Mid-days With Lauree

For anyone who has a loved one who has seemed to wander from God, I have encouragement for you today: God loves our loved ones more than we could ever imagine. He want to see them find peace and freedom even more than we do, which can be hard to wrap our brains around but it's true! God is inviting you today to entrust them to him, not only because he wants to but because he's capable of loving them better than we can.

As you are celebrating this Father's Day weekend, here is how you can be praying for Doug and his family!

I'm more and more grateful each and everyday that our identity, our security is found in the love and kindness of the Lord. Always has been true, always will be true.

Life can be the best teacher and our lesson is either learning for others or our own mess ups. That's why I'm here. The thing that has taken me a long time to learn due to my knuckle-headedness is that God can infinitely more with our surrender than we could ever do with our control.

Are you believing a lie today? I bet you a lot of us are. One of the most common lies I think we tend to believe is that everyone else has is better than we do. We think we're somehow missing out on something that everyone else is getting to be apart of and it's simply not true! God is a good and faithful father to you, to me, to everyone that calls him savior. Even when things aren't going as we expected them to, God is good and he provides. No good thing does he withhold from us.

If you're a parent, I want you to take a moment to think about your kiddos. Your kids will probably never fully know all the things you have done for them to care for them, to protect them, to provide for them. As you think about your kids, how much more do you think your heavenly father is doing to protect you and your kids? Like our children, we can't even to begin to grasp all the ways he working on our behalf. God really is the ultimate parent.

There are multiple studies that shows that 4 to 5 cups of an 8 oz. coffee each day is associated with reduced death rates. Coffee drinkers are in agreement that this is true: daily coffee will indeed make them less likely to kill someone.

You may have read this or heard this before: "The Lord is near to the broken-hearted." It comes from the Psalms and it's true. God isn't in the business of recruiting strictly those with a background of winning. Actually, God's heart is drawn to those who have nothing to offer but need, regret, shame, fear. You name it, God wants it. If that's you, may the Lord be yours today because he's there for the taking.

It's kind of stunning to think about it, but your prayers don't have an expiration date. Our prayers don't spoil or go bad. There's no "best if used by" date to your prayers. God can and most likely will use the prayers we offer to him to impact our lives for years to come!

The older I get, I look back on my life and realize I only have one regret: I should have trusted God more. We spend too much of our lives worried about situations that aren't ours to worry about. God has always been faithful and he'll always be faithful. It's like the old saying goes, "Worry is just interest paid on trouble before it's due."

Everything in the world today is filled with hype: commercials, movies, social media. It's almost a sure bet that what you experience has been doctored and curated. We're kind of used to being lied to. But that's why God's approach is refreshing. Not a single one of his words is distorted by flattery or fake hype. So you can be encouraged that when God tells us about our salvation and gives us his promises, we can trust the his word will never return void. That's pretty refreshing.

I don't know if you've heard this verse or not, but I've found that it's never not been true to my life. It's Isaiah14:24 "The Lord Almighty has sworn, "Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen."" That's never not true. It's true for you and it's true for me. God is always making plans and when he makes those plans, he keeps them. That's something we can count on in a world that is pretty unsure. God's plan, even when we don't understand it, is good. We can place our whole trust in him.

Do you think it's wrong to question God? The Psalmist in Psalm 13 doesn't seem to think so. We have a lot of questions for God that we'd like an answered, but what good would it do if we had all the answers? God know what we need: Not more information, but more love. Not a timetable, but his presence. Not all the answers, but all the grace.

Just a word of advice from experience: If a child happens to ask you how old you are, you may want to think long and hard before you just answer "guess!" Because chances are, you're not going to like their answer.

Generally speaking, we feel like when we're praying for someone, we're doing them a favor. Though that may be true, praying for others not only benefits the person we're praying for, but it can bless us too!

Are you a fan of pie like me? Then I might just see you at the Texas Pie Fest. Yes it's actually a thing and it's happening this Saturday from 10-4 in Rockwall at Tate Farms. There will Pie Eating Contests, A Car Show, and you might even be able to snag yourself a Fletcher's Corn Dog!

I hate to brag, but today for lunch I ate Chick-Fil-A in the parking lot of a Hobby Lobby. If that doesn't scream "Not Today Satan", I don't know what does.

Some good news after last year's cancellation: The State Fair of Texas is back!Gates open September 24th and the fair will run through October 17th.

Maybe you have child or grandchild who's walked away. Walked away from God, walked away from you, maybe both. It's heartbreaking. I know this feeling well. Here's what I have learned: I don't have answers, but I understand that God understands. He hears my cries and my prayers and he hears yours just the same. I believe in God's faithfulness in my children's lives and you can too.