When you learn to listen to your fear, you've found a compass that can show you what matters.

students today are educated collecting dots. Almost none of it spent teaching them the skills necessary to connect dots. The magic of connecting dots is that once you learn the techniques, the dots can change but you'll still be good at connecting them.

The old stories of what happened to Joe or Bob or Sue thirty years ago are told over and over. We use them to stoke our fear, to rationalize our desire to hide.

My friend Jon likes it when an airplane hits heavy turbulence. His insight is worth sharing. "The odds of a plane crashing from turbulence are essentially zero, so I sit and enjoy it. It's like a ride at an amusement park.

If we believe we are loved, we will live loved. If we believe we are strong in the power of God, we will live strong. If we believe Christ is with us in our fear, we will be brave. If we believe that Christ is with us in the mornings of life, He will be there at midnight too.

We can be frozen by the chaos we feel inside instead of choosing to stand on the truth of who God's Word says we are. We must not give our enemy such advantages. We must not live that way one moment longer. It's time to trade what we feel for the powerful truth of who we are. How we feel can change in a moment, but who we are is eternal.

Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isaiah 43:1—2

It's often at our most broken that we realize how loved we really are.

You are not alone. You are not alone. No matter how you feel, God's Word would never lie. You are not alone!

Listen, God is big enough, and His love is fierce enough to deal with anything we feel or must face.

I was learning the truth: though I felt lonely and scared, I was the well-loved girl of God. And though these feelings of loneliness were familiar, I was coming into an understanding: just because a place has become familiar doesn't mean its where you belong.

Eighteen months before I was born, my mother was in Auschwitz. She weighed 49 pounds. She always told me that God saved her so she could give me life. I was born out of nothing.