LizChatter

Hey guys! I am tardy in providing an update, please accept my sincere apologies.  I have moved from the Hudson Valley area up to Buffalo, NY, and when I say up, I mean up. The Canadian border is 15 minutes from my office! 😁 People who contact me here or on social media have wanted to know about the change so soon after moving to NY. After a few months I realize that there is no way to simply explain the catalyst for this move other than to say that once a person has worked in agile, grace-based environments with servant leadership principles enacted, there's no going back. True to the way I function, I could not compromise my convictions about healthy work environments, so this move out of the Hudson Valley area was bound to happen eventually. Also, opportunities are presented for a purpose, and I am not one to squander an opportunity! 😊 My current role of service is with the City Mission Society which has two main program properties in Buffalo: The Alfiero Center and Cornerstone...

Can we get real about the carnal effects of hard times? I think we can.  In fact, as we engage in this topic lets allow our mind to compare the carnal-minded response vs the spiritual-minded response to difficulties and suffering. We come to God underdeveloped, weak, immature, and uneducated in matters of eternal things. He invites us and we respond. We meet Him and over time allow Him to develop, strengthen, mature, and inform us. He does this most often through circumstance, and situational processing.  One of the most beautiful examples of process and the value that God assigns to process is found in the life of Christ. Luke 2 is an incredible account of "Process" in this way. Here we see the human growth, the spirit growth, and the plan of salvation processing to the exact point in time when it would become a reality for all of humanity.  The way Jesus made it through the most difficult parts of the process was to pray, "Not my will, but Yours be done." and this...

The Holy Spirit has been preaching to me about how often prayer time centers around things that concern us which more times than not, has little or nothing to do with God being glorified and more to do with our comforts and earth-bound desires. Since God is concerned with the things that are about us, we can be concerned with the things which about Him. I sense that this is a healthy foundation for long-lasting relationships in any case, and with God most especially. It is not that He suffers from our poor attempt at a relationship with him, but our spirit will definitely suffer and in the long run so will our witness. Too many are unwittingly focused on how their relationship with God should benefit them; this is a sign that the pride of life has not been addressed in the heart of a believer. When one sees Him as worthy, despite earth-bound struggles, the focus is on His fame and His honor, on His glory... rather than on how our lives will benefit from a relationship w...

I get junk mail, you get junk mail. It's so common that I rarely even read the details of the junk mail envelopes. I have been adulting for so long that I can literally see which mail is junk and which is contains something I want and need.  Most of the time.  Recently though, I came home to a pile of mail sitting on the coffee table. It had been there a few hours and needed to be sorted. So I got to it, 1 stack of important mail and 1 stack of junk mail. The important mail eventually travels to my desk while the junk mail eventually travels to the recycle bin.  After sorting the mail into the two separate stacks I began to open the important envelopes & packages. Dealing with the contents of one envelope after the other. Then, I side glance at the junk mail stack and see that there is a short note on the back of one envelope. So I pick the envelope up and turn it over to see who sent it. Long story short, the envelope contained a refund, a desperately needed, u...