very individualistic in this process. We ask questions like, what do I want out of this new year? What…
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Word of the Year 2024
This will be my 10th year of having a word for the year, rather than resolutions. I heard about this idea of choosing a word to focus on for the next year during my first year living as a missionary in Honduras, and it has since become an annual practice. If you are not familiar with…
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The Christmas Story: From Sarah to Mary
Matthew begins his telling of the Christmas story with a genealogy that most people probably skip right over. He starts with a summary: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). The family line was traced through the males, but for us ladies, I want…
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Christmas Reading and Prayer Calendar
If you used the prayer calendar I created for November, I hope you’ve enjoyed it and it has brought you closer to God! (And if you missed it, you can find it here and use it any month!) For December I have created another calendar that includes alternating days of reading from the Christmas story…
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Breath Prayer
Have you heard of breath prayer? These are typically short, one or two sentence prayers rooted in Scripture that you can focus on and pray as you simply inhale and exhale. To be totally honest, I am not sure where this idea came from originally, or when I first learned about it, but it is…
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The Holy Spirit’s Role in Prayer
Have you ever had a time where you wanted to pray for something, but just didn’t have the words? Or maybe you weren’t sure if the thing you wanted and were praying for was really what God wanted for you. I can think of countless examples in my own life that fit these two scenarios,…
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A Month of Prayer
This past month a did a prayer challenge from Val Marie Paper that helped my prayer life get a little refresh. Her prompts had me praying for different things in different ways, and I want to keep that prayer momentum going! So I created a prayer calendar of my own for the month of November,…
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God is Faithful to His Word
When I was in college, I went with my home church on a week-long mission trip to Honduras where we did Vacation Bible School type programs in some villages, and I loved it. Long story short, I got connected to a school in a different area of Honduras that provided free Christian bilingual education to…
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Book Rec: God of All Things
I recently finished a book called God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World by Andrew Wilson. This was the first book I have read by this author, but it has rocked my world. I think I first heard of it on a podcast I listen to, and the forward was written…
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Don’t Despise Discipline
This summer I am leading a group through my Wise Worship study on the book of Proverbs, and in reading back through, these two verses from chapter 3 have stuck with me. If you are familiar with the book of Proverbs, you know it is all about wisdom, and these verses deal with the wisdom…
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Delighting in God’s Word
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 This is one of those “feel good,” often quoted, coffee cup verses. But what does it mean REALLY? Is David, the author of this Psalm, really saying God will give us everything we could ever want, as this…
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Meditating on Psalm 1 + A Freebie!
Blessed is the manwho walks not in the counsel of the wicked,nor stands in the way of sinners,nor sits in the seat of scoffers;but his delight is in the law of the Lord,and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a treeplanted by streams of waterthat yields its fruit in its…
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Mary: The Lord’s Servant Part 2
This is the second part of a teaching I shared at my church’s women’s Bible study. If you haven’t yet, read part one here. We pick up the story of Mary in Luke 1:39. The angel has just shared this huge piece of news that will forever affect Mary’s life, and she has willingly submitted…
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Mary: The Lord’s Servant Part 1
Mary is one of my favorite people in the Bible. I was recently asked to teach a lesson for my church’s women’s group, and so I focused on Mary and her preparation for the birth of Jesus from Luke 1:26-56. I wanted to write about some of the things I shared here. First, we learn…
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Setbacks and Spiritual Warfare
I want to preface this post by saying I am not a “see demons around every corner” type of person. However, because I believe God is real and the Bible is true, I know that “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), and that he comes only…
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How I Study the Bible
In Matthew 22:37, when asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (emphasis mine). Studying the Bible, with the goal of getting to know God better, is one of the best ways to love Him…
Alexa Bailey
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Alexa Bailey 