Grace | Laurie Coombs

Archive for the ‘Grace’ Category

Choose Life

Posted on: July 31st, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 4 Comments

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. – Deuteronomy 30:19-20 We don’t often like to talk about obedience. It’s simply not a popular topic to address. Quite honestly, I don’t think any of us naturally want to obey God. We all seem to have this thing in us that wants to go it alone. To do our own thing. To be masters of our own domain and live our lives however we so choose. Even the thought of having…

Fail Fast and Forget about It

Posted on: July 23rd, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 3 Comments

I recently heard a pastor say, “Fail fast and forget about it.”* It made me smile and think about what Paul wrote to the Philippians, the scripture I used in my last post, where he said, Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 3:12-14 I know I’m stating the obvious, but we all fail. Everyone of us has failed in the past, and more failures are sure to come to us in the future. Failure, after all, is a given. We are imperfect sinners in need of God’s…

{Fight for Faith} Sanctified Stubbornness

Posted on: July 9th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 4 Comments

If you’re anything like me, your faith is not static. You may have times of great faith––faith so strong you’re absolutely convinced your unwavering trust in Jesus will quite literally move mountains. But oftentimes, that very faith seems to diminish over time. It goes out from you, like the air of an untied balloon when let go. Seasons of great faith are simply amazing, and I always think I ought to stay there. I seem to measure my level of Christian-success by how audacious my faith is, but I’m starting to think I have it all wrong. Downswings of our faith can be frustrating, alarming even, but I’m not entirely convinced these challenging seasons are a bad thing. I think we’re all bound to experience moments of failed faith. Times when we seem to be holding on by a thread. When we feel weak and discouraged by our lack of faith. But ultimately, every challenge, every…

{Anxiety and Depression} Losing Your Life to Save It

Posted on: June 25th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 12 Comments

Anxiety and Depression Losing You Life to Save It

I think my anxiety was brought on by the many years of heightened stress I experienced after my dad’s murder. It seemed the stress built up slowly over time until my body simply couldn’t take it any more, and I just sort of fell apart. But it wasn’t just the murder. I think it was a combination of many things––my type-A personality, my need for control, additional stress caused by a high-risk pregnancy, and the normal stresses of daily life––that contributed to my downfall. I was confused when the physical symptoms of anxiety finally came to a head. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, and this was when the depression hit. All the medical tests ordered by several different doctors came back normal. In hindsight this was a good thing, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. Not finding a cause for my many troubling symptoms left…

Do We Need to Rid Ourselves of Our Weaknesses?

Posted on: June 18th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 5 Comments

God, Jesus, Faith, Christian, Christianity, strengths, weaknesses, weak, strong, strength, weakness, overcome weakness, overcome, achievement, start, finish, finish what you start, 2 corinthians 12:10, 2 corinthians 12:9, made strong in my weakness, when i am weak then I am strong, strengths finder 2.0

I’m a starter. When called to something, I jump on it and get the ball rolling. But I have to admit, I’m not very good at finishing. That’s not to say that I don’t finish, but for me, finishing what I start does not come without a fight. All I kept thinking during those last few weeks finishing my manuscript was, “I want to quit! I want to quit!! I want to quit!!!” I knew I wouldn’t let myself quit, but I wanted to. I wanted to give up the fight. I wanted to take the easy road. I wanted to sit myself down in front of the TV or read a book or do just about anything other than write––all things I hadn’t done for months. But I was determined to finish even though it took every bit of will I had and a strength that truly was not my own. A…

A Gideon Moment

Posted on: June 11th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 7 Comments

God, Jesus, Gideon, faithful, God fights for us, God fights, trust, trusting God, answered prayer, God impossible, impossible, victory, accomplish, how to accomplish

I’m back! Thanks for hanging in there with me while I took some time off to finish my manuscript. Here’s a post about the last few months. I hope you enjoy! Have you ever had a Gideon moment with God? You know. The kind where He makes the very thing He’s called you to increasingly impossible? The kind where He just keeps putting more and more on your plate as a deadline approaches? The kind where time is taken away when you actually need more of it, not less? I have. In fact, this is precisely what’s been going on in my life over the last few months as I’ve worked to finish my manuscript. If you’re not familiar with the story of Gideon, let me fill you in a bit. Gideon was commissioned by God to lead Israel into battle against the Midianites, the Amalekites, and “all the people of the East.” Israel was armed…

Letters of Hope #3

Posted on: May 6th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 2 Comments

With permission, I’ve decided to anonymously share some of the correspondence I’ve had with readers about their struggles with anxiety and/or depression over the coming weeks. I think some of you may be able to relate with these individuals who are currently battling fear and darkness, and it is my hope that you find comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in this. And I also thought my responses may be of some use to you as well. To those readers who aren’t struggling in this area, I’d like to encourage you to hang in there with me for a few more weeks! I’ll be back writing as I had before long. Thank you for patiently waiting this topic out! I am sitting at work, at my desk, in tears over your article on depression/anxiety. I’ve been experiencing this for some time now and I just started going to a…

Letters of Hope #2

Posted on: April 30th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs

fear, anxiety, depression, how to battle depression, battle depression, battling depression, God, Jesus, Christian depression, trust

With permission, I’ve decided to anonymously share some of the correspondence I’ve had with readers about their struggles with anxiety and/or depression over the coming weeks. I think some of you may be able to relate with these individuals who are currently battling fear and darkness, and it is my hope that you find comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in this. And I also thought my responses may be of some use to you as well. To those readers who aren’t struggling in this area, I’d like to encourage you to hang in there with me for a few more weeks! I’ll be back writing as I had before long. Thank you for patiently waiting this topic out! Laurie were you confident of your relationship with God when u went thru depression? I ask for a good reason. I may have another question depending on your answer i…

Letters of Hope #1

Posted on: April 23rd, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 5 Comments

Joy is coming, fear, anxiety, depression, how to battle depression, battle depression, battling depression, God, Jesus, Christian depression, trust

With permission, I’ve decided to anonymously share some of the correspondence I’ve had with readers about their struggles with anxiety and/or depression over the coming weeks. I think some of you may be able to relate with these individuals who are currently battling fear and darkness, and it is my hope that you find comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in this. And I also thought my responses may be of some use to you as well. To those readers who aren’t struggling in this area, I’d like to encourage you to hang in there with me for a few more weeks! I’ll be back writing as I had before long. Thank you for patiently waiting this topic out! Dear Laurie, I am 40 and I have struggled my whole life with anxiety, phobias, etc. I have been “coasting” using meds etc for 15+years. I haven’t driven on the…

More Practical Thoughts on Anxiety and Depression

Posted on: March 26th, 2014 by Laurie Coombs 3 Comments

This is an extremely rough post. It’s an unedited response I wrote to someone this morning, and felt the Spirit tell me to share it here. I, quite frankly, don’t have time this morning to go through and refine my prose, so I won’t because after all, that’s not what it’s all about. Email after email is pouring into my inbox. There are so many of you struggling right now, and I just don’t have the heart to hold this back for the sake of making it read better. Some of you need this now. Some of you are hanging on to your lifeline by a thread. So here it is. It’s not pretty, but here it is. On another note, my daughters are off for spring break for two weeks beginning next week, so I’ll be taking some time off with them. BUT, I will be posting scriptures that…