Today, we share all sorts of fun with you. How to initiate and respond in friendship, all about taking time in nature and so much more. I hope many of you will ponder reaching out to someone, or maybe you will hit the ball back to someone who has initiated to you. Or maybe you can serve a ball yourself. :)

I was so thankful to be able to have a conversation with my online friend, Pierce Taylor Hibbs, about anxiety. In this episode, today I talk about some of these issues with him, author of Struck Down but Not Destroyed: Living Faithfully with Anxiety, about ways to move through these issues. We share stories of God's faithfulness and presence, our own growth in compassion, and our responses to God in times of great anxiety and suffering.

I invite you to join us in our podcast today and it is my prayer that our message will give you encouragement but also a pause to think about how to live well into this moment that you have.

If you want to equip your children to stand strong for truth, for Christ and for family values that includes a high picture of morality, marriage, sex, the foundations of scripture, world view, then you must gently engage over the years, little by little, day by day.  It is best for children to hear about controversial subjects from their parents than on the internet.

Gentleness grows stronger with practice. It comes with humility. It grows as wisdom and takes root in the heart that values the ones she loves. May God grant us to become gentle in our love, that others may see Him through us.

God longs for the most personal, intimate relationship with us. While He created us with this in mind, sometimes in the midst of a particularly challenging time, we allow ourselves to drift away from Him. And yet, it is in drawing closer to Him than ever before, in committing ourselves to daily time alone with Him, that we are able to claim our roles as His child. When we let Him meet us where we are, peace will follow.

There have been crucial dark moments in my life when I would have floundered or fallen apart if I had not had friends to carry me, to comfort me, to guide me when I couldn’t see where I was going. We were created with a yearning for connection, community, and a sense of belonging, a people to call home. Much of our joy is sustained through relationships with people who have chosen to love us, to help us, to be committed.

The secret to cultivating a lifegiving home is not a perfectly balanced life, luxurious home, or a fancy table of food. Instead, it is an open mind, inspired heart, and a deep longing to create stability, no matter the circumstances.

The starting point of your influence is the state of your own heart, mind and soul. If there is purity, wisdom, strength, faith, love and righteousness there, then when you pour out your life, those around you will be blessed indeed.

In all of our ideals, righteousness is progressive. In other words, we make mistakes, we fail, sometimes we do foolish things because they are so accepted in culture. Sometimes, wickedness jumps after us like Potifer's wife chasing Joseph. And our children learned the concept of fleeing--just drop what will burn you and flee--run immediately away from the temptation.