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“What’s my birthmother’s name?” My seven-year-old daughter’s sincere question pierced my heart. Ours had been a private adoption where we were provided only the most basic of information about her parents: height, weight, age, color of hair and eyes. How was I to respond? The question felt impossible! I drew in a breath and prayed, “God, what do I say?” A sentence tumbled out of my mouth, “What would you like her name to be?” She beamed at me and proclaimed, “Madeline!” “Then, Madeline it is!” I declared. In just a few minutes, I believe God had provided an answer when I didn’t have one. 

In the years after His death, Jesus’ followers would encounter great challenges where they needed God’s answers in seemingly impossible situations. In John 14, Jesus promised He would not leave them alone but would come to them with help (v. 18). Further, God would provide an ongoing flow of help: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (v. 26).

Sometimes the questions we face seem impossible to answer. We need God’s help and answers with our children, our work, our neighbors and our world. When we don’t have the answers, He can provide them.

In 1849, Henry “Box” Brown (a US enslaved man from Virginia) folded himself into a wooden crate marked “dry goods,” and two friends shipped him from Richmond to Philadelphia. Brown was inside the box (3 x 2.5 x 2 feet) for the 26-hour trip, with three small holes cut for air. As abolitionists pulled Brown from the box, he sang a paraphrase of Psalm 40, expressing his hope in the God who promises freedom. “If you have never been deprived of your liberty, as I was,” Brown later wrote, “you cannot realize the power of that hope of freedom, which was to me indeed, an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast.”

Freedom is central to how God operates in our hearts and in our world. His wisdom leads to spiritual freedom, but false wisdom leads to oppression. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” Paul says, “there is freedom” from sin, death, and condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:17). When we listen to God and follow His ways, freedom results. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: when we ignore Him and resist His invitations, we become ensnared and confined. God liberates and transforms us by His Spirit (v. 18), but sin and rebellion traps us.

We sometimes believe that God limits and obstructs our possibilities and pleasure. But in truth, He’s the only one who can lead us into an expansive future, the only one who can guide us into genuine freedom.

If you don’t plan the handoff, you’re planning to lose everything.

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Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

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In Acts 1:8 Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses—in Jerusalem, in all of Judea, in Samaria, and in every part of the world” (MSG).  We are God’s witnesses.

And we are to speak truthfully.  God loves the truth and God hates deceit. But Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (NIV).  How do we explain our dishonesty?  Well, for one thing, we don’t like the truth because the truth isn’t fun.  The wages of deceit is death.  Not death of the body, perhaps, but death of a marriage, a conscience, a career, or faith. But perhaps the most tragic death that occurs from deceit is our witness.

Examine your heart.  Do you tell the truth…always? If not, start today.  Be just like Jesus.  Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Read more Just Like Jesus

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

Those who drive along Highway 18 in western Oregon each fall are greeted with a delightful surprise from the tree-covered hillside flanking the road: a giant smiley face. The cheerful face is only visible in the autumn when the Larch tree needles turn yellow, contrasting with the surrounding, dark green Douglas fir trees (which create the eyes and mouth). A lumber company planted the three-hundred-foot diameter face in 2011 as part of an effort to replenish the timber they’d harvested.

Isaiah invites us to know God as the one who brings life to desolate places. He reminded the Israelites during the barrenness of their captivity that God “[makes] rivers flow,” can “turn the desert into pools of water,” and grow “the cedar and the acacia” in the desert (Isaiah 41:18-19). God does these things not solely for His (and our) delight; He plants junipers, fir, and cypress “so that people may see and know” (v. 20) that He authors all and will ultimately redeem all—even those places thought to be “wasteland[s]” (v. 19).

Though we may not glimpse a face smiling back at us from a hillside, all of creation can remind us of God’s redemptive power over our world and our individual circumstances—even in the wake (or fear) of devastation. Let’s seek His face as our source of hope and joy amid our struggles.

There's a battle happening in our minds: one that shapes how we see ourselves, our circumstances, and even God. In this episode, Carey moderates a conversation with Louie Giglio, Jennie Allen, and...

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Visit www.joniradio.org for more inspiration and encouragement!

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Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Jesus’ heart was so focused that his last words were “It is finished.” God wants us to have focused hearts like Jesus. Here are four simple questions to help us stay on course:

Read more Just Like Jesus

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

Ethel and Ed live in the high desert area of the Rocky Mountains. As we visited them on their ranch filled with memorabilia, the conversation turned to childhood stories of riding horses on the grasslands of North Dakota and herding cattle in Montana. They’re on in years now, and I could hear in their voices a longing for home.

Psalm 137 captures a similar emotion. The Israelites had been forced into captivity and longed for home. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept,” they said. “There our captors asked us for songs” (vv. 1,3), prompting the Israelites to ask, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” (v. 4).

The longing to return from exile is a common theme throughout the Old Testament prophets. Eventually the Israelites did return. They rebuilt Jerusalem and resettled in the land, but it was never the same. When the temple was rebuilt, those who remembered its former glory wept because it was a shadow of the first (Ezra 3:12).

Old age may feel as if we’re in exile from our former selves as time takes a toll on mind and body. For those who know Jesus, this longing points not to the past but the future. That’s where my conversation turned with Ethel and Ed—a longing for our future home where everything is made right and is far better than anything we can imagine.