waiting

The Power of Delayed Gratification

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” – Psalm 27:14 It’s so important as believers that we understand the power of delayed gratification. One famous study in the 1970s was done at Stanford University. It was on delayed discounting, which is a scientific way of saying delayed gratification. They offered children the opportunity to eat one marshmallow now, or have two marshmallows later. They would leave the room and come back 15 minutes later. Some of the kids ate the marshmallow right away, and some of the kids waited. In the video, you can see they are tortured with this decision. The kids that waited and ate two marshmallows were the subjects of a study that spanned 30-plus years.  These children who waited to eat the two marshmallows did better in every aspect of life. They did better financially, in their careers, and

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Separation Precedes Elevation

“On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin — the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord was on him.” – Ezekiel 1:2,3 The story of Ezekiel is an interesting one. Born a Levite and set apart by God to be a Jewish priest, his life turned out nothing like he thought it would. In fact, when he was just 25 years old, the Babylonians came and attacked Jerusalem. Though this was many years before the Babylonian exile, it foreshadowed it, and when the enemy armies ransacked the city, though they left it intact, they took a bunch of loot and a large group of Jews with them back to Babylon. One of their unlucky captives was Ezekiel. Now alone

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The Call to Prepare

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning.” – Luke 12:35 When Hannah was pregnant with our first child, Haven, she was certain she was going to deliver after her expected due date. Since her mom had given birth six times and was late each time, she figured she would follow suit, and she kept saying it to me. I took her words to heart, so you can imagine my shock when she woke me up in the middle of the night three weeks before her due date. Half-dazed and with blurry eyes, I heard her tell me that her water had broken. Like a scene out of a movie, I stumbled and fumbled to get my stuff together so we could get to the hospital. Thankfully, we made it there in time and everything went smoothly once we arrived. However, when we got home, I realized just

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The Harvest of His Promises

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:10,11 I love this promise from the Lord as recorded by Isaiah because it reminds us that His Word never returns void. I think many of us become discouraged when we faithfully apply ourselves to the things of God and yet don’t experience the freedom and breakthrough we’ve been longing for. We pray, seek, and trust, but we still endure a prolonged wilderness that leaves us wondering if He’s there at all. It can be equally as

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