About Dena
“First and foremost, I’m a Daughter of the King and a long-time Christ follower. I’m also a dog mom who enjoys reading Christian books, cardio drumming, traveling often, and I’m a bit of a technology geek. My life has seen its fair share of curve-balls and I’ve found that I’ve become closer to Christ in each trial as He’s comforted me and shown me that I can solely put my faith and trust in Him. 2 Corinthians 1:4 NLT says “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” I feel thankful and blessed for the messes in my life – as they have brought me closer to God. Through the messes, God has given me a message to share with you.”
#NoMessNoMessage
~Dena
17
Nov '18
The Serenity Prayer
17
Nov '18
Do you ever get impatient? I know do – about all kinds of things. I try not to make it a habit, but I can sure conjure up ideas in my head of things that I think are going to happen, and then I get impatient while I wait for them to happen. Sometimes they happen, but sometimes they don’t, and most always they are out of my control.
There’s been times in my life that I’ve really prayed for patience – and I’ve since learned that patience is something God will provide every! single! time! I ask for it. (I believe He’s definitely given patience to me in various large doses over the years! ha!). I remember Pastor Frank mentioning this during a sermon
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10
Nov '18
The Right Crowd
10
Nov '18
May I ask – how intentional are you with choosing the people (or friends) in your life?? I’ve heard this question asked in various forms many times in life. Pretty deep question if you think about it.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. – Jim Rohn
“Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.” – Mexican Proverb
“The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” – Proverbs 12:26
I’ve thought back to the friends I’ve spent my life with over the years, and if I’m being
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03
Nov '18
Winds of Change
03
Nov '18
I’ve experienced it many times. Change. This change usually occurs when God wants to close a door – so what does He do? He closes the door. Have you been in this situation before? Where God just closes a door (and most likely it was a door you thought you wanted to walk through)? We all know how it feels to continue going through life comfortable. Or even if we’re not entirely “comfortable”, we will stay somewhere just because we’re not fond of change. We’ll settle for mediocrity, when God didn’t intend for us to “settle” for that. So, when that door closes, and a “shake-up” happens, we don’t know what to do. We sometimes become scared and upset and wonder why this is happening to us. Or – we thought we were relying on God during seasons of our lives, but looking back – we see that we just wanted to be in “control”. I fully believe that God intended hardships in my life to bring me closer to Him. I’m thankful that God may actually use my hardships
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27
Oct '18
Shift Your Focus
27
Oct '18
A friend recently shared a post on social media that said “Worship gets you through the hardest times in your life because it shifts your focus from the problem to the Problem Solver”. This post showed up right after a different friend was inquiring about what I’ve been doing since some struggles in my life. I proceeded to tell him that after these struggles came along, I got myself very busy with Godly people doing Godly things. He then said he felt he may have isolated himself in the same situation. I’ll admit, I may have wanted to isolate myself, but God surely didn’t give me that option. God began moving in my life immediately and didn’t give me much of a chance at all to sulk or have pity party with myself (i.e. “poor me!”).
Nope, God grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me a few times, told me to take a few days to get things out of my system, and then we’re going to be on to the next thing. God knew exactly what needed to happen with me, so I didn’t question Him. I got involved more in church, started hitting the gym more, and started surrounding myself more with Godly people.
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20
Oct '18
Rear View Mirror
20
Oct '18
When a struggle in life comes at you out of the blue…. on an idle Saturday….. at 2pm….. like a freight train, you feel helpless. (Maybe you saw it coming.. but did you really?) You feel like your whole world is crashing down around you. You feel it fully and deeply and you feel like you can’t breathe. Here’s where we need to take a step back and just look at the whole forest (and see a different perspective).
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13
Oct '18
Crave What?
13
Oct '18
I was in a Small Group/Bible Study in the Spring titled “Made to Crave.” Crave is a verb and is defined as this: 1.) to long for; want greatly; desire eagerly 2.) to require; need.
While this actual study is about healthy eating habits (Lysa TurKeurst; Made to Crave), the concept can be applied to so many other areas of our lives. This study could almost be paraphrased as “Who/what is your God?”, as that’s basically the premise of the study. May I ask… what is the most important thing in your life? Is it a person? A material thing? Food? A relationship? A lifestyle? God?? Be honest.. what is it? Think. {..pause here..} Got it?? You may say it’s God, but is it really? I asked myself this same question.
So, I learned in this Bible Study that when we crave and put something – anything – above God, it’s a sin. Yes, a sin. I dislike that I must admit that I’ve rarely looked at it this way. Yeah, I would go about life enjoying the things that God provided for me, and I
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06
Oct '18
Limitless Love
06
Oct '18
Although a known fact in my life, up until recently I didn’t often just ponder God’s love. Did amnesia set in and maybe I forgot about it? Or did I possibly grow to doubt it because of life’s struggles? Hmmm… I’m not even sure I fully understand it yet, but I do know that God’s love for me is so vast that I could never even fathom it. That’s hard to comprehend on my best day, and even more hard on my worst. Why would God choose to love me? With all my faults – me?
Of course, growing up in a small Baptist Church in a little rural town that had about 20 members, we’d sing in Sunday school “Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.” So, yes, I always knew Jesus loved me, but
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29
Sep '18
The Angel Oak
29
Sep '18
Have you ever looked at an Oak tree and wondered how it got so big, so vast, so tall? Of course, getting as beautiful and grand as it may be, it surely didn’t start out like that. It takes decades to become that grand Oak.
There’s a tree in John’s Island, South Carolina that I’ve visited many times called “The Angel Oak”. If you’ve ever visited, you can most likely remember the amazement when looking at the tree for the first time. This tree is thought to be one of the oldest living organisms east of the Mississippi River. It is estimated to be 400-500 years old, stands 65 feet tall, its trunk is 28 feet in circumference, and an area of 17,000 square feet is shaded by its branches. It has survived a number of hurricanes, floods and
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22
Sep '18
Wrestling the “Why”
22
Sep '18
Have you ever just awoke one morning and had to ask and wrestle with the “why”??? “Why God? Why is this happening to me?” I’ve surely had to reign myself in at times in my life and remind myself that what I was going through was (and is) God’s plan for my life.
Asking “why” is human nature. When we’re toddlers and first start talking, “Why?” is one of the first questions that we ask about nearly everything. We’re curious, we want to learn.. WHY? In my situation, however, asking “why” is a response to the misconception and lies by the enemy that if I understand the reason behind my pain, then
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15
Sep '18
When it’s a Lego Life
15
Sep '18
I remember when my nephew was younger, he was very much into Lego’s. He’d so badly want a Star Wars ship, a Batman car, or any other various Lego set. The picture on the box looked so cool and he was excited to have this item, but once it was brought home, and the box was opened, it surely didn’t look like the picture on the box! As the little plastic packages inside would come out of the box one by one, there instead of a ship or a car were a bunch of little block pieces in bags – and when I say a bunch, I mean no less than 1000 pieces!! For fun, I researched and found the largest Lego set of all time:
Source: Lego. It’s 7,541 pieces. That’s the number of Lego bricks in the newly updated Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon set that Lego announced today. August 31, 2017
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