Draw Nearer

I am learning to draw nearer to the Lord. It is a lifelong path. After almost fifty years of serving Him, I am not where I want to be. But I am getting closer.

One day last week, during my morning quiet time with the Lord, a song written one hundred years ago flowed from my heart. I sang the chorus to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.” Do you know it?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

When we look upon Jesus with our whole heart, our problems no longer seem as large. Our troubles seem to fade when we consider the sacrifice He made for us and focus on the hope He gives. He died so we can live eternally with Him if we know Him as our Savior and Lord.

I read YouVersion’s Verse of the Day each morning and journal the verse along with the Guided Prayer. The app offers background music, too, which helps me to focus on a quiet and personal time with the Lord. The verse on the day I sang, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” was Isaiah 26:3.  

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you,
all whose thoughts are fixed on you! (NLT)

This verse spoke to my heart and aligned with the song that I had sung. If I fix my thoughts on Jesus, and I trust in Him, I can turn my eyes upon Him and see not only the light of His glory and grace, but perfect love and peace.

Because I could not remember the verses to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” I googled the song. Here is verse one.

O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!

When our troubles seem to overwhelm us and we don’t know what to do, we can look to Christ. In Him, we find light, life, and freedom. And because of the freedom He has given us, we can draw nearer to Him.

What do you see when you turn your eyes upon Jesus?

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Lemmel, Helen Howarth. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.” Hymnary. Accessed July 3, 2023. Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus | Hymnary.org.

YouVersion Bible App - YouVersion

Photo by Ben White - Unsplash

Our Faithful Love

Today I’m posting an interview with Melanie Meadows, heroine in Our Faithful Love, the newest release in the Love in Pleasant Springs series. She just moved back to her hometown here in Tennessee after being gone for several years and agreed to chat with me at Mama Lou’s Café.

Thank you, Melanie, for agreeing to meet with me.

She smiled and nodded. “Please call me Mel.”

Mel? Didn’t the café owner call you Lanie a few minutes ago?

“Yes. But Mel suits me better.” She sipped her coffee. “I’m not the same person who grew up here in Pleasant Springs.”

How have you changed?

“I realized I couldn’t trust anyone, and I had to be strong all on my own. The name Mel conveys more strength than the name Lanie.”

Interesting. Tell me about yourself. What brings you joy?

Her eyes sparkled, and she grinned. “The kids I serve. I’m a caseworker. Doesn’t matter if I’m finding them a good foster home or reuniting them with their birth parents. I love working with the kids.”

That’s good to hear. As a Christian author, I’d like to know where God fits into your life.

“My parents and church taught me about God, but I’ve learned that He doesn’t care about me.” She fidgeted in her chair and stared at her coffee cup. “I haven’t gone to church in a while.”

Why? Do you no longer believe in Him?

She lifted her head and widened her eyes. “I think He exists. But He doesn’t care about what I do.”

Oh, but He—

“I’m sorry.” She leaned toward me and furrowed her brow. “Could we please change the subject?”

Okay. You moved back to your hometown after living in Chattanooga for the past eleven years. Are you excited to be home?

“If you include my time in college there, I’ve been gone for fifteen years.” She sighed and picked at a piece of fuzz on her shirt. “Coming home wasn’t my first choice.”

Why did you return?

“My sister Jill talked me into coming back. But it’s a temporary arrangement. The agency I worked with in Chattanooga had to downsize and let me go.” She took another sip of her coffee. “I’ve applied in Nashville at two private agencies and hope one of those will come through soon.”

What will you do in the meantime?

“Jill arranged an interview for me two weeks ago with Clancy County Children’s Services here in town. I’ll start on Monday.” She pinched her bottom lip. “I moved in with Jill and will try to make this work for now.”

You said, “try to make this work.” Do you and your sister not get along?

“Oh, no. I love my sister. We get along well.” She rested her elbow on the table, placed her hand on her forehead, and squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s just that I vowed to never return home. There’s a person here. Someone I don’t want to see. I must avoid him.”

Sounds like a story worth sharing. Care to elaborate?

“No.” She lifted her eyes to mine and placed her hand on her chest. “I haven’t shared what happened between us with anyone.”

I finally got the story from both her and the man she never wanted to see again, Luke Gibson. Learn why Melanie lost her trust in people and in God and the circumstances that led her to trust again. Join her, Luke, and a full cast of characters including Billy, an eight-year-old boy in need of a foster home, a dog named Grizzly, and a cat named Mims. To discover their story, check out Our Faithful Love, a tale of forgiveness and reconciliation available from Amazon! 

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven,
but dwelling on it separates close friends.
Proverbs 17:9, NLT 

And coming soon, for one day only, the Kindle edition for Book One of the Love in Pleasant Springs series will be available on Amazon for $0.99. Mark your calendars and grab your copy of An Odd Request on Friday, March 17!

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Photo by Gemma Evans - Unsplash

Seek the Third Solution

Please welcome guest author, Sherri Stewart, to my blog today as she shares about seeking the third solution and her new release, Deer Eyes!

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
James 1:5, NIV 

Being a believer of Jesus Christ doesn’t mean life will be smooth and easy. Sometimes we face huge dilemmas at work and at home where there doesn’t seem to be a good solution. As an immigration attorney, I dealt with cases like the one with the twenty-four-year-old widow who was being deported to the Philippines because her American husband had died in a car accident while her application for a green card was being processed. But God often gives His children a third option, as He gave me with regard to my widowed client. God brought a happy ending to this case that seemed unsolvable. Often the characters in my books face practical problems with no apparent solution, but they pray and usually find their third option in the Bible.

Ask high school principal, Judd Trudeau, who deals with people problems at work every single day. But what he also has learned is God often gives a third solution when there seems to be no answer. In Deer Eyes, Judd’s most immediate problem is more personal. Newcomer to Bar Harbor, Selah Brighton, is as skittish as a deer in the headlights when he encounters her in Acadia National Park. Once she learns to trust him, together they seek God’s third solution to thwart the plans of the enemy who’s followed her to town. https://amzn.to/3oGaI0s

Author Bio & Links

There’s a lot of me in the book, Deer Eyes. Authors are advised to write what they know, and that’s what I do in all my books. In Deer Eyes, Judd deals with the same conflicts at school as I did as a principal of a Christian school. Selah’s disclosure about her father came straight from my own life as a fourteen-year-old. I’ve written twenty historical fiction/romance and romantic suspense novels. My hobby is traveling to the settings of my books. Next month, I’ll visit Lancaster, Pennsylvania. If you have any suggestions about what I should see, let me know.

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gZ-mv9

https://www.amazon.com/author/sherristewart/ 

https://twitter.com/machere

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/758893.Sherri_Stewart

www.stewartwriting.com

https://www.instagram.com/stewart_sherri/

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/sherri-stewart

www.hhhistory.com

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Title photo by Nathan and Kiran Edwards

Unmet Expectations

Have you made a purchase that didn’t meet your expectations? This happened to me last week with makeup I ordered online. I wanted a product that would hide the sun freckles on my face. That’s what my dermatologist called them. I call them age spots. But even with my new makeup, the spots remained. What a disappointment. And that wasn’t the only time last week I encountered unmet expectations.

In my work in progress, my hero and heroine once shared a fondness for blue forget-me-nots, but at the time of my story, these same flowers represent brokenness. Because I mention forget-me-nots a few times in the book, I wanted to experience them too. I purchased and planted seeds, but I didn’t get what I expected. I wanted the flowers in the photograph above, but I got these instead:

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Those tiny little flowers are lovely, but the blooms don’t have the white or yellow star in the center as I supposed. And I thought forget-me-not flowers were a little larger than the blossoms on my plant. Mine look like weeds with tiny 1/4-inch blooms.

My disappointment was due to my lack of knowledge before my purchase. Upon further research, I realized these weren’t the forget-me-nots I envisioned. The package stated Cynoglossum when I wanted Myosotis, which has the center stars I desired and blossoms of 3/8 inch. And 1/8 inch makes a vast difference with a tiny flower. This problem was easier to fix than my sun freckles: buy and plant the correct seeds!

These unmet expectations I experienced last week are small in comparison with situations we often deal with in life. Circumstances that cause heartache, such as a job that doesn’t go as well as we anticipated, a relationship that ends, a major diagnosis, or losing a loved one. But if we are a child of God, we can meet each situation with hope. Hope that God is with us and will carry us through whatever we face. In our trials, we grow in patience and courage. 

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because
God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through
the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5, NIV 

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace
as you trust in him, so that you may overflow
with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13, NIV 

Trust the Lord with those unmet expectations and rely upon Him and His great love for you. Ask for His help when you face difficulties in life. His hope is yours.

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Notice I didn’t use my face for picture examples! If you have a product to recommend that works for me, I’ll be happy to post before and after photos in my newsletter!

Banner photo by Claude Laprise - Unsplash