I vividly remember a point in my life when the Bible was completely foreign to me. I had heard and understood the gospel, confessed my sins to the Lord, believed in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, attended church regularly, prayed often, participated in small groups, told other people about Jesus, and even played in the praise band. But amid it all, I knew something big was lacking in my Christian life. I didn’t read my Bible.

It wasn’t that I never read my Bible. I spot-read every now and then, I jotted down verses and put them on my fridge, I listened to inspiring sermons on Christian radio, and I even memorized a few key verses. Having grown up going to church, I had a small arsenal of about twenty to thirty verses that I knew by heart, and I would trot them out in Christian circles so as not to appear completely ignorant or unspiritual.

When I was being honest with myself, I really didn’t know the Bible. For me, the New Testament felt daunting, and the Old Testament felt like a foreign language. My lack of Bible knowledge or spiritual understanding had become a source of embarrassment and shame.

Adapted from How to Eat Your Bible: A Simple Approach to Learning ad Loving the Word of God by Nate Pickowicz (©2021). Published by Moody Publishers. Used with permission.

Have you ever lost it—at a time when things were humming along for you?

You were feeling good—until someone said or did just the thing to set you off. You got derailed, pushed out of your sweet spot. You stopped listening and started reacting. You no longer felt like a competent, functioning adult, responsible and caring. You turned into that awkward adolescent all over again as fears and big feelings took over.

Of course you have! We all lose it, some of us more than others. No matter how good our intentions, or how strong our willpower, we are no match for unregulated feelings. We all reach a tipping point. Our ability to manage what we feel sets the limits on our enjoyment of life and relationships. Under the right conditions, all of us can be pushed too far. But the trick is knowing how to get back to that sweet spot, those healthy emotions. When we don’t know

how to get back, life becomes unbearable.

Excerpted from The Joy Switch: How Your Brain’s Secret Circuit Affects Your Relationships – And How You Can Activate It by Chris M. Coursey (©2021). Published by Northfield Publishing. Used with permission.

When we refuse to sacrifice our time for the sake of busyness or of keeping up with the person next to us, we can get back to the good stuff. We can enjoy the rewards that come from instilling these values in our children. We can get back to the simple joys that we would otherwise miss out on as we go through motherhood and life. We forget the abundant beauty that’s hidden in the simplest moments. We forget that oftentimes it is these moments that end up meaning the most to us.

We can’t see what’s right in front of our faces if we are constantly looking ahead to what’s next on our calendars. Our priorities shift, and we lose sight of the beauty in life. We stress about the board we agreed to be on, the cookies we have to bake for the bake sale, and the other commitments we have to juggle, and we no longer have time for what really matters.

Caitlin Henderson is a small-town girl from Kansas who fell in love with a farmer. She and her husband have three kids who keep her on her toes and clinging to coffee. Caitlin is passionate about showing people Jesus and writing about her family’s life full of grace, craziness, love, dirt, and cows. The Henderson family lives on a grain-and-cattle farm in south-central Kansas.

Excerpted from Faith, Farming, and Family: Cultivating Hope and Harvesting Joy Wherever You Are. Copyright © 2021 by Caitlin Henderson. Used by permission of WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

OR

Excerpted from Faith, Farming, and Family: Cultivating Hope and Harvesting Joy Wherever You Are. Copyright © 2021 by Caitlin Henderson. To be published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, on January 19, 2021.

Love. Even if we’ve never cracked open a Bible, most of us know evangelical America’s favorite verse, John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The verse sums up the essence of Christianity. But it’s so familiar to us that we sometimes lose the backstory.

For God so loved the world, we’re told. And so He gave us His son. Why did He need to give us Jesus? Because we needed Him. It wasn’t that we deserved that special gift of life and salvation. Just the opposite, really. He loved us not because we showed a great deal of love for Him, following His commandments and all, but in spite of that fact. He loved us, and because God also knew how broken we all were, He sent His Son so that we could be with Him anyway. God’s love isn’t dependent on what we can do for Him. He loves us.

You have just read an excerpt from the book, Beauty In the Browns: Walking with Christ in the Darkness of Depression by Paul Asay. © Focus on the Family 2021. Used by permission of Focus on the Family (rights managed by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) All rights reserved.

All Christian churches preach and teach the “Great Commission,” the command Jesus gave to all of us to go and make disciples. The Greek word translated “go” is in the present-perfect verb tense and more accurately can be translated “while going.” In other words, wherever Christians go in life, we should seize the opportunities God gives us to make the gospel of Jesus Christ known to every person He places in our paths.

Question: are our churches successfully responding to Jesus’s command to go? If not, why not? In most churches today, evangelical outreach is primarily accomplished by inviting people to attend our churches. Our visitors then hear the gospel message and, if the Holy Spirit leads them, accept an invitation to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. Simply stated, our members are not being encouraged to go out and share the gospel, but to share their church. Inviting people to church should be encouraged. But inviting people to church is not the command of the Great Commission to “go.” Inviting people to a church service is more of a suggestion to others to “come and see.”

Deb Haggerty is a lover of God, a wife, and a mother. Born in Benson, Minnesota, she earned her BA from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, and her MBA from Mercer University in Atlanta, GA. Following a successful career, she purchased Elk Lake Publishing, Inc., a Christian publishing company in 2016.

Roy Haggerty is a lover of God, a husband, and a father. He has a BA from the University of Miami, Miami, Florida, and has taken courses towards a masters of theology through Reformed Theological Seminary. Roy retired in his mid-sixties and has spent his time immersed in Bible study and a study of modern politics. He has taught Bible studies for over twenty-five years.

Severe depression is, by definition, an unhealthy, unnatural state of mind, inherently and wholly illogical. It really and truly doesn’t make sense. And that’s what makes it so difficult for those who’ve never dealt with it (and even many who have) to understand. Cheer up, people say. Get out. Get active. Life’s not so bad. And, of course, they’re right. On some level, you know they’re right. This is exactly how you should be thinking and what you should be doing, because this is what normal people think and do.

You have just read an excerpt from the book, Beauty In the Browns: Walking with Christ in the Darkness of Depression by Paul Asay. © Focus on the Family 2021. Used by permission of Focus on the Family (rights managed by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) All rights reserved.

I remember the first time I learned about orphans as a young boy. It was from a late-night

infomercial highlighting starving orphans in Africa. It hit me hard then, and still today, I cannot

fathom not having a loving family to take care of me. I was born into and raised in a home with

love and stability. My parents taught me to love and follow God, and I learned of His character

and how Psalms says, He is a Father to the fatherless. Sadly, my childhood is a far cry from the

reality of orphans. The orphan crisis is real, and the need for adoptions and fostering is high.

Currently, in the United States, there are 425,000 kids in foster care, and 122,000 of those are

waiting to be adopted. These children are waiting for families that will love and care for them, as

I experienced as a child.

“We’re thankful our church highlighted foster care and adoption regularly. God used it to speak

to us and open our hearts and home to foster and adopt. We often say this is the hardest yet

best thing we’ve ever done. Our children have brought unimaginable joy to our lives and taught

us so much about the love of our Father.” - Kris and Jen Watts

If you would like to know how to get started or more involved, please connect with Rick Smith at

Pathway Family Services (1-877-550-KIDS) or [email protected].

An old man stoops and grabs a weathered hardback off the shelf. He handles the volume gently, careful not to disturb the fragile binding while returning to his favorite chair, glasses perched on his nose. As he slowly turns the yellowed pages, his eyes dart around the room. Grandpa is flanked by several grandchildren, who lean in with anticipation. Across them a fire flickers and crackles in the hearth.

It’s less than two weeks until Christmas, but at Grandpa’s house, these words usher in the official beginning of the season. “Let me tell you a story.” They knew the story, but they want to hear it again.

And so he begins a daily December ritual. Each day Grandpa unfolds another piece of the Christmas story. An angel. A scared young Jewish girl. A bewildered fiancé, Joseph. Shepherds. Angels. Wise men. The kings from the East. The wicked Herod. The shepherd boys in the field. The innkeeper. Prophets and princes, paupers and philosophers, wise men and wanderers.

Taken from The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught up in the Story of Jesus by Daniel Darling (©2019). Published by Moody Publishers. Used with permission.

If you listened to my Christmas playlist, you’d quickly get bored. It’s essentially every version of O Holy Night available on Spotify. Even though they’ve left out some verses, my favorite version is still the *NSYNC cover.

Oh, holy night! The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth

I love the reminder of the night of Christ’s birth. His coming was anticipated, but unexpected. He was born in the arms of common people, not to nobility, royalty, or even wealth. He was given no special treatment, laid in a manger not meant for Him.

Melissa Fuller serves as the Content Director for the international ministry Love God Greatly. She served as the general editor for the Love God Greatly Bible and as the managing editor on several Bible projects including the She Reads Truth Bible and the (in)courage Devotional Bible. Melissa has a Master’s degree in Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. She currently lives in Georgia. https://lovegodgreatly.com/love-god-greatly-bible/

The word “nativity” is derived from the Latin nativus, which means “arisen by birth.” Although technically we could use the word to describe any birth, it has become synonymous with the birth of Jesus. Nativities created as art, models, carvings, or even live demonstrations are common Christmas decorations depicting the night of Jesus’ birth.

Although Christmas Day is celebrated in only twenty-four hours, the immensity of its meaning and significance demands much more time and consideration. We do not know the exact day or even the year of Jesus’ birth, and few believe it was December 25 or even in the winter. The shepherds would unlikely have been out in their fields by night! So this creates a problem with some Christmas carols that speak of snow and cold. Even though our calendar implies that year one is the first year of Christ’s life, most scholars believe the year was somewhere between 6 and 4 BC. Yet the most important issue is not the precise date of when it happened, but that it happened on a precise date. In his book The Truth of God Incarnate, Michael Green defines the incarnation as being “the way and time that God made Himself known specifically and personally by taking our human nature into Himself, by coming amongst us as a particular man, without in any way ceasing to be the eternal and infinite God.”

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Adapted from Hosanna in Excelsis: Hymns and Devotions for the Christmas Season by David & Barbara Leeman (Moody Publishers, October 2020). Used by permission.